'Every hospital now tracks length of stay closely.' 'More efficiency is brought into the system now.'
RInfra, which is sitting on a debt of over Rs 6,000 crore, has been working towards monetising its assets to reduce debt.
India's macroeconomic situation is improving fast and the country's GDP growth will turn positive in the third and fourth quarters of the current financial year, eminent economist Ashima Goyal said on Sunday. Goyal in an interview to PTI said the management of the COVID-19 pandemic and gradual unlocks announced by the government have helped in avoiding multiple COVID-19 peaks. The growth estimates by different agencies are being continuously revised, she said.
The survey, however, said that GDP is expected to revert to growth terrain next year, when it is likely to grow by 7.2 per cent.
The edtech major promised a learning revolution, offering hope to millions of under-educated youth. Now, those dreams are shattered, observes Devangshu Datta.
A consortium of shareholders with over 30 per cent stake in cash-strapped Byju's might approach the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) seeking a management change, if the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) scheduled for Friday failed to yield an 'amicable settlement' or faced further delays, sources said. Earlier this month, these shareholders had issued a notice calling for an EGM to address "persistent issues", including a change in management. They will vote for a revamp of the existing board, an exercise which would include asking Byju Raveendran to step down as chief executive officer (CEO) and relinquish his operational role, according to sources.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday said that inflation is on a declining trajectory, as it has fallen by 170 basis points from its January 2020 peak. Retail inflation fell to four-month low of 5.91 per cent in March over the previous month, mainly due to easing food prices.
Mirroring the increase in the earnings of their companies, the chief executives and promoters of India's top listed firms gained handsomely from the boom last financial year. Their remuneration includes salaries, perquisites or perks, and profit-linked commissions.
Food delivery aggregator Swiggy's losses widened 2.24 times to Rs 3,628.9 crore during last financial year, as its expenses surged 227 per cent in a year. This is even as the decacorn's revenue jumped more than twofold to Rs 5,704.9 crore in FY22, according to details from company research platform Tofler. While the company's losses surged from a base of Rs 1,616.9 crore in FY21, its total expense in FY22 touched Rs 9,748.7 crore, from Rs 4,292.8 crore a year ago.
Manufacturing's share in the profit pool of companies had declined before the pandemic.
Outward remittances in February under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) liberalised remittance scheme (LRS) fell 23 per cent over January, latest data released by the central bank, in its monthly bulletin, revealed. In February, Indians remitted $2.1 billion under the RBI's liberalised scheme. On a year-on-year (YoY) basis - aided by international travel - LRS jumped 15.24 per cent. Further, in April 2022-February 2023, outward remittances under LRS stood at $24.18 billion, an all-time high.
Steps will be taken to attract external commercial borrowing and FDI in the education sector, the finance minister said. Stating that govt will soon introduce new education policy, Sitharaman said online degree courses to students from weaker sections.
While the stress is lower than projections, it would be higher than what we saw last year because of the pandemic: Axis.
India's largest edtech firm Byju's will fire 1,000 employees in a fresh round of layoffs across departments. With the latest round, total job cuts at the company have mounted to around 3,500. According to sources, fresh job cuts are an attempt by the company to improve its finances and work towards a path to profitability.
Assets under management with the mutual fund industry jumped a whopping 41 per cent in fiscal 2021 to Rs 31.43 lakh crore, despite a minor 1 per cent decline in March, says a report. The 1 per cent decline in assets on monthly basis in March was because of net outflows from open-ended debt funds, even though open-ended equity funds for the first time in June 2020 recorded net inflows, according to the industry data collated by Crisil on Friday. Marc saw net outflows of Rs 29,745 crore, taking down the industry's asset base to Rs 31.43 lakh crore, down from the record high of Rs 31.64 lakh crore in February, registering a whopping 41 per cent growth in the fiscal 2021 over the previous fiscal, said Crisil, adding cumulative inflows equalled Rs 2.09 lakh crore.
However, the Indian economy is expected to bounce back in 2021, the World Bank said.
South Korean auto giant Hyundai Motor Company is considering tax implications of listing its Indian unit before taking a final call, according to sources privy to the development. Hyundai Motor is mulling an initial public offering (IPO) for its Indian arm to raise around $3 billion (at a valuation of up to $30 billion), and talks are in the early stages between the company and bankers, banking sources revealed. Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL), however, declined to comment on the development.
