Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a potential new demand driver for India's office market, with AI-focused technology (tech) firms actively leasing new office space and established information technology (IT) companies expanding their footprint as they ramp up investments in AI.
...compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
A consortium led by Kal Somani, a tech entrepreneur, has acquired Rajasthan Royals for $1.63 billion, marking a significant milestone in IPL's history.
A consortium led by the Aditya Birla Group emerged the lead bidder to acquire IPL franchise Royal Challengers Bengaluru for a whopping Aditya Birla Group-Led Consortium Acquire IPL Champions RCB for Rs Rs 16,660 crore.
Walmart, the world's largest retailer, is tripling its sourcing from India to about $10 billion a year by 2027, said Judith McKenna, president, and chief executive officer of Walmart International, the segment which includes the company's operations outside the US. "To achieve this, we are growing our sourcing team in India," said McKenna, during a fireside chat with YourStory founder Shradha Sharma at Converge@Walmart, the flagship event of Walmart Global Tech India. "Walmart has a 20-year history of sourcing from India and already exports more than $3 billion worth of Made-in-India goods each year to 14 markets worldwide." McKenna said the company has expertise in processes such as international standards and demand forecasting that businesses need to get ready to export.
India has emerged as a favoured location for captive technology units of Walmart, Lowes and Daimler.
The Indian retail segment has its own uniqueness and the country is one of the most exciting markets globally that is poised to grow to over a trillion dollars by 2025, according to Walmart Inc President and CEO Doug McMillon. Speaking at the Converge@Walmart event, McMillon noted that given the diversity of the Indian market, the company has to "think local and execute locally". "India is such a diverse market, it's not one country in some ways and so we have to think local and execute locally, and it has its own rules, and so, we've got to comply with those rules," he said.
IPOs have been the flavour of the season for some time. But the coming together of three mega IPOs, from diverse businesses and historic relevance, could tell a story that's still in the making, points out Nivedita Mookerji.
More than 30 technology startups, collectively valued at $100 billion, are poised to go public by 2027, signalling a potential rebound in India's stock market activity, according to a report by investment bank The Rainmaker Group. Walmart-owned Flipkart, financial technology (fintech) leader PhonePe, SoftBank-backed Lenskart, Razorpay, Zetwerk, and Meesho are among the top companies preparing to go public in India.
'We do not need short-term measures but long-term ones. Companies seem to have given up on the infrastructure part. Long delays are fuelling more traffic crisis.'
Nasscom on Monday said the US clarification that the H-1B visa fee hike will not affect current visa holders and will apply as a one-time fee only to fresh petitions has helped address the immediate ambiguity surrounding eligibility and timelines.
The IPO wave of 2025 is here, and it's bigger than ever. From fintech unicorns to financial powerhouses and infrastructure giants, some of India's biggest names are all set to make their stock market debut. PhonePe, Zepto, Tata Capital, NSE, NSDL, and JSW Cement are just a few of the highly awaited listings that have investors and analysts buzzing with excitement.
Walmart-owned fintech firm PhonePe said it has crossed 500 million lifetime registered users on its platform. With this milestone, 1 in 3 Indians are now on PhonePe. The company said it is the first Indian internet company to have reached this scale globally. This milestone has been achieved in just over 7 years since the PhonePe UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payments launched in August 2016.
In a filing with the US Security and Exchange Commission on Friday, Walmart said it would allow the initial public offering of Flipkart in four years at a valuation no less than what it invested in the e-commerce firm, if a grouping of minority shareholders asks for it.
Global investment management firm Bernstein has pegged the enterprise valuation of Reliance Industries (RIL)'s 85 per cent stake in Reliance Retail at $111 billion, while valuing the Mukesh Ambani-led company's 66.5 per cent stake in telecom and digital platform arm Reliance Jio at $88 billion. Reliance Industries had earlier planned to list both its subsidiaries to unlock value for its shareholders but hadn't fixed any timeline. The report said that Reliance Retail had raised $6 billion by diluting a 10.1 per cent stake, while Jio Platforms raised $20 billion from investors by selling 33 per cent in 2020.
'India has a lot of potential, not just in commercial aspects, but also in hiring of people and sourcing of products.'
Sachin Bansal, who had co-founded Flipkart with Binny Bansal in 2007, would exit the company
'We went from zero to about 10 million users in three months. Paytm came out with the wallet play and we came out with the UPI play.'
