India's e-commerce market is poised to grow by 84 per cent to $111 billion by 2024 on the back of accelerated adoption of digital technologies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a report by fintech firm FIS said on Wednesday. The report noted that countries, including India, have seen a shift in consumer behaviour caused by COVID-19, and new payment trends are shown to be on the rise. FIS, in its 2021 Global Payments Report, examined current and future payment trends across 41 countries. India's e-commerce market is projected to grow by 84 per cent between now and 2024 to about $111 billion (from about $60 billion in 2020) driven by mobile shopping, which is projected to grow 21 per cent annually over the next four years, the report said.
'There is no such thing as ultimate survivability.'
'It's all comparative -- who outperforms, who uses tactics, who optimises technology to the best is what makes the difference.'
The report forecasts that by 2020, four out of every five smartphone connections worldwide will come from the developing world.
This week's collection of unbelievably unusual images from across the world.
People on the Ladakh sector of the border with China are compelled to ponder over a heart ripping prospect of a future in China -- a country they viscerally hate for steadily usurping their land. Their swelling disillusionment and popular frustration with India is fraught with grave geo-strategic and national security implications for the country. New Delhi's morbid indifference is indeed frightening, says R N Ravi.
The number of participating automakers has fallen from 50 in 2018 to 30 this year. The count of exhibitors, including technology companies, has come down from 119 to 112. And showstopper luxury and supercar brands, including Toyota, Jeep, Lamborghini, Porsche, and Volvo will be missing. Similarly, the commercial vehicle makers also gave the show a miss -- a prolonged economic slowdown has dented their fortunes and near chances of any recovery.
It is ramping up capacity in the second facility in Andhra Pradesh, run by Foxconn
The Delhi Police on Friday said it has recovered 105 oxygen concentrators during raids at two upscale restaurants and arrested four people.
Unlike the race to buy airwaves by telecom companies, airports by infrastructure companies and city gas networks by energy companies, the race to develop super apps by consumer-facing companies in India has not brushed up against any regulatory issues. Officials at the ministry of electronics and information technology and at other regulators are happy they do not have to meddle in who among the Tata group, Reliance Industries Ltd, Flipkart or Paytm will manage to build an app that sweeps in customers. Unlike separate apps a customer uses on her mobile to order groceries, buy food or airline tickets or just make payments, a super app can perform all these functions.
Chinese automakers Great Wall Motors, FAW Haima Automobile, and Changan Automobile, after dithering about entering India for some years, have been encouraged by the robust sales performance of the late entrants Kia Motors and MG Motors even in a slowing market.
...but are we chasing yesterday's dreams, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
News of all that's transpired on and off the football field
'Overall, compared to the previous episode, we are in a better shape because the vaccine is already out there and vaccination drives are proceeding'
Multinational conglomerate Tata Group has submitted its 'Expression of Interest' to become IPL title sponsor this year, joining education technology company Unacademy and fantasy sports platform Dream11 in a bid to replace Chinese mobile phone company Vivo for one season.
'What we are actually missing in India is a platform wherein the government engages with cybersecurity experts, gets them employed and then utilises their capability to deter such attacks.'
'Whoever owns the best chip industry will be the Saudi Arabia of the era of data,' predicts Rajeev Srinivasan.
The BCCI and Vivo on Thursday decided to suspend their partnership for the 2020 IPL beginning on September 19 in the UAE amid the clamour to boycott Chinese products amid widespread anti-China sentiment in India.
Tech Mahindra is building 5G use cases with US-based hospitals to help manage devices remotely and eventually manage remote surgeries that will require seamless network connectivity.
'India is still hierarchical, but not as much as Japan and people appreciate a flat working culture,' Charles Frump, managing director, Volvo Cars India, tells Pavan Lall.
If India wants to become a globally competitive manufacturing hub, it will have to rethink the notion that the traditional SMEs will form the manufacturing backbone, argues Prosenjit Datta.
A year after Bharti Airtel launched 4G services, there are only 6.5 mn users in the country
Apple and Samsung are international players and should work as a team with domestic companies to transform India into a global powerhouse: IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
After gaining 300 million mobile wallet users in India, the firm has now expanded operations to Japan via PayPay Corporation, a joint venture established by SoftBank Corp and Yahoo Japan Corporation.
A lot of new technologies developed indigenously were successfully tested in the trial.
The auto ancillary industry - one of the worst hit due to the labour exodus - will need at least three months to get its factories up and running.
The US company is driving this strategy through a combination of initiatives, including working with telecom carriers to offer Facebook to users at an affordable rate.
To outgoing Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao, negotiating big deals was an art form, as an international report pointed out after the $130-billion sale of Vodafone's 45 per cent stake in Verizon Wireless, says Nivedita Mookerji.
Leading automakers Maruti Suzuki India, Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors and Tata Motors reported sales growth in the domestic market in November, aided by robust offtakes amid the festival season. While Maruti Suzuki India reported marginal growth, Hyundai logged in its highest ever monthly sales in November. Others like Honda Cars India, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, Mahindra & Mahindra and MG Motor India also reported sales growth in November as compared with the same month last year.
Rizwan Kaskar, the son of Ibrahim's brother Iqbal Kaskar, was arrested on Wednesday night from the international airport when he was trying to escape the country.
Both protesters and the authorities in Hong Kong are using complex combinations of technology, reports Devangshu Datta.
One of Apple's suppliers, Salcomp, will invest Rs 2,000 crore over the next five years to make components at a Nokia plant in Chennai. The facility, which has been closed for nearly 10 years, will be revived and made operational from March 2020.
Companies in the small-cap universe are having a dream run - the Nifty Smallcap 100 index has shot up more than 25 per cent on a year-to-date basis, even as the benchmark Nifty is up 7 per cent. This is the best start for the index since 2017 when the Nifty Smallcap 100 index surged 32.3 per cent between January 1 and May 10. However, in terms of outperformance to the Nifty, this year's performance is the best in more than a decade. A combination of sectoral tailwinds and lack of institutional selling pressure has helped small companies escape from the correction triggered by the second wave of Covid-19.
The BCCI on Friday said it will review IPL's sponsorship deals, including the one with Chinese mobile manufacturing company Vivo, in a meeting next week after 20 Indian soldiers were killed during a clash with Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh. The meeting of the IPL Governing Council will review the yearly Rs 440 crore title sponsorship deal with Vivo among others.
'Remote Working/Work from Home' strategy has been activated to aid social distancing in the impacted regions. Travel advisory across the organisation has been issued with full precautionary measure.
'Biden's promise of returning to 'normalcy' after Trump appears to mean that the same old politicians, who are responsible for the 'endless wars' in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, are being brought out of the woodwork after four years,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
From being an inevitable part of the telecommunication services, landline devices are becoming outdated.
Aruna Tanwar enters Taekwondo quarters.
After dropping Chinese sportswear company Li Ning as India's Olympic kit sponsor, Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju on Wednesday said the country's athletes will not wear branded apparel in the upcoming Tokyo Games even as the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) claimed that the search is on for a new partner.
