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.
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.
'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.
Their startup investments number 13 so far, compared to 17 deals in 2020.
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.
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.
'Today, there is no easy money to be made after the run-up in equities.'
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.
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.'
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.
'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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Foreign banks set the template in consumer banking in its infancy, but have almost vacated this booming space.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Many of them are housewives looking to increase income in households struggling with the economic devastation caused by COVID-19.
'There is pent-up demand for cricket after last year when no tournaments were played on Indian soil due to the pandemic.'
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.
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.
'Banking is a business of trust.'
Modi hailed the close defence cooperation between the two countries and welcomed the completion of the logistics agreement between the two navies.
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.
That's because India does not have a serious venture capital industry with an appetite for risk, observes T N Ninan.
E-KYCs and Aadhaar authentication are of crucial importance to the fin-tech companies as the recent RBI instructions require strict KYCs for these players to function in the market.
The only feasible way to have a healthy banking sector could be making it mostly private, along with two or three large, better-run government banks, suggests T N Ninan.
Ajit Balakrishnan offers a New Year resolution for our policy-makers.
The content discovery platform designed to help you discover content and services in the language of your choice recently turned profitable. It has delivered 1 billion application installs and updates in the past 12 months, says Samreen Ahmad.
Mobile payments alone gathered close to $1.51 billion in the year 2017 through 13 rounds of funding, according to data compiled by Tracxn
