Business Today January 2016

One of the biggest casualties of the first dotcom crash of 2000/01 in the US was a company called Webvan. It was founded in 1997, and headquartered in Silicon Valley. It was envisaged as an online grocery business, taking orders and delivering on-demand fresh produce. It had a raft of big venture capitalists’ backing, and was considered a business that would revolutionise groceries much the same way that Amazon was trying to revolutionise the book sales business. It raised almost $400 million from venture capitalists and then another $345 million in an IPO in 1999. At its peak, it was valued at over $5 billion. In 2000, it bought out a smaller rival called HomeGrocer.com, which had started operations one year before it did. Webvan spent millions on infrastructure and…

Best Wishes for BT’s Majestic March This refers to Business Today’s 24th Anniversary Issue (January 17, 2016). First of all, kudos to BT for successfully completing 24 years in the turbulent media industry. It is a remarkable feat. The excellent suggestions by experts in the last edition have depicted innovative means to speed up the progress of the Indian economy. With abundant resources at our disposal and a vast talent pool, the policymakers must accelerate reforms and disinvestment, attract huge investments, bolster governance, ensure timely execution of the revamped plans, and make India a global economic and military giant along with the US and China. Many of the measures and weapons that are recommended by Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd.) in the defence policy arena are yet to be brought into…

THE SCIENCE & THE CIRCUS Indian born Nobel Laureate Venkataraman Ramakrishnan calls the Indian Science Congress a “circus” in a newspaper interview after hearing some of the topics discussed in it, including Homoeopathy and Astrology. SHIA-SUNNI OR OIL RIVALRY? After Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia executed 47, including Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, its Embassy in Shia-dominated Iran was attacked and ransacked by an irate mob in Tehran. Saudi Arabia announced breaking off diplomatic ties with Iran and its allies Bahrain, Sudan and UAE also either broke off ties or downgraded their relationship. But more than the Shia-Sunni rivalry, analysts see the event as the after-effect of oil rivalry. Both sides have refused to curtail production to steady global oil prices. THE H-BOMB North Korea leader Kim Jong Un claims his country has…

11 TECH-ENABLING INDIA WHAT: i-Bharat 2016 WHEN: January 11, Federation House, New Delhi WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The second edition of the FICCI-Department of Electronics & IT event is titled ‘Embracing Technology: Transforming India’. It aims to discuss the various technologies and government policies that could enable smart cities, implement Digital India and e-governance. 14 - 15 REACHING OUT TO KOREA WHAT: India-Korea Business Summit WHEN: January 14-15, Le Meridien, New Delhi WHAT TO LOOK FOR: More than 100 top executives representing the largest Korean companies, South Korean government officials, besides Indian CEOs. The summit will focus on emerging business opportunities in India in infrastructure, ICT, power, smart cities and manufacturing. 21 REALITY CHECK WHAT: National Real Estate Summit 2016 WHEN: January 21, PHD House, New Delhi WHAT TO LOOK…

The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in late December, raising questions about the utilisation of funds collected by the government under various cesses, has jolted taxpayers. “The problem is lack of transparency,” says Pronab Sen, Chairman, National Statistical Commission. “The finance ministry should regularly reveal how much it collects and how much it disburses. But it does not.” The CAG report notes that `64,000 crore was collected as cess on secondary and higher education between 2005/06 and 2014/15. “Neither was a fund designated to deposit the proceeds of the cess nor were schemes identified on which the cess proceeds were to be spent,” it says. “Consequently, the commitment of furthering secondary and higher education as envisaged in the Finance Act was not transparently ascertainable from the Union…

ONE OF THE WORST AFFECTED IS THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY ON CHENNAI’S OUTSKIRTS, WHERE FACTORIES OF TOP COMPANIES ARE LOCATED A NUMBER OF IT MAJORS HAVE ALREADY ANNOUNCED THAT THEIR 2015/16 THIRD QUARTER RESULTS WOULD BE IMPACTED The devastating floods in Tamil Nadu in early December, especially in and around Chennai, have dragged down Indian manufacturing. Though manufacturing has been sluggish in recent years, the Nikkei India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), a measure of manufacturing output released every month, had been rising, however slowly, continuously for the past 25 months. In December, however, it dipped, and that too to a 28-month low, from 50.3 in November to 49.1 – its sharpest fall since the early months of the downturn of 2008/09. Why? “India's manufacturing sector took a turn for the…