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Insider > Bullets
Your daily dose of crisp, spicy financial news in 80 words.
As the US attempts to curb inflationary pressure by increasing interest rates, the Dollar bloats in value, making the Rupee look weaker. So the news of "Rupee touching an all-time low of ₹80+" is actually "Rupee stays put, Dollar blows up".
Other western countries like UK following suit to preserve their currency value expose the world to a threat of global recession.📉
Rupee must feel like SRK from K3G (main thehra raha, zameen chalne lagi)💸
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" seems to be the idea driving the banking partnership between India and Russia. While no love was lost between US and India, the former's sanctioning of F-16 jets for Pakistan did not sit well with the Indian government.🙅♂️
As per the partnership, UCO & Yes Banks will collaborate with Russia's Gazprom and Petersburg Social Commercial Banks. The arrangement will allow the two countries to conduct bilateral business using their local currencies.🤑
SEBI is looking to establish a fund-blocking system similar to ASBA. Under this new method, money spent by investors/traders would not leave their bank accounts unless the trade is complete, leaving no funds in the brokers' ledgers.
Non-bank-based brokers would no longer have access to float money available in their ledgers for up to 90 days. Bank-based brokers already have a similar system in place.
Based on their development, honestly, why not just get rid of brokers altogether?🤷♂️
Supermarket Grocery's Bigbasket is looking to raise upwards of $200 million from Tata Digital and other shareholders. The Tata Digital grocery arm is expected to be valued at $3.5 billion.
With the share lock-in period ending on September 30th 2023, Bigbasket is also looking to bring an IPO by the end of FY23. Tata Group seems to be banking heavily on Bigbasket, looking to fill the crater left in the retail ecosystem by BigBazaar's collapse, competing with Reliance's Retail business.😏
In an attempt to step away from the British era jurisdiction, DoT has created the draft Indian Telecommunication Bill, 2022. Under the proposed bill, social media platforms and OTT platforms shall be included in the purview of "telecommunication services", allowing monitoring of the same.👁
The platforms claimed this change would deter innovation (innovation=malpractice) and general public's stance was more alarmist towards their privacy. With the youth oversharing on the internet, however, I thought they would welcome the invasion of "privacy"!🤣
Who to hold accountable when a brand like Mahindra & Mahindra errs, and it cannot be reversed? M&M’s ‘recovery’ agent, who was in the process of taking possession, ran over a 27-year-old pregnant woman, causing her death. So much for “Rise. Live Young. Live Free”!😐
The big bank, RBI, has gotten into action right away and has barred M&M Financial Services from outsourcing its loan recovery or repossession activity after the incident. Guess what happened next? Its stock plunged 10%. 📉🤷♀️
When well-established companies follow the same tactics as newbie startups, the end times are near. However, Wipro firing 300 of its employees seems justified. The IT giant emptied its payroll, owing to discovering these employees secretively associating with a rival company. "Jis motherboard pe code kiya, usi main chhed?!"😲
Rishad Premji, Wipro chairman called this practice of moonlighting "Cheating, plain and simple." Honestly, this one firing seems pretty well suited, considering the ongoing startup winter and lay-off storms.🥶
Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar has become India's richest woman reaching a net worth of ₹30,000 crore. Her net worth experienced an increase of 345% to reach this monumental amount; all of this as a self-made entrepreneur too!
Seeing a woman reach, and shatter this "richest in geographical region" ceiling is a breath of fresh air after hearing oh so often about "Mr X-ani vs Mr X-ezos" only. I wonder when female entrepreneurs will become commonplace million/billionaires?
