Having missed most of the first three industrial revolutions, India has its chance to lead the fourth industrial revolution through a convergence of its IT prowess, ultra-high-speed internet connectivity and affordable smart devices, billionaire Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday. The richest Indian, who heads the nation's most valuable company Reliance Industries, said his group's telecom and digital unit Jio was conceived to provide the key ingredients needed to lead the fourth industrial revolution.
India's exports may have touched an all-time high of $422 billion in 2021-22 but recession in key western markets and geo-political crisis due to the Russia-Ukraine war are expected to impact the growth of the country's outbound shipments in 2023. All the global trade promoting factors like political stability, movement of goods, adequate availability of containers and shipping lines, demand, stable currency and smooth banking systems are in disarray. Adding to the woes, COVID cases have again started rising in countries like China, Japan, South Korea and the US.
'Transparency, privacy and security have been the core design principle of Aarogya Setu. Opening the source code to developer community signifies Government of India continuing principal to these commitments'
Rejection of the three central agriculture laws is one of the three resolutions approved by the Maharashtra cabinet on Sunday which will be moved in the monsoon session of the state legislature beginning Monday, sources said.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries has started a limited test use of WhatsApp to connect customers to grocery stores, days after Facebook decided to invest USD 5.7 billion in digital assets controlled by the company. JioMart, an e-commerce venture of Reliance Retail, "has already started interacting with customers on WhatsApp for grocery orders" in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan, Credit Suisse said in a report.
Goyal said, there is no proposal under consideration on withdrawal of MFN status to China.
Advertising on television continued to show momentum in May despite the surge in Covid-19 infections and the temporary suspension of the Indian Premier League (IPL), a high-impact television property. The data shared by the Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) on Thursday shows that advertising volumes in May were up 64 per cent year-on-year. However, there was a marginal dip sequentially, that is, in comparison to April 2021, when advertising had touched a record high owing to the start of the summer season and the return of the IPL to India after being held in the United Arab Emirates in 2020.
The order follows a complaint filed by Delhi Vyapar Mahasangh which accused the e-commerce firms of anti-competitive practices like preferential listing, exclusive tie-ups and private labels.
Spurring the economy, currently in the throes of a slowdown, remains the prime focus for most ministries, but the government is also looking to make women's welfare and environmental protection key to policymaking in this term.
After a group of young hackers beat companies that claim to spend a bomb on cyber security, Karan Choudhury reports on just how easy it is to exploit digital wallets.
The Indian IT industry will stage a "strong recovery" in 2021-22 with a revenue growth of up to 11 per cent, ratings agency Crisil said on Wednesday. The recovery will be led by increasing outsourcing and accelerating digital transformation services mainly in sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), healthcare, retail and manufacturing, it said. As per Nasscom, the IT services industry grew 2.7 per cent to $99 billion in 2020-21.
The annual rate of inflation based on monthly wholesale price index (WPI) was 1.22 per cent in December as compared to 1.55 per cent in the previous month. It was 2.76 per cent in December 2019. The decline last month was mainly due to lower increase in food prices, data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry showed on Thursday. The food inflation for December dropped to 0.92 per cent as compared to 4.27 per cent in the previous month.
The exponential number of downloads can be attributed to a call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking people to have the app on their mobiles, combined with the government's push for downloading of the app through other channels, reports Neha Alawadhi.
The country's exports rose by 47.34 per cent to $32.46 billion in June on account of healthy growth in sectors such as engineering, gems and jewellery and petroleum products, even as trade deficit aggregated at $9.4 billion during the month, according to the data released by the commerce ministry on Friday. Exports in June last year stood at $22 billion and $25 billion in June 2019. In May 2021, the outward shipment was worth $32.27 billion, while in April this year, it was $31 billion. Imports in June 2021 grew by 96.33 per cent to $41.86 billion, from $21.32 billion in June last year. In June 2019, imports stood at $41 billion.
Mittal said he discussed a plethora of issues with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and sought the government's support for faster clearances to streamline the group's investment plans.
Ajit Balakrishnan on how to arrest a worldwide decline.
Google will be able to co-relate data from the first click to the final delivery of product. This kind of knowledge is invaluable, something which even Amazon does not have.
The Indian FMCG industry has recorded a 9.4 per cent growth in the January-March quarter of 2021, helped by a consumption-led growth and value growth by increased prices of products, especially of staples, said data analytics firm Nielsen. The rural market continued to perform with strong growth of 14.6 per cent during the period and the metro markets have registered a positive growth after two quarters. Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry sales growth from the traditional trade channels jumped to double digits, while growth in e-commerce normalised down to single digits in the January-March quarter.
Housing prices may rise 5 per cent next year on improved demand, according to Knight Frank India. In its '2022 Outlook Report', the property consultant said: "While 2021 was mostly impacted by the volatility due to the pandemic, 2022 may prove to be a more stable year for the sector both for commercial as well as the residential sector." On the housing segment, the report said that sales momentum is expected to continue in 2022 as prospective homebuyers' preferences for bigger homes, better amenities, and attractive pricing will keep them interested to seal the deals.
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.
Imports too declined by 8.83 per cent to $38.61 billion, bringing down the trade deficit to $11.25 billion during the month under review.
