General Awareness

BUSINESS AND ECONOMY - February 2017

Feb 2017

May 16, 2019

Mirae invests over $100m in Indian startups

South Korean financial services firm Mirae Global Asset Management has invested a little more than $100 million across four transactions in India in its first year of operations, with its latest bet of $35 million on ridehailing major Ola.
The firm plans to continue its pace of investments in India's startup space, and is also exploring an India-dedicated fund.
Mirae had set up operations in April, 2018 after it roped in Ashish Dave, a former executive at venture capital firm Kalaari, to lead India investments, with a focus on mid- to late-stage transactions.
The firm has emerged as one of the most active investors with plans to invest $10-100 million in each transaction.

Single Monthly Return System for GST

The Union finance ministry is finally ready to move ahead with the single monthly return system for the Goods and Services Tax (GST), a move that will simplify the process of filing returns and also getting input tax credit.
The three-phase plan was announced in May 2018 to address complaints about the difficulties in filing multiple returns (and the higher cost of compliance).
According to that plan, for six months, in a transition phase, businesses would continue to file two returns, GSTR1 (for sales) and GSTR 3B , a summarised return form.
After six months, they would move to a single filing on a to-be-introduced form.
For consumer-facing businesses, the simplified form would be about total sales while for business-facing businesses, the form would incorporate invoice details.

Differences Between Co-founders at IndiGo

Differences have cropped up between the two promoters and co-founders of India's most successful and profitable airline IndiGo.
The development adds to the string of negative news emerging from the aviation sector.
The two, Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal, have reportedly hired legal firms for dispute resolution.
It is learnt the differences between the two stalwarts of Indian aviation are over Bhatia possibly feeling that Gangwal is trying to gain greater control of Indi-Go by bringing in his own team as the low-cost carrier plans to expand its footprint globally.
Bhatia and Gangwal have hired JSA Law and Khaitan & Co, respectively.
The news of the differences comes against the backdrop of the turmoil in Jet Airways, which has shut services, hurting flyers in one of the fastest growing markets.
Rakesh Gangwal, a US citizen and non-executive director, is a veteran of the global aviation industry with over 30 years of experience and holds nearly 37% stake in the airline. Bhatia has about 38% stake.

NCLAT Admits HUDCO's Plea against Bakshi

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) admitted the intervention plea filed by HUDCO claiming dues of Rs. 195 crore from Vikram Bakshi, the estranged India partner of U.S.-based McDonald's.
A two-member bench headed by Chairman Justice S.J. Mukhopadhaya accepted the intervention plea filed by the Housing and Urban Development Corporation and urged the parties to settle the issue.
The bench listed the matter on May 27 for the next hearing. McDonald's had reached an out-of-court settlement to buy out Mr. Bakshi's Connaught Plaza Restaurants, which runs the restaurants chain of the U.S. major in north and east India, from their joint venture.

Taco Bell to Scale Presence in India

American quick service restaurant chain Taco Bell is set to scale up its presence in India, nine years after it opened its first store to serve Mexican food such as tacos and burritos in the country.
Taco Bell, part of American food services company Yum! Brands Inc., is planning to open 600 restaurants over the next 10 years, to make India its largest market outside the US.
Taco Bell finds more acceptance among India's urban consumers for cuisines beyond just burgers and pizzas.
Taco Bell announced Burman Hospitality Pvt. Ltd as its master franchise partner for India, making the New Delhi-based company the largest Taco Bell franchise globally by store count.

Tata Chemical Consumer Arm and TGBL to Merge

The boards of Tata Global Beverages (TGBL) and Tata Chemicals (TCL) have approved the demerger of the consumer products business of TCL and merging it with TGBL through a National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT)-approved scheme of arrangement to create one consumer products company, which will have a combined turnover and EBITDA of Rs. 9,099 crore and Rs. 1,154 crore, respectively.
As per the demerger scheme, each shareholder of TCL will get 1.14 new equity shares of TGBL for every one equity share held in TCL.

May 15, 2019

India Finds OECD Index Faulty

India has found problems with the current method under which the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranks countries based on their services trade policies, indicating the outcomes are biased and counter-intuitive.
Launched in 2014, the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI), computed by the OECD, is now available for 2018 for a total of 45 economies (36 OECD and the rest non-OECD) and 22 sectors.
A study commissioned by the Commerce Ministry found, that the OECD index has a large number of problems associated with it, including some significant design issues that render it impractical for use.

StanChart Slams Essar Steel's CoC

Standard Chartered Bank slammed Essar Steel's committee of creditors (CoC) for holding secret negotiations with ArcelorMittal, resulting in illegality that reduced the bid amount and jeopardised its interest.

Pepsi and Coke May Go Off Shelves

Leaders of a trade body in Tamil Nadu announced that the ban on sale of Pepsi and Coca-Cola in Tamil Nadu would be effective from August 15.
This is not the first time such an announcement has been made.
Earlier, in March 2017, a faction of traders made a decision not to sell Coca-Cola and Pepsi and took them off the shelves.
The traders had then cited two reasons for taking this decision, health issues and the fact that multinational firms exploit groundwater resources.
But within six to seven months, they started stocking these two brands again.

