Nivedita Mookerji finds out how Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma is handling his soaring popularity after the note ban as well as the criticism that comes as a package deal.
The old note will continue to be accepted for other utility bill payments as well as at railway ticketing counters and counters of government or public sector undertaking buses for purchase of bus tickets till December 15
Walmart, the world's largest retailer, has paid $1.4 billion to buy out US-based Tiger Global's investment in e-commerce firm Flipkart, according to sources. The transaction puts Flipkart's valuation at $35 billion, against nearly $38 billion in 2021 when it raised funds from Japan's SoftBank, Walmart, and other investors. Tiger Global, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, and Accel now have all fully exited the e-commerce firm by selling their stake to Walmart.
Opposition members in the Lok Sabha on Monday blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government's policies for the price rise and accused it of ignoring the plight of common people, saying kitchens will soon "see a lockdown" if the Centre does not take corrective measures.
This year, festive sales are expected to push up the annual gross merchandise value of e-commerce companies to around $38 billion, a 40 per cent growth over the previous year.
In a stock exchange filing, Adani Enterprises Ltd said VCPL has urged SEBI "to provide its observations on the draft letter of offer filed in relation to the open offer, in accordance with the SEBI (SAST) Regulations."
The Rs 2,000 note withdrawal decision and response to it so far suggest that the move can help boost FY24 GDP growth to beyond 6.5 per cent estimated by the RBI, a report said on Monday. The real GDP growth for the first quarter of FY24 will come at 8.1 per cent with an upward bias and the Reserve Bank of India's 6.5 per cent estimate can also be exceeded, economists at the country's largest lender SBI said. "We expect Q1 FY24 GDP growth at 8.1 per cent with an upward bias due to the impact of Rs 2000 note withdrawal event...this reinforces our projection that FY24 GDP could be higher than 6.5 per cent, basis the RBI estimate," a note said.
The probe, being conducted under various sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, is against the Kallal Group and the UK-based Lyca group and its Indian companies Lyca Productions and Lyca Hotels, it said.
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.
We are certainly for digitisation. I do not have opinion about demonetisation. I still don't, says Bill Gates.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Friday launch two schemes of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that may go a long way in changing how the household sector invests, and complains if anything goes wrong with their savings. These schemes - retail direct and an integrated ombudsman - will be launched by the Prime Minister virtually, in the presence of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. With the introduction of retail direct, a common man can directly take a position in government securities (G-Sec), considered to be the safest asset class a sovereign can offer.
He said the country needs to have "zero tolerance" for corruption in the administrative ecosystem and this would work for the idea of a developed India.
...current industry models will soon fade out, notes Ajit Balakrishnan.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is looking to collaborate with foreign countries and international organisations to build digital identity systems across the world, a top official said on Friday. UIDAI CEO Saurabh Garg during a panel discussion with Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma at the Infinity Forum said the authority is also exploring emerging technology to enhance security and increase the number of transactions that can be done by using Aadhaar. "We think going forward we will be happy to collaborate with other nations...We would like to collaborate with international organisations also in building international institutions for standards for national identity.
He said Parliament in the past decades has debated a number of government decisions, which had caused tensions and social conflict, but it was now deadlocked by rival parties over a 'constructive decision' like demonetisation.
'To the believers of crypto regulations, I have only one question to ask, how will you regulate it?'
Banks are in need of government support to manage the stressed assets
While mobile wallets are still busy exploring the multiple facets of interoperability, experts believe that bringing in new customers would be costly affair and the numbers of new wallet users might not see a major hike anytime soon.
Indian IT giants are outstanding companies with great management teams, but they have been held hostage by their past success.
Billionaire Gautam Adani on Wednesday shared a personal note on the development of Dharavi in Mumbai, days after the Maharashtra government issued a resolution to award the Dharavi redevelopment project to his conglomerate on July 14. In the note shared with the media, Adani said his first tryst with Dharavi in Mumbai was in the late 1970s, and the slum settlement continues to amaze and inspire the billionaire to date. "When this opportunity to renew Dharavi came calling, I seized it with both hands," he said.
About 300 fintech firms are under investigation by the ED for allegedly partnering 38 non-banking financial companies for predatory lending practices to charge borrowers high interest rates.
While the RBI's guidelines aim to streamline the loan closure process, borrowers must remain proactive.
Could it have been more reformist? Of course, but this is an election year Budget, observes Akash Prakash.
The growth in personal loans for fintech major Paytm may remain muted in the future and not replicate a three-digit year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth that it recorded in the previous years, a person familiar with the matter said. Sources said the personal loans book may grow in the range of 30 to 40 per cent Y-o-Y on its current base. On a quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q) basis, the number of personal loans the Noida-based fintech company disbursed has dropped 20 per cent from 0.3 million in the first quarter of this financial year (Q1FY24) to 0.24 million in Q2FY24, according to regulatory filings.
