Business

IRDAI approves Edelweiss Financial Services' general insurance business

The Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has accepted the registration application for setting up a general insurance company in India, filed by Edelweiss General Insurance Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary, it said in a regulatory filing.

Edelweiss Financial Services said it has received regulator IRDAI's approval for setting up a general insurance company.
The Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has accepted the registration application for setting up a general insurance company in India, filed by Edelweiss General Insurance Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary, it said in a regulatory filing.
This is the second stage of regulatory clearances required for carrying on the business as a general insurance company in India.
The company has applied for general insurance licence in July 2016.
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Amazon, Flipkart battle now moves to in-house brands


Three years ago, technology giant Amazonintroduced Echo, its range of wireless speakers, into an already crowded market. Leaning on its in-house technology and marketing muscle (the etailer has made waves previously with its Kindle and Fire devices), Amazon has sold over eight million units of Echo. 


For a company best known in India for its ecommerce platform, success of private labels such as Echo is useful in a cutthroat battle. In India, the behemoth is locked in a bruising tussle with homegrown rival Flipkart. 



http://m.economictimes.com/small-biz/startups/amazon-flipkart-battle-now-moves-to-in-house-brands/articleshow/57966536.cms


Alibaba to soon open its first India office

Kotak Mahindra Bank, IDFC Bank and Aditya Birla Finance are the company's new partners in India


Alibaba, largest e-commerce entity in China, is setting up its first India office in Mumbai, apparently an indication that it would step up investment in the country in the coming year, to capture a pie of the growing e-commerce market here.


So far, the Jack Ma-founded enterprise has been a preferred platform for small businesses in India to source industrial goods from China. And, for vendors selling their products to customers globally. Alibaba has invested in Indian e-commerce company Snapdeal, and in Paytm, the mobile payments service platform, through Ant Financials, its payment arm.


It has, though, kept its plan to enter e-commerce in India under wraps. By setting up a office at Platina in the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) in Mumbai, closer to that of US rival Amazon,it appears to now be signalling the intent that it is serious on entering. 


“Given the kind of merchant network they have, India is definitely a potential market for them,” says Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of Third Eyesight, a consultancy for e-commerce firms. “There needs to be significant investment from Alibaba because Amazon is on a high and though Flipkart and Snapdeal are on a low, they’ve invested significant money in the delivery network.”


sensex-can-hit-29k-in-2017-and-these-5-stocks-could-turn-multibaggers


http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/expert-view/sensex-can-hit-29k-in-2017-and-these-5-stocks-could-turn-multibaggers/articleshow/56197208.cms?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ETFBMKTS

Steady Biker


Siddhartha Lal has continued to whet the appetite of consumers for Royal Enfield motorcycles.


Siddhartha Lal, MD & CEO of Eicher Motors, wants to create a global brand. And, going by the diverse appeal of his Royal Enfield motorcycles, now sold across five continents, his ambition may not be out of place.

This comes after he generated enormous wealth for his investors - each share clocked Rs 26,601.95 at its peak on 29 September, from a mere Rs 17.50 when Lal took over in 2001. The stratospheric level of Eicher's share price comes on the back of a gush of profits that zoomed 10-fold to Rs 1,230 crore, lifting its EBITDA margins to 28.3 per cent. This is more than a turnaround for Eicher, which booked as little as Rs 125 crore profits just five fiscals ago.

