Apple Inc is expected to produce iPhones worth $12 billion (freight on board value) in India during 2023-24, according to discussions between the company's vendors and the government. This would account for around 12 per cent of Apple's global iPhone production-higher than the earlier plan of shifting around 9 per cent of the total to India by FY24, which is the third year of the PLI (production-linked incentive) scheme.
Delhi-headquartered Fortis Healthcare is open to acquisition of hospitals with over 250-300 bed sizes as part of its strategy to grow at a faster clip. It may also opt for a neutral brand name soon. Neutral brand is a new brand, which is not owned by any of the stakeholders.
The Indian pharmaceutical market (IPM) grew 6.8 per cent to touch a turnover of ~1.93 trillion in calendar year 2023, despite volumes going down marginally by 0.9 per cent. This indicates the price increase has been the major growth driver. Growth in the moving annual turnover (the previous 12 months' turnover) in December was 5.1 per cent and that in new product introduction 2.6 per cent, while volumes dipped 0.9 per cent, leading to an overall growth rate of 6.8 per cent, according to the data from market research firm Pharmatrac.
Data for the first nine days of January shows that tourist arrivals from India to the Maldives has been at similar levels as last year during the same period.
Indian shoppers accounted for 13 per cent of the total hours spent by mobile users across the globe on their shopping apps in 2023, next only to China in this regard. According to the "State of Mobile -2024" report released a few days ago by data.ai (previously known as App Annie), which looks into various segments of the app economy across the world, in the last calendar year, users in India collectively spent 12.84 billion hours on shopping apps. This represents an increase of over 73 per cent from the time they spent in 2020 and of more than 3.5 per cent over 2022.
India's share of total global venture capital (VC) funding fell to 2.9 per cent in calendar year 2023 (CY23) - the lowest since CY19 - reaching $7.3 billion as most startups struggled to raise money without compromising on their earlier valuations. Based on global data by CB Insights on VC funding, funding to Indian startups fell by nearly a third compared to CY22 when it hit $20.6 billion and accounted for 4.8 per cent of the global figure. While the data shows that the world had 71 new unicorns (21 in Asia), India contributed only two of them, as compared with CY22 when it had 22.
'We carry 6.5 billion passengers every year. We have crossed seven billion this year, and are targeting 10 billion by 2030.'
The demand for buses largely remained robust in 2023, driven by the increasing need for public mobility and replacement. Ashok Leyland Limited (ALL) recorded a 64 per cent year-on-year increase in sales of medium and heavy commercial vehicle (MHCV) buses during the April-to-December period of 2023 to 11,216 units. Volvo Eicher Commercial Vehicles (VECV) posted 24.7 per cent sales growth between April and December for light and medium-duty buses, and 36.9 per cent growth for heavy-duty buses.
'Similar to the case of the digital payment system where the government created a public platform and others joined in, we are exploring a similar structure to create a PPP platform where the compute required for AI could be accessed by the small player.'
'There is no reason why we should break this business up.'
Based on discussions with stakeholders, the ministry is proposing to allocate Rs 26,400 crore for FAME-III subsidy alone with electric two wheelers getting around Rs 8,158 crore, electric buses Rs 9,600 crore and electric three-wheelers Rs 4,100 crore, according to sources in the know. Along with some other components like setting up an innovation fund and money for testing , the total allocation could cross Rs 33,000 crore, estimates suggest.
Exports of electronics goods has risen by 24 per cent from April to November as compared with the same period in the last fiscal, the largest increase out of India's top 10 export categories. The increase has been propelled by mobile exports under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme and has pushed electronics up from sixth to fifth position in the top 10. A gap of $200 million separates electronics from occupying the fourth position, currently held by drugs and pharmaceuticals at $17.9 billion.
Rising penetration of trade generic medicines is eating into the value growth of the domestic pharmaceutical market, showed a recent analysis. According to a Kotak Institutional Equities analysis, 70-110 basis points (bps) annual dent is expected from trade generics and Jan Aushadhi on Indian Pharma Market (IPM) growth at least until FY27-28 (see chart). Trade generic medicines are those that are not pushed into the market through doctor promotions.
Ola Electric's initial public offering (IPO), of Rs 5,500 crore, is essentially aimed at ensuring the company maintain its top position in the electric two-wheeler segment, with incumbent players TVS and Bajaj Auto giving a fight to the number one player in market share. Most experts and competitors say the amount being raised is in line with the investment required to expand the electric-vehicle (EV) business. There are two discernible trends in the competitive electric two-wheeler market.
As of now, Gennova Biopharmaceuticals has launched a vaccine, Gemcovac-OM, which is based on the Omicron variant.
India may be 15th among the top 25 Artificial Intelligence nations, but it has the 'the greatest upward potential' according to research by Tufts University's business school, the Fletcher School. At the top is the US, followed by China, fighting for global leadership in AI followed by the UK, Japan, and Germany. In the 15th spot, India is ahead of Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia and Thailand.
According to CoWIN data, only 73 vaccination centres are currently active in India, of which 32 are government-run.
Dixon Technologies right now is a beehive of activity. It is building a new facility in Noida to make 1.3 million laptops for Taiwanese PC maker Acer. The facility must be up and running in four months. The pace of activity will only increase. Last week Dixon won a similar contract from Lenovo, the Chinese personal computer maker and the third largest information technology (IT) hardware brand in India, to assemble laptops and notebooks. Though the clientele in these two cases is Taiwanese and Chinese, Dixon is a company reaching for the stars with its feet planted firmly in the Indian government's policy.
While the market for satellite broadband currently is small, the potential is large as an estimated 30 per cent of the country does not have reliable terrestrial broadband services.
Larger hospitals are not worried about a spike in cases, as they are now accustomed to converting ICUs and general wards into negative pressure zones or isolation rooms. For smaller hospitals, the task is tedious.