'Considering Pai is putting his own personal money in Byju's, stakeholders in the company can look forward to more governance and transparency.'
Corporate India's net profit as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) dipped in the 2022-23 financial year (FY23) -- after rebounding sharply in FY22 -- amid a decline in global commodity prices. Top 500 companies' combined net profit stood at 4.1 per cent of the GDP for FY23, down from 4.3 per cent in the previous financial year when it had gone up from just 3.5 per cent in FY21. "The year-on-year (YoY) decline was led by global commodities, which contributed adversely to the ratio, while the financial sector contributed positively.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday kept the key repo rate unchanged at 4 per cent in view of rising inflation and faint signs of economic growth amid the gradual lifting of coronavirus related countrywide lockdown.
In 2019-20, Gopinathan had received a total remuneration of Rs 13.3 crore. According to TCS' annual report for 2020-21, Gopinathan received Rs 1.27 crore in salary, Rs 2.09 crore in benefits, perquisites and allowances, and Rs 17 crore in commission. TCS chief operating officer N Ganapathy Subramaniam drew a pay package of about Rs 16.1 crore in the last financial year. This includes Rs 1.21 crore in salary, Rs 1.88 crore in benefits, perquisites and allowances, and Rs 13 crore in commission.
Bharti Airtel has quietly narrowed its adjusted gross revenue (AGR) market share gap with Reliance Jio, the country's largest player in the game, in the last three years. Despite Jio's aggressive entry into 4G and now into 5G, Airtel's gap with Jio, which was 6.4 percentage points in Q1 of FY21 and went up to 7.2 percentage points in Q1 of FY22, has fallen to only 4.4 percentage points in Q1 of FY24. Currently, Reliance Jio's AGR market share is 41.6 per cent while Airtel's is at 37.2 per cent.
The disruptions caused by COVID-19 have more severely impacted small and mid-sized corporates, including NBFCs and MFIs, in terms of access to liquidity.
As a percentage contributor to nominal GDP, PFCE's share was 60.1 per cent in FY23, compared with 59.6 per cent and 60.8 per cent in the two preceding fiscal years. "Although PFCE is expected to grow 7.7 per cent in FY23, we believe it is still short of a broad-based recovery. "The current consumption demand is highly skewed in favour of goods and services consumed largely by the households falling in the upper income bracket. "A broad-based consumption recovery, therefore, is still some distance away," said Sunil Kumar Sinha, principal economist with India Ratings.
ITC highlighted that legal cigarettes account for 9 per cent of tobacco consumption in India, but 80 per cent of tax collection is from tobacco products. While illicit cigarettes account for roughly one-third of the market share, legal cigarette volumes have recovered to around 96 per cent of peak FY13 volumes, after dipping to 70 per cent in FY21.
An increased brand fee paid by India-listed Vedanta, apart from record dividend, has helped Vedanta Resources (VRL) - the London-based holding company of Vedanta Group - to repay part of its debt. Vedanta paid a brand fee of Rs 2,632 crore ($325 million) for 2022-23 (FY23), according to Nomura report. This was after the Anil Agarwal-owned holding company raised the brand fee to 2 per cent of the turnover for its Indian businesses in 2021.
India Inc's net profit as a percentage of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) is just shy of reaching 5 per cent, bolstered by strong earnings growth in the second quarter of 2023-24. Analysts interpret this as an indication that a corporate profit upcycle is in progress, with projections suggesting that this share could exceed 8 per cent within the next five years, driven by bullish earnings growth expectations. "We believe we are only halfway through a profit cycle, with the profit share in GDP rising from a low of 2 per cent in 2020 to about 5 per cent currently, and likely heading to 8 per cent in the coming four to five years. "This implies about 20 per cent compounding of earnings growth. "Underscoring this forecast is the start of a new private capex cycle, under-geared balance sheets, a healthy banking system, lower corporate tax rates, improving terms of trade, and structural consumption demand outlook albeit somewhat offset by likely consolidation in government deficit," said Ridham Desai, managing director, head of research, Morgan Stanley India in a note.