The overflowing chest has augmented Lal's global pursuits - he has already moved base to the UK in 2015 to incubate next generation technology. The first outcome of his move - 'Himalayan', a 411-cc air-cooled four-stroke tourer - has already created transcontinental ripples. Just a few months into its debut in Columbia and Australia, Himalayan already accounts for 10 per cent of the companys exports in the current fiscal. And it is yet to enter Europe, potentially the largest market.
It sold just 25,000 motorcycles till 2005, compared to almost 500,000 units in FY15/16. "We want to emerge as the world's No. 1 mid-sized motorcycle company - with a global brand - for long leisure rides, something like Himalayan has fairly achieved overseas," Lal told Business Today on the phone from his new office in Leicestershire, London, which is the epicentre of his global ambitions.
Besides moving to London, he has infused fresh blood into the top management. Many of them - such as his new President at Royal Enfield, Rudratej Singh - come from Unilever. He also hired Rod Copes, a former Harley-Davidson manager, to head North America operations. He is also laying more focus on newer areas of revenues like branded Royal Enfield merchandise that will ideally drive revenues in the next decade, besides not ruling out opportunities of growth from fast-growing categories like scooters.
His performance has already reaped him the prestigious BT Best CEO awards, with the jury awarding Lal the award in two categories - best automobile company, and best small company (across sectors). This is the second year running that he has achieved this feat. The reason is simple. He had the courage to trim his portfolio in 2000 when he was just 26. He divested 13 group businesses and put all resources behind Royal Enfield and Eicher Trucks. For Lal, it was a choice between sharpening focus to go global, or remaining "a mediocre player in all the 15 small businesses we had at that point in time". He chose the former, and invested in it, and it has been a swashbuckling ride. For perspective, Lal draws inspiration from global brands like Porsche and Mini, which he says are focused and stick to their core DNA.
Royal enfields biggest asset
Motorcycles have been the forte of Royal Enfield, and robust demand continues even during the current cash crisis. It is likely to boost the brand's valuation and enable it to continue the ride even as the two-wheeler segment faces huge decline owing to the cash-starved market.


8 Retail Chains That Are Closing Stores This Year

Time to check your stock portfolio.

With some retailers, including Sports Authority and Sports Chalet, closing all of their stores, and others, like Aeropostale, teetering on the edge of heading into the great strip mall in the sky, this has been a difficult year for brick-and-mortar retailers.
The damage, however, is not limited to the chains that are closing up shop entirely. A number of others — including some iconic names — are getting smaller, closing stores as a way to shrink into, if not profitability, at least lower losses.
It’s a tough time for America’s shopping centers, with it looking like those temporary pop-up Halloween stores will have their pick of prime locations this year. Blame the Internet in many cases, changing consumer demands in others, bad management in a few, and a combination of all of the above in many cases.
Here’s a look at some of the retailers that have either already begun closing locations or plan to do so this year.

Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren  RL 0.09%  plans to cut 8% of its workforce while closing more than 50 stores, according to the company. It also plans to trim its management structure from an average of nine layers down to six. CEO Stefan Larsson, who joined the company from Old Navy, where he led a successful turnaround, also plans to cut the amount of time it takes the brand’s clothes to go from idea to stores.
Macy’s
Macy’s  M -0.21%  plans to close 40 stores and eliminate as many as 4,500 jobs, a process that has already started and will continue through the summer. CEO Terry J. Lundgren said the moves were needed due to the company’s “disappointing 2015 sales and earnings performance.” The chain does plan to open five new Macy’s locations in 2016 as well as 50 additional Macy’s Backstage off-price stores.

Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble  BKS -0.39%  may be the only happy news on this list as the bookseller has actually decided to close fewer stores in 2016 than it has in any year since 2000. The chain will shutter only eight locations, down from the 13 it had originally planned to lose this year, Fortune reported. The change comes because while most retailers have seen sales slow at physical stores, Barnes & Noble has actually lost online sales volume while its retail locations have been a relative strength.

Markets

 

Sensex ends 115 points lower, Nifty at 8,104; telecom sector drags








For More  Regarding Price Performance Chart :


Ola To Invest R
s.
 100 Crore Over 3 Years For Skill Development


New Delhi: Transportation aggregator Ola said it will invest R
s.
 100 crore for addition and skilling of one lakh drivers to its platform over the next three years.


Ola has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) for training, skill development and empowerment of these driver partners.

The joint project will involve Ola and NSDC identifying people from various sections of the society and skilling them to become driver entrepreneurs, Ola said in a statement. 


"Ola aims at investing R
s.
 100 crore in adding 1,00,000 drivers to its platform," it added.


