Innholdsfortegnelse for 6 February 2022 i Business Today

In the best of times, preparing a Budget that pleases the majority of the population is a very difficult task. But when a finance minister has to do that in a completely unpredictable environment, it becomes several times more so. That’s what Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will have to do when she rises to present the Budget for 2022-23, as the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, driven by the Omicron variant, sweeps the country. Meanwhile, latest data shows retail inflation rose to 5.59 per cent in December 2021, up from 4.91 per cent the previous month, while growth in industrial output slipped to 1.4 per cent in November, the lowest in nine months. The silver lining, however, is that the ongoing Covid-19 wave is not seen to be as…

GOODBYE SSANGYONG MAHINDRA AND Mahindra (M&M)-owned SsangYong Motor has been acquired by a consortium led by South Korean electric bus and truck maker Edison Motors for $254.56 million. In 2010, M&M had acquired a controlling 75 per cent stake in debt-ridden SsangYong and even retailed SUV Rexton in India, but failed to make a mark. Sridhar V., Partner, Grant Thornton Bharat LLP, says despite M&M’s SsangYong and (earlier) Ford partnership failures, group Chairman Anand Mahindra may “still explore a partner as it makes sense for electric vehicles”. —PRERNA LIDHOO GROWW WITH SATYA Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella’s investment in stock trading platform Groww reinforces global investor bullishness on the Indian start-up story, especially on the burgeoning fintech sector. Founded in 2016, Groww was valued at $3 billion when it secured…

MID THE DOOM and gloom of the pandemic in 2021, two instances showed the government a way forward, financially speaking. In April, Power Grid Corporation of India became the first PSU to go public by floating an infrastructure investment trust (InvIT), which included mainly high-voltage transmission lines and substations, raising more than ₹7,700 crore. Then, in November, Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways, took to Twitter to announce that the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) first InvIT, which comprised five toll roads spanning over 390 km, has raised ₹5,000 crore. This success spawned a plan to raise another ₹3,000 crore. These two examples show that if the government wants to monetise assets, there is enough private sector interest in “viable, structured and investable projects”, says Manish Aggarwal, Partner…

RADICAL UNCERTAINTY MAKES DECISION-MAKING REQUIRE NEW PARADIGMS, where data, probabilistic analysis and similar tools provide limited support, say Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England, and John Kay in their book Radical Uncertainty: Decisionmaking for an unknowable future. India’s Finance Minister faces an unenviable task in the Union Budget to transition us past uncertainties ranging from Omicron, supply chain disruptions, interest rate normalisation and possible taper tantrums, inflationary pressures, climate change, as well as the opportunities of “blessings of unicorns”, the 4 Ds of democracy, demography, demand and data, plus digital public infrastructure and the flood of international ESG capital to build back better and create the “next normal”. A humble wish list that integrates “new and novel” with “tried and tested”: • A unified Indian financial code: Like…

AS THE FASTEST GROWING MAJOR ECONOMY, India is slated to drive global growth. The poise with which India managed the pandemic impact and navigated from a negative growth in the first two quarters of FY21 to positive growth in the next four consecutive quarters deserves praise. As the Finance Minister presents the Union Budget, she will have the complex challenge of balancing this pace of growth with keeping the fiscal deficit in check, against the backdrop of the likely impact of the new Covid-19 wave and rising inflation. For this Budget, choosing growth to aid recovery will be advisable—if growth and private investments take off, fiscal deficit will gradually come under control with lesser need for the government to borrow. I make a case for a more calibrated return to fiscal…

NOT JUST ANY PROJECTOR The Freestyle is a one-ofa-kind portable projector. Unlike traditional box-shaped projectors, the cradle of the Freestyle allows rotation of up to 180 degrees, to project up to a 100-inch high-quality video almost anywhere—tables, floors, walls or even ceilings—with no separate screen required. To provide a proportional image every time, it comes equipped with technology such as automatic screen adjustment to any surface at any angle, full-auto keystone, auto levelling and autofocus. Its features include built-in streaming services, mirroring and casting with both Android and iOS devices, and farfield voice control for hands-free operation. Weighing a tad over 830 gm, it features a dual passive radiator for deep bass and has 360-degree sound radiation for an immersive experience. It can work off batteries or be connected to…