The family that takes over together, stays together! Gautam Adani is looking to join the board of directors of India's oldest cement companies, ACC and Ambuja. This move will be a part of Adani Group's ₹83 thousand crore acquisition of Holcim's assets.💸
The reshuffle will include previous members stepping down and Gautam's son and nephew, Karan and Pranav, joining the board of directors. Hurray for family businesses! Karan and Pranav won't have to break any Ambuja walls.💥🧱
Remember the seagull scene from Finding Nemo? Now replace the fishes with Vedanta Group and the seagulls with domestic banks. This newfound fame is the result of a proposed ₹1.54 lakh crore semiconductor manufacturing unit.🤑
Although the manufacturing unit will belong to Volcan, Vedanta's holding company, Vedanta stock prices have seen some major volatility this past week. The prices went from ₹277 to ₹318📈, only to fall back to ₹280 following the clarification of the JV📉.
Adani Group has edged closer and over the Tata Group as the most valuable business conglomerate in India. The nation that took every word with a grain of "Tata Salt" is now going to be "Fortune-ate" with oil.🤭
Tata Group, which had a listed market cap of ₹20.72 lakh crore, was left in the dust as Fortune's listed market cap achieved ₹20.86 lakh crore. Adani seems ready to beat competitors in a race of valuation, even with possibly hollow claims.😏
TCS cannot seem to catch a break! It was recently declared the most valuable brand in India, but soon after, as it wanted to implement hybrid working into its timetables, the employees seemed to demand a different schedule.
The millennial employees moved back to their hometowns to make living affordable during the pandemic. However, when it comes to returning to work, these same employees want to pull a move they got familiar with during the pandemic, ghosting.
The "IPO Fever" that Covid-19 brought seems to be fading! As many as 19 companies are approaching deadlines for the IPO application that lasts for a duration of one year. IPOs worth ₹24,000 crore might go dark if these companies meet their deadlines.☠
Market instabilities are one of the reasons why companies seem to be retracting from approaching the public📉📈. Another reason seems to be cautious investors that look into the company's performance and management🔍.
📈Whoever said that life has its ups and downs was probably predicting Gautam Adani's net worth in 2022!📉
The richest man in Asia knocked Jeff Bezos from his position as the second richest globally, with Adani's net worth touching ₹12.36 crore today.🥊🤑
However, he soon lost this position to French businessman Bernard Arnault as Sensex lost close to 1000 points and shrunk Adani's wealth. What good is beating a rival if it doesn't improve one's position in the race?🤔😂
Edtech company Byju's reports a loss of ₹4500 crore for FY2021.📉 Audit reports released by the edtech giant revealed that its losses had increased by over 13 times (talk about 13 being unlucky)!👀
This audit report was released after being delayed for months, like a student trying to hide a bad report card.😂
All we need now, is someone to call and harass Byju's like their teachers salespeople do to parents & students they want to sell their classes to...🤔
Vedanta, the multinational mining company seems to have struck the goldmine of deals as it enters into a 60:40 Joint Venture with Taiwanese electronics manufacturer. Foxconn. The partnership is aimed at reducing the cost of semiconductors that go into various electronic products.
With domestic manufacture of silicon parts, import duty on the same would go down, reducing the final price of various electronic products. My time to show off fruits on my phone might finally be here soon!🤑
The Right to Information act has taken the inspection and risk assessment report under the purview of information that needs to be made available to the public domain.
HDFC Bank, SBI and PNB have been the financial organisations most displeased by this decision, vocally opposing it. The banks cited a breach of the Right to Privacy of their lenders and customers.
Are the banks more worried about their shady trades being exposed or the loss of data to sell?🤔
Google is considering India as its next manufacturing region as it uproots itself from China. The decision to move came as a result of geopolitical tensions around China and supply chain shortages as an aftermath of Covid-19.
Pay attention to the fact that India is being considered. Taiwan and Vietnam are also eyeing the high fruit. If these two are as welcoming of sweatshops as China, India might need more than the PLI scheme to attract Google.
According to SEBI guidelines on investment advice, Algo traders are now illegal.❗ The market regulator has applied stringent laws on advisors that use algorithms as their research tools.🤖
SEBI is finally waking up to the miss-selling problem prevalent in the stock markets. I guess the in-game ads promising hundreds against just $10 were a lie, after-all.🎮 Makes you wonder how such blatant lies get through the regulators. 🤔
The Directorate General of Foreign Trade has moved broken rice from the "free" list to "prohibited". Other grades of rice will face a 20% export duty levy. The stringent laws are to avoid excess exports and a resultant shortage.
