Innholdsfortegnelse for 10 September 2017 i Business Today

The battle between the promoters of Infosys and the current management has taken a turn that was not entirely unexpected. Over the past few months, N.R. Narayana Murthy, Co-founder of Infosys, had made it clear that he did not like the way either the Infosys board was functioning or the steps management was taking. He had raised concerns regaring payments to senior executives, their travel arrangements and even the takeover of a company. The board and management had tried to address his concerns, but all signs pointed to a major schism that could not be bridged between the two sides. So, Vishal Sikka’s decision to resign was not entirely unexpected. In my view, the affair is unfortunate. The rather public spat between the retired founders and new management would definitely…

21-22 LEADERSHIP LESSONS WHAT: PROGRAMME ON EFFECTIVE & INSPIRING LEADERSHIP WHEN: 21-22 August, Goa WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The two-day CII conference will get into the details of how good leaders promote success at work, get the best of people and make a difference to the organisation. Leaders also change their style and approach depending upon the situational needs of the organisation. 14-15 HR INNOVATIONS WHAT: SHRM India Annual Conference & Exposition WHEN: 14-15 September, Delhi WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The SHRM India Annual Conference & Exposition 2017 is the fastest growing HR event in the sub-continent. It is also Asia’s largest exhibition showcasing innovations in HR Solutions. It offers a big opportunity to discuss various HR-related issues with the business community to discover and lead the way in creating…

He dons many hats – that of an economist, a historian, a best-selling writer and an urban theorist. However, as the Principal Economic Advisor, Sanjeev Sanyal is in the thick of major economic reforms being carried out by the government. In a conversation with Dipak Mondal and Joe C Mathew, Sanyal explains the basic framework adopted by the government to implement these reforms. Edited excerpts: What is the broad economic scenario in the country? In the second volume of the Economic Survey, we have said there are deflationary trends overall, not just in India but worldwide. There are pressures on private investments, again not specific to India, but globally. There are things to be done [internally] although nothing can be done about external factors. As we are under no particular pressure –…

This is Business Today’s fourth edition of India’s Fastest-Growing Emerging Companies. The aim is to find companies that have done well in difficult times and have a promising future. The methodology has undergone a transformation this time in terms of segmentation and scale of business to focus on actual emerging trends among companies. We included both listed and unlisted companies in our survey. However, unlike last year, we changed the revenue benchmarks to between ₹500 crore and ₹1,000 crore. And, it gave satisfactory results. The study was done in July 2017 using the Ace Equity database. At that point, not many companies had filed their audited data for 2016/17, but we went ahead and made efforts to capture the latest picture for you. Data for 2016/17 was available for companies…

NILE LTD TOTAL INCOME(₹ cr) 580.1 NET PROFIT(₹ cr) 26.2 THREE-YEAR TOTAL INCOME CAGR (%) 27.5 THREE-YEAR AVERAGE TOTAL INCOME GROWTH (%) 28.3 Standalone data; total income and net profit exclude extraordinary and exceptional items Source: Ace Equity When Navabharat Industrial Linings and Equipment Ltd was incorporated in 1984, the promoter could not have foreseen a change of name or a drastic business pivot. “Nile is not an acronym [of Navabharat],” says Vuyyuru Ramesh, the 69-year-old Chairman and Managing Director. “The name is registered with the Registrar of Companies. Our customers called us Nile as it was convenient and we changed the name to Nile Ltd in 1995.” In the beginning, Nile made glass-lined equipment for the pharma industry. “It is a highly specialised area and we were the second…

Superfast Primetime Ultimate Nation: The Relentless Invention of Modern India BY ADAM ROBERTS PAGES: 279 PRICE: ₹599 PROFILE BOOKS Did Prime Minister Narendra Modi yearn to win the Nobel Peace Prize? That rumour had been doing the rounds by 2015. But, writes Adam Roberts, The Economist’s former Delhi-based South Asia bureau chief, “A member of the relevant committee, in Oslo, once told me, later, of visits he had had from Indian lobbyists who made the case.” To be eligible for the award, the prime minister would have to establish a lasting peace accord with Pakistan and resolve the Kashmir problem. Over the years, Modi’s views on Pakistan had changed, says Roberts, who had spoken to Modi in 2012 when he was chief minister of Gujarat and later, when he was prime…

