Innholdsfortegnelse for 14-Jul-19 i Business Today

THE AVIATION sector is getting serious about cost savings. Last year, SpiceJet operated the country’s first test flight powered by bio-jet fuel, which was followed by fuel saving initiatives of Air India, IndiGo and SpiceJet this year. Now, Turkish ground handling firm Çelebi Aviation has commercially deployed taxibots at the Delhi airport after testing them on narrow-body aircraft (Airbus A320 and Boeing 737) since early this year. Taxibots are used to tow aircraft from gates to the runway, and saves up to 200 kilogram of aviation fuel (ATF). ATF constitutes 30-40 per cent of an airline’s costs, and fuel savings through such measures improve the bottom line. Taxibots, which are controlled by pilots in the cockpit, typically make more sense at large airports such as Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, where…

SWADESHI JAGRAN MANCH Trade & Commerce ▸ Say no to Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership commitments▸ More synergy among government departments for free trade agreements in future▸ Constructive protectionism to complement the Make in India programme▸ Reduction in trade deficit with China▸ No foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail▸ No concessions to the US on ecommerce, data localisation, intellectual property rights Macro & Finance ▸ More stakeholder consultations for disinvestment, especially of Air India▸ Increase in social sector spending▸ Focus on creation of jobs and investing in MSME and agriculture sectors▸ Recapitalisation of banks to fund small and medium enterprises▸ Setting up of development finance institutions to fund infrastructure projects; banks must stay away from the sector ABVP ▸ The National Education Policy must be aligned with the economic road map…

AIR POLLUTION claims over 12 lakh lives in India in a year. But the entire discussion on the topic is focussed on outdoor air pollution. Indoor air quality doesn’t get the attention it deserves, in spite of the fact that we spend most of our time indoors. Aayush Jha, a lawyer by profession, who lived in Bhilai in Chhattisgarh till 2016, was oblivious of the health problems that indoor air pollution can cause. Until he moved to Delhi. It was when his father suffered chest pain due to the dreaded Diwali air pollution that the problem struck home. One solution was to buy an air purifier. But Jha realised that a purifier works in only one room and costs ₹8,000-10,000. Not a convenient, practical solution for a middle-class family. “Clairco…

IT’S BEEN WELL OVER a decade since Business Today started identifying start-ups that have the most potential. Over the years, the list of such start-ups that grew up to become big brands has become longer. Some such as Flipkart, OYO Rooms and Hike messenger have become unicorns. This time around, 134 start-ups filed nominations. They were divided into two categories based on when they were set up – those 0-2-years-old and those that were 2-4-years-old. After vetting by BT’s senior editorial team, the list was down to 62 applicants. Of these, 25 were in first category and 37 in the older category. The jury, however, was provided with a docket that included all applicants. The jury looked at scale and originality of ideas, among other things, before identifying the winners.…

IN A FAST-PACED WORLD where work and non-work boundaries tend to overlap and iconic leaders like Jack Ma, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos praise gruelling office schedules, working smart to push up your performance level a notch or two might not be a bad idea. Most of us want to succeed without tilting the work-life balance too dangerously (one should be extra careful here as the WHO recently recognised work burnout as a serious medical condition). On the other hand, nations favouring four-day work weeks are also keen on good performance to beat any productivity dip. One way of doing it is to use specialised apps which can reduce distractions and stress and keep one focussed and productive. In fact, these apps are becoming increasingly important as we move away…

Auction Celeb Outfits to Dazzle All ITALIAN ACTOR Claudia Cardinale was an iconic figure in the 1960s with films like The Pink Panther (directed by Blake Edwards) and The Magnificent Cuckold to her credit. She was also considered one of the most stylish women of her times. Now, Sotheby’s will auction about 130 couture and ready-to-wear items from the star’s wardrobe. While the sale will see a wide range of exciting outfits go under the hammer, one of the key items will be a long gown in fuchsia organza that Cardinale wore at the Cannes Red Carpet in 1961. The dress is expected to fetch between €3,000 and €4,000. Other designer outfits, including a Nina Ricci that Cardinale wore at the 37th Academy Awards in Los Angeles in 1965 as…

