Innholdsfortegnelse for 17-Oct-21 i Business Today

The ever-smiling face of 56-year-old HDFC Bank Managing Director and CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan belies the grim determination of the man. Having stepped into the big shoes of his predecessor, the iconic Aditya Puri, Jagdishan was aware of the burden of expectations he had to shoulder. But as if that wasn’t enough, the new CEO of the bank, India’s largest in the private sector with ₹17.46 lakh crore in total assets, walked right into the middle of a series of problems—serious tech glitches, disruption in banking services, and a hard rap on the knuckles from the Reserve Bank of India. There were two things the former HDFC Bank CFO could do: either rue his luck and get bogged down by the weight of the problems, or convert the crisis into an…

RENEW POWER HAS become India’s largest publicly traded renewable energy company, in terms of generation capacity, by combining its business with the US-based RMG Acquisition Corporation II and getting listed on the Nasdaq. Among the top 10 renewable independent power producers (IPP) globally by capacity, ReNew Power has more than 100 operational, utility-scale wind and solar energy projects in nine Indian states. It also owns and operates distributed solar energy projects for more than 150 commercial and industrial customers in India. In an exclusive interview, Sumant Sinha, Founder, Chairman, and Managing Director of ReNew Power, explains how the listing gives an opportunity to showcase India’s capabilities globally and attract leading investors to the country’s green energy space, among other things. Edited excerpts: ReNew Power is the first major Indian renewable…

1 Ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is starting the new airline, which is expected to begin operations by the summer of 2022 2 Akasa has roped in veterans like Vinay Dube, Aditya Ghosh and Ankur Goel to run operations 3 The airline is betting on the expected growth in air passenger traffic, which has been halted by Covid-19 concerns for the time being 4 To Akasa’s advantage, narrow-body aircraft, pilots, crew and other airline staff are readily available at the right price 5 The strategy to have 70 planes over four years would enable the airline to compete with larger peers 6 But Akasa might need to look beyond the metro cities where the slots are constrained 7 By mid-2022, Jet Airways might re-enter the market, and Air India could be…

STRESS IS, often, the worst accompaniment to modern working life. While senior executives look at ways to manage their health, they do slip up in the chaos of work. For Anuj Puri, Chairman, Anarock Property Consultants, his first line of defence is “getting sufficient sleep regardless of the circumstances”. In the best of times, the property business can be a roller-coaster ride and Puri, having spent three decades there, knows it only too well. “My pre-working morning hours are dedicated to my physical, mental and spiritual fitness,” he says. The answer to get all of that right is yoga. “I usually start my day with a solo session of yoga followed by meditation. It does limber up my body and strengthens my mind for the day ahead.” Puri has been…

ON US LISTING With the US listing, we have a large pool of top global investors… [And the money] we have and the [net] proceeds [of $610 million] will help us fund our plans till 2025. LED BY BOARD We are transforming into a Board-run company with professional independent directors from all over the world. ReNew Power will not be Sumant Sinha’s or Goldman Sachs’s company. It will be fully professionally run. ON INDIA India’s total current generation and consumption is about 1.4 trillion kWh. This is growing at 5 per cent a year and over the next 10-12 years, we need additional capacity of 1 trillion kWh. The bulk of it has to come from renewables. BIG BUSINESS With more big companies coming in, it will lead to faster…

FOR FIFTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD CRICKET buff Sashidhar Jagdishan, the entry into the eighth-floor corner room of HDFC Bank’s Mumbai headquarters amidst the raging Covid-19 pandemic was like walking into the Sabina Park cricket pitch in the 1980s and facing a battery of West Indian fast bowlers. That’s how the new MD & CEO of the country’s second-largest bank often recounts his gruelling first 11 months to friends and acquaintances. The man whom iconic CEO Aditya Puri trained and tutored as his successor, faced a barrage of bouncers—technology glitches, disruption in banking services, a credit card acquisition freeze by the regulator Reserve Bank of India (RBI), an embargo on new digital product launches, compliance failures, a hefty penalty by the regulator, and the most challenging economic environment in the bank’s history. Jagdishan (fondly…

