India's telecom sector has been through dizzying peaks, troughs, policy U-turns, court battles, brutal competition, and daily controversies. India could go back to a private sector duopoly with just Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel surviving the mayhem. The third player, Vodafone Idea, could be history.
Companies say that unlike in the US and other countries, in India the high cost of rentals and lower ticket price makes it unviable to run an operation without half the seats available for sale.
Chingari, Roposo, Khabri and Trell are seeing huge traction as people are looking at options to earn incentives from home. Music streaming app Gaana, which is strongly placed in the market with 150 million users, recently opened up its short video platform for subscribers.
Reliance is leveraging the technological change of building a virtualised 5G network which would see the current hardware-dependent networks shift to software-centric platforms.
Apart from digital advertising revenue, both companies want to reach out to the 'next billion' Indian customers. After all, around half of the 1.3 billion population is still not on the net and this represents a challenge as well as an opportunity.
For the first time, the value of card and mobile payments of Rs 10.57 trillion was more than ATM withdrawals of Rs 9.12 trillion in Q4 of fiscal 2019-20. In the months of lockdown, the gap may have widened further, but cash could be back in vogue when the situation normalises.
Economists caution that the underlying cause could be an alarming drop in demand -- something that's not good for economic growth.
According to software company Mavernir, the new virtualised networks would lead to a saving of 40 per cent in capex and 34 per cent in terms of lower operations cost for operators.
Beside RIL's Jio Switch and Jio Browser, smaller Indian app companies who have been overwhelmed by TikTok are again seeing a big rush - even though till the second week of June they might not have been even listed in the top 100 apps in the country.
The Indian authorities feared that these apps were transferring consumer data to locations outside the country, especially China, in an unauthorised and surreptitious manner. With servers in India, the data of local consumers would be stored in the country.
JioMeet, which has already got the endorsement of top government officials and politicians, saw a huge surge in its ranking on Google Play, based on its downloads.
The mobile phone manufacturers are planning to plead with the government that the new rules suggested by the DoT could leave them with no option but to stop introducing new phone models in the country if the stringent rules are eventually approved.
Globally, the focus has moved back to India, especially in terms of telecom assets. Vodafone Idea, with some 300 million customers, continues to be attractive with shares available at a low price.
Like everything else, the structure of banks may change, and banks may depend more on digital technologies and artificial intelligence for dealing with both their customers and employees.
Steel, cement, aluminum, fertilisers, tractors, two-wheelers, beverages and carbonated drinks, tyres and FMCG could see demand back to near normal levels by the third or the fourth quarter of the financial year, or even earlier.
Gulabo Sitabo was made with a budget of Rs 40 crore to Rs 45 crore. Amazon Prime bought the streaming rights for Rs 60 crore to Rs 65 crore, helping the producers make over Rs 20 crore.
The bonds were available for seven years. Since these were not traded in the secondary market, redemption took place at maturity.
Work is underway in identifying global companies in sectors ranging from electronics, auto components and medical equipment to shift part of their existing or incremental manufacturing to India.
Going by the strict criteria set, only Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Haryana qualify for such extra borrowing, as of now.
While Ola will be restarting services in over 60 cities across the country from Tuesday, Uber, on the other hand, will restart services in 13 more cities from Tuesday, increasing coverage to over 35 cities.
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