Jiomart B2B is the latest among organised supply-chain companies to bite the bullet, shutting down its warehouses, and asking its employees to leave. Why are companies finding it difficult to sustain the supply-chain business? Experts point out that gross margins in supplying fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) are very low.
With debt woes and a legal case in the US courts, educational technology (edtech) giant Byju's is expected to be laying off more employees, according to media reports. According to The Morning Context report, Byju's intends to lay off 1,000 employees. This number, however, could not be confirmed by Business Standard independently. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on the reports.
Spear-phishing e-mails typically try to steal sensitive information, such as login credentials or financial information, which is then used to commit fraud, identity theft, and other crimes.
The earnings of India Inc hit a record high in the 2022-23 (FY23) January-March quarter (fourth quarter, or Q4), compared with their poor showing in the previous two quarters of the financial year. The rise in earnings, however, is exclusively led by banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) companies. A better-than-expected showing by banks and non-bank lenders in Q4FY23 more than compensated for the earnings contraction in the non-BFSI space.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the group's biggest cash generator, overtook Vedanta to become the highest dividend payer in India in FY23. The IT services major paid Rs 42,090 crore for FY23, up 167.4 per cent from Rs 15,738 crore for FY22. The 10 biggest payers together shelled out Rs 2.06 trillion for FY23, more than double the Rs 98,371 crore for FY22.
Reliance Industries (RIL) was the top-performing index stock on Friday (May 26) and closed the day with gains of 2.8 per cent, against a 1 per cent rise in the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex during the day. RIL's performance on the bourses on Friday was, however, an exception, and the stock has struggled to beat the broader market for nearly two years now. The company's share price is currently at the same level as in September 2021, while the benchmark index is up 6 per cent in the period.
The government is set to earn an equity dividend of nearly Rs 13,800 crore from the listed public-sector banks (PSBs), all 12 of them, for FY23, up 50 per cent from Rs 9,210 crore in FY22. This will be the highest ever dividend for the government from PSBs. The 12 PSBs in our sample are paying an equity dividend of nearly Rs 21,000 crore for FY23, up 53 per cent from Rs 13,710 crore for FY22.
The banking sector emerged as an outlier when the rest of India Inc witnessed a slowdown in earnings in FY23. The combined net profit of listed public and private sector banks was up 39.4 per cent year-on-year (YoY) last financial year and their share in India's gross value added (GVA) or gross domestic product (GDP) at factor cost rose to a record high of nearly 1 per cent up, from 0.8 per cent a year ago. Listed banks' combined net profit grew to Rs 2.36 trillion in FY23, from Rs 1.69 trillion a year ago. In comparison, India GVA at current prices was up 15.2 per cent YoY at Rs 247 trillion in FY23; it was around Rs 214 trillion a year ago.
As artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to replace jobs, a new report from Microsoft has suggested that Indian employees are caught between a fear of losing jobs and an opportunity to reduce workload by delegating tasks to technology. Microsoft's Work Trend Index 2023 found that while 74 per cent of Indian employees are worried about AI replacing their jobs, 83 per cent would delegate as much work to it as possible, to help lessen their workloads. More than three in four Indian workers would be comfortable using AI not just for administrative tasks (86 per cent), but also for analytical work (88 per cent), and for the creative aspects of their role (87 per cent).
'I am confident that TCS's best years are ahead,' outgoing CEO tells staff in farewell email.
Led by Tata Motors and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the combined revenue of the Tata group's listed firms crossed the Rs 10-trillion mark for the first time, in 2022-23. The group's 14 key listed companies in which Tata Sons holds a direct equity stake reported a combined revenue of Rs 10.07 trillion in FY23, up 15.3 per cent from Rs 8.73 trillion in FY22. The combined net profit of these companies was, however, down 10.6 per cent year-on-year (YoY) at Rs 66,670 crore in FY23, from a record high of Rs 74,540 crore in the previous financial year, when the profit had jumped 156 per cent YoY, aided by Tata Steel's strong showing.
