Flipkart Group on Monday said it has raised $3.6 billion (about Rs 26,805.6 crore) in funding led by GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Walmart, valuing the e-commerce giant at $37.6 billion. The company, which competes with Amazon, Reliance Industries' JioMart and others in the burgeoning Indian e-commerce market, said it will continue to make deeper investments across people, technology, supply chain and infrastructure to address the requirements of a rapidly growing consumer base in the country. The current funding round has also seen participation from sovereign funds DisruptAD, Qatar Investment Authority, Khazanah Nasional Berhad as well as marquee investors Tencent, Willoughby Capital, Antara Capital, Franklin Templeton and Tiger Global.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
American online major Amazon seems to be almost doubling its India investment going by the company's recent announcement during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to the US. From the time the Seattle-headquartered company started its India journey in 2013, its investment into the country is pegged at $11 billion or roughly $1.1 billion a year. By committing a fresh round of $15 billion by 2030, the Jeff Bezos-founded company's investment would go up to more than $2 billion a year over the next seven years.
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Most infra projects have hit a road block due to high cost of funds.
Speaking at CNBC TV 18's business leadership awards event, Sitharaman made it clear that she was not expecting a jump in the number either.
Nearly half of the investments by various US-based investors have been made in Reliance subsidiary Jio.
Mining magnate Anil Agarwal's conglomerate on Friday announced a major business shake-up, with flagship Vedanta Ltd approving a spin-off of its metals, power, aluminium and oil and gas businesses into separate listed entities and an overhaul of lucrative zinc unit planned as part of value creation and reducing debt load. Vedanta will issue one share of the five demerged businesses for every share held in the company, the firm said in a statement. The entire exercise, which would require shareholder and lender approval as well as a nod from the stock exchanges and courts, is expected to be completed in 12-15 months, its president for finance Ajay Agarwal said.
The handsome 25 per cent rise in corporate profits in the September quarter amid a sharp contraction in GDP was on the back of wage squeezes, leading to rise in inequalities in India, economist Nouriel Roubini said on Thursday. This rising inequality is "dangerous" politically and socially because only a few people in the economy are benefitting, the economics professor at New York's Stern School of Business said. Roubini said earnings of listed entities have risen 25 per cent in the September quarter, which means that wages and income are getting "squeezed, if not collapsed".
Fresh capital raised by companies by way of initial public offerings (IPOs) is set to hit a 14-year high, thanks mainly to Zomato's maiden offering. India Inc has raised about Rs 19,300 crore in fresh capital by maiden offerings, including the Rs 9,000 crore the food delivery company will raise this week, so far in 2021. The best year in terms of fresh fund-raise was 2007, when companies had raised Rs 32,102 crore. With Paytm planning to issue fresh shares worth Rs 12,000 crore, the domestic market looks set to surpass that tally this year.
Indian issuers are borrowing lesser through bonds compared to their global peers. The total value of bond issuances was down 10.1 per cent on a rolling 4-quarter basis in March 2022, compared to a similar period in March 2019, shows an analysis of data from tracker Refinitiv, a London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) business. The four quarters ended March 2019 marked the last full financial year before the pandemic took hold.
Amid imminent phasing out of the fiscal stimulus by US Federal Reserve, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday called for an "orderly exit" from unconventional monetary policies being pursued by the developed world for the last few years to avoid damaging growth prospects of the developing world.
LIC, EPFO and PSBs are likely to be asked to subscribe to bonds.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Wednesday pitched for using the USO Fund to subsidise smartphones for select groups to help penetrate the digital revolution and said India should make the rollout of 5G or the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks a national priority. As much as 5 per cent of the licence fee paid by telecom operators goes to the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund, which was set up in April 2002 for achieving universal service objectives by providing access to telephone services in rural and remote areas and creation of infrastructure for mobile services and broadband in these areas. However, according to the CAG, less than half of the funds so collected are transferred for the said purpose.
The combined market-cap of all listed Adani group firms has plunged nearly Rs 7.11 trillion since January 24 when the Hindenburg report was made public.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown may have put the best of funds on a backfoot of deal activity, RIL, however, has been an outlier. With 10 different investors brought in for its telecom venture Jio Platforms, RIL undertook 12 different transactions since April this year.
Richest Indian Gautam Adani's ports-to-power-to-cement conglomerate is "deeply overleveraged" with the group predominantly using debt to invest aggressively across existing as well as new businesses, CreditSights, a Fitch Group unit, said on Tuesday. In a report titled 'Adani Group: Deeply Overleveraged', CreditSights said, "In the worst-case scenario, overly ambitious debt-funded growth plans could eventually spiral into a massive debt trap, and possibly culminate into a distressed situation or default of one or more group companies." Starting out as a commodities trader in the late 1980s, the Adani group has diversified from mines, ports and power plants into airports, data centers and defence.