NMDC to Invest in Infrastructure

National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) is investing about $1 billion in infrastructure in the next three years to help ramp up iron ore production.
Amitava Mukherjee, director (finance), said that the cost of the upcoming three-million tonne capacity steel plant would go up to Rs. 19,000 crore against the estimated over Rs. 15,500 crore.

Bad Loan Divergence in Union Bank

Public sector lender Union Bank of India reported a Rs. 3,370-crore loss in the January-March period of 2018-19 even as the Reserve Bank of India's annual inspection found the lender had under-provided, also known as 'divergence' in banking parlance, in 2017-18.
The divergence is also because of its exposure to troubled infrastructure conglomerate, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services, which turned bad.
Following the RBI inspection report, the bank had to make additional provisioning of Rs. 2,281 crore in Q4. For IL&FS, a Rs. 880 crore provision was made.
While the lender had reported a Rs. 2,583 crore-lossin 2018, it had recorded profits in the first three quarters of 2018-19.

May 14, 2019

Hindustan Times the Most Read Paper

Hindustan Times has consolidated its position as the most read newspaper across India's two top markets, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai combined, reaffirming the formidable trust of readers in the brand.
The newspaper has a combined daily readership of 2.72 million in the two cities.
Published by HT Media Ltd, HT has grown readership in all major markets while retaining its spot as the second most read English newspaper in the country, with 3.39 million readers.
It continues to be the undisputed No. 1 newspaper for the 16th time in a row in Delhi and the National Capital Region with 1.84 million readers against The Times of India's 1.34 million.
It also has 885,000 readers in Mumbai as compared to the latter's 1.28 million readers.

Pure Nutrition to Expand Offline Stores

Pure Nutrition, an online nutraceutical company, has announced offline store expansion plans to augment its retail presence in the country.
The company, which operates in five different verticals viz. dietary supplements, super foods, protein powder, pure herbal infusions and cold pressed oils, has already opened a few stores at airports for better visibility of its products and is now planning to put up stores in key cities.

Nabventures Launches Maiden Fund

Nabventures, a subsidiary of NABARD, announced its maiden fund to back agriculture, food and rural start-ups.
Nabventures Fund has a proposed corpus of Rs. 500 crore with a greenshoe option of Rs. 200 crore.
It has received an anchor commitment from NABARD. The fund plans to raise the resources from domestic and global investors.

China Hits Back

China said that it will raise tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods from June 1, in retaliation to the latest round of U.S. tariff hikes and Washington's plans to target almost all Chinese imports.
The announcement came after the latest round of U.S.-China trade negotiations ended without a deal, and after Washington increased tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
U.S. President Donald Trump had also ordered the start of a process to impose new duties on another $300 billion worth of Chinese items.
Despite the retaliation, Beijing appeared to give time to find a resolution by setting the June 1 date.

Exporters to Get Auto GST Refunds

Exporters of goods and services as well as suppliers to SEZ units are likely to get GST refunds automatically from June as the revenue department plans to introduce faceless scrutiny of refunds and faster claim settlement.
Currently, manufacturing exporters and suppliers to SEZs, who want to claim ITC (input tax credit) refund, have to file an application on the common portal and thereafter, manually submit a print out to the jurisdictional officer.
Once implemented, the time period for such refunds will come down to about a fortnight from months at present.

May 13, 2019

IMF to Loan Pakistan

After signing an agreement, Pakistan's adviser on finance said that Pakistan will get $6 billion from the IMF over the next three years to meet its foreign debt obligations.
The deal comes after months of negotiations over what will be Pakistan's 22nd bailout aimed at staving off a potential balance-of-payments crisis.
Pakistan will get $6 billion from the IMF, and in addition, will get $2 to $3 billion from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank in the next three years.

IT Sector on Recovery Path

According to international IT experts, after some years of dry drive, Indian tech firms now seem to have turned the corner and established themselves firmly as digital transformation agents in the global market.

May 12, 2019

SRF to Sell Engineering Plastics Unit

Chemicals firm SRF Ltd. will sell its engineering plastics business to DSM for Rs. 320 crore, as part of a strategy to focus on core operations.
The Gurugram-based SRF is engaged in the manufacturing of industrial and specialty intermediates.
The company has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its engineering plastics business to DSM, a life sciences and materials sciences company.
SRF's engineering plastics business manufactures multiple grades of engineering plastic compounds.

Facebook Sues S. Korean Firm

Facebook is suing South Korean data analytics firm Rankwave to make sure it isn't breaking the leading social network's rules.
A lawsuit was filed against Rankwave in a California State court in Silicon Valley to enforce terms the company agreed to in order to operate apps on the social network.
Facebook suspended apps and accounts associated with Rankwave, and asked the court to order Rankwave to abide by its rules for applications.

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