The groups plan to take on well-entrenched players like Amazon, Flipkart, and Paytm by merging their offline businesses with e-commerce initiatives.
Food, family, politics, superheroes, serial killers, there's a little bit of everything. Sukanya Verma recommends what to catch on OTT this week.
Swiggy is rapidly scaling up its technology (tech) teams as the food delivery giant is witnessing strong recovery and growth over the past few months. The SoftBank-backed company is hiring across engineering, product, design, analytics, and data science functions in the next two quarters. Building this team, Swiggy is setting up a new development centre in Gurugram. Its rival Zomato, which had a stellar debut on the Indian stock exchanges in July, is also headquartered in Gurugram.
Rasika celebrates her birthday... Lakshmi shoots in Kochi... Bachchan Pandey gets a release date...
Aseem Chhabra highlights 10 films that moved him, films that may show up in theatres near you.
Footfalls will invariably come down to a trickle even after lockdown restrictions go away, and the only way to prevent someone else from poaching your consumer is to go down to the consumer herself. Consumers will prefer products and services to be delivered to their doorstep, hygienically and safely.
Everyday consumerables, such as grocery and order-in food items are the key buyout sector, analysts say, and a major reason for kirana stores' digitisation push.
The move is significant since it signals the growing importance of foods in Marico's overall strategy. It also comes six months after Marico stepped into honey, a Rs 1,500-crore category dominated by players such as Dabur.
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 recent protests by employees of Urban Company and the case of a a Zomato delivery executive who died in a road accident point to the severely straitened condition of gig workers during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Budget 2021 had promised several measures to help the cause of gig economy workers, but most of them are yet to see the light of day. Even after a year, the country's gig workers continue to be without any social security cover or a minimum wage guarantee. "In Budget 2021, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the government is looking toward including migrant and gig workers for social security benefits," says Srinivas Kotni, managing partner, Lexport, a consulting firm. Parliament had passed the Code on Wages in 2019 and Code on Industrial Relations, Social Security and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions in 2020.
E-commerce platform Snapdeal is looking at filing its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) in the next few weeks to launch an initial public offering in first half of next year, according to sources. Sources close to the development said the company is looking at a $250 million (around Rs 1,870 crore) IPO that could value Snapdeal at about $1.5-1.7 billion. Snapdeal is looking at filing the DRHP in December-January time frame, and launch the IPO in the first half of 2022 after the necessary approvals, they added. One of the sources said the founders will not be selling shares as part of the IPO, and major shareholders are also expected to hold onto their shares.
The 'buy-now, pay-later' (BNPL) juggernaut continued to roll on during the festive season with multiple players seeing disbursals grow by more than 100 per cent compared to Diwali last year. LazyPay, the BNPL platform of Prosus-owned payments major PayU, witnessed a credit demand increase of 300 per cent over the festive season last year, especially in segments like travel, food & beverages and entertainment. "We also saw an uptick of 70 per cent in user acquisition in the last two months.
Madhuri Dixit's brief seems to have been to look glamorous, which she does, while others struggle to hold the film together, observes Deepa Gahlot, Maja Ma Review.
It's addictive. It's entertaining. It's gorgeous. Once bitten by the K-drama bug, there's no going back.
In recognition of Priyanka Chopra's work with the UNICEF, Amazon is making a $ 1,00,000 donation to support UNICEF to help save children.
The latest infusion brings the total capital pumped into Amazon's e-commerce business in India to Rs 22,390 crore
'Then, one fine morning, I returned to my first love.' 'All the top directors of the time were waiting for me.' 'In one day, I signed 12 films.' 'Prosenjit Chatterjee was back!'
Roger Ebert's favourite Fellini film, time travel in Kolkata, Charlie Kaufman's existential horror, Fahadh Faasil's hacker skills, audacious superheroes, fledgling superheroes, Sukanya Verma offers 10 recommendations to watch on OTT.
The competition which BigBasket faces now is with the big three - Amazon, Walmart, and Reliance.
Mothers' advice from 50 years ago reappears, notes Ajit Balakrishnan.
'For a very long time I could not bring myself to watch several of their films because I couldn't see them depressed, in trouble or dead on screen.' 'It was hard to separate my parents from their characters, so I stayed away.' 'It was only after I became an actor that it became a job requirement.'
Farah wishes Gauri... Prithviraj promotes Bhramam...
Richarlison is a rarity among the overindulged footballing elite. In a World Cup which has been overshadowed by social issues, Brazil's latest football sensation is championing more than just one cause, observes Deepti Patwardhan.
Online retailers pointed out that their delivery staff is being stopped by local police and urged authorities to streamline the movement of delivery agents and goods.
Gits now has super food mixes like brown rice and flax seeds idli mix, oats idli mix and such other products. It has also launched an organic and vegan version of ready meals abroad. It also has an e-store, besides selling through Flipkart, Amazon and Big Basket.
As many as 81 per cent people support having rules for consumer e-commerce, but want more services-based platforms to have more clearly defined roles, a survey by community social media platform LocalCircles has found. The survey asked respondents to answer questions based on the recent draft Rules proposed by the ministry of consumer affairs. The responses found 81 per cent consumers wanting sales of products and services over electronic or digital networks to be governed by a set of electronic commerce rules.
Policy constraints may prevent many of the global retail giants from reaching their full potential.There are too many restrictions right now in the sector and policy makers lack clarity.
Categories such as lifestyle, food and electronics accounted for over 1,350 sellers across the country last year.
Three business houses are likely to be in the final race to strike a deal with Germany's Metro AG for investing in its India unit -- Metro Cash & Carry. Industry sources in the know named Reliance, Adani Group, and Thailand's conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP) as potential frontrunners to acquire a partial or full stake in the Gurugram-headquartered Metro Cash & Carry, which has 31 stores and 5,000 direct employees. Around 20 companies, including strategic and private equity investors, were approached by the German chain, inviting them to bid for the Indian wholesale business, according to a source aware of the M&A developments.
Should we not stop uncritically celebrating NRIs' elevation without regard to what kind of companies they are getting to run, and the nature of their products or business practices, asks T N Ninan.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has slammed the mainstream American media, including The Washington Post, for their 'biased' coverage of India.
With an epic battle of billionaires for supremacy in one of the world's most prolific markets and a pandemic-propelled surge in online shopping in the background, India's nearly trillion-dollar retail market is hoping to touch 85 per cent of the pre-COVID business in the first half of the New Year. In a year when the COVID-19 carnage ripped apart the retail business, circa 2020 will best go down for the unravelling of the war between Jeff Bezos, the world's wealthiest man, and richest Indian Mukesh Ambani for pre-eminence in the booming market that is estimated to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025. It all started with Ambani's Reliance Industries agreeing in August to buy assets of the nation's second-largest retailer for Rs 24,713 crore, just a year after Bezos' Amazon purchased an indirect stake in the indebted Future Retail.
Future group founder Kishore Biyani on Wednesday said the homegrown retail major lost nearly Rs 7,000 crore revenue in first three-four months of the Covid-19 pandemic due to closing of stores, which led him to sell his business to Reliance Industries.
What seems to have changed over the last two-three years is that earlier the CCI considered online as another channel for retail sales, while it now seems dividing the retail market into two -- online and offline, and looking at them separately, say competition law experts.
The chairman of the Essel Group says he has settled 91.2 per cent of the estimated Rs 11,000 crore debt on the group's books.
Reliance Retail will acquire the retail, wholesale, logistics and warehousing businesses of the Future Group. Future Group's financial and insurance businesses are not part of the deal.
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.
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