Business Today 6 March 2022

As the Indian economy attempts to rise from the pandemic with renewed vigour and pursue growth, a key engine powering this ambition has to be the banking sector. With the government clearly setting its growth agenda in Budget 2022, the hope is for private investment to crowd in, following the elevated levels of public expenditure. In this scheme of things, India’s banks will need to play a vital role and support the growth push. As the Reserve Bank of India has pointed out in its ‘Trend and Progress of Banking in India’ report, during 2020-21 banks reported a discernible improvement in their asset quality, capital buffers and profitability, notwithstanding the disruptions of the pandemic. But despite these positives, the RBI does issue a clear warning. The central bank says incipient…

Source: Election Commission of India; annual audit reports ₹3,585 CRORE The amount of money spent by the BJP on elections ₹1,405 CRORE The amount of money spent by the Indian National Congress 8.43 PER CENT The percentage of the total amount which is the election outlay of the five other national parties…

Note: The pan-India survey was conducted among more than 30,000 customers on CASHe’s platform. More than 65 per cent of the responses were received from the metro markets of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Pune and Chennai, while the rest 35 per cent were received from other Tier II and Tier III towns. And 34 per cent of the respondents are in the age group of 20-30 years, 52 per cent are 31-40 years, and 14 per cent, 41+ years 33% RESPONDENTS HAVE AVAILED BUY NOW, PAY LATER (BNPL) IN THE PAST ONE YEAR; THE REST WANT TO TRY IT SOON 49% INDIVIDUALS WANT TO USE BNPL FOR BUYING CONSUMER DURABLES, ETC., ON E-COMMERCE PLATFORMS WHILE 29 PER CENT PREFER TO USE IT FOR TRAVEL Are you open to…

JIO’S METAVERSE JIO PLATFORMS IS investing $15 million for a 25 per cent equity stake (on a fully diluted basis) in Pranav Mistry’s Two Platforms Inc. An artificial reality firm, TWO will help Jio fasttrack its adoption of tech such as AI, metaverse and mixed reality. “Going forward, this [partnership] would potentially result in new consumer as well as enterprise use contexts,” says Prabhu Ram, Head – Industry Intelligence Group, at CMR. —NIDHI SINGAL ₹33K CRORE FPIs NET SOLD ₹33,303 CRORE WORTH OF INDIAN SHARES IN JANUARY. THIS IS THE HIGHEST SINGLE-MONTH NET SALES BY FPIs SINCE MARCH 2020, WHEN THEY SOLD SHARES WORTH ₹61,973 CRORE STRUCK BY LIGHT The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has granted approval to the single-shot Sputnik Light vaccine for restricted use in emergency…

The Arms race commenced in the late nineteenth century. Soon the British and the Germans, the Turks and the Greeks, France and Italy were all engaged in one to one, micro conflicts building up arms against each other right up to the First World War. Once the Second World War was over, the Cold War took the arms race to another level involving nuclear stockpiles. While the Cold War is over, the arms race continues between multiple adversaries-Israel vs the rest of the Islamic World, India vs Pakistan, North vs South Korea, China vs US vs Russia etc. A country's strength is today evaluated primarily on the basis of military strength along with economic prowess. The latter is again measured on various factors like physical infrastructure, GDP size/growth, per capita…

RAHUL BAJAJ and I had a rather unusual relationship. He knew my father (the industrialist R.P. Goenka) well and addressed him as guru. The fact that I was much younger never mattered and he always reached out to me. I called him Rahul bhaiya and for me, it was a combination of respect and friendship. Our families knew each other for a few generations and to that extent, this was a long and old connection. Rahul Bajaj used to come home often and have long conversations with my father on our group’s acquisitions. He was a man with a curious mind and the “why and what” always intrigued him. There are two or three incidents that come to mind immediately. At one point, Rahul Bajaj wanted to acquire Ashok Leyland.…