The heatwave faced by the Indian farming industry has stunted the production of the largest exporter of rice globally. Rice, a staple of many struggling countries, is soon to go into short supply as India deals with its own shortages.
Gautam Adani, Asia's richest man is $6 billion away from becoming the 2nd wealthiest person on the planet. A stock surge of around 1000% in Adani Transmissions and Adani Entreprises Ltd. is responsible for this uptick.📈
FitchGroup's Creditsights shed light on errors in the two debt reports of Adani Groups' transmission companies, but the stock prices do not seem to have reflected any change for the same. How strong of an influence do you need to be this untouchable?🤔
Tata Sons Ltd must be feeling the pressure of revival as it looks to raise as much as $4 billion through a mix of equity and hybrid debt to make Air India operations efficient.😬
Was the criticism of already running 2 unprofitable joint ventures with Singapore Airlines & AirAsia Group so bad that the big brains are ready to get indebted? And to what end? Just to prove the critics wrong?🤔
Founded in 2015 1mg has received $40 million dollars of funding from Tata Digitalraising its stakes up to 62.97%. Tata Digital, which acquired 1mg in 2015 is helping them to give striking competition coming from Reliance’s Netmed, PharmEasy & Curefit.
What ailment bugs Tata for this increased interest in pharma? Is Tata clouded by the fear of falling behind? Is 1mg increasing its dosage of profits? Or is Tata following its penchant for welfare with easier access to meds?
SBI Mutual Fund acquired over 1.07 lakh equity shares in the company via open market transactions on Sept 1, increasing the stakes to 5% from 4.98% earlier.
Is SBI's MF customer base falling so hard that it requires an attempt to steal customer attention towards it, but at what cost? How long does this repeated investing continue? Do they really hope that such a cost to them will increase the base & help them regain populace?
From ease of opening Demat accounts to educating people about investment habits, many IPO lined up, to bounce-back of the share market, all sums up how 41 million investors climbed to 100 Million in almost 3 years.
Showing such humongous numbers will help achieve a new user pool. Is that how the FM wants to show-off India as an advanced economy? You never know if it is really 100 million or a mere duplication which surged the numbers.
Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) purchased 9,41,557 shares at ₹2,290, taking the transaction value to ₹215.61 crore of Indian listed cement company ACC Limited (ACC). Synonymous with cement, ACC is a leading player in the Indian building materials space, with a pan-India operational and marketing presence.
Remember the Adani-Holcim Asset deal in a race to become an ‘ACC’e of the cement industry? It appears the outsiders are all buckled up & built the nerve to challenge Asia’s richest man.
Reliance Power & its subsidiary entered into an MoU with Varde Partners availing debt of up to ₹1,200 crore "for settlement, discharge, acquisition or restructuring of certain financial debt."
The a‘NIL’ factor has turned its way around & brought a golden smile of relief for Anil Ambani as FII buying have worked its magic; post announcement, Reliance Power prices jumped on Monday by 9.91% at Rs 23.30 a piece on the NSE.
Cafe mogul Starbucks declares Laxman Narasimhan, as its latest CEO. Laxman, an Indian-American business executive, has had prior experience with brands like PepsiCo and the consumer arm of Reckitt Benckiser "under his belt". For some reason, his management of the contraceptive brand Durex has come to limelight with his recent change in company.
Automobile boss Anand Mahindra congratulated Laxman on the change of station. As impermeable as Durex may be, Laxman Narsimhan will forever be "the one that got away".
Zomato plans to begin intercity deliveries with its brand new Intercity Legends segment. CEO Deepinder Goyal mentioned in his blog that the new model has great scalability. The intercity orders will be tackled using flights and mobile refrigeration units.
