Innholdsfortegnelse for 6-May-2018 i Business Today

RECENT economic data shows that the Indian economy has put the disruptions caused by the demonetisation of specified banknotes in November 2016 and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax in July 2017 firmly behind it. The Index of Industrial Production shows that manufacturing is improving. The Wholesale Price Index and Consumer Price Index show that inflation is under control. The GDP growth for 2018/19 should be anywhere between 7.3 per cent and 7.6 per cent, according to different forecasts. There are, of course, potential dangers, including a trade war triggered by US President Donald Trump. But a bigger danger could be the relentlessly rising crude prices. The BJP-led NDA government had been very lucky in its first three years as far as crude prices were concerned. It had…

FIRST, THE INCOME TAX RETURN (ITR) form was called ‘Saral’ (easy). Then in 2011/12, it was renamed ‘Sahaj’ (together), implying getting all information in one place. If Saral and Sahaj were meant to simplify ITR-1 for the salaried class so that an individual could file returns without the help of a chartered accountant, today it is far from that. New regulations require salaried employees earning up to ₹50 lakh annually to provide a salary breakup, including non-taxable allowances and perquisites as well as profit in lieu of salary, for the first time. They also need to give details of properties and income from them. However, perquisite details are already provided by employers to the IT department. There are fears that it is a case of ‘big brother watching’. Instead of…

THE PARLIAMENTARY panel scrutinising the expenditure plans of the Department of Food and Public Distribution in the Union Budget 2018/19 made an interesting observation. Of the ₹50,499 crore earmarked by the department towards capital expenditure during FY2017/18, only ₹6,431 crore was utilised until December 31, 2017, it was found. The committee said that the gross underutilisation of the budgetary allocation proved the lack of perspective planning. It also resulted in lesser funds for warehouse construction for the Food Corporation of India (the country’s premier food procurement agency), required to strengthen PDS operations and timely implementation of several government schemes. Unspent budgetary allocations will help the government maintain its fiscal deficit targets. But the task of providing relief to India’s vast rural and agrarian population, done through procurement of foodgrains at…

9 THE RIGHT DOSE WHAT: Pharma Conclave 2018 WHEN: May 9, New Delhi WHAT TO LOOK FOR: India has not yet realised its potential to develop a strong, research-based pharmaceutical industry that can produce innovative medicines. The ASSOCHAM conclave will debate the multiple initiatives needed across infrastructure, financing, human resources, and the legal and regulatory framework to enable India to emerge as a preferred destination for pharmaceutical innovation. 11 DEFENCE HUDDLE WHAT: CII Defence Conclave WHEN: May 11, Ahmedabad WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The second edition of the conclave aims to bring together leaders from the government, industry and academia to exchange perspective and information about critical defence offset policies, do sector analysis and chalk out manufacturing technology programmes for the production and sustainment of indigenous defence systems. 11-12 AN…

WHAT IS AN E-WAY BILL It is a way bill generated on the GST portal giving details of shipment — sender, receiver, kind of goods, value of goods, destination, etc PURPOSE OF E-WAY BILL To track movement of goods and check tax evasion WHO GENERATES IT The sender, the receiver or the transporter FORMAT OF E-WAY BILL Part A contains GSTIN of recipient, place of delivery (PIN code), invoice/challan number and date, value of goods, HSN code, transport document number (Goods Receipt Number or Railway Receipt Number or Airway Bill Number or Bill of Lading Number) and reasons for transportation. Part B mentions transporter details (vehicle number) THRESHOLD Consignments with value of more than ₹50,000 should be accompanied by e-way bills VALIDITY For less than 100 km, the bill is…

TODAY YOU DO NOT HAVE TO go far to experience five-star living. Upscale hotels are popping up faster than you realise and they are closer to home. Or you can zip across the country to find your dream destination and live a decadent life for a couple of days with the family in tow – a perfect way to reboot one’s life. From epicures or backers of sustainable luxury to young adventurers looking for premium and personalised experiences, India’s leisure travellers are a rapidly growing segment. And now that the millennials have started to globetrot passionately – many of them opting for bleisure and mixing business and leisure travel – Indian hoteliers acknowledge that leisure travel is on a roll. The year 2017 was tough for the hospitality industry due…

