Sundays are generally quiet days for air travel, but this Sunday was a tad different. There was quite an excitement at Gate 28 of Mumbai airport's Terminal 1 as Akasa Air, India's newest airline, prepared to take to the skies on Day 1. With a new fuel-efficient Boeing 737 Max aircraft and soft cushioned seats equipped with USB ports, Akasa Air hopes to bring freshness to the flying experience.
Xiaomi will strengthen its product portfolio and launch 5G devices in the sub-Rs 15,000 segment as it looks to increase its market share in the segment. Xiaomi led the shipments in overall smartphone category in 2021 with a 24 per cent share, according to Counterpoint Research. However, in the 5G segment it is ranked fourth behind One Plus, Samsung, and Vivo, with a 13 per cent share.
US hedge fund Tiger Global and Japanese investment giant SoftBank have trimmed their investments in Indian start-ups by over a third - from $3.8 billion in the second half of 2021 to a mere $1.08 billion in H1 2022, according to data from Venture Intelligence. While SoftBank's investments in India dropped from $1.9 billion in H2 2021 by more than a fifth to only $0.33 billion in H1 2022, that of Tiger Global fell from $1.92 to $0.74 billion in the same period. Private equity (PE) fund trackers point out that this year most of the deals that Tiger Global has invested in are in the early stage (up to series D), and only a few are in the series E and above.
Apple's three vendors in the country have hit the milestone of creating 30,000 new direct jobs since the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile devices kicked off in April 2021. Based on the government's estimate that one direct job in the electronics industry helps to generate three indirect ones, Apple's vendors, Foxconn Hon Hai, Wistron and Pegatron, are close to creating 100,000 direct and indirect jobs. The direct jobs that the vendors have created account for a fourth of Apple's commitment to generate 60 per cent of the new direct jobs out of the 200,000 jobs targeted by the government under the PLI scheme within five years.
The rupee depreciation will work in favour of students who are currently studying in the US and plan to secure a job that pays in dollars.
It was supposed to be a happy journey to London, one that the Imam family had been planning for the past two months. Everything was set - except the visa, which did not arrive in time for one of its members. "Visa was the villain...As a consequence, half of the family of four will be in London today and the other half at home in India and the US, respectively," Sanjar Imam, director of travel firm Panache World, wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday.
Seven of Bollywood's big stars (Akshay Kumar, Ranveer Singh, Ajay Devgn, Varun Dhawan, Saif Ali Khan, John Abraham and Shahid Kapoor), who had 10 movies released with a collective budget of Rs 1,100 crore since December, could rustle up only around a third of that money at the box office.
Telcos participating in the upcoming auctions at the end of July say they expect only a fourth of the value of spectrum on offer to be sold. The government has put Rs 4.3 trillion of spectrum up for sale at the base price across seven bands including for 5G. An executive of a leading telco said he estimates that mobile operators collectively would buy spectrum of only around Rs 1.1 trillion.
Will open radio access network technology (O-RAN) disrupt the way 5G networks roll out in the country? After all, it promises to offer a substantially lower capital cost, enables the choice of an array of vendors, and provides more network flexibility - all very important for telcos who expect to invest over Rs 60,000 crore to roll out a pan-India 5G network and that's without spectrum costs. But more importantly, it counters the stranglehold of global telecom gear makers such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung over telcos to whom they sell propriety technology and bundled hardware and software.
Elon Musk's decision to drop the idea of acquiring Twitter over purported under-reporting of fake accounts due to the use of bots has opened a can of worms on what is a growing and crucial problem - advertisers who put in money based on these falsified numbers (which is the mainstay revenue of these platforms) are making losses; they are paying for bots in the guise of viewers. mFilterIt - a global digital and advertising (ad) fraud detection and protection company in India - says search engines like Google have the lowest average ad fraud rate of 10-12 per cent, based on the inference arrived at while working with clients that use these platforms. This means 10-12 per cent of the ad viewership is generated by machines.
Ten years after Kingfisher Airlines was grounded, its former employees continue to wait for their dues. On Monday, the Supreme Court awarded a four-month sentence to the grounded airline's flamboyant owner Vijay Mallya in a contempt case. The apex court also ordered him to deposit $40 million plus interest in four weeks to avoid attachment of his properties.
With the Adanis submitting an earnest money deposit (EMD) of just Rs 100 crore on Monday for the upcoming 5G spectrum auction, the apprehension among the rivals that the group is nursing ambitions of being an all-India mobile player has been allayed at least for now. Based on its EMD, analysts say it can buy spectrum worth just Rs 900 crore, whose use will be limited to enterprises and captive networks -- that too is likely only in a few circles where it has its infrastructure like ports, airports, and power stations. While getting all-India millimetre band spectrum of 400 MHz (which costs Rs 2,800 crore) is ruled out, it might choose circles like Gujarat and Mumbai to start with.
On Thursday, Virgin Atlantic, for instance, cancelled its morning flight between London and Delhi. And Air India rescheduled its London-Ahmedabad flight by several hours. With the Heathrow restrictions to remain in place till September 11, air traffic between India and London is likely to see slower growth over the next two months.
In the late 1990s, Japanese electronics brand Aiwa tied up with a maverick entrepreneur, Kabir Mulchandani, to sell its consumer electronic products. Founder of Baron International, Mulchandani, all of 26 at that time, had already disrupted the television market through a tie-up with another Japanese player, Akai. With a strategy that relied on heavy discounts, exchange offers and freebies, Akai was selling in huge volumes.
Some aircraft technicians at IndiGo are on sick leave since Friday demanding a revision in salaries. The protest comes days after the airline partially restored salaries of its pilots and cabin crew and made changes to its human resource (HR) policies. Some technicians in Hyderabad reported sick on Friday night while those from other bases skipped work on Sunday demanding a revision in salary, an industry source said.
Akash Ambani's first big job as he takes over as chairman of Reliance Jio, the group's telecom arm, is a no-brainer - he has to get his company through the long-awaited 5G auctions that are a few weeks away. But his bigger job, analysts said, will be to lead the transformation of the telecom company into a tech giant, a process that is underway as it seeks to list in the US. Insiders said there has been plenty of debate within the company's top executives on the auction strategy.
IndiGo's management is of the opinion that Saturday's flight delays caused by sick leaves taken by many in the cabin crew are just an aberration. The airline's on-time performance nosedived to 45 per cent on Saturday as a large part of the cabin crew reported sick to participate in Air India's recruitment process. Privately, Air India executives denied holding interviews on Saturday and the airline did not issue any statement.
More than 1,600 employees of Air India, the former state-run carrier now owned by the Tata group, have opted for voluntary retirement under a scheme announced on June 1. These employees comprise 22 per cent of permanent staff (around 7,000). The airline has a total employee strength of around 10,800, including those on contract.
'Kartik is an outsider, so he takes nothing for granted. That's why he will do well.'
Jet Airways has complained to India's aviation regulator about the use of its livery on SpiceJet aircraft, saying the practice could "mislead the public" and is a safety hazard. Jet collapsed in 2019 and lessors repossessed its Boeing 737s. Some of these aircraft were leased to SpiceJet, which operates them without changing the livery. Jet, which is now being revived by the Kalrock Jalan consortium and aims to restart operations in September, has asked the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to ask SpiceJet to stop using its livery.
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