'The fiscal pressure will be there, but the intent of the government behind this move is to spur demand and growth.'
As the industrial era wanes, the network era looms, notes Ajit Balakrishnan.
The interest rate offered by PSBs like SBI, BoB and BoI hover around 8.9 per cent-10.50 per cent. For private banks, the range is between 10.49 per cent and 12 per cent.
The government is considering a provision to provide an exit window to holders of cryptocurrencies (cryptos), keeping in mind that banning them outright could deal a blow to investors sitting on them for years. According to sources in the government, the framework in the making may propose a grace period of three to six months for investors before prohibiting the possession, trading, mining, and issuing of cryptos. A group of secretaries chaired by the Cabinet secretary is learnt to have met in mid-March and discussed issues associated with cryptos, including the consequences of banning them and also on possible substitutes of blockchain technology - an advanced technology Bitcoin uses.
Fintech giant Paytm claimed it is selling more FASTags than all the banks put together on a daily basis.
Paytm will look to raise up to $1.5 billion as part of primary share sale, leading up to its initial public offering (IPO), which is planned for November, a person familiar with the developments said. The company is looking to file its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) by July, according to sources. According to this person, though the details of the listing are being worked out, Paytm may take the qualified institutional buyer (QIB) route to list and issue fresh equity to raise funds.
Ayan Pramanik reports on former Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan's fintech firm, which aims to make borrowing easy for small firms and individuals.
Their startup investments number 13 so far, compared to 17 deals in 2020.
India must remain an integral part of the global economy if it has to grow at 9-10 per cent over the next three decades, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Tuesday. Speaking at the 15th India Digital Summit, Kant said India needs to become a major global exporting nation, without that it will not be possible to become richer and create wealth for its people over the next three decades.
75 per cent of new Internet users will come from rural areas
AI, IoT, 3D printing, drones, data storage, quantum computing etc are all re-writing world economic order, the FM said.
'Today, there is no easy money to be made after the run-up in equities.'
India is in dire need of cybersecurity professionals. With several recent incidents of data breach, India's cybersecurity journey so far proves this demand. But is the country ready to meet this demand and is it preparing a cybersecurity workforce for the unforeseen cyber future? A report titled "India Cybersecurity Services Landscape" by Nasscom-Data Security Council of India (DSCI) predicts that the Indian cybersecurity services industry would grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 21 per cent to touch $13.6 billion by 2025. And by 2022, the industry, which generated a cumulative revenue of about $4.3 billion in 2019, is expected to grow to $7.6 billion. However, around 3.5 million jobs in the cybersecurity space will remain unfilled by the end of 2021.
India's e-commerce market is poised to grow by 84 per cent to $111 billion by 2024 on the back of accelerated adoption of digital technologies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a report by fintech firm FIS said on Wednesday. The report noted that countries, including India, have seen a shift in consumer behaviour caused by COVID-19, and new payment trends are shown to be on the rise. FIS, in its 2021 Global Payments Report, examined current and future payment trends across 41 countries. India's e-commerce market is projected to grow by 84 per cent between now and 2024 to about $111 billion (from about $60 billion in 2020) driven by mobile shopping, which is projected to grow 21 per cent annually over the next four years, the report said.
Initial share sales are set to dazzle the Dalal Street in 2022 too as companies are expected to garner up to Rs 1.5 lakh crore in the New Year, continuing with the bullish momentum after 2021 turned out to be the best IPO year in two decades for the Indian market. Excessive liquidity and increased retail investor participation ensured a persistent euphoria in the Initial Public Offer (IPO) space wherein companies mopped up more than Rs 1.2 lakh crore this year even as pandemic gloom shadowed the broader economy. In 2022, the higher amount of funds through the primary market will be largely driven by the mega IPO of state-owned Life Insurance Corp (LIC).
The government plans to bring down its stake to 26 per cent in these two banks, which are yet to be identified. This may not come in the way of getting investors for these banks, provided the government is willing to step back rather than run them the way it had been doing for over five decades since these banks were nationalised, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Even if the Paytm fiasco does not mark the end of the bull run, at least some sanity will return to the wild IPO market, observes Debashis Basu.