ENVY SHOULD BE RECOGNISED FOR BEING A SOCIAL COMPARISON TOOL ENVYING SOMEONE for what they have or what they’ve done is an intense emotion that everyone goes through at some point in their lives. It can involve feeling absolute pleasure in the very thought of harm coming to the subject of envy and even going so far as to cause it. One may not like to acknowledge it because of how unworthy it makes us feel, but we need not be ashamed of envy. Shankar Vedanta, journalist, podcaster and expert in human behaviour and social science, in his podcast Hidden Brain, says that envy should be recognised for being a social comparison tool that it is. We are hard-wired to notice these, as are most animals, because we need to…

IF YOU think asthma and breathing problems are triggered by pollution or constant exposure to fungus-contaminated air conditioners, it is time to study the symptoms a bit more closely. Doctors point out that the impact of poor sleep on pulmonary issues or breathing disorders is a growing area of research for pulmonologists. “Central sleep apnea and obstructive sleep apnea are serious disorders in which one’s breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep, and these are a growing concern,” says Dr Reddy of Rainbow Hospitals. Then there is obesity-induced asthma. A person is said to be obese when the Body Mass Index is 30 or more and this condition may reduce one’s lung power over time. One should also check the peak expiratory flow, the measure of one’s air expiration capacity.…

Unscrupulous promoters are trying to manipulate the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). And the provision they seem to be ‘misusing’ most is the one that allows corporate defaulters to start bankruptcy proceedings against themselves. As of now, the IBC provides a stay on the continuation of proceedings or suits, against a corporate debtor and its assets if insolvency proceedings are pending. There are many such cases – out of 540 insolvency proceedings approved by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) till December 2017, 108 were initiated by the corporate defaulters themselves. Many of these were initiated either to avoid recovery proceedings under earlier acts such as the SARFAESI Act and the RDDB Act or to safeguard promoters’ personal assets. But the regulator and adjudicating authorities are taking note of the…

STAR INDIA has paid a staggering ₹16,347.5 crore for the IPL rights and is known to have increased its ad rate by 20-25 per cent as it needs to earn ₹54 crore per match to be profitable. Although the broadcaster claims it has managed to sell 90 per cent of its IPL ad inventory, the talk in the industry is that Star is far from achieving the ₹54 crore target per match. So, in a situation where it is already struggling with IPL, why would it shell out another ₹6,128 crore for the BCCI rights? Industry sources look at it as a well-thought-out strategy not only to keep Sony Pictures Network at bay but also to stave off Reliance. Reliance has the Jio edge and also upped its stake in…

NOW SPOTIFY IS A ‘LISTED’ COMPANY The world’s largest digital music-streaming company is 10 years old and has never been profitable. But its unconventional IPO – it did a direct listing – was above expectations when it debuted on NYSE with an opening price of $165.90, well above its $132 reference price. Based on the total number of shares outstanding post the listing, it has a market value of about $27.8 billion. NOVARTIS TO BUY GENE THERAPY FIRM FOR $8.7 BN Swiss drugmaker Novartis will pay $8.7 billion to acquire AveXis, a US-based gene therapy firm specialising in spinal muscular atrophy. It is Novartis’s second big deal in the gene therapy space after it acquired Spark’s blindness treatment business Luxturna. The company recently sold its stake in the consumer health…

The second term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was widely perceived to have been marred by corruption and policy paralysis. The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came into power promising sweeping changes in social and economic structures of the country. For the first four years, the government went into an overdrive and launched over 110 schemes and initiatives, including repackaging some of the old schemes of the UPA government. With general elections nearing, there’s a belief that the government might slow down on its reforms agenda. Given that development and good governance were the focal points of the last general elections, can the government afford to sit quietly? It tried to hedge bets in the last budget by introducing the world’s largest government-funded healthcare scheme —…

AKZO NOBEL In early 2012, minority shareholders objected to Akzo Nobel India’s decision to merge three of its unlisted subsidiaries with the listed parent, saying they were overvalued, but failed to prevent it SESA STERLITE Shareholders opposed Vedanta Resources effort to merge Sesa Goa with Sterlite Industries in mid-2012 to form Sesa Sterlite, and thereafter transfer two unlisted entities, Vedanta Aluminium – loss making and controversial – along with Madras Aluminium to the merged entity. The merger finally went through in 2014 TATA MOTORS In mid-2014, Tata Motors’ proposal to increase its remuneration to two of its executive directors and compensation to the legal heir of former managing director Karl Slym (who died in office in January that year), was opposed by shareholders. The proposal was, however, okayed in January…