The program's pilot phase will create its initial footfall in the South Delhi cities like Gurugram. The food delivery platform plans to rapidly expand its geographical reach.
Let's hope there are no plane crashes due to rushed deliveries! ✈💥
Gautam Adani seems to have gotten a fix for the news; he just can't seem to get out of it (as a subject or shareholder)! The "Fortune"-ate mogul is making headlines for becoming the world's 3rd richest person. 💰
While Mr Tesla and Amazon seem to have lost $19 billion and $39 billion, respectively, Adani gained $61 billion.
Meanwhile, Ambani has fallen out of the top 10 billionaires list📉. Guess Adani's leaving an "oil slick" behind him! 😂
Following the closure of its grocery arm, Superstore, Meesho is set to lay off 300 employees. Farmiso, which was the initial name for the grocery segment, had already laid off 150 employees when it rebranded to Superstore to highlight its grocery services.
With big brands like Reliance and Tata making headway through their pre-existent presence in other fields, Meesho had affordability on its side. What's the point of changing the cover when the book's story is flawed, to begin with?
Reportedly, Anant Ambani,the youngest son of Ambani and Reliance fame's Mukesh Ambani, has bought Dubai's most expensive home at ₹640 crore 🤑. As if "brain drain" wasn't bad enough, now India needs to worry about legacy businesses' fund drain.
Anant, along with Isha and Akash, is the next generation of Ambanis that will be taking the reigns of Reliance Industries. The exorbitant purchase seems to have changed the famous line "with great power, comes great responsibility" on its head. 😵
Hero Electric, the EV cousin of Hro Motocorp, is partnering with Reliance Industries' Jio BP. The EV business is taking not-so-baby steps. The collaboration with Jio BP is to support charging infrastructure.
Hero Electric, a splinter organisation of Hero Motocorp, came into existence with the arbitration ruling that hampered the latter's ability to enter the EV space.
I suppose Hero Electric is going on a trip on its own path 🛵, and not looking to make friends along the way.
As a part of its 2026 goal to reach a pre-tax profit margin of 10%, American Car manufacturing brand Ford is set to lay off 8,000 employees. The first step of the layoff will begin with 3,000 employees being laid off from USA, Canada and India. The lay-offs will also be to cycle employees who might not be skilled to work in the upcoming EV environment.
So much for "Family Wali Feeling".
Maruti Suzuki has decided to recall 166 units of its Suzuki DZire Tour S owing to Airbag Control Unit failure. Owners of suspected units produced between the 6th and 16th of August will be contacted by authorised workshops for free repairs.
Thankfully for Maruti Suzuki, the repairs are preventive. A "free repair" in the face of a grievous incident would have been a PR nightmare. How mediocre production led a brand to be a market leader, I'll never know.
Imagine paying at a shop, and instead of handing you confectionary (we don't expect change back anymore), the shopkeeper sends you off! Wait, where's your money?! Well, the shopkeeper's charging you in lieu of using your money.
This dystopian scenario wouldn't have been too far from reality had RBI allowed payment intermediaries to charge users for UPI payments. The charge aimed to help intermediaries generate revenue against the free mode of payments. Guess the intermediaries are on their own now.
Inox Leisure shares tumbled down the red stairs today as Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) filed a complaint against the multiplex giant to the Competition Commission of India (CCI). The complaint was in regards to the company's obviously anti-competitive merger with PVR.
"How is the merger anti-competitive?" you ask? Well, imagine a scenario where you dislike one multiplex provider because of exorbitant F&B prices. What are you gonna do? Switch? Well, you cannot; it's just one big company!
Nykd, Nykaa's athleisure and lingerie brand, has opened a brick-and-mortar store in New Delhi. The store is breaking out of its online-only presence to strengthen its foothold in India by making the process of buying innerwear more empowering with the use of tech. While the country's female youth has grown less uncomfortable with the environment, older customers still struggle.
Tech would reduce human interaction and improve the experience. This begs the question, maybe the humans involved could have been better?
