At the stroke of midnight, live dashboards lit up simultaneously across Amazon India's World Trade Centre headquarters and Flipkart's Outer Ring Road office in Bengaluru. In sprawling "war rooms" at both the companies, executives monitored real-time data streams tracking payment speeds, inventory levels, and delivery logistics as millions of shoppers flooded online platforms.
Learning from East Asia, India must reform its district administration with performance, accountability, and vision to achieve the goal of Viksit Bharat, points out Deepak Mishra.
US-based retail giant Walmart will connect one lakh more MSMEs in the next three years to its supplier development programme in India, a company official said here on Thursday. The programme, Walmart Vriddhi, has partnered with Ideas to Impact Foundation (i2i), which will enable more MSMEs to expand their access to both national and international markets, helped by the combined strengths of Walmart's global supply chain and Flipkart's e-commerce capabilities.
France today increasingly resembles the Italy of the past, when governments fell with bewildering regularity, prime ministers came and went in rapid succession, and political instability became the norm rather than the exception, point out Krishnan Srinivasan and Manoj Mohanka.
The most striking features of this Budget was its focus on simplification and improving the ease of doing business in India, asserts Kaku Nakhate.
Structural reforms, pro-people programmes and employment opportunities helped the economy get new vigour, the finance minister said. After contracting by 5.8 per cent in 2020-21, the economy recorded a growth of 9.1 per cent in 2021-22.
The fast-growing Indian online gaming sector is facing a significant threat from money laundering, necessitating urgent steps to ensure its sustained success and protect the country's robust digital economy, a report said on Thursday. The essential measures outlined in a report by the Digital India Foundation include forming a dedicated task force for illegal operators, creating a whitelist of legal operators, combating misleading advertisements, and incorporating principles of financial integrity and international cooperation.
The next many decades belong to India as the global economic powerhouse, and it will be essential to continue demonstrating policy stability, as the country aspires to be the world's manufacturing hub, Maruti Suzuki India MD and CEO Hisashi Takeuchi said on Friday.
Festive sales are expected to surge 27 per cent to cross Rs 120,000 crore in 2025, driving Amazon and Flipkart to expand warehousing capacity by millions of cubic feet and extend delivery networks to thousands of new pin codes -- an infrastructure buildout that could reshape India's retail landscape for years.
The average Indian worker must labour for an extraordinary 160 full working days to afford Apple's latest iPhone 17 Pro.
Despite facing financial constraints, Kerala has been able to invest in welfare schemes and targeted programmes.
The weakening of inflation, prospects of economic growth, geopolitical uncertainty and comfortable system liquidity may result in the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to cut the repo rate by another 25 basis points, opine top economists. They also said the external economic pressures like trade policies and others would require continued RBI's accommodative stance and policy support for the Indian industry to sustain the growth.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's sudden resignation after only a year in office has thrown Japan into political turmoil, raising doubts about how the country will handle economic and regional challenges, observes Dr Rajaram Panda.
'There is no immediate threat to the government, and they would prefer the growth agenda.'
India registered its protest at the board of IMF, which met on Friday to review the EFF lending programme for Pakistan.
'If all goes well, we may well hit or even surpass the forecast growth rate.'
'We have essentially tried to set out an agenda for the next five years and it, in essence, represents the political commitment to that agenda.'
'The kids are already used to this place. We go back and that's a different environment.' 'So, mentally, emotionally we are stressed.'
AI and machine learning remain the top focus areas, followed by software development (36 per cent) and cybersecurity (35 per cent).
Kant, a retired 1980-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Kerala cadre, was appointed as India's G20 Sherpa in July 2022, months before India assumed the G20 Presidency.
The finance minister, in her Budget speech, should focus more on what she is directly responsible for, rather than on programmes where her role is largely supportive, notes Nitin Desai.
