Business Today 18 June 2017

In the past couple of weeks, I had a series of conversations with CEOs and senior executives in different industries, and all the chats revolved around the same few issues. Though they hailed from very diverse sectors, all the corporate chiefs agreed on one point – that we were experiencing unprecedented technology developments and these were changing the way we have traditionally worked. While technology advances had been taking place in the past decades as well, the pace of change in the past few years has been staggering. And while these technology changes were upending traditional ways of doing work, they were also heralding an unparalleled growth in productivity and efficiency and throwing up numerous opportunities. The flip side was that technology was also putting an enormous pressure on jobs.…

When Quenchers Become Violators of Health Norms This refers to your cover story on soft drinks (Cola Dilemma, June 4). The article has elaborately explained that both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo face fierce competition from Indian cola makers. They have polarised people on their brand command rousing, extending fizz wars among cola guzzlers. Indian cola manufacturers have intelligently transformed their product portfolio to suit the palate of the changing taste of the healthconscious consumers. The selfdriven wrong moves of MNCs and availability of reliable alternative drinks from domestic operators have gripped them. While India is afraid of becoming the diabetes capital of the world, these quenchers have assumed the proportion of clinchers of health norms. Pepsi’s demand with the Centre for lower taxation for such beverages must be turned down. India…

STAY CONNECTED WITH US ON www.facebook.com/BusinessToday @BT_India NEWS Three Years of Modi Government: Time to Connect the Dots? With Modi-led NDA ministers competing against each other to announce more schemes every day, one cannot blame the government for policy paralysis either businesstoday.in/modigovernment-promise The Bull Run Is Likely to Sustain Though the stock market has scaled up around 15 percent this year, the impact of GST on the economy remains to be seen businesstoday.in/sensex-bullrun Pharma Sector Sees No Adverse GST Impact The only larger concern for the industry is how the transition would be made to these new GST rates businesstoday.in/pharma-gst IRDAI Considering Insurance Cover for Discontinued ULIPs As of now, insurance cover for policyholders ceases when the policy is discontinued businesstoday.in/discontinued-ulips-insurance COLUMNS Indian Chemical Industry: Will M&A Be a Game-changer?…

IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on job losses in the IT industry 500 times This has been the rise in the value of digital currency Bitcoin in the past five years. On January 26, it reached a record high, climbing above $2,700 for the first time. MOODY'S DOWNGRADES CHINA MOODY’S Moody’s has downgraded China’s long-term local and foreign currency issuer ratings by one notch to A1 from AA3. It cited expectations that China’s financial strength would erode in the coming years. This is the first downgrade of China in three decades. HDFC IN FORBES' LIST HDFC Ltd has been named among the top 10 consumer financial services companies in the world in the Forbes Global List 2017. It is the only Indian company in the top 10. There are 58…

01 GST TRANSITION WHAT: GST- Transition and the Way Forward WHEN: 1 June, Mumbai WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry is organising a series of interactive sessions on GST across the country. It will focus on the implementation aspects of the new tax system in the context of the Central GST Acts and the draft rules. 07-08 STRATEGY FORUM WHAT: WEF’s Industry Strategy Meeting WHEN: 7-8 June, San Francisco WHAT TO LOOK FOR: Industry Strategy Officers will meet to define and shape the outlook for industries, identify where sectors can work together for economic and societal benefit and look at how industries can manage disruption in light of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 08 FINTECH INNOVATIONS WHAT: FintechX WHEN: 8 June, New Delhi WHAT…

Just as we are reeling under the malicious WannaCry attack – a ransomware from the WCry family that has affected over 3,00,000 computers in more than 150 countries – researchers have discovered its more deadly version, called EternalRocks. EternalRocks uses seven NSA (National Security Agency) exploits for Windows as compared to just two used by WannaCry. Even though the potential damage of EternalRocks is yet unfathomable, the onslaught of WannaCry is a wake-up call for governments around the world to beef up their preparedness against large-scale attacks. The Indian government has downplayed the impact of WannaCry so far. In the first few days of the attack, IT Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said that the attack has been limited to five-six isolated instances, and “there are no reports of a substantial scale…