Corporate India is starting to step up its capital expenditure plans amid government incentives and signs of rising demand, company executives and analysts have indicated. This coincides with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently citing a double-digit growth in private capital expenditure. Healthy balance sheets of banks and corporates, along with increasing capacity utilisation and improving business sentiment, are contributing to a favourable environment for sustained growth in private sector investments, the RBI said in its policy last week.
Dalal Street investors became richer by Rs 9.68 lakh crore in five days of market rally, where the Sensex breached the historic 73,000-mark for the first time ever to reach a new record peak, taking the market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies to an all-time high of Rs 376 lakh crore. The 30-share BSE Sensex jumped 759.49 points or 1.05 per cent to settle at a new closing high of 73,327.94 on Monday. During the day, it zoomed 833.71 points or 1.14 per cent to reach its all-time peak of 73,402.16.
Tata Passenger Electric Mobility (TPEM), a subsidiary of Tata Motors, on Friday announced that it has commenced production at its second factory in Sanand, Gujarat, which it had acquired from Ford India last year. This new facility will unlock an additional manufacturing capacity of 300,000 units per annum, which is scalable to 420,000 units. The new facility is spread over 460 acres and is adjacent to Tata Motors' existing passenger vehicle facility in Sanand.
The migration of domestically developed intellectual property to foreign corporations within India reflects an anomaly in the demand pattern of the country's job market, points out Kanika Datta.
Among the Sensex firms, Axis Bank fell over 4 per cent, emerging as the biggest laggard. State Bank of India, IndusInd Bank, NTPC, UltraTech Cement, Bajaj Finserv, Tata Steel, JSW Steel, Maruti and Larsen & Toubro were the other major laggards. Nestle, Hindustan Unilever, HDFC Bank, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCL Technologies, and Asian Paints were among the gainers.
'If creative jobs can get disrupted, then left brain jobs like coding are easily disrupted. We are going through the journey of huge disruption.'
'We want to prove to the world that they will get the best code written from a small place like Wayanad.'
Nineteen per cent of global fund managers remain bullish on India, suggests the latest BofA Asia Fund Manager Survey (FMS). A total of 249 panelists with $656 billion worth of assets under management (AUM) participated in the survey between February 2 and 8, BofA said. Two hundred and nine participants with $568 billion AUM responded to the global FMS questions, while 145 participants with $331 billion in AUM responded to the regional fund manager survey (FMS) questions, BofA said.
'Interim Budget has ignited the entrepreneurial spirit.'
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP (DTTILLP) has announced its list of 50 fastest growing technology companies in the country with fintech emerging as the fastest growing segment. Conducted by DTTILLP, the programme ranks the fastest growing technology companies in India based on their percentage revenue growth over the past three financial years. The aggregate revenue of the top 10 companies has gone up from about Rs 21 crore to just under Rs 400 crore, representing a growth of close to 20x in the 2018 to 2020 period, a Deloitte statement said. Fintech emerged as a key sector in this year's rankings represented by four of the top six winners, it added.
More people working in India's technology industry have lost their jobs in the first six months of 2023 than in the corresponding period in 2022.
Learning will become genuinely global as a result of immersive experiences. Edtech advances will increase engagement, enhance knowledge and dissolve geographical barriers, says Anant Bengani, director, Zell Education.
Which entrepreneur would willingly part with her or his hard-earned money for grasping, self-serving politicians? asks Debashis Basu.
'Global coordination, convergence, market complexities and dynamics and cross-border enforcement compound the existing challenges we face.'
Social media unicorn ShareChat has laid off 200 employees, around 15 per cent of its workforce, in another round of layoffs this year to reduce costs and achieve profitability within the next six quarters. In January, Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd, the parent company of platforms ShareChat and Moj, fired 500 employees, 20 per cent of its workforce. The same month, company co-founders Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan also stepped down from executive roles.
'This Lok Sabha election is more of a trial for GenAI content.'
Both sports and digital will drag down the healthy operating margins that entertainment television continues to make.
India and the US have signed an agreement to promote innovation through increasing cooperation among startups, address regulatory hurdles and share best practices on fundraising by entrepreneurs, an official statement said on Wednesday. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) on enhancing innovation ecosystems through an innovation handshake under the framework of India-US Commercial Dialogue was signed on November 14 in San Francisco. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal is in San Francisco.
Godrej Aerospace is a tier-1 manufacturer of precision and hi-tech aerospace components, assemblies, and systems, executing global projects that serve the defence, space, and aviation sectors.
'This is total fraud. You are showing me the slip of my vote but not counting it so this is fraud.'
Investing the time and resources needed to acquire new skill sets and sharpen existing ones will enable you to stay relevant and make you more employable, says Ankit Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Unstop.
No government in the past initiated the process of policy making for its next tenure even before going in for elections. Once the Model Code of Conduct is enforced by the Election Commission, should the government of the day refrain from taking an active interest in policy making for the next five years and let that be the function of the new government?, asks A K Bhattacharya.
