In order to determine whether this would be sound strategy for them, one needs to look at two issues: One, on the alliances being built globally between telcos, on one hand, and cloud service firms, on the other, especially with the advent of 5G; and two, how their business strategies in India will blend into with such a deal.
Mastercard recently launched an authentication product called Identity Check Express that enables customers to verify transactions on their own.
Urban Company, the home services firm, announced a 12-point programme on Thursday to improve partner earnings and livelihood for all partners on its platform in India. The announcement comes after most women partners on the platform staged a protest last Friday, demanding better layouts and safer working conditions. Among the provisions in the 12-point programme are reduction of highest commissions in the beauty category, in which most of Urban Company's female partners work.
After facing multiple outages that irked the regulator, the country's largest private sector lender, HDFC Bank, is revamping its technology infrastructure by making large scale investments, wherein it is bringing new talent, getting into cloud-native stacks, a shift from the traditional monolithic IT infrastructures, and working with strategic partners for better products and services. The bank management is clear that it will do whatever it takes in line with its growth path to ramp up its technology infrastructure.
If that happens, Jet Airways will be the first bankrupt airline which will be revived under the Insolvency process.
The Tata-SIA airline Vistara is gearing up to station an indigenously developed robot, RADA, at its signature lounge at Delhi airport's Terminal 3. Powered by AI, the robot is programmed to scan boarding passes, provide information on the terminal, departure gates, real-time flight status and weather conditions of destination city etc. And RADA can also entertain people by playing games and multimedia content, says Sangeeta Tanwar.
W12 Studios will be part of TCS Interactive, further strengthening the already impressive array of creative and experience services it offers
Help your employees remember the vision and the goals of your exponential organisation and why they decided to be there, suggests Kunal Sood.
The government is considering setting up air freight stations to enable direct movement of vaccines from pharmaceutical factories to the aircraft.
The government has created a comprehensive budget with sharp focus on sustaining economic activity and investment but more clarity is needed on areas like taxation framework for adopting remote working on a long-term basis, IT body Nasscom said on Monday. The industry association noted that the IT/ITeS (Information Technology-enabled Services) industry has been a key driver of growth and jobs in 2020 and there is an opportunity to significantly accelerate it further. "For the IT sector, one of the biggest needs ahead of us is the development of future business models, with hybrid working becoming a reality. "We look forward for the government to provide clarity on providing a framework in direct taxes and indirect taxes for the industry to adopt WFH/remote working on a long-term basis," Nasscom said in a statement.
IT firms Infosys and Mphasis on Tuesday said they will create employment for about 2,000 people, while Wipro will invest pound 16 million (about Rs 163 crore) in the UK over the next few years. The announcements were made ahead of the virtual summit between UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Tuesday. Infosys said it plans to hire 1,000 workers in the UK over the next three years as part of efforts to support the country's economic recovery and growth.
India's current account deficit is expected to deteriorate in the current fiscal on account of costlier imports and tepid merchandise exports, according to the Finance Ministry's monthly economic review. The review released on Thursday by the ministry also said that global headwinds would continue to pose a downside risk to growth as crude oil and edibles, which have driven inflation in India, remain major imported components in the consumption basket. For the present, it said, "their global prices have softened, as fears of recession have dampened prices somewhat. This would weaken inflationary pressures in India and rein in inflation."
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday announced to increase the policy repo rate by 50 basis points to 4.9 per cent, the second hike in five weeks aimed at quelling the inflation. The MPC vote was unanimous and has decided to keep stance withdrawal from accommodative, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said in a press conference on Wednesday. The decision was taken during a three-day meeting of the RBI's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to review the interest rates in the country. The MPC voted unanimously to increase the policy repo rate by 50 bps to 4.90 per cent," Das said.
Demand for digital technologies and resumption of normal economic activities will drive sales for IT companies, and the sector will post a revenue growth of up to 9 per cent in 2021-22, a report said on Thursday. Rating agency Icra gave a "stable" outlook for the sector, whose size is pegged at over $180 billion by industry lobby Nasscom, including the business process outsourcing business. The IT services sector's revenues will rise between 7-9 per cent in rupee terms and between 5-8 per cent in dollar terms in 2021-22, it estimated.
10 high dividend paying stocks across sectors that are expected to maintain or even increase their pay-outs in FY23 thanks to faster earnings growth in the last four quarters.
'The force of reforms. The force of investment. The force of formalisation. The force of digital and green technology. And the force of youth and entrepreneurship. I am convinced that these 5 forces will propel India's rise over the next several decades,' predicts Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman, Aditya Birla group.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon as an online bookseller nearly three decades ago, will step down as the CEO of the $1.7 trillion global retail giant in the third quarter of 2021 with Andy Jassy being named his successor.
RBI said its policy focus had been to encourage banks to leverage on this channel.