The Battle Continues The chairman of Tata Sons, N. Chandrasekaran, has sent a letter to group companies, including Tata Power, Tata Chemicals and Tata Motors, asking them to discontinue all business dealings with the Shapoorji Pallonji Group. It seems the tussle between Cyrus Mistry and the Tata Group, which began after Mistry’s ouster, has no end in sight. The Shapoorji Pallonji Group, too, issued a statement after Chandrasekaran’s letter stating that Mistry, during his tenure as Tata Sons Chairman in 2013, had issued a directive to stop awarding new engineering and construction contracts to the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, as it would be a conflict of interest. The letter adds that the recent decision, therefore, is not going to affect them much. The Philanthropist Microsoft’s Co-founder and the world’s richest man,…

Reaching Heights with Fire in Their Belly This refers to your cover story on India’s Coolest Start-ups (August 27). The winners’ feats speak loudly that India is not a laggard in this sphere. The companies are also maintaining the lead in their chosen domains. Insurance is given a new lease of life, junked autos are given a novel incarnation, and organisational growth is capped with green plumes owing to the endeavours of the game changers. “It is better to do the right thing than doing things right,” said Peter F. Drucker, for the organisational contribution to its objectives and societal welfare. The talents and proven skills of the start-ups testify to the competence of the Indian entrepreneurial capacity in start-ups, vindicating their selection as winners. B. Rajasekaran, Bangalore The Agony of…

I t’s a bromance gone awry. An internecine feud involving whistle-blower complaints, allegations of financial malpractice, abdication of fiduciary responsibilities, a patriarch who refuses to quietly walk away into the sunset, a divided board, external and internal turmoil, executive exits, angry denunciations and power grab. The goings-on at India’s second largest IT service exporter would make for a splendid soap opera plot line. Often called iconic, the industry’s bellwether and many such sobriquets, Infosys is facing an unprecedented crisis after its first non-promoter CEO and MD of the company, Vishal Sikka, resigned over what he called “false, baseless, malicious and increasingly personal attacks… amplified by the very people from whom we all expected the most steadfast support...” The accusations were around alleged kickbacks received and paid, nepotism, extravagant expenditure and…

Promoters of BSE 500 companies have pledged 1,741 crore shares in the first quarter (April-June) of the financial year 2017/18, up from 1,608 crore in the year-ago period. At the time of our analysis, 485 companies have declared their share-pledging data. Shares can be pledged by a promoter to raise funds for the same business, finance other projects or get money for personal use. “In a bull market, with rising share prices and the market brimming with optimism, lenders usually do not hesitate to go for such deals. Problems start with the start of a bear market,” says Jimeet Modi, Chief Executive of SAMCO Securities. “Promoter pledging is usually the last option to raise funds as it shows lenders do not have faith in the company’s ability to pay back…

MANPASAND BEVERAGES TOTAL INCOME(₹ cr) 735 NET PROFIT(₹ cr) 72.6 THREE-YEAR TOTAL INCOME CAGR (%) 35.7 THREE-YEAR AVERAGE TOTAL INCOME GROWTH (%) 36.1 Standalone data; Total income and net profit exclude extraordinary and exceptional items Source: Ace Equity For Manpasand Beverages founder Dhirendra Singh, adding manufacturing muscle to the ₹700 crore Indian beverages company is not a big deal. He has built two plants in the middle of an industrial zone in Vadodara, Gujarat, in the last 12 years. The third will be completed next year, a part of a massive expansion plan under which Manpasand, the maker of ‘Mango Sip’ and ‘Fruits Up’, is building four manufacturing facilities to add to its existing five plants. The company, it seems, is on a roll, while fighting off competition from the…

It has been three months since the WannaCry ransomware crippled thousands of computers across the world, and yet, the hackers behind the attack have not been identified. The ransomware infected computers over the network by encrypting files and asked victims to pay between $300 and $600 in bitcoins (a cryptocurrency) to decrypt the files for future use. Earlier this month, the attackers further concealed their identities by converting bitcoins to another virtual currency called Monero – an opensource, private, untraceable currency that is considered to be more anonymous than bitcoins and requires no account details to sign up. Monero can be used for making purchases in the deep web (part of the World Wide Web that is not discoverable by standard search engines). Tarun Kaura, Director, Product Management, Asia Pacific…

THE FORTNIGHTLY PICK By Tim Harford Who thought up paper money? How did the contraceptive pill change the face of the legal profession? Why was the horse collar as important for human progress as the steam engine? The book has curious, surprising and memorable stories for each of the 50 inventions covered in it. BUSINESS BESTSELLERS* The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck By Robert Cialdini Harper Collins Price: ₹599 Eat That Frog! By Brian Tracy Berrett Koehler Publishers Price: ₹199 Marketing 4.0 By Philip Kotler Wiley Price: ₹499 Tools of Titans By Timothy Ferriss Random House Price: ₹799 *Top books by sales for July 30 - August 13; Includes only books released after Jan 1, 2015; Information provided by…

