-->

Tuesday 18 September 2018

NEWSLETTER, 20-IX-2018











DELHI, 20th September 2018
Index of this Newsletter


INDIA

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC. 


1.1.  Law and order in a time of lynch mobs
1.2.  Demonetisation comes to haunt govt as RBI says 99.3% notes back
2.1.  Will centre’s flagship ‘Ayushman Bharat’ scheme ensure quality healthcare?
2.2.  New Industrial Policy to focus on jobs, push tech use, cut red tape
3.1.  Row your bot
3.2.  AI startups Arya.ai, Entropik Tech helping firms improve productivity
4.1.  Mature economies accept dependence on coal-sourced energy
4.2.  RInfra consortium inks pact with MSRDC for Rs 7,000-cr Versova-Bandra sea link project
5.1.  Vedanta to invest $8 bn in 3 years
5.2.  Govt approves 100% electrification of railways by 2021-22


– AGRICULTURE, FISHING & RURAL DEVELOPMENT


6.1. eNAM
6.2. How a farmer in Tamil Nadu is reimagining agriculture
7.1.  New umbrella scheme to ensure farmers get remunerative price
7.2.  India's public spending on agri R&D not far behind China: Niti member
8.1.  India's retail market likely to touch Rs 80 trillion in 2020, says report
8.2.  Flipkart launches 2GUD, new e-commerce portal for refurbished goods
9.1.  Fine chocolate boom has idli-grinder to thank
9.2.  Alinz, Petrocard tie up to make portable petrol pumps in India
10.1. Foodgrain output seen at record 285 million tonnes in 2017-18
10.2. Microfinance sector registers a growth of around 39% in loan portfolio


– INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURE


11.1. Alibaba in talks with Reliance Retail for joint venture
11.2. Ikea’s real challenge in India lies online
12.1. Top automakers gear up for eco-drive
12.2. Export of India-made cars to US goes up, America becomes 2nd-biggest market
13.1. Hero MotoCorp to launch four 200-300cc bikes over the next 18 months
13.2. Lockheed Martin, Tata Advanced Systems to build F-16 wings in India
14.1. Haier to set up Rs 3k cr manufacturing units at Greater Noida
14.2. Intel India trains 99,000 people in artificial intelligence
15.1. Ashok Leyland bags order from Bangladesh
15.2. Voltbek eyes ₹10,000 crore from sale of appliances


– SERVICES (IT, R&D, Tourism, Healthcare, etc.) 


16.1. Main Stream India
16.2. Wipro bags 10-year, $1.5-bn deal from US-based Alight Solutions
17.1. Government may take PPP route to increase hospital beds under Modicare
17.2. Learning from the past on medical device pricing
18.1. Domestic passenger traffic grows 20.82% in July
18.2. Mumbai-Goa cruise line service to finally begin from Oct 1
19.1. Armed with smartphones and biometric scanners, the postman leads India Post’s banking push
19.2. Hiring picks up at TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and HCL Tech
20.1. TCS 2nd Indian firm to cross ₹ 8 trillion market cap after RIL
20.2. Aurobindo agrees to acquire Novartis’s US generics business for $1 billion


INDIA & THE WORLD 

21.1. Govt mulls duty-free import of capital goods to skirt WTO
21.2. India is standing still as global trade changes
22.1. Global alliance to create 50 mn jobs, 10 mn entrepreneurs in India by 2030
22.2. Successful businessmen should invest in start-ups, says Kris Gopalakrishnan
23. Amazon India unveils Hindi website, app to take on Flipkart
24.1. US now has greater confidence in sharing technologies with India: Arun Singh
24.2. Cases of diabetes, heart diseases and cancer surging unabated in India: Study
25.1. Asian Games 2018: 10 Indian athletes to watch out for
25.2. In memory of Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul


* * *

DELHI, 20th September 2018

NEWSLETTER, 20-IX-2018



INDIA

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC. 



1.1. Law and order in a time of lynch mobs 
Livemint, 23 Aug. 2018, Rohit Prasad

The road to a truly law-abiding society begins with exemplary punishment meted out to hate-mongers and lynch mobs, irrespective of where and under whose patronage they operate


Social activists display placards during ‘Bharat Jodo: Do or Die’ protest over the incidents of lynching, religious polarization and hate, at Parliament Street in New Delhi on 9 August, 2018. Photo: PTI

If victory is attained,” I had written in an article in this paper before the 2014 general election, “will Modi be able to rein in his dogs of war, or will the nation be subjected to the ills of majoritarian muscle flexing? The threats to stability from Modi’s supporters, unshackled from the need to work toward a win, may be as great as those from his detractors.’” Unfortunately, such fears appear to be fast turning into reality.

Acts of violence are being perpetrated almost weekly by self-appointed upholders of public morality. The victims are Muslims, leftists, rationalists, and Dalits. In the wake of concerted national and international opprobrium, the Union home minister has finally taken notice. The prospect of an anti-lynching law emerged in the monsoon session of Parliament. The session also saw the enactment of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, which introduces the death penalty for the rape of girls below 12 years. Can the legislations give respite? Is there another way of tackling the growing menace? 

An insightful paper by Guy Halfteck in the Stanford Law Review identifies legislative threats as an important alternative to actual legislation. Legislative threats are prospects of harm meted out to groups of individuals, firms, or communities by legislators or regulators through a variety of means, including public statements, draft legislation, and policy recommendations. These are characterized by their desirable impact on social or commercial conduct without any explicit rulemaking.

An example of such legislative control is the recent US Congress investigation into the alleged infringement of privacy by Facebook. No explicit action will be taken provided the company concerned and the industry undertake sufficiently stringent measures for self-regulation.

The advantage of adopting such a method of social control is that it provides flexibility to legislators in a fast-changing world and does not bind them to prematurely formulated statutes set in stone. However, three enabling conditions are necessary. First, the threat that an actual legislation will be enacted in the absence of behavioural change must be credible. Second, the prospect of successful law enforcement following the enactment of the threatened resolution must be real. Third, the threat should be addressed to reasonably cohesive groups that are capable of demonstrating perceptible behavioural change in a rapid fashion.

In India, the prospect of using legislative threats is bleak. “Soft lawmaking” can be a useful addition to the tool kit of lawmakers only when the systems of explicit lawmaking are in good order. India ranked 62nd among 113 countries in the World Justice Project’s 2017-18 Rule of Law Index, and only 98th on the dimension of order and security. Under the circumstances, a legislative threat would have little meaning.

That leaves us with the oft repeated cycle of enacting fresh legislation where previous legislation already exists, or escalating penalties, sometimes beyond the level commensurate with the crime. A number of new provisions can be debated in the context of lynching, including enabling third parties to prevent, report, and deter such crimes. However, such a discussion would be sterile without the recognition that the current phase of violence is integrally linked to the promissory cocktail of Hindutva and development that propelled the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in 2014.

That promise includes two contradictory elements—good governance and the consolidation of a majoritarian identity. The appeal to cultural majoritarianism draws respectability from its avowal of constitutionalism, but derives its power from its ability to draw the masses to the polling booths even as it arouses the passions of the worst elements in society. Pleasing development enthusiasts while pandering to Hindutva gangs is the balancing act that the BJP has set out to master. 

The administration has undertaken a number of progressive economic steps, including the implementation of the goods and services tax, the Real Estate Regulation and Development Act, and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. However, the delay in addressing the non-performing assets problem, demonetization, and the neglect of agricultural distress in the first two years of the regime have resulted in a situation where the economy is growing but without increasing the well-being of the masses. 

The failure to bring about achhe din means that the balance has tilted away from the development enthusiasts and toward the hardliners. The steady breakdown of law and order is, thus, not an anomaly, but a direct consequence of the politics of the BJP and its failure to fulfil the aspirations of its supporters, especially in the area of chronic unemployment. 

Given the political provenance of the problem, the solution must emerge from new political dynamics. With an alleged attempt to murder in the heart of Delhi, the ruling party might feel that things have gone too far. Arson in remote rural locations is apparently alright by its lights, but disorder in Delhi may be a bit too close for comfort! The desire to project a moderate face in the run-up to the general election may also acquire heft. Action might return to the sleepy towns, while Delhi reverts to its status of permanent outrage without any skin in the game.

The road to a truly law-abiding society begins with exemplary punishment meted out to hate-mongers and lynch mobs, irrespective of where and under whose patronage they operate. Does the government have the guts to throw out the baby with the bathwater?

Rohit Prasad is a professor at MDI, Gurgaon, and author of Blood Red River. Game Sutra is a fortnightly column based on game theory.


1.2. Demonetisation comes to haunt govt as RBI says 99.3% notes back
Livemint, 29 Aug. 2018, Gopika Gopakumar

All but ₹10,720 crore of the ₹15.4 trillion returned, indicating the note ban hasn’t worked as desired
The demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in November 2016 had prompted the RBI to print new currency notes. 

Mumbai: The central bank’s post-mortem of the invalidation of high-value currencies in November 2016 is in: All but ₹10,720 crore of the ₹15.4 trillion is back in the banking system, indicating that the government’s shock move to deal a body blow to black money hasn’t worked as desired.

The government had then argued that at least ₹3 trillion of the old currency will not be returned to the banking system for fear of scrutiny.

A finance ministry official tacitly admitted as much in an incredulous response to a question at a press conference convened at North Block, which houses the finance ministry. “I think demonetization has achieved its objectives quite substantially,” said Subhash Chandra Garg, secretary of department of economic affairs, and then added, “How is not the question. If you have a counter-narrative just tell me.”

For the record, RBI’s annual report for 2017-18 says that upon completion of the verification and processing of banned notes, ₹15.3 trillion worth of specified bank notes have been returned to banks.

Expectations that the proportion of high-denomination notes in circulation would decline have also been belied.


The annual report reveals that the share of ₹500 and ₹2,000 banknotes, which together accounted for 72.7% of the total value of currency in circulation at the end of March 2017, has increased to 80.2% as on 31 March 2018. In comparison, the value of ₹ 500 and ₹1,000 notes constituted nearly 86% of the currency in circulation at the time of demonetization.

“The primary objective of demonetization was to account for the cash and not to deprive people of value,” said R. Gandhi, a former deputy governor of RBI. “But for demonetization, the proportion of high-value currency would have gone up to 95%. Instead, it has been arrested at 80%.”

Expectations that the proportion of high-value notes in circulation would decline post note ban have been belied
“It (return of most currency notes) comes as no surprise. Very little of unaccounted wealth is kept in cash. Most of it goes into real estate, gold and stock market,” said Pronab Sen, former chief statistician of India. “We have been taking several measures to address the problem of unaccounted wealth and money laundering. Seeding Aadhaar with bank accounts is one of the effective steps taken,” he added.

Even while the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which heads the National Democratic Alliance, exchanged accusations, the troubling question that persists is—what went wrong? Remember, electorally, despite the best efforts of the opposition, demonetization was a force multiplier in the Uttar Pradesh elections, which followed soon after demonetization—BJP won a record 312 seats in the 2017 assembly polls.

The assumption of the Union government and RBI about black money stocks, in hindsight, appears flawed.

While no one disputed the existence of black money, most are taken aback by how it was laundered and returned to the banking system.

Gireesh Chandra Prasad in New Delhi contributed to this story


2.1. Will centre’s flagship ‘Ayushman Bharat’ scheme ensure quality healthcare?
Livemint, 10 Sep. 2018, Neetu Chandra Sharma

Ayushman Bharat aims to cover more than 100 million poor and vulnerable families for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization in India where more than 70% of all health services are provided by the private sector

New Delhi: Not even 1% of the private hospitals expected to be empanelled to provide services under the Ayushman Bharat-National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM) carry a quality tag.

This will make it difficult for the centre’s flagship scheme, billed as the world’s largest health assurance programme, to provide quality care.

This is all the more so as the government is largely looking at the private sector for providing “quality healthcare” under the scheme, which is popularly known as Modicare and is set to be launched under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana on 25 September, the birth anniversary of Bharatiya Jana Sangh leader Deendayal Upadhyaya.

The health protection mission aims to cover more than 100 million poor and vulnerable families for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization in India where more than 70% of all health services are provided by the private sector.

At least 6,000 private hospitals are likely to join the AB-NHPM but not all may not be accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH), according to the Quality Council of India (QCI), an autonomous body aimed at ensuring that standards are maintained in various sectors including health.

NABH is a constituent board of QCI, set up to establish and operate accreditation programmes for healthcare organizations based upon international standards, through a process of self and external evaluation.

“Currently, we have around 540 NABH-accredited hospitals in India which is a very small number. All these hospitals may not join Ayushman Bharat. NABH accreditation indicates that a hospital has best-in-class services and gives hospitals additional benefit as these hospitals will get more in the base rate in the scheme as compared to the non-accredited ones. It is totally a commercial decision and a private hospitals’ discretion to join or not to join the government scheme,” said Harish Nadkarni, chief executive officer, NABH.

“More and more NABH-accredited hospitals should join Ayushman Bharat because of the incentives. NABH-accredited hospitals will be paid 15% higher rate and entry level NABH hospitals will be paid 10% higher for the same package than non-accredited ones,” said Alok Saxena, joint secretary, ministry of health and family welfare.

“We will try to ensure that we provide quality healthcare through private hospitals. Getting entry level accreditation from NABH is not very difficult and there should be around 2,000 entry-level NABH hospitals, which is low. It is the just the starting of the scheme. If not immediately, gradually the quality healthcare systems under Ayushman Bharat will fall in place. We are empanelling hospitals according to their specialty and super-specialty such as cardio, neuro and nephro. Even before empanelment, the government will do reality checks of the hospitals if they have the required equipment and tools to provide quality healthcare,” he said.

At least 29 states and Union territories have started working on implementation of the scheme, according to the Union health ministry. Pilot projects have started in 16 Union territories, while other states will launch pilot projects before the launch of the scheme this month.

Interestingly, the government will require an additional 160,000 hospital beds to provide health assurance under AB-NHPM, according to a PwC-Confederation of Indian Industry report.

The ambitious scheme, to be implemented by the health ministry, aims to offer an annual health cover of ₹5 lakh per family, based on the socio-economic caste census (SECC) database. The health cover will allow beneficiaries to avail cashless treatment at any public or private empanelled hospital in India.

The expenditure incurred in premium payment will be shared by the central and state governments.


2.2. New Industrial Policy to focus on jobs, push tech use, cut red tape
BusinessLine, 23 Au. 2018, Amiti Sen

The much-anticipated New Industrial Policy, which will replace the 27-year-old existing policy and pave the way for promotion of new technology and reduced regulations, has been placed before the Union Cabinet for approval.

“The New Industrial Policy is now just a Cabinet nod away. Its implementation will lead to job creation and modernisation of units, and will encourage entrepreneurs to experiment with new technology to improve efficiency,” a government official told BusinessLine.

“All ministries and departments concerned were kept in the loop throughout the drafting process. Hence, there were no major changes proposed during the inter-ministerial consultations,” the official said.

This will be the third industrial policy drafted in independent India. The first was announced in 1956, and the second, in 1991.

