Innholdsfortegnelse for 11 December 2022 i Business Today

EDTECH WAS ONE of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic-induced lockdowns, managing to grow at breakneck speed through 2020 and 2021. With schools and offline coaching centres shut due to Covid-19-related restrictions, India’s 260-million-odd student population took to online learning by the hordes. But come 2022, things would change dramatically. Without the cushion of venture capital and the screen time of locked-down learners, the plans of India’s edtech start-ups have gone haywire. From mass layoffs to suspension of marketing spends to other cost-cutting exercises—one start-up, a unicorn no less, has even stopped providing complimentary snacks and meals in its offices—online education firms are clutching at the last straws for survival. What’s worse is that students also seem to be losing interest in remote learning. In the first three months of…

THE FUTURE OF electric mobility is bright in India, says a recent report by the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA). The country’s EV market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 49 per cent by 2030 and may even cross annual sales of 17 million units, it says. What this also points to is that over the next few years, the EV battery manufacturing and recycling space should see immense growth. While the space is still nascent, a report by the NITI Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute says India’s EV battery market could surpass $15 billion by 2030, while market research firm IMARC expects the space to grow at a CAGR of 27.12 per cent in 2022-2027. Already, global players like Foxconn and domestic ones like Amara Raja are…

INDIA’S LARGEST COMPANIES have been ranked based on market capitalisation by Business Today every year since 1992. This year’s rankings are based on the average market capitalisation of the companies for the 12-month period from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022. We began with a master sample of 4,271 listed and actively traded companies. We have used the BSE market capitalisation for all cases, except companies that are listed only on the NSE. Some 230 companies that were not traded on at least 20 per cent of the 249 total trading days in the October 2021-September 2022 period, were excluded from the list. Thereafter, we extracted the average (daily) market capitalisation of each company over the period under consideration and used it to rank the top 1,000 companies For…

ONE OF THE mega events in 2022 for the stock markets was the listing of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). It was not the first time that an insurance company had got listed in India, but what created the euphoria and excitement around it was the sheer size and scale of its operations. Consider this: The behemoth insurer alone had assets under management worth ₹41 lakh crore in FY22, which is more than the current (October) market size of the entire mutual fund industry of ₹39.50 lakh crore. Not to mention, it has a huge policyholder (lives insured) base of 280.7 million, 1.33 million agents and 104,036 employees spread across the length and breadth of the country. Therefore, when the government announced its plans to list LIC, one question…

A COMPANY THAT—despite undergoing a rapid transition—has continued reporting extraordinary growth for 12 consecutive quarters. This would perhaps be the most appropriate description of Tata Power. But in these times of Industry 4.0, where there is a discernible global shift towards renewable energy (RE) sources, the company’s road to transformation is not without its fair share of challenges. More so if you are an entity with a 107-year-old legacy that has 68 subsidiaries in India and overseas, along with 34 joint ventures and five associates across the entire power value chain. “What is important for us is consistent performance… [which] is reflected in the market price and market capitalisation,” Praveer Sinha, CEO & Managing Director, tells BT on a busy November afternoon. “We have successfully come out of several challenges…

AS 5G NETWORKS roll out across Indian cities, stakeholders in the country’s vibrant telecom sector, the second largest in the world with a base of 1.17 billion wireless and wireline subscribers as of July 2022, prepare to tap into new areas for growth in a disruptive world. The wireline segment received a major boost from the Covid-19-induced lockdowns with an uptick in subscribers opting for wired broadband internet, shaped doubtless by the remote-work and remote-education paradigm. With cinema houses suspending shows, people turned to over-the-top (OTT) platforms for their daily dose of entertainment. However, the telecom sector struggled due to internecine competition, adverse judicial and government stands on spectrum pricing and adjusted gross revenue (AGR) disputes, and digital players building new businesses on 4G superhighways that eluded telcos. The BT500…