SAROSH ZAIWALLA, Founder and Senior Partner, Zaiwalla & Co Born and raised in Mumbai, Zaiwalla was the first Asian to set up a City law firm in London, and has been involved in more than 1,200 arbitrations globally. He has also worked for the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Bachchan brothers. Q. The biggest challenge you faced in your career A. I was an ambitious young lawyer from India and wanted to make it big in the city (London). But in the early ’80s, there was open prejudice against Indians from some in the profession. Then an English mentor told me, being an Asian, I would never excel in a big city firm. So, I started on my own but found it difficult to get work from English clients and had…

JET AIRWAYS is officially bankrupt. After exhausting all revival options, Jet’s lenders, led by State Bank of India, has finally taken the airline to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). With most of its assets gone, the lenders of Jet – both financial and operational – have a snowball’s chance in hell to recover even half of their dues. The biggest tangible asset for Jet is its owned aircraft – 10 Boeing 777s and six A330s. The US Exim Bank is planning to take over the Boeing 777s after the airline defaulted on its debt payments. The equity value of A330s is estimated at ₹2,500 crore which is far short of Jet’s current liabilities of over ₹17,000 crore. Even liquidation of…

RAVEENA VELLORE, an 18-year-old student at Manipal Institute of Communication, is an average millennial who spends considerable time browsing social media feeds. This, however, involves a lot of jugglery, as she moves between apps, replies to friends on Snapchat and watches Netflix, all at the same time. It is not easy. So, to remain on top of her social media game, she has hit upon some innovative apps. Bitmoji, for instance, helps her send instant replies to friends in the form of interesting stickers while she is binge-watching her favourite show. Bitmoji — developed by Canada-based Bitstrips and acquired by Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc. in 2016 — helps users create personalised virtual avatars with witty commonly used phrases. Bitmoji is not a one-off. The app world has tens of…

As the Narendra Modi government starts work in the second term, it faces an economy that is in a bad shape. The big driver of the economy, rural India, is in trouble. Add to that slowing consumption, exports not growing enough, fall in sales of automobiles and worrisome prospects on the monsoon this year. What can the new Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, do in the Union Budget to provide the much-needed boost to the economy? To discuss this, Business Today organised a roundtable discussion. The participants included Arvind Virmani, former Chief Economic Advisor in the finance ministry and Chairman, Foundation for Economic Growth & Welfare; Dhruv M. Sawhney, Chairman & Managing Director, Triveni Engineering and Industries; Mahendra Singhi, MD & CEO, Dalmia Cement; Sunil Sinha, Principal Economist, India Ratings; Bidisha…

ON A FIERY JUNE evening, start-up accelerator GSF organised a tête-à-tête with Tej Kapoor, the India Managing Director of Chinese investor firm Fosun RZ Capital. But it wasn’t a private conversation between two people. Many start-up founders started trickling in at the Bombay Sandwich Company, a new cafe in Gurgaon, the venue for the discussion. Rajesh Sawhney, Co-founder of foodtech firm InnerChef, which owns the cafe, ordered for a round of cutting chai. He sat in one corner explaining his mission. “Sandwich is a very exciting category. We have an alternative vision of sandwich from Subway,” he says. “Subway is a mayo sandwich; we are a chutney sandwich. Our vision is to take Bombay to the world. The market looks very large.” Gurgaon is a good test market for such…