The draft industrial policy floated in August 2017 by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion aims to create jobs over the next two decades, promote foreign technology transfer and attract $100 billion FDI annually.

While the policy does not suggest direct changes in laws such as those governing labour, it is likely to propose the establishment of a body with representation from the Centre and the States to work on changes whenever required. It also suggests strengthening of municipal bodies.

To promote the use of new technology such as robotics and artificial intelligence, the policy is expected to emphasise promoting R&D and set up an institutional mechanism to encourage commercial utilisation of research done using government funds, the official said.

Commerce & Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu has said the policy would include steps to cut down unnecessary regulations.

“The New Industrial Policy will encourage the industry to work together with the government to improve productivity, R&D efforts, and efficiency,” the official said.

The policy will focus on ‘Make in India’, improving ease of doing business, aligning trade and manufacturing, improving access to credit for MSMEs, industrial infrastructure creation, skill development and promotion of technology.

The DIPP is also hopeful that the policy will act as a catalyst to help the Start-up India initiative to drive India’s economic growth.


3.1. Row your bot
BusinessLine, 10 Sep. 2018, Venkatesh Ganesh & Jinoy Jose P


Indian companies and consumers are increasingly interacting with chatbots now, creating a new economy while integrating themselves into the larger universe of artificial intelligence. Venkatesh Ganesh and Jinoy Jose P log into the bot economy to track the trend

For Pravin Dholakia, investing is a passion. Though he stopped working as a stock trader some years ago, the 58-year-old seeks to stay abreast of the latest trends in the sector.

For this purpose, earlier, Dholakia used a Nokia 1180 and a landline to call mutual fund agents/brokers regularly for tips and trends. But they didn’t always entertain the former broker. They would ask him to drop a message on WhatsApp so they may answer later at will. This was a worry. But soon Dholakia found a friend, Motabhai, who had all the time in the world — and the inclination — to answer his queries.

For starters, Motabhai is a chatbot, developed and run by the Bombay Stock Exchange. It responds to investor queries, providing customised information from the BSE’s database. “I asked Motabhai whether I could invest in a product that had exposure to exchange traded funds (ETFs) and the bot directed me to a link that helped me understand my need better and take decisions accordingly,” says Dholakia.

Hundreds of miles away from Dholakia’s Bengaluru, in Delhi, K Lathika, a retired government employee suffering from hearing loss, dreads calling customer care whenever her appliances break down or when she wants to clear queries while booking a travel ticket. “The IVRS is not for me,” she says. “Nor are those customer care executives who lose patience at the drop of a hat.” But she has found a saviour in the chatting-messaging services that are now available on the websites of e-tailers, banks, insurance companies and even pharma-medical service providers. “I didn’t realise I was interacting with a machine until my daughter told me about chatbots,” says Lathika. “But I must say I am happy about the way they treat me, patient and ready with an answer.”

Bought into it?
With the explosion in smartphone technologies and sales, and the advent of cheap and fast data, a clutch of internet-enabled solutions have come up to enhance customer-business interactions. Among them, the bot has swiftly carved out a niche, thanks to its simplicity and ubiquity. Bots, short for internet robots, are transforming the way businesses, governments and similar entities interact with their stakeholders in India and elsewhere.

A few crucial factors make bots a favourite medium for customer engagement. For one, they are always-on and available 24x7. Phone calls, interactive voice responses (IVRs) and emails are time-consuming and can be annoying for most customers. The bot makes customer-management easier while helping companies save labour costs.

The economic case for bots is straightforward. As Dholakia would vouch, a bot answers a query any time, any place, unlike a human. “This delivers better service in resolving a large volume of standard queries that do not necessarily involve navigating through the complex landscape of human emotions,” says Ritesh Pai, Chief Digital Officer, YES Bank. The YES Robot, a chatbot service from the bank, has handled over 3.5 million customer interactions since its launch last year.

To be fair, the bot economy is a relatively new phenomenon in India. Bots got popular only recently, especially after the smartphone boom kicked in, making internet easily accessible. Globally, chatbots help enterprises save an estimated $8 billion every year. Considering that over 50 crore Indians will use smartphones by 2022, businesses are looking at innovative ways to engage customers in a personalised manner, thereby generating business.

“Chatbots tick all these boxes, as they can provide 24x7 accessibility along with easy engagement in the form of conversations,” says Aakrit Vaish, CEO and Co-Founder, Haptik, a chatbot services provider. Haptik, SurBo, Niki, Gupshup and Avaamo are among the many Indian companies building chatbot solutions for companies in the country and abroad.

Chat is a powerful medium of communication; considering that India has a higher percentage of millennials who are more comfortable being in ‘chat’ mode, chatbots will see faster adoption in India, say experts. Market watchers feel that the current boom in e-commerce can tap into tier-2 and tier-3 cities only through chatbots.

Chatting up
“Chat can simplify the complex experience offered by mobile apps and give the masses access to the digital world,” says Pratik Jain, Co-Founder of Morph.ai, a chatbot services provider. “Messaging apps like WhatsApp have now opened up APIs (application programming interface) for building automated experiences. The bot economy is just going to explode,” he says.

Agrees Mahendra Upadhyay-Head, Data & Technology, Mindshare India: “Customer experience and skill development are two of the biggest challenges for any industry directly engaging with consumers.” India, with its vast and diversified culture, poses a different challenge to marketers and customer care managers. Delivering high consumer experience with cost control is a key concern for top management. Response to consumer queries and expectations in real time is crucial to build the right perception in the consumer’s mind. “Chatbots come precisely in that space and can help you build that,” says Upadhyay.

In India, operating costs for businesses used to be relatively low. However, all that changed in the last decade with rapidly increasing wages, growing infrastructure costs, pricing pressures and increased competition leading to lower margins. Businesses are, therefore, looking at efficiencies to reduce costs, improve customer engagement and satisfaction.

“Chatbots are a new channel that is fast emerging, given that consumers are increasingly using their mobiles for transacting and controlling their lives,” says Thomas Abraham, Founder, T-Ventures, which tracks emerging technologies.

Right on cue, businesses are deploying chatbots across verticals and platforms. “There are some 8,000 chatbots engaging customers in India today,” estimates Milan Sheth, Lead-Intelligent Automation, EY, which implements chatbot solutions in the country. Sheth says more bots are being added in many languages, including the vernacular.

Those many bots
Banking, insurance, travel, e-tailing, healthcare and education are some sectors that have deployed chatbots.

One of the largest mutual funds in India, UTI, which has investor accounts of over one crore under its 221 domestic schemes and plans, has deployed the UTI Chatbot to answer basic, mutual fund-related queries. The bot is accessible through Facebook Messenger via UTI MF’s Facebook page. Major banks such as SBI, HDFC and ICICI all use chatbot services to engage customers.

PNB Metlife’s bot, Dr. Jeevan, educates customers on critical illnesses — cancer and heart failure — with interactive videos and personalised quotation. It’s also available on Facebook messenger.

ICICI Lombard’s chatbot called ‘MyRA’, launched in December 2016, has already served over 60,000 customers, and even sold 850 policies without any human intervention. In the travel segment, Yatra launched its own bot on FB Messenger to help customers search and book a flight directly from the app. In the education space, ‘edu bots’ now answer questions related to myriad subjects.

InFeedo, an HR services firm that tracks employee and organisational mood and culture on a real time basis, has Amber, a bot for engaging with employees based on the respective stages in the career.

Similarly, MapRecruit uses a voice bot to do initial interviews and further analyse the call to screen a large applicant base, saving recruiters considerable time.

Voice and beyond
The rise of virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant has given the bot industry the much-needed impetus to experiment on voice services. Speech recognition, the holy grail for computer scientists for decades, has finally found voice. For many years, only incremental improvements were made in speech recognition. But three or four years ago, things started to change due to a combination of factors — from cheap computing to large amounts of digital data collected over the years.

“Voice bots will become the new user interface, the gateway to the digital universe,” says Kavita Reddi, co-founder Voxta, a desi speech-tech start-up. Consider the facts around voice: In India, for Google, voice-based search accounts for 30 per cent of total search, and Hindi search grew by 400 per cent last year, albeit on a low base. Voxta also built an IVR Hindi speech recognition support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign in the last election.

Chatbots can offer a conversational interface that non-English speakers are more comfortable with, says Abhishek Shah, co-founder of Wellthy, a health-tech start-up. Similarly, in the education sector, Gopal Devanahalli, CEO, Merittrac, a learning and skills assessment company, has launched a bot that can interact in text and push associated videos pertaining to a subject.

Currently, speech recognition in English has an error rate of about 5.1 per cent — same as the human error rate. “Machines are at parity and getting better, so it’s kind of amazing,” points out Peggy Johnson, Executive Vice-President, Business Development, Microsoft. “So now you can look at taking this technology; we’ve actually put it in Microsoft translator and translated into a number of languages all over the world, including three from India — Hindi, Bengali and Tamil,” she adds.

While chatbots, voice bots, languages and the works look glamorous, human-machine interaction raises more questions than answers (SeeBots and us). One of the things that Pai of YES Bank alludes to is answering complex queries where the Indian chatbot stuck.

Sriram Raghavan, VP, IBM Research and CTO, IBM India, calls it a technology problem — technology is trying to solve basic issues that humans have wrestled with for the last thousand decades. “As of now, Emotional Intelligence has not been baked into systems. To understand human feelings for interaction purposes is where it is heading to,” he says.

In the near future, chatbots are expected to take on a lot more responsibilities. Currently, they are mainly employed in tasks that are repetitive and require an objective, and not a subjective, response.

Though many bots are still not capable of handling complex queries, they transfer such queries to human agents and assist them with suggestions pulled from product manuals, thereby helping reduce human error — and hopefully, not writing the doomsday manual for humans yet. According to experts, the present chatbot technology is capable of automating several repetitive and human-intensive touch points with accuracy of over 80 per cent.

Also, as Abraham of T-Ventures puts it, the challenge will lie with organisations that are traditionally ‘brick and mortar’ and unsure of how this ‘shift’ will work for them. They will perhaps experiment with some pilots and see how their own digital transformation journey can move forward.

The excitement around bots is infectious. The Indian chatbot industry, albeit in its nascent stages, is a $3.1-billion market, according to analysts. And its users are beginning to want more. Stock trader Dholakia, for instance, is hoping that bots will soon chit-chat with him, apart from offering tips on making more money.


3.2. AI startups Arya.ai, Entropik Tech helping firms improve productivity
Livemint, 10 Sep. 2018, Prasid Benerjee

While Arya.ai builds Artificial Intelligence tools for banking, reducing processing time by hours, Entropik Tech uses AI tools to track human emotions

New Delhi: Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming the cornerstone of all modern technology. From smart cities to banking, insurance and more. Here, we profile two enterprising Indian enterprises that are reaching new frontiers in AI:

AI for banks
Arya.ai, which raised $750,000 in pre-series A funding in 2015, is expected to soon announce a bigger round of funding.

The team: Started in 2013 by IIT Mumbai researchers, Vinay Kumar Sankarapu and Deekshith Marla.

Cool factor: Arya.ai builds artificial intelligence (AI) tools for the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector, which has reduced processing time by hours.

Profile: In 2013, two researchers from IIT Mumbai, Sankarapu and Deekshith Marla started Arya.ai, to build AI solutions for industries.

Currently focusing on the BFSI segment, the company’s core product is called Vega. This is a tool that the company uses to develop its solutions. For instance, hospitals can clear insurance claims in minutes using Arya’s platform. Traditionally, insurance companies have to look at things like room rent, claim reports, policy details, etc., when processing an insurance claim. With Arya.ai’s platform, this can be done in minutes by the AI program. Similarly, in the banking sector, Arya’s platform helps in cheque automation, scanning images of cheques and clearing them on the fly. The firm currently has one of India’s top banks as its customer, along with other customers. The company is based in India, but spreads across Singapore and the UK as well.

Tracking emotions
Entropik Tech raised $1.1 million in a pre-series A funding led by Bharat Innovation Fund in June 2018.

The team: Founded by Rajan Kumar, an IIT Kharagpur engineer, in 2016.

Cool factor: Entropik Tech uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools to track human emotions, by mapping brainwaves, eye-tracking and more.

Profile: Entropik Tech is the only emotion recognition startup in India. The firm makes AI tools that help brands identify human emotions and tweak products. With technologies like brainwave mapping, eye tracking, facial coding and more, the company’s platform, tracks or predicts consumer emotions, and also suggest changes when required. For instance, a film studio can run its trailer through Entropik’s platform and it will know how viewers are likely to react to it.

The firm has also run pilot products with auto makers to track driver emotions inside a car. Entropik’s clients include Myntra, BankBazaar.com, GroupM and Xiaomi.


4.1. Mature economies accept dependence on coal-sourced energy
BusinessLine, 9 Sep. 2018, P. Manoi

The import of higher calorific value coal will go a long way in supplementing Indian coal and ensuring the lowest cost generation. - The Hindu

The rhetoric on turning the world into renewable energy-run planet is gradually going up in thin air. Many nations including matured economies are waking up to a renewed dependency on coal-sourced energy. Despite the persistent green lobbying, policy makers across the globe have gradually accepted that the viability of coal-heavy energy mix remains unchallenged.

Whether it was Donald Trump’ infamous pull out from the Paris Accord or the much recent comments made by Angus Taylor, Australia’s new energy minister, the global dependency on coal is inevitable.

Talking on the existing government inclination towards renewable energy, Taylor said that he will fix this “mess”, with “one aim only: to reduce power prices while keeping the lights on”. Even China, one of the leading coal producers and largest importers of coal, have demonstrated only limited slowdown in its coal-based capacity addition.

India’s stance?
Amidst the changing global headwinds, it will be interesting to see India’s stance considering its new-found penchant for renewable energy. The fragility of shunning coal and promoting only renewables is evident. Records reflect that even as we grapple to cater to rising power demands, the generation and supply from hydro and renewables have been subdued.

The rebound shows coal’s resilience, which is evident from the recent action by the Power Minister, R K Singh to permit usage of imported coal in state and central power generating companies, which had been restricted since the last few years.

The commercial exploitation of coal in coal exporting countries supported by sound government policies would add significant supply in the international markets further driving down imported coal prices. The import of higher calorific value coal will go a long way in supplementing Indian coal and ensuring the lowest cost generation, in turn, benefitting the end consumer of electricity.

India has abundant and economical coal reserves which can be effectively put to use for achieving its goal of ‘Power for All by 2020’ in a sustainable manner. Today, India boasts one of the lowest per capita CO2 emissions globally.

And, why should India cripple its energy needs when global peers with several times higher per capita energy consumption are refusing to budge. As of March 2018, India’s per capital energy consumption stood at 1149, a fraction of the US (12071), Australia (9742) and China (4475).

It is also pertinent to note that India’s carbon footprints have come down courtesy the mandated use of supercritical technology in thermal plants. According to industry estimates, better technology has helped India cut down Co2 emissions by 20.69 million tonnes in comparison to sub-critical power plants.

