The pharmaceutical and the consumer durables sectors, which depend on China for imports, have not been impacted yet due to unrest in China with people protesting against lockdowns. But the lockdown could have an impact on the supply of components used in consumer durables if it continues for the next fortnight. In the pharmaceutical industry, Indian players import 66-70 per cent of their bulk drug requirements from China.
The Oreva group, which is under the scanner following the collapse of the suspension bridge at Morbi in Gujarat that killed at least 130 people, specialises in CFL bulbs, wall clocks and e-bikes, and it is not known how it managed to get the contract to maintain an over 100-year-old bridge.
Beijing wants assurance that its investments won't come under scrutiny
A combination of one of the lowest labour costs and a large surplus workforce, which will continue to grow until 2031, is one of the key competitive edges that India is leveraging to challenge its rivals in Southeast Asia in the race for a China-Plus-One strategy. Apart from India, the countries in the race to woo global companies that manufacture in China, as well as the supply chains to their country include Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. On the labour front, India is a clear winner.
The Tata group is looking to make a foray into semiconductor (also known as chips) manufacturing and it has set up a business to seize the opportunity, Chairman N Chandrasekaran said on Monday. "At the Tata group, we have already pivoted into a number of new businesses like electronics manufacturing, 5G network equipment as well as semiconductors, in all probability," he said while speaking at the annual general meeting of the IMC Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Chandrasekaran said global supply chains, currently heavily dependent on China, would see a big change in a post-pandemic world with businesses shifting their reliance to other countries.
Analysts have predicted a 23 per cent volume growth for the auto segment between FY22 and FY25, riding on the company's differentiated EV and SUV plan. M&M is already a market leader with a 36 per cent share in electric three-wheelers, and its Zaheerabad plant in Telangana is ready to cater to demand. In the farm segment, the company plans to focus on niche electric products.
Then chief minister Jyoti Basu once told an industrialist that capitalists were class enemies and he should expect no sympathy.
The finance ministry is looking at a reworked proposal from mobile device makers on how to fight the rampant and growing smuggling of very high end phones. The proposal suggests reducing the basic customs duty (BCD) on phones which have a CIF (cost, insurance and freight or price at landing in the port) value of over Rs 35,000-Rs 40,000. The retail value of these phones is upwards of Rs 70,000.
The new mantra was to align Apple's ambition with the government's, focusing on Modi's favourite themes of Make in India, employment generation and India as a high-tech export hub.
Railway officials also indicated that possible 'sabotage' and tampering with the electronic interlocking system, which detects the presence of trains, led to the Friday accident.
The Centre Thursday told the Delhi high court it has set up an appellate mechanism to deal with grievances of the users arising from the decisions of social media platforms.
The global semiconductor shortage hit passenger vehicle sales in September, with major manufacturers like Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai and Mahindra & Mahindra reporting a decline in sales on Friday. Kia India and Honda Cars also reported a dip in wholesales last month as compared with the year-ago period. Carmakers like Tata Motors, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, Nissan and Skoda, however, reported an increase in passenger vehicle dispatches last month despite supply chain issues.
Disney-Star is positioning IPL as a "big-screen experience" where families and friends can come together over a game of cricket, much the way football is consumed in Europe and other parts of the world.
Meta Platforms Inc, the parent company of WhatsApp, will partner with Reliance JioMart for a service where WhatsApp users can buy groceries on the messaging platform from the Indian retail firm. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer (CEO) of Meta Platforms, said in a Facebook post, "[I am] Excited to launch our partnership with JioMart in India. "This is our first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp--people can now buy groceries from JioMart right in a chat." "Business messaging is an area with real momentum and chat-based experiences like this will be the go-to way people and businesses communicate in the years to come," he said in an announcement coinciding with the annual general Meeting (AGM) of Reliance Industries the parent company of JioMart.
Is self-reliance the right approach in a mega-buck game, or better to be part of a network? asks T N Ninan.
'Maybe the State wants to be watching people all the time. But when they are watching, others too may be watching!' 'The State is becoming more and more secretive while throwing people to the wolves.'
Indian plants -- who plan to begin production with 28 nano metre chips -- will take two to four years to get off the ground. By that time, in the fast changing world of chip making, the global market would have shifted to 22 nm.
Unlike many other B-schools, IIM Ahmedabad follows a cluster system of final placements process where sectors are invited in cohorts at regular intervals.
The National Restaurant Association of India has written an advisory to its members against Zomato Pay and Swiggy Diner discount programmes saying these are against the interest of restaurant owners. The advisory alleges that 'middlemen' Zomato and Swiggy are making money at the cost of restaurants, who sign up to be on the Zomato Pay and Swiggy Diner programmes by making them compulsorily offer discounts and also pay commission fee on every transaction on these platforms. "Zomato Pay and Swiggy Diner both operate broadly on the same construct -- no cost/subscription fee to the customer to participate; restaurants must compulsorily offer a discount in the range of 15-40 per cent to be part of the program," NRAI wrote to its members.
With the Adani and Jindal groups and Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries joining the race to buy Videocon Industries' (VIL's) assets, lenders are expecting aggressive bids for VIL's consumer durables and overseas oil assets, which are to be sold in separate auctions. The entire asset sale exercise is expected to be completed in the next six months, said a banker. A promoter entity of Naveen Jindal-owned Jindal Steel and Power has also evinced interest in the second round of bids for VIL's consumer durable business. The deadline to submit bids for VIL's assets ended on February 2.