LET’S SAY YOU plan to fly from New Delhi to Mumbai for a holiday before December. Currently, you can choose among all six pan-India carriers that fly that route, with all of their cheapest tickets at around ₹2,500. The closeness of the price range isn’t a surprise considering the cut-throat competition in the aviation industry, especially after airlines were grounded for months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. By this time next year, there will hopefully be two more options—Akasa Air and Jet Airways 2.0. And if things go as per plan, Air India could go to a private entity, which would be raring to go. After the lull of the past 18-odd months, suddenly there’s action happening in the sector. The most astute investor of current times, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, too,…

I WAS HYPED up about the launch of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, just as much I am about Thor: Love and Thunder, and Star Wars Visions. And all for good reason. In terms of design, the iPhone 13 Pro Max is not that big an upgrade from the previous iteration—except that the cameras on the rear panel look a touch bigger, the notch a little trimmed, and the edges a tad sharper. What I was most interested to try out was the improved camera system. It’s never been a megapixel-measuring contest for Apple; instead, it relies on sensors to elevate the entire photography experience. The main wide sensor on the iPhone 13 Pro Max is much bigger with an f/1.5 aperture that lets more light pass through, resulting in…

SIDDHARTH SHAH loves speed. Shah, a two-time national go-karting champion at the school level, is a big Formula 1 (F1) fan and dreams of becoming an F1 driver one day. While racing may be his passion, the 32-year-old is known for something very different. The computer engineer and MBA from IIM Ahmedabad—cofounder of healthtech unicorn PharmEasy—led the acquisition of well-established diagnostics firm Thyrocare recently. Shah is thankful to his mother, a doctor, for his go-karting triumphs. Despite her busy schedule, she took time out to take him to go-karting tournaments in many cities when he was in school. And he dreamt of becoming a racer then. But college, and life, had other plans. In college, his priorities changed and he wanted to become an entrepreneur. Now that he has achieved…

ON JUNE 8 THIS YEAR, the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approved the resolution plan for Videocon Industries Limited. The consumer durables company and its 12 subsidiaries had defaulted on repayments of ₹64,838.63 crore. Of that amount, Videocon’s lenders had agreed to a resolution amount of ₹2,962.02 crore. That was a massive 95.85 per cent haircut—the dues banks are ready to forgo in case of settlement—on the admitted claims. However, the NCLT bench—comprising Member (Judicial) H.P. Chaturvedi and Member (Technical) Ravikumar Duraisamy—made a very interesting comment while passing judgment. They questioned, in writing in their 47-page judgment, whether the Committee of Creditors (CoC) was taking a haircut or a “total shave” The jibe was aimed at Videocon’s lenders, led by the State Bank of India (SBI)…

→ Shift from legacy IT infrastructure to global benchmarking against the likes of Amazon and Google → Multiple cloud strategy with scaleable capacity, which would be fail-safe and recover faster from outages → Create a neo bank in the next two-three years → Be ready for new open banking models; leverage tech stacks and account aggregators to tap new business → Restructure organisation with sharper focus on retail assets, MSMEs, rural business → Digital auto portal for car loans in minutes and new products like buy now, pay later → Partner with fintechs to grow in new areas; tie up with Paytm to jointly tap the small merchants segment for payments solutions and lending → Reduce product launch life cycles from years and months to a few weeks → Ecosystem…

THE KITCHEN IS the hub of the Singh household. “It’s where we talk, play games and, of course, eat meals together. To me, cooking for my family is about sharing traditions, building bonds, and making memories,” says Harkirat Singh, MD of Aero Club, which makes Woodland shoes. His interest developed as he grew up relishing a variety of cuisines by his mother. “I learnt to make the Italian dishes that I like the most such as penne alfredo pasta and lasagna.” Now, with an excellent cook and a foodie in his wife, the duo enjoys experimenting with dishes. Most of Singh’s holidays are spent cooking for his family and loved ones. “Any festive occasion deserves at least one of my special dishes.” He can whip up a mean pan-fried salmon…

What was the problem you were grappling with? My biggest challenge during my first 90 days of becoming the Country Manager for India was shaping a playbook for the country with a bold vision. I firmly believed that India must be positioned as a strategic market. Therefore, it was crucial to ensure complete buy-in of the executive team and present a shared vision, channelising highly competent and aspiring engineering talent. Who did you approach and why? To understand a challenge entirely, you need to ask “why”. It is equally important to know the stakeholders you must collaborate with. I met executive leaders at the headquarters to understand their expectations and seek an opportunity to position India as a region with immense opportunities. What was the advice you received? As I…