Nasdaq-listed information technology (IT) services firm Cognizant will incur the cost of $400 million over two years as it sets to restructure its operations amid sluggish growth rates. Its NextGen Program aims at simplifying the operating model, optimising corporate functions, and consolidating and realigning office space to reflect a post-pandemic hybrid work environment. As part of this structural shift, Cognizant will eliminate 80,000 seats, or 11 million square feet of real estate in large cities in India.
Shivani Shinde reports. The youngest member of the Tata group, the much-awaited Tata Neu, has finally been launched for people across the country. The 'super app' offers a number of services ranging from financial services to tech, travel and even groceries. The app takes off with a customer base of 120 million, with 2,500 offline stores. According to the Tata group, the app will be a one-stop destination for all consumer needs. The super app also offers a bouquet of financial offers like Unified Payments Interface (UPI), bill payments, loans and insurance. Tata Neu will also provide other services like fashion, gadgets, groceries, travel and health.
Indian telcos have been able to garner over 20 million 5G customers in less than four months after the official launch of the service last October, according to industry estimates. With telecom operators like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel aggressively rolling out their 5G services in over 190 cities across the country to date, India is now only behind China and the US in terms of the number of cities in a country where 5G services have been extended. Top executives in telcos say that the number of 5G subscribers in India is a conservative estimate and that it will rise as the roll-out gains momentum.
India's forex reserves rose by $204 million to $532.87 billion for the week ended October 7 on an increase in the value of gold holdings, the Reserve Bank said on Friday. In the previous reporting week, the overall reserves had dropped by $4.85 billion to $532.66 billion. The reserves had been falling for many weeks now as the central bank deploys the kitty to defend the rupee amid pressures caused majorly by global developments.
'With our focus and strategy we can solve at least 20 per cent per cent of India's education problems.'
Gogamedi, the chief of Rashtriya Rajput Karni Sena, was shot dead in Jaipur on Tuesday by unidentified bike-borne criminals.
China's Vivo said on Thursday it will export more than one million 'Made in India' smartphones in 2023 to achieve a target announced last year when it sent out its first indigenous shipment to Thailand and Saudi Arabia. Vivo India, known for its economical phones, has proposed investing Rs 7,500 crore in the country and it is set to spend Rs 3,500 crore of that amount by end of this year. According to the firm's India Impact Report 2022, it will start production at a new 'state of the art' manufacturing facility by early 2024 after regulatory clearance.
According to respective company sources, Biological E is holding 200 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine Corbevax while Bharat Biotech is sitting on a stockpile of 50 million doses of Covaxin.
The report came at the time when British-based health data firm Airfinity, said that the infections in China are likely to be more than one million a day with deaths at more than 5,000 a day.
The global health intelligence company had said China's zero-COVID strategy also means the population has almost no naturally acquired immunity through the previous infection.
After securing a euro 150 million Credit line for solar energy finance from a German financial institution, State Bank of India is in talks with european Investment Bank for about euro 200 million to fund climate finance. Recently the country's largest lender obtained euro 150 million in green funding from German government-owned KFW on soft terms and a long repayment period. SBI will use funds to finance solar energy projects.
The country's foreign exchange reserves declined $897 million to $572.98 billion in the week ended August 5, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In the previous week ended July 29, the reserves had risen $2.31 billion to $573.87 billion. In the week ended August 5, the fall in the foreign exchange reserves was due to a dip in the Foreign Currency Assets (FCA), a major component of the overall reserves, as per the Weekly Statistical Supplement released by RBI on Friday.
Amid the funding winter, 128 Indian startups have raised over $995 million (around Rs 8,000 crore) venture capital funding in August, GlobalData said on Thursday. The funds raised in August are 9.7 per cent more than that in the previous month, the data and analytics company said in a statement. Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, said: "Although the total VC funding amount still remains below $1 billion akin to July, August managed to reverse the decline in fundraising, despite a 2.3 per cent fall in deal volume."
