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.
'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!'
First phase of online video's growth is over. Netflix, Amazon developing new content ecosystem.
The last few months have been hard on digital wallets which had a short-lived dream run post-demonetisation.
IIM Lucknow has concluded its 2020-21 final placements.
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.
Bindisha Sarang takes a look at Vodafone's RedX and Airtel's new plan.
India's Internet economy has two choices: An immediate $30 billion Sale-and-Leaseback or a $3 trillion value harvesting over decades, observes Vibhu Arya.
Zombies, high society, avenging monkeys, reincarnation, twins, meteor strikes, you'll be spoiled for choice on OTT this week. Sukanya Verma makes her recommendations:
Sukanya Verma looks at what's looking hot on the OTT menu this week.
According to sources, employees from marketing, ad-tech, category, digital marketing, engineering team, catalogues, have all been asked to leave.
Instead of jumping into marriage Indians now like to understand the person first as friends and discover if they truly have a connection, observes Shalini Singh, founder, andwemet, an Indian matchmaking Web site.
Sources said about hundreds of companies, including Facebook and Amazon, could seek tax refund because they import software for sale in India.
Amazon Prime leads the race to buy digital rights for Bollywood blockbusters with Hotstar and Netflix trailing far behind.
Here's a quick guide to navigating and ordering from global websites.
While most banks in India store all this data on Indian servers in their core banking systems, the current directive addresses new-age payment and fintech companies operating in the space
If at all the series can be criticised, it would be for its all-Brahmin characters and keeping out the caste problems, the misogyny and the backwardness and ugliness of rural India, points out Deepa Gahlot.
E-commerce giants such as Amazon, Netflix and Flipkart, whose headquarters are not in India, potentially have to pay the additional levy of 2 per cent from April 1.
For years it has been evident that fibre and DTH would give tough competition to cable in India where regulatory overload has mutilated an already warped industry structure. OTT added fuel to the fire. From Rs 27,000 crore in 2010, cable's share of subscription revenues is now estimated at Rs 13,000 crore.
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.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has slammed the mainstream American media, including The Washington Post, for their 'biased' coverage of India.
'India missed the software products revolution (and now is in danger of missing the platform revolution), complacent that we are the software experts of the world based on IT services prowess,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.
Within two days, the business school had 108 recruiters making 370 domestic and international offers, including 23 new final recruiters with an average salary of Rs 25.08 lakh.
Companies like Amazon Prime Video are also temporarily lowering bit rates -- a measure of how much data is being transferred -- to ease pressure on telecom network infrastructure.
Digital commerce operators advertising on global social media, which earlier did not pay Google tax on their operations in Jammu & Kashmir, may now have to cough it up at 6 per cent.
Mutliplexes want the gap between a film's release in theatres and on OTT to be doubled from 4 to 8 weeks.
Hiranandnani's new venture is well-timed, but it will face heavy competition from both international majors and domestic peers like Adani Group.
A look at the actors, who have been a part of the franchise and are no more.
A scene of a play and a conversation between two key characters were snipped from the first episode Tanashah, a day after the cast and crew of the nine-part starry political saga on Amazon Prime Video once again apologised and said they had decided to implement changes to address the concerns raised.
Whatever you plan on doing, make sure you do it with an intention of you really caring about HER sexual happiness.
Transcripts of both the conversations that happened on January 27 and 28 respectively were posted by The Washington Post.
The OTT menu is hot as ever. Sukanya Verma tells us everything we can try out this week.
'There is a lot of money coming into the business, people are consuming a lot of content, there is no dearth of new films and shows coming out of India and being available worldwide.'
There are as many as three films and a Web series premiering on October 2.
The latest smartphone is a cop out. Here's some tech for thought.
More companies with unconventional business models to get into messy legal hassles in India.
Of the 200 to 250 students who enroll in a graduate language course at Doon University annually, nearly all are assured placement in a range of companies like Amazon (France), AXA Insurance, Oracle and Capgemini.
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 group began to outperform the broader market only with the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 while earlier it was largely keeping pace with the Sensex. The group's market cap is up 164.4 per cent since the end of March 2020 against a 105 per cent rally in the Sensex.
