Even as the Dow and Nasdaq scale new peaks, Indian IT cos still guarded on US economy

India’s leading IT services companies, TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, are treading cautiously on demand from the US, despite rising optimism about the US driving stock markets there to all time highs. The management teams of these IT giants remain guarded in their portrayal of the situation and demand in their largest market, emphasizing the need […]

ANALYSIS: HUL Delivers Strong Q2, Margin Expansion Despite Challenging Environment

Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL), India’s largest fast-moving consumer goods company, on Thursday reported a resilient performance for the second quarter of fiscal year 2023, beating analyst estimates on bottomline and operating profit. HUL’s net profit rose 4% year-on-year to Rs 2,717 crore, surpassing analyst expectations of Rs 2,570 crore. Net sales grew 4% to Rs […]

The Cryptocurrency Series: Part 1 – The Dream

This is the first of a multi-part series on cryptocurrency, examining the dream and promise behind cryptocurrency, the evolution of the technology, the challenges faced by it on the way, and finally, its future. You can read the second part here. Cryptocurrency: The Dream In 2008, in the midst of the global financial crisis, a […]

ANALYSIS: Dip in India’s Savings Rate – More of Consumption, Less of Assets

Recent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data on a sharp fall in savings rate of Indian households during the last financial year has created a lot of controversy. Critics of the current government alleged that the sharp fall in savings rate to 5.1% of GDP — the lowest in 47 years and considerably lower than […]

ANALYSIS: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles May Replace Battery EVs Eventually

As big groups like Adani, Ambani, Tata and L&T make moves on the hydrogen fuel sector, an analysis of the relative strengths of hydrogen fuel cell technology and battery technology suggests that the HFC technology is likely to turn out to be the long term winner. The analysis suggests that battery-based technology will definitely dominate […]

How Congress, BJP underestimated Pinarayi Vijayan

Keralites overwhelmingly voted to retain the government of Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala, breaking from a nearly half-a-century-old tradition of swapping the party in power every five years. Several factors have helped ensure a second term for Vijayan, but perhaps the most crucial has been the decisive and efficacious leadership shown by the politician during the […]

Why Kerala’s anti-fake news law is urgently needed

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has withdrawn the controversial Sec 118A of the Kerala Police Act, also known as the anti Fake News law, pending fine-tuning and further consultations. “Whoever makes, expresses, publishes or disseminates through any kind of mode of communication, any matter or subject for threatening, abusing, humiliating or defaming a person or […]

Airtel overtakes Jio in 4G subscriber & traffic growth

The numbers released by India’s three telecom operators on their July-September performance show a remarkable trend reversal: For the first time ever, Reliance Jio was no longer the fastest growing data operator in India, losing the crown to Bharti Airtel. While Jio’s mobile data traffic went up by 220 million GBs in July-September compared to […]

GTPL not overly worried about Airtel’s LCO broadband scheme

GTPL Hathway, one of India’s top cable TV and cable internet providers, indicated it was not overly worried about telecom players like Bharti Airtel luring away its local cable operator partners under their new LCO partnership strategy. Bharti Airtel had announced some weeks ago that it plans to authorize local cable operators (LCOs) to resell […]

Jio need not pay RCom’s AGR dues under sharing rules:DoT

India’s communication ministry today said that there was no possibility of an operator being asked to pay the dues of another operator simply because it has entered into a spectrum sharing agreement with the other. This was clarified by Minister of State Sanjay Dhotre in reply to a question by MP K Subbarayan on whether […]

Does VODAFONE IDEA have a FUTURE?

As Vodafone Idea unveils a new brand identity, the financial troubles facing the company has as thrown into question the very future of the Indian telecom operator. There has been speculation that American telco Verizon or online retail giant Amazon may infuse money into the operator, but such rumors have been quashed by the Indian […]

COVID-19 lockdown proves a blessing for DTH providers

The Direct to Home (DTH) satellite broadcasting service has emerged as perhaps the only segment that has seen a clear benefit from the COVID-19 lock-down, with all three listed players seeing an increase in their customer revenue during the lock-down. The biggest jump in revenue was reported by Airtel Digital, which saw its revenue jump […]

Move over Kerala! Gujarat is the new star in COVID-19 fight

Even as the rest of the country is seeing an accelerated increase in the number of new Coronavirus cases reported every day, the western Indian state of Gujarat has is reporting a surprising decline in the number of active cases every day. It has also shown a remarkable stability in the number of new COVID-19 […]

CORONAVIRUS: Gujarat overtakes Delhi for No.2 spot, leads in death rate

With an addition of 127 cases so far today, the western Indian state of Gujarat has dislodged the national capital Delhi as the state with the second highest number of Coronavirus 2019 cases in India. The state, which also crossed the 2,000 patient milestone today, also has the highest death rate — along with Madhya […]

Colors, Star Plus & Zee TV see sharp fall in ratings after COVID-19 lockdown

Premium Hindi general entertainment channels, including Star Plus, Zee TV and Colors, have seen a sharp decline in their viewership during the COVID-19 lockdown, even as viewership of Doordarshan, movie channels and news channels have seen sharp increases, reveals ratings from BARC, India’s largest TV ratings agency. Even as general TV viewership increased, no category […]

RISING COVID-19 CASES: Is India’s lock-down a total failure?

The first case of COVID-19 in India was reported 67 days ago on January 30 in Kerala. It was only after 55 days that India imposed a countrywide lockdown to prevent the virus from spreading. In those 55 days, the Coronavirus infected around 500 people — at an average rate of 9 new infections per […]

COVID-19: Stock Markets will ‘wait and watch’ for 1 week

Stock markets extended their losses on today, with the Nifty 50 falling by around 2.5% to 8,967. Among the biggest drags were ICICI Bank, which fell nearly 9%, indicating that large, foreign portfolio investors are exiting their long positions in the market. With this, the Nifty 50 index is now down 27.5% from its all-time […]

Stock markets likely to find near-term bottom on Tuesday

Stock market indices, including India’s Sensex and Nifty 50, are likely to find their short-term bottom today, after a savage correction on Monday in both the Indian markets as well as US markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered another massive setback on Monday, dropping by a massive 13% to 20,188. With this, 30-stock US […]

MARKET CORRECTION: Good time to invest?

Major Indian stock market indices fell by 8-9% today in the biggest single-day fall since the global financial crisis of 2008. The Sensex fell 2,919 points (8.2%), while the Nifty 50 fell 868 points (8.3%) — by far the biggest single-day points correction in the history of these two indices. GOOD TIME TO INVEST? The […]