Axis Bank, Tata Steel, Kotak Mahindra Bank, ICICI Bank, Tata Motors, and Bajaj Finance were among the other major laggards. Tata Consultancy Services, Reliance Industries, UltraTech Cement, Infosys, HCL Technologies, and Tech Mahindra were among the gainers.
Ashok Kumar Gupta, chairman of the Competition Commission of India (CCI), has never minced words while talking about the giant technology companies, referring to them on multiple occasions as "centres for entrenched and unchecked dominance". The anti-trust regulator has, in fact, been cracking down on big technology companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and others, after they were hauled up by regulators and lawmakers in Europe and Australia. However, in several instances, existing regulations have prevented the CCI from going all out against these companies for anti-competitive activities.
'There is a need for an innovation sandbox where the PSBs can collaborate and then they can do their own innovation on top of it.'
'While every year presents new challenges, it also provides opportunities for better growth and performance.'
Madhabi Puri Buch, the first female chairperson of Sebi, doesn't plan to rest on her laurels in her third and final year in office and has set out an ambitious goal, such as moving towards a same-day and instantaneous settlement cycle for the secondary market.
Among the Sensex firms, Tata Consultancy Services, Larsen & Toubro, Infosys, UltraTech Cement, ICICI Bank, Nestle, ITC and Sun Pharma were the major gainers. Power Grid, NTPC, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Mahindra & Mahindra and Reliance Industries were among the laggards.
Tokyo -- the songs Japan, Love In Tokyo and Sayonara from the 1966 Hindi film automatically pop up in the mind -- is buzzing and crowded like any other metropolis, discovers Deepa Gahlot. The modern apartment blocks are built cheek by jowl, so close together that one can open the window and borrow sugar from the neighbour in the next building. One of the fears of the Indian traveller is the unavailability of vegetarian food. Every city and town in Japan has an array of Indian restaurants that serve every variety of cuisine, right from Gujarati to Punjabi to Andhra and Kerala meals.
An online company would show a particular price to the customer and then quickly increase the cost after analysing consumer behaviour or detecting any kind of desperation.
Byju's is set to go the way of Housing.com and Zilingo. It is only a matter of time. Indeed, the coup attempted by investors will ensure that, says Debashis Basu.
'We do not see people getting reduced, but because of automation, we will do more work.'
In a major decision, the RBI on Friday announced that UPI payment limit to hospitals and educational institutions will be raised to Rs 5 lakh from Rs 1 lakh at present and hiked the cap for e-mandates for recurring payments to Rs 1 lakh. Unveiling the December bi-monthly monetary policy, Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das said the limit for various categories of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions has been reviewed from time to time. "It is now proposed to enhance the UPI transaction limit for payment to hospitals and educational institutions from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh per transaction," he said.
Blockchain's promise: Dramatically speeding up transactions, explains Ajit Balakrishnan.
India's second largest IT services company Infosys on Thursday reported a 3.1 per cent year-on-year rise in net profit to Rs 6,215 crore for the September 2023 quarter. The earnings (before minority interest) of the Bengaluru-based company stood at Rs 6,026 crore in the year-ago period. The company - which competes in the IT services market with TCS, Wipro, HCL Technologies and others - saw its revenue rising 6.7 per cent to Rs 38,994 crore for the just-ended September quarter.
The gauge for the performance of informational technology (IT) stocks soared nearly 5 per cent-most in nearly three years-as growth worries eased following a robust order book posted by bellwether Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). The Nifty IT index rose 4.5 per cent to close at 30,945. This was the biggest single-day gain since September 14, 2020. Industry titan TCS' shares rose 5 per cent to Rs 3,509.
Private equity and venture capital funds' investment in the country continued to fall in May, with the overall values declining by nearly 44 per cent to $3.5 billion, a report said on Monday. The dedicated funds had invested $6.2 billion in May 2022 and $7.4 billion in the preceding month of April 2023, representing a dip of 44 per cent and 52 per cent, respectively, as per the report by industry lobby IVCA and consultancy firm EY. "Despite a recovery of sorts being seen in tech sector indices and some of the large global tech names, sentiment in India for tech sector investments has been lacklustre, and fundraising by Indian startups has been sluggish," the firm's partner Vivek Soni said.
India is all set to make its presence felt in the $47 billion global outsourced semiconductor testing and packaging market, an arena where Malaysia and Vietnam have been way ahead so far. The Cabinet last Thursday cleared two projects, the Tata's assembly testing and packaging plant (ATMP) and the Murugappa-owned CG Power with Renesas from Japan as its tech partner. These, together with Micron's assembly and testing plant which is already being constructed in Sanad in Gujarat, will collectively invest Rs 47,300 crore to set up the factories.
Corporate margins and profits in India remain vulnerable to changes in crude oil prices in the international market. Historical quarterly data from listed companies (excluding banks, finance and insurance, oil and gas, and power sectors) indicate an adverse correlation between corporate margins and crude oil prices.
Titan surged 2.98 per cent, followed by IndusInd Bank, ITC, JSW Steel, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Tata Consultancy Services and Maruti. Hindustan Unilever, Asian Paints, Bharti Airtel and HDFC Bank were among the laggards.