The country’s appetite for electricity demand is soaring and we are already on the right path of being a leader in renewable energy. The time is ripe to push through a comprehensive energy policy by supplementing renewable energy with coal-based power generation.

It is established that coal, as a source of fuel, has been one of the mainstays of energy consumption and shall continue to be a primary source of energy in the forseeable future.


4.2. RInfra consortium inks pact with MSRDC for Rs 7,000-cr Versova-Bandra sea link project
BusinessLine, 4 Sep. 2018

Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) said Tuesday that its consortium has inked an MoU with Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) for the Rs 7,000-crore Versova-Bandra Sea Link Project in Mumbai.

“Reliance Infrastructure Ltd-Astaldi SpA (Italy) Consortium has signed an agreement with MSRDC today for construction of the prestigious Versova-Bandra Sea Link Project in Mumbai,” the company said in a statement.

Reliance Infrastructure-Astaldi had earlier bagged the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the Rs 7,000-crore project on a competitive bid basis. The consortium had emerged the most competitive bidder with their bid of Rs 6,993.99 crore.

The other bidders in the fray were L&T-Samsung and Hyundai Development Company-ITD, it said in a statement, adding that the tender for the construction of the second sea link in Mumbai on EPC basis was floated by the MSRDC.

With a length of 17.17 km, Versova-Bandra Sea Link is three times the length of the existing Bandra-Worli Sea Link, which is 5.6 km, the statement said.

Reliance Infrastructure EPC CEO Arun Gupta said, “This project will further propel Reliance Infrastructure as a premier EPC company in India. Our partnership with Astaldi S.p.A, the third biggest construction player in the world in bridges, will help us create a truly world-class mega infrastructure project for Mumbai.”

Reliance Infrastructure-Astaldi has to commission the project in five years from the appointed date. However, the company said owing to the monsoon, the work would be completely stalled for three months each year.

The largest order executed by Astaldi SpA is Izmit Bay Bridge (Gebze-OrhangaziIzmir Motorway Project) in Turkey with an investment of $7 billion (Rs 45,500 crore) for the entire project, the statement said.

Besides, Astaldi has also executed the Western High Speed Diameter Motorway in Saint Petersburg in Russia at a contract value of euro 2.2 billion (Rs 17,600 crore), it added. The project has a 12-km section with 5.3-km viaducts on sea and two cable stay bridges, which was opened to the traffic in December 2016.


5.1. Vedanta to invest $8 bn in 3 years
BusinessLine, 24 Aug. 2018

Anil Agarwal-owned Vedanta plans to invest $8 billion (about ₹56,000 crore) to increase the production of aluminium, zinc, lead and crude oil over the next three years.

Addressing shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting on Friday, Vedanta Chairman, Navin Agarwal, said India currently spends $125 billion on oil imports, which accounts for 80 per cent of its oil needs. As the country's largest private sector oil producer, Vedanta contributed 27 per cent to the domestic production and aspires to take it up to 50 per cent, he added. Towards this end, he said Vedanta will invest $3-4 billion over the next 2-3 years, in various projects.

Policy changes
Agarwal said there is an urgent need to bring further changes in policies for the natural resources sector, particularly the implementation of the New Mineral Policy, and to ensure a level playing field in terms of imports and duties. Encouraging the exploration and production of natural resources will lead to greater self-reliance, save billions of dollars in imports, generate immense employment opportunities, he added.

Vedanta is the world's second largest integrated zinc-lead producer and the only primary silver producer in India.

"We are also the largest aluminium producer in the country. This year, we had a record production at our zinc-lead-silver and aluminium businesses. We will be further investing $3-4 billion in these businesses in the next 2-3 years," Agarwal said.

Centre for tech excellence
The company also said it plans to establish a global centre for technical excellence.

Vedanta's free cash flow stood at ₹7,900 crore and gross debt came down by ₹8,500 crore. With a contribution of over ₹33,000 crore to the Indian exchequer, the company is among the top two corporate contributors in India Inc.


5.2. Govt approves 100% electrification of railways by 2021-22
Livemint, 12 Sep. 2018, Jyotika Sood and Prashant K. Nanda

100% railway electrification will reduce Indian Railways’ fuel bill by ₹ 13,510 crore/year and improve safety, capacity and speed

New Delhi: The Union cabinet on Wednesday approved a proposal for the complete electrification of Indian Railways in the next four years, reducing dependance on imported fossil fuel and saving revenue for the national carrier.

The move will cost the government ₹12,134 crore, rail minister Piyush Goyal said after a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).

Indian Railways had moved the cabinet to electrify 108 sections of the railways covering 13,675 route kilometers of tracks.

The government backed the proposal saying it will help the carrier save ₹13,510 crore per annum in fuel costs. Besides, complete electrification of broad gauge routes will have a significant impact on safety, capacity and speed.

Indian Railways is one of the largest rail networks in the world with 67,368km of tracks and 22,550 trains that carry 22.24 million passengers and 3.04 million tonnes of freight every day.

Indian trains primarily run on electricity or diesel. Currently, around two-third of freight and more than half of passenger traffic in Indian Railways are ferried by electric traction (engines). However, electric traction accounts for just 37% of the total energy expenses of Indian Railways.

“This will reduce dependence on imported fossil fuel and reduce costs for the Railways. Prime Minister wants to improve efficiency and by saving cost make Indian Railways profitable. This without burdening the passengers,” Goyal said adding that the move will also reduce pollution.

The minister said once the project is completed, Indian Railways may become the largest electrified rail network in the world. It will help save foreign exchange, reduce pollution and make railways faster and safer.

Goyal said heavy duty routes like Delhi-Chennai, Howrah-Delhi and Howrah-Chennai will be taken up one by one on a priority to complete end-to-end electrification.

Railways in a press statement said that the step will also help it to reduce expenditure on maintenance of locomotives. Electric locomotive maintenance cost is ₹16.45 per thousand gross tonne km (GTKM), while for diesel locomotive it is ₹32.84 per thousand GTKM.

Goyal told reporters Wednesday that full electrification does not mean there will be no diesel engines—these can still can be used for alternative arrangements and in border areas. He said the country needs 700 to 1,000 diesel engines in border areas. Besides, he said railway engineers are working to convert existing diesel engines into electric engines.

The railway electrification move comes a year after the Railway-GE controversy. Last year Goyal asked the Indian Railways to review the GE diesel locomotive project as Indian Railways wanted to go for complete electrification by 2022. His comments drew protests from the US-based company GE which warned the national carrier that any decision to scrap the project would have a “serious impact on job creation and skills development and cause the government to incur substantial costs”. GE was asked to set up a diesel locomotive factory in Bihar in 2014 and as per the government’s decision Indian Railways would buy 1,000 diesel locomotives from it over 10 years.

The Union cabinet also approved a proposal to give incentives to companies by reducing cess and royalty payment for improvements in production in existing oil and gas fields.



- AGRICULTURE, FISHING & RURAL DEVELOPMENT 


6.1. eNAM

- The Andhra Pradesh experience 
BusinessLine, 9 sep. 2018,Rajalakshmi Nirmal,

While many States are still finding it tough, Andhra Pradesh has successfully linked many of its mandis to eNAM. B Rajasekhar, Special Chief Secretary, Agriculture, Andhra Pradesh, spoke to BusinessLine on how the State ensured a smooth transition for farmers and traders into the new platform. Excerpts:

How was AP able to find success in eNAM?
First and foremost, we had political commitment, including from the Chief Minister (Chandrababu Naidu). So that takes care of a lot of things. We initiated eNAM in about 21 APMCs (Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee) initially. It was a struggle because the vested interests of traders and commission agents were well-entrenched. In the initial days, there was a lot of resistance because once you are in the system (eNAM), you have to pay taxes. But the CM gave us his full support. So even when ruling party MLAs were against it, we used help from the Chief Minister’s office to quell the dissent.

Ours was a twin strategy; we confronted the issue with both the stumbling blocks — traders and commission agents. We didn’t tell them that they are going to be eliminated; we said: “You have to fall in line.”

We conducted several meetings at the ministerial level with various associations and unions, and dangled the carrots. We told them that they would get benefits, but also made it very clear that this had the mandate of the CM and the PM — “we will be pushing this whether you like it or not.”

Simultaneously, we demonstrated to the farmers that eNAM is ultimately beneficial to them and that they can get a better price.

Duggirala was a market with no commission agents; so that was our first choice for the pilot eNAM centre. We opened centres at Adoni and Kurnool, too. Those markets had some open bids, which where moved to online bidding. These places, too, started showing some good results.

Parallely, we employed KPMG for project management to analyse and identify the bottlenecks in the whole value chain and found that the pain points for the farmers were: lack of assaying and grading infrastructure.

Value addition wasn’t a custom in the mandis. The farmers brought the produce as it was, and so quoting lack of quality in the lot, traders quoted low prices.

We demonstrated to the farmers that a small intervention such as cleaning and grading before getting the lot to the market would give them that extra money. We started convincing them that if they first have price discovery within the market, we can then slowly move to assaying, with which they can move the produce inter-mandi. The next obvious step would be going for a larger market, which will lead to even better price discovery.

It seems to be working now, but to be fair to the various stakeholders at the mandis, we found the SFAC (Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium) being not that flexible. It is too idealistic for the Centre to ask everyone to implement eNAM from day one. So we have been asking for some concessions such as giving more time for traders to make online payments, but SFAC has been very rigid. Otherwise, by this time, we would have made more progress.

Flexibility in what sense?
Traders have been requesting 15 days of credit period instead of payment within 24 hours.


- Sowing seeds for future 
BusinessLine, 9 Sep. 2018, Rajalakshmi Nirmal


It may still have many missing links, but the national agri market is slowly transforming the way India trades in agri produce

Since its launch in April 2016, many States have joined the electronic national agriculture market (eNAM) platform by reforming their APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) Act and taking a hard stance with arhityas (commission agents) who had been resisting e-auctioning and online payment. But at the ground level, have things changed for the farmer?

Yes, eNAM is ushering in change, though in a small way.

At Adoni, Guntur and Kurnool mandis in Andhra Pradesh, Nizamabad in Telangana, Charkhi Dadri in Haryana, and many more mandis across the country, farmers today are drawing the benefits of better price discovery.

From a system of undercover auctions in some mandis to open-outcry auction in others, auctions have now become automated.

Gone are the days of trade cartels pre-fixing the price for farmers’ produce.

The benefit has also come from computerised weighing with weighing machines linked to the eNAM portal through Bluetooth. Earlier, commission agents used to falsify weight calculations.

While there were many hiccups at the beginning — including poor internet connectivity, glitches in software and delays in online payments — many of these have been addressed by the Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC, an autonomous entity promoted by the Agriculture Ministry), the implementing agency for eNAM.

Nagarjuna Fertilizers and Chemicals, the company that won the bid to design, develop and maintain the application and the portal, also had two tough years resolving the tangled agri-marketing chain.

BusinessLine caught up with State and Central government officials, SFAC, mandi board officials, farmers and arhityasto understand the changes brought about by eNAM.

There are still many missing links in eNAM, but the transformation made in the mind set of many farmers and traders who now trade online, as a result of eNAM, is itself a commendable feat.

What it has achieved
The biggest achievement of eNAM is automated bidding. Every trader, after inspection of a lot, logs on to the eNAM portal (through mobile app or website), and places his bid. The system then discovers the highest bid for every lot and declares the winners.

A trader cannot revise or cancel his bid once placed. SMS alerts are sent to the farmers’ mobile phones as soon as the winners’ list is announced.

Today, online auctioning is being carried out smoothly in eNAM mandis across the country, even in States such as Andhra Pradesh and Telangana where volumes are relatively high.

“During the initial days of eNAM, there were glitches in the system, but we worked closely with the National Informatics Centre and sorted it out, and now that is history,” said Dushyant K Tyagi, Chief Business Officer, Nagarjuna Fertilizer and Chemicals.

“Over the past year, our focus has been enhancing the system as per requests from States and strengthening the portal by adding new features,” he added.

Vijay Vujjini, Chief Technology Advisor and Architect of the platform, said: “The eNAM platform can now be scaled to handle more traffic and work with less downtime. It also has a backup system.” Vijay was also involved in creating some of the core systems of UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India - Aadhaar).

Computerised weighing is another success of eNAM. Farmers used to earlier lose 2-3 kg from every lot they brought in because of wrong reading or cheating by agents. But now, many eNAM mandis have electronic weighing with the machine integrated with eNAM.

Thanks to eNAM, agri commodities now have standardised quality parameters. Till two years ago, no one talked about assaying of agri produce.

But today, there is a lot of awareness.

The Directorate of Marketing and Inspection (under the Department of Agriculture Cooperation and Farmers Welfare) has published the quality specifications for all commodities traded on eNAM, and how to check them.

An incomplete party
Inputs received from different mandis in the North, Central and Western parts of the country show that trading is not yet done 100 per cent online in all eNAM mandis.

In some mandis in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat, farmers have the option to sell their produce through normal auctions.

A farmer from Botad, Gujarat, told BusinessLine: “Many of us do not want to go through eNAM because it’s a long process and takes time. During off-season, it’s okay; but during peak season, we prefer to sell via normal auction itself as that’s faster.”

The powers that be need to brainstorm on how to reduce the process time in eNAM.

At some mandis in Bundi, Bikaner and Kota in Rajasthan, stakeholders said that small farmers still preferred to take their produce through the normal auction route because — one, they do not understand technology, and two, they fear they may get a lower price if their produce is not of good quality.

SFAC and Nagarjuna Fertilizers, for their part, have been running awareness programmes.

The training modules are designed in the local language and explained with audio-visual content to farmers and traders.

So far, about 1,170 training and awareness camps have been conducted across 16 States and two union territories.

While training programmes focus on familiarising farmers with the platform, what is equally critical is sensitising them on the benefits the platform will bring with better price discovery.

States’ lethargy
Giving a farmer the right price for his produce is still a distant dream for eNAM.

This, though, can’t be entirely blamed on the Centre or the implementing agency. It is the States, here, that have failed.

While seven States have demonstrated smooth inter-mandi transactions on eNAM, none have yet done inter-State trade.

For that to become a reality, States need to issue unified licence to traders, using which traders could buy commodities from any farmer from any part of the country.

Since assaying of the commodities is necessary for inter-mandi/-State trade to become a reality, the Centre is offering ₹70 lakh to each mandi to get the machinery in place. It also provides information on the machines needed and where to source them from.

Quality-testing machines from CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), Nebulaa and FOSS have been piloted in a few mandis, said Prasanta Kumar Swain, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture Cooperation and Farmers Welfare. It is up to the States now to take it forward.

Checking with mandi officials and farmers across States, BusinessLinefound that most mandis still have only very basic machines for assaying commodities.

If the advanced AI machines of the companies mentioned above reach the market, they may answer many of the current problems.

Payment solution
Besides the hardships in selling, farmers have been pained by troubles in payment, too.