The MoU was signed by Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal and Manish Kumar, MD and CEO of NSDC, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, among others in Kanpur.

"The mobility sector in the country is witnessing phenomenal growth and has the potential to empower aspiring individuals from all walks of life to become entrepreneurs. We are extremely excited to partner with NSDC to invest in the training and skilling of drivers as this would help us in realising our objective of nurturing micro-entrepreneurship," Aggarwal said.

Ola currently has over 5.5 lakh driver partners on its platform.


India's NSE Must List Sans Hubris


India's largest stock exchange is getting ready for a listing it has fought long and hard to avoid: its own.
While some long-time investors may be relieved to have an opportunity to exit, newer shareholders should be glad if the bourse uses the scrutiny of being a publicly held company to shed its outsize sense of exceptionalism. A descent into ordinariness would be quite welcome.




National Stock Exchange of India Ltd.'s $1.5 billion IPO will be the country's largest in more than six years. The share sale won't raise any new money, but it will give investors -- including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Singapore's Temasek Holdings Pte -- a chance to realize profits they've been forced to sit on for as long as a decade.

When investors pressured NSE for an out, it demurred by saying that listing on the rival Bombay Stock Exchange could compromise its competitive edge. But when the BSE filed its own draft prospectus -- suggesting the older bourse found it perfectly okay to list on NSE -- the business-confidentiality excuse lost all credibility. That was the second blow to NSE's notion of superiority.
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Motilal Oswal's latest Wealth Creation Study tells investors to adopt 'focussed investing'


Motilal Oswal Financial Services unveiled its 21st Wealth Creation Study on Saturday. The basic takeaway from the report is to buy stocks of businesses at a price lower than the intrinsic value. Every year, for the past 21 years, the broking firm has been ranking the top 100 companies in terms of absolute wealth created.



The report concludes that as stock markets are fairly efficient, opportunities for concentrated bets come seldom. The firm believes that focussed investing is a sound strategy to capitalise on these opportunities. By investing into 15-20 stocks with strongly favourable odds, investors can enjoy risk diversification and return magnification.

  • The study concludes that TCS is the biggest wealth creator for the fourth time in a row. For the period between 2011-2016 the company has shown an annual growth of 16 percent in its share price.
  • Ajanta Pharma has emerged as the fastest wealth creator for the second time in a row with a stock price multiplier of 53 x for the period between 2011-2016.
  • Asian Paints is the most consistent wealth creator over 2006-2016 by virtue of appearing in the top 100 wealth creators in each of the last 10 studies with the highest 10-year price CAGR of 30 percent.
  • Consumer/Retail is the biggest wealth creating sector with a return on equity of 31 percent in 2016 and an overall wealth of Rs 6,36,400 crore.
  • A collapse in the price of commodities has caused wealth destruction as seven of the top ten wealth destroyers are in the business of global commodities which includes metals, banking and utilities.
  • The top 100 wealth creators created Rs 28.4 lakh crore of wealth during 2011-2016.
  • Eight of the top ten wealth creators are the same as of last year. Kotak Mahindra Bank and Maruti Suzuki have entered the top ten displacing Axis Bank and Tata Motors.
  • PSU stocks remain insignificant in terms of wealth creation. The number of PSUs in the top 100 wealth creators is only seven. These are BPCL, HPCL, Petronet LNG, Concor, LIC Housing, Bharat Electronics and Power Grid Corporation.
  • Five companies—Wipro, Indian Oil, Larsen & Toubro, ICICI Bank and Siemens —created enough wealth to qualify among the 100 biggest, but failed to make it to the final list as their stock price return was lower than the Sensex, which delivered 5 percent between 2011-2016.
  • The report states that of the 30 Sensex Stocks in 2011, as many as 18 underperformed over the next five years or were down 12 percent on an average. If an investor had avoided these stocks and only bought the remaining 12 stocks, the average returns from these stocks would be 14 percent annually over the next five years. This is much higher than the 5 percent returned by the Sensex.