As more companies ask their employees to return to office after the pandemic, the share of women employed in regular salaried jobs in urban India decreased from 54 per cent in the first quarter to 52.8 per cent in the second quarter of the current financial year, according to the quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data. The slump in the share is the lowest in wage employment in any quarter in the last six years when the National Statistical Office started releasing the quarterly PLFS surveys in Q3 of FY19. The share of women in wage work was highest in Q1 of FY21 at 61.2 per cent.
Tax devolution shares, which threaten to create a north-south divide among states, may have more to do with per capita income, and not so much with population.
The Q1FY24 earnings season has started on a dismal note for corporate India. The early-bird companies' revenue growth has been at a 10-quarter low, while the combined earnings of non-BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance) companies seem to have hit the ceiling. The numbers suggest corporate India is entirely dependent on BFSI companies and the IT services sector to drive growth in revenue and profit while other sectors are showing signs of stagnation.
'Byju's financials only reflect the core business. At a group level, they are experiencing substantial losses.'
Engineering giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T) handed out a pay cheque of Rs 61.27 crore to its chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD) SN Subrahmanyan in the last financial year (FY22), which is a near 115 per cent hike over FY21, as executive compensation at India Inc comes under sharp focus after two years of Covid-19. In fact, the total compensation of L&T's executive directors (including Subrahmanyan) in FY22 was 120 to 670 times the median remuneration of the company's employees, data from its FY22 annual report shows. This points to sharp hikes that the top management saw in their remuneration during the period, experts in human resources said. In FY21, L&T's executive compensation was 56 to 337 times the median remuneration of company employees.
The Indian economy, severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, is projected to contract by a massive 10.3 per cent this year, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. However, India is likely to bounce back with an impressive 8.8 per cent growth rate in 2021, thus regaining the position of the fastest growing emerging economy, surpassing China's projected growth rate of 8.2 per cent, the IMF said in its latest 'World Economic Outlook' report.
'As long as economic growth remains steady, creating jobs and generating stable incomes, the rise in home loans should not create problems.' 'If the growth trajectory changes course over the medium term and interest rates rise along with inflation, the expanding trend in home loans may not sustain.'
Engineering giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is looking to divest its exposure to road and power concessions and incubate digital and e-commerce businesses as part of its new five-year plan ending 2025-26 (FY26). The base year for the plan is 2020-21 (FY21). The blueprint, called Lakshya 2026, is intended to help the company exit sub-scale businesses, concentrate on high-technology (tech) manufacturing, construction and green energy projects, and increase its share from information technology (IT) and digital services. The lending operations of the financial services business, meanwhile, will be reorganised, with focus on retail lending.
It is 10 years since Bandhan Financial Services became the first microfinance institution (MFI) to receive the universal bank licence. A year later, in 2015, it started operations. Bandhan's entry into banking was seen as a vote of confidence by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the country's microfinance sector. Subsequently, the RBI awarded small finance bank licences to nine MFIs.
Indians remitted close to $2 billion in November under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) liberalised remittance scheme (LRS), latest data released by the central bank showed. Outward remittances under the scheme jumped 29 per cent to $1.99 billion compared to $1.54 billion in the year-ago month. Sequentially, outward remittances under the scheme were up about 3.5 per cent.
Tech Mahindra was the top loser in the Sensex pack, crashing over 9 per cent, followed by Kotak Bank, Axis Bank, TCS, Infosys and HUL. On the other hand, Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto, Bajaj Finance and Titan were the gainers.
Clawing the economy back to an 8 per cent growth path will require bringing savings and investment rates closer to 35 per cent on a sustained basis, which were 30.2 and 29.6 per cent, respectively, in FY22, according to a report. As per India Ratings, a large part of investments will have to be in infrastructure, which can help revive private investments by easing supply constraints and offset the weakening of external demand due to global headwinds. Higher investments will have to be accompanied by higher domestic savings to keep the savings-investments gap under check.
The currency in circulation (CIC) declined in the first half of this financial year and this is the first time this has happened in H1 in at least 10 years. The CIC on March 31, 2023, was Rs 33.78 trillion, which fell to Rs 33.01 trillion on September 22 -- a difference of about Rs 76,658 crore. In the first half of the last two financial years, the CIC went up by Rs 33,357 crore in FY23 and Rs 84,978 crore in FY22.