Innholdsfortegnelse for 8 January 2023 i Business Today

The Need for Speed 5G IS ALL SET to revolutionise consumer experience and industrial automation in the New Year. 5G services are expected to be available across the country the over next few months—improving data speed for retail consumers and opening up business opportunities for companies in OTT and gaming. They will also help manufacturers adopt Industry 4.0 practices that allows greater automation and usage of robotics—improving production efficiencies. Is the age of high-speed internet finally upon us? CURRENCY BYTES WHILE THE RESERVE Bank of India (RBI) launched pilot projects for retail and wholesale e-rupee in 2022, it is only in 2023 that the e-rupee may become a reality for you and me. Digital payments are expected to become much faster, transparent and efficient on the back of blockchain technology.…

SINCE CHANGE IS life’s only constant, it ensures that priorities also evolve. The new international airport at Mopa in Goa is a prime example of this dynamism. Prime Minister Narendra Modi indicated as much while inaugurating the country’s 10th greenfield airport on December 11. Assuring that the airport would help ensure all-round development in the region, he said, “The Manohar International Airport is an example of the changing soch (mindset) as well as approach of the government… The luxury tag attached to aviation had led the previous governments to curtail spending on the sector. They failed to understand that even the middle class aspired to travel by air.” Recognised as one of the most favoured tourist destinations globally, Goa’s newest airport is named after the late former chief minister of…

IN EARLY DECEMBER, PTC India, a player in the power trading solutions business, faced a crisis when four of its six non-executive independent directors stepped down from the board. At the core of the issue are serious concerns over issues related to governance. A communiqué sent to the stock exchanges expresses how grave the situation is, with the starting point being PTC India’s subsidiary, PTC Financial Services (PFS). Three independent directors resigned in January 2022 when “the board chose to turn a blind eye to the corporate governance lapses in PFS,” say the outgoing directors in their resignation letters. On the specific issue of PTC, the outgoing board members have stated that their views “are either overlooked or ignored”. Besides, board meetings are called at short notice with agendas not…

BREACHING THE HEAVENS THE GLOBAL SPACE ECONOMY IS EXPECTED TO EXPAND AT A CAGR OF 6 PER CENT TO $600 BILLION BY 2025 FROM $447 BILLION IN 2020 DATA AS OF 2020; PERCENTAGES DENOTE SHARE IN THE TOTAL SPACE ECONOMY SOURCE SPACE FOUNDATION, SATELLITE INDUSTRY, EY AS SKYROOT AEROSPACE’S diminutive 546 kg, 8-metre tall sub-orbital launch vehicle, Vikram-S, zoomed towards the exosphere on November 18, a round of ap-plause erupted in the sounding rocket complex at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota. Elsewhere in India, the founders of more than 100 spacetech start-ups watching the event also celebrated the launch of the country’s first privately-built rocket. Within a week of the launch, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully deployed Anand and…

AFTER SPENDING OVER 20 years helping multinational financial firms set up captive centres in India, Ashish Bhatia felt his job was getting too comfortable and it was time for a change. Seeing the startup fever sweeping the country, Bhatia jumped in. Like most entrepreneurs in their early days, he too struggled and was frantically looking for support when he chanced upon the concept of accelerators. That’s when he started looking at how they operated. “When I launched a start-up, I didn’t know who to talk to. I thought, if someone like me, in spite of a fairly successful corporate career, is struggling so much while doing a start-up, spare a thought for the young founders out there,” says Bhatia. His thesis was simple. India’s start-up ecosystem was expected to grow…

SOURCE DEPT OF AGRICULTURE & FARMERS WELFARE, CMIE, COMMISSION FOR AGRICULTURAL COSTS & PRICES, MEDIA REPORTS 5.2 MILLION HECTARES The likely surge in area under cultivation this rabi season from 62.7 million ha last season 10 PER CENT Pick-up in oilseed sowing till November-end to 8.3 million ha from 7.55 million ha a year ago 21.15 MILLION HA Area under wheat crop till November-end, compared to 20.06 million ha in the corresponding period last year 159.68 MILLION TONNES India’s total foodgrain production in the FY22 rabi season, 16.7 per cent higher than the 136.78 million tonnes five years ago…

AIR INDIA, NOW a part of the Tata group, may abandon the Maharaja mascot as the airline’s management perceives the caricature of the mustachioed emperor in red livery as “outdated”. However, that may not prevent the 90-year-old carrier from soon announcing a king-size order for 500 wide- and narrow-body planes. As the initial disbelief at the news—reported by Reuters citing unnamed industry sources—made way for acceptance, speculation mounted about the structure of the proposed deal that may be worth more than $100 billion. It is expected that the order, not yet confirmed by the Tatas, may comprise a mix of 400 single-aisle narrow-body and 100 wide-body jets from both Boeing and Airbus. “The need to be aligned with the current new-age fleets of competition was highly pronounced for Air India,…

2022 ▸ HSBC MF acquires L&T MF ▸ Baroda MF merges with BNP MF ▸ Sundaram MF buys Principal MF 2016 ▸ Edelweiss MF acquires JPMorgan MF ▸ Goldman Sachs MF merges with Nippon India MF 2014 ▸ Aditya Birla Sun Life MF acquires ING MF ▸ HDFC MF acquires Morgan Stanley MF 2004 ▸ UTI AMC buys IL&FS MF ▸ Principal AMC buys Sun F&C MF ▸ PNB MF merged with Principal AMC 2002 ▸ Registration of Jardine Fleming MF, Indian Bank MF and Anagram Wellington MF cancelled ▸ Templeton India AMC buys Pioneer ITI MF ▸ Taurus MF acquires all BOI MF schemes SOURCE VALUE RESEARCH…

