Innholdsfortegnelse for 20 February 2022 i Business Today

In the first of our 30th Anniversary specials in August last year, we focussed on the theme “The Next India Opportunity”. Several of India’s biggest names wrote how the country’s time had come and how it could rightfully claim its place as the toast of the world. As we bring you this second, and final, volume of our 30th Anniversary special issues, we have chosen to take a close look at 15 of the top trends which would help power India to the global centre stage. The latest Economic Survey projects India’s GDP growth to stand at 9.2 per cent for FY22, and between 8 per cent and 8.5 per cent in FY23. The International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook pegs India’s growth at 9 per cent in FY22…

To transform India into a $300-billion electronics manufacturing powerhouse, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has identified key focus segments—mobile phones, IT hardware, consumer electronics, industrial electronics, auto electronics, electronic components, LED Lighting, strategic electronics, PCBA, wearables and hearables, and telecom equipment. The plan is to boost electronics exports from $10.1 billion in FY21, to $105-130 billion by FY26.…

ROLLOUT OF 5G for broadband cellular networks in the US led to flight cancellations over warnings that frequencies could hamper navigation equipment. This led many to raise concerns around India’s 5G plans. But telecom experts say Indian telcos would only be allotted spectrum in the mid-band of 3.3-3.6 GHz. Countries like Japan have deployed 5G without any issues. Japan, in fact, assigned spectrum through a beauty contest in 2019! Hope DoT is taking note.…

NETFLIX CO-CEO Reed Hastings has called the firm’s lack of success in India “frustrating”. It has slashed prices twice. Still, its cheapest mobile only plan of `149 a month is one of the costliest amongst its peers. It’s struggling to add to its 5 million subscriber base. Looks like it is facing a conundrum. It can stray from global strategy and tweak content to suit a lower-denominator regional viewership, which would put at risk existing premium viewership. Or, it could stay put and stagnate.…

V. ANANTHA NAG-ESWARAN, dean of Chennai-based IFMR Graduate School of Business, is the new chief economic advisor (CEA) in the finance ministry. He succeeds Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian, who returned to academia at the end of his term. The new CEA, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, was appointed just days before the Economic Survey and Union Budget. With the Budget’s focus on expenditure, the government will need all the advice the new CEA can provide.…

Sheryl Sandberg knows India well. Arguably the most well-known female leader in the tech space, the Meta COO spent time in India—which happens to be one of Mark Zuckerbergled Meta’s largest markets—when she was with the World Bank early in her career. But Sandberg, 52, is much more than a global tech leader; she has talked about the need for more women leaders in tech and the importance of retaining women in the workforce. In an exclusive interaction with Business Today’s Sourav Majumdar, Abhik Sen and Vidya S., she talks about the India story, the country’s place in the Meta scheme of things, its partnership with Jio and gender diversity. Edited excerpts: Q: What was the rationale behind rebranding Facebook Inc. to Meta? Why has the organisation undertaken it now? A: Facebook…

IN RECENT MONTHS, there has been a lot of talk of super apps that will replace all other apps. Everyone from fintech to social apps to grocery and ride-hailing apps is looking at evolving into an all-in-one platform. Super apps are basically single mobile applications that are designed to provide a multitude of services under a single, virtual umbrella. Thus, rather than relying on multiple apps for different services, users can have access to a plethora of seemingly unrelated services in a single location on their mobile phones. The idea is to make it convenient for people to use a single login for all possible needs. Across the globe, these platforms are being envisioned as virtual malls, and different geographies are responding to the trend differently. The idea of super…

OUR WORLD IS on the cusp of an environmental crisis—the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. Air pollution and climate change are two environmental challenges that we cannot ignore. More than 90 per cent of the global population is breathing polluted air. In developing countries, the problem is more serious. Due to dependency on traditional fuels, inefficient technologies and limitations on access to clean energy and capacities for enforcement of standards, air pollution levels in developing countries are found to be extremely high. In India, more than 70 per cent of cities do not meet the prescribed national standards for air quality. Implications are severe as an average person in the world is losing 2.2 years of life due to air pollution.…

SMALL AND medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the growth engines of the global economy, making up around 90 per cent of all businesses globally, comprising roughly 70 per cent of employment and, by some estimates, contributing up to 90 per cent of global GDP. In the Indian context, the micro sector with 63.05 million estimated enterprises accounts for more than 99 per cent of the total estimated number of MSMEs. The aforesaid data points demonstrate the vast footprint and the immense contribution that MSMEs make in overall nation-building and growth. While MSMEs, undoubtedly, have been prominent in the pre-Covid-19 era, the disruption due to the pandemic has resulted in both threats and opportunities for MSMEs and the overall industry. Challenges such as disruption in the MSME supply chain, a spike in…