AS THE MERCURY hits 45 degree Celsius on a Friday afternoon in June, there is a throng of onlookers at a small intersection in a housing colony in Gurgaon. Apart from the bystanders, there are sanitation workers and officials from the Punjab Water Supply and Sewerage Board too. They have all assembled to witness something they have only heard about, but never seen – a robot in action. The cynosure, meanwhile, with four legs on wheels stands atop a manhole, which it would soon clean. As an electric generator comes to life, Bandicoot the robot of the machine are pressed, and a three-armed structure with claw-like arms descends from the robot and goes into the manhole. The screen shows users the messy insides of the manhole as the claws clutch…

MOST PEOPLE AVOID buying insurance as they don’t want to deal with the complexities. Even if they do buy, it is largely for saving tax. Rohan Kumar and Nishant Jain, the co-founders of Toffee Insurance, observed the scale of the problem while working on online sales with client Apollo Munich. “We realised that insurance products were not only expensive but also irrelevant for a large number of people. Millennials are not that worried about cancer or heart attack. They would prefer insurance for dengue, malaria, typhoid or even food poisoning,” says Kumar. Why the name ‘Toffee’? Kumar explains: “Toffee means small; so sachet-like insurance products. Sachet products have always worked in India. Besides, it’s a fun, young and happy name that will resonate with even non-English speaking populace.” Kumar and…

AT ITS CORE is water treatment, but the process is unique. Bengaluru-based start-up ECOSTP Technologies converts “bad water into good water using the cow stomach mechanism”. A large part of sewage water in India is untreated, so the solution lies in sewage treatment plants (STPs). But conventional STPs, says Tharun Kumar, one of the four co-founders of the company, “need power and that too, in most cases, thermal power”. The start-up offers a ‘Zero Power Zero Operator’ option, based on how a cow’s stomach functions. “A cow’s stomach has four compartments which help it digest grass using anaerobic bacteria and convert it to milk. Similarly, we use four chambers and anaerobic bacteria to convert bad water into good water. You could call it biomimicry,” says Kumar. The prevailing wastewater treatments…

IT WAS DURING LATE 2016 that Sai Krishna V.K. and Ajay P.V., old neighbours and family friends from Chennai, reconnected over their common interest in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Small chats turned into a big idea, eventually resulting in them setting up Scapic, a cloud computing platform based on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The aim is to make augmented and virtual reality experience compatible across platforms and allow its use through a Web browser. Sai is a Stanford graduate and a serial entrepreneur with two start-ups under his belt – Aeriem (education tech) and Supertext (AI assistant). Ajay is an engineer with experience in Internet of Things. He was a member of the development team of AR/VR start-up Gridraster. “When we reconnected, we started talking about AR and VR,…

A FEW HOURS after the national launch of the Maruti Swift in May 2005, a clutch of top executives from Suzuki Motor Corp. and its Indian subsidiary Maruti were in a huddle in the business centre of hotel Maurya Sheraton (now ITC Maurya) in central Delhi. Such meetings are routine; held to analyse the initial feedback after the launch of any car. As its first offering in the nascent premium hatchback category in India, Swift was an important product for Maruti. During the meeting, Mayank Pareek, who was then the head of sales and marketing at Maruti, suggested that the team of engineers from Japan look into the possibility of developing a compact SUV based on the Swift. The suggestion was unanimously rejected, even scoffed at. The engineers contended that…

Mutual fund assets under management have almost doubled to ₹23.42 lakh crore in the past three years. Although the growth has been led by equity funds, the largest chunk of mutual fund money is still parked in debt funds — they account for more than half the assets and have seen 48 per cent absolute growth over the past three years, as per data provided by Icra Online. Although institutional investors are the major holders, retail investors have also been increasing their exposure to debt funds over the past few years to beat the low bank fixed deposit rates. Individual investors’ share in debt funds (retail and high net worth individuals) has gone up from 28 per cent to 32 per cent in the past three years as debt fund…