Following Vauld and WazirX's asset freeze, Finance Minister advised investors to treat crypto as "not a currency" and to practice caution with investing in the same until new rules are implemented. The crypto exchanges faced investigation following alleged money laundering threat. The laundering threat was assumed when following high-value transactions; a few of the accounts on the platforms showed significantly reduced activity.
For once, there seems to be a reason behind the government opposing crypto instead of just tech aversion.
No Bullets posted in this week.
What if I said you could trade in your current two-wheeler while riding it to the showroom where you want to trade it in? If the "smart-screen" electric two-wheelers become a thing, Hero Motocorp could turn this somewhat outlandish statement true!
According to Hero, customers can trade in their two-wheelers from any brand and receive a "fair valuation" on their phygital platform. It's either going to be fair to the customer or Hero, never both!
Congratulations to the Indian Economy on gaining 6,000 new crorepatis for the FY 2022, with the total number now standing at 1,31,000 crorepatis! Now, if only there were a way to get a count on the number of faces that went unfed for the same period... Or the number of "real" crorepatis. Oh, let me clarify, this 1,31,000 is the number of crorepatis the IT Department came up with, based on ITRs filed.
Welcome 6,000 more to the "-ani club".
Yes Bank will finally bother someone other than SBI customers. For once, SBI account holders can breathe easy that their deposits won't be used to fund sinking banks! Yes bank is seeking shareholder approval for an infusion of funds worth ₹8,900 crore from US-based PE investors Carlyle and Advent.
Ahead of this infusion, Yes Bank shares experienced a rise of 12% today. Carlyle and Advent might lose some serious dough if this confidence isn't well founded.
Reliance might repeat its “data mania” with 4G as it has submitted the largest bid for the 5G spectrum, weighing in at ₹88,078 crore 🤑, for more than half of the total airwaves being auctioned.
While a business is meant to strive for improvement with growth in tech, if history repeats itself with Jio becoming data vendor for the masses, the future might be bleaker than before for both competitors and users. Monopoly doesn’t just kill the competition. ☠
Has it been a year already? With a lost hope, the investors of this food delivery platform can only pray for a miracle to let the stock prices rise again so that they can exit, saving a little face (and of course money).
The Monday was actually blue for Zomato investors since the company's shares tanked over 13 percent to record lows. This occurred after most of its shares were released of the mandatory one-year lock-in after the IPO.
Tighten your seatbelts as this ITR session might get slightly out of hand. Or, on second thought, don't tie yourself down; you might need to go on a few chakkars of the daftar in a little hurry. Why? Because the Revenue Secretary, Tarun Bajaj, declared that the Central Government is not considering extending the ITR submission date beyond 31st July this year. This decision, very uncharacteristic of most Indian Government calendars, comes to change the norm of the deadline being extended. ⌛
The Secretary also added that close to 50 lakh ITRs were submitted on or closely before the deadline, and he has asked "his people" to be prepared to handle twice the number of submissions this year. This confidence comes from the fact that by the extended deadline of 31st December 2021 for the last financial year, around 5.89 crore returns were filed, and this year's returns as of 20th July are already really close to half of that number.
Claims of a robust website capable of handling this increased traffic seem a bit out of place from the same set of websites that cannot handle the task of displaying board results in an orderly way. But I speak from a 6-year-old experience, government websites must have developed a lot since then and can keep up with the current netizens' demands, right?
Scooting over a little from the everyday Joe's income, we discuss the fake entity, Reliance's profits. Of course, I use the term "fake" loosely and only mean "artificial" when I say it. The Ambani-owned corporate titan has reported that its Q1 profits went ⬆ by 24% to reach ₹4,335 crore, a significant rise from last year's ₹3,501 crore but not a large leap from last quarter's ₹4,173 crore. This might be Reliance "one big bang" before things spiral out of control as the Neo-Ambanis take the company's reins, or the next line of Ambani's might have inherited their grandfather's biz prowess and Reliance might still have a lot of juice left in its tanks. Only time will tell.