ABOUT A DECADE ago we stood on the brink of a technological revolution that was to fundamentally alter the way we live, work and communicate. The lines between the physical, digital, and biological have been substantially blurred by a fusion of technologies that are enabling the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR). Unlike previous Industrial Revolutions, the 4th one has scale, speed and scope that have not been seen or experienced earlier. Having said that, the basic element that’s enabling this transformation is not unknown to us, it is data. Data is fuelling 4IR. The ability to generate, store, process and consume data has grown exponentially. For industries, it has held the promise of unparalleled efficiency and productivity gains across the value chain, at a fraction of the investment. With the onset…

THE WORLD AROUND us changed rapidly, and drastically, with the sudden spread of Covid-19 in March 2020. To call it a Black Swan event would be an understatement. During the lockdowns, it was not just brands competing with each other to reach consumer households. It was more a battle between their supply chains. The brands that won the race, won it on the back of the success of their well-oiled supply chains. Covid-19 has forced many companies, and in fact the entire industry, to rethink and transform their supply chain model. The focus over the past two years has been on creating systems and processes that help the supply chain—regarded as the backbone of any organisation—have the ability and the flexibility to absorb such disruptions and shocks. As companies looked at…

The Indian start-up ecosystem’s growth has quickened over the past one year, thanks to a combination of domestic and international factors. So, earlier projections are being reworked upwards. An annual start-up report by Nasscom and Zinnov estimates that India is set to have 180-200 unicorns by 2025, significantly upping its last year’s estimates of 95-105 for the same time frame. The report predicts that by 2025, India will have 36,000-37,000 start-ups with a cumulative valuation of $600-700 billion, up from $320-330 billion at present.…

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal says $650 billion of exports for both goods and services within the current financial year is possible to achieve. While that would be a remarkable achievement, the fact is that imports are growing faster than exports. So, despite higher and higher exports, the trade deficit is widening. Last December, exports were at a record $37.81 billion, but imports were also at a record $59.48 billion. Kotak Securities expects India’s trade deficit to widen to $190 billion in 2021-22 and to $200 billion in 2022-23. Comparatively, the deficit was $102 billion deficit in 2020-21. While Minister Piyush Goyal is hopeful of record export numbers in FY22, imports are growing at a faster clip and this could lead to the widening of India’s trade deficit…

FOR N. CHANDRASEK-ARAN, the buyout of Air India must rank as one of the high points in his tenure as Tata Sons’ Chairman. Buying governmentowned firms is not new for the group. But Air India is special since it was owned by the Tatas before the government took charge nearly 70 years ago. The task on hand is to turn around an airline that is deep in the red. For Chandrasekaran, this will be his sternest test to date.…

▶ Capital expenditure stepped up by 35.4% to `7.50 lakh crore in FY23 ▶ Fiscal deficit in FY22 stood at 6.9% as against 6.8% in Budget estimate ▶ The National Highways Network to increase by 25,000 km in FY23 under PM Gati Shakti master plan ▶ ECLGS scheme with an added cover for `50,000 crore for MSMEs extended to March 2023 ▶ Any income from transfer of any virtual digital asset to be taxed at 30% ▶ RBI-led digital rupee using blockchain to be launched in FY23 ▶ Required spectrum auctions will be conducted in 2022, to facilitate roll-out of 5G mobile services by private telecom players ▶ Taxpayers can file an updated return within two years of the filed IT return of an assessment ▶ Alternate minimum tax for…

*SOME OF THE COVERS HAPPENED BEFORE THE ERA OF DIGITISATION, AND SO MAY APPEAR A BIT RAGGED AS THEY WERE SCANNED AND STORED FOR POSTERITY.…

THE PANDEMIC HAS led to one of the biggest reshufflings in the concept of ‘work’. Today, a workplace is no longer just a physical location, a workforce is no longer just a group of people operating at the same time and space. The defining trait of this new world of work is that there is no single standard or blueprint for operating. The pandemic affected each of us differently. Therefore, every organisation and every individual will need to create their own unique road map as we move forward. This diversity of experiences and perspectives is best summed up by what we call the ‘hybrid work paradox’. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index survey, which reveals insights, challenges, and motivations that will shape the future of work, found that nearly 74 per cent…

UST IMAGINE THIS. You land at the Denver International Airport in the US with barely 20 minutes to catch your connecting flight from a different terminal. So, you need to walk, take a train, and walk some more. Today, you have one option—run—with no idea if you will make it in time or end up missing your flight. But not in the augmented reality (AR) world of the future: as you step out of your aircraft, your smart lenses would scan the nearest gate number, search the airline database for the connecting flight’s gate number and, using the airport’s indoor maps, project directions on the lens itself and also display your estimated time of arrival basis your walking speed. If you have time, you could canter along. Glancing through the…