Till now, the farmer’s worry was taking back home safe the cash got from the commission agent (who in turn was paid by the trader after 15-20 days). With eNAM, this concern has been addressed with the trader now transferring the amount to the farmer’s account directly, in most of the mandis.

But the need to pay the farmer in T (trade)+2 days through an online mode has created fresh troubles for the trader — a reason why many traders have been resisting eNAM.

Nagarjuna Fertilizers is now contemplating a few ways to solve this problem. One is bill discounting, where the end-buyer issues a purchase bill to the trader and the trader pledges this with a bank and raises money for an interest of 1-2 per cent for 15-30 days.

He uses this money to settle the transaction with the farmer and repays the bank when he sells the the stock to the buyer and receives payment. The other option is getting traders a credit limit from banks. The credit limit will be based on the trade history of the individual trader.

‘Give it time’
When asked on what he thinks of eNAM, Ashok Dalwai, Chairman, Committee on Doubling Farmers’ Income, said: “I think we have been holding eNAM to accountability too soon. We have had APMCs since 1950s and ’60s, and even today, we don’t have uniformly efficient APMCs across the country. If it has taken such a long time for APMCs, we should not be expecting eNAM to be the best within two years.”

“eNAM can set up a national agriculture market only in a phased manner — first, replacing physical auction with e-auction, then facilitating inter-mandi trade, and later inter-State trade. If someone from Delhi wants to buy from a farmer in Tamil Nadu, it is practically not possible today because the State may not allow outsiders. We don’t have a national marketing act; we only have a state marketing act. So there are policy constraints which we need to be addressed.”

- States should do their bit: Agriculture Secretary 
BusinessLine, 9 Sep. 2018, Rajalakshmi Nirmal

‘Those which have actively taken up eNAM have seen success’

In a candid talk with BusinessLine, Agriculture Secretary Shobhana K Pattanayak throws light on the various challenges before the agri-marketing reform process. He explains the initiatives taken to push forward eNAM, and answers questions on why and how the implementation of eNAM is being done the way it is. Excerpts:

This year, the Centre has set a target of connecting 200 more mandis to eNAM. Will you choose the mandis or will the States decide, like how it was done for the 585 markets already under eNAM?

The Agriculture Department has given the States guidelines on how they should pick the mandis, giving preference to those that have high trade volumes. But the States’ decision is driven by factors including connectivity, willingness of the mandi parishad to do trade on the electronic platform and awareness of farmers.

A total of 585 from among the 2,500 major APMCs (Agriculrural Produce Market Committees) in the country is a good number, but since many of these mandis are small, eNAM is not able to show any achievement in trade volume...

You are right. Our efforts, from here on, will be to link markets that deal with high volumes of trade.

What initiatives are you taking to improve trade volume on eNAM?
With the eNAM platform, our idea was to not just link mandis across the country, but also connect all functional standalone entities such as warehouses. We are now working on the latter aspect. A warehouse is a mini marketplace, and once it gets connected to eNAM, farmers in and around it can draw a lot of benefits. We are also trying to bring FPOs (Farmer Producer Organisations) to trade on the eNAM platform; close to 174 FPOs have already been linked.

We will consider only 600 warehouses that are WDRA-(Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority)-compliant. Even if just these 600 warehouses are linked, it will help farmers. India has a total of about 165 million tonnes of warehousing capacity. If at least all the warehouses under the State Warehousing Corporations become WDRA-compliant, it will boost storage capacities, and we can bring all of them under eNAM.

Today, the warehousing facility within the mandis itself is poor. If the farmer has to wait to get the right price, or for the produce to be assayed, before he disposes the stock, there should be warehousing facilities inside mandis. Are States investing in building warehouses?

That’s an interesting question. Logically speaking, a warehouse facility should be there within the mandi. Many mandis have godowns today; but considering the changing needs and types of commodity mix, it is not enough to have just plain warehouses. There should be scientific warehouses where temperature and environment can be controlled.

Along with distributing funds to set up assaying infrastructure (₹70 lakh for each eNAM mandi), we also now support creation of other infrastructure at mandis.

The government has created an agri-market infrastructure fund with a corpus of ₹2,000 crore. Any State interested in improving the infrastructure of its mandis can dip into this fund.

Have there been studies that have shown a positive correlation between price and quality? Prices at mandis are determined by the demand-supply situation, isn’t it? Isn’t it, therefore, necessary to study the price-value correlation in different commodities, and then invest in assaying infrastructure?
What you say is right, but not completely. During the peak arrival season, there are chances that prices drop and quality doesn’t matter much. But this trend is only in the initial few days of arrival. Mid-season, say, after a month or so, sorting and grading matters. So we need to create assaying facilities at all mandis. We are trying to bring advanced equipment, and have tied -up with a few companies for this.

The building and running of the eNAM platform has been outsourced to a private player on a fixed-fee basis, unlike the transaction fee model in UMP (Unified Market Platform) of ReMS (Rashtriya eMarket Services). Wouldn’t it have been better to have a transaction fee model for eNAM, too?
In a transaction-fee model, farmers are not happy. Farmers in Karnataka have got the benefit of the electronic platform; but if you ask them, they are very unhappy about paying a fee to trade on the platform and that fee is going to some private player. But this aside, the important issue here is: to what extent should we be hand-holding farmers and other stakeholders in the entire process. We expect a change to come in the way business is done at mandis, and it should be a voluntary process. State governments should do their bit. States which have actively taken up eNAM implementation, such as Telangana and Chhattisgarh, have seen success.

What future do you envisage for eNAM?
In the initial years, we had many problems, beginning with poor internet connectivity; but now, we have overcome most of that. Now, it is about the degree to which people adapt to this system. Assaying is now being done in 85 per cent of the markets, but it is not perfect yet.

We will soon reach a state where we will assay all key commodities and be able to segregate the good from the bad, and the good produce will get a better price.


6.2. How a farmer in Tamil Nadu is reimagining agriculture
BusinessLine, 26 July 2018, L.N. Revathy

Moneybags The grow-bag method of vegetable cultivation at the ICAR Krishi Vigyan Kendra at Gobichettipalayam

After running an art gallery for years, bagging an award for his innovative works on ‘tiles for ceiling’, C Shanmugasundaram of Chittode decided to become a farm innovator.

His model — dish pandal and vertical farming stand — at ICAR Krishi Vigyan Kendra – Myrada, at Gobichettipalayam near Erode catch the attention of every visitor.

Creeper vegetables such as ridgegourd, snake gourd and bottlegourd hang vertically from the dish-type pandal and brinjal, tomato, chilli peep out of small holes in grow bags.

Though the vertical garden is usually the cynosure of all eyes, the design structure at Shanmugasundaram’s 10th Planet Organic Farm is different. “I worked on the structure for three years before sharing the idea here,” he told BusinessLine.

Manifold benefits
His vertical farming design structure appears more suited for small and marginal farmers with holdings of an acre or more, and not for growing plants on the walls of a balcony.

The vertical farming structural design comprises fiveracks with three rows, erected using laminated wooden poles. Coco-pith, vermi-compost, cow dung and 2 kg of red soil were mixed and filled in each grow bag and micro dripper used for water management.

“I’ve tried raising crops such as onion, tomato, cauliflower, capsicum, chilli, brinjal, beetroot and radish. Besides space management, we were able to save water up to 80 per cent, cultivate throughout the year, get better aeration, better management of pest and diseases and above all, get increased yield. The investment works out to ₹1.5 lakh, which can be recovered in one yield,” he explained.

“Creeper vegetables are grown using dish pandal technology. Here we ensure that the creeper clings to the wired-mesh — erected like that of a cobweb — and that there is enough light to grow greens or even tomato in the ground area,” he said.


7.1. New umbrella scheme to ensure farmers get remunerative price
BusinessLine, 12 Sep. 2018

The government on Wednesday announced the launch of a new umbrella scheme ‘Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay SanraksHan Abhiyan’ (PM-AASHA), which aims to provide minimum support price (MSP) assurance to farmers.

Following the Cabinet decision, a government statement said the scheme has been designed to ensure that farmers get remunerative prices for their produce as announced in the General Budget earlier this year. The government has already hiked MSP for kharif crops on the principle of 1.5 times the cost of production — in line with the target to double farmers’ income by 2022.

Three components
The new scheme has three components — Price Support Scheme (PSS), Price Deficiency Payment Scheme (PDPS), and Pilot of Private Procurement & Stockist Scheme (PPPS).

PDPS has been framed on the lines of the Madhya Pradesh government’s Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana (BBY) to protect oilseed farmers. The government said the other existing schemes of the Department of Food and Public Distribution for the procurement of paddy, wheat and nutri-cereals/coarse grains and of the Ministry of Textile for cotton and jute will be continued to provide MSP to farmers for these crops.

The Cabinet also decided that participation of private sector in procurement operation needs to be piloted so that based on the learnings, the ambit of private participation in procurement operations may be increased. For oilseeds, States have the option to roll out Private Procurement Stockist Scheme on a pilot basis in select districts or in Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees with the participation of private stockists. The pilot will cover one or more crop of oilseeds for which the MSP is notified. Since this is akin to PSS, in that it involves physical procurement of the notified commodity, it will substitute PSS/PDPS in the pilot districts.

The selected private agency shall procure the commodity at the MSP in the notified markets during the notified period from the registered farmers in consonance with the Private Procurement Stockist Scheme guidelines, whenever prices in the market fall below the notified MSP and whenever authorised by the State/UT government to enter the market; a maximum service charge of up to 15 per cent of the notified MSP will be payable.

The Food Corporation of India, the government’s nodal agency for procurement and distribution of foodgrains, already procures wheat and rice at MSP for supply through ration shops and welfare schemes.

The Centre also implements the Market Intervention Scheme for procurement of those commodities, which are perishable in nature and are not covered under the MSP policy. Under the MSP policy, the government fixes the rates for 23 notified crops grown in kharif and rabi seasons.


7.2. India's public spending on agri R&D not far behind China: Niti member
PTI, Sep. 12, 2018

New Delhi: India's public spending on agriculture research and development is not far behind neighbouring China, Niti Aayog member Ramesh Chand said Tuesday. 

He however expressed concern that private sector is investing in other places than in India's agriculture Research and Development (R&D) and this need to be changed.

Chand said the food demand is set to rise with increase in population and the technology innovation will be a key driver to achieve the desired production.

He was participating in a panel discussion on the report 'Fixing Asia's Food System' commissioned by Cargill India.

"The report says that India's public spending is 0.40 per cent of farm GDP on agri R&D whereas Brazil spends much more. But public spending on agri R&D is still not that bad here. We are not far behind China," he said.

Private investment in agri R&D is not much in India. However of late in China, private investment in farm research is on the rise. It is rising rapidly as compared to the public funding in China, he said. 

"Globally, more intellectual property rights in farm technologies are being created by private sector. So, I do not say private sector is avoiding investment in agriculture," Chand said.

Emphasising the need to use technology in a more balanced way, Chand said technology used in the Green Revolution period had some adverse effects as it promoted use of fertilisers and pesticides. However, any shift from this would be a "dangerous trend" for the country.

He also talked about creating awareness on nutritious foods and absence of science in food manufacturing in the country.

Talking about food wastage, Walmart India CEO And President Krish Iyer said it is a serious problem and needs to be curbed given constrains of natural resources to grow food to meet the needs of the rising population.

Iyer enumerated four steps that retailers could take to check food wastage at supplier and retail levels -- upgradation of inventory system, partnering with farmers and supply chain, modification/elimination of some standard store operation and consumer awareness.

Nestle India Managing Director and Chairman Suresh Narayanan said the challenge in the country is not only about quality nutrition but also about awareness on what constitutes good nutrition and healthy habits. 

Food safety regulator FSSAI's chief management services officer Madhavi Das and Cargill India Chairman Siraj Chaudhry were also present at the event.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.


8.1. India's retail market likely to touch Rs 80 trillion in 2020, says report
Business Standard, Sep. 07, 2018

New Delhi: Buoyed by consumerism, rising income levels and foreign direct investments in consumer-facing sectors, India’s retail market may touch Rs 80 trillion in 2020 from close to Rs 50 trillion now.

A joint report from Deloitte and Retailers’ Association of India shows the retail sector is emerging as one of the largest sectors in the economy.

As investments flow in and the goods and services tax in place, the share of organised retail is expected to increase to 20 per cent by 2020 from less than 10 per cent now.

E-commerce is creating the biggest revolution in the retail industry, with marketers now able to reach hinterlands of the country.

And the trend will continue in the years to come. With e-commerce booming in India in recent years, this opens up a significant investment opportunity for foreign retailers.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same. 


8.2. Flipkart launches 2GUD, new e-commerce portal for refurbished goods
Livemint, 23 Aug. 2018, Nikhil Agarwal

2GUD, Flipkart’s new e-commerce portal, sells only unused and returned products or used products which are restored to full functionality by professionals. At present it is selling mobile phones, laptops, smartwatches, tablets, etc

New Delhi: After closing down eBay.in, the India operations of the e-commerce website which it acquired last year, Flipkart today launched its new website to sell only refurbished products. Named 2GUD, the portal is like any other e-commerce site selling electronic items but has only certified refurbished products at cheap prices for value buyers.

At present, the refurbished store is selling mobile phones, laptops, smart watches, tablets and streaming devices. In the coming days, Walmart-owned Flipkart will launch speakers, power banks, smart assistants, hair dyer, hair straightener, TV sets and other 400 product categories.

According to the new e-commerce portal, 2GUD sells only unused and returned products or used products which are restored to full functionality by professionals. Each product is certified and graded by experts at F1 Info Solutions and Services or other partners of Flipkart. All products are certified to be fully functional.

Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said with 2GUD, the e-commerce major has removed the trust deficit that exists in the Twitter Ads info and privacy

“The refurbished goods market has remained highly fragmented and unorganised despite its size, primarily due to complex processes, and missing assurance on the quality of products. Unlike existing C2C (customer-to-customer) platforms, 2GUD offers an organised space devoid of regular buyer-seller interactions, which simplifies the process for both parties,” said Anil Goteti, VP, Flipkart, who will be heading 2GUD along with Flipkart Marketplace.

According to the e-tailer, the refurbished goods market is expected to be a $20 billion market in 5-6 years.

2GUD has been rolled out on mobile website initially and will be available on desktop soon. Flipkart is also coming out with a mobile app.

You will find products divided into 5 grades of refurbishing:
  1. Unboxed like new: Unused with zero scratches. 12-month warranty.
  2. Refurbished superb: Minimally used with negligible scratches.
  3. Refurbished very good: Moderately used with minimal scratches.
  4.  Refurbished good: Extensively used with visible scratches.
  5. Refurbished okay: Heavily used with significant scratches.

Flipkart says all products listed on this website goes through a rigorous 47-step quality check. For a mobile phone, for example, everything from its screens to batteries are tested. If any parts are found faulty, then the part is replaced and the phone is replaced to its full functionality.

Flipkart is offering 3 to 12 month warranty across product categories.

eBay.in, which was sold by American e-commerce company eBay to Flipkart in 2017, had stopped accepting new orders from 14th August after which it was clear that Flipkart will launch a new portal soon.