SBI's spending habits on sinking businesses might finally be catching up to it (looking at you, Yes Bank)!🙄 The bank acquired board permission to borrow ₹11,000 crore through various convertible and non-convertible debt instruments. Reportedly, the loans will be acquired to meet regulatory requirements and support business growth. Now, correct me if I'm wrong... but aren't businesses supposed to fulfil these requirements with their own funds? Then how does a bank (a literal money business) run out of funds like that?
So much for the "largest bank" in the country with a 25% market share in deposits and loans...
Well, if I were to cut the old-time finance giant some slack, I'd shift my sight to a recent siphon of the bank's reserves. You couldn't guess who in a 100 tries unless you got lucky! It's the Adani group! The multi-business conglomerate has borrowed close to ₹32,000 crore from poor old SBI in the last 4 months. The funds have been used for the following ventures:
But why would Adani Group, with the richest man in Asia go to a pseudo-sarkari bank for so many loans? Ask the boss for some funding, no?
The simple answer; poor fund management. I suppose they could take a page out of my impeccable finances. I always know where I want to spend my money, and I'm done spending it all before the calendar even reaches the 15th of the month!
For too long, India has suffered the plight of income disparity! A hero shall emerge, a Robinhood that shall take from the rich and give to the masses! This hero will be... the 5G network?🤔
Ok, let's take a few steps back from the grand entrance and snap back to reality. As 5G comes ever close to launching, the new network will reportedly cost around 10-20% more in its initial stages than its predecessor, the 4G network. The timeline of 5G tariffs will go something like this:
The initial tariffs will hit the richer demographics of the country more as only people above a certain income level can afford 5G compatible smartphones. The affordable plans will be released to drive customer acquisition higher.
So, in a way, the rich shall pay for the bandwidth needs of the masses. Hooray for equality (I guess? 🤷♂️)
Speaking of phones and retail consumers getting some fair treatment, the department of consumer affairs plans to implement Right to Repair in India. In its pilot stage, the right shall apply to the following products:
If the new law is successfully implemented, consumers of the products mentioned above can avail of repair services from third-party vendors who will be provided with proper information and genuine parts required for said fixes. Finally, warranties would mean something for the retail customer for once, as a phone in need of repair doesn't add to the e-waste pile; just because a "genuine repair" shop isn't available nearby. 🙄
The government might again hurt the poor in an attempt to help them as Tuesday, 19th July 2022, marks the day "essential goods" fall under the purview of the GST regime. The tax shall apply to packages containing goods less than 25 kg or 25 litres. While this might target the retail purchases of the aforementioned goods, the monetarily underprivileged often buy in smaller quantities as bigger purchases that would not be taxed are not always feasible for them. The essential goods to be taxed anew or at an increased rate include, but are not limited to:
Staying on trend with the collapse of the Indian economy, the Indian Rupee hit a record and psychological low of ₹80 against the dollar. As the national currency deteriorates, Indian companies with foreign liabilities make a beeline to manage these liabilities to mitigate the threat of currency depreciation. How this rush to soothe liabilities will affect the companies, possibly through a liquidity crunch; only time will tell.
Jindal Stainless bags a deal with Indian Railways to supply the government transport department with 3,500 tonnes of stainless steel. The agreement is to supply the materials for the USBRL (Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Railway Link) tunnel project. The USBRL tunnel is a 272 km long rail link between Jammu and Kashmir. Even if with just rails, the disjointed state seems to be establishing some semblance of fraternity🤗.
Going off on a tangent with public transport and oil, India is finally experiencing a slash in oil prices. Of course, the oil is edible, but it's still a respite from the ever-imposing price of the golden liquid. Adani Wilmar chopped off as much as ₹30 from its range of cooking oils. Maybe EVs aren't quite the way forward yet, but vehicles powered by edible oil might not be such a bad idea. Affordable both ways 🤷♂️.
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