Innholdsfortegnelse for 5-Sep-21 i Business Today

The pandemic has not only altered the country’s economic trajectory, it has also brought to the fore the need to focus on social infrastructure. For long, nature has been warning us to shift towards sustainable growth models. Government policy and direction are central to achieving this, be it through infrastructure build-outs, fiscal stimulus or retooling of the economy to address health, inequality and climate change challenges. Two areas stand out, ripe with possibilities for India and India Inc. alike. One is the under-developed, yet expanding, corporate bond market. The second is something that’s been getting serious attention the world over: environmental, social and governance (ESG)-driven investing. DEEPENING OF THE CORPORATE BOND MARKET The fulcrum of the government’s India development (and now building-back) strategy is the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), which…

I recently among webinar with a 19-year-old entrepreneur from Sitamarhi, Bihar. Instead of pursuing studies overseas or seeking a government or corporate job, this young entrepreneur established a start-up that provides a unique service. It helps other start-ups in neighbouring towns and villages raise funds and scale up their business. These start-ups represent every possible sector: agriculture, waste management, e-commerce, education, medicare and artificial intelligence, others. These innovators are not just thenavigators of India’s growth story but its very engines of growth. They are the creators of this growth and the energy that is propelling us into the future, to a ‘New India’. New India is framed not only by enterprises but also the enterprise of countless entrepreneurs, both young and the not-so-young. The story of start-ups in India is…

The onset of the pandemic had a devastating effect on the economy last year. The national lockdown, uncertainty over vaccine development and dealing with a completely unknown event which had no precedent in the modern era led to an understandable pessimism about what the future holds for us. From an economic perspective, I was confident we would begin to recover as lockdown measures are eased. India’s macroeconomic fundamentals are sound and our inherent demand cannot be questioned. As regards housing loans, there was a general consensus that the recovery would be gradual, but it was much faster than anticipated. At HDFC, our year-to-date retail disbursements not only continued to improve month-on-month, but more importantly, from September onwards, there was consistent growth compared to the same month in the previous year. In fact,…

Many have argued that India can still take a while before rolling out 5G. What’s your take on that? We are a little bit behind the curve in rolling out the 5G, but there has been significant progress. There is ample reason to be optimistic, as there is tremendous focus, and a qualitative change in the way the Indian corporate, government and operators are working together, especially on the technology side of it. Telecom companies like Airtel and Jio, are making very strong and fast advancements in the technologies, while the government has also approved 5G trials. There is clear signal that spectrum auction for 5G is being scheduled and that ambiguity is being addressed in a sincere way. What are the things India need to work on to leverage…

Playing a momentous role in India’s economy, the handicrafts sector provides employment to a vast segment of crafts persons in rural & semi urban areas and generates substantial foreign exchange by way of exports for the country, while preserving its cultural heritage. The sector supports not only the existing set of millions of artisans spread over the length & breadth of the country, but also the increasingly large number of new entrants in the crafts activity. The significance of handicrafts also lies in the use of environment-friendly zero-waste practices in their production. But the sector has also its share of problems such as low capital, inadequate exposure to new technologies, and absence of market intelligence faced by artisans. Removing all such bottlenecks, the Ministry of Textiles has catapulted the sector…

India’s start-up ecosystem is a global success story where the synergies and active collaboration across geographies have contributed significantly. The country’s start-ups have even defied all odds brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many Indian tech start-ups continue to attract a rush of capital, with a record number reaching unicorn status. In the first half of 2021, Indian start-ups are estimated to have received $12 billion in about 382 deals, the highest in the past five years. So, what’s making us shine? In my opinion, it’s a combination of factors like digital push to get customers online, high liquidity in the markets, and a series of IPO announcements from leading start-ups. The recent Zomato IPO is the inflection point that all of us were waiting for. As India remains the go-to-market…