9.1. Fine chocolate boom has idli-grinder to thank
BusinessLine, 23 Aug. 2018, Narayanan V.

India can lead in the bean-to-bar segment, says entrepreneur

A power outage on a sweltering summer afternoon left the residents of Chennai’s Royapettah area fuming. But 39-year-old L Nitin Chordia’s concern was only about keeping his stone-based wet grinders running for the next 24 hours.

“These machines are helping India achieve a revolution in the global bean-to-bar chocolate-making industry,” says Chordia, pointing to the white table-top wet-grinders in his living room, which have been running non-stop for 24 hours.

Chordia and his wife Poonam operate Cocoatrait, an initiative aimed at promoting knowledge, production and consumption of fine chocolates in India. The couple also holds the record for being India’s first chocolate tasters to be certified by the International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting (IICCT), London.

“This is the most important process — when the cocoa brings out a natural flavour on its own without any external intervention,” says Chordia, adding that like wine, even fine-flavoured cocoa beans will also help the chocolate maker deliver natural flavours without any need for additives.

Unlike industrially-made premium chocolates, bean-to-bar chocolates, also known as ‘Craft’, or ‘Fine’ chocolates, are traditionally made in home kitchens or small confectioneries. They are made in small quantities using fine-flavoured cocoa beans, and are designed to deliver natural-flavoured chocolates. While they may or may not have natural ingredients, they do not contain any artificial ingredients, flavours or colours.

India’s greatest contribution to the evolution and growth of the bean-to-bar industry across the globe is the humble stone-based idli-dosa batter grinder, better known as the ‘Chocolate Melangeur’, or ‘Refiner’ among chocolate makers.

Niche segment
Although India accounts for only 1 per cent of global cocoa production, the country is poised to become a leader in the bean-to-bar chocolate-making industry, thanks to low-cost equipment and infrastructure, technical know-how and availability of raw materials, says Chordia.

“It takes more than half a million rupees to set up a complete bean-to-bar unit in India with a capacity to produce 100 kg per week, the cheapest anywhere in the world,” Nitin claims. The cost covers licensing, packaging, equipment, infrastructure and training expenses. “Even globally, there is a lateral shift across South America and Africa where cocoa farmers are increasingly forward integrating into becoming chocolate manufacturers,” says Chordia, adding that India, as an early-mover, is better-positioned to leverage this phenomenon.

Derived from Theobroma cacao trees, cocoa beans are found in abundance in the tropical regions of South America and Africa which accounts for 90 per cent of the global production. In India, only the southern States of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu currently grow cocoa.

Traditionally, Indian cocoa do not fetch any premium but with the growth of bean to bar chocolate, demand and remuneration for fine flavoured beans are growing exponentially, Nitin says.

The bean-to-bar chocolate market in India is estimated to produce two lakh bars this year, and is likely to grow by more than 100 per cent on a year-on-year basis. The market size is expected to be worth ₹25 crore by 2022, or even earlier.

According to the India Chocolate Market Outlook — 2023, by Bonafide Research, the premium chocolate market in India was worth ₹2,754 crore at the end of FY17. The market has grown at a CAGR of over 28 per cent in the last five years.

“The expansion in the premium chocolate segment and awareness of pure foods will logically drive growth to the bean-to-bar chocolate business,” asserts Chordia.


9.2. Alinz, Petrocard tie up to make portable petrol pumps in India
Livemint, 23 Aug. 2018, PTI

Portable petrol pumps will be a boon for people living in rural areas, mountainous regions and remote locations, says Alinz managing director Inderjeet Pruthi

New Delhi: Alinz Portable Petrol Pumps said on Wednesday that it has tied up with Czech firm Petrocard to set up four manufacturing units in India to make machines for such pumps at an investment of ₹1,600 crore.

The concept of portable petrol pumps is new to India, which has been approved by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Alinz managing director Inderjeet Pruthi told reporters in Delhi.

The approval was given by the ministry on 10 August, he added. “We would soon be able see an unmanned fuelling station where we, on our own can refuel our vehicle making digital payment,” Pruthi said.

“The market of portable pumps will grow here. We have joined hands with Czech firm Petrocard, our technology partner, and have plans and target to set up four facilities to manufacture portable petrol pump machines in India at investment amount of ₹1,600 crore based on the market, states and oil marketing companies response and cooperation,” he said.

A portable petrol pump is an automatic self-service machine dispensing petrol, diesel and kerosene. The payment are cashless, through facilities like e-wallets, he said.

These pumps will be a boon for people living in rural areas, mountains regions and remote locations, he said, adding that they can be set up in just about 400 sq mts as against huge land requirement for normal gas stations.

Besides, he said, it is a good opportunity for those also looking to start a business. To set up a new pump an amount of Rs 90 lakh to Rs 1.20 crore would be required and as per communication with the banks they are ready to finance 80 per cent of the project.

Pruthi further said: “As per communication with state authorities and oil marketing companies, it is expected that the respective state governments along with oil companies will float a tender and who so ever bags the tender will be eligible to set up a portable petrol pump.

“We will install the machine to the eligible person who will get allotment from the respective state governments or Oil Marketing Companies. The machine would be of different sizes. The smallest machine has a capacity of containing 9,000 litres of oil and the largest one is of 30,000 litres capacity,” he said.


10.1. Foodgrain output seen at record 285 million tonnes in 2017-18
Livemint, 28 Aug. 2018, Sayantan Bera

Production of rice is estimated at 112.9 mn tonnes in 2017-18, while that of wheat touched 99.7 mn tonnes

New Delhi: Production of foodgrains touched a record high of 284.8 million tonnes in 2017-18 on the back of last year’s normal monsoon, according to the fourth advance estimates of crop production released on Tuesday. The latest estimates by the agriculture ministry are an upward revision from the 277.5 million tonnes estimated in February.

Going by the latest estimates, foodgrain production in 2017-18 is 9.72 million tonnes or 3.5% higher than the previous year, which also witnessed normal rains leading to the highest ever harvest of rice, wheat, pulses, coarse grains and oilseeds like mustard.

While 2017-18 marked the second successive year of record harvest of foodgrains, the year also saw repeated protests by farmer groups as higher supply depressed wholesale crop prices.

According to the agriculture ministry, while production of rice is estimated at 112.9 million tonnes in 2017-18, 2.9% higher than the previous year, production of wheat touched 99.7 million tonnes, about 1.2% higher than the previous year.

The data further showed that while production of coarse grains rose to 46.9 million tonnes in 2017-18, up 7.3% year-on-year (y-o-y), output of pulses grew to a record 25.2 million tonnes, about 9% higher than 2016-17. However, production of oilseeds during the year was stagnant at 31.3 million tonnes.

Among non-food crops, sugarcane production touched a record 377 million tonnes in 2017-18, about 23% higher than last year and the steepest y-o-y rise in production among all crops. Higher production of cane led to surplus stocks of sugar and a payment crisis for farmers. In Uttar Pradesh alone, sugar mills still owe farmers over ₹10,400 crore.

As per the latest estimates, farmers harvested 34.9 million bales of cotton in 2017-18 (one bale is 170 kg), 7% higher than the 32.6 million tonnes harvested the previous year.

The higher estimated output of foodgrains, and crops like sugarcane and cotton in 2017-18 may lead to an upward revision in the agriculture growth rate. In May, the Central Statistics Office estimated that agriculture GDP grew at 3.4% in 2017-18, lower than the 6.3% estimated for the previous year.

Other than foodgrains, production of horticulture crops also hit a record high during the year. Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh tweeted that production of perishables grew to a record 306.8 million tonnes in 2017-18 as per the third advance estimates of horticulture production, a 2% increase year on year.


10.2. Microfinance sector registers a growth of around 39% in loan portfolio
Business Standard, Aug. 31, 2018

Defying muted credit growth in the banking sector, the microfinance sector registered a growth of around 39 per cent on a year-on-year basis, with the total outstanding loan amount at Rs 1,480 billion at the end of June 2018, according to data released by Microfinance Institutions Network (MFIN).

According to data from the Reserve Bank of India, gross bank credit increased by 11.07 per cent in June on a year-on-year-basis, while microcredit grew by 48.3 per cent.

Over the past few months, most MFIs (microfinance institutions) have been recovering from the after-effects of demonetisation and government-mandated debt waivers.

However, with the majority of non-performing loans written off, MFIs are again looking at growing their portfolios. Several of the MFIs have been exploring the option of initial public offerings (IPOs) to raise funds. 

Banks hold the largest share of microloans at 39 per cent, followed by non-banking finance companies (NBFC)-MFIs accounting for 32 per cent of the total loan outstanding. Small Finance Banks had a share of 21 per cent, while NBFCs at 7 per cent and non-profit accounting for remaining one per cent of the microfinance pie.

About 64 per cent of the bank lending to the MFI sector was direct lending, while the rest was through banking correspondents. The portfolio at risk (loans that have at least one payment for more than 30 days overdue), which were 10.7 per cent in June 2017, stood at 3.2 per cent at the end of June 2018, signifying a significant improvement in the asset quality of microloans.

Cashless disbursements by NBFC-MFIs now account for 87 per cent of the total disbursements. In Q1 FY 2018-19, a total of Rs 114 billion was disbursed in cashless mode in about 4.2 million loan accounts. 

According to Harsh Shrivastava, MFIN CEO, “Microfinance industry has gained pace, showcasing growth in the past quarters. We see more new players entering the space and the current ones growing larger realising their IPO plans. Additionally, improved investors’ confidence, due to proper regulations in place and the increased transparency in the sector, will also support the growth story.”

In Q1 of FY19, NBFC-MFIs received a total debt funding of about Rs 102 billion, which is a whopping 160 per cent growth over Q1 of FY 18. The total equity in the NBFC-MFI sector was about Rs 103 billion, of which about 48 per cent belonged to the category of foreign equity. In terms of regional distribution of portfolio (GLP), east and north east accounts for 35 per cent of the total NBFC-MFI portfolio, south 26 per cent, north 15 per cent, west 14 per cent and Central region contributes 10 per cent.

Karnataka, Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are the five top states in terms of loan amount outstanding, accounting for 53 per cent of total GLP of the NBFC-MFI segment.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.


- INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURE 

11.1. Alibaba in talks with Reliance Retail for joint venture
Livemint, 21 Aug. 2018, Anirudh Laskar

Alibaba is in talks with Reliance Retail to pick up as much as 50% stake for $5-6 billion to challenge Flipkart and Amazon in India’s e-commerce market

Mumbai: China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has initiated talks with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail Ltd to form a mega Indian retail joint venture (JV), with an investment of at least $5 billion to challenge the dominance of Flipkart and Amazon in the world’s fastest-growing economy, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Alibaba Group has proposed to acquire a large stake in Reliance Retail to create a behemoth in the digital marketplace and also expand Alibaba’s physical retail businesses in India, the people said, requesting anonymity.

The talks indicate that the battle for India’s booming e-commerce market may only intensify further, with two large and deep-pocketed companies planning to come together to take on the market leaders.

Alibaba’s executive chairman, Jack Ma, met Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani in July-end in Mumbai to discuss the proposal, the people said. The two discussed a number of issues, including a plan to create a large omnichannel retail entity through the proposed joint venture, they said.

“Alibaba is willing to pick up a significant stake in Reliance Retail, preferably 50%, which will require Alibaba to invest $5-6 billion,” one of the two people said. “It could also result in a strategic JV between Alibaba and Reliance Retail, with a smaller stake held by Alibaba.”

Goldman Sachs is advising Alibaba on the proposed venture, the person said. A Goldman Sachs spokesperson declined to comment. Emails sent to Reliance and Alibaba remained unanswered.

The joint venture, if it goes through, will be the largest investment by Alibaba in an Indian company.

“The deal is crucial for Alibaba, especially after RBI (Reserve Bank of India) directed Paytm (in which Alibaba holds 49%) to stop on-boarding new customers because of the shareholding pattern of Paytm,” said the second person.

RBI was concerned that the Chinese company has access to Paytm’s customer data, the person said. It has asked Paytm to improve security mechanisms to store customer data, Mint reported on 1 August.

“Alibaba had picked up the stake in Paytm with the objective of benefiting from Paytm’s successful e-commerce and digital wallet business in India. Reliance Retail is planning a similar model like Paytm, and once that happens, Alibaba will benefit the same way it was gaining from its association with Paytm,” added the second person.

Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall are two of the world’s largest and most popular online retail marketplaces. Together, they achieved a total transaction volume of $478.6 billion in fiscal 2016, and hope to double the figure to over $900 billion by 2020. As of February 2018, Taobao had at least 580 million monthly active users, while Tmall had 500 million.

Alibaba has also announced that it will invest 100 billion yuan over five years to build a global logistics network, while working on an aggressive overseas expansion plan.

Alibaba’s consumer-to-consumer portal Taobao and business-to-consumer portal Tmall, each feature over a billion products and both are among the 20 most visited websites globally.

Reliance Retail, a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, is the largest retailer in India in terms of revenue. Its retail outlets offer food, groceries, apparels, lifestyle and home-care products, consumer electronics, farm implements and so on. The company also sells vegetables, fruits and flowers, apart from consumer goods, consumer durables, travel services, energy, entertainment and leisure, and health and well-being products.

In the year ended 31 March, Reliance Retail’s profit before depreciation, interest, and taxes more than doubled to ₹ 2,529 crore. As on 30 June, Reliance Retail was present in at least 5,200 towns and cities, with 8,533 stores including 4,530 Jio Points, according to a company release.

Reliance Retail, which has crossed the $10 billion revenue mark, has been planning to expand its retail business, leveraging the network of its parent’s telecom unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.

The case for a Reliance Retail IPO
Reliance Retail has an edge over overseas online retailers, as foreign entities are not allowed to hold inventory in India and can only operate as marketplaces. Amazon is taking an indirect route to avoid any complications and comply with the numerous conditions that it might have to follow under the multi-brand FDI norms.

Alibaba’s talks with Reliance Retail and other potential retail partners in India assume significance after RBI’s directive to payment firms such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal Holdings to ensure before October that the data of Indian customers stays in the country.

Reliance clarifies: An RIL spokesperson on Monday said that there has been no discussion with Alibaba or anyone else on acquiring a stake in Reliance Retail Ltd. Also, there was no meeting between Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and Alibaba’s Jack Ma in Mumbai in July-end.


11.2. Ikea’s real challenge in India lies online
Livemint, 21 Aug. 2018, Sundeep Khanna

Ikea’s Hyderabad store may be drawing the crowds, but for success in the long run, it will need a robust online presence on Amazon, Flipkart Walmart or Alibaba

Ikea’s first store in India may be drawing the crowds, but for success in the long term, the innovative Swedish giant will need a robust online presence on platforms like Amazon, Walmart-Flipkart or Alibaba.

The world’s largest furniture retailer is targeting some six to seven million visitors in its first year and, with well over 25,000 thronging the store every day since the launch at Hitec City in Hyderabad, that number doesn’t appear improbable even if some of the novelty will eventually wear off. Considering that it has already spent ₹ 800 crore on setting up the store, whether those numbers will be enough for it to recoup its investments will depend upon how much of the curiosity converts into actual purchases. Given the deliberately low price points, volumes, not margins, will drive its success.

