Udaan, India's largest business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce company, has received approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for its internal corporate restructuring plan, according to sources. By consolidating into a single entity, the restructuring will enhance Udaan's agility and pave the way for various financing options, including the ability to pursue an initial public offering (IPO) in India by 2026, according to people familiar with the matter.
Qualcomm launched its new affordable, India-designed chipset, the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2, on Tuesday. This chipset will enable mobile device makers to sell 5G smartphones operating on a standalone (SA) network for Rs 8,300 or less.
While JioMart is doing 250,000 orders per day, BigBasket and Amazon pantry are doing 220,000 and 150,000 orders, respectively.
"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.
But the road map of telecom will be decided by one thing: Whether Jio sticks to its ambitious plan and whether incumbents have enough financial muscle or ability to raise money every year to ensure that Jio does not reach its target, says Surajeet Das Gupta.
Market cap touches Rs 5 lakh crore; earnings growth to spurt in FY19
Jio's100-million subscribers target appears an uphill task in the next one month, believe analysts. Also, the existing subscribers are already witnessing slowdown in data speed thanks to the high traffic.
The Mukesh Ambani-owned company had complained to Trai about incumbents offering segmented offers to different customers
Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) CEO Ravinder Takkar did some plain speaking. In an analyst call after its quarterly results recently, Takkar said that the main stumbling block to raising fresh capital from investors is "pricing" - telecom tariffs, in other words. Nine months ago, the telecom company's board had cleared a proposal for raising Rs 25,000 crore from investors, after the promoters made it clear that they were not ready to pump in more money. But potential investors are concerned that without clarity on tariff hikes (there have been none for more than 18 months) they might just lose their money. The lack of visibility on raising tariffs has also impelled VIL to request the Department of Telecom (DoT) for a fresh reprieve by extending the two-year moratorium on paying its spectrum instalment of Rs 8,200 crore for another year till FY23.
The network has been built by six telcos to handle high bandwidth demands of emerging technologies and applications.
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Tuesday posted a 31 per cent drop in consolidated profit to Rs 2,072 crore in the March quarter mainly due to devaluation of the Nigerian Naira. The company had registered a profit of Rs 3,005.6 crore in the year-ago period. The consolidated revenue of operations increased 4.4 per cent to Rs 37,599.1 crore during the quarter under review from Rs 36,009 crore a year earlier.
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio lashed out at COAI.
The recognition that content - video in particular - will be the next big thing in the telecom wars requires no rocket science.
Telecom services providers have urged the Ministry of Finance to suspend the universal service obligation (USOF) till the existing corpus is exhausted. In their Budget recommendations, they have also pressed for an exemption from the service tax on "assignment of right to use natural resources" and the slashing of Customs duty on telecom equipment to zero. The Cellular Operators Association of India (Coai), which represents private sector telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea, called for abolishment of USOF levy.
Reliance Industries Ltd on Monday reported a 5 per cent fall in the net profit for the July-September quarter, as weak oil refining and petrochemical business hurt operational performance.
With India rolling out 5G services, can telcos get the sizeable 350-400 million 2G customers to upgrade to 4G, or even better -- but very improbably -- straight to 5G?
Till now, Jio was primarily targeting the prepaid customer base, with only a few post-paid plans. Now, it is targeting post-paid customers, who usually spend over five times their prepaid counterparts and are more company-loyal.
According to the quality of service rules, not more than 2 per cent of total calls in a telecom circle on a network should automatically get disconnected.
The Rs 51 per GB data versus industry norm of Rs 250-plus comes with the caveat of an upfront payment of Rs 1,498 for a year
The big advantage that Jio is able to garner currently is its low cost of operations.
Airtel, Vodafone, BSNL increase subscriber share while Idea manages to retain
Bharti Airtel on Tuesday announced that it has scrapped the minimum recharge plan of Rs 99 in seven circles -- Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Northeast, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh (West). In these circles, the price of the entry-level plan now would be Rs 155. This 57 per cent increase in Airtel's entry-level plan comes two months after the telco discontinued the Rs 99 plan in Haryana and Odisha in November last year.
Mukesh Ambani-owned RIL's JioMart is set to launch a slew of new products including financial services, electronics to airline tickets to take on the competition from upcoming rivals like the Tata Super app and other established players including PayTM, Amazon and Flipkart. This comes at a time when RIL's e-commerce revenues are set to grow by 35 per cent to $15 billion within four years and its core retail revenue is expected to grow at the same pace to $44 billion, as per a forecast by Goldman Sachs. "The Tata vs JioMart war will be the next big corporate battle to watch. "While Tata has an upper hand like in-house products and brands, RIL has the backing of global biggies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft," said head of a rating firm asking not to be quoted.
Reliance Industries, which holds pan-India 4G telecom spectrum for data services, has applied for a licence to offer mobile telephony.
With better than expected Rs 1.45 lakh crore bids coming in on the first day, the auction of 5G spectrum entered the second day on Wednesday with the opening of the fifth round. Firms run by tycoons Mukesh Ambani, Sunil Bharti Mittal and Gautam Adani as well as Vodafone Idea are participating in the e-auction to buy fifth-generation (5G) airwaves. The government received confirmed spectrum bids worth Rs 1.45 lakh crore after the completion of four rounds of spectrum bidding on the opening day on Tuesday.
The rating affirmation reflected RIL's strong business profile - a large-scale refinery with a capacity of around 1.2 million barrels a day and dominant market position in petrochemicals.
As many as 3.2 lakh shareholders attended the meeting on the newly-minted JioMeet platform from 550 cities in 48 countries.
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.
After monetising Jio Platforms -- which houses the firm's telecom arm and digital ventures, richest Indian Mukesh Ambani is looking to rope in investors in the retail business.
Consolidated net debt of Airtel increased by 24 per cent to Rs 97,395.2 crore.
After Reliance Industries Ltd and its partner bp plc of the UK, Nayara Energy - the nation's largest private fuel retailer - has started selling petrol and diesel at Re 1 less than the fuel sold by state-owned retailers, officials said. While state-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) continue to hold prices despite a drop in international rates, private fuel retailers have started passing on the benefit to consumers. "To further stimulate domestic consumption and cater to local customers better, we have introduced a Re 1 discount in our retail outlets until the end of June 2023," a spokesperson for Nayara Energy said.
Isha and Akash, 23, were appointed to the boards of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, the company said.
Reliance Retail will also sell Wi-Fi dongles.
Samsung makes the largest number of non-4G feature phones in India
Competition Commission of India on Wednesday said it has approved the merger of the media assets of Reliance Industries and Walt Disney Co to create the country's largest media empire. The deal, announced six months ago, has been cleared by the CCI with certain modifications proposed by the two parties.
Check out the stunning attendees at the Tira beauty store launch.
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.
The TMC-led West Bengal government has already started laying the groundwork for the election, setting the tone with the recent Bengal Global Business Summit and the state Budget.
The Department of Telecom on Tuesday approved applications of telecom companies -- Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and MTNL -- for conducting 5G trials but none of them will be using technologies of Chinese entities. The list of telecom gear makers approved for trials include Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, C-DOT and Reliance Jio's indigenously developed technologies.
Since September, Reliance Retail has raised money from Silver Lake, KKR, Mubadala, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority , GIC, TPG, General Atlantic and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund in a divestment programme that mirrored sister Jio Platforms a few months earlier.
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