Where Binny slipped up badly was in gauging the level of transparency and governance that is expected by a global strategic investor, says Indrajit Gupta.
While the investment amount could not be immediately ascertained, a report pegged it at about $2 billion.
With expectations of customers changing and demand for seamless, uninterrupted shopping increasing, tech companies are now using this fear of becoming irrelevant as a sales pitch to sell their products to traditional retailers.
Policy constraints may prevent many of the global retail giants from reaching their full potential.There are too many restrictions right now in the sector and policy makers lack clarity.
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.
American CEOs expected to meet Modi on Sunday include Apple's Tim Cook, Walmart's Doug McMillon, Caterpillar's Jim Umpleby, Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella.
In January, Visa's chief executive officer, Al Kelly, said during an earnings call that "there's been a burst of the balloon in valuations in the fintech world". Noting that the trend of lower valuations "is a helpful characteristic of the current environment", he added: "We will look for capabilities and management teams that will bring more value to Visa than we can bring ourselves." Data from KPMG's Pulse of Fintech H2'22 shows that global fintech investment - via mergers and acquisitions (M&As), private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms - at $164.1 billion in 2022, was down 31 per cent over the year before. Indian fintechs held up better during this timeframe, attracting $6 billion, or a fall of 24 per cent.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said India is a very special and important country with a remarkable entrepreneurship culture, as he sought to push deeper the just-launched payments services that allow users to make payments over WhatsApp. Last month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for rolling out its payments services in India. In 2018, WhatsApp started testing its UPI-based payments services in India -- a global first -- with about a million users.
While the government's recent moves may have been necessary in some cases, these would have an adverse impact on the investment cycles of some of these companies. The marquee global names are suddenly finding themselves out of favour as local flavour is gaining currency in the run up to 2019 elections.
Flipkart has promoted several of its leaders into newer roles at a time when the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant has internally raised its IPO (initial public offering) valuation target to about $60 billion and aims for a US listing in 2023, according to the sources. "I am delighted to announce the promotion of some of our exemplary leaders," said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive officer, Flipkart Group, in an internal note, and which has been reviewed by Business Standard. "Each of them has been instrumental in delivering impact and creating long-term value for Flipkart.
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.
So what's up? Why are so many promoters heading for the door? It cannot be that all of them lost their appetite for a good fight at the same time.And if Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways and Subhash Chandra of Zee Entertainment do bow out, will it be seen as chickening out when the going got tough or the entrepreneurial instinct of surviving to fight another battle waned, wonders Shailesh Dobhal.
'In investing, you have to first make sure you don't make big mistakes.' 'I would advise small investors to be systematic, don't be arbitrary; don't be on either end of the risk spectrum.' 'Don't go from fixed deposit to option trading or crypto trading.'
WhatsApp on Wednesday said it expects to facilitate the purchase of "affordable sachet-sized" health insurance through its platform by the end of the year as part of its efforts to provide users in India with greater access to financial solutions. The Facebook-owned company noted that its 'Payments' feature is now available to users across the country (currently up to 20 million users) with support from banking partners - State Bank of India, HDFC, ICICI and Axis Bank.
The possible acquisition of Holcim India business will be one of the biggest inbound corporate deals in the country. Currently, Walmart Inc.'s $16-billion acquisition of Flipkart Online Services in 2018 remains the biggest acquisition of an Indian asset by any acquirer, followed by BP plc acquisition of 30 per cent stake in Reliance Industries' 23 oil and gas production blocks in 2011 for $7.2 billion. Bloomberg reported late on Wednesday night that Holcim - the world's biggest cement maker - is considering a potential sale of its India business and gauging interest in its controlling stake in Ambuja Cement.
This is the second investment by General Atlantic in a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, following a Rs 6,598.38 crore investment in Jio Platforms announced earlier this year.
Fresher hiring is expected to more than double compared to last year.
'This is a race where every technology can be used by the bad guys and good guys.'
India is currently home to 52 unicorn startups and one of the fastest-growing startup ecosystems.
A slew of Indian firms, including Flipkart, Byju's and Zomato, is building a path to profitability and diversifying into newer business segments ahead of mega-IPO plans.
Unlike many peers in the VC space, LSE grad Juneja doesn't have an entrepreneurial background but is said to be strong in finance skills
Online biggies and global retail giants are working on being omnipresent in both the virtual and the real world to see what helps them get the numbers, says Karan Choudhury.
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