Bulk of the medicine sales in the $22-24 billion domestic pharma market happens through offline retail chemists. With the entry of online pharmacies, this space has started to witness a shake-up. Sample this: Dawaa Dost, a Rajasthan based digital health start-up, generates medicine orders from 'kirana' stores and women self-help groups (SHGs) that operate in villages, and then service these orders through its affiliated network of pharmacies. Biddano, another health-tech start-up, has a platform that acts as an aggregator for neighbourhood chemist shops.
It has 18.9 per cent share of the market, down from 22.6 per cent for the third quarter of 2018 while Xiaomi has 27.1 per cent share.
Leveraging global capital markets to give muscle to an innate competitive advantage in rapid mass transaction systems will lead to India becoming a petri dish for global enterprises and new-age innovation that it yearns to be.
ITC has extensively reset its strategy and will explore opportunities to craft disruptive business models to set up structural drivers helmed by digital and sustainability for its next horizon of growth and make the company future-ready, chairman Sanjiv Puri said on Wednesday. The company is pursuing an accelerated journey to build a dynamic utureTech' enterprise by investing in cutting-edge digital technologies to shape a new paradigm of competitiveness, create innovative business models and tap newer opportunities, he said while addressing shareholders at ITC's virtual annual general meeting. As part of the next horizon vision, the company is "proactively exploring inorganic opportunities" even as it has shrunk "business segments that were incongruent to our growth aspirations, such as the Lifestyle Retailing Business" while the existing growth platforms comprising megabrands will be scaled up and fortified.
'I worked over 100 times more to prove I wasn't a madamji doing this as a hobby.'
The NSE International Exchange (NSE IFSC) on Monday said trading in select US stocks will soon be facilitated through its platform. The Exchange will soon announce the operational details and will launch the product at the earliest possible time, NSE IFSC said in a statement. It further said depositories, banks and brokers have already started working with NSE IFSC to enable these investment products for Indian investors.
Walmart-owned Flipkart will undertake a buyback employee stock options worth about Rs 600 crore, according to sources Earlier in the day, Flipkart announced raising $3.6 billion (about Rs 26,805.6 crore) in funding from a clutch of investors that valued the e-commerce major at $37.6 billion (about Rs 2.79 lakh crore). In an e-mail to employees, Flipkart group chief executive officer Kalyan Krishnamurthy lauded the critical role played by the staff in reaching this milestone.
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel and IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have joined hands to build a 5G-based remote working technology using robotics, according to a joint statement. TCS during the trials has successfully tested two use cases of its Neural Manufacturing solutions on Airtel's 5G testbed in Manesar - remote robotics operations, and vision-based quality inspection, the statement claimed. "The 5G ecosystem will open limitless possibilities for enterprises to enhance productivity and serve their customers even better with digitally enabled applications.
Banking technology start-up Zeta is the latest entrant to the unicorn club after raising $250 million in its Series C round from SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Sodexo participated as an additional minority investor in the round. Founded by serial entrepreneur and billionaire Bhavin Thurakia, the startup is now valued at $1.4 billion. It is the 14th company this year to cross the $1 billion valuation mark after Meesho, Cred, Pharmeasy, ShareChat, Moglix and others.
In a major expansion into sportswear and lifestyle wear segment, the Kumar Mangalam Birla-led Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail has signed a long-term licensing agreement with Authentic Brand Group of New York, which has the marketing and branding rights of Reebok, to run the operations of the global sportswear, athletic and lifestyle major in the country and ASEAN markets. The new agreement between the largest domestic multi-brand fashion retailer and Authentic Brand is an extension of their existing relationship as ABFRL already markets and sells some ABG brands like Forever 21. The agreement follows the global transfer of ownership of the Reebok brand from Adidas to ABG, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022.
Humans will work far more collaboratively with artificial intelligence for rapid and complex decision-making.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's four-year-old telecom venture Reliance Jio has been ranked the fifth strongest brand globally behind the likes of Ferrari and Coca-Cola. The Brand Finance's Global 500 ranking of the strongest brands globally, which determined the relative strength of brands, is topped by WeChat, according to its annual report on most valuable and strongest global brands.
Employers are now looking to hire professionals who can demonstrate their skills rather than reel off a catalogue of undirected theoretical qualifications.
14-year-old Vinisha Umashankar has been creating a buzz with her solar-powered ironing cart. The youngest finalist of the Duke of Cambridge's The Earthshot Prize 2021, she is a shining example of why one is never too young to help the environment.
Nearly 45 per cent of this value is likely to be delivered by 3 sectors - consumer goods and retail, agriculture and banking and insurance, the Nasscom report said.
Leaders of the powerful G7 grouping and its five partner countries, including India, have said that they are committed to open public debate and the free flow of information online and offline while guarding the freedom, independence and diversity of civil society actors.
Once stability returns to the secondary market, companies that have obtained approval from Sebi will start tapping the market.
New Delhi had proposed during the 2+2 dialogue in April that the US navy could avail of the services and expertise of Indian shipyards.
The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal has accepted BCCI's submission that the latter's objective is the promotion of cricket and it enjoys the power of holding IPL for achieving its objective, reports Indivjal Dhasmana.
'The deaths of the children in the Gambia would batter India's reputation as the developing world's pharmacy.'
While Nifty 50 reflects changes in 40 years, it also shows what is missing: Low-cost manufacturers at one end, and deep-value players at the other. Also missing are technology players, observes T N Ninan.
Punjab Kings co-owner Ness Wadia feels that IPL should now be held in two separate halves with a significant increase in number of matches after the BCCI made a 'killing' at the media rights auction with a US$ 6.2 billion deal.
Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar reckons that ground conditions will dictate which spinners are to be played in the XI.
The Centre has completed asset monetisation worth Rs 96,000 crore during FY22, surpassing the target of Rs 88,000 crore. For FY23, it has set itself a goal of Rs 1.62 trillion, and already has a pipeline of assets worth Rs 1.6 trillion under advanced stages of implementation, an official said. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday reviewed the progress made by several ministries and nudged departments to achieve the targets set for them, the official added.
Companies that do not know why they are doing good also do not know why they are failing when they are on a downward slide, notes Baqar Iftikhar Naqvi, founder and CEO, Upriver, a sales accelerator firm.
The government on Wednesday approved a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the pharmaceutical sector, entailing an outlay of Rs 15,000 crore. The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the scheme which will benefit domestic manufacturers, help create employment and is expected to contribute to the availability of a wider range of affordable medicines for consumers. The duration of the scheme would be from 2020-21 to 2028-29 and is expected to promote the production of high value products in the country and increase the value addition in exports, an official release said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday released Rs 20,946 crore to 10.09 crore farmers across India as the 10th installment of financial aid under the PM-KISAN scheme and said there was a need for innovation in agriculture along with promotion of natural farming. Under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme, a financial benefit of Rs 6,000 per year is provided to the eligible farmer families, payable in three equal installments of Rs 2,000. The PM-KISAN scheme was announced in the February 2019 Budget.
Fresh capital will help Flipkart further grow its e-commerce marketplace in India as the world's second-largest internet market begins to recover from the COVID-19 crisis.
Postman, a leading application programming interface platform, has secured $225 million in a Series D round, placing its valuation at $5.6 billion. With this, Postman has emerged as the most-valued software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm started by Indian founders, overtaking web and mobile testing firm BrowserStack, which was valued at $4 billion in June. The valuation of the San Francisco-headquartered firm with offices in Bengaluru, where it was founded, has almost trebled in just about one year and risen multi-fold since 2019. Postman, with team members spread across four continents, had secured $150 million in a Series C investment round led by Insight Partners at a $2-billion valuation last summer.
The country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) will revamp its banking application (app) YONO and position it as a complete digital bank (DB) under a new rubric 'Only YONO' for enhancing customer experience and ease of use. The bank plans to bring in a consultant to help draw up the project plan, keeping in mind business goals for the next five years. With 54 million monthly active users (MAUs), SBI YONO has seen growth of over 35 per cent in MAUs in 2021.
The number of times public sector undertakings (PSUs) have held conference calls with investors, their capital management, and debt financing are among the parameters that the Centre will use to judge their performance for the first time, a senior official in the know said. The government will evaluate PSUs for FY22 based on new parameters that were finalised by the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) in consultation with the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) last year, the official said. The government had included more conditions in the memorandum of understandings (MoUs) - used to set annual targets - that public sector enterprises sign with the DPE every year. These included a consistent dividend policy, which seeks to transfer dividends by PSUs every quarter; and market capitalisation or share price improvement over the sectoral index on an annual average basis for listed companies.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries Ltd's retail arm on Thursday raised Rs 9,555 crore from Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, taking total fundraise in the last two months to Rs 47,265 crore. PIF will take a 2.04 per cent stake in Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL), the Indian firm said in a statement. The investment values RRVL, the retail arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, at a pre-money equity value of Rs 4.587 lakh crore.
In a statement, Modi said he will be visiting Berlin on May 2 at the invitation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, following which he will travel to Copenhagen on May 3-4 at the invitation of his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen to hold bilateral engagements and also participate in the Second India-Nordic Summit.
'High-value homes are designed and built on slum lands and slums are given residue. They do not have access to free air and live in close proximity of others.'
London Marathon race director Hugh Brasher said on Friday that organisers are working to ensure the rescheduled race is held on Oct. 4 despite the cancellation of September's Great North Run due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The cancellation of the annual half marathon had raised doubts about the London Marathon going ahead due to the challenges faced by organisers in implementing social distancing protocols.
Apart from fulfilling banking services, one can access more than 100 e-commerce sites, book tickets, and even pay for small value groceries through the app. The bank is now proposing to allow other banks to use this to serve their own customers.
Challenge the status quo, question the why behind processes, and push yourself and your organisation. That's how you will win, even if you 'lose' is Neha Sampat's advice to wannabe entrepreneurs.
HCL Technologies on Monday said its founder Shiv Nadar will take on the role of Chairman Emeritus and Strategic Advisor to the company's board. Nadar, chief strategy officer and managing director of the company, on completing 76 years of age, has tendered his resignation as the MD as well as the Director with effect from close of business hours on July 19, according to a regulatory filing. "In order to continue to benefit from his vast knowledge, experience, and wisdom in an advisory role, the Board of Directors in its meeting held today, after considering the recommendations of the Nomination & Remuneration Committee, has approved the appointment of Shri Shiv Nadar as the 'Chairman Emeritus and Strategic Advisor to the Board' for a term of five years with effect from July 20, 2021," it added.
'To set up a successful business, one must have a solution to an existing problem or a better way of addressing the current solution.'
From March 3, investors in India will be able to trade in select US stocks through the NSE International Exchange (NSE IFSC), a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Investors can invest in NSE IFSC receipts on US stocks, which will be in the form of unsponsored depository receipts (DRs). For a start, this will include DRs of 50 US stocks such as Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Nike, P&G, Coca-Cola, and Exxon Mobil. Indian retail investors will be able to transact on the NSE IFSC platform under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) limits prescribed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which currently stand at $250,000 per year.