MIND-BOGGLING VALUATIONS. Much-awaited listings. Stocks getting pummelled. Anyone tracking the Indian stock markets will tell you that this has been the usual story for new-age companies that were listed over the past year or so. While the listing gave the start-ups’ existing investors a chance to sell their holdings and get high returns, the stock price crash thereafter left retail investors frustrated. Amid all this, old-economy or legacy companies have provided the much-needed salve. While these firms have been around for years, the recent surge in investor interest has been because of factors like rising commodity prices, geopolitical uncertainty or their smart moves. Their revenue growth has been steady, and profitability has been on expected lines. And in these uncertain times, this predictable story has found favour with investors too.…

1 GAUTAM ADANI FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, ADANI GROUP ₹13.58 LAKH CRORE* TOTAL VALUE OF PROMOTER HOLDING THE GROUP COMPRISES LISTED ENTITIES SUCH AS ADANI ENTERPRISES, ADANI POWER, ADANI PORTS AND SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE, ADANI WILMAR, ADANI GREEN ENERGY, ADANI TRANSMISSION AND ADANI TOTAL GAS *THE RECENT ACQUISITIONS OF ACC AND AMBUJA CEMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN INCLUDED 2 MUKESH AMBANI CHAIRMAN AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, RELIANCE INDUSTRIES ₹7.99 LAKH CRORE TOTAL VALUE OF PROMOTER HOLDING RELIANCE INDUSTRIES’ BUSINESSES INCLUDE HYDROCARBON EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION, PETROLEUM REFINING AND MARKETING, PETROCHEMICALS, RETAIL AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS. AMBANI IS ALSO THE PROMOTER OF NETWORK 18 MEDIA & INVESTMENTS AND JUST DIAL, WHICH ARE PART OF THIS YEAR’S BT500 LIST 3 RAJIV BAJAJ, SHEKHAR BAJAJ, SANJIV BAJAJ AND FAMILY PROMOTERS, BAJAJ GROUP ₹5.11 LAKH CRORE TOTAL VALUE OF PROMOTER…

SOURCE CMIE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK, STATISTA 18 PER CENT Surge in wheat prices (wholesale) in the past 12 months till November 1 in India ₹36.60 PER KG The retail price of atta on October 31, 2022, compared with ₹30.80 per kg a year ago 106.84 MILLION TONNES Total production of wheat in India—the second-largest producer—in FY22, down 2.50 per cent year-on-year 102.85 MILLION TONNES The average consumption of wheat in India in the past two years till March 31, 2022…

THE ARENA OF bids to acquire debt-laden Future Retail is seeing some interesting names. Apart from the Adani Group and Reliance Industries, names such as the DS Group, Dickey Alternative Investment Trust, Shalimar Corporation and Nalwa Steel and Power are also in the fray. In all, there are 16 bidders. Given that Reliance already owns a significant number of the Kishore Biyani-promoted Future Retail’s stores (Big Bazaar being a prominent name), what remains of the company will be interesting to see. For a process that has long been hanging fire, it will likely take some time before a winner emerges.…

INDIA INC. POSTED financial results for the quarter ended September 2022 largely in line with expectations. Earnings growth in Q2FY23 was led by BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), automobiles and telecom players, while sectors such as metals, oil and gas, and select cement and consumer durables firms dragged down the overall growth of the Nifty 50 companies. The combined consolidated net profit of all the Nifty 50 firms retreated 1.45 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to ₹1.49 lakh crore during the quarter under review. But if we exclude BFSI, then the profit in Q2FY23 stands at ₹92,753 crore—a decline of 16.80 per cent. On the other hand, gross sales (ex-BFSI) jumped 27.76 per cent to ₹13.68 crore. According to V.K. Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, the Q2…

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. It’s not just hoteliers and real estate agents who harp on this as the most important aspect of their business. Retailers, too, say much the same thing. Pick the right location for a store, and half the battle is won. Or is it? The fact is, choosing the right location for a store is an art and science in itself. And as you go deeper into the other aspects of the retail business, you realise that location is not the only thing that a retailer needs to get right. Other components include understanding areas such as consumer trends, spending patterns, population density, competition, supply chain, and above all coming to terms with an operations-intensive business. And in India, this is just half the story. Consider the country’s…