It’s a tried and tested formula for Ikea, one it has successfully implemented across geographies with only minor tweaks to account for local tastes and sensitivities. In many ways though, this is the Ikea of the past, a formidable retailing machine which 75 years after it was set up, still doesn’t have a real competitor. Until now, that is. Forced by stagnating sales at its 400 stores across the world, Ikea is in the process of trying to change. Key among those changes is an experiment with smaller showrooms, less than a tenth the size of its usual gigantic stores, which are equipped with high-end touch screens so that customers can get a sense of various products, including how they will appear in their homes and then order online and have the furniture delivered at home later. Sounds familiar? It is the new world of online retailing in which Ikea isn’t quite a leader yet.

In the US, retailers like Wayfair and Houzz, the closest competitors to Ikea, are using newer technologies like augmented reality and artificial intelligence to drive furniture sales on the web. And those are not even the biggest boys in the business. That honour lies with the troika of Amazon, Alibaba and a Flipkart-fortified Walmart.

As in the rest of the world, retailing is being redefined by these three giants with purely offline companies unable to match up.

Online retail sales in India are expected to grow by 31% this year to scale $32.70 billion, according to a report by marketing research firm eMarketer. What’s more, homegrown online furniture retailers, such as Trendsutra Platform Services Pvt. Ltd—which owns the Pepperfry brand—as well as Urban Ladder Home Décor Solutions Pvt. Ltd, have cut their losses over the last one year even as sales are growing at nearly 30%.

Ikea’s Hyderabad store and subsequently the ones planned in Navi Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurugram may thus just be brand building exercises for the company, serving as showrooms for its wares

The real business of returns on the $2 billion it plans to invest in India will come from online sales, where it has lagged so far in most markets. Conscious of the gap, the company has been making efforts to woo online customers even suggesting it may tie up with third party platforms to sell its products online. But it is not an easy juggle since nearly 90% of its sales still come from offline stores.

Indian consumers, particularly millennials, have now got used to the idea of researching, comparing and scanning reviews and product ratings before they make a purchase decision. Delivery at home is another advantage that stems from online shopping. While there is some virtue in the touch and feel of a physical store, particularly one as well-designed as Ikea’s, the sheer convenience and plethora of options that online offers make it the natural choice of younger customers.

A brick and mortar store is also much more complex to construct, as Ikea which was forced to delay the launch of the Hyderabad store by nearly a month, found out to its chagrin. Indeed, given how well its supply chain is organized in India, we may well see Ikea online moving faster than the roll out of the physical stores.

Sundeep Khanna is a consulting editor at Mint and oversees the newsroom’s corporate coverage. The Corporate Outsider looks at current issues and trends in the corporate sector every week.


12.1. Top automakers gear up for eco-drive 
BusinessLine, 7 Sep. 2018, S. Ronendra Singh

India’s growing per capita income, aspiring youth population, environment-consciousness and impetus to digital infrastructure offer a huge potential for e-vehicle manufacturers.

Global Mobility Summit saw a display of the latest technologies in the mobility space including electric vehicles and solutions to reduce emission and facilitate shared and connected mobility.

Suzuki, Toyota in pact
Japanese car-maker Suzuki will launch its first EV in India by 2020 in partnership with Toyota. It will start the test run using a fleet of 50 EV prototype vehicles in India from next month to develop safe and easy-to-use EVs suited for climatic and traffic conditions here.

The company will also commence production of lithium-ion battery for automobiles at its battery plant in Gujarat by 2020.

Korean carmaker Hyundai is all set to launch electric cars in India and is betting on fuel cell electric vehicle NEXO and autonomous IONIQ.

Chinese motor company SAIC, which entered India in 2017, announced the launch of internet car in India by first half of 2019. The company plans to invest $500 million by 2020 through MG Motor India, its fully-owned subsidiary.

It doesn’t end here.

German company Bosch announced that the company is in discussions to launch combustion engines with negligible emission for two- and three-wheelers in India.

Automation company ABB Group launched battery charging station to fast charge cars in eight minutes for a 200-km run.

Speaking at the summit here on Friday, Osamu Suzuki, Chairman of Suzuki Motor Corporation, said that the company has been in India since 1983. “In India, there is a significant number of people who are eagerly waiting to have their own car. It is said that EV will be approximately 30 per cent in 2030, which means a huge population of vehicles would still be non-EV at that time,” Suzuki said.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, Chairman, Toyota Motor Corp, said, “Global warming is a problem” and the company is developing cars keeping that in mind. It plans to make EV versions for its entire models by 2025 and bring down the emission by 2025, making the company well-positioned in the EV race.

Volkmar Denner, Chief Executive Officer, Bosch, said increasing pollution and traffic are major concerns in India. According to him, a mix of combustion engines with negligent emissions, which the company has been working on, and electrification could be a solution.

Some challenges
But, these automakers see challenges too, primarily on the infrastructure front. Guenter Butschek, Managing Director of Tata Motors, said, “While it is nice to see volumes grow up, it is imperative that we offer a safe and clean transport.”

Suzuki said, “We also need to address various issues in addition to electrification of vehicles such as EV and hybrid vehicles. It cannot be done without sufficient charging infrastructure development. In this regard, we look forward to proactive leadership from the government.”

Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group, said one should also make mobility inclusive by creating a digital platform for multi-modality transport, where people can look at multiple transport options in public private partnership.


12.2. Export of India-made cars to US goes up, America becomes 2nd-biggest market
Business Standard, Aug. 20, 2018

New Delhi: The ride of Indian-made cars to the United States continues to pick up speed. The US was the third-biggest export destination for Indian cars in FY18. Now, as per the figures for the first quarter of FY19, the country is the second-biggest market for cars from India. South Africa, which was the second-biggest market, now stands at the third position. Mexico retains the top slot.

India has exported passenger vehicles (that includes cars, utility vehicles and vans as sub-segments) worth $268 million (~18.76 billion approximately) to the US in three months ended June, data with the commerce ministry showed. Shipments to South Africa were significantly lower at $199 million in the same period. In the entire FY18, India has exported vehicles worth $654 million and $666 million to the US and South Africa, respectively.

At $268 million, US accounted for 15 per cent of total car exports in the April-June period. Mexico remains the biggest export destination for India-made cars, with a total export value of $407 million exports in the quarter. Going by the data, the US is undeniably the fastest-growing market for Indian cars. The value of exports had grown manifold from just $3 million in FY17 to $654 million in FY18. FY19 looks well placed to be another record year.

This growth in export to US is coming on the back of a single product from one carmaker, Ford. The company started exporting the EcoSport, the compact sport utility vehicle (SUV) manufactured at its Chennai plant, to the US last year. Ford India, a subsidiary of American carmaker Ford Motor Company, has exploited its Indian capacities to ramp up exports to several markets, including the US. It also overtook Hyundai as the biggest exporter of passenger vehicles last year.

The company exported about 35,000 cars to several markets, including the US in the April-June quarter. About 20,500 of these happened to be the EcoSports. Ford India does not share the destination-wise data for exports.

This surge in exports from India to the US comes at a time when US President Donald Trump has been pushing American carmakers to do more local production. “I want new plants to be built here for cars sold here,” Trump had tweeted last year, ahead of a meeting with heads of American car majors, including Ford and GM.

The US, however, is a focus market for Ford India, a company, which gets more volume from exports than from domestic sales.

“Export is one of the key pillars. It is critical for a variety of reasons. It gives us economies of scale allowing us to bring more features at competitive costs for the Indian market,” Anurag Mehrotra, president and managing director at Ford India, told Business Standard last month.

On exports to the US, he said it was business as usual for the company. “We are sure both the governments will take the right decision in the interest of ensuring ease of doing business. We haven’t baked in any risks yet,” he said.

No other carmaker in India is known to be exporting a passenger vehicle to the US market. Ford EcoSport is priced at ~780,000 and ~1,180,000 in the domestic market. “If we take a conservative average realisation of ~1 million for exports, then 18,000 units of the EcoSport may have been shipped to the US alone in the last quarter,” Mehrotra said.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same. 


13.1. Hero MotoCorp to launch four 200-300cc bikes over the next 18 months
Livemint, Sep. 10, 2018

Mumbai: Hero MotoCorp Ltd is set to introduce four motorcycles with 200-300cc engine capacity over the next 18 months and sell them through new premium dealerships in a strategy to diversify from its image as a mass-market brand, said three people with direct knowledge of the matter. India’s largest two-wheeler maker will also retail a new range of merchandise and accessories through these outlets, the people said on condition of anonymity.

The maker of the Splendor and Passion motorcycles has meanwhile hired Virat Kohli, India’s cricket team captain, as its new brand ambassador, they said, adding a brand name to promote the new sales network and merchandise will be announced in due course.

“Hero currently wants to focus on the 200-250cc segment and then gradually scale up towards the 300cc space,” said the first person cited above.

Of the four, Hero has already showcased the Xtreme 200R and XPulse motorcycles. Retail sales of the Xtreme 200R will commence next week with new brand ambassador Kohli in tow.

A company spokesperson declined to comment.

Sales of motorcycles with engine displacements of 200cc and above have grown at a fast clip largely due to the popularity of Royal Enfield motorcycles and rising disposable incomes among the country’s large middle-class households. Sales in the segment grew nearly five-fold from 220,000 motorcycles in 2011-12, to 1.02 million in 2017-18. In the same period, sales of 110cc-125cc motorcycles, or the so-called commuter segment, rose to 2.19 million from 1.57 million.

Hero MotoCorp, controlled by New Delhi-based Munjal family, dominates the vast market for entry-level motorcycles, but sales in this segment have been sluggish in the past six years, hurting its market share. The company accounted for 36.56% of the domestic two-wheeler market as of 31 March, falling from 45% in 2011-12. In the same period, Honda’s share of the market has grown from 14.9% to 29% though the Japanese company taps a sizeable scooter portfolio for its sales.

“A high-decibel, multimedia campaign will be rolled out featuring Virat Kohli and the Xtreme 200R over the next few days,” said a second person, responsible for Hero’s advertising campaigns.

Kohli’s appointment signifies Hero MotoCorp abolishing its five-year-old stance where it started to shift from cricket and related activities for sponsorship and branding to focus on sports such as hockey, shooting and athletics.

Hero previously had eight brand ambassadors from cricket. Now, it only boasts of golfer Tiger Woods, and current coach of Atletico Madrid and former Argentine footballer, Diego Simeone.

Hero is still debating whether it would own the new outlets or follow the franchise model, said a third person cited above.

“It could be a mix of dealer-owned and company-owned outlets. The plan is to start with a limited number of outlets in select metros and then gradually expand to other cities,” the person said.

The showrooms will also sell jackets, helmets, leather bags, shoes, denims, wallets, chinos, T-shirts, sun glasses and riding gear, the person said, adding some of the accessories will be showcased at the upcoming two-wheeler expo EICMA at Milan in Italy.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.


13.2. Lockheed Martin, Tata Advanced Systems to build F-16 wings in India
BusinessLine, 4 Sep. 2018, V. Rishi Kumar

Lockheed Martin Corp has announced an agreement to commence production of F-16 wings in India.

This strategic initiative positions Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) to become the provider of wings for all future customers and strengthens their role in the F-16 global supply chain. TASL is Lockheed Martin’s strategic industry partner in India.

Producing F-16 wings in India will strengthen Lockheed Martin’s strategic partnership with Tata and support ‘Make in India.’ The planned F-16 wing production move to India is not contingent on the Indian Government selecting the F-16 for the Indian Air Force.

“Building F-16 wings in India is a natural next step that builds on our successful partnerships with Tata on the C-130J (airlifter) and S-92 (helicopter),” said Vivek Lall, Vice President of Strategy and Business Development for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics.

“This is a strategic business decision that reflects the value of our partnerships with India and the confidence we have in Tata to perform advanced defence manufacturing work and deliver world-class products.”

RFI to IAF
Lockheed Martin’s broader proposed F-16 partnership with India — to produce F-16s exclusively in India for the Indian Air Force and export customers — stands firm. Lockheed Martin recently submitted a comprehensive, fully compliant 600-plus page Request for Information (RFI) response to the Indian Air Force, a company statement said.

Lockheed Martin and TASL announced last year that the two companies intend to join hands to produce the F-16 Block 70 in India if the aircraft is selected by the Indian Air Force.

The F-16 Block 70 features advanced avionics, a proven Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, a modernised cockpit, advanced weapons, conformal fuel tanks, an automatic ground collision avoidance system, an advanced engine and an industry-leading extended structural service life of 12,000 hours.

To date, 4,604 F-16s have been procured by 28 customers around the world. Approximately 3,000 operational F-16s are flying today with 25 leading air forces, including the U.S. Air Force.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 100,000 people worldwide.


14.1. Haier to set up Rs 3k cr manufacturing units at Greater Noida
PTI, Aug. 23, 2018

New Delhi: Haier Appliances will invest Rs 3,069 crore to establish manufacturing units at an industrial township in Greater Noida, UP, DMICDC said today.

The consumer electronics company expects to generate direct employment for 3,950 people with this project, Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (DMICDC) said in a statement.

It has been allotted 123.7 acre of land in the DMIC Integrated Industrial Township Greater Noida (IITGN) project for setting up manufacturing units, it said.

Besides, Chinese Mobile maker Forme's Indian subsidiary Forme Trading has been allotted 3.5 acre land in IITGN for the same purpose.

"Forme Trading plans to invest Rs 100 crore in its new mobile phone manufacturing unit at IITGN which is likely to create 600 direct and 1,000 indirect jobs," it added.

Satkriti Infotainment, a sister concern of leading audio manufacturer Fenda Audio India, is another company to have been allotted land in the township project.

"Combined investment of the three companies is pegged at Rs 3,404 crore and is likely to generate 12,550 employment opportunities," it added.

DMIC project is aimed at creating mega industrial infrastructure along the 1,483-km-long Delhi-Mumbai Rail Freight Corridor.

Dholera (Gujarat) is the biggest of the eight industrial smart cities being developed in the first phase of the project. Overall, DMICDC is setting up 56 Greenfield smart industrial townships.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same. 


14.2. Intel India trains 99,000 people in artificial intelligence
PTI, Aug. 20, 2018

Mumbai: US chipmaker Intel has trained as many as 99,000 developers, students and professors in artificial intelligence (AI) in India since April 2017, against a target of 15,000 for the first year of its programme, according to the tech major. 

It has also tied up with premier educational institutes like the IITs in Delhi, Mumbai, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Chennai, and IIITs in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, BITS Pilani, ISI Kolkata, IISc Bangalore, CDAC and companies like Shell and TCS among others for training under its AI developer education. 

"Though we had committed to train 15,000 developers, students, and professors in AI initially through training and workshops, we have already exceeded the target over seven-fold at over 99,000 by roping in many of them from 100 organisations," said Prakash Mallya, managing director for sales and marketing, Intel India. 