As Mirabai Chanu 21-year-old wait for the second Olympic medal in weightlifting, one can resonate with what writer and philosopher Sun Tzu famously said, “Victory comes from finding opportunities in problems.” Resilience is an imperative, as nobody knows what our world will look like when coronavirus is over. But one thing is certain — as an industry projects are built to last for generations, we believe that our big opportunity may be right where we are now. The projects we build today have to be ready for the requirements of tomorrow. The rate at which the infrastructure ecosystem is evolving, we feel certain in creating an opportunity for everyone. The time to start rebuilding society is now. Fresh thinking is the need of the hour, as dual demands of climate change and urbanisation…

India is set to witness a boom in the electricity sector. As things stand, India ranks third globally in both electricity production and consumption. However, our per-capita consumption is a shade over 1,200 kWh (kilowatt-hours), which is a third of the global average, a quarter of China’s and a tenth of that of the US. Moreover, India’s population is projected to increase by 270 million by 2040. And that will lead to a steep rise in economic activity as all these people will need homes, vehicles and several consumer goods. Our electricity consumption is likely to grow with rising economic activity, as studies show a strong historical correlation between the two. The International Energy Agency estimates that to feed this demand, India will need to add a power system that is…

THE The consumption story of India will only become stronger moving forward. Aspirations are rapidly converging between urban and rural India due to the advent of the internet and smartphones that have significantly bridged the information divide between urban and rural consumers. The convergence of aspirations in the digital age has been far sharper than what we had imagined. Additionally, at a given income level, both urban and rural consumer groups desire a similar standard of living, aspire for a similar set of brands and are equally comfortable with technology-enabled consumption. This indicates that consumption of branded goods with high quality, safety, nutrition and credentials will see an uptick, thereby opening up a window of opportunities for FMCG companies. Therefore, the need of the future is to look for ‘many…

1 GDP On A Fast Track The gross domestic product (GDP) was ₹135.13 lakh crore in FY21, registering a CAGR of 5.7 per cent in the last three decades, from ₹25.41 lakh crore in FY92 2 GVA Sees a Sharp Spike Gross value added — output, less intermediate consumption — was ₹124.53 lakh crore in FY21, rising 432 per cent from FY92. Farm sector’s share halved during the period 3 & 4 Loosened Purse Strings The fiscal deficit is estimated to be ₹15.07 lakh crore, or 9.3 per cent of GDP, versus a deficit of ₹0.36 lakh crore, or 5.5 per cent of GDP, in FY92. It has been higher than 4 per cent during most years 5 Per-capita Income up 18 Times India’s per-capita GDP growth soared 1,783 per cent to…

India of 2021 is dramatically different from the India of early 2020, not just because of the massive health crisis that we’re facing globally, but equally because of a generational shift that has happened over the last one year as a result of an explosive digital transformation. One of the most visible effects of digital adoption has been on businesses, both small and large, and con sequently on the Indian economy. We know that the pandemic has adversely affected business operations, but it’s also true that the digital forces unleashed over the last one year have made the economy more resilient, created new opportunities for business growth and are now paving the way for economic recovery. Several studies have shown that the economic impact of the second wave of the…

We are given to understand that the foundations of the Hansgrohe empire was laid 120 years ago, in 1901. The world has certainly changed. How has Hansgrohe managed to remain relevant across these decades? Since our inception, we have strived to prioritize the needs and comfort of our users. Both hansgrohe and AXOR products are created with the purpose of delivering human-centric water experiences that make one truly feel alive. Our drive is to express our passion for water, with ideas that are blueprints for tomorrow, and a design that stands the test of time, which have helped us to remain ahead of the curve. German Brands are known for solid workmanship. Modern customers give more importance to design. How does Hansgrohe address this expectation without compromising on the quality?…