Q: Why did you choose to crowdsource? A: We didn’t want a technology-driven innovation, where we add a random new flavour and hope that consumers like it. We wanted to go new ways and, most important, to start with consumer needs. How well does it work? Very well. When we first did this, in 2012, we received more than 800 ideas. They ranged from obvious ones we could have come up with ourselves to crazy ones, such as licorice-flavoured drinks and strange colours. The diversity of ideas has expanded our imagination, because we may have blind spots or be overly influenced by something we tried years ago that didn’t work. How did consumers’ “likes” influence your evaluation of ideas? We viewed them as qualitative, not quantitative, data. An idea that…

“OUR VALUE CREATION IS VISIBLE IN TERMS OF OUR EARNINGS AT AN ASSET LEVEL WITH REVENUE GROWING BY 2.5 TIMES”Ritesh Agarwal, Founder, OYO RITESH AGARWAL, the founder of hotel room aggregator OYO, is firmly focused on the future. “Initially, it was about the difficulty of convincing potential partners and recruits to work with us. Since it was an untested business model, hotel owners were unsure about the value we could bring. But once they saw the impact, which reflected in higher customer repeats and revenues, as well as in operations, revenue management and CRM (customer relationship management) becoming more efficient through the use of OYO apps, they were convinced.” OYO started in 2013 as a full-service operator but a year or so later changed its strategy to focus on room…

SCIENTISTS CAN LOOK AT PEOPLE’S BRAINWAVES TO SEE NOT ONLY WHETHER THEY HAVE HEARD A PARTICULAR SOUND, BUT WHETHER THEY HAVE ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD IT RESEARCHERS are surprising themselves with their breakthroughs in mind reading experiments. There already are several demonstrations of researchers being able to ‘see’ the images a person’s brain is seeing with frightening ease and accuracy – using the widely available EEG. A neural network is presented with thousands of images and their characteristics made into short work of learning. The algorithm is then taught to match the characteristics with recorded EEG patterns. In this way, it puts two and two together. At the University of Toronto, AI has actually been able to reconstruct faces using information read from EEG scans. The applications in crime investigation are obvious.…

SELDOM DOES A phone bowl you over with its design. Nokia 8 Sirocco is a fine piece of hardware crafted from a single piece of stainless steel. The screen is covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 with curved edges that blends into the thin metal strip on the side panels. Even at 7.5 mm thickness, it is surprisingly razor thin. And being IP67 certified, makes it water resistant. The 5.5-inch 2k display does a great job at colour reproduction. Gaming and video streaming on the curved edge-to-edge display is a delight. The Nokia 8 Sirocco runs Android One – the pure stock Android OS – which means there is no bloatware or custom UI. Our review unit, running Android 8.1.0, consumed only 13 GB of the 128 GB of internal…

IF ALL COMMUNICATION at the workplace were to end with a specific action point, much fewer meetings would be needed and much more work would get done. If you look back at conversations with colleagues, meetings and e-mails, you’ll be surprised at how often they end ‘in the air’, with no one being quite sure what the next step is and who’s going to take it. If the end of a meeting or work-related conversation could end on specifics rather than over-detailing in the beginning and middle, everyone would make much more headway. For example, someone on your team comes up to you with the complaint that he or she wants to move to another location. If it’s not out of the question, say something to take it forward. Instead…

Santro: The Car that Built a Company By B.V.R. Subbu Hachette Pages: 316 Price: ₹599 JOINT VENTURES SEEMED to be the norm for entering the Indian auto sector. Yet, many did not live up to the potential. Why did the past unfold as it did? Was there another model that could have been adopted? In Santro: The Car that Built a Company, author B.V.R Subbu shares the approach, strategy and execution plan followed by Hyundai Motors India in the late 1990s leading to the launch of the Santro in 1998 and the roll-out of the one millionth car in 2006. There are interesting details on the start of the South Korean private sector investments in India that eventually led to Hyundai announcing plans to set up manufacturing in India, its…

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck By Mark Manson Harper Collins Price: ₹499 Thinking, Fast and Slow By Daniel Kahneman Penguin Price: ₹499 Attitude Is Everything: Change Your Attitude Change Your Life! By Jeff Keller Collins Price: ₹199 Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of Spacex and Tesla is Shaping Our Future By Ashlee Vance Virgin Books Price: ₹699 Catalyst By Chandramouli Venkatesan India Portfolio Price: ₹299 *Top books by sales for Mar 28 - Apr 11, 2018; Includes only books released after Jan 1, 2015; Information provided by…