IT TAKES less than a keen eye to notice that we are in the midst of a critical transition with regard to mobility in India. The more-than-noticeable shift from internal combustion engines powering our vehicles to electric mobility is a cornerstone that, for a multitude of reasons, we must turn. As early adopters and firm believers to that line of thinking, we are gearing ourselves up for what will surely be an exciting future ahead. That said, it’s not as simple a matter as ‘Plug and Play’. As with any good structure, a solid foundation needs to be in place and, in this case, that foundation is building up an appropriate infrastructure and ecosystem to support the electric revolution. To its credit, the Indian government has already stepped in and…

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY is no stranger to licensing disputes. There have been many instances when companies faced lawsuits because of improper media attribution or failure to pay songwriters. For example, Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming service provider, settled a licensing dispute in the past with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) in the US over unpaid royalties. Later, to solve the attribution problems, Spotify acquired blockchain start-up Mediachain Labs, which has helped the company develop solutions via a decentralised database to better connect artists and licensing agreements with the tracks on Spotify’s service. Another example is Walmart where the blockchain technology has been efficiently leveraged to establish a system for food traceability. Here, each node of the blockchain showcases the entity that has handled the food before it reached…

LAST YEAR WAS a watershed one for the Indian start-up ecosystem as it notched up a record investment of nearly $36 billion. 2021 also proved to be a full-cycle year for Indian venture capital as companies like Zomato, Nykaa and PolicyBazaar delivered outsized exits to their investors by listing on public bourses. This was also the year of the unicorn for India—42 start-ups achieved billion-dollar valuations, doubling its count of the entire past decade. Put this in the context of 2012—which accounted for 39 unicorns from around the world—and you get a sense of how far the ecosystem has come in the past decade! Unicorns on Fast Track: Tech-led start-ups are rewriting the pace of business aggregation across sectors. While e-commerce, fintech, SaaS and edtech were prolific sectors that have created…

THE EDUCATION ecosystem currently is at the intersection of the offline and online modes compelled by external factors. This has greatly accelerated digital adoption in education delivery. With such changes, comes the need for creativity and faster improvements to ensure there is no gap in the skilling process for both learners and learning providers. Just like any other sector, innovation is essential to introduce and improvise the qualitative changes in educational content, teaching methods, and practices. Technology-backed innovations are key to redesigning the education environment in which schools/institutes operate. The government has adopted various initiatives towards educational support for children who lost their parents to Covid-19, children with special needs, integrated teacher training programmes, and so on. It is the responsibility of private edtech players to join the bandwagon and…

A FEW DECADES AGO, buying and selling shares in the Indian stock market was all about hand signals and strong lungs. Surprised, eh? Indeed, it was. A thumbs-up signal meant the person had 50 shares to trade, the palm facing outward meant he was a seller, and palm inward was the sign of a buyer. Flashing a victory sign in a particular manner in the trading ring meant he had 20 or 200 shares to trade. The trader had to shout throughout the trading session to attract the attention of other traders and, of course, had to be physically present in the trading ring of BSE, Asia’s oldest stock exchange. Those days have become the subject of coffee table books. Today, Indian capital markets are counted among the most advanced…

FROM POLITICAL campaigns to prime-time news debates, the phrase $5-trillion economy has been stressed upon so many times that Indians cannot possibly forget it. It took our economy nine long years—from FY06 to FY14—to double its size from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. Another five years to reach $2.9 trillion. And as our leadership has often suggested, we were set to achieve the coveted $5-trillion mark by FY25. For any nation, 5X growth in less than two decades is a matter of pride. But then, the pandemic happened. What followed was a record contraction in the Indian economy, reversing years of progress and gains. The country still has tenable economic growth prospects thanks to a stable and democratic political landscape, favourable demographics, a large captive domestic market, and sustainable external debt.…

Apple CEO Tim Cook is pleased as punch: “We set all-time records for both developed and emerging markets and saw revenue growth across all of our product categories except for iPad, which we said would be supply constrained,” he said during an earnings call. Emerging markets include India, where the iPhone 13 was launched. Despite logistics constraints and supply shortages, Apple recorded revenue of $123.9 billion, 11 per cent up YoY in the October-December quarter of 2021. CMR estimates iPhone’s potential market share in CY 2021 to be about 4.4 per cent, up from 2.4 per cent in CY 2020.…

THE GOVERNMENT HAS OFFICIALLY SOUNDED THE BUGLE on the retreat of the pandemic. Hemmed into a cage of relief packages and income support over the past two years, it is now trying to break free and train its sights on the bigger goal of sustainable economic growth through investments in infrastructure. In doing this, it seems happy to live with a modestly loose fiscal setup and not give in to clamours of more welfare spending, even in an important election year. Bold, yes, but not without risks. The first hint of such risks was flagged by the bond market on the day of the Budget, as yields rose in response to the government’s larger than expected borrowing calendar. An expansionary Budget in a rising inflation scenario when the country’s central bank…