▸ AI NOT ONLY AFFECTS INDIVIDUALS, BUT ALSO COMMUNITIES AND SOCIETY ▸ DATA ITSELF CANNOT MAKE DECISIONS, SO AI SYSTEMS NEED INTERVENTION AND CHECKS AT ALL LEVELS ▸ COMPANIES INFUSE A LOT OF DATA FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES INTO AI SYSTEMS, BUT FAIL TO ANALYSE AND UTILISE THEM BASED ON THE FEATURE THEY ARE TRYING TO CAPTURE ▸ TRUSTWORTHY AI STANDARDS ARE LEFT TO THE DISCRETION OF THE PEOPLE WHO WRITE AND DEPLOY AN ORGANISATION’S AI ALGORITHMIC MODELS, MAKING IT IMPERATIVE FOR THIS COMMUNITY TO BE EDUCATED ON THE ETHICAL AND SUSTAINABLE USE OF DATA SETS ▸ RESPONSIBLE AI IS NOT MAGIC. IT MEANS CONDENSING VARIOUS DATA SETS ACCORDING TO WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO IDENTIFY ISSUES AND TAKE STEPS TO ELIMINATE THEM…

MARTINI, SHAKEN NOT STIRRED” said James Bond in Sean Connery’s third appearance as Bond in the 1964 film Goldfinger, and singlehandedly made it one of the most fashionable drinks in popular culture. But did Bond get it wrong? Should a martini be stirred and not shaken. “A shaken martini is way colder for the first few moments after it’s poured but soon after it creeps up to room temperature. And no one likes a room temperature martini. A stirred martini will have less dilution and stay colder longer. So if you prefer your martinis sipped in a couple of sips, nice and snappy, like Bond, have it shaken. Me, I like to savour mine so I’ll have it stirred,” says Joe McCanta, Global Brand Ambassador, Grey Goose. However, he adds:…

A DIFFERENT BALL GAME APART FROM THE GAME ITSELF, ANCILLARY CATEGORIES RELATED TO SPORTS ARE ALSO EXPECTED TO GROW MANIFOLD IN INDIA IN THE COMING YEARS Source: Anand Rathi Advisors GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS IN CRICKET-CRAZY INDIA, OTHER SPORTS ARE ALSO GRABBING EYEBALLS (Viewership in million) 400 IPL 2022 227 PRO KABADDI (SEASON 8) 130 INDIAN SUPER LEAGUE (2021-22) Source: ‘Sports Broadcasting on TV’ report by CII, KPMG, Indian Broadcasting & Digital Foundation TOP SCORERS AMONG THE WORLD’S HIGHEST PAID PLAYERS, INDIAN CRICKETER VIRAT KOHLI WAS RANKED 61 IN 2022 Total income ($ million) Total income includes salary, prize money and endorsements in 2022 CENTRE FORWARD THE GOVERNMENT’S SPENDING ON SPORTS HAS INCREASED MORE THAN 3x IN THE PAST 10 YEARS Figures are actual spending in ₹ crore by the government…

HINDUSTAN UNILEVER LTD (HUL), the country’s leading fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) player, is boosting its health & wellness products portfolio by picking up stakes in two home-grown companies—Zywie Ventures and Nutritionalab—for ₹334 crore. HUL plans to acquire a 51 per cent-stake in Zywie Ventures for ₹264 crore, while the rest of the shares will be acquired by it after three years based on a pre-agreed valuation criteria. And the FMCG major will pick up 19.8 per cent in Nutritionalab for ₹70 crore. Founded in 2016—the maker of premium lifestyle protein, and hair & beauty supplements under the OZiva brand name—Zywie has an annual revenue run rate of over ₹100 crore, with more than 3 million consumers in its fold. And Nutritionalab’s annual revenue stands at ₹50 crore, while it serves…

A LACKLUSTRE 2022 has shown Bollywood that it needs to go that extra mile to draw in the crowds again. With star power and the opening weekend rush failing to carry a movie beyond the first Sunday in the face of the strong content found on OTTs, the theatre game is not the same anymore. The year—where even big names such as Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar, among others, failed to draw in cinemagoers—has seen a string of films from the South, especially Telugu and Kannada, give Bollywood a run for its money. The two recent successes in Hindi cinema—Drishyam 2, remade from Malayalam, and Kantara, dubbed into Hindi from Kannada—has further driven home the point. Drishyam 2 crossed ₹200 crore in net collections, while Kantara came to Bollywood’s rescue…

Douglas W. Diamond, often called the founder of modern banking theory, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2022 for path-breaking research aimed at enhancing the understanding of the role of banks in the economy, especially during financial crises. The 69-year-old Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business shared the prize with economists Ben Bernanke of the Brookings Institution and Philip Dybvig of Washington University in St. Louis. Over a video call with Business Today’s Anand Adhikari, Diamond shares his views on the developing economic situation around the world and its implications for India. Edited excerpts: Q: What is the long-term impact of higher inflation, higher interest rates, and the strengthening of the dollar in emerging markets, particularly…

Now that a few spacetech start-ups have had major demonstrable successes, how much ground has been covered by IN-SPACe in the two years since it was founded? Since the full team at INSPACe started operating only in April 2022, we have practically been active for eight months. And a lot has been achieved in that timeframe. We have facilitated requests for authorisation, handholding and the use of ISRO facilities or tech transfers [that we] received from the private sector. How many proposals have you received till this point? So far, we have received 160 such proposals. Almost half of them are start-ups and the rest are established companies. Among these, five were authorised for space activities. AgniKul’s pre-orbital launch is also in the pipeline. There are a couple of more companies…