Telcos in Asia's emerging markets will face higher spectrum liabilities, but these essential costs are not subject to refinancing and have limited immediate impact on cash flows and liquidity, Moody's Investors Service said on Monday. The ratings of Asia-Pacific (APAC) telecom companies in emerging markets can tolerate the increased deferred spectrum liabilities at current levels, if these essential costs are the main driver of high debt or weaker leverage, Moody's Investors Service said in a new report. For emerging markets -- China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines -- spectrum liabilities to gross debt will increase to more than 16 per cent in 2021 and 2022, from 11.6 per cent in 2020 and 9.3 per cent in 2018, assuming India completes its 5G spectrum auction in 2022, it added.
The failure of SVB was due to idiosyncratic reasons, but shows how higher rates can expose fault lines in unforeseen places, observes Neelkanth Mishra.
Bharatiya Janata Party national president J P Nadda on Thursday constituted a four-member committee to ascertain the facts leading to a 17-year-old girl student's death by suicide in Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu earlier this month, and submit a report to him soon.
Communications solutions and services provider British Telecommunications' (BT) Indian arm, BT India (BTI), on Tuesday said it will invest 375,000 pounds (about $558,418) for setting up its Asia Pacific security operations centre (SOC) in the country.
India is expected to see the highest salary increases among nations in the Asia-Pacific region, of around 10.8 per cent this year, due to the huge demand for talent in the country, despite the global economic crisis severely impacting overall wage increments in the region, a study says.
Michael Boneham, president, Ford India, said the small car would be engineered for Indian conditions and that the company was keeping options open for both petrol and diesel variants. Ford's mall car will mark its entry into the mainstream segment, popularly known as the B segment cars in India, which accounts for a little over 70 per cent of the 1.3 million India car market.
Roles ranging from digital marketing to wealth management are some of the emerging roles, notes Sekhar Garisa, CEO, foundit, a job search app.
The World Economic Forum on Monday said it has decided to defer its Annual Meeting 2022 in the Swiss Alpine ski resort town of Davos in the light of continued uncertainty over the Omicron outbreak. The Annual Meeting, which was scheduled to take place in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland between January 17-21, 2022, is now planned for early summer. The World Economic Forum (WEF) held its last Davos summit, attended by top leaders from across the world, in January 2020, just before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, while the 2021 meeting could not take place due to the outbreak.
Mobile entertainment developer Indiagames Ltd., has announced its partnership with SingTel (Singapore Telecommunications Ltd) to launch Asia Pacific's first and largest competition for mobile gamers - World Cyber Games (mobile).
Airtel, a member of Asia's largest mobile alliance, Bridge Mobile, on Monday announced a suite of services that will enable its customers access, among other facilities, seamless roaming when they are abroad.
If you are a budding developer and interested in Web3, chances are that you will be headed to one of India's largest-ever meetings of Web3 developers, being held by Polygon, a Web3 platform. The company's ongoing "Web3: Made in India Tour" is expected to see close to 4,000 developers coming together at the inaugural Polygon Connect event in Bengaluru on December 1. The event highlights the growing dominance of Web3 developers from India, as well as the sector's rising interest to investors, who continue to invest in startups despite a funds crunch.
It also said that to make it easier for people to subscribe, Disney+ Hotstar VIP has tied up with telecom players Jio and Airtel.
Regional films may have prevailed over the country, but regional leaders still have far mountains to climb to reach Delhi, asserts Shreekant Sambrani.
Uber and WhatsApp on Thursday announced a partnership that will allow people in the country to book a ride via WhatsApp - a global-first initiative by the ride-hailing platform. With this integration, riders will no longer need to download or use the Uber app. Everything - from user registration, booking a ride and getting a trip receipt - will be managed within the WhatsApp chat interface, a statement said. The integration is a global-first for Uber, and it will make booking a ride as easy as sending a WhatsApp message, it added.
Meanwhile, cross-border M&As touched 23.8 billion dollars in 69 deals in 2007 so far.
Backed by the 'China Plus One' sentiment globally, India's textile exports is expected to grow by 81 per cent to $65 billion by 2026 from the pre-Covid level of around $36 billion in 2019, said a report by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and global consulting firm Kearney. This jump is likely to generate 7.5-10 million new jobs. A large chunk of this targeted increase, or around $16 billion may come from the China Plus One sentiment due to India's relatively large strategic depth compared with Vietnam or Bangladesh, the report said.
While overall IT budgets were expected to decline by 3.1 per cent on an average.
Located in a small township in the eastern part of Bengaluru is IBM's new Security Command Centre, which is surrounded by offices of multinational tech companies. This unit is the centrepiece of IBM's multi-million dollar investment to help businesses prepare for the growing threat of cyberattacks across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. This facility is the first of its kind in the region. It helps train in cybersecurity response techniques through highly realistic and simulated cyberattacks.
