Currently, most crowdfunding platforms neither operate with proper authorisation nor are governed under any law.
'With NPA under control, we should be able to post better profits.'
Google unveiled on Wednesday a slate of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and technologies for Indian developers at its first I/O Connect event for India, being held in Bengaluru. The company made accessible for Indian developers its faster, more accurate large language AI model accessible through PaLM API, Makersuite, as well as features on Google Cloud's Vertex AI. Google Cloud officially launched a new initiative in collaboration with Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, to help sellers build and scale commerce platforms across the country.
'In the next 15-20 years, India will have at least 50 new (AI-driven) billion-dollar companies that are going to solve problems for the largest companies around the world.'
Strengthening of rules governing insider trading is among the key proposals in the agenda set by Sebi for 2018-19, along with making improvement to the Prohibition of Insider Trading Regulations (PIT) and Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices regulations.
In yet another move to close the regulatory gap between banks and shadow banks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has mandated exposure limits to the non-banking finance companies, in line with commercial banks. In the large exposure framework released on Tuesday, the regulator capped aggregrate exposure of NBFCs which are in the upper layer toward one entity at 20 per cent of capital base. The limit can only be extended by another 5% with board's approval. For a particular borrower group, the cap is at 25 per cent, with additional 10 per cent if exposure is towards infrastructure.
'To the believers of crypto regulations, I have only one question to ask, how will you regulate it?'
"We will raise Rs 300 crore via bonds of two-, three- and five-year tenures. This will be our maiden bond issuance and is part of our effort to widen funding sources," says Vimal Bhandari, executive vice-chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), Arka Fincap. The firm, a subsidiary of Kirloskar Oil, is only five years old and small (assets of around Rs 5,000 crore with an "AA" rating), but the response to this float will be closely watched: It would be the first by a non-banking finance company (NBFC) after Mint Road upped the risk weights on bank exposures to them by 25 percentage points. The move by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has caught NBFCs off guard even though the issue had been flagged by Governor Shaktikanta Das with their corner-room occupants (and that of banks) in July and August 2023 - on consumer credit and the dependency on bank borrowings.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is discussing with mutual funds (MFs) a proposal on introducing new total expense ratio (TER) slabs linked to the total equity and debt assets by replacing the current ones that are linked to assets of an individual scheme. Senior MF executives confirmed that Sebi had held discussions on this matter with AMCs. Such a change is expected to lead to a lower TER cap for bigger asset management companies (AMCs).
The buyout will cost LIC about Rs 100 billion, based on the Rs 248 billion market capitalisation of IDBI Bank as on Friday, and assuming it acquires a 40 per cent equity stake from the government.
Google is building voice and text search for over 100 Indian languages and will spend $75 million to support women-led startups in the country, said its CEO Sundar Pichai at the start of his visit to India - a nation that he saw as a big export economy. India, he said, will be a big export economy and it needs to create a balance between safeguarding citizens and enabling companies to innovate with its framework. Pichai first met Telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and spoke at a Google for India 2022 event before calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
One looks upon the coming new year with foreboding as current wars in Ukraine and Gaza spill over and escalate and new ones erupt in incipient fault lines across the world, notes former foreign secretary Shyam Saran.
Adani Group is expected to report a 20 per cent rise in its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (Ebitda) at Rs 61,200 crore for the year that ended in March 2023 (2022-23, or FY23), according to a note submitted by the group to lenders recently. The group had earned Ebitda of Rs 57,299 crore in the preceding financial year that ended in March 2022 (2021-22). The group's gross debt was Rs 2.27 trillion as of March 31, 2023, and has projected to not take on additional debt until it lowers its existing one.
Indian policymakers must realise that in buying small quantities of equipment, it becomes hard to start manufacturing them in India, explains Ajai Shukla.
In January, Visa's chief executive officer, Al Kelly, said during an earnings call that "there's been a burst of the balloon in valuations in the fintech world". Noting that the trend of lower valuations "is a helpful characteristic of the current environment", he added: "We will look for capabilities and management teams that will bring more value to Visa than we can bring ourselves." Data from KPMG's Pulse of Fintech H2'22 shows that global fintech investment - via mergers and acquisitions (M&As), private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms - at $164.1 billion in 2022, was down 31 per cent over the year before. Indian fintechs held up better during this timeframe, attracting $6 billion, or a fall of 24 per cent.
The Supreme Court on Friday said there should be a robust mechanism to ensure that the interests of Indian investors are protected in the stock market and sought views of the Centre and market regulator SEBI on PILs alleging exploitation of innocent investors and "artificial crashing" of the Adani group's stock value.
'The focus needs to shift towards the ability to collect payments, particularly in tier-3 to tier-4 areas where acceptance is still lacking.'
India needs a paradigm shift in personal data management that transforms the current organisation-centric data sharing system to an individual centric approach that promotes user control on data sharing for empowerment, said Niti.
Penalty must act as a deterrent. If it is too low, it could encourage the regulated entities to lap up penalty instead of complying with the norms, suggests Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
'What can a teacher do that ChatGPT cannot?'
The 'Rating Level 4' means that the financial market regulators have all regulatory measures "fully in force"
Traditionally, financial institutions have operated risk functions in silos. However, the nature of unknown threats today requires industry participants to work together, says Vikram Limaye.
'When users sign up for free apps and services, they are giving up data. They fail to realise the impact of their data in the public domain, which is something that corporations have been monetising on for some time now.'
'We try to pick up stocks early and hold onto them for the long term.' 'We are not someone who buys and sells on a daily basis.'
An International Policy Network report in 2010 found that seven per cent of drugs bought from wholesale traders were substandard, and 3.6 per cent of the drugs from traders contained no active ingredient whatsoever.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved 'Mission Karmayogi', dubbed as the biggest bureaucratic reform initiative, aimed at capacity building of government employees to make them more "creative, proactive, professional and technology-enabled". The core guiding principles of the competency-driven programme will be to support a transition from "rules based to roles based" HR management to prepare the Indian civil servant for the future, according to a government statement.
The Right to Read programme hopes to cover 100,000 schools, covering 15 million students.
Given the security dilemma prevailing between India and China, India should curb the operation of Chinese telecom companies in India, asserts Dr Rup Narayan Das.
N Sundaresha Subramanian digs deeper into what Catalyst, an Indo-US project, brings to the payments ecosystem.
The present legislative framework on betting and gambling in India is sketchy, at best.
As economic policy making moves from pragmatism to populism, the bulls begin to make way for cautious optimists.
ISI sought to intercept all communications passing through the country in 2013, the most significant expansion of its capacity to conduct mass surveillance to date and rivalling that of the United States and UK.
'Every few days, I wake up with a sense of restlessness that time is running out'... 'We have created a due process for stressed assets to resolve, but there is no concrete plan in place for public sector bank balance sheets,' says RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya.
'The new government will have to contend with slowing economic growth, weak private investment, anaemic exports and vulnerable external imbalances, a stressed financial system, mounting fiscal pressures (including high government debt-to-GDP ratios) and an exceptionally bad employment situation,' says Shankar Acharya, former chief economic adviser to the Government of India.
'It's still very early. I have just been handed over the matter and therefore I haven't formed any views on it as yet,' Justice B N Srikrishna tells Pavan Lall.
At present there is virtually no dialog between votaries of different various versions of economic democracy.
Uncertainty lingers in the minds of retail investors due to scams.
The YES Bank family tussle puts focus on RBI guidelines on appointment of directors.
'There will always be hiccups given that the Namami Gange programme is spread over different sectors and involves several agencies.'
FIXES BY THE GOVERNMENT: Energy price fixed, tax issues linger.