The programme was launched in April 2017 and the initial target was for a year ending April 2018, he said, adding the programme is aimed to democratising AI through collaborations with partners and customers. 

Intel powers as much as 97 per cent of data centre servers running AI workloads at present in the world. 

The company, which organised its first AI developer conference in the country last week in Bengaluru after the initiative in home market US earlier this year, had over 500 developers attending it. 

It also announced collaborations with Philips India and Mphasis to deploy its AI portfolio in the local ecosystem.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.


15.1. Ashok Leyland bags order from Bangladesh
BusinessLine, 17 Aug. 2018

Leading truck and bus maker Ashok Leyland has won an order from Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) for the supply of 300 double-decker buses for an undisclosed sum.

They are to help in decongesting the busy roads of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. This procurement is against a tender under Indian line of credit. The delivery will take place within eight months, according to a statement.

“Bangladesh is one of our key export markets and this order further strengthens our position. This is yet another testimony of our leadership in the country,” said Vinod K Dasari, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland.

“Exports have been a strong focus for us to derisk from the cyclicality in Indian market and to globalise our product portfolio. This win builds on the strong export growth we had last year,” he said.

Innovation for engines
Meanwhile, the company continues to reap benefits out of Indian innovation. After its successful mechanical pump for BS3 engines & iEGR tech, Ashok Leyland has combined both these innovations to introduce in-line pump for BS4 engines called ‘Innoline’ for the first time in India.

This technology can be used for BS6 engines as well. “We are the only OEM in the world to have an in-line pump for BS4 or Euro4 engines, that is also certified by the ARAI,” said Dasari.

The company had said its mechanical in-line fuel injection pump for BS3 was an Indian solution to an Indian problem. This product, while meeting the emission regulations, is less expensive to maintain and repair making both environmental and customer-friendly.


15.2. Voltbek eyes ₹10,000 crore from sale of appliances
Livemint, 14 Sep. 2018, Sounak Mitra

Voltbek Home Appliances, a joint venture between Voltas Ltd and Turkey-based Arçelik, will launch more than 100 products over the next 3 months

New Delhi: Voltas Ltd, the Tata Group company that announced entry into consumer appliances market in joint venture with Turkey-based Arçelik on Thursday, aims to generate ₹10,000 crore of revenue by 2025 by selling household appliances such as washing machines, refrigerators, microwaves and dishwashers under a new brand Voltas Beko, its managing director and chief executive officer Pradeep Bakshi said.

The company has so far restricted itself to air conditioners and air coolers in the consumer products segment, and has a strong presence on commercial cooling market.

Voltas enters the market at a time when India’s home appliances market is projected to grow at 10-12% annually in the next few years, from around ₹43,000 crore (excluding air conditioners) estimated last year. “Over the next five years, we’ll invest around ₹1,000 crore in manufacturing, marketing and distribution. Both the companies will invest equally,” Bakshi said.

The new company, Voltbek Home Appliances Pvt. Ltd (Voltbek), is an equal partnership joint venture that will launch more than 100 products over the next 3 months.

The company will manufacture all its products at its facility at Sanand, Gujarat. “Arçelik is the technology provider, and all products will be sold under the new brand Voltas Beko targeted to mass and mass premium segments. Initially, we’ll feed the domestic market, and would look at export opportunities for top-end products in future,” Bakshi added.

“We have been looking at India as a potential market for a long time. With its vast population and significant economic growth prospects, India offers huge potential to support our continued plans for global expansion. But, India is a difficult market. It’s not possible to crack a market like India without a strong local partner. We waited until we decided to partner with Voltas,” said Hakal Bulgurlu, chief executive officer, Arçelik.

Post announcement, Voltas last traded 1.7% higher at ₹585.95 apiece on Thursday. The company reported its consolidated revenue at ₹6,602 crore for the year ended 31 March 2018, up 4.9% from ₹6,294.84 crore the previous year.


- SERVICES (Education, Healthcare, IT, R&D, Tourism, etc.) 


16.1. Main Stream India
BusinessLine, 17 Aug. 2018, Payel Majumdar Upreti

Binge-watching on the go: A significant chunk of the digital streaming services in India is consumed during the daily commute - prashant nakwe

A video revolution is sweeping across India. From farmers in villages to multinational companies, everybody is jumping on to the great digital bandwagon. Netflix and other such entertainment platforms have big plans — and shows — lined up for the Indian market

Who would have thought two Telangana farmers and a pair of bullocks would break the Internet? But they did just that some days ago, as the men shook a leg — and their mundus— to a song that has become a global rage.

It doesn’t take long for enterprising Indians to grab the attention of the ever-growing legion of netizens in the country. The two farmers went big time after they uploaded their version of the ‘Kiki dance’ — a global fad that has men and women getting off moving vehicles and dancing to the line “Kiki, do you love me” from a song by Canadian rapper Drake. The Telangana farmers are seen breaking into a lively jig in the middle of their irrigated field, as their yoked bullocks lumber ahead insouciantly.

The video, posted on the YouTube channel My Village Show, went viral globally. And it certainly wasn’t the only one to do so. For Indians — whether city slickers or small-towners or villagers, and companies — are jumping on to the digital bandwagon in growing numbers. According to a report by a streaming service provider, video consumption in India grew almost five times in one year in 2017.

Over The Top (OTT) media services — which enable one to watch content on the Internet, bypassing traditional distribution systems such as cable networks — are zeroing in on the huge Indian market. The country’s internet penetration may well be among the lowest in the world, but it is growing briskly. According to the not-for-profit Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the number of internet users in India touched the 500-million mark by June 2018.

Emerging market
Rural consumers formed one-third of the country’s internet users in 2013. By 2020, every second internet user will be a village dweller. In December 2017, IAMAI said 20.26 per cent of India’s rural population was connected to the internet.

Not surprisingly, videos are emerging as money-spinners, as they are accessed by people across regions and class, and even those who haven’t achieved literacy. “Since India has so many regional languages with strong oral traditions, consuming information and entertainment in the form of videos comes naturally to the consumer,” said Deepak Abbott, vice-president of the digital payment company Paytm, which has started Paytm Inbox, a video platform.

There were 110 million digital video viewers in India in 2015, according to an Ernst & Young (EY) report on the future of digital consumption in the country. About 95 per cent of the content consumed is in the regional languages, the report said.

Showtime now: The easy availability and falling cost of internet services are aiding the growth in demand for online video streaming services - VIJAY KUMAR BAJAJ

Many of the viewers are commuters, and content providers are tapping into this captive audience. “Indians are 82 per cent more likely to stream at 9 am, a behaviour that continues on the ride home too. Peak streaming in India is at 5 pm,” said Simran Sethi, director of international original shows at Netflix, the American OTT service with a growing presence in India. “India is clearly a nation of commute streamers, with Netflix members kicking off their binge while on the road,” Sethi said.

From films and documentaries to music videos, food shows, cricket, entertainment, news clips and more, the digital stream offers them all. Paytm, for instance, has launched Paytm Inbox to stream cricket and short videos for its 300-million subscriber base. Instagram has a streaming portal, IGTV, where one can watch videos that are longer than those available on its Stories channel. Streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, which are posing a direct competition to DTH (direct-to-home) cable, are experimenting with newer formats to reel in more audiences.

Amazon Prime Video found its niche in stand-up acts, which have a growing following across urban India. Its original reality comedy show Comicstaan, starring several well-known Indian comics, has been a success. Last year, Prime commissioned nine comics for hour-long specials. The content head of Prime, Vijay Subramaniam, hinted that winners of Season 1 of Comicstaan will get their own specials. Casting has already begun for Season 2.

Subramaniam told BLink that movies and comedy were popular across all ages and demographics. “We have tapped into that opportunity, and can safely say that we are the home of Indian comedy currently,” he said.

Culture sites such as Buzzfeed India and iDiva, too, are making short videos on everyday experiences to meet the demand for comedy. As for soaps, The Viral Fever (TVF), an entertainment platform, has web series such as Yeh Meri Family andPermanent Roommates, targeting different viewer segments. The former is a nostalgia trip for those who grew up in the ’90s, while the latter is on a new-age couple and their old-school parents.

Original content
Original stories, meaning content that is locally produced and not necessarily hugely popular international shows, are also in focus. Netflix’s India production Lust Stories tasted unprecedented success; the company said it was the largest watched original ever in any of its different markets in its first month. Its nine original series from India includeGhoul, Baahubali: Before the Beginning, Little Things, Selection Day and Bard of Blood. Other shows include stand-up comedy specials with Aditi Mittal and Vir Das, the kids’ seriesMighty Little Bheem, and an unscripted series on the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament and its Mumbai Indians team.

My theatre: By 2020, most Indians will be watching videos on their private screens - THE HINDU/SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

“What we see is that people love watching TV, but they don’t love the linear TV experience, where channels present programmes only at particular times, one episode at a time on non-portable screens, with shows also not launching in all countries at the same time. What has changed significantly is how quickly content is consumed when you give consumers more control over their experience. In India, our mobile downloads have been very popular with the recently launched Smart Downloads feature. When a member finishes watching a downloaded episode, Smart Downloads will delete it, and then automatically download the next episode,” Sethi said.

And since content is king, writers are in focus. Amazon Prime has a writers’ room, which provides feedback, and conducts writers’ workshops before finalising the script. Netflix prefers to work with newer talents, producers and crew in India to ensure variety and fresh content.

The story is the hero, said a member of the team that produced Sacred Games, Netflix’s first original series from India. “Working with Netflix has given us an opportunity to concentrate on the story and give it primacy... Nothing is bigger than the script, not even the actors.” Prime’s Subramaniam seconded that. “We match our directors with the cast. If needed, script doctors are called in. The story arc is the draw of our shows.”

Easy to upload
In the digital content business, it’s not just the big fish who are in charge. The spread of smartphones has made it easier for ordinary people to gain fame, and often money, with the videos they post on the Net. Take the Telangana farmers, who often appear in the My Village Show channel. The 7.13 lakh views for their Kiki video on YouTube and 55 lakh views on their Facebook page have propelled them to social media stardom. As for the money, YouTube pays the video’s makers for every 1,000 views, though that amount varies depending upon the subscriber base.

YouTube viewership has surged massively in India, garnering 180 million subscribers and featuring 14 independent content creators with a million-plus subscriber base. 80 per cent of the views is on a mobile handset, according to a report in The Hindu Business Line.

Take Delhi resident and HR professional Nikita Gangwani, whose life revolves around her smartphone. It wakes her up at 7am; she watches a 5-minute stand-up on YouTube and listens to music on it while getting ready for work. Her 10-minute breakfast time is peppered with WhatsApp forwards and Insta Stories. She updates her own Snapchat; and on the 40-minute commute to work, she watches a web series on her phone, alongside switching between news breaks and Insta stories of her friends. Lunch break is devoted to GIF-embedded articles and short news clips on her Twitter and Facebook feeds. Gangwani watches some more shows on her way back home, and stories on social media and IM (instant messaging) platforms before going to bed.

New players
The rise of new consumption patterns and the demand for newer forms of storytelling are reshaping the business plans of investors such as Paytm, which now wants to provide its user base with “snacky content”.

Paytm Inbox was initially designed as a messaging app, similar to WhatsApp, for Paytm’s vendors, to broadcast promotions, among other things. “Over time, we observed how the vendors spend time on the app and decided to invest in entertainment. Paytm will tie up with business partners and stream cricket through Paytm Inbox,” the company vice-president Abbott said.

Also in the works are its music streaming app musicall.ly, now Tik Tok, a social media platform for small videos, and other live entertainment involving paid content.

The payment process is being fine-tuned to enable viewers to buy entertainment through their handheld devices. “For instance, if anyone wants to pay ₹2 to watch cricket for the next half hour, we want to ensure that option is available to them,” said Abbott.

Piece of the pie
No one is turning a net profit yet in the digital streaming business, but the number of players continues to increase, as everyone wants a piece of what they believe will eventually be a rich pie.

Right now, however, there are problems. While smartphone penetration is high in the country, the number of people with access to internet remains low. Fast speed internet is also rare, and video platforms have to take that into account. Lower definition social videos on social media platforms draw more eyeballs. Ajit Mohan, CEO of Hotstar, said that there is a big change in how consumers are responding to affordable data. “Three years ago, most new data users would start with messaging, do text search, move on to social platforms and few watched video. This rule has been inverted. Video is very often the first port of call for new data users.”

The mighty pen: In Netflix’s first original series from India, the story is the hero - ISHIKA MOHAN MOTWANE/NETFLIX

OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar are gaining currency. Pointing to the estimated 150 million active users of Hotstar today, Mohan said, “Access to affordable mobile broadband is good for streaming platforms that have built good products.”

The consumers, of course, are spoilt for choice. They can flit between OTTs, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and more. They can watch anything from a documentary on miners trapped underground in Chile to homemakers whipping up cakes, or funny dog and cat videos. There is hardcore news as well as film trivia. Ordinary people are turning celebrities overnight, as they capture the imagination of specific sections of viewers. Mumbai’s Scherezade Shroff, for instance, has 7 lakh subscribers for her YouTube channel, where she discusses make-up and fashion, while Bhuvan Bam from Delhi has raked in over 90 lakh followers with his humorous takes on current events. Superwoman aka Lilly Singh, an Indian-origin Canadian, posts videos of her desi parents coming to terms with her Western life, making a killing in the bargain. The falling cost of online viewing is helping matters too. From ₹250 for 1 GB data in 2015, the rate has tumbled to ₹15, thanks to telecom players such as Reliance Jio.

Viewer engagement
Besides original content, the focus is on presenting viewers with the shows or films they want to watch. Netflix’s strong suit, for instance, is that it makes available to its subscribers some of the best films and shows from across the world that people might otherwise not have access to.

“Our Indian members enjoy many of the shows that members around the world enjoy, such as Stranger Things, Narcos, The Crown, Sacred Games and Lust Stories,” said Sethi.

Viewer engagement, the buzzword for streaming services, depends on how much of the entertainment on a particular app matches the interest of the viewer.

This is where, Abbott stressed, AI (artificial intelligence) comes into play, mining user data to direct viewers to the videos they are most likely to be interested in, going by their past clicks. “There’s a lot of free entertainment available on YouTube, but how many would scroll through it all without the help of suggestions,” Abbott asked.

AI is a win-win for both parties concerned. The service provider can gain a better understanding of the customer’s requirement, enabling production houses to tailor the relevant content, for which the customer can pay. And that, the industry believes, is a more efficient way of gauging viewer engagement than the controversy-ridden TRPs.

Money matters
Streaming services that are run by DTH television networks, such as Hotstar, have ready access to free content and operate on a freemium model — a semi-free model relying on sources other than subscription for revenue. While TVF depends on ad revenues from brands and brand partnerships, services such as Hotstar have three sources of income: subscriptions, partnerships with telecom companies and advertising revenues.

In the freemium model, while 90 per cent of the content is freely available to viewers irrespective of whether they subscribe or not, ad-free access is available only to subscribers.