Reliance Jio may not ask for a premium for its 5G services in the initial stages of the launch, according to sources in the company. The company will roll out 5G commercial services in four cities -Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata - around Diwali this month and slowly ramp up the processes for other cities, too. A senior executive, when asked whether Jio will charge higher tariffs for 5G against 4G, said: "In the initial stages, customers have to adopt 5G, then they will have to find value in the service, and then one can look at monetisation."
The Biden administration has approved a $450 million F-16 fighter jet fleet sustainment programme to Pakistan to help it meet current and future counterterrorism threats, in Washington's first major security assistance to Islamabad in four years.
As sanctions-hit Russia increasingly relies on consumer products from India, outbound shipments to Russia have started picking up for the second consecutive month in October. This comes after it witnessed contraction for six consecutive months starting March, commerce and industry ministry data showed. During October, India exported goods worth $280 million, up 3.7 per cent as compared to a year ago. It was led by demand for items such as vegetables, tea, coffee, chemicals as well as iron and steel products.
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.
A record 21 million dollars in television and advertisement revenue is likely to be generated from the much awaited Test and one-day series between Pakistan and India.
According to officials, seven employees of the Yojna Bhawan having access to the basement have been detained for questioning.
Warid Telecom, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Dhabi Group, offers mobile telecom services with a user base of over 2.9 million in Bangladesh.
The loan being extended on concessionary terms will have an interest rate of 1.3 per cent with repayment period of 30 years including a grace period of 10 years.
The number of poor people in India fell by about 415 million between 2005-06 and 2019-21, a "historic change" and a demonstration that the Sustainable Development Goal target of reducing at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty by 2030 is possible to achieve, even at a large scale, according to the UN.
The government has lost its appeal in the English High Court against a $111 million arbitration award in favour of Reliance Industries Ltd and Shell in a cost recovery dispute in the western offshore Panna-Mukta and Tapti oil and gas fields. High Court judge Ross Cranston on June 9, 2022 ruled that the government should have brought its objections over the arbitration tribunal not meeting the required thresholds, when issuing the 2021 award earlier, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. Rejecting the government's arguments, the court said the objections are barred by an English law principle whereby a party cannot raise matters in new proceedings that could have been raised in earlier proceedings.
Providence will sell up to 30 mn doses of its mRNA vaccine to Biological E. It would also provide the necessary technology transfer to make the vaccine in India, with a minimum production capacity of 600 mn doses in 2022 and targets capacity of 1 bn doses, reports Sohini Das.
Toyah Cordingley (24) was walking her dog on Wangetti Beach in Queensland when she was killed in October 2018.
Byju's is planning to raise $500-600 million from Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth funds and existing investors, according to sources, as the start-up world is facing a funding freeze. The educational technology (edtech) giant targets profitability by March next year. "There is no change in Byju's valuation. The new fundraising process is still going on," said a person familiar with the matter. "Any new valuation would be determined in the futureByju's is planning to raise $500-600 million from Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth funds and existing investors, according to sources, as the start-up world is facing a funding freeze. The educational technology (edtech) giant targets profitability by March next year. "There is no change in Byju's valuation. The new fundraising process is still going on," said a person familiar with the matter. "Any new valuation would be determined in the future as it is very tough for investors to do that in this environment." as it is very tough for investors to do that in this environment."
The content 'actioned' belonged to categories including bullying and harassment, violent and graphic content, adult nudity and sexual activity, child endangerment, dangerous organisations and individuals, and spam, among others.
Global investment firm Blackstone-sponsored Nexus Select Trust has filed the draft paper with market regulator Sebi to launch India's first public issue of retail REIT to raise around $500 million (about Rs 4,000 crore), sources said. Nexus Select Trust has a portfolio of 17 operational shopping malls across 14 major cities, covering about 10 million square feet of area valued at around $3 billion. As per the sources, Nexus Select Trust has on Thursday filed the Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and is looking to hit the capital market with India's first retail REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) public issue in the first half of the 2023 calendar year.
