Business Today 7-Mar-21

A common characteristic of some of the world’s oldest organisations is their uncanny ability to adapt & adopt, destruct & rebuild, terminate and transform — constantly. Take Finland’s 156-year-old Nokia which began as a paper mill in 1865, dabbled in power, rubber and cable manufacturing until it hit upon the success of mobile communication in 1984, eventually becoming the world’s biggest handset maker with over 40 per cent global share by 2007. Then came the decline which resulted in sale of its handset business to Microsoft for $7.2 billion in 2013. But by 2015, it had already acquired Alcatel-Lucent and taken charge of JV with Siemens to emerge as a huge network infrastructure provider. At the other end of the spectrum is 132-year-old Kyoto-based video gaming firm Nintendo, known the…

↘ The pace of central government expenditure picked up in third quarter of FY21 with easing of lockdown restrictions. In fact, December saw a year-on-year jump of 50.2 per cent ↘ According to the Economic Survey, the expenditure grew 11 per cent from ₹21.1 lakh core in April-December 2019 to ₹23.4 lakh crore in April-December 2020 (flash estimates) ↘ Capital expenditure was ₹3.17 lakh crore, 24 per cent more than in corresponding period last year. It rose 81.9 per cent in December 2020 (flash estimates)…

↘ India reported all-time high foreign currency reserves of $586.1 billion on January 8, 2021, due to robust FDI and FPI inflows ↘ Merchandise trade deficit in April-December was $57.5 billion compared with $125.9 billion in April-December 2019 ↘ Meanwhile, net services receipts remained stable at $41.7 billion in April-September 2020 compared with $40.5 billion in corresponding period of 2019…

↘ Production of refinery/petro products fell 13.5 per cent in first nine months of FY21 as refineries processed 4.3 mb/d crude oil compared with 5.1 mb/d in first nine months of FY20 ↘ Cumulative capacity utilisation was around 85.6 per cent compared with 101.6 per cent in same period of previous year ↘ Consumption of petroleum products fell 12.6 per cent; it was 87.2 per cent of level seen during the same period last year…

₹80,000 CRORE THE AMOUNT TATA SONS HAS INVESTED IN GROUP COMPANIES IN LAST FOUR YEARS Natarajan Chandrasekaran’s first major decision as Chairman, Tata Group, was rather symbolic of the changes in store. Three months after taking over on May 30, 2017, he asked architects to refurbish Bombay House, the iconic headquarters of the 152-year-old conglomerate. The heritage building on Homi Mody Street in Mumbai’s Fort area had never been altered since it was built in 1924, based on design of Scottish architect George Wittet, who also designed the Gateway of India. The building had cracks in the roof, limited natural light and was vulnerable to termites. Chandrasekaran, who started his career with TCS and contributed hugely to its growth over three decades, wanted to make Bombay House vibrant, incorporating his…

1. Tapping digital experts from group companies to build India’s first Super App 2. Tata Power to invest only in renewable energy or consumer facing businesses 3. Engineering capabilities pave way for Tata Electronics, Tata Medical and Diagnostics 4. Integrating supply chains of all Tata companies 5. Leveraging group expertise in financial services, launch of Tata Payments 6. Combining consumer businesses; making Tata Consumer Products an FMCG giant 7. Combining expertise of different companies to create an EV ecosystem 8. Combining consumer connect of Trent, Infinity Retail, Tata Consumer Products, Titan, Tata Chemicals and Voltas 9. Tata Steel to cash in on the lucrative Indian market 10. Aerospace, defence subsidiaries to tap government business “There are several key trends that are going to be important as we go into the…