As the shadow of governance deficit and corruption back home threatened to lengthen behind the glorious Davos sun, India's image managers launched a spirited damage control exercise on the penultimate day of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The warning by the anti-trust watchdog has come days ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' India visit, about which the Seattle-headquartered company has been tight-lipped. Sources in the know indicated that Bezos, coming on a short trip, has sought a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The founding members of The E-Commerce Council of India include Snapdeal, ShopClues, UrbanClap, Shop101, Flyrobe and Fynd, among others.
Domestic chains rejoice at Cabinet's in-principle nod to 51% cap, most of them call it a positive development.
From convincing film-makers to do shows for online, to having a slate with some of the best films and shows, Amazon Prime Video has come a long way since it came to India four years ago.
Dhirubhai may or may not have owned the government; it would seem his son wants to own the market, notes T N Ninan.
While JioMart is doing 250,000 orders per day, BigBasket and Amazon pantry are doing 220,000 and 150,000 orders, respectively.
Almost eight months after Noel Tata stepped down as managing director of Trent, retail arm of the Tata Group, the company said it had appointed Philip Auld as chief executive officer.
While the denial rate has dropped slightly to 21 per cent in 2019 from 24 per cent in 2018, the National Foundation for American Policy has said it is much higher for Indian IT companies like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro and very low for American companies like Amazon and Google. For instance, the denial rate for TCS and Infosys in 2019 was 31 per cent and 35 per cent respectively, whereas for Wipro it was 47 per cent and 37 per cent for Tech Mahindra. On the other hand, the denial rate for the new H-1B petitions in 2019 was just four per cent each for Amazon and Google. The denial rate for Microsoft during the same period was six per cent, and Facebook along with Walmart was just three per cent each.
Ramping up e-commerce operations and going beyond its current strongholds are key challenges for the grocery chain in its battle with Mukesh Ambani's retail behemoth.
'The best way to make an impact in this market is by focusing on three things: Unmet customer need, unarticulated customer need, and emerging customer need,' Metro's Arvind Mediratta tells Sangeeta Tanwar and Alokananda Chakraborty.
Amazon has shot off yet another letter to market regulator Sebi, accusing Future Retail of insider trading and called for an investigation as the US online retailer looks to ratchet up pressure against the Future-RIL deal. Future Group, however, vehemently denied the charges, saying these allegations were "Amazon's ill-motivated attempts to throw everything at the situation to stultify the transaction."
India may adopt norms similar to the US Federal Reserve model, which regulates conglomerate-led banks in the country.
Cash-and-carry stores try tricks, from playing Bollywood music to customising orders, to retain customers.
Tech start-ups will continue to take the lead in bolstering the regional economy, says Murali Talasila.
Bharti Retail launched its first mall, The Pavilion, in Ludhiana.
Contractors were seen busy boarding up major stores and businesses from New York and Boston in the north to southern Houston to Washington DC and Chicago in the east to San Francisco in theWest.
Kishore Biyani led-Future Group has filed a caveat before the Delhi high court requesting it to be heard if any plea is filed by e-commerce major Amazon over its Rs 24,713 crore deal with Mukesh Ambani-led RIL. Anticipating a move by Amazon, which had got an interim arbitration award in its favour, putting the announced deal on hold, the Future Group firm has moved the Delhi high court.
The fear of being boycotted by large US stores like WalMart, JC Penny and GAP has led Indian apparel exporters to formulate a code to eliminate child labour from Rs 46,000 crore (Rs 460 billion) garment export business.
After being cornered by Patanjali and macro-headwinds, ayurveda major Dabur is pulling up its socks. With better sales and improved margins, the firm is now looking to leverage the renewed popularity of ayurveda, mostly ignited by rival Patanjali. Sunil Duggal, bottom, left, chief executive officer, Dabur India, shares his plans and insights with Arnab Dutta.
No consensus on what, when and how much to do.
Though Kishore Biyani is selling stakes in group companies to pay off debt, a significant share price crash since January this year is making his task difficult.
The world's largest bicycle maker, Hero Cycles, on Monday said it plans to enter the US market by the end of this year, for which it is close to signing up with a local partner.
India's shift towards US companies for technology investments and partnerships fits well with the present government's 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' and 'Make in India' initiatives, say experts.
Launched in 2000 with six installations, the number of e-choupals grew to 6,500 in 2007, and at one point of time, ITC was opening six such choupals a day.
We are also trying to bring in modern processes and technologies in the area of supply chain, logistics and cold chain that should ultimately benefit the entire retail ecosystem through better quality, and more choice at better prices, says Bharti.
The new jobs - created both directly and indirectly - will be across industries, including IT, skill development, content creation, retail, logistics, and manufacturing.
Footfalls will invariably come down to a trickle even after lockdown restrictions go away, and the only way to prevent someone else from poaching your consumer is to go down to the consumer herself. Consumers will prefer products and services to be delivered to their doorstep, hygienically and safely.
'We want to look at very strong entrepreneurial teams.' 'I want to focus on a full team and not just the entrepreneur, which is building innovative and amazing differentiated businesses in large markets.' 'We also look at business models that are proven and have reasonably good gross margins, which show that this is where a lot of value is getting built.'
Reliance Retail will acquire the retail, wholesale, logistics and warehousing businesses of the Future Group. Future Group's financial and insurance businesses are not part of the deal.
After a gruelling 24 hours, the PhonePe team has fully restored UPI on the payment platform. The app is up and running again with ICICI Bank as its new partner with all payment instruments enabled.
In comparison, Flipkart India, the marketplace unit of the country's largest e-commerce marketplace, posted a 750% growth in losses to Rs 20.6 billion.
Across the country, companies have stepped up their act to contain the crisis. IT and other new economy firms seem to have taken a lead.
WakeupWalmart.com, an anti-Wal-Mart website which belongs to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, came out with a report two days ago titled, 'Wal-Mart's vaunted $4 prescriptions supplied by disgraced Indian manufacturer.' UFCW claims to have a membership of over 1.3 million workers in the US and Canada. WakeupWalmart.com mainly campaigns for the rights of Wal-Mart employees and consumer interests.
"We are delighted to welcome Google as a strategic investor in Jio Platforms. We have signed a binding partnership and an investment agreement under which Google will invest Rs 33,737 crores for a 7.7 per cent stake in Jio Platforms," Mukesh Ambani said at the company's annual general meeting.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed how businesses look at payments. Earlier, fintech companies said when they were talking to merchants, they were not interested in digitisation.
In its new avatar as the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), it will directly be responsible for 'the welfare of traders and their employees'.
Protesters, including retail traders, wholesalers, hawkers and mathadi workers, mainly hailing from areas around Mumbai, started gathering for the protest, organised under the banner of Federation of Associations of Maharashtra, amid a heavy security cover.
Since its launch in September, Ayushman Bharat has issued 20 million cards and has set an ambitious target to hit another 30 million within the next three months.
The company has a wide-ranging client base spanning across consumer durables to retail groups like ITC, UB Group and WalMart. It is also in the process of designing various white goods for its clients in the consumer durable industry.