The agency has booked Sisodia, a 1992-batch IRS officer Sukesh Kumar Jain who was then secretary of vigilance, retired CISF DIG Rakesh Kumar Sinha who was working as special advisor to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and joint director in the Feedback Unit, they said.
The Bombay high court on Friday heard prosecution and defence arguments on the applications of former ICICI Bank CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar and her businessman-husband Deepak Kochhar, challenging their arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in an alleged loan fraud case, and reserved its verdict which will be delivered on Monday. The Kochhars, along with Videocon group founder Venugopal Dhoot, were arrested by the CBI late last month for their alleged roles in the case and the trio is currently in jail under judicial custody. The Kochhar couple has termed their arrest as "illegal" on the ground that no sanction was obtained prior to the CBI action as required under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA).
The letter shared with the media on Saturday comes amid Maharashtra losing several big-ticket projects to neighbouring Gujarat.
The government is planning to roll out 5G testbed in early January to enable small and medium enterprises and other industry players to test their solutions on a working platform, a top Department of Telecom official said on Thursday. For the promotion of 5G indigenous technology, DoT in March 2018, had approved a multi-institute collaborative project to set up an indigenous 5G Test Bed at a total cost of Rs 224 crore. A testbed consists of a specific environment including hardware, software, operating system, and network configuration to test a product or service.
In his second term in office, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has retained 34 portfolios.
The chief minister said certain steps by the government, including the introduction of an electric vehicle policy in 2020 and 24-hour electricity supply, had led to an 18.6 per cent decline in air pollution levels in the last four years.
Tata Motors on Monday launched the country's first CNG truck in the medium and heavy commercial (M&HCV) vehicle segment in the 28- and 19-tonne nodes. Most truck makers, including Tata Motors, currently offer CNG only in the small and light commercial vehicle segments. The company also launched a fleet of seven trucks in the intermediary and light commercial vehicle (I&LCV) segment, meant for varied applications.
'While we have done a few thousand kilometres in India, most of the testing and data collection and analysis has been done in the US, Japan and Europe.'
The lawyer of Videocon Group promoter Venugopal Dhoot on Friday argued before the Bombay high court that the industrialist's arrest in the ICICI Bank loan fraud case was unwarranted as he was cooperating with the probe. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), on the other hand, claimed that he was trying to avoid probe. Dhoot, arrested by the CBI on December 26, 2022, and presently in judicial custody, has moved the high court seeking to quash the First Information Report, and has also sought interim bail.
He acknowledged that police had been caught off-guard by local delinquents who turned up to cause trouble at the match. But defending the security protocols in place, the minister said France had only had three months to prepare after the venue was moved from Russia.
The shortage of semiconductors globally is expected to persist through 2021 and recover to normal levels by the second quarter of 2022, which will constrain the production of many electronic equipment types this year, according to research firm Gartner. Semiconductors play a crucial role in everything, right from computers to appliances, communication devices, transportation systems to critical infrastructure. The breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic had temporarily disrupted semiconductor shipments.
The Bombay high court on Monday granted bail to former ICICI Bank CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar in a loan fraud case, saying their arrest was not in accordance with the provisions of law. A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and P K Chavan held that the arrest of Kochhars was in violation of Section 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which mandates sending notice for appearance before the police officer concerned. The couple was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on December 23, 2022 in connection with the Videocon-ICICI Bank loan case.
IT major Wipro Limited has appointed Satya Easwaran, a former senior executive at consultancy KPMG, as its India head. Easwaran will be in charge of strengthening Wipro's business in India across key industry sectors through strategic consulting, transformation and modernisation engagements, it said in a statement on Monday. "India is a strategic market for Wipro and I am excited to welcome Satya to champion our bold ambition for growth and leadership here.
'Whoever owns the best chip industry will be the Saudi Arabia of the era of data,' predicts Rajeev Srinivasan.
The company is planning to invest Rs 1,100 crore in the new mobile phone manufacturing facility.
Don't be surprised if growth in the second half of the financial year drops below 4%, which is where it was in the year before the pandemic, warns T N Ninan.
From compromised machines to mass email lists for spamming, electronically-transferring funds out of bank accounts to phishing attacks -- India's 100 million internet users have become prime targets for hackers across the globe.
Ola Electric is moving the delivery for the first batch of its electric scooters to between December 15 to the end of the month, a two- to four-week delay from its earlier schedule, due to a shortage of chipsets and electronic parts. The first batch of deliveries were scheduled for November 30 but the company decided to delay them after a meeting between its factory team and the global supply chain on Saturday. It became clear that the late delivery of chips and electronic parts was only 'getting worse', sources told Business Standard. Ola has apologised to customers for the delay and said it is "ramping up production as fast as we can so that you can get your Ola S1 at the earliest". It has stopped taking any new bookings until the chip shortage has eased, say sources.
Jio's Estonia arm and Finland-based University of Oulu have signed an agreement to collaborate for development of 6G technology as well as to foster entrepreneurship. The collaboration with the university is expected to extend Jio's 5G capabilities and will help explore use cases in the 6G era. Jio Platforms is the parent of telecom player Reliance Jio.
Reliance Industries invested Rs 30,000 crore (around $3.76 billion) in its retail business and added 2,500 stores, taking the total store count to 15,196 in FY22. Besides, Reliance Retail added 11.1 million square feet of warehousing space during the year, nearly doubling the warehousing space to 22.7 million square feet, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said in the annual report for FY22. In FY22, Reliance Retail added over 1.50 lakh jobs, taking its total headcount to 3.61 lakh.