Reliance Jio, together with partners, has tested its 5G solutions in India, successfully demonstrating speeds of over 1 GBPS, and its 'Made in India' solution is "globally competitive", RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday. Ambani also exuded confidence that the company will be the first to launch full-fledged 5G services in the country. Jio is not just working to make India '2G-mukt' (free from 2G) but also '5G-yukt' (5G empowered), he added. Jio's engineers have developed a 100 per cent home-grown and comprehensive 5G solution that is fully cloud native, software defined, and digitally managed.
In collaboration with autonomous mobility start-up Ottonomy IO, Snapdeal has successfully tested last-mile delivery using robots in select locations of Delhi-NCR.
Engineering graduates specialising in artificial intelligence and machine learning can earn up to 24 lakh a year, says Saran Balasundaram, founder and CEO, HanDigital, a talent consulting firm.
India's medical devices imports surged 41 per cent to touch Rs 63,200 crore in 2021-22, led by a 48 per cent year-on-year (YoY) jump in imports from China to Rs 13,538 crore, the commerce ministry data analysed by the Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AiMeD) has showed. Local industry players say this has led to several small and medium units to shut shop. Rakesh Vaid of Usha Fabs, a garments exporter, had started making N95 masks in his Gurgaon factory during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A single application and a plethora of services for passenger cars - that is what myTVS, a brand that operates under Ki Mobility Solutions and is part of the TVS family, is set to bring to customers, in a bid to disrupt the concept of "super apps" in India. Starting July 15, myTVS will launch its connected car platform or super app called myTVS Life360 for aftermarket passenger cars. Through it, customers will be able to avail themselves of a range of services like maintenance, diagnostics, roadside assistance, accessories, payments, insurance, and so on.
Among all the geographies where Amazon is fighting regulators, India is the only place where its lines are also tangled in a major corporate battle, this one with India's largest company by market capitalisation over the acquisition of Mumbai-based Future Group's retail chain, the country's second largest. No other corporate entity in any country offers a challenge to Amazon's hegemony in a way Reliance Industries does - and the final hearing of an arbitration case filed at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre between the two may decide at least some of these issues. This legal battle between one of the world's most powerful corporations and one of India's most powerful conglomerates could be complicated by a host of other developments.
Amazon's fresh investment in its India entities come at a time when the Seattle-based firm has faced losses in several of its business entities in India, such as seller services, wholesale, transportation services and digital payments, for the 2018-19 financial year.
The payments industry is at a crossroads with the banking regulator on two pressing issues, neither of which seems headed towards an amicable solution. Depending upon which side accommodates the other, customers in India will have to choose between convenience and ironclad safety. In the end, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which regulates both banks and all payments services providers, will prevail. But the question is: will it do so by bending a little or by sticking to its firm stand? The two issues - one concerning payment facilitators storing customers' card details and the other about auto-renewal of payments - appear similar but aren't.
Software major Wipro's chairman Rishad Premji on Thursday said social media platforms have integrated the world like never before and should be allowed to practice "responsive self-governance" to tackle the menace of hate and misinformation. Premji said technological developments on the digital and social media represent an incredibly powerful opportunity for betterment and the issues arising through its misuse need to be addressed immediately. "Technology, particularly digital and social media, have integrated the world as never before. "They've fostered human connections and solidarity across distances and barriers.
The only fuel that showed growth was LPG as the government dole of free cooking gas cylinders to poor households fired up consumption by 21 per cent during April 1 to 15.
According to industry sources, domestic toy manufacturers are seeing a sharp rise in sales during the current financial year. On January 1, 2021, India had banned the sale of toys that are not certified by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). This meant that all factories churning out toys to be sold in India had to be certified by the bureau along with mandatory product testing, including for units abroad.
Imports too tumbled by 58.65 per cent to $17.12 billion in April from $41.4 billion in the same month last year, according to the data by the commerce and industry ministry.
The country's exports in December surged 37 per cent on an annual basis to $37.29 billion, the highest-ever monthly figure, government data showed on Monday.
Investments by private equity and venture capital funds declined by 22 per cent to $5.4 billion in June, as compared to the $6.9 billion in the year-ago period, a report said on Monday. However, if compared with May's $4 billion, the investments were higher by 33 per cent, the monthly report by industry lobby group IVCA and consultancy firm EY said. If one were to compare the inflows into companies in the first half of 2021, the investments were 45 per cent higher at $26.9 billion.
WhatsApp on Tuesday said its latest policy update does not affect the privacy of messages as the Facebook-owned company sought to address concerns around security of user data on the platform.
Ordering groceries, vegetables and daily essentials is just a WhatsApp away as billionaire Mukesh Ambani's e-commerce platform JioMart taps into the popular messaging app to scale up online business in its fight for dominance in the giant Indian retail market with Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart. Ambani's twin children, Akash and Isha gave a preview of the ordering at Meta's second edition of the Fuel for India event on Wednesday. A new 'tap and chat' option allows users to order groceries through WhatsApp.
So far, there seems to be limited debate about their activities in India, where virtually all FAANG companies have teamed up in different ways with India's most powerful businessman, observes T N Ninan.
There seems to be no dearth of funds to fuel this growth, report Peerzada Abrar and Shivani Shinde.
The wholesale price-based inflation shot up to an all-time high of 10.49 per cent in April, on rising prices of crude oil and manufactured items. Also, a low base of April last year contributed to the spike in inflation in April 2021. The WPI inflation was 7.39 per cent in March 2021, and (-) 1.57 per cent in April 2020. This is the fourth straight month of uptick seen in the wholesale price index (WPI)-based inflation.
