SoftBank-backed mobility firm Ola, announced expansion of its employee stock options (ESOP) pool to Rs 3000 crore. Ola is also allocating an additional Rs 400 crore worth of stocks to employees in the run up to its IPO. The allocation rewards Ola's high impact employees and will lead to long term wealth creation for them.
The Uttar Pradesh government will tap the Indian embassies in the US and European countries in its bid to double merchandise shipments to Rs 3 trillion in the next 4-5 years. The Indian embassies in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Israel, Singapore, etc. will promote the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) products, apart from traditional handicrafts and indigenous products, under the state's flagship One District One Product (ODOP) scheme. "Indian embassies will provide the much-needed traction and visibility to our traditional products in key export destinations across the globe," UP additional chief secretary (MSME and export promotion) Navneet Sehgal told Business Standard.
Reliance Industries Ltd will acquire German firm Metro AG's wholesale operations in India for Rs 2,850 crore as the conglomerate run by billionaire Mukesh Ambani seeks to strengthen its dominant position in India's mammoth retail sector. "Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd, signed definitive agreements to acquire a 100 per cent equity stake in Metro Cash & Carry India for a total cash consideration of Rs 2,850 crore, subject to closing adjustments," said a joint statement. Through this acquisition, Reliance Retail will get access to a network of Metro India stores located in prime locations across key cities, along with a large base of registered kiranas and other institutional customers, and a strong supplier network.
The government has imposed a penalty on e-commerce major Amazon for not displaying mandatory information, including the country of origin, of products sold on its platform, according to an official order. Last month, the consumer affairs ministry had issued notices to e-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon for not displaying such information. The ministry has imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on Bengaluru-based Amazon Seller Services as well as each of its directors as per the provisions of the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 and the Legal Metrology (Package Commodities) Rules, 2011.
Instead of making the sellers bleed, experts say, e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart have roped in banks to offer discounts to buyers.
E-commerce companies have said they are well prepared and working closely with delivery partners to ensure smooth and safe delivery of packages in Maharashtra where the government has announced a slew of restrictions, including night curfews and weekend lockdown to control the spike in COVID-19 cases. However, there are concerns around the mandate for delivery staff to be either vaccinated or carry a negative RT-PCR report. According to the health ministry data, till 8 am on Tuesday Maharashtra's COVID-19 caseload was 452,777 with an addition of 20,881 from the previous day. In an order on Sunday, the Maharashtra government said all personnel belonging to home delivery services will have to be vaccinated and in case they are not vaccinated, they will have to carry a negative RT-PCR report.
Tata Group chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran on Thursday said the group's recently launched super app Neu is on an open architecture and it will host non-group brands as well. The Tatas finally launched its super app Tata Neu on April 7, after piloting it for months, but the group chairman claimed there was no delay in the commercial launch. Stating that the app has received an overwhelming response in the past seven days of going live, Chandrasekaran said the app is on an open architecture and will host products and services from non-Tata group companies.
The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has imposed a penalty of Rs 1 lakh on e-commerce major Amazon for selling pressure cookers that did not meet quality standards. The CCPA also directed Amazon to notify the consumers of all these 2,265 pressure cookers sold through its platform, recall the products and reimburse the prices to buyers, the Department of Consumer Affairs said in a statement.
Amid the protests against leading e-commerce firms, Flipkart and Amazon, shipments through the online route in fact witnessed a double-digit growth every quarter.
The probe is being conducted under various sections of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) after the central probe agency recently received a communication from the commerce ministry seeking "necessary action" against e-commerce players like Amazon and Flipkart pertaining to certain multi-brand retail businesses and an observation made by the Delhi High Court in relation to Amazon.
Byju's, Flipkart, PharmEasy and CRED, among others, have taken the acquisition route to grow
Narayanan said while there would be some redundancies as a result of integration of the back-end functions of Myntra and Jabong, it will, however, be less than 10 per cent of the overall headcount
Besides Jeff Bezos-led Amazon, Walmart-owned Flipkart is also facing a threat from Asia's richest man and RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani, who is also betting big to grab a share of the country's e-commerce market.
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.
'If the RBI blesses us with a banking licence, we would like to launch a successful bank.'
Going ahead with its festive sales as per schedule, companies such as Flipkart, Jabong, and Myntra are having week-long Valentines' Day sales, offering discounts of as much as 80 per cent. Amazon India is also offering discounts of almost 40 per cent.
Probe has allegedly found calculation errors by Amazon. The company paid higher GST but instead of claiming refund took wrong input tax credit.
US major lost its first mover advantage, now wants to secure its investments in the country.