ON AUGUST 18, PUBLIC SECTOR COMPANY Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd (IRCTC) floated a tender to onboard a consultant to monetise passenger data, including basic user details such as name, address, phone number, age, email ID, payment mode, class of journey, and even login and passwords. The tender mentioned that the revenue generation potential of the initiative would be to the tune of ₹1,000 crore. A nationwide furore followed, topped by a summons to its top officials by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, then led by Shashi Tharoor. Before the date of the summons, the company decided to withdraw the tender at its AGM. Due to flip-flops like these, financial consultancy firm Prabhudas Lilladher maintains a neutral stance on the company. “Its data monetisation plans got cancelled…

THE VANISHING SPECTRE of the pandemic has left in its wake contrasting shadows in different segments of the healthcare space. While hospitals showed strong recovery due to a rise in patient footfalls and surgeries, diagnostics companies’ revenues tanked following declining Covid-19 testing in the past two quarters. And while major pharmaceutical companies are seeing revenues recover, their ranks in the BT500—based on average market capitalisation from October 2021 to September 2022—have mostly fallen below 2021. For instance, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, India’s largest pharma company, saw its rank slip to 27 this year from 24 in 2021. But its consolidated Q4FY22 revenues grew 10.9 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to ₹9,386 crore. And in Q2FY23, the company recorded double-digit top line growth and strong margins driven by market share gain in India…

THE LIST (1-14 / 500) THE LIST (15-49 / 500) THE LIST (50-83 / 500) THE LIST (84-117 / 500) THE LIST (118-152 / 500) THE LIST (153-187 / 500) THE LIST (188-222 / 500) THE LIST (223-257 / 500) THE LIST (258-292 / 500) THE LIST (293-327 / 500) THE LIST (328-362 / 500) THE LIST (363-397 / 500) THE LIST (398-431 / 500) THE LIST (432-466 / 500) THE LIST (467-500 / 500) Average market cap of Adani Power more than doubles Newly-listed FSN E-Commerce (Nykaa) is now in the top 100 Rankings of Biocon, Lupin, Alkem Labs, Abbott India decline in 2022 Average market cap of Patanjali Foods rises over 37% Tata Tele (Maharashtra) sees 551% growth in average market cap Solar Industries rises 51 ranks to…

SIDDHARTHA NANGIA, Co-founder of Smytten—India’s largest sampling-based e-commerce platform—remembers a lovely story from his childhood. On his tenth birthday whenever someone asked him what he wanted as a present he said he wanted a badminton racquet. “I ended up receiving seven badminton racquets as presents,” smiles the 45-year-old. Nangia has been passionate about sports, especially badminton, since he was a child. Today he plays all four racquet sports—badminton, tennis, table tennis and squash, but badminton remains his first love. He plays regularly on weekends and at least twice during weekdays. “Sports is a great teacher and tells you a lot about a person’s character,” says Nangia adding that if he wasn’t in the corporate sector, he would have been “doing something with sports”. He admits that if a person’s CV…

Note: In 1992, the market capitalisation (m-cap) on December 24, 1991, was used; from 1993 to 1996, the m-cap of the financial year ended March was used; for 1997-2001, the average m-cap between April 1 and March 31 was used; for 2002-2016, the average m-cap between April 1 and September 30 was used; for 2017-2021, the average m-cap between October 1 and September 30 was considered. Before 2011, PSUs were listed separately Source: ACE Equity, annual reports of companies 19 THE NUMBER OF COMPANIES THAT GOT LISTED IN THE STUDY PERIOD AND DEBUTED ON THIS YEAR’S BT500 LIST ₹7.3 lakh crore CONSOLIDATED CASH AND CASH BALANCE OF THE BT500 COMPANIES, EXCLUDING BFSI, AGAINST A TOTAL DEBT OF ₹30 LAKH CRORE, AS OF MARCH 31, 2022 ₹10 lakh crore CONSOLIDATED NET…