India Infoline News Service / 16:03, Dec 13, 2016
Tech Mahindra, Tata Motors, BPCL, Wipro, Adani Ports, Tata Motors DVR, Axis Bank were the top gainers while Ultratech Cement, Hindalco, Zee, BHEL, Grasim, GAIL, Ambuja Cement, Lupin were among the losers on NSE.

Closing Bell

Indian shares dropped, with the equity benchmarks snapping a two-day winning streak, as a surge in oil prices raised concern that inflation will accelerate.Brent crude climbed to a 17-month high, threatening to raise import costs for India which gets about 80 percent of its oil from overseas.
Adding to the woes, the country’s factory output unexpectedly slumped the month before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unprecedented clampdown on cash. The data released after market hours on Friday, raised concerns that the world’s fastest growing economy will slow in the coming months.
The S&P BSE Sensex declined 0.8 percent to 26,515 while the NSE Nifty lost little over 1 percent to 8,169. The market breadth was firmly in favour of the sellers with 1020 declines, 554 advances and 320 stocks remaining unchanged on the NSE.
All 11 sectoral gauges on the exchange ended trade with losses, led by automakers and lenders.

Amul to debut on Amazon overseas on Black Friday

Amul products will debut on Amazon Global Selling platform on Black Friday in the US, which falls on 25 November
Online marketplace Amazon India on Thursday said products from leading dairy brand Amul will be available in nine countries, starting with the US on 25 November.
In May 2015, Amazon India launched its Global Selling program, under which Indian vendors can sell their products in nine countries including the US, the UK, Japan, Canada and France with a total consumer base of 300 million.
Amul products will debut on the Global Selling platform on Black Friday in the US, which falls on 25 November.
“We are happy to announce an online exclusive partnership with Amul, the iconic and most loved dairy brand in India, giving Amul the access to new age digital shoppers. We are taking the brand to the doorstep (of consumers) across the country (US)” Gopal Pillai, director and general manager, seller services, Amazon India said in an interview.
“Amul is (also) a part of Amazon Prime program, (for which) Amul is sending products to the fulfillment centers so that consumers can get products in a day or two. We are helping Amul with logistics, (product) returns, so they (Amul) don’t have to worry about anything,” he added.

7.25% interest on savings account: Five other things to know about Bharti Airtel's payments bank



Country's largest telco Bharti Airtel has launched its first payment bank's pilot services in Rajasthan. Airtel will commence the pilot project with banking points at 10,000 retail outlets. Airtel Bank is a fully digital and paperless bank.

On April 11, 2016, Airtel Bank became the first entity in India to receive a payments bank license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). It intends to bring banking services to the doorstep of every citizen of the country. It plans to leverage Bharti Airtel's extensive national distribution network of over 1.5 million retail outlets, with deep penetration in rural areas 


For More : 

http://www.businesstoday.in/current/corporate/bharti-airtel-payments-bank-interest-on-savings-account/story/241016.html

Symantec acquires Lifelock for $2.3 b


L eading cyber security company Symantec Corporation has acquired LifeLock — a leading provider of identity and fraud protection services — for $2.3 billion in a deal that is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017.
The acquisition will create the world’s largest consumer security business with over $2.3 billion in annual revenue based on last fiscal year revenues for both companies, the company said in a statement on Monday.
“Consumer cybercrime has reached crisis levels. LifeLock with the combination of Norton will deliver comprehensive cyber defence for consumers,” said Greg Clark, Symantec’s CEO.
“This acquisition marks the transformation of the consumer security industry from malware protection to the broader category of Digital Safety for consumers,” Clark added.
A third of US citizens and over 650 million people globally during the last one year became the victims of cybercrime, raising the security concerns among the consumers about digital safety.
An estimated $10 billion market is growing in the high single digits, with a total addressable market of about 80 million people in the United States alone, Clark said.
“With the acquisition of LifeLock, Symantec adds a new dimension to its protection capabilities to address the expanding needs of the consumer marketplace,” noted Dan Schulman, Symantec’s Chairman of the Board.
Source  :  Bloncampus