The government will develop a mechanism to ensure that e-commerce companies and entities that have adopted Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) architecture are compliant with the rules. Non-compliance may result in a penalty. "We will have our own evaluation system, and if we find any player is not sticking to it, then we will take action. "Participants will have to be compliant with the rule of the land," Sanjiv, joint secretary at the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), told reporters on Thursday.
In contrast to the growth on IT and ITeS front, disbursements of venture capital and public equity funding halved to $540 million during 2003 in India
Around 15 years ago, when Reliance Industries (RIL) struck natural gas in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin off the east coast, the government made plans to supply that fuel cheaply to scores of generators that sprang up in India triggered by the discovery. Most of the plants, which account for 6 per cent of India's total generation capacity, operate sparsely after the KG-D6 area first failed to meet production targets, and then finally shut shop. Affordable domestic gas was why those thermal plants came up and the rate of the fuel today is why those generators hardly operate. Record liquefied natural gas (LNG) rates may yet again unravel India's ambitions to expand use of gas in industries, households and vehicles. Rates, while volatile, may stay strong this decade as developed nations with higher purchasing power embrace gas as the transition fuel.
Online pharmacy platform Tata 1mg turned a unicorn after raising close to $40 million in a funding round led by Tata Digital, media reports said. The company was yet to comment on the valuations till the time of going to press. 1mg has raised $230.8 million across 16 rounds, including this one.
Reliance Industries on Tuesday said it will acquire a majority stake in California-based solar energy software developer SenseHawk for $32 million (around Rs 256 crore). The acquisition of a 79.4 per cent stake in SenseHawk is part of the conglomerate's aggressive push into renewable energy to decarbonise its oil and chemical-dominated business. SenseHawk, founded in 2018, develops tools for the solar industry to help companies streamline processes and use automation. It had a turnover of $2.3 million in last financial year.
The Bangladesh prime minister said that her government had tried to take care of the displaced community keeping the humanitarian aspect in mind.
After rising for two consecutive weeks, the country's foreign exchange reserves declined by $306 million to $601.06 billion in the week ended June 3, according to RBI data. In the previous week, the reserves had increased by $3.85 billion to $601.36 billion. It had risen by $4.23 billion to $597.51 billion in the week ended May 20.
These customers will be unable to meet the lowest recharge requirements for Jio, meaning they will either exit the market or migrate to BSNL/MTNL.
Around 31 million households have demanded work under the flagship MGNREGA in the month of May this year, which is almost 11 per cent more than the same period last year and much higher than the corresponding pre-Covid period, data sourced from the website showed today. In April 2022, around 23.26 million households have sought work under the scheme which as per the provisional data for May has risen to almost 31 million households. The April 2022 work demand was almost 11.15 per cent less than the corresponding period of April 2021.
Private equity investments in proptech firms rose 35 per cent to $741 million last year as investors sought to tap huge opportunities amid rising use of technology in the realty sector, Housing.com said. Proptech firms that are providing solution in sales and marketing, and construction management got 69 per cent of the total funds. Inflow of funds into proptech firms stood at $551 million in 2020. Between 2009 and 2021, the proptech players in India received a total of $3.2 billion Private Equity(PE) investments.
Tech giant Microsoft Corporation has invested nearly $5 million (about Rs 37 crore) in OYO through the issuance of equity shares and compulsory convertible cumulative preference shares on a private placement basis by the latter, according to a regulatory filing by the hospitality chain. An extraordinary general meeting of Oravel Stays Pvt Ltd (OYO), which runs the OYO Rooms chain of hotels, on July 16 approved issue of the equity shares and Series F2 compulsory convertible cumulative preference shares (Series F2 CCCPS) for "an aggregate consideration amounting to rupee equivalent of $4,971,650 to Microsoft Corporation on a private placement basis", as per an RoC filing by the company.