Business Today 23 July 2023

For someone who leads the country’s largest pharmaceuticals company, 67-year-old Dilip Shanghvi is painfully low profile. But despite the reluctance to be in the public eye, the reclusive billionaire, who features among the Top 10 richest people in India, has been hard at work to script a dramatic turnaround in fortunes for his company, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. Between 2014 and 2018, Shanghvi had been navigating choppy waters. Intense pricing pressures in the US market—where Sun Pharma is a major player—together with regulatory issues and product recalls had been keeping the company’s management on their toes. Besides, its mega acquisition of Ranbaxy Laboratories in 2014 also brought its own set of challenges, especially problems around regulatory compliance, requiring Sun Pharma to improve quality control and manufacturing processes. This apart, the…

SOURCE IMD, IRDAI, WWW.CLIMATE-TRANSPARENCY.ORG 2,227 Human casualties in India due to extreme weather events in 2022, compared to 1,750 in 2021; more than 2.5 million people were also displaced due to natural disasters 5.4 PER CENT Impact of extreme heat conditions on India’s gross domestic product in 2021, amounting to $159 billion ₹2,559 CRORE Total insurance claims raised in the country due to damages suffered from natural disasters in FY21…

₹1,021 PROJECTED NIFTY 50 EPS FOR FY24 COMPARED TO ₹881 (ESTIMATED) IN FY23 AND ₹756 IN FY22, ACCORDING TO EMKAY GLOBAL FINANCIAL SERVICES ₹ 4.61 lakh crore THE CONSOLIDATED NET PROFIT OF BFSI COMPANIES IN FY23, UP 4.43 TIMES FROM ₹1.04 LAKH CRORE IN FY13 ₹ 1.14 lakh crore* CUMULATIVE DIVIDEND PAID BY TCS, VEDANTA AND HINDUSTAN ZINC, THE HIGHEST PAYERS, IN FY23. THE FIGURE STOOD AT ₹40,330 CRORE IN FY22 *Includes dividend paid to non-controlling interests Profits Peak IN FY23, THE COMBINED NET PROFIT OF INDIA INC. SURGED NEARLY FOUR TIMES FROM THE FY20 LOWS Data as of June 19, 2023; Source ACE Equity Surging Sales THE CUMULATIVE REVENUE OF INDIA INC. IN FY23 TOPPED ₹150 LAKH CRORE FOR THE FIRST TIME Data as of June 19, 2023; Source…

▶ WHEN THE FOUNDER of the world’s leading hedge fund says something, it has to be taken seriously. In a tweet during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US, Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates noted, “…He [Modi] and India are in an analogous position to Deng Xiaoping and China in the early 1980s—i.e., at the brink of the fastest growth rates and biggest transformations in the world…”. The 1979 visit by the late Chinese premier saw China and the US agreeing to co-operate in the areas of science and technology, education, commerce, space and culture as well as the opening of consulates. Forty-four years later, Modi may have far surpassed Deng’s record by inking over 30 agreements in areas ranging from high-end technologies to advanced telecommunications, and defence to education,…

DEFENCE Joint production of F-414 fighter jet engines by GE and HAL; proposed procurement of MQ-9B SeaGuardian UAVs; ship repairs TECHNOLOGY Semiconductors; critical energy minerals; advanced telecom; space exploration; quantum computing; AI and cutting-edge research in emerging technologies EDUCATION Pilot to review certain petition-based work visas; establishment of new consulates by the two countries; university-level partnerships in agriculture, energy, health and technology DIPLOMACY The US to join the Indo-Pacific Ocean Initiative and the Indian Ocean dialogue for greater regional coordination; US support for India’s membership to the International Energy Agency (IEA); US-India Global Digital Development Partnership; and a Triangular Cooperation Partnership Source Joint Statement from the US and India…

▶ EXACTLY ONE YEAR, five months, and 22 days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet unveiled the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme to boost the semiconductor ecosystem in India, news came of a company committing to build a $2.7-billion assembly and testing unit in Gujarat. This isn’t the first such application received under the scheme. What makes it special is the company involved: US-headquartered Micron Technology, which makes its own chips and packages, tests them, and directly sells to electronics product companies. More importantly, Micron will enable assembly and testing of both DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) and NAND flash memory products, which can practically go into every type of use case from mobiles to laptops, cars, data centres and more. “Our new assembly and test location in India will enable Micron…