Data as of January 18, 2022 Source: cowin.gov.in, media reports 1.58 BILLION Number of vaccine doses administered in India so far 70 PER CENT The percentage of adults fully vaccinated in India 38 MILLION Number of teens in the 15-18 age group that have received their first dose 50.3 PER CENT Percentage of the world population that has been fully vaccinated…

TWENTY YEARS is a long time. That’s what it took to execute the privatisation of Air India. The process was set in motion in year 2000, albeit the idea for selling it was first proposed in 1988, following the successful selloff of British Airways and other national assets by the Margaret Thatcher government in the UK. “Air India was the Holy Grail of public sector privatisation. The sentiment in the government was, ‘If we can successfully privatise Air India, we can sell anything.’ Now that it’s done, it’s up to them to leverage it,” a market source told Business Today requesting anonymity. The sale of Air India is to fetch the government ₹18,000 crore, and would give the buyer, Tata group, ownership of Air India, its low-cost unit Air India…

AS THE DECKS ARE CLEARED for Budget 2022-23 in the long shadow of the pandemic, budgetary allocations on infrastructure will impact the pace of economic activity and renewed growth. It goes beyond academic interest, therefore, to understand how the government will stimulate longterm sustainable finance for the sector and boldly put together a viable business case for large-scale private investment that shares in the socio-economic benefits. The latter, through regulatory reforms that allow for alternative avenues of finance, such as pension funds. Infrastructure Development and Financing Today Much has been done. For a start, about ₹111 lakh crore is to be invested in the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), an amalgam of roads, highways, bridges, railways and urban infrastructure expected to decimate bottlenecks to movement of people, materials and services. Close to…

WITH THE UNION BUDGET SET TO be announced shortly, the Finance Minister is faced with the challenge of determining additional avenues for mobilisation of financial resources to support the government’s ambitious infrastructure development and growth targets. Over the past few years, the government has explored various sources of generating revenue to supplement the limited fiscal resources available. Apart from the taxation route, an assessment of non-tax revenues of the government shows a significant rise from 2.7 per cent of GDP in 2014-15 to 5.1 per cent of GDP in 2020-21. Non-tax revenue generation methods by unlocking investment value of public sector assets to generate capital has been institutionalised through the National Monetisation Pipeline. This programme aims to aggregate the monetisation potential of ₹6 lakh crore through core assets of the central…

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC is not dying down anytime soon. That much is clear from the electric pace of spread of the Omicron variant of the SARS CoV2 virus. Aside from the tragedy of it all, this has also thrown open an opportunity for revenue growth for the Indian pharma industry. According to an analysis by Motilal Oswal, the share of Covid-19-related therapies stood at 44 per cent of the total Indian pharma market’s sales at the peak of the second wave in April-May 2021. That’s a lot of money, considering the size of the Indian pharma market was $42 billion (more than ₹3 lakh crore) in 2021, according to India’s Economic Survey 2021. In the current crisis, growth will be driven by new vaccines and therapeutics to treat the highly…

The current calendar year promises to be as exciting—if not more—than the last one as far as the primary market goes. Reason: There are enough IPOs in the pipeline to keep investors busy and the eclectic mix is only going to get better. There are over 40 companies with all regulatory approvals in place and another 40 who are in queue to get the nod from regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)—a company can launch its IPO within a year from the date of SEBI’s approval. Start-ups will once again vie for investor attention as online majors like MobiKwik, ixigo, OYO, Delhivery, PharmEasy, Droom and Snapdeal are expected to launch their IPOs this year. Traditional sectors like financial services, banking, information technology, chemicals and healthcare will also be adequately…

Afew weeks ago, Mirae Asset Investment Managers (India) saw its assets under management (AUM) cross the ₹1-lakh crore mark. That makes Swarup Mohanty, the CEO of the mutual fund house, a very busy man. But that has not stopped Mohanty from focussing on his long-playing (LP) records, which he listens to almost every day. He has nearly 1,000 LPs at his home in Mumbai—he recently shifted to a bigger place that can accommodate his LP collection. “If I play the same song on my LP and on the digital player, the digital player will be spotless, clean music. It seems almost filtered to me. In the LP, there is the vibration, the echo, the basic nuances that are captured. It is the closest one can get to live music,” says…