The exit of NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya may have surprised many, but the writing had been on the wall for a while. Although Panagariya, a free market economist, said the Columbia University is not willing to extend his leave, he could not meet expectations of people who matter, including those in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). In the last 27 years, Panagariya is the first head of a government think tank to resign before the tenure of the PM expires (Jaswant Singh did it in 1998, but to join the cabinet). The tenure of the vice chairman runs concurrently with the term of the PM. Within days of Panagariya resigning in early August, the government appointed conservative economist Rajiv Kumar in his place. NITI Aayog, which replaced the…

CONCENTRATED RISK PSBs Dominate The Banking Space 74% SHARE IN DEPOSITS 71% SHARE IN ADVANCES 69 % SHARE IN TOTAL ASSETS 68% SHARE IN TOTAL INCOME After the 1997 East Asian currency crisis, Malaysia’s central bank, with the blessing of the government, merged almost 50 financial services companies into a dozen banks. The objectives sounded fine — merging weak entities with stronger ones, reducing fragmentation, building a strong banking industry with healthy capital levels, and creating banks that could compete globally. But a decade-and-a half-later, a good enough time to look back, researchers find that several of those merged entities are lagging on most performance parameters. Some blame restrictions on sacking staff for poor productivity. Some blame wrong selection of partners. Whatever the reasons, the net result is that the…

Under its new President, T. Krishnakumar, Coca-Cola India has its task cut out. It wants to shed its image as just a cola company and become a brand for all types of beverages. This is part of a global strategy charted out by new global CEO James Quincey. A predominantly beverage company, unlike rival Pepsi, which has a significant food and snack vertical, Coca-Cola is heavily dependent on fizzy drinks, which account for nearly 60 per cent of its India revenues. To realise Quincey’s vision, it needs to diversify and launch products for the local taste. It has started with Kinley Flavors, an ethnic-flavoured sparkling water. An old hand in the set-up — he was earlier the CEO of Coca-Cola’s largest bottler HCCB (Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages) — Krishnakumar perhaps…

TOTAL INCOME(₹ cr): 810.0 NET PROFIT(₹ cr): 17.6 THREE-YEAR TOTAL INCOME CAGR (%): 17.5 THREE-YEAR AVERAGE TOTAL INCOME GROWTH (%): 25.2 Standalone data; Total income and net profit exclude extraordinary and exceptional items Source: Ace Equity Jayant Mhaiskar is busy making last-minute preparations for a meeting in Delhi, which he proudly says is now his karma bhoomi. The reason is simple: his company, MEP Infrastructure Developers, has entered road construction, after years of being a toll operator, mostly in and around Mumbai. And Delhi, home to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, is where national-level road projects are bid out. “We were into toll collection and road maintenance. We always aspired to become a developer. Our entry into road building has made us a complete infrastructure player,” says Mhaiskar,…

THE BUSINESS Set up by four NIT Kozhikode graduates, Arcatron Mobility has developed a shower and commode wheelchair that can be used by the physically challenged and older people FOUNDED IN July 2015 HEADQUARTERS Pune INVESTMENTS Initial funding from personal and other private sources: ₹ 8,143,712 Sudhir Mehta: ₹20 lakh AMOUNT RAISED FROM THE MOST RECENT ROUND OF FUNDING FROM INDIAN ANGEL NETWORK: ₹1.5crore It was a happy moment for four young engineers from NIT Calicut when their design for a shower and commode wheelchair won the top prize at the ‘Design for Disabled’ competition sponsored by the Kozhikode-based NGO Pain and Palliative Care Society (PPCS). Funded in part by PPCS and the NIT, the team made a prototype in 2011. “The response was immediate,” says Ganesh Sonawane, the founder…

Marching with a Billion: Analysing Narendra Modi’s Government at Midterm BY UDAY MAHURKAR PAGES: 234 PRICE: ₹499 PENGUIN VIKING In May 2014, when PM Modi took over the reins of the country to form the first full majority non-Congress government, expectations were rife. He set out to do many things right. These include restoring several strangulated infrastructure projects, rejuvenating the interests of private investors, restructuring the speed of reforms and reshaping India’s image globally. From the start of his tenure, PM Modi has hardly spoken to the Indian media. He has instead chosen to speak directly to the audience via his monthly radio show and social media. This strategy enables him to successfully dodge questions and scrutiny from news organisations and commoners, leaving no room for an opportunity to gain…