Innholdsfortegnelse for 28-Nov-21 i Business Today

India’s equity markets have been on a roll over the past year. New investors have been entering the market in droves, driven by the soaring indices and the hope that despite all the Covid-19 disruptions, the economy will be able to bounce back, leading to an improvement in corporate fortunes. Between October 1, 2020, and September 30, 2021, the S&P BSE Sensex gained 21,058 points, or 55.32 per cent, indicating the kind of up-move the markets have been witnessing. Business Today’s much-awaited annual compendium of India’s most valuable companies, the BT500 ranking, comes to you against this background. And the results are in line with the rally at the bourses—the aggregate rise in market wealth of the BT500 in 2021 has been to the tune of 43.4 per cent, as…

HE HAS SEEN IT all. Sunil Bharti Mittal is among the earliest pioneers in connecting hundreds of millions of Indians and laying the foundation for a massive digital backbone across the country. In a rare interview, the Founder and Chairman of Bharti Enterprises opens up to Business Today’s Global Business Editor Udayan Mukherjee about overcoming challenge after business challenge in his journey to emerging as one of the most successful entrepreneurs of this generation. Welcoming the recent measures to support Indian telecom service providers, the telecom czar says the next frontier for him is OneWeb—a company that aims to deliver broadband satellite internet services worldwide. Edited excerpts: UM: I often think that if you were not in telecom, you would be a boxer or a wrestler. That fighting spirit……

Billionaire Gautam Adani-led Adani Group has created enormous wealth for investors amid the ongoing rally in the domestic equity market. Since the last (2020) edition of the BT500, the cumulative 12-month average market capitalisation (mcap) of the group has soared to over ₹6.11 lakh crore as of September 30, 2021, from ₹1.93 lakh crore on the same day in 2020. Out of the six listed entities, five have more than doubled investors’ wealth during the same period. Except for a brief period in July when there was confusion about the concentrated ‘overseas investor’ shareholding, which seemed to have been blocked by the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) for some time, nothing seems to have gone wrong for the group. Market veteran Ambareesh Baliga told Business Today that the group seems…

ASHISHKUMAR CHAUHAN values wealth creation over liquidity. The BSE MD and CEO explains that this is because more wealth leads to job creation. The BSE is Asia’s oldest stock exchange, whose benchmark, the S&P BSE Sensex, is looked upon as the barometer of the Indian stock market. In an interaction, Chauhan—who has been at the helm of the exchange since 2012—talks about the current rally, the safety of the markets and what investors should do to stay safe. He also speaks on the pitfalls of encouraging a trading culture instead of an investment culture. Edited excerpts from an interview with BT: The Indian equity markets have registered a one-way rally, touching record highs almost on a monthly or weekly basis. That has attracted a record number of new investors to…

▸ Some marquee India Inc. names such as Infosys, the Mahindra group and the Godrej group have taken voluntary steps to reduce their impact on the environment ▸ Many firms have adopted renewable energy, the cheapest form of energy ▸ Firms serving the export markets have been forced to go green as part of their clients’ insistence on decarbonising the supply chain ▸ Investor-requested corporate disclosure for climate change from Indian companies grew by 17 per cent in 2020 compared to 2019, with 220 firms making disclosures ▸ There has also been an 87 per cent increase in investor-requested corporate disclosures for water security ▸ With SEBI coming out with its ‘business responsibility and sustainability reporting’ (BRSR), companies will have to make more disclosures related to climate and the environment…

Overall ranks are based on average market capitalisation (October 2020 to September 2021). ‘Rank 2020’ is as published in last year’s BT500. Parameter ranks are for within the top 1,000 companies. Ranks have been assigned based on multiple decimals. Because of rounding off, some ranks may appear incorrect. Results are audited and standalone. Figures in brackets denote negative value. ROCE: Return on capital employed; RONW: Return on net worth; na: Not available; N/A: Not applicable; N/L: Not listed on the bourses; N/R: Not ranked last year. All the latest data for FY 2020-21 unless otherwise indicated; * 12 months ending September 2020; ** 12 months ending March 2020; ^12 months ending June 2020; # 12 months ending December 2020; ##12 months ending December 2019. *** Earlier known as Majesco. ###…

WHEN YOU COME FROM a business family that is deeply into the financial sector, it is a given that your first priority is to expand the horizons of that enterprise (the Anand Rathi Group), something that Priti Rathi Gupta did very well. But if you have a creative bent of mind, it comes to the fore at the most unexpected moments. That is exactly what happened with Gupta, Founder of LXME, a financial planning platform for women. While racking her brains to find out newer ways to earn better returns for her clients, she hit upon the idea of filmmaking. As she researched the subject, she fell in love with the entire process, from ideating and writing a script to shooting and releasing a movie. “All my hobbies culminated into…