SBI chief Rajnish Kumar said the focus going forward will be on cost reduction, rationalisation and reskilling of workforce, improving staff productivity and redeployment of workforce from admin offices to sales roles.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd's plans for investing Rs 75,000 crore in solar, batteries, fuel cells and hydrogen could create valuation of $36 billion (Rs 2.6 lakh crore) for the new energy business, Wall Street brokerage Bernstein Research said in a report. Reliance currently has three verticals -- oil-to-chemical (O2C) business that houses its oil refineries, petrochemical plants and fuel retailing business; digital services that comprises telecom arm Jio; and retail including e-commerce. New Energy will be the fourth vertical. At the company's annual general meeting of shareholders last month, Ambani announced a plan to invest Rs 75,000 crore in a new energy business over the next 3 years in the next stage in its transformation.
The Reserve Bank of India has formulated strategic polices to enhance growth in banking sector.
Jet's advertising and that of most other airlines has been limited to new routes or promotional fares.
Bansal has picked up a majority stake in Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development Services, a company which runs microfinance institution Chaitanya India Fin Credit.
According to a survey by community platform LocalCircles, early-stage start-ups, funding dependent start-ups and many small businesses will soon be fighting for survival as the spurt in coronavirus cases hits them hard.
Poor governance and mediocre short-sighted politics are destroying the paradise that Goa was as its environment, water table, culture and way of life is drastically threatened by tourism and migration, points out Ramesh Menon.
Anil Rego, CEO, Right Horizons, answers your personal income tax queries.
With scrutiny that comes with a public listing, Deepinder Goyal's leadership could face its sternest test yet.
'Aquaponics can effectively cushion the impact of a calamity like COVID.'
IPO-bound mobility platform Ola, said it has successfully raised $500 million via a Term Loan B (TLB) from marquee international institutional investors. This term loan has no impact on the valuation of Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola. The Bengaluru-based firm recently raised $139 million. This is part of a $1 billion funding round for which the company is in talks with investors, increasing its valuation to about $7.5 billion, according to the sources.
Mindtree on Thursday said it will acquire the NxT Digital Business from Larsen and Toubro (L&T) for Rs 198 crore, a move that will enable the mid-sized IT firm to capture opportunities in the IoT and Industry 4.0 space. The acquisition would enable Mindtree to capture opportunities in the IoT and Industry 4.0 market by leveraging NxT Digital Business capabilities to cross-sell and create holistic solutions for new prospects as well as for existing clients, a regulatory filing said. Capability in this space will bolster Mindtree's vision to leverage existing digital strengths and aim to become a 'Go-to business transformation partner' for clients, it added.
... As the world swings from 'financialisation' to 'artificial intelligence', asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
'The increasing mix of fixed price contracts is helping us improve productivity by bringing in more automation.'
'Even during the lockdown, we have received many online enquiries and subsequent bookings.'
When Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was conceived last December, the idea was to reduce the dominance of e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart. It was also to bring in a level-playing field for small merchants in India's fragmented but fast-growing $1-trillion retail market. However, those goals have changed now as large e-commerce players such as Flipkart, Amazon and Ecom Express are in various levels of talks with the ONDC team. They want to form partnerships like integrating with the network as well as providing their expertise to build it, according to the industry sources.
'In FY21, as of October, LIC has booked a profit of Rs 18,800 crore through sale of equities.'
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and two other public sector oil firms will install 22,000 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations over the next 3-5 years to support the nation's target to reduce its carbon intensity and reach net zero emissions by 2070. IOC, the country's largest state-controlled refiner by capacity, will set up EV charging facilities at 10,000 fuel outlets over the next three years, chairman Shrikant Madhav Vaidya said. Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) said it will set up 7,000 stations over the next five years while Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) has plans for 5,000 stations.
Sanjay Jalona, CEO & MD of LTI says the push would be to increase digital business and look at outcomes in projects for customers.
Honed and utilised in-house for over three years, the engineering major's new arm - L&T-Nxt - will focus on AI, IoT, vitual reality and cyber security among other fields of digitisation.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has weathered the pandemic very well, and has earned tremendous goodwill from customers, which enhanced the firm's standing in the market, N Chandrasekaran, chairman, said in his virtual address of the 26th Annual General Meeting on Thursday. He said TCS shareholders received over 3,000 per cent return on their investments since the company was listed in 2004.
India has a history of jugaad, and retrofitting vehicles is one such manifestation of the legendary Indian skill. Not so long ago autorickshaws and small Marutis used to strap on subsidised LPG cylinders and power themselves to a cheap ride. There were the odd explosions, lives were lost, but the jugaad continued. Then compressed natural gas (CNG) was introduced in Delhi following a court order. Initially, customised CNG kits were fitted to conventional (internal combustion engine or ICE) autos cheaply, enabling commuting at less than half of what you would cough up for diesel. The industry is better organised now with Suzuki and Hyundai designing CNG-fired vehicles, and Mahindra and TVS manufacturing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)-powered three wheelers.