With the third and final round of layoffs implemented by Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms, Inc. in process globally, India, too, has seen its impact, with some senior executives being asked to leave. Some of the executives to have been impacted are Avinash Pant, India's director of marketing; Saket Jha Sourabh, director and head of media partnerships; and Amrita Mukherjee, one of the directors on the legal team. An email sent to the company did not elicit any comment on the development until the time of going to press.
Rishad Premji, chairman of IT services major Wipro, saw his compensation for FY23 decline by almost 50 per cent year-on-year, due to a fall in the firm's profit. According to the Form 20-F, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by Wipro, Premji's compensation for FY23 was $951,353, down 50 per cent from $1,819,022 in FY22. "Rishad A Premji is entitled to a commission at the rate of 0.35 per cent on incremental consolidated net profits of Wipro Limited over the previous fiscal year. However, in light of the fact that the incremental consolidated net profits for fiscal year 2023 was negative, the Company determined that no commission was payable for fiscal year 2023 to Mr Rishad A. Premji," said the company in the filing.
Macroeconomic (macro) concerns, along with a cautious approach towards discretionary information technology (IT) spending, will see the revenue for Indian IT firms decelerate by 5 per cent through 2024-25 (FY25), from the highs of 12-18 per cent in 2022-23, said analysts from S&P Global Ratings. "The reason behind this slow growth is a macro slowdown. "Customers are cutting their discretionary IT spending, especially on projects that take longer to deliver quantifiable outcomes. "We also acknowledge that there are still strong economic headwinds for the next few years," said Spencer Ng, associate director, corporate ratings, S&P Global Ratings, over a call in a media briefing.
Thanks to a big payout by the group's cash cow, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tata Sons is set to earn a record-high equity dividend worth nearly Rs 33,350 crore from the group's listed companies for FY23, up 130 per cent from Rs 14,529 crore in FY22. Nearly 90 per cent of this, or around Rs 30,500 crore, is estimated to accrue to Tata Sons while the rest will show up in its profit & loss account for FY24. This is because nearly 80 per cent of the dividend payout by TCS for FY23 was done before the end of the financial year through three quarterly interim instalments and a special one in January this year.
Corporate India continues to be generous in rewarding its shareholders with big dividend payouts. This is especially true for shareholders of companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Hindustan Zinc (HZL), and Coal India (CIL) which are seen as cash cows of large business groups and the government. Boosted by a big payout by these three companies, the combined equity dividend payout by listed companies was up 38 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to a record high of Rs 2.27 trillion in 2022-23 (FY23), compared with Rs 1.65 trillion in 2021-22 (FY22).
Vedanta Limited (Vedanta) helping its parent and group holding company Vedanta Resources to deleverage its balance sheet has started to strain its balance sheet. Vedanta's gross debt (consolidated) was up 24.3 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in FY23 and reached a six-year high of Rs 66,628 crore by the end of March. Similarly, its net debt went up 20.3 per cent YoY to Rs 45,706 crore at the end of FY23, up from Rs 38,228 crore a year ago; it was the highest since FY20.
The growing mismatch between Go First's losses and other group companies' profits was making it tough for the group to fund the losses of the airline venture.
The hiring scenario is for the batch that passes out in 2024. These are graduates who will be impacted, given 2022 graduates are not fully absorbed and 2023 onboarding still incomplete.
In the technology (tech) world, especially storage, Sanjay Mehrotra is a well-known name. Co-founder of SanDisk, a flash memory storage company in 1988, it was eventually acquired by Western Digital in 2016 for a whopping $19 billion. For a boy from Kanpur, who went on to pursue higher studies in the US, becoming the chief executive officer of Micron Technology, Inc - one of America's largest memory chip makers - and now setting up the company's first plant in India, it has been quite a ride.