Indian economy is likely to rebound with an 8.9 per cent growth in the fiscal year beginning April 2021 after economic activity showed significant improvement in the last quarter, IHS Markit said on Friday. The National Statistical Organisation (NSO) on Thursday predicted that the economy will contract 7.7 per cent in the current financial year ending in March, the worst performance in four decades.
Growth in corporate profits needs to be commensurate with wages to boost the economy, Economic Survey 2024-25 said, noting that sharp disparities between the two pose risk to the economy by curbing demand. The document tabled in Parliament on Friday noted that while the labour share of GVA (gross value added) shows a slight uptick, the disproportionate rise in corporate profitsredominantly among large firmsaises concerns about income inequality.
In the short run, the Trump presidency has already ensured one thing: The assumptions of the past can no longer guide the strategies of the future, points out Manish Dabhade.
Despite the alarming figures on job displacement, AI is expected to generate millions of new roles, echoing historical trends of technological transformation.
Pakistan on Tuesday increased its defence budget by 20 per cent, allocating PRs. 2,550 billion ($9 billion) for the fiscal year 2025-26, amid tensions with India.
The government will come out with a White Paper on the mismanagement of economy prior to 2014 with an aim to draw lessons.
There is a need for real-time or near real-time credit reporting, instead of the current fortnightly system, to improve underwriting precision, enable timely reflection of borrower actions such as loan closures or repayments, and deliver a superior consumer experience, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), M Rajeshwar Rao said on Wednesday.
'With a solid investment programme and sustainable development strategy, India can exceed 7 per cent growth per year, or a doubling of high-quality national income within a decade.'
There are challenges galore before him, and it is not going to be easy. In the next four years, he has to conjure a system that changes the optics about him and the BJP both nationally and internationally so that he can ride back on his own, claim the top slot, and not have to lean on a coalition, asserts Ramesh Menon as Modi 3.0 completes a year in power.
'There are tall personalities who have utilised Mumbai and Maharashtra for their career growth, but they never thought it is their responsibility to learn Marathi.'
Australia, Canada, US and UK are restricting immigration, but other countries are opening their doors.
'Make-in-India played a key role in India's effective action against terrorism during Operation Sindoor.'
Job creation, improving farm productivity, and mobilising public funds for infrastructure development were some of the issues that figured during the interaction between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and economists ahead of the 2025-26 Union Budget. The prime minister on Tuesday met eminent economists and sectoral experts at NITI Aayog to hear their views and suggestions for the upcoming Budget. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to present the Budget for 2025-26 in the Lok Sabha on February 1, 2025.
India is poised to be the fastest-growing major economy in the world and an engine of global growth despite global headwinds, says leading industrialist and Aditya Birla Group Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla. The economic activity in India has witnessed a sharp recovery to pre-pandemic levels on the back of a rapid and widespread rollout of the vaccination programme, Birla said in the latest annual report of UltraTech Cement Ltd. "A strong digital ecosystem, fiscal and monetary policy and various government schemes helped small and medium enterprises and the worst affected sections of the population to survive while reviving demand and bringing the economy back on track," said Birla while addressing UltraTech's shareholders.
'Tax rate and stock markets are entirely two different things.'
'Binary fission will happen -- startups will lead to more startups.'
'We've moved from thousands killed yearly in Jammu and Kashmir to 127 last year.' 'Cross-border terrorism in Kashmir is being solved. We are winning it.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday asked financial institutions to come out with innovative and futuristic financing as well as risk management ideas to fund the emerging needs of the economy. Stating that implementation of green financing is the 'need of the hour' to meet net-zero carbon emissions target by 2070, Modi said financial help should be extended to environment-friendly projects. "Our financing sector will have to look into new futuristic ideas, initiatives and think of innovative financing and sustainable risk management ideas," Modi said in a post-Budget webinar on 'Financing for growth and aspirational economy'.
It will be the second Budget of the Modi 3.0 government and eighth straight Budget for Nirmala Sitharaman, rare in Indian polity.
