At the annual general meeting of Reliance Industries earlier this week, Isha Ambani, director at Reliance Retail Ventures, announced that the company is foraying into the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) space. But analysts say that only time will tell if this will lead to a disruption in India's FMCG market. While Reliance Retail's initial strategy is to take its own brands, which it currently sells at its own supermarkets and hypermarkets, to general trade, it is also looking at acquisitions.
While the investment amount could not be immediately ascertained, a report pegged it at about $2 billion.
Thanks to a $5.7 billion deal with Facebook, a Rs 53,125 crore rights issue and more stake sale to companies such as Saudi Aramco, the target is likely to be achieved by December.
"Starting today (on Wednesday), Airtel Xstream Fibre is available to homes, SOHO (Small Office Home Office) and small commercial establishments in Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Indore, Jaipur and Ahmedabad," Bharti Airtel said in a statement.
The company raised Rs 53,124 crore through a rights issue and sold nearly 33 per cent stake in Jio Platforms Ltd - the firm that houses telecom business and apps - to likes of Facebook and Google for Rs 152,056 crore.
It has invested $2 billion and spent $200 million on its R&D centre in Bengaluru, the largest such centre outside China where some core technologies are under development.
Across the world, there are around 150 trials on 5G currently going on and India has lagged behind. The government has now formed a committee which will look exclusively at developing a model for conducting 5G field trials, reports Kiran Rathee.
Tamil Nadu cadre IAS officer K Rajaraman on Friday took charge as the new telecom secretary. His joining comes following the superannuation of Anshu Prakash on September 30. "Shri K Rajaraman, IAS (TN:89) takes charge as Secretary, @DoT_India in presence of senior officials of the department," a PIB tweet said. He was serving as the additional secretary for investments at the Department of Economic Affairs before being promoted to the position of secretary, DoT.
Mukesh Ambani's Jio, high debt and some bad decisions drove RCom to its grave.
Reliance Retail has bought a 25.8 per cent stake in Dunzo, India's leading quick commerce player, for $200 million (around Rs 1,488 crore) as it looks to expand its presence in online grocery delivery business. Dunzo has raised $240 million (about Rs 1,787 crore) in its latest funding round that was led by Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) - the retail arm of Reliance Industries, the two firms said in a statement. Existing investors Lightbox, Lightrock, 3L Capital and Alteria Capital also participated in the funding round.
Udaan - India's largest business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce company - has laid off about 180 employees, or 4-5 per cent of its workforce of 4,000, in a move to drive cost efficiency, revealed sources. They said the layoffs have happened across various department functions. The layoffs have happened at a time when the Bengaluru-based firm is trying to turn into a publicly listed entity in 18-24 months.
Betting as a function of pure luck is banned in the country, but games of skill with monetary stakes are not.
Credit Suisse said if the deal fructifies, then this will bring together the largest offline and online retailers in India.
Commercial 5G services will be rolled out in 13 cities in India, including the metropolises, in 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in a statement on Monday. These cities are Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Jamnagar. "These metros and big cities would be the first places for the launch of 5G services in the country next year," the DoT said.
What worked for Airtel was that its data traffic growth was 13 per cent sequentially and its average data usage was even higher than Jio's at 11.9 gigabyte per month per user.
This year's list includes 40 influential people under 40 years of age in five categories -- finance, technology, healthcare, government and politics, and media and entertainment.
Telecom gear makers, who are in talks with telcos, say that if all goes well, they are ready to roll out the first phase of 5G services from October this year and cover the country's top 30-50 cities (in limited areas) by March 2023. The gear makers expect the telecom companies to give them a heads-up about their plans as well as the equipment required by July, and have promised deployment in three to four months after that. India's main telecom gear suppliers are Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung.
Beside RIL's Jio Switch and Jio Browser, smaller Indian app companies who have been overwhelmed by TikTok are again seeing a big rush - even though till the second week of June they might not have been even listed in the top 100 apps in the country.
With RIL's market capitalisation crossing the Rs 11-trillion mark on Friday, Ambani is ahead of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the 10th and 11th richest, respectively, and behind Zara founder Amancio Ortega on the Forbes Real-time Billionaires List.
