The recent equity market weakness has sobered up investor mood, but the coming festive season is keeping analysts upbeat on stocks related to the consumption basket. Among the lot, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), retail, and consumer electronics segments are expected to do well over the next few months, and investors should thus selectively take bets in these pockets, analysts suggest. "We expect good volume growth for the FMCG sector during the festive season with some improvement in rural demand.
Ola founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Bhavish Aggarwal will step back from day-to-day operations to focus more on engineering functions, team building, and products, apart from focusing on long-term strategic projects, such as two-wheelers, cars, and innovations in quick commerce and international expansion. "I'll be spending more time with all engineering functions, team building, and on products," said Aggarwal in an internal note, adding, "I'll also be increasing my focus on our longer-term strategic projects, including new two-wheeler products, our car project, innovations in quick commerce, electrifying ride-hailing, our cell research and development (R&D), international expansion, building our Pune technology (tech) centre, and Futurefoundry UK." To drive scale, speed, and quality, Aggarwal said he is expanding Ola Group's chief financial officer (CFO) G R Arun Kumar's role to help him steer 'day-to-day operations' across the group.
In the April-June quarter (Q1) of 2023-24 (FY24), growth in sales of FSN E-Commerce Ventures (the parent company of Nykaa) decelerated to 24 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y), and 9 per cent quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q), compared with 34 per cent in the previous quarter, due to a decline in the beauty & personal care (BPC) and fashion division's gross merchandise value (GMV). But Nykaa claimed it gained market share in both divisions. The earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (Ebitda) margin of 5.2 per cent expanded 120 basis points (bps) from a year earlier.
The threat may be a decade away, but it has brick-and-mortar sellers rethinking their strategies and banking on the govt to regulate online companies.
'Given the inherent volatility, investors should take at least a three to five-year view.'
IPO-bound mobility platform Ola, said it has successfully raised $500 million via a Term Loan B (TLB) from marquee international institutional investors. This term loan has no impact on the valuation of Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola. The Bengaluru-based firm recently raised $139 million. This is part of a $1 billion funding round for which the company is in talks with investors, increasing its valuation to about $7.5 billion, according to the sources.
Ordering groceries, vegetables and daily essentials is just a WhatsApp away as billionaire Mukesh Ambani's e-commerce platform JioMart taps into the popular messaging app to scale up online business in its fight for dominance in the giant Indian retail market with Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart. Ambani's twin children, Akash and Isha gave a preview of the ordering at Meta's second edition of the Fuel for India event on Wednesday. A new 'tap and chat' option allows users to order groceries through WhatsApp.
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.
We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
Morgan Stanley writing down its investment in the e-commerce leader by 27 per cent does not augur well for the sector.
India's internet subscriber base is 100-150 million, depending on whose estimates you take, and is growing at 20-30% a year.
It is the season of cooking and baking, but with Amul Butter in short supply, consumers aren't like the cat that got the cream. A shortage only means market shelves without butter on them. "There is a supply-side deficit. "We are now able to procure only two packs of butter a day, as opposed to three packs (each containing 30 packets of butter) in a day," says a salesman at Modern Bazaar, a departmental store in New Delhi's Greater Kailash.
The wider NSE Nifty too fell by 20.15 points or 0.19 per cent to end at 10,749.75.
While political experts claim that the Modi Magic is missing in the 2024 general election, the common people in the street -- at least those in the crowd on Thursday -- vow that they will vote for Modi and the candidate who contests the election doesn't matter much.
'Today, we have 150,000 orders a month. And a monthly sale of Rs 1 crore.'
Amazon India has decided to shut down 'Amazon Distribution', according to sources. This follows its recent decision to shut its food delivery and edtech offerings. The moves are part of the annual operating planning review process amid global macroeconomic uncertainty. The e-commerce giant is looking to focus on its core businesses, sources said.
Apart from digital advertising revenue, both companies want to reach out to the 'next billion' Indian customers. After all, around half of the 1.3 billion population is still not on the net and this represents a challenge as well as an opportunity.
'Just the amount of work which is there just to become more and more successful in banking. For this to happen you need to have leaders who understand technology.'