REALTORS’ REALITY The country’s realtors are gaining some pricing power. Demand for homes surged 51 per cent in 2021 over 2020 following pandemic-induced disruptions, continuation of work from home, and low interest rates on home loans. Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru recorded decent price appreciation. Developers in micro markets close to infrastructure projects like Delhi-Mumbai corridor (Sohna, Haryana), and Jewar international airport (Noida) also hiked prices by mid-single digits. What’s keeping realtors jittery is steady cost escalation—25-30 per cent over the past one year—that is threatening their margins. Housing.com estimates residential prices to rise steadily from mid-2022. —ARNAB DUTTA WHILE HOME sales have surged, there has been steady cost escalation over the past year All Stocked Up THE SUPPLIERS ARE IN POSITION. The Omicron wave has pushed fast moving consumer goods…

THE INDIAN ECONOMY IS ANTICIPATED TO BE ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING ECONOMIES IN THE WORLD (IMF estimates India’s GDP to grow at 9.6 per cent in CY22). This is a positive step towards realising our ambition of becoming a $5-trillion economy in the next few years. While there are varying opinions on when we may get there, our original target of FY25 may be a stretch due to the pandemic and its impact on the economy. At the same time, there is a general consensus that the manufacturing sector must play a pivotal role to achieve this goal. This is reflected not just in the report of the Working Group on the $5-trillion economy (20 per cent of the $5 trillion is projected to come from manufacturing compared to the…

Hassle-free credit, clarity on taxes, higher exemptions Legislation, tax sops, infra support, policies, duties MAKE SMALL POWERFUL A distressed MSME sector hopes for some relief in the Budget THE ONGOING third wave of Covid-19 has battered the already distressed MSME sector. This sector holds significant value in the Indian economy as its share of gross value added in India’s GDP at current prices for 2019-20 stands at 30 per cent. MSMEs face problems in getting access to credit. “In the upcoming Budget, we suggest hassle-free credit availability to industry, particularly for MSMEs; ease of doing business for the MSMEs; reduced costs of doing business; level playing field for the industry; and timely justice for people and industry,” says Pradeep Multani, Chairman, PHDCCI. On the credit front, V. Padmanand, Partner, Grant…

On a good day for technology stocks, Roshni Nadar Malhotra is India’s wealthiest woman. She has inherited not only the genes of her father Shiv Nadar, a pioneer of the Indian tech boom, but also his keen sense of philanthropy. In a freewheeling chat with Business Today’s Global Business Editor Udayan Mukherjee, she speaks about stepping into Shiv’s tall boots, preparing HCL Tech for the digital age, her mother Kiran’s love of art, and her lifelong admiration of primatologist Jane Goodall. Edited excerpts: Q: Roshni, you are today one of the richest women in India and chairperson of HCL group, but you had once set your heart on being a media personality. And, if I remember correctly, you even interned with CNN and Sky News. So, I had imagined Roshni Nadar was…

IT’S OFFICIAL. Men are paying more attention to personal grooming. Gone are the days when they used the same creams and shampoos that were being used by the rest of the family. There are now a host of products that cater to men specifically keeping in mind their skin type, hair texture and even their preference for fragrance. Little wonder, the men’s grooming market in India is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 11 per cent to cross $1.2 billion by 2024, from $643 million in 2018 as per Research and Markets. However, this is a fraction of the global male grooming market that is projected to reach around $81.2 billion by 2024. From oils and waxes for beards to cologne soaps and face washes, men are investing…

The skies are covered for recruitment firm Randstad India’s MD & CEO P.S. Viswanath. “We spend so much time flying because of work, either travelling internationally or to the corners of India.” VISWANATH TOOK HIS FIRST DIVE IN 2016 IN THE ANDAMANS. HE FOUND IT SO “AMAZING” THAT HE DECIDED TO TAKE OUT A WEEK EVERY YEAR FOR IT Land is taken care of, too, because he lives on Planet Earth, of course. “But my passion is to experience the underwater. That’s how it started,” he says, referring to his scuba diving trips. The hiring expert took his first dive in 2016 in the Andaman Islands. It was an experience he found so “amazing” that he decided he would like to take out at least a week every year to…