Having grown swiftly since the acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart in 2018, it was looking at a valuation of $10 billion. However, factors such as lack of diversification, new e-commerce and data policies, as well as the overall investment environment, have slowed the process.
Online retail in the country is expected to grow to $200 billion by 2026, up from $15 billion in 2016.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is India's most-valuable brand in 2022 replacing HDFC Bank, which held the number one spot since 2014, according to Kantar BrandZ report on India's most-valuable brands. TCS was able to grab the top slot due to rising global demand for automation and digital transformation, following the pandemic. Indian brands have bounced back from the pandemic to increase their brand value by 35 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2020.
FSN E-Commerce Ventures, the parent of Nykaa, has had a roller-coaster ride since listing last November. The initial public offering (IPO) was priced at Rs 1,125 apiece, and the stock listed at a 96 per cent premium, closing the first day at Rs 2,205 apiece. It subsequently hit a high of Rs 2,573 in late November, but has seen steady selling since, hitting a low of Rs 1,208 in May.
Several exchanges are facing a cash crunch with committed investment not coming from venture capital funds and trading activity seeing a sharp decline, reports Rajesh Bhayani.
The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) move to ban Mastercard from issuing new cards for not complying with the local data storage guidelines may hit five private banks, a non-bank lender, and a major card-issuing company. The impact is expected to be felt for a few months as these players transition to other card networks. According to Nomura Research, RBL Bank, YES Bank, and Bajaj Finserv are the ones most impacted by the ban as all their credit card schemes are allied to Mastercard. Among others, IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank have 35-40 per cent of their credit card schemes tied to Mastercard, the report said.
Online play is a priority now -- so far unthinkable in a business that's all about a meaningful interface with kirana stores.
The two parties did not share the deal size but said MavenHive's two founders and 40-odd team members have joined the Bansal-owned firm. MavenHive was started by Bhavin Javia and Anandha Krishnan in 2012.
The NCB has widened its probe into a recent seizure of about 50 kg of heroin from a house in south Delhi's Shaheen Bagh area with the arrest of three more people on Friday, officials said.
Capital dumping is being used by foreign e-commerce firms to subsidise and engage in predatory pricing, oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) has told the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) in an internal document. The document alleges that this is leading to massive unemployment and financial distress among small merchants and kirana stores. It consists of various recommendations and proposed changes that deal with Press Note 2 of 2018 (PN 2), which RIL wanted Assocham to present to the government, according to sources.
Many industry executives have said the draft e-commerce policy is being perceived as nationalistic but not overly protectionist and it is providing preference to Indian players against foreign companies. This might have an impact on investment by large players such as Walmart and Amazon in the country, said the executives. They said e-commerce was a very small portion of the retail industry and at a nascent stage and did not require heavy hammer regulations. Though the policy talks about being equally applicable to foreign and domestic players, it mentions that foreign direct investment (FDI) takes precedence over the e-commerce policy in any area of overlap.
However, the tender criteria demands that an entity must be eligible to conduct Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations in order to become eligible. Currently, no drone companies are eligible to do BVLOS operations, reports Arindam Majumder.
Of the 23 companies, eight have raised funds after Shark Tank India.
'For all of us at Amazon, it is 'Bharat first'.' 'We are keeping the Indian customer at the centre of what we are doing.'
For now Walmart has said it remains optimistic about India. But that could change without prior notice, says Nivedita Mookerji.
Udaan - India's largest business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce company - has laid off about 180 employees, or 4-5 per cent of its workforce of 4,000, in a move to drive cost efficiency, revealed sources. They said the layoffs have happened across various department functions. The layoffs have happened at a time when the Bengaluru-based firm is trying to turn into a publicly listed entity in 18-24 months.
The teen, who was with her younger sister when the attack took place at Mohan Garden near Uttam Nagar, has named two persons who could be responsible for the attack.
The much-talked-about sale of Ambuja Cement and ACC by Holcim Group will see the single-biggest outflow of foreign capital from the country if the two cement firms are acquired by Indian investors. The deal, valued at nearly $10.35 billion, will put in the shade Cairn Energy Plc's exit from India in 2010, when it sold Cairn India to Vedanta Group for $4.48 billion. According to various reports, big business groups such as AV Birla, JSW Group, and Adani Group are in the fray to acquire Holcim's assets in India.
That's because India does not have a serious venture capital industry with an appetite for risk, observes T N Ninan.
What seems to have changed over the last two-three years is that earlier the CCI considered online as another channel for retail sales, while it now seems dividing the retail market into two -- online and offline, and looking at them separately, say competition law experts.
India is currently home to 52 unicorn startups and one of the fastest-growing startup ecosystems.
Bansal has picked up a majority stake in Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development Services, a company which runs microfinance institution Chaitanya India Fin Credit.