The future of cryptocurrencies in India appears uncertain but that has not deterred young Indians from embracing the so-called 'fourth industrial revolution' world, where interconnectivity and smart automation, much of it relying on blockchain technology, drive human civilisation. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das has repeatedly warned of macroeconomic instability and even "serious consequences" if cryptocurrencies turn mainstream. The country's monetary authority wants a China-like total ban on crypto, not even allowing these currencies to be treated as investments. Though Parliament's website had listed the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill as one seeking a total ban of cryptocurrencies in the country, it was not presented in the Winter Session. India now has the highest number of cryptocurrency investors in the world.
'During the course of these two years, as new people have joined, we have no mental picture to associate with them and hence, have little connection with them.'
Modi will have a number of high-profile multilateral and bilateral meetings with global leaders including United States Vice President Mike Pence and Singapore premier Lee Hsein Loong.
'A lot of first-time users who have entered the markets after Covid are increasingly investing in mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and stocks for their long-term goals.'
Many in the US establishment must hope that the crisis would put the brakes on China's growing military might. Well, it ain't gonna happen, says T T Ram Mohan, who was appointed a member of the prime minister's economic advisory council on Wednesday, October 28, 2021.
With the 21 unicorns collectively valued at $73.2 billion, India is the fourth biggest in terms of unicorns, behind the US, China and the UK, as per the Hurun Global Unicorn List.
Barring stray references such as the 'dual control' of banks and shifting the goalposts during demonetisation, he is not in a fault-finding mode with the government, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said there were visible signs of revival in the economy but the GDP growth may be in the negative zone or near zero in the current fiscal.
Dubai-based billionaire BR Shetty has sued Bank of Baroda (BoB) and audit firm Ernst & Young (EY) in a New York court, accusing them of ignoring fictitious and fraudulent transactions that resulted in NMC Healthcare going bankrupt. Shetty is seeking $8 billion in damages in the suit that also names the top management of NMC Healthcare, and Netherlands-based Credit Europe Bank. A top NMC Healthcare official confirmed the development to Business Standard and said despite several meetings, senior BoB officials in India did not take remedial steps for fear of getting involved in an international ponzi scheme perpetrated by then senior management officials.
Foreign banks set the template in consumer banking in its infancy, but have almost vacated this booming space.
The bank is using readily available satellite images from ISRO and NASA for the purpose, and plans to scale up to 63,000 villages in the next three months.
Professionals with sharp technical skills and knowledge of emerging markets will continue to be in demand, says Nikhil Barshikar, founder and CEO of Imarticus Learning, a tech learning and training company.
For now, the concerns over bad loans have taken a back seat; a bigger challenge for the banking community is credit growth, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Changes in lifestyle due to aspects like lockdowns and work from home has created additional demand for items such as television sets, laptops, Wi-Fi routers and even vacuum cleaners, which the bank is funding at present.
HDFC Bank on Thursday said network outages that led to a regulatory ban on new credit card sales were not due to transaction volumes, and affirmed that it continues to stay in touch with the RBI for restarting the services but giving a timeline for it will be difficult. The bank said it is on its way to creating a new technology architecture for the future as part of the "digital factory" and "enterprise factory" initiative. But, it conceded that outages will continue under the older system though it will be working to minimise the time taken to bring the service back. In December 2020, the RBI took the unprecedented step of stopping the largest private sector lender from selling any new credit cards and also launching new digital services, because of a series of network outages.
'Banking is a business of trust.'
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.
'There is pent-up demand for cricket after last year when no tournaments were played on Indian soil due to the pandemic.'
Why settle for $400-500 million when you can make a billion or even more? That, in a nutshell, is why Krishna Kumar, 43, and Kashyap Dalal, 40, co-founders of Bengaluru-based edtech firm Simplilearn, one of the big players in the segment, sold a 51 per cent stake to Blackstone instead of selling 100 per cent as close competitor and rival Great Learning chose to do.
Many of them are housewives looking to increase income in households struggling with the economic devastation caused by COVID-19.
India needs a paradigm shift in personal data management that transforms the current organisation-centric data sharing system to an individual centric approach that promotes user control on data sharing for empowerment, said Niti.
That's because India does not have a serious venture capital industry with an appetite for risk, observes T N Ninan.
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.
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