Banks do extensive investigation before declaring an account fraud; they owe it to us as they deal with our money. Why would they try to fix an innocent borrower? asks Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Nikunj Saraf, Vice President Choice Wealth, answers your queries.
With the State Bank of India moving the National Company Law Tribunal's Delhi bench to enforce the personal guarantees of Ambani, it will delay the recovery of dues by the Chinese banks which won a UK court order in May this year.
It would be a difficult task for the Indian economy to reach the $5-trillion mark a year before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projection of 2026-27. Pankaj Chaudhary, minister of state for finance, said in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that the government is taking steps to make the country a $5-trillion economy at a date earlier than the IMF's projection. In that context, it would not be difficult to meet the projection in the third quarter of FY27.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
Equity markets began the new financial year with smart gains on Friday, with the Sensex rallying over 708 points to recapture the crucial 59,000-mark following gains in index majors HDFC twins and Reliance Industries, along with foreign fund inflows. On the first day of trading in the new financial year, the BSE barometer rallied 708.18 points or 1.21 per cent to settle at 59,276.69. During the day, it jumped 828.11 points or 1.41 per cent to 59,396.62. The broader NSE Nifty advanced 205.70 points or 1.18 per cent to settle at 17,670.45.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
In spite of the high number of exits, Reliance group firms of both brothers continue to be darlings of small investors
Insurance companies are seeking a separate deduction limit of Rs 1 lakh for insurance premium payment under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act in the upcoming Union Budget to bring in more people under the ambit of insurance. The insurers also want reduction in the goods and services tax (GST) rate of 18 per cent currently applied on health insurance products to 5 per cent to make such products more affordable to common people. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget for 2022-23 on February 1.
Mumbai Monorail was to be built in two phases - Phase I of 8.93 km and Phase II of 11.20 km. The first phase ran operations for around three years before services were abruptly halted, owing to a fire incident last year. The second phase now stands completed, but is lying closed.
Of the 23 Indian billionaires mentioned in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, only one saw a reduction in net worth, with the companies owned by most of them outperforming the Nifty 50 index by a big margin.
The auditors also said that the company is in the process of monetising its assets and has submitted a draft resolution plan to the consortium of bankers for restructuring its borrowings and also there have been discussions for stake sale by the promoters to a strategic partner with further equity infusion.
The queries, sent in November, were mainly about Capital Investment Trust, which the I-T department said, was used for the purpose of transferring foreign funds comprising global depository receipts (GDRs) of the value of $400 million to two Indian entities - Reliance Utilities & Power (RUPL) and Reliance Port & Terminal (RPTL), owned by the Ambani family. A show-cause notice issued on March 29 to Ambani's wife Nita, and their three children.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
A 15 per cent corporate tax rate for services companies in SEZs, setting up a fund for deep-tech startups and establishing clusters to demonstrate design-to-manufacturing capabilities of tech firms were some of the key demands made by the IT sector at the pre-Budget consultation on Monday. The participants shared their views and suggestions regarding Big Data, incentives for encouraging setting up of data centres, fiscal incentives for data localisation, incentives for pushing digital penetration in rural areas, and corporate guarantee to startups for competing with other nations.
US e-commerce giant Amazon has written to the independent directors of Future Retail Limited (FRL), including Gagan Singh, Ravindra Dhariwal and Jacob Mathew, and its audit committee, providing data and alleging that there have been significant financial irregularities to the prejudice of public shareholders, banks, creditors, and third-party suppliers. Amazon has said this warrants a thorough and independent examination of all relevant facts and related-party transactions, including of past financial years, by an independent agency. Separately, Amazon has written to Securities and Exchange Board of India Chairman Ajay Tyagi, seeking the withdrawal of the regulator's conditional approval granted to FRL related to the merger deal between the Future group and Reliance.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, will answer your queries.
New norms are in place to strengthen regulations for this set of lenders which has been playing a critical role in Asia's third largest economy, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
SBI was the top loser in the Sensex pack, shedding around 3 per cent, followed by Kotak Bank, IndusInd Bank, NTPC, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank. On the other hand, HUL, ITC, L&T, Bajaj Finserv and Tech Mahindra ended with gains.
Infrastructure for all-IP next-generation, wireless broadband infrastructure across all the 29 states in India is being laid, says Mukesh.
The Department of Telecommunications has received 21 bids from telecom operators and infrastructure service providers for the Rs 2,395 crore (Rs 23.95 billion) rural telephony project.
A single application and a plethora of services for passenger cars - that is what myTVS, a brand that operates under Ki Mobility Solutions and is part of the TVS family, is set to bring to customers, in a bid to disrupt the concept of "super apps" in India. Starting July 15, myTVS will launch its connected car platform or super app called myTVS Life360 for aftermarket passenger cars. Through it, customers will be able to avail themselves of a range of services like maintenance, diagnostics, roadside assistance, accessories, payments, insurance, and so on.
For non-banks, the IL&FS crisis was nothing short of India's Lehman moment, which has for a foreseeable future reset the sector on multiple grounds.