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India launches race to build fighter jet

India has kick-started a race to supply fighter jets to its air force in what could be among the world’s most lucrative military aerospace contracts, with international defence companies lining up to pitch for as much as $10bn worth of business. In its haste to replace its ageing fleet of jets, India is willing to circumvent its normal tendering process and do a deal more quickly. The current request comes just weeks after India signed a contract with France to buy 36 twin-engine Rafale jets built by French company Dassault. New Delhi had originally asked for 126 aircraft, but negotiations fell apart over disagreements over how much of the manufacturing would be done in India. The reduction in the deal has left the air force well below the capability its chiefs say is needed as its current fleet of MiG 21s reaches the end of its life. The Rafale deal will take the force from 33 squadrons (of between 16 and 18 aircraft) to 35, but senior officers say it needs another 10 squadrons.

 Netflix, Amazon take divergent paths to reach Indian audience 
As Amazon.com Inc and Netflix Inc look to build up in India amid a global expansion, they are following two diverging scripts. While Amazon is scouting for locally appealing programming by sending its executives to India, Netflix makes content-buying decisions out of Los Angeles even for regional shows, to ensure they have global appeal. The contrasting approaches in India highlight fundamental differences in how the streaming giants are pursuing international growth as the US market gradually matures. Netflix, which has expanded into some 190 countries following a near-global launch in January, doesn’t believe in a physical presence in every market. It says it can use its trove of viewer data to buy programming with multinational appeal, so that it doesn’t have to spend heavily on local content in every single country. Amazon has been choosier internationally, pushing Prime Video into some European markets, Japan and now India. The latter’s bet is that home-grown programming will win over Indian audiences. 


Eicher-motors-stock-rises-royal-enfield-october-sales:
         
       Royal Enfield, the two-wheeler division of Eicher Motors, on Tuesday reported a 33 per cent rise in total sales at 59,127 units in October.  The Eicher Motors stock rose 4.55 per cent to 25,115 points. The stock opened at 24200 level and continued its upward move on the BSE. The Eicher Motors stock closed 5.36 per cent higher at 25,309 level. 

The two-wheeler manufacturer had sold 44,522 units in October 2015, Eicher Motors said in a BSE filing. Sales in the domestic market stood at 58,369 units as against 44,138 units in the same month last year, up 32.24 per cent. Exports during the month jumped 95 per cent to 748 units compared with 384 units in October 2015. 









The public autopsy of India’s dismal performance at the recently concluded Rio Olympics where the country won just two medals was nothing if not predictable. The usual suspects—the government and sports bodies—came under fire. The causes of India’s sporting woes were discussed. And it all led to a familiar conclusion: India lacks sporting infrastructure. But the chairman and co-founder of Mumbai-based startup KOOH Sports, Susir Kumar, 50, thinks otherwise. “There is enough infrastructure available,” he says. The challenge in India, he believes, is underutilisation of existing infrastructure and the absence of a grass-roots level sporting ecosystem. It’s what he, along with Chirag Patel, 48, CEO at KOOH Sports, and managing director and co-founder Prabhu Srinivasan, 43, have been quietly working at addressing for the past four years. Now, with Rs 14 crore in fresh funding from existing investors, which they raised in September, and having achieved what they believe is sufficient scale, the founders have bigger plans, including expansion in India and abroad. 

Launched in 2012, KOOH (an acronym for Kids out of Home) Sports functions as an outsourcing firm that provides and runs the sports curriculum for schools, replacing or occasionally supplementing the sports department. It has expanded its presence to reach over 180 private schools in 51 towns and cities across the country, and is currently engaged with about 200,000 children. It also aims to close the year with revenues of around Rs 30 crore.

While there are other firms like Bengaluru-based SportzVillage (which owns the physical education platform, EduSports) and LeapStart that work along similar lines, KOOH claims to be among the few that have adopted the ‘full stack’ approach. Essentially, it provides children sporting opportunities beginning at the school level, moving on to academies, then to high-performance centres and even sports leagues. And while this may not by itself be a novel idea (Reliance IMG, for instance, also has wide-ranging grass-roots programmes aimed at developing sports like football and basketball), the company’s ability to build its service-based platform at scale is significant. 