'The hackers' objectives were centred around smearing India's reputation, causing productivity loss, creating operational damage and seeking financial gains.'
In terms of highest paying countries, Australia tops at entry and mid-management levels.
44 per cent Indian respondents say that bundling media services with their telecom plan was the main reason they were willing to spend more on their mobile and fixed broadband bills.
In 2022, the hybrid work culture will become more relevant to attract and retain talent, while also ensuring they foster a sense of wellness and belonging in the workspace.
Mohan will be responsible for aligning of teams, overall strategy in this country and driving Facebook's investments in India
Gender equality might have improved over the years but India's working women still contend with the strongest gender bias across Asia Pacific countries, says a report. According to the LinkedIn Opportunity Index 2021, more women in India have experienced the impact of gender on career development when compared to the APAC region. "In India, more than 4 in 5 working women (85 per cent) claim to have missed out on a raise, promotion, or work offer because of their gender, compared to the regional average of 60 per cent," the report said.
Fitch Ratings has cut India's economic growth forecast to 8.7 per cent for the current fiscal but raised GDP growth projection for FY23 to 10 per cent, saying the second COVID-19 wave delayed rather than derail the economic recovery. In its APAC Sovereign Credit Overview, Fitch Ratings said India's 'BBB-/Negative' sovereign rating "balances a still-strong medium-term growth outlook and external resilience from solid foreign- reserve buffers, against high public debt, a weak financial sector and some lagging structural factors". The 'Negative' outlook, it said, reflects uncertainty over the debt trajectory following the sharp deterioration in India's public finances due to the pandemic shock.
Wipro may not see good growth in APAC regions in ensuing quarters.
Investment in real estate sector in India stood at $3.4 billion during 2012.
Infosys on Tuesday said it has formed a long-term partnership with Daimler AG for a technology-driven IT infrastructure transformation. After the receipt of all regulatory approvals, Daimler AG will transform its IT operating model and infrastructure landscape across workplace services, service desk, data centre, networks and SAP Basis together with Infosys, a statement said. "As a part of this partnership, automotive IT infrastructure experts based out of Germany, wider Europe, the US and the APAC region will transition from Daimler AG to Infosys," it added. The companies, however, did not disclose the number of people who will transition as part of the deal.
Adapting to the new hybrid normal of remote and office work, cautiously optimistic corporate are looking to hire more people and provide better appraisals in the new year as they step out of the pandemic-ravaged 2020. The coronavirus pandemic emerged as the biggest inflection point for the Indian job landscape. For the corporates, work-from-home and remote workers became the new normal and for the professionals, online learning and digital skills took centrestage.
The company, which is part of tech giant Microsoft, has about 1,200 employees in India. It, however, did not comment on the impact of the job cuts on its India operations.
Italian carmaker Maserati is targetting India's tier II and III cities, which are proving to be catalysts in spurring demand for super luxury brands, as it looks to strengthen foothold in the country, according to a senior company official. The company, which re-entered India in 2015, has also overhauled its after sales and service support as part of its renewed focus on customer experience. "Maserati has seen a hike in demand in smaller cities although traditionally we enjoyed steady patronage in the metros. "Even though the expansion in terms of physical network presence in these cities depends on our partners," Maserati APAC head Bojan Jankulovski told PTI in an emailed interview.
'As a donor, you may think you are saving one life. But you touch the lives of the entire family and community associated with the person. And it only cost you a few hours of your life.'
Whitehurst talks about India expansion plans, its latest offering in cloud computing and India's most ambitious project Aadhaar.
Wipro Technologies, which runs the global IT business of the IT-to-soaps conglomerate, is looking to increase its business from Japan and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. It sees a strong demand for intellectual property (IP) in areas such as semiconductors, System on Chip (SoC) and Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) design coming from Japan and the APAC region, which is emerging as the new growth engine of the world.
To be able to manage any such uptick, Indian IT services players are hiring more locals, and relying on hybrid work models.
The Indian IT services sector is scrambling to retain talent since digitisation-led transformation has increased the demand for a digitally skilled workforce. As a result, the pull for jobs for tech professionals is also coming from non-IT sectors, leading to higher attrition among IT companies. The average number of tech jobs from non-IT sectors has seen a 41 per cent uptick in March-May'21 versus March-May'19, according to data from Naukri.com.
The purchase or construction of houses by large numbers of people can add meaningfully to India's economic growth, points out Neelkanth Mishra.
Sushil Chandra will conduct the UP, Punjab, Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand elections before he retires in May 2022.
Franklin Templeton Asset Management (India) on Tuesday said it strongly disagrees with the findings in Sebi's order in the case of winding of six debt schemes in 2020 and has decided to challenge the direction in Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT).
The careful dismantling of Steve Ballmer's legacy is moving apace. Microsoft just announced 18,000 job cuts, more than two-thirds of which relate to Nokia, the handset maker the former boss bought for $7.2 billion.