THE MESSAGE FROM the UN is loud and clear. All climate change talks over the next decade will prove ineffective if immediate actions to stop the earth’s rising temperatures aren’t acted upon. The point became apparent at the recently held 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) when UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned world leaders that humanity is on a “highway to climate hell”. This year’s summit was focussed on the inadequate ambition to curb global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and aimed to fully implement the promise of the Paris Agreement—a legally binding international treaty on climate change that envisages keeping the global temperature rise in this century below 2° C of pre-industrial levels. Following intense negotiations, a much-delayed and long-awaited promise of…

Ray Dalio, the Founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, is one of the most important voices in global financial markets. TIME magazine lists him among the 100 most influential people on the planet, and he is widely known as the Steve Jobs of investing,, such is the inventiveness he brought to fund management. In an exclusive interview with Business Today’s Global Business Editor Udayan Mukherjee, Dalio talks about the burning issues in the global economy today and warns of dire days ahead. Edited excerpts: Q: Ray, they call you the Steve Jobs of investing—does that annoy you? Or do you take it as a compliment? A: I was an admirer of Steve. He was an independent thinker who came up with great and different ways of doing…

“THE INDIVIDUAL INVESTOR should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.” American economist Benjamin Graham’s advice seems to encompass all that is currently happening in the Indian stock markets. There is an influx of individual investors, many of whom are looking to make a quick gain. The swift and sudden rally in many stocks is fuelling this behaviour. But that does not mean that the Indian stock market is a speculator’s den. The arena is replete with companies that have emerged as consistent wealth creators. Plus, they also boast impressive growth in terms of profitability. These performers are what the annual BT500 listing is all about. Started in 1992, the ranking of the biggest 500 companies (by market capitalisation) throws up several interesting insights each year. The ranking…

TATA MOTORS, INDIA’S third-largest carmaker, is well known for its risk-taking nature. Be it with the launch of India’s first true-blue sports utility vehicle (SUV) Tata Safari in 1998, or now with its aggressive push into India’s nascent electric vehicles (EV) market, the homegrown automaker is at its competitive best. This competitive intensity is also reflected in the carmaker’s performance on the BT500 2022 list, where it has climbed 15 spots to No. 33, and its average market cap has jumped 72.1 per cent to ₹1.51 lakh crore during the study period (October 2021-September 2022). While all is well for the firm domestically, its UK-based subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has hit a speed bump. “It [Tata Motors] exists in the global market and its financials depend a lot on…

THE CLIMATE CRISIS is real. Countries, cities and companies have commenced work towards abating greenhouse gases (GHG), yet the past eight years (2015 to 2022) are on track to be the eight warmest on record, fuelled by ever-rising greenhouse gas concentrations and accumulated heat (per the WMO Provisional State of the Global Climate in 2022 report). This has resulted in extreme heat waves, drought and devastating floods, affecting millions and costing billions this year. Companies have been adhering to the protocols for effectively measuring their GHG emissions, but that’s mostly restricted to Scope 1 (direct emissions) and Scope 2 (emissions from direct purchases of energy). The indirect emissions, which occur in activities outside the boundary of an organisation—such as vendors, suppliers, etc., which are external entities but are inextricably part…

For 38-year-old Mathew Joseph, CEO and Co-founder of Sleepyhead—an online-only home lifestyle brand, music has been a part of his life since childhood. “I started playing the piano when I was five and later moved to the keyboard,” says Joseph, who was introduced to everything from western classical to Indian classical and heavy metal by his parents who loved music. So which is his favourite genre? “It doesn’t exist. It depends totally on my mood.” Joseph goes from playing soft western classical such as compositions by Beethoven to heavy metal such as music by Ozzy Osbourne depending upon how he is feeling. “The keyboard is quite versatile to bring any form of music to life,” he says. While he was trained to play the piano as a child in boarding…