Besides Jeff Bezos-led Amazon, Walmart-owned Flipkart is also facing a threat from Asia's richest man and RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani, who is also betting big to grab a share of the country's e-commerce market.
Start-ups don't care that mad-money funding comes to a hard stop after an IPO, observes Debashis Basu. As a listed entity, corporate actions have to take the interests of all shareholders, especially minority shareholders, into account. So far, we are not seeing any sign of it, observes Debashis Basu.
As large-scale layoffs begin at Facebook's parent company Meta, employees on work visas such as H-1Bs are now faced with uncertainty over their immigration status, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledging "this is especially difficult if you're here on a visa" and offering support to those impacted. Meta announced that it is laying off 11,000 employees or 13 per cent of its workforce, with Zuckerberg describing it as "some of the most difficult changes we've made in Meta's history." US-based technology companies hire a large amount of H-1B workers, the majority of whom come from countries such as India.
Unacademy may see a funding dry spell for at least next 12-18 months and even last till 24 months and will cut costs to weather the lean period, said the chief executive of the education technology unicorn that recently laid off more than 600 employees. "This is a test for all of us. We must learn to work under constraints and focus on profitability at all costs. We must survive the winter," said Unacademy's co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal in a letter to the employees. "Winter is here. We are looking at a time when the funding will dry up for at least 12-18 months.
Apart from the growing adoption of the internet in the country, brands are drawn to the agility of the medium, its targeted and data driven approach and the increasing cost of offline channels for sales and distribution.
'We're seeing major Bollywood celebrities, fashion icons, and even movie studios all wanting to build Metaverse experiences'
The race to commercialise driverless cars is far from over with experts predicting that a fully autonomous car will not hit the market until 2020 or later
Review: It offers Samsung Mall, a first of its kind shopping app, in addition to usual features.
What is driving the digital-first approach of traditional, legacy brands? Apart from the growing adoption of the internet in the country, brands are drawn to the agility of the medium.
Ajit Balakrishnan offers a thinking man's guide to the state of ecom in a nation of shopkeepers.
Investments by private equity and venture capital funds declined by 22 per cent to $5.4 billion in June, as compared to the $6.9 billion in the year-ago period, a report said on Monday. However, if compared with May's $4 billion, the investments were higher by 33 per cent, the monthly report by industry lobby group IVCA and consultancy firm EY said. If one were to compare the inflows into companies in the first half of 2021, the investments were 45 per cent higher at $26.9 billion.
Swiggy, a Bengaluru-based food ordering and delivery start-up, says it aims to revolutionise this segment.
Instead of making the sellers bleed, experts say, e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart have roped in banks to offer discounts to buyers.
The industry is looking at a promising 2016, though experts and even the investors anticipate correction on the valuation side
A long and bitter funding winter in the start-up world is beginning to take its toll on start-up advertising across properties. Earlier this week, Mastercard replaced Paytm as the title sponsor for all international and domestic cricket matches organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). But this is just one part of the story. The other side is that organisers of high-impact shows and events on Hindi general entertainment channels, too, are feeling the winter chill.
The content discovery platform designed to help you discover content and services in the language of your choice recently turned profitable. It has delivered 1 billion application installs and updates in the past 12 months, says Samreen Ahmad.
'People will say a lot of things -- ignore the noise.'
From Artificial Intelligence to yoga, sign up for courses that will benefit your career in the long run.
'The reality is no one, including some of the names that have shown up in the last few weeks, have any unilateral decision-making power in this,' Facebook India MD Ajit Mohan tells Peerzada Abrar.
The potted history of the browser wars indicates how much the online space has altered in the last 25 years. Chrome's dominance, says Devangshu Datta, is unlikely to last forever.
Reliance Jio, together with partners, has tested its 5G solutions in India, successfully demonstrating speeds of over 1 GBPS, and its 'Made in India' solution is "globally competitive", RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday. Ambani also exuded confidence that the company will be the first to launch full-fledged 5G services in the country. Jio is not just working to make India '2G-mukt' (free from 2G) but also '5G-yukt' (5G empowered), he added. Jio's engineers have developed a 100 per cent home-grown and comprehensive 5G solution that is fully cloud native, software defined, and digitally managed.
Here's a quick guide to navigating and ordering from global websites.