After years of steady and gradual growth, global adoption of blockchain and crypto accelerated during the pandemic. Facing uncertainty in a turbulent world economy, more people than ever before turned to crypto for the first time. Last year, Bitcoin emerged as a new and exciting technology for individuals, companies and even governments. More recently, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, a landmark decision that prompted governments around the world to re-evaluate the role of crypto. Crypto is incredibly versatile and can be used as a currency, reward, token and much more. Regardless of how the Indian government decides to classify this emerging technology, what is important is that they continue to foster local innovation in the blockchain and crypto space. As one of the largest…

In a virtual international conference last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed India’s pharmaceutical industry as an asset not just for India but the entire world. From manufacturing generics to highly complex formulations to biosimilars and specialty medicines, the nation’s pharmaceutical industry has come a long way. Today, it is regarded as the ‘Pharmacy of the World.’ In terms of volume, it is ranked the third-largest globally, accounting for 60 per cent of global vaccine production. India is the largest provider of generic drugs and hosts the highest number of USFD-approved A plants outside the US. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has played a leading role in providing high-quality, affordable medicines globally. With the world in a lockdown, it faced serious challenges such as supply of…

Sailesh’s parents had the passion for imparting quality education at an affordable cost and their passion was evident in the phenomenal growth of the institution - from just 6 students initially to thousands now in a span of 60 years. The founder of this institute, Sampathy, had approached a school in Secunderabad seeking admission for his friend’s son. The Principal of that school turned out to be the teacher, who taught him when he was young. However, Sampathy wasn’t treated with any respect. “My father was both hurt and angry then. It is often said that decisions should not be made on an impulse. But not this time. He instantly resolved to start a school, run it in a manner much more efficient where people - visitors or parents or…

The journey from a mother’s womb into the world is way too special than we can summarize in words, and an obstetrician makes this painful yet magical journey easier with all his skills and experiences. Years of hands-on training with mental and physical strain walking through the wards checking on the patients is what makes doctors so special and revered by their patients. One such known name is Dr. G.S.S. Mahapatra. An O.B.G.Y.N. with years of experience, he has been felicitated with honors such as "Odia Ra Gourav Samman" in 2010 for removing a15kg ovarian tumor. This was followed by another honor in 2017 as the best gynecologist and laparoscopic surgeon in Eastern India by Primetime Media. Dr. Mahapatra is aquint essential example of hard work and compassion. He is…

To work in a post-Covid world is what psychologist Robin Hogarth called a wicked learning environment, one where the rules keep changing, players keep changing, patterns and relationships keep changing, goals keep changing and feedback is often inaccurate or delayed. Hogarth contrasted this with a kind learning environment where the rules are fixed, players are known, goals are predetermined, patterns and relationships are predictable and feedback is often timely and accurate. I make the case that the Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy but is also setting off a super-cycle of a radical rise in the productivity of Indian cities and firms as well as their people. The pandemic has accelerated many opportunities for India — geopolitical, structural, global and regulatory. Our geopolitical opportunity arises from the simultaneous shift of global…

The last eighteen months have been a peculiar time for Indian financial markets and its participants. We saw one of the most serious market corrections during this period followed by a strong unidirectional bull run. The way the markets have moved since the crash of March 2020 has only widened the gap between market conditions and the broader economy. This is not an encouraging sight and is naturally unset-for investors and traders. Ever since the first wave of the pandemic, India has seen heavy addition in the number of retail market participants. In India, less than 5 per cent of the population is directly or indirectly exposed to financial markets. However, this seems to be changing progressively. According to a State Bank of India (SBI) report, the number of individual…

India has been one of the most prominent exporting countries in textile and apparel. But its rank in apparel export registered a steady fall ever since 2008 as it faced several disadvantages such as restrictive land and labour market of the country, high power cost, difficulty in accessing credit for taking up projects resulting in operation of low and sub-optimal technology. The Ministry of Textiles has mounted all-out efforts to overcome these challenges and help India regain its historical position in textile and apparel market. It is targeting at exports worth more than USD 44 billion out of the country’s total exports' target of 400 billion. The target does not seem afar cry in view of the fact that now there is a good demand for Indian textile products in…

The Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH), established in the year 1986-87, has been making a seminal contribution in the promotion of the export potential of handicrafts. Significantly, the Council has created necessary infrastructure as well as marketing and information facilities, which are availed by exporters of handicrafts. The Council has 10 offices all across the country with head office at New Delhi and closely working in craft clusters like Jaipur, Jodhpur, Moradabad, Narsapur, Saharanpur and North East region to name a few. GROWING SIZE OF THE HANDICRAFTS INDUSTRY The exports of handicrafts for April-March of the financial year 2020-21 stood at Rs 25679 crore registering a marginal growth of 1.62 % the same period in the preceding year (2019-20). Over the last ten years, the exports of handicrafts has…

‘‘Time has taught us that we must make ‘local’ the mantra of our lives. I request people to buy and endorse local products. We have done this before also with khadi and it worked very well. ‘‘We have to be ‘vocal’ for ‘local’. Not only we have to buy local products, but we also have to promote them. I have full confidence that our country can do this.’’ - Narendra Modi, Prime Minister Riding the crest of fast-paced economic growth, Haryana has emerged as an economic power house. Out to tap the potential of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in employment generation, economic revival and boosting exports, the Haryana Government, led by the Chief Minister, Sh. Manohar Lal, has donned the mantle of a facilitator, promoter, advisor and financer…

Our Covid-19 vaccine shot is no less a supply-chain miracle than it is a medical one — moving billions of vials around the world, in the right ambient conditions, with complete track-and-trace, and the ability to match the ‘arm to the vial-code’. The other facets are even more pervasive. From home delivery of food and medicines to how industries operate, supply chains are everywhere. Omni-channel and direct-to-consumer (D2C) are not just channel diversification strategies, but make-or-break choices to work around constraints imposed by lockdowns upon lockdowns and mitigate ever-increasing geopolitical and environmental risks. The next generation of supply-chain is thus a two-part formulation. The first is to create a resilient supply chain as part of a national agenda, and it needs to be tackled as such on various levels from…

AN EVENTFUL RIDE The BSE Sensex has risen 55 times in three decades; the key events JULY 1991 Dr Manmohan Singh’s budget APRIL 1992 Harshad Mehta Scam OCT. 1999 Sensex crosses 5,000 points 2008 Global financial crisis 2009 UPA wins second term 2014 NDA wins with Narendra Modi as PM 2017 GST is implemented 2019 NDA wins second term MARCH 2020 Covid-19 triggers crash JAN. 2021 Vaccine rolled out in India ₹20.6 LAKH CRORE Revenue of all listed companies in FY21, from ₹29,000 cr in FY92 ACTION PACKED Market Turnover up Almost 17 Times Since 1996-97 THE GREAT INCOME BOOST Profitability has seen a steep jump THE SIX SURVIVORS The other 24 companies in the 1991 Sensex are out of the benchmark index Hindustan Unilever 14.5 2,358.8 Larsen & Toubro…

The performance of India’s economy during the past few quarters has been good, despite the considerable uncertainty created by the second wave of Covid-19. Notwithstanding these continuing challenges, the country looks set to register impressive growth this year. As the second wave wanes, vaccination drives accelerate and states gradually unlock, an all-round optimism is re-emerging. POLICIES AND REFORMS India will keep attracting investments and advancing steadily to become the manufacturing hub of the world as it continues with broad structural reforms to ease policy and infrastructure bottlenecks. The Centre’s emphasis on rural development and employment generation are well supported by programmes such as ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ (self-sufficient India), ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’. It is no surprise that the latest Union Budget has included measures to support micro, small and…