THE ECONOMY might be showing signs of improvement, but consumer confidence in the metros has actually dipped, according to a RBI survey released recently. It was conducted in six metros – Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi – and had 5,297 respondents. The survey results showed that consumer confidence in March 2018 had actually dipped from that reported in December 2017. The current expectations index was in the pessimistic zone since March 2017, but what was worrying was that future expectations were also low. The perception of households about the general economic situation had dived deeply while the one-year outlook had also deteriorated (although it was still in the optimistic zone) since the last round. The employment expectations of the urban households surveyed were also low.…

Though the Modi government has taken various measures to improve the health of agricultural sector over the past three-four years, farmers are not happy. That is because some good schemes are taking time to show results while several initiatives have been killed even before they could take off. The examples of failed but good initiatives include land leasing reform and more recently, the minimum support prices or MSP for agricultural commodities. I will discuss the dynamics of MSP. The Union Budget 2018-19 contains several goodies for agricultural growth and farmers’ welfare. One announcement was MSP on various agricultural commodities would be based on total production cost plus 50 per cent margin. This has been the demand of farmers and farmers’ organisations for several years. Implementing the new MSP, based on…

In recent times, the use (or misuse) of customer data has been hogging headlines. In a parallel world, not so far away, it has been in the news for another reason–taxation. Whether you read the news, buy merchandise or post reviews online, it leaves a digital footprint in the form of data. Such data is collected, and analysed by businesses (digital and otherwise), for targeted advertising. This data also helps businesses improve their offerings, and thereby generate increased revenue. In this scenario, the question being raised globally, including in India, is – who has taxing rights over such revenue. The core principles of international taxation are based on the notion that any value creation is captured in the physical presence (known as permanent establishment) of people, factories, storefronts, etc. Businesses…

DELHI-BASED UMESH SARAF is a seasoned hotelier. He owns 14 hotels in India and Nepal, including properties such as Hyatt Regency, Hyatt Andaz and The Grand in New Delhi, and Grand Hyatt in Mumbai. With a series of distressed hotels coming up for sale, hotel owners like Saraf are waiting in anticipation. Several hotel properties have gone to the NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal), including Marriott Convention Centre and Courtyard by Marriott in Hyderabad, and Taj Gateway Hotel in Kolkata. “There are buyers like us. People have created funds for acquisitions. Some pension funds have been roped in by promoters to buy distressed assets,” Saraf says. For Saraf, this kind of expansion will be different from his previous approach of building hotels from scratch. For starters, the hotel industry has…

EVEN AT 95, John Goodenough is a busy man. He’s looking for the holy grail of battery and energy solutions. Goodenough, the father of lithium-ion batteries that are used in everyday gadgets, research partner Maria Helena Braga and other scientists have been working on new battery tech because, as we are aware, lithium-ion batteries have a tendency to explode and are in any case not as efficient as the world of technology would want today. The research group led by Goodenough describes what it has developed as a ‘safe, low-cost, lithium or sodium rechargeable battery of high energy density and long life’. The low-cost, all-solid-state battery is three times more efficient than lithium ion and can recharge in minutes, making it possible for use in electric vehicles apart from mobile…

GOOGLE HOME SMART SPEAKER LOOKS BETTER THAN THE AMAZON ECHO, BUT ITS ECOSYSTEM IS NOT AS EVOLVED WITH ITS COMPACT SIZE and elegant design, Google Home, in white and grey, blends perfectly with the home décor. The cylindrical smart speaker has a capacitive touch panel on the top that can be used to control volume, play/pause music and activate voice assistant. It also has circular LEDs that indicate the volume level and glow while music is playing or when the assistant is responding to a request. There are two microphones on the top panel that pick up voice commands, and a mute button at the rear. Google Home can be set up using the Google Home app which is available for iOS and Android; we tested it using the latter.…

Q. Your best teacher in business A. It was my late father, Ramanbhai B. Patel, who founded Cadila Laboratories and inspired me during the initial years. Q. One management lesson for young people A. Never lose sight of your goal and keep innovating. It is the differentiator that will always give you the winning edge. Q. The biggest challenge you faced in your career A. When we restructured operations in 1995 and Zydus came into being, we were at ground zero and had to start anew. At the time, we had a shared manufacturing space but no research centre, and a meagre global presence while our peers were already making headway in global expansion, consolidation through mergers and acquisitions and research programmes. For us, the challenge was to ‘project manage’…