DYSON PRODUCTS are all about cutting-edge technology and superb design. And its recently launched Lightcycle desk lamp is no exception. For a starter, this one uses heat pipe cooling – a drop of water put inside a vacuum-sealed copper tube alternately evaporates and condenses to pull the excess heat away to prevent the six LED lights from over-heating, discolouring and fading. The lamp comes with a five-year warranty, but the company claims the light quality will last 60 years. The clean, minimalist design – a circular base, a vertical pole and a horizontal mount for the lights – resembles a science lab equipment stand, but its smart features are bound to wow all. Thanks to its fluid three-axis movement, I was able to slide the lamp up and down, back…

FOUR YEARS AFTER the RBI allowed differentiated banks alongside full scale commercial banks, the banking regulator has indicated granting more licences in the Small Finance Bank category throughout the year. The RBI’s optimism comes from the fact that these micro-finance institutions turned banks have achieved priority sector targets and hence helped in achieving financial inclusion. However, it would be too early to open the gates for all. The RBI should be cautious as initial success of the existing close to a dozen banks came from their erstwhile micro-finance business. These banks are yet to see an economic cycle of boom and bust to show their strong foundation. In fact, there are many challenges that await them as they have to enter the IPO market as agreed in the guidelines. The…

THE PHARMA sector is no longer a priority sector for foreign direct investment (FDI) in India. FDI in the sector witnessed a sharp fall of 73 per cent during the last financial year, down to just $266 million this year from $1.01 billion a year ago. That was not the case until a few years ago as multinational drug companies were competing with each other to sign a big deal in India. That led to mega deals like Daiichi Sankyo acquiring Ranbaxy and Abbott paying record prices for Piramal’s formulation business. Analysts say deals have dried up as MNCs no longer view India as a safe haven to invest, despite its potential. Over the last couple of years, the Indian government brought almost all essential medicines sold in the ₹130,000…

Twitter has announced that it has removed the feature of tagging a precise location in tweets to "simplify your Tweeting experience." However, this feature will still be available for photos in the updated camera. The function was added in 2009 to provide advanced geo-tagging capabilities, but the advent of hashtags and trending topics made the feature obsolete. Video Support IGTV, Instagram’s move to promote long-form videos, will now provide support for landscape videos too. “Ultimately, our vision is to make IGTV a destination for great content, no matter how it’s shot, so creators can express themselves how they want,” the social network said. The move comes after users complained about shooting in a proprietary format that is often difficult to reuse. TRY ON GOOGLE HAS INCHED A STEP CLOSER TO…

73% Increase in total allocation to the agriculture sector versus the revised estimate of 2018/19. ₹ 60,000 CRORE Allocation for MGNREGA in budgeted estimates of 2019/20. ₹ 75,000 CRORE Annual outlay for the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Scheme (around 0.36 per cent of GDP). Under this scheme, ₹6,000 will be given to small and marginal farmers. ₹ 6.1 LAKH CRORE The estimate for central GST collection for 2019/20. This is around 20 per cent more than the ₹5.04 lakh crore revised estimate for 2018/19. ₹ 3.28 LAKH CRORE Allocation towards Centrally Sponsored Schemes in the 2019/20 budgeted estimates. 2% Interest rebate for MSMEs registered under GST for loans up to ₹1 crore. MONEY GOES OUT The central government’s total expenses have increased sharply… Total expenses (₹ lakh crore) …but…

As the new Modi government gets down to the job of presenting its first full Union Budget, all eyes are on ‘Dharmakshetra’, a building in New Delhi’s government residential colony of RK Puram that serves as the headquarters of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM). The complex has been built on a road named after Babu Genu, a pre-Independence star of the Swadeshi movement. An economic think-tank of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the ideological parent of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the SJM had guided the first Modi government’s stand on all important economic matters and tried to steer it towards what was loosely termed as swadeshi economics, though the government, despite their opposition, did open up several sectors to foreign direct investment (FDI), including insurance. Today,…

