Business Today 22 October 2017

If you were to go only by the placement records of the top 10 odd business schools in the country, you would never think that economic growth has been slowing down for over a year now. The best B-schools – the top 50 or so – manage to place their students at good salaries year after year, whether the economy is booming or in a depressed state. Go lower down the list and the economic conditions start showing a far greater impact on the placement records. In good years, no one has a placement problem. In years when the economy is not doing great, securing 100 per cent campus placements – and at decent salaries – becomes a big slog, barring few exceptions. However, placement records alone do not define…

Most Powerful Women: Value for Money This refers to your special issue on the Most Powerful Women in Business (October 8). All the 30 winners in business category and 23 winners in the impact category deserve to be included in your list by virtue of 3Ps – Performance, Perseverance, and Pragmatism. Their achievements are case studies to motivate the younger generation which needs to learn about being an achiever and what qualities make one really powerful. Hope the present generation takes a lesson from these powerful women and makes an honest attempt in the highly competitive times of today. Your cover story goes to show that Indian women are no more mere show-pieces to adorn the drawing rooms of their homes. Over the last decade or so, they have carved…

₹90,669 crore GST collections in August, less than what the government was expecting. The July collections were ₹94,063 crore. Only 55 per cent assessees paid tax for August, compared to 64 per cent for July. QUOTE “The prime minister claims that he has seen poverty from close quarters. His finance minister is working overtime to make sure that all Indians also see it from equally close quarters” Former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha in an editorial in a national daily PRIVATE FIRMS MAY GET UP TO 60% IN PSU FIELDS India plans to offer private companies up to 60 per cent stake in oil and gas fields owned by government companies that are already under production, according to a Reuters report. The government has taken the decision after failing to draw…

04 ALL ABOUT GAS WHAT: India Gas Infrastructure Conference 2017 WHEN: October 4, New Delhi WHAT TO LOOK FOR: Indian natural gas sector has been facing major challenges in recent years in terms sluggish growth in domestic production, challenges of under-utilisation of regasification and transmission pipeline infrastructure and global oil and gas market dynamics. The FICCI conference would bring together all the stakeholders to evolve a pragmatic roadmap for gas sector development. 06 PROMOTING HIGHER EDUCATION WHAT: 2nd Edition of CII Higher Education Conclave WHEN: October 6, Visakhapatnam WHAT TO LOOK FOR: This conclave provides an opportunity to share concepts, approaches and best practices that can be adapted or adopted by institutions. It will also create an opportunity for dialogue among education leaders for sharing their vision, strategy, innovations, challenges and concerns.…

21 Govt’s spending spree 22 The new tax tangle If it was not for some of our investors looking for an exit, we might have not listed our company,” says Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO, Matrimony.com. The company, whose initial public offering, or IPO, in September mopped up nearly ₹500 crore at ₹985 per share, got only ₹130 crore, as the rest went to exiting investors. The stock was subscribed 4.5 times but, since its listing, has had a tepid run, ending the first listing day at ₹901.20. As of September 26, it was down to ₹801.90, 18.5 per cent below its issue price. But Janakiraman is not worried. “The listing has given us liquidity and visibility, apart from allowing earlier investors an exit,” he says. “We raised only ₹130 crore as…

To even out the expected revenue loss, India would require commercial and industrial units to consume at least 55,000 mn additional units in the next 14 months, an unlikely scenario Over the next 14 months, the government wants to illuminate every home in India – that’s a staggering 4,05,11,995 households. The move, however, might just end up plunging into darkness power distribution companies, or Discoms, already struggling to implement fiscal reforms under the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY). The ambitious Saubhagya (Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Ghar Yojana), which Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on September 25, is politically sound, but for distribution companies, sheer logistics make it virtually impossible to finish the task in the given time-frame. There are several reasons for this. Nearly 95 per cent of these homes…