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.
The Appellate Authority for Advance Rulings (AAAR) of Gujarat has held that papad fryums would not attract any goods and services tax (GST) as they are similar to traditional round papads in all respects. In this connection, the appellate authority modified the ruling of the authority for advance rulings (AAR), which had ruled that Fryums would attract 18 per cent GST. The AAAR held that Fryums is a brand and not a generic name of the product, Harpreet Singh, partner, indirect taxes at KPMG in India said while explaining the order.
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.
The mandatory use of the Indian flag on SCI's ships has been a bone of contention with prospective buyers, on account of the costs it will entail in terms of taxation and vessel registration.
Now, more pieces of information about your transactions and income, such as remittances received from overseas, will be uploaded in Form 26AS by the income-tax (I-T) department. This will help the taxpayer file I-T return (ITR) correctly and assist the department in detecting discrepancies, if any, in the ITR. Besides foreign remittances, these new items are interest on I-T refund, dividend from mutual funds (MFs), and purchase of MFs, among others.
International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Gita Gopinath tells Indivjal Dhasmana high-frequency indicators for the third quarter of 2021 indicate momentum in economic recovery in India.
Agencies, whether public sector or private sector, may have to pay goods and services tax on the charges they collect on behalf of the government from clients. The authority for advance rulings (AAR), Telangana, has ruled that e-procurement transaction fee collected by an agency on behalf of the government is chargeable to GST, said Rajat Mohan, senior partner at AMRG & Associates. The AAR also ruled that neither services provided by the agency to the government, nor services provided on behalf of the government to the business entities are exempt from GST, he informed about the case.
Indian Space Association (ISpA) chairman Jayant Patil has said that the executive council will debate whether it can include more telecom companies as founding members. The response came after some leading telcos said that they had been asked to be core members but preferred to be inducted as founding members. The key founders of the ISpA include the Bharti group through two companies (OneWeb and Airtel), L&T, Nelco, Walchandnagar, Alpha Designs and MapmyIndia.
Tata Group, which will now include Air India, Vistara, and Air Asia, has the highest market share of departures on the top 10 routes in the country. According to the data from Caladrius Aero Consulting, which tracked the departure data for eight airlines in August and September, Tata Group is ahead on all the top 10 routes ranked in accordance with the number of departures in August-September 2021. On the top 100 routes in terms of departures, Tata Group is ahead of its chief rival IndiGo on 30 of them.
Mutliplexes want the gap between a film's release in theatres and on OTT to be doubled from 4 to 8 weeks.
In what is amongst the first focused fund in the space, India Media Entertainment Fund (IMEF) is raising Rs 500 crore, which will provide both equity as well as instruments like non-convertible debentures (NCD) to companies in the content, distribution platform and services areas. The private equity fund has appointed a high-profile advisory body which includes ad guru Prahlad Kakkar, managing director of Red Chillies Entertainment and cricket team KKR Sports, actress and entrepreneur Raadhika Sarathkumar, who has starred in Malayalam, Hindi and Kannada films and runs Radaan Mediaworks. It also includes Ramnath Pradeep, former chairman and managing director of Corporation Bank, and Rajesh Gupta, senior partner of law firm SNG Partners.
'The opening up of theatres is well-timed to coincide with the festival season and give a big push. We expect box office collections to reach 2019 levels when they stood at Rs 10,000 crore.' Surajeet Das Gupta reports.
Vodafone plc has made it clear that it will not make any fresh equity infusion in its Indian telecom business--Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL). Responding to a query, a spokesperson at the UK-headquartered telco said: "Just to confirm our position, there will be no new equity infusion from Vodafone Group." This is the first time that Vodafone has spoken about its stand after the government announced a telecom package.
Lack of skilled labour, among other factors, led to 187,062 vacancies in nine sectors during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, showed the new revamped quarterly employment survey (QES). This accounted for a little over 0.6 per cent of the total jobs given by these establishments till April-June 2021-22. The nine sectors - manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurants, IT/BPOs and financial services - employed 30.8 million people.
Certain clarifications by the GST Council, such as tax rates on ice cream parlours and royalty paid to state governments over mineral rights, may turn out to be contentious and lead to litigation, feel some experts. The council, at its meeting in Lucknow on Friday, had clarified that ice cream parlours will attract goods and services tax (GST). The clarification said these parlours sell already manufactured ice cream and such supply would draw 18 per cent tax.
'There is no doubt at all that Jio's disruption of the mobile broadband market was a turning point for India's digital economy.'
Eighteen months after the government started banning Chinese mobile apps, two distinct changes have occurred in the country's mobile app sweepstakes. The move has given a thrust to domestic app publishers, especially in certain segments and it has dramatically reduced the market share of Chinese apps. What started as an interim government ban on 59 Chinese apps, including the highly popular TikTok and WeChat in March 2020 ended as a permanent ban on many of them in January this year. According to a China Internet Report 2021 (by South China Morning Post), the market share of Chinese apps in India has dropped substantially from 44 per cent in 2018 to only 29 per cent in 2020. In 2017 it was 41 per cent.
From powering mobile devices, US chip designer Qualcomm has tied up with Ola Electric to power its electric scooters. Qualcomm is providing the key 4G connected octa core android platform which provides connectivity, computing capabilities and enables rich immersive displays with power saving software.
Palo Alto-based electric carmaker Tesla has initiated talks with the government on the modalities of setting up fully-owned retail outlets. The company needs to comply with the foreign direct investment (FDI) guidelines related to single-brand retail, including local sourcing norms, to sell directly in India. At least two other foreign majors - Apple and Ikea - were engaged in talks with the government long before the sourcing norms were eased under the single-brand retail route.