Large-scale health catastrophes aren’t new. The world has already witnessed a series of epidemics, including SARS, MERS, Ebola and Zika. But Covid-19 is different, a pandemic that swarmed the planet at one go, leaving no place for us humans to take refuge. Certain developments over the years allowed the virus to spread far and wide. On one hand, we root for interconnectedness, to make the entire world our playground and on the other, we are sobered break in a remote village in one part of the world spreads to a major city on the other side within a matter of days. Of course, we cannot reverse gears or turn our back on all the benefits and opportunities of a global world. But we need to be cognisant of the associated…

■ At the beginning, I would like to say that I am fairly awed by your urgency to go deep and wide into philanthropy in this time when businesses across the world are trying to put together the pieces which were lost during the pandemic time. That businesses and the economy as a whole has been bleeding terribly is known to us all. All the facts, the effects, and the trends are very well documented. But from my experience in philanthropic work since 2000-2001 and more since 2009, when I was made the Founding President of Birhor Vikash Samiti in Giridih, I can tell you that the effects of the pandemic on the lives of millions of poor and economically disadvantageous sections of our society have been devastating. Even this is…

We were speaking about supply side incentives and demand side incentives, bringing out to the world the lucrative offers and incentives it holds for battery manufacturers, EV manufactures and for those who would buy and use an electric vehicle. This is probably the most comprehensively researched and all-encompassing policy for electric vehicles in the country put together after consultations with all stake holders in the sector. While it is true that the incentives are highly lucrative and nudge us to go for an EV, in my mind the question still looms large-“do we need incentives to survive on the planet?” Most of Western Europe has faced a heat wave earlier this summer and now is facing flash floods that have killed hundreds. Germany and Belgium are under a deluge, while…

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” This quote by John W. Gardner — one of the giants of public service, philanthropy and education — came to mind when the Covid-19 pandemic forced educational institutions across the world to shut down almost overnight. That, in turn, dramatically impacted how education was imparted and forced a shift to e-learning on digital platforms. Educational institutions rapidly switched to the digital medium, adapting to online forms of teaching and learning so that students wouldn’t miss out on education. This surging market demand created a never-before-seen opportunity for edtech to disrupt the education sector using technology. Reams have been written over the last year-and-a-half about how the pandemic led to an acceleration in the adoption of…

‘Digitising India’ is a deceptively pithy use of words that belies the incredible complexity of mapping onto technology the many disparate levers that work in concert to help a country of this size to run. That said, if this attempt isn’t the true zero to one experiment of our lifetimes, I’m not sure what else is. In our journey of over 15 years in India, we, at Google, have had a unique players’ view of the arena. Many of our products and features that are today used globally were first piloted in India, because India provides a unique crucible that puts to the test a product’s ability to talk simultaneously to someone in Bhilai and another one in Bengaluru while at the same time testing its sheer resilience in the…

Choices are all around us. In the last 18 months, all of us have had to make choices beyond the ordinary. Personally, making choices and implementing them to revolutionise the future is a promising and endearing prospect. Going digital has gone from a ‘good to have’ to a necessity for short-term survival and long-term progress—for the entire ecosystem and value chain. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a large or small enterprise, or a diversified conglomerate, the opportunities and possibilities ushered in by digitalisation are too exciting and omnipresent to ignore. With time-to-market a new product or process spiralling down to half, the cost of development reducing to a mere fraction, production systems getting 30 per cent faster and 25 per cent more efficient, and downtimes almost tending towards zero, it…

Technology has always fascinated ITC Chairman and MD Sanjiv Puri. In fact, way back in 2000, he was asked by his mentor Y.C. Deveshwar (former Chairman and CEO, ITC) to build an ecommerce website. “We knew it was ahead of time, but I spent a considerable amount of time reading a lot of books on technology and building it,” remembers Puri. The book that influenced him the most during those days was Larry Downes’ “Unleashing The Killer App”. It talks about digital transformation of businesses. Puri says he refers to that book even today as the diversified conglomerate looks to become a digital-first company. He, in fact, spends a lot of his free time reading about AI, ML and big data. One of his recent initiatives has been to set…