Even as regulatory focus has zeroed in on foreign e-commerce giant Amazon, a domestic retail giant has been created almost below the radar in Reliance Retail (RR), one of the most crucial businesses for the group's future. From doorstep delivery of groceries, apparels to branded jewellery, medicines, toys, furniture to high street retailing, RR's presence in the world's fourth largest consumer market is just one part of the story.
Reliance Industries Ltd, whose offering of rock-bottom tariffs shook up the telecom industry, is looking to repeat the feat in the green energy business, where its billionaire chairman Mukesh Ambani sees promise to outshine all existing growth engines in 5-7 years. Having pledged Rs 6 lakh crore on green energy, Ambani says RIL will scale up investments in this business which will start going live in the next 12 months. "Over the next 12 months our investments across the Green Energy value chain will gradually start going live, scaling up over the next couple of years," Ambani, chairman and managing director of RIL, said in the company's latest annual report.
Consumer-focused companies have been left with few options but to increase the prices of their products as input costs mount because of various factors, including supply chain disruptions. This has been affecting monthly household budgets. Prices of scores of items -- from spices to soaps to rice -- have increased in the past year.
If we work together with dedication, concentration and effort, we should be able to achieve our aspirational growth target of double-digits for a very long period of time, suggests K V Kamath.
India's sourcing from China may not necessarily be for cost-effectiveness alone but also for the lack of domestic qualified bidders, technology or other know-how.
This first-of-its-kind-in-India centre is fully funded by Reliance Foundation and includes a negative pressure room that helps in preventing cross-contamination and helps control infection. All beds are equipped with the required infrastructure, biomedical equipment such as ventilators, pacemakers, dialysis machines, and patient monitoring devices.
Power firms can pass on burden to consumers, stocks rise up to 2%
Woefully inadequate infrastructure is just one of the many reasons why a case is not settled within 180 days and even 270 days as envisaged by the law, says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
'What would we feel if we found the world behaving the way it has?' 'Forced to fight our own prolonged battle; nobody from outside really demanding that the war end or actively working to make it end, and above all, a completely toothless United Nations reduced to pleading for a halt to the violence,' notes Shyam G Menon, exactly a month after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
The national carrier, which is already struggling with its fuel payments, spends Rs 6,000-7,000 crore annually on fuel. A 10 per cent hike in crude price would mean over Rs 50-58 crore of extra costs for the airline.
The Yamaha Fascino is a cheaper option for those who want to buy a stylish scooter like Vespa, says Naveen Soni
The Indian economy is on the path of a durable recovery on the back of conducive monetary and credit conditions, the global headwinds notwithstanding, said a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) article on the state of the economy. Domestically, there have been several positives on the COVID-19 front, in terms of reduced infections and faster vaccinations, the article published in the RBI Bulletin November 2021 added. The Indian economy, the article said, is clearly differentiating itself from the global situation, which is marred by supply disruptions, stubborn inflation and surges of infections in various parts of the world.
A day after sealing final pacts with Iran on a long-talked gas pipeline, Pakistan on Monday said it will welcome India joining the project and will guarantee safe delivery of the fuel.
The marine version of the French-made Rafale fighter jet has been successfully flight-tested at a shore-based facility in Goa where conditions similar to that on the indigenously-developed aircraft carrier INS Vikrant were simulated, a top diplomat said.
India and the US also made a strong push for the intra-Afghan peace process to end violence in Afghanistan and ensure that it does not become home to terrorism, and vowed to deepen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and on COVID-19 response and economic recovery.
The agreement would divert China's attention and keep them busy in the Pacific theatre, probably resulting in a reduction in threat perception in our area of interest in the Indian Ocean, notes Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
Iran had called a meeting of technical experts and lawyers from the three nations during September 24-26 to exchange views on the gas-supply contract that India and Pakistan, as consumers, would have to sign with fuel supplier Iran.
India's planned transition to electric vehicles will drastically affect the commodities market, says Aditya Gandhi
Friendlier government policies, greater demand and better supply of coal have fuelled investor interest.
Asia's richest man Gautam Adani, besides looking at opportunities to expand his vast empire, is hooked on ChatGPT - the programme that trawls vast amount of information to generate natural-sounding text on virtually anything - from crafting jokes to writing ad copy, debugging computer code, to even generating poems and essays. Adani, whose conglomerate has in recent years diversified from mines, ports and power plants into airports, data centres and defence, penned musing from his visit to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum meeting. "From a meetings perspective, this was perhaps my busiest WEF as I met over a dozen heads of states and several business leaders," he wrote on LinkedIn, talking of new geopolitical couplings, climate change and tight-lipped evangelists and AI.
The government's move to set up a regulator for the coal sector would help bring in transparency, encourage exploration and enhance quality of the dry fuel, India Inc said on Friday.
Obama was responding to a question as to what his administration is doing to keep the ethanol plant.
Direct economic stimulus measures such as tax cuts for individuals and industry would have helped to prop up the Indian economy which was hit hard by the lockdowns across several states in India, say economists and corporate leaders. While the measures announced on Monday are focussed more on the supply side, these steps would take a lot of time to move the needle for the economy.
'The decision to supply free food grains is not an economically sound decision because the government will find it very difficult in future to charge anything for food grains.'
We have our own problems for sure and they are not trivial, but for now, our economy is in not too bad a shape, our politics is as personality-driven and authoritarian as that of most countries in the world. We must make the best of what we have and not be excessively unhappy looking at the grass on the other side of the septic tank which may not be greener after all!, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
The agreement to be inked later in the day after summit talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will form the basis of wide ranging bilateral cooperation from basic and applied research to full civil nuclear cooperation, including reactors and fuel supplies, nuclear safety, radiation and environment protection and nuclear fuel cycle management.
India on Monday signed a key safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to allow inspection of additional civilian reactors, clearing the decks for supply of atomic fuel and technology by the international community after a 34-year-old nuke trade embargo was lifted last year.
A vilification campaign against Rosneft has begun in right earnest, says M K Bhadrakumar.
Prices are likely to rise further as demand grows in coming months due to festivals
India and France on Monday inked an Inter-Governmental Agreement on the sale of 36 French fighter jets, Rafale, but were unable to sign the final deal due to some "financial" aspects, which are expected to be sorted out in "couple of days".
While consumers feel that petrol pinches directly, diesel hurts indirectly, as it is an input in almost all the goods and services we use.
India will begin supply of ultra low sulphur content petrol and diesel in all but seven states from April 1, the government announced on Thursday.
Iran had called a meeting of technical experts and lawyers from the three nations during September 24-26 to exchange views on the gas-supply contract that India and Pakistan, as consumers, would have to sign with fuel supplier Iran.
India is pursuing sales to South East Asian countries that are wary of Chinese aggression, including Vietnam and the Philippines.
Al Gore warns that black carbon from India's use of biomass fuels that contribute to global warming can adversely impact India's great rivers, the life-blood of the country's agriculture.
India Inc is gearing up for a slugfest this year and from tech to paints, new battlegrounds are emerging, observes Indrajit Gupta, co-founder, Founding Fuel.
Ford, which had announced to quit the Indian market last year, said it was exploring the possibility of using one of its plants in India to produce electric cars for exports.
Both prime ministers believed in crafting schemes to help the common man. Modi used quite effectively the instruments Dr Singh introduced. In assessing Modi's success with many schemes, Dr Singh's fundamental work should not be ignored, points out A K Bhattacharya.
The electric vehicle evolution in India's passenger vehicle market has remained frozen in time and may see limited adoption over the next decade, experts say.
With RIL supplying about 47 per cent of the domestic petcoke production, current dynamics are bound to change.