Reliance Aerospace to execute Rafale offset programme in India

The agreement includes a 50% offset obligation which is the largest ever offset contract in the history of India

The Anil Ambani-led Reliance group on Monday announced the creation of a joint venutre with French defence manager Dassault. 

The new joint venture called “Dassault Reliance Aerospace” will execute offset obligations, as a part of the 36 Rafale fighter jets purchase agreement at a value of €7.87 billion, or about Rs 59,000 crore signed betweenFrance and India on September 23.



Anand Deshpande, 54, chairman and MD of Persistent Systems, is a techie by training and an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur



I
n 1990, Anand Deshpande, then a databases engineer for Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California, got a fortuitous refund from the US taxman when he got married 10 months into the calendar year. The money helped him start his software engineering firm Persistent Systems in India that year.

At a time when most software companies pursued the body shopping model (recruiting skilled manpower and contracting them out to larger firms overseas), Deshpande instead sought projects that involved coding software products for global software giants.

In hindsight, Persistent’s ‘products services’ model has reaped rich dividends. A quarter of a century later, Persistent has earned an enviable clientele. It serves many of the biggest software names in the world, from pre-internet era companies like Microsoft and IBM to made-for-the-cloud tech pioneers such as the San Francisco-based Salesforce.com. The Pune-based Persistent has more than 9,000 employees and ended the first quarter of the current fiscal with an annualised revenue run-rate of over $400 million (around Rs 2,600 crore). That compares with the $351 million revenue clocked in the previous fiscal. On BSE, the company has a market capitalisation of around Rs 5,000 crore.

Now, with the software industry at an inflection point, Persistent is ready for Deshpande’s next leap of faith—taking its technological know-how and software-building prowess directly to enterprises. This means, in addition to working with independent software builders like Microsoft and IBM, who have been Persistent’s traditional customers, the Indian company will go directly to enterprises, or the end customers of software products namely banks, hospitals and other businesses that are grappling with the challenges of the digital era: Startups upending their businesses.

Persistent plans to do this by offering enterprises cloud-based solutions. “The cloud has become mainstream, and the process of building software keeps improving and changing, and more people are building software directly on the cloud,” Deshpande, 54, tells Forbes India. “You can build a lot more with a lot less people—the effort required to build a next generation software product on the cloud is far less than the way it is done by traditional technology companies,” he adds.

This means enterprises around the world are loath to burning mountains of cash on software licences for unwieldy packages that take several months to roll out—the type of software that Persistent’s traditional customers build. Banks, hospitals, retail chains and even manufacturing companies are now testing software that is built and rolled out in days and can be evolved when needed.

Deshpande, who heads Persistent as its chairman and managing director, believes he can tap into this phenomenon and lead the company he founded into its next phase of growth. Persistent wants to help its new customers, the enterprises, tap the data already at their disposal (from their everyday operations) and build digital experiences for their end customers, or the consumers. And it wants to build them rapidly, while improvising features iteratively. “We want to work with enterprises and show them these iterative developments and focus on integration and intelligence,” says Deshpande.

He is convinced there is money to be made this way, especially given Persistent’s rich legacy of partnerships, like the one it announced with IBM earlier this year, to build solutions and services around the US company’s cognitive computing platform Watson and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Persistent plans to use the learning it acquires from the IBM partnership for the benefit of its enterprise customers. “Persistent’s IoT alliance with IBM is a step in the right direction,” says DD Mishra, a research director at technology market research and consultancy Gartner. “The next few years will be dominated by IoT and smart machine capabilities. One of the things that will be immediately required is the availability of skills. Client organisations expect more agility and flexibility and I think this partnership [with IBM] has the potential to address that,” Mishra says. “The success of this partnership will revolve around how quickly Persistent can re-skill resources and IBM’s ability to leverage the capability Persistent can provide.”




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