N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Tata Sons, believes that the Digital India Act is a necessity. "The Digital India Act is a necessity because so much has changed over the decades since the original Information Technology (IT) Act was put in place. I am glad the government is developing a participative approach to developing the Digital Act," he said, while answering shareholders at TCS' 27th annual general meeting. Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar a few months ago had said that the government would shortly roll out the Digital India Act - a renewed policy for the digital ecosystem and cyberspace in the country.
Despite strong AUM growth, MFs lag behind other popular investment avenues. MFs received only 6 per cent of total household savings in 2021-2022.
India appears poised to sustain its growth in a more durable way than before with the economy carrying the momentum from FY23 into the current fiscal year, the Annual Economic Review for 2022-23 released by the finance ministry on Thursday said. However, the report cautioned that escalation of geopolitical stress, enhanced volatility in global financial systems, sharp price correction in global stock markets, a high magnitude of El-Nino impact, and modest trade activity and FDI inflows, are factors that could constrain the pace of growth. "Should these developments deepen and dampen growth in the subsequent quarters, the external sector may challenge India's growth outlook for FY24," the finance ministry said.
Scrutiny of Google's code of conduct in the Indian Android ecosystem is far from over with several start-ups preparing to appeal against the company's revised policies of service fee on in-app purchases and subscriptions, according to sources in the know. This comes days after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) granted partial relief to the tech giant, reversing four of the 10 key non-monetary directives that would have forced Google to allow uninstalling of its pre-installed apps on Android devices. Paytm, BharatMatrimony, and ShareChat are among the start-ups that are likely to file grievances against the tech major for alleged non-compliance with the Competition Commission of India's (CCI's) cease-and-desist order on Play Store policies.
In April, RBI had to issue a warning about a mobile application.
'AI is not a new thing for us. We started our AI journey in 2015.'
RuPay National Common Mobility Card's offline wallet can be used to make ticket payments in transit, including in metros, cabs, etc, enabling automatic, quick, cashless payments.
For last two months, much of the discussion, a large part of due diligence, agreement negotiations, etc, have happened remotely.
The Reserve Bank of India is likely to take a call on the relaxations sought by HDFC Bank in relation to the merger, as the date of merger draws closer, sources said. The HDFC twins, which announced their decision to merge in April last year, received National Company Law Tribunal's (NCLT's) approval recently - a key milestone to close the deal in due time. The management of both the entities had said that it will take 15-18 months for the merger.
During a three-hour long virtual meeting with CEOs of large public and private sector banks along with heads of NBFCs, the prime minister assured them that the government is ready to take all steps to support the financial sector.
With the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) extended deadline coming to an end, there will be no automatic recurring payment for various services including recharge and utility bill as the additional factor of authentication (AFA) will become mandatory from Friday. On December 4, RBI had directed all banks including RRBs, NBFCs, and payment gateways that the processing of recurring transactions (domestic or cross-border) using cards or Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPIs) or Unified Payments Interface (UPI) under arrangements/practices not compliant with AFA would not be continued beyond March 31, 2021. As part of risk mitigation measures, RBI announced this step to bolster safety and security of card transactions.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Friday backed the proposed data privacy and cryptocurrency bills, saying India is putting in place the most forward-looking policies and regulations. Ambani, who has been a votary of Indians owning and controlling their own data and the nation drafting strict rules around how digital information is stored and shared, said nations have the right to build and protect strategic digital infrastructure. Stating that data is the 'new oil', he said every citizen's right to privacy has to be safeguarded. "India is putting in place the most forward-looking policies and regulations," he said at the Infinity Forum, hosted by International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA).
The Enforcement Directorate has arrested four persons including the MD of the Lava International mobile company and a Chinese national as part of its ongoing money-laundering probe against Chinese smartphone-maker Vivo, official sources said on Tuesday. They identified the four as Hari Om Rai, the MD of Lava International company, Chinese national Guangwen Kyang, chartered accountant Nitin Garg and a person called Rajan Malik. They have been taken into custody under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
India's mutual fund (MF) industry had barely any retail footprint when it completed 50 years in 2013. MFs had Rs 7 trillion in assets under management (AUM) in March 2013, of which around Rs 5 trillion was in institution-focused debt funds. By comparison, bank deposits in the country stood at Rs 67.5 trillion around the same time.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has proposed a new common income-tax return (ITR), with greater focus on disclosing income from virtual digital assets or crypto assets and foreign equity and debt instruments held by resident Indians. For non-resident Indians, the draft ITR seeks exhaustive details ranging from nature of business, permanent establishment (PE), business connection, whether the entity has significant economic presence (SEP) in India, along with the number of users in India. The ITR protocol for NRIs could widen the scope of the SEP principle that was introduced in the Finance Bill 2018-19, and the explicitly defined 'business connection' to include provision of download of data or software, if aggregate payments from such transactions exceed a prescribed amount, or if a multinational's interaction is with a prescribed number of users.
The Reserve Bank of India on Thursday decided to keep policy rate unchanged for third time in a row as it maintains heightened vigil on inflation. The rate increase cycle was paused in April after six consecutive rate hikes aggregating to 250 basis points since May 2022.
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