IT IS PERHAPS FITTING that as this issue goes to press, the world of Indian business and economy is still contemplating the incremental changes wrought by the Union Budget of 2022-23, as though it were part of a slow symphony that will rise in time. But then, that is what real change is about, or at least should be about. What has altered this truth is the Covid-19 pandemic, and not so gently. But with destruction comes new birth. Not only has Covid-19 taught us new ways to live, but it has also taught us new ways to earn a living, new ways to educate, and new ways to do practically everything. But let us now look forward. What are the further changes happening now, at a subterranean level, which…

INTHE EARLY YEARS of this century, when malls were getting popular in India, there was palpable excitement in the way clothes, gaming parlours, groceries and restaurants came to be housed under one roof. Today, a similar disruption is in the making in the digital arena. This disruption that we are talking about is the emergence of the super app, a single mobile app that offers basic services like chat and payments, but also has a host of other thirdparty ‘mini-apps’ for e-commerce, food delivery, healthcare, etc. Not dissimilar to a physical mall that houses a variety of brands. In many ways, the super app has become the Holy Grail that every company—from conglomerates like Tata and Reliance to fintech players like Paytm to even Big Tech firms such as Facebook…

AS A KID, I came across in the Valmiki Ramayan a mythological story about the sage Vishwamitra. The story goes that King Trishanku wished to reach heaven in his mortal form and approached the sage. Vishwamitra promised Trishanku his wish, offered the power of his penance and sent Trishanku to heaven. But Trishanku was pushed back to earth by Lord Indra, the caretaker of heaven. Vishwamitra flew into a rage, stopped the falling Trishanku in midair and created another heaven for the king—Trishanku Swarg. The word Trishanku has come to denote a middle ground or limbo between one’s goals and one’s current state. Decades later, I came across movies where lives on new planets are beautifully depicted. I thought it won’t be surprising if people desired to visit such worlds.…

BITCOIN, THE MOST famous cryptocurrency, was unleashed to the world in 2009 as a digital currency. However, it is not ideal as its value in terms of other official currencies like the US dollar and the Indian rupee keeps fluctuating. Cryptocurrencies in another form—more commonly called stablecoins like USD Tether, USDT, USD Coin or USDC—have acquired the character of an international currency. These stablecoins tied in value to the US dollar are being used extensively for making international money transfers and payments. The use of cryptocurrencies in crypto platforms is also becoming quite significant. Ether, the cryptocurrency of the blockchain platform Ethereum, is essentially meant for transactions on the Ethereum platform only. Irrespective of their objectives, utility or use case, cryptocurrencies have established that it is possible to transform currencies…

OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, India’s real estate narrative has been shaped by resilience and constant adaptation. Despite ongoing socio-economic changes, 2021 saw India’s real estate market recover from the hurdles induced by the pandemic. In essence, the year 2022 will be the year of faster decision-making, quality real estate boom, and workplace reconfigurations as businesses gain further confidence to resume operations. Here are the top trends to watch out for in the coming years. Residential: Attracting a new generation of homebuyers The residential sector witnessed strong momentum in sales as of 2021. While affordable and mid-segment housing led sales, there was also an increase in demand for luxury projects. In 2022, residential sales can be expected to witness a smooth spike. Strong government support in terms of policies, low mortgage…

PICTURE THIS: Early 1980s London, brokers and traders jostling in the early hours of the morning, shouting out the buying and selling orders on the floor of the stock exchange. Though this on-the-floor trading went on for many years, it didn’t take long for the scenario to turn on its head, thanks to the ‘Big Bang’ on October 27, 1986. With sudden deregulation of the markets, the trading floor now wore a desolate look. While having all those real traders in one place provided a sense of community and continuity, brokers and traders who used to rely on fast reflexes were now dependent on computer programs. London’s switch from traditional face-to-face share dealing with electronic trading not only helped it outpace its European competitors but also cemented the city as…

INDIA HAS BEEN at the forefront of the global pharmaceutical and healthcare industry’s fight against Covid-19. As the pandemic left the world in disarray, the Indian pharma industry rose to the challenge and quickly developed cost-effective diagnostics, vaccines, and therapies for millions of people at home and across the world. While Indian drug makers took on the pandemic head-on by ramping up drug innovation and production, they continued to supply a global patient pool with a diverse range of medicines to prevent and treat non-Covid-19 health threats such as cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, HIV infections, malaria, tuberculosis, etc. U.S. President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser Anthony Fauci acknowledged the role played by the industry, saying: “India’s contributions to the global scientific knowledge are well known to all, with strong government…