BROTHERS RAJUL AND ROMIL JAIN and Anshuman Agarwal have more in common than being IIT graduates. They had all dabbled with start-ups and e-commerce companies before founding Increff (Incredible Efficiency). The start-up is a technology and analytics enterprise that uses data tools to help fashion and lifestyle brands optimise their inventory turnover, thereby helping them improve the return on capital. Their warehousing solution, for instance, acts as a marketplace, and allows brands to access warehousing services without incurring any capital expenditure. Rajul recollects how his e-commerce days exposed him to the challenges and opportunities that retail offered. “Inventory is the biggest risk and at the same time the biggest asset. Inventory is everything,” he says. But uncertainties like sale of stock, warehousing, right quantity of distribution and inventory management pose…

YULU’S JOURNEY started when Amit Gupta was about to turn 40. As a first-time entrepreneur in his 20s, he co-founded India’s first unicorn start-up InMobi. But that just happened, he says. “There was no logic. I wanted to be an entrepreneur when I turned 20 and I thought I will retire when I turn 40.” But retirement is far from his mind now. When he was searching for the next big idea, India’s plentiful problems threw up many options, but traffic congestion and pollution was what drew him. “Irrespective of profession or financial status, we all take the same roads everyday and if hurts me, I’m reminded of the problem every day.” Amit thought a last-mile, short-distance, electric mobility solution could be an answer. When he began to think about…

SCROLL THROUGH the 260-plus customer reviews and about 86,845 ratings of Mamaearth’s ‘Easy Tummy Roll On for Digestion & Colic Relief with Hing & Fennel’ on Amazon, and you would get a fair idea of what this newbie company is all about. Mamaearth is working on parental stress. The roll-on is “an all natural essential oil solution” that can be used for stomach related issues in babies. This, and the start-up’s other products, are free of toxins and thereby safer for babies – a whitespace that founders Varun and Ghazal Alagh saw when they started out in the winter of 2016. The couple were looking for chemical-free products for their child, Agastya, but found only a few. A majority of the baby brands available had toxins such as parabens and…

LAST YEAR, Cape Town, South Africa, ran out of water. It was on the verge of reaching Day Zero, a complete shutdown of municipal water supply. Fortunately, that didn’t happen as the city managed to impose severe restrictions on water supply and use. Water experts say many cities across the globe are going the Cape Town way. India is no exception. Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad are among the 21 cities that will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting at least 100 million people, according to a NITI Aayog report. Water conservation and management are an urgent need, and that’s where Chennai-based start-up WEGoT Utility Solutions wants to make an impact – by helping manage water infrastructure of building complexes and reducing water Founded in 2015 by four engineers…

A thumping mandate in favour of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has not only created euphoria in stock markets but also raised hopes of uptick in economic growth. “The NDA has got a thumbs up for its reformist policies and execution. The mandate should empower it go for more reforms,” says Prateek Agrawal, Business Head and Chief Investment Officer, ASK Investment Managers. Other are also of the opinion that such a verdict will mean more reforms. “The election results are a vote for continuity of policies. We expect the government to work towards the promises it mentioned in the manifesto,” says Neelesh Surana, Chief Investment Officer, Mirae Asset Global Investments. In anticipation of further reforms and more, the broadly tracked indices, the Sensex and the Nifty, hit all-time highs…

DR G. SHASHI KANTH, an orthopaedic surgeon working as a senior consultant at Yashoda Hospitals in Hyderabad, has attended numerous patients over the past two decades. But a recent case involving a 24-year-old worried him most. The young man had chronic back pain for about three months and used to take over-the-counter pain medicines. But the pain persisted, and finally, he visited the doctor. “I found that he had spinal tuberculosis. Early diagnosis and right medicines can cure it completely, but he had lost three valuable months and had to undergo surgery. The treatment and the recovery took a long time,” he says. Back or neck pain should not be neglected, given our long office hours, desk-bound lifestyle and love of screens (we are either slouching in not-so-ergonomic office chairs…