Its trajectory in telecom is well known but now it is pushing for a similar leap into the ranks of the top players in its other businesses: media and entertainment, e-commerce, a series of online businesses ranging from health to education, and retail.
While payments banks surely lose money, their operating ratios were looking better in 2017-18 compared to the year before. This implies that as customer volumes start picking up, the business models may perk up too, says R Jagannathan.
Foreign brokerage firm CLSA initiated coverage on the stock with a Sell rating and target price of Rs 1,095, citing hefty premium valuation.
Priyadarshini Maji evaluates the impact that payment banks are likely to have on your financial life.
Kotak Bank rose the most among Sensex scrips, spurting 2.92 per cent amid reports that LIC will up its stake in the private lender to 10 per cent. Gains in HCL Tech, TCS, Infosys, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finance and Titan helped Sensex close in the green. NSE Nifty edged higher by 27.50 points to end at 17,053.95.
Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea said the Railways should not be permitted to offer commercial services like Wi-fi and voice and video communication.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call to make this decade a "techade" for India and the push for 5G, semiconductors and transformation through digital services is going to boost the technology sector in the country, industry players said on Monday. Modi, in his speech on the 76th Independence Day, touched upon all-round development of technology in the country, from 5G to push for electronic chips, laying of optical fibre cable (OFC) network across villages and enablement of digital entrepreneurship in villages through Common Services Centres, making the present decade as "techade" for India. Homegrown mobile devices maker Lava International's Chairman and Managing Director Hari Om Rai said electronics and technology sectors create about $4 trillion of revenue.
The temptation to get into businesses that are hot is perhaps too great for any politician, no matter what his public slogans are. Nehru plunged into hot sectors of his time -- engineering and iron and steel. Modi has plunged into digital payments -- the hot sector of his time, notes Debashis Basu.
From spending a little less than three hours on making voice calls, Indians are spending well over 5 hours. So, while people make more calls, they are spending less than ever, reports Romita Majumdar.
Move comes in view of big debt overhang in two sectors; companies unwilling.
Move comes in view of big debt overhang in two sectors; companies unwilling.
"Starting December 4, 2016, every new Jio user will get Jio's data, voice, video and the full bouquet of Jio applications absolutely free till March 31, 2017," Mukesh Ambani said, adding that the 'Jio Happy New Year Offer' will also be extended to existing customers on current SIMs.
Meesho has emerged as the second-largest player by order share in this year's festive sales till now, surpassing Amazon, while Flipkart Group platforms topped the market in both orders and gross merchandise value (GMV), according to according to a report by consultancy firm Redseer. It said Flipkart Group maintained its leadership position with a 62 per cent market share in terms of GMV during the first week of the festive season, followed by Amazon which had 26 per cent share, while the remaining 12 per cent was distributed among other e-commerce players. In terms of order volume, Flipkart Group again leads the market with about 49 per cent share and SoftBank-backed Meesho ranks second with about 21 per cent order share, according to Redseer.
US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners will invest an additional Rs 1,875 crore in the retail arm of Reliance Industries, the Indian firm said in a statement on Wednesday.
Unlike most MF distributors in India, Paytm Money will be offering low-cost direct plans, which don't charge for distribution expenses
The Tata group on Thursday launched its super app, Tata Neu, bringing all its brands in one platform as it seeks to play a major role in the Indian ecommerce space currently dominated by the likes of Amazon and Flipkart.
Multiple triggers such as asset sales, pickup in energy cash flows, increased traction in omni-channel retail, and rise in ARPUs could further drive the stock.
Airtel CEO said, the 5G ecosystem is yet to develop in India and the prices are very high. Telecom companies including Vodafone Idea (VI) and Reliance Jio have also said that the current prices are exorbitant.
'The government is unwilling or unable to provide the kind of relief that Vodafone India is asking for.'
Active subscriber base declined by 2.2 million on a month-on-month (MoM) basis to 970.2 million in August 2019, on the back of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea losing customers. Jio was the only operator to add 7.2 million active subscribers in the same month.
Reliance announced a rights issue of Rs 53,125 crore, which it said was the biggest in India.
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