▸ The sector was disrupted by the global financial crisis, the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review, and the debacles at IL&FS, YES Bank and Dewan Housing ▸ A slowdown in the economy and falling credit growth year after year also hit the sector hard ▸ Another factor was banks switching to lending to higher-rated corporates for safety and diversification in the deposit base from bulk deposits to retail deposits ▸ There has also been a rise in unsecured loans, especially credit cards, personal loans, microfinance, etc. ▸ Lenders have also expanded into smaller geographies, and to the non-salaried class and business banking customers ▸ And after Covid-19 struck, the sector has faced hidden stress because of a loan moratorium, one-time restructuring and government guarantees…

Over the past three decades, India has watched with envy as its powerful neighbour and bête noire China pulled further and further away on the economic front, leaving it to wistfully bemoan what could have been had it played its cards better. While the more jingoistic among us would spiritedly point out how we still had our democracy versus their oppressive autocracy, no one seriously believed there could be any comparison between how the two countries had fared relatively. China was simply way, way ahead. And while it continues to be, the events of the past few months point to a potential unravelling of the Chinese success story, the portent of which has been received at home with an expected sense of schadenfreude. Were this an isolated Chinese blunder, it would…

INDIA INC. and, indeed, the economy in general weathered the second wave of the pandemic much better than the first. This is reflected in the superlative returns on the domestic equity market in the 12 months ended September 30, 2021. While the benchmark BSE Sensex jumped 55 per cent during this period, the broader BSE MidCap and BSE Small-Cap indices soared 72 per cent and 89 per cent, respectively. The market sentiment, market watchers say, was boosted by hopes of a faster return to business normalcy, sustained foreign institutional investor inflows, better-than-expected financial results, the central bank’s liquidity measures such as maintaining low interest rates, as well as a series of government reforms such as the ₹100-lakh crore ‘Gati Shakti’ infrastructure spending plan. As a result, more than 91 per…

A ONCE-IN-A-DECADE opportunity.” That’s how Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO and MD, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) describes the current robust demand environment for information technology (IT) services. Not since the 1990s has the sector witnessed such a boom period. From a nascent industry worth about $150 million in 1991, the IT industry exploded to top $5.6 billion by the turn of the millennium. Two decades later, they are back at it. The top four—TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies—are set to clock double-digit revenue growth this fiscal. Their deals pipelines are overflowing, with strong demand in emerging areas such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, amid an across-the-board digitalisation drive in the post-pandemic world. Consider this. The global market for technology and business services jumped 40 per cent between July…

TRY THIS SMALL exercise. Pick one letter at random from the English alphabet and name a well-known publicly listed company whose name starts with it. Chances are that it would have faced shareholder activism at some point. This is neither a joke nor is it a way to test a person’s IQ. In fact, it is an indication of the times we are in and the real possibility of the issue getting extremely challenging for companies that refuse to acknowledge how seriously their lives can be affected, if it already has not. At the core, shareholder activism is not about irate people who believe they have got a raw deal. Instead, it is about companies being told that their levels of accountability need to be so high that there is…

TIME IS MONEY” is a common business refrain. Well then, humans have about 7 years and 9 months until the effects of global warming become irreversible, according to the global Climate Clock. But Infosys did not need such a warning. Nor did it wait for India to pledge to the COP26 climate summit in 2021. It voluntarily committed to carbon neutrality in 2011. In 2020, when the Climate Clock’s countdown began, the IT services firm turned net carbon neutral. Its footprint dropped from 179,410 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) in 2008 to 139,407 tCO2e in 2020 (pre-Covid-19) and to 77,350 tCO2e in 2021. It did this by reducing emissions under its control by over 70 per cent, reducing per capita electricity demand by more than 55 per cent and increasing…

FROM GIN tastings to food pairings, and even gin immersion masterclasses—there has undeniably been a global ‘ginaissance’ in recent years. Gin has transitioned from a dreary, older person’s drink to one that is considered the last word in cool. This global resurgence has resonated across India as well. Till five years ago, India’s gin scene was non-existent. But thanks to a bunch of millennials, the Indian craft gin market has exploded with over 15 brands having been launched since 2017. “Gin is now seen as a fun, lifestyle drink preferred by the sub 35-40 age group,” says Magandeep Singh, a veteran beverage industry consultant. Pick up a bottle of one of these craft gins and the list of botanicals is typically Indian—from turmeric to coriander to even hemp seeds. “The…

What was the problem you were grappling with? In 2004-05, we were on the verge of expanding our product portfolio, but [I] was apprehensive because of the high cost of the ingredients in the new categories and stiff competition from MNCs.  Who did you approach for advice and why? I turned to Kailasan Iyer, my R&D consultant and guru, my go-to person for products, consumer preferences and formulations. The dilemma was whether to compromise on the inputs or hold back from entering the new categories. What was the advice you received? He strictly advised me to never compromise on the quality of the product by replacing the best ingredients with moderate alternatives readily available. These compromises might look helpful for the time being, but would be detrimental to establish Joy…