If the vaccine is recommended for use as a booster against Omicron, it may significantly boost the demand for Covishield in India.
The government is looking at a time frame within the first two weeks of July to kick off and complete the upcoming 5G auctions, according to discussions between officials and stakeholders. It is expected that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will give its recommendations on the base price by March, after which the necessary cabinet clearances will be given. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had earlier looked at undertaking the auction in the first quarter of 2022 but decided to push it back. Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had also said that the auctions are likely to take place in April-May.
'Last year we sold 18 million phones in India, this year we should do 23-24 million, and next year our target is to hit 40 million.'
With the spectrum auction now delayed till at least next May, the expected 5G orders for telecom equipment have not been sealed, the companies point out. Surajeet Das Gupta reports.
Of the amount, the home-grown private equity player founded by Renuka Ramnath plans to deploy $8 billion in various companies as part of its blueprint for growth.
Mobile device maker Realme has overtaken South Korean giant Samsung to grab the second spot in the branded smartphone market, with 18 per cent volume share in October this year, revealed Counterpoint Research. Its rival Samsung ended October with 16 per cent share. Xiaomi (including its brand POCO) was at 20 per cent; Vivo at 13 per cent. The ascent brings Realme closer to its ambition to reach the No. 1 berth by 2022 when it hopes to sell over 40 million smartphones annually.
'Should we shortchange our investors by exiting early?'
As the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 takes centrestage, vaccine makers in India are of the view that scaling up the existing vaccines to make them more effective is possible.
The share of total health expenditure as part of the gross domestic product (GDP) went down to 3.3 per cent in 2017-18 from 3.8 per cent in the previous two years, according to the national health account data released on Monday by the health ministry. The share of government expenditure as part of total expenditure as well as GDP has gone up from from 3.78 per cent to 5.12 per cent between 2013-14 and 2017-18, which could also explain a decline seen in out of pocket expenditure in 2017-18. Health ministry also emphasised the increase in the government health expenditure as part of the total GDP from 1.15 per cent in 2013-14 to 1.35 per cent in 2017-18.
After ramping up production to meet the steep demand spike during the Covid-19 pandemic, Indian medical device makers are now struggling with idle capacity. According to industry estimates, around a third of the installed capacity, especially for consumables, disposables, small-ticket electronic items, etc., is lying unutilised. Sample this: India used to produce just 6.24 million pieces of PPE kits per annum before the pandemic, but by June this was ramped up to 233.87 million pieces per annum.
'Antiviral treatment will have no change. Spike protein change may affect the immunity protection.'
The government is engaged in talks with telecom firms for a launch of commercial 5G services in some cities by Independence Day and has assured them that spectrum auction will take place in April-May, providing them a three to four-month window for the rollout. A top executive of a leading telecom gear company said the deadline was feasible in some cases. "It can be achieved in some cities as it will take us 4-6 weeks to deploy a network, once the equipment or components have reached India.
With around 2 million Covid vaccine doses likely to get wasted in December, leading hospital chains have now started to give it gratis to citizens. Sohini Das and Ruchika Chitravanshi report.
A nasal vaccine, one expert said, is a "fantastic idea" for two reasons -- one, it can potentially create sterile immunity, and two, it is easy to administer and thus scalable.
Buoyed by Sooryavanshi's success, the Hindi film industry is banking on 25-30 big movies lined up with a collective cost tag of Rs 2,000 crore.
Ola Electric is moving the delivery for the first batch of its electric scooters to between December 15 to the end of the month, a two- to four-week delay from its earlier schedule, due to a shortage of chipsets and electronic parts. The first batch of deliveries were scheduled for November 30 but the company decided to delay them after a meeting between its factory team and the global supply chain on Saturday. It became clear that the late delivery of chips and electronic parts was only 'getting worse', sources told Business Standard. Ola has apologised to customers for the delay and said it is "ramping up production as fast as we can so that you can get your Ola S1 at the earliest". It has stopped taking any new bookings until the chip shortage has eased, say sources.
As many as 2,000 chips are annually designed in India by semi-conductor and fabless companies, Intel India managing director Prakash Mallya said in a conversation with Business Standard. Mallya was reiterating the importance of India in the semi-conductor sweepstakes. "As much as 90 per cent of the semi-conductor companies have a design footprint in India.
Leading microchip providers Qualcomm and Intel say the chip shortage might last anything between four months to a year, perhaps even two years, depending on the various product categories - mobile devices, ICE, electric vehicles, appliances, data centres. Prakash Mallya, MD, Intel India and vice president, sales and marketing and communications group, said the spike in demand was huge, and cut across segments from PCs, phones, appliances and auto leading to the shortage.
Social e-commerce platform Meesho is set to disrupt the food and grocery market by offering free home delivery on all orders in over 200 below Tier 1 cities in a year's time, in the first phase. It is also disrupting the monetization model by focusing primarily on advertising revenues rather than commissions from sellers, as distinct from its competitors. The move is expected to challenge the big players in the sector which include Jio Mart, Tata's Big Basket, Amazon, Grofers, and others, many of which have minimum prices for free delivery.
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