The players are also aware that India will be one of the biggest markets for digital streaming services because China is a closed market and western markets are already saturated.

The 2015 EY report lists eight trends that will define the future of digital consumption in India, including breaking the 30-minute and 60-minute limits on content. About 62 per cent of the content consumed on YouTube is short-form. The average length viewed is less than 20 minutes.

By 2020, most Indians will be watching videos on their private screens, as opposed to a family or group viewing. By then, 520 million Indians will have their own smartphones, which, together with tablets and laptops, will displace TV as the primary screen.

With the coming of the internet, while people’s television viewing does not change immediately, they spend more time online, global surveys have underlined. The change in consumption patterns, including the rise of short videos, has a huge impact on the kind of content being made.

This holds true for India, as well, where subscriptions for DTH television services continue to grow, alongside those for OTT platforms. It remains to be seen who wins India’s great eyeball challenge. For the viewer, these are good times. It’s show time, folks.

Brand new: A still from Permanent Roommates, a web series by The Viral Fever. Shows such as these cater to the changing tastes of a young adult population


16.2. Wipro bags 10-year, $1.5-bn deal from US-based Alight Solutions
BusinessLine, 2 Sep. 2018.

Wipro has won a 10-year $1.5-billion deal from the Illinois-based Alight Solutions. The deal, which is Wipro's largest, will translate into revenues of $1.5 -1.6 billion over a decade, the company said in a statement.

Wipro will enable the digital transformation of Alight’s offerings across health, wealth, HR and finance solutions, and enhance the employee experience of Alight’s clients by using Wipro’s work in digital technologies, cognitive automation and data analytics.

Abidali Z. Neemuchwala, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, Wipro, said this long-term partnership will help Alight in its business transformation journey. Alight provides benefits administration and cloud-based HR and financial solutions.


17.1. Government may take PPP route to increase hospital beds under Modicare
Livemint, 17 Aug. 2018, Neetu Chandra Sharma

Currently, there are 1.35 million hospital beds for around 180 million people population covered under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana

Billed as the world’s largest health insurance scheme, AB-NHPM, also called Modicare, aims to provide free health insurance of ₹5 lakh per family to nearly 40% of the population—more than 100 million poor and vulnerable families (approximately 500 million people) based on the socio-economic caste census.

New Delhi: The government is banking on the public-private partnership (PPP) model to try and raise an additional 160,000 hospital beds that PwC-Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) report says are needed to provide health cover under its ambitious Ayushman Bharat-National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM).

Billed as the world’s largest health insurance scheme, AB-NHPM, also called Modicare, aims to provide free health insurance of ₹5 lakh per family to nearly 40% of the population—more than 100 million poor and vulnerable families (approximately 500 million people) based on the socio-economic caste census.

At least 33% of the people covered by the scheme will have no previous health insurance coverage and will have a hospital admission incidence rate of 6% with an average length of stay of three days. A PwC-Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) report on AB-NHPM released last week highlighted that the government will require the right infrastructure strategy to meet the new bed capacity demand.

Currently, there are 1.35 million hospital beds for around 180 million people population covered under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, according to the report.

“From the new population, which comes under coverage for the first time, and also from increased demand from previously covered population due to higher coverage, the demand for new beds can be met by capital investments, changing the status of non-functional beds to functional, public-private collaboration, new business models and focus on preventive health care,” the report said.

According to the Quality Council of India, an autonomous body to set up to ensure standards in various sectors, at least 6,000 private hospitals are likely to join AB-NHPM.

The government has long been pushing for PPP in this sector. In 2017, the government think tank NITI Aayog proposed that the ministry of health and family welfare adopt the PPP model to provide diagnosis and treatment for major non-communicable diseases in smaller cities. The majority of patients prefer the private sector over the public sector for healthcare services. According to the Economic Survey 2018, the expenditure by the government healthcare providers accounted for only 23% of the current health expenditure.

“Irrespective of ideological considerations, the fact is that the private sector does provide about 75% of outpatient care and 60% of inpatient care. Thinking of a health service delivery system without engaging the private sector is symptomatic of the refusal to face up to this reality. There is a need and space for vibrant public facilities as well as responsive private providers to take care of the patient load,” said Alok Kumar, adviser (health & nutrition, financial resources, and administration) at NITI Aayog.

Several states have adopted the PPP model, with Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Uttarakhand attempting to use the PPP framework to set up secondary and tertiary care facilities. Uttar Pradesh has also recently announced that it will establish more than 1,000 hospitals under the PPP model. The Haryana government last month entered into a PPP agreement with the Kerala-based Meditrina Group of hospitals for cardiac care.

Public health experts claim that the PPP model can be considered a key to providing universal health coverage. However, the initiative is plagued with problems. “The main problem is with the rural areas, which lack quality healthcare facilities. In rural areas and Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, the private sector can play a pivotal role in bringing healthcare to the poor,” said Prathap Kumar N, chief interventional cardiologist, chairman and managing director at Meditrina.

“The major problem is the lack of awareness among people that free and highly subsidised medical procedures are available for the poor. Even after we started providing free surgeries in Haryana, people did not know that there is such a facility,” he added.


17.2. Learning from the past on medical device pricing
Livemint, 26 Aug. 2018, Amir Ullah Khan

The government’s previous attempts to cap high trade margins in the sale of drugs show that getting the balance wrong can hurt patients

After having brought down the prices of drugs, the government has medical devices on its agenda. It will soon announce its decision on the method of rationalizing trade margins for medical devices from the first point of sale. The moot point in this debate has been the incidence of high margins, whether they accrue to the distributor or to the hospital.

According to the report of the committee of high trade margins in the sale of drugs, released by the department of pharmaceuticals in 2016, the price to the distributor for both global and indigenous companies was considered from the first point of sale. This report clearly identifies that it is the margin between the price to the distributor and maximum retail price (MRP) that results in the escalation of the latter, and recommends that this should be capped.

Subsequently, data published by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA)—also available in the public domain—shows that margins are indeed skewed towards hospitals.

The National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Policy, 2012 (NPPP-2012) provides a pointer to understanding which method to opt for when rationalizing trade margins. Till 2012, the practice followed by the NPPA was a maximum allowable post-marketing expense (Mape) over standardized manufacturing cost or over landing cost of the product.

According to the observations documented in NPPP-2012, the manufacturing cost/landing cost methodology of price capping had led to “possible manipulation” of cost data, resulting in entry barriers. This was neither good for the patient nor for industry growth, and it impacted “the industry’s ability to invest in enhancing in capabilities”. In other words, the techniques that were used for knee and stent price capping have been attempted in the past as well, and, predictably, failed. So why is the government continuing with the same method for knee and stent price capping?

The idea of price capping based on manufacturing cost/landing cost as per Drug Price Control Order 1995 was an unmitigated disaster. The emphasis on price control starting at the bulk drug and formulation stages resulted in drug manufacturing shifting away from notified bulk drugs and formulations under price control. In fact, only 47 bulk drugs out of the 74 notified in the first schedule of the DPCO 1995 were in production by 2012. As a result, patients were adversely affected.

Considering the need for investment in skill development, in-clinic support, innovation and after-sales service of equipment, the scale of investment in pharmaceuticals is less than what it is for the medical device industry. Hence, in the latter case, the magnitude of the adverse effect will be higher if any cost-based price control is imposed.

Let’s now look at the demand side.
Who deals with medical devices? The demand comes from doctors at the primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare levels. They need to be aware of the availability of various medical devices for different conditions before treating a patient so that they can guide patients and form an effective referral chain to super-specialty care. For this, the global research-based companies need to invest and support clinicians in education and skill building.

Every year, around 2.3 million healthcare professionals are trained by these companies. We need to do much more if we are to have universal coverage. Who will invest in skill development and therapy awareness if medtech companies and their subsidiaries find margins capped unreasonably from landing cost?

If a patient feels a certain medication is not effective, he will go back to the doctor to change it, but this is not the case when it comes to medical devices. The risk factor is high, as medical devices can’t be replaced without re-operating on patients. So a doctor needs to be well informed about the quality and functionality of the devices for better clinical outcomes.

The government should initiate a collaborative effort with industry to ensure circulation of information on alternative therapies among clinicians. Without this, diagnosis and patient prognosis will not be complete.

In this Union budget, the government focused on the healthcare sector, launching the world’s largest government-funded healthcare programme, Ayushman Bharat. Besides providing health insurance to 100 million poor families, the government also plans to open 150,000 health and wellness centres to provide comprehensive healthcare with free diagnostics and treatment. For the success of these initiatives, a lot of skill-building activities are required.

How Johnson and Johnson is scooting from the hip
At this stage, if the rationalization of trade margin is not calculated from the first point of sale, companies will stop investing in these activities. That would increase the chances of the scheme failing.

In such a situation, with the government still undecided which way to go, the department of pharmaceuticals’ recommendation on trade margin rationalization from the first point of sale is the most viable solution. It will not only allow global companies to sell innovative products, but also enable them to invest in skill development along with therapy awareness, while still ensuring affordability by correcting the skewed margins in the supply chain.

Amir Ullah Khan is director of research, Aequitas.


18.1. Domestic passenger traffic grows 20.82% in July
PTI, Aug. 21, 2018

New Delhi: Continuing to register double-digit growth, domestic airlines carried 115.57 lakh passengers in July which is nearly 21 per cent higher compared to year-ago period, according to official data.

Budget carrier IndiGo continued to be the largest player with a market share of 42.1 per cent while that of national carrier Air India stood at 12.4 per cent in July.

Latest figures compiled by aviation regulator DGCA showed that there was an increase of 20.82 per cent in the number of passengers flown by local carriers last month.

In July this year, airlines carried 115.57 lakh passengers as against 95.65 lakh people in the year-ago period.

Last month, the market share of SpiceJet and GoAir stood at 12.3 per cent and 8.9 per cent, respectively. Jet Airways garnered a market share of 13.6 per cent in July.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-July 2018 were 800.40 lakh as against 657.21 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 21.79 per cent," the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said today.

India is one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world and has been registering double-digit growth for more than three years.

As per the data for July, as many as 2,001 passengers were denied boarding while 14,045 people were affected by cancellations. Besides, delays of flights impacted 1,35,481 passengers.

In terms of On-Time Performance (OTP), IndiGo topped the list with a figure of 85.5 per cent followed by SpiceJet (80.6 per cent).

SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor of 93.8 per cent.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines in July was 1.49 per cent, with Zoom Air cancelling all its flights during the month. Air Odisha and Air Deccan also cancelled a large number of flights.

"During July 2018, a total of 714 passenger related complaints had been received by the scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of July 2018 has been around 0.62," the regulator said.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.


18.2. Mumbai-Goa cruise line service to finally begin from Oct 1
PTI, Aug. 27, 2018

Mumbai: After much delay, the maiden sail of the country's first luxury cruise line service between Mumbai and Goa will begin on October 1, Union shipping minister Nitin Gadkari today said.

The ministry is investing Rs 1,000 crore to build a cruise terminal in the Mumbai port area on the east coastline of the financial capital.

"The first cruise line will set sail from Mumbai on October 1 to Goa," Gadkari told reporters at the JNPT near here.

Earlier the minister had said the cruise line services between Mumbai and Goa will begin by August which was then delayed to December.

Gadkari had said earlier, the country receives around 80 cruise liners now but the government want to attract more than times of that at 950 over next five years. To achieve this he is planning to build a cruise terminal along the eastern water front of the megapolis at an investment of around Rs 1,000 crore.

He had also said that as part of developing cruise tourism, two floating restaurants will come up in Mumbai.

"The first cruise between Mumbai and Goa having capacity of 500 people would start from August 1," he had said last month, adding the ministry had asked all ports to set up cruise terminal.

The government would provide Rs 800 crore to Shipping Corporation of India to purchasing boats, he had said.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.


19.1. Armed with smartphones and biometric scanners, the postman leads India Post’s banking push
BusinessLine, 26 Aug. 2018, Kram Kumar

On the go IPPB will leverage its 3-lakh postal employees to serve customers in every district, town and village - The Hindu

The ubiquitous postmen, who deliver letters, parcels and money orders across the country, are probably being primed to don the role of part-time bankers, going by the aggressive plan of the government-owned India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) to buy smartphones and biometric devices.

IPPB, which was incorporated as a public limited company with 100 per cent government holding under the Department of Posts on August 17, 2016, is looking to procure about 1.6 lakh smartphones and about 2.7 lakh biometric devices (scanners) to facilitate doorstep banking. Its tagline, after all, is “Aapka bank, aapke dwaar (Your bank at your doorstep)”.

This aggression in procuring electronic devices that will help it source and service customers across the country shows the new bank is throwing down the gauntlet to its competitors.

The battle to mop up deposits, provide payment and remittance services, and distribute (on a non-risk sharing basis) simple financial products such as insurance and mutual fund products is indeed hotting up.

Starting with the launch of 3,250 access points, IPPB said it will be spreading its footprint and leveraging the vast postal network of nearly 1.55 lakh post offices and three lakh postal employees to serve its customers in every district, town and village.

Minister of State for Communications Manoj Sinha, in a reply to the Lok Sabha in March, said the bank has launched a pilot branch each in Raipur and Ranchi.

“There would be complete integration of IPPB branches with the 1.55 lakh post offices so that each post office functions as both a Postal Department outlet and an access point for the payments bank, subject to technical and commercial feasibility,” he said. “The pan-India rollout of 650 branches is to commence from April 2018,” Sinha added. He also noted that IPPB will leverage Postal Department ATMs for its banking operations, which are already connected with the ATM networks of other banks. The Postal Department currently has 995 ATMs.

Exacting demands
As the Postal Department sees it, the mobility of the Indian population both within and outside the country has led to new and exacting demands on communication and financial services.

“The speed with which communications and other transactions need to be executed with a high degree of reliability is now measured in real time.

“The requirement for such services and products with improved features of accessibility, transparency, reliability and speed are clearly apparent in the marketplace,” the department has stated in its strategic plan.


19.2. Hiring picks up at TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and HCL Tech
Livemint, 12 Sep. 2018, Varun Sood

The turnaround in the pace of hiring at TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and HCL Technologies in the June quarter follows a year of tepid employee additions

The top five IT companies in India, namely TCS, Cognizant, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies, hired 24,047 in the June quarter, against 13,772 in the entire fiscal 2018. 


New Delhi: The top five software services providers operating in India added 24,047 people in the first quarter of this fiscal, compared with the 13,772 net additions in the previous fiscal, leading many experts to believe that the industry is set to record the fastest growth in three years. The turnaround in the pace of hiring at Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Infosys Ltd, Wipro Ltd and HCL Technologies Ltd in the June quarter follows a year of tepid employee additions, the slowest pace since the offshore outsourcing boom started at the turn of the century.

Analysts attribute the reversal of fortunes for the sector to three reasons. First, companies are looking to spend more on outsourcing technology work. Second, Fortune 1000 companies are using data analytics platforms offered by information technology (IT) vendors to run their business better. This, in turn, is translating into more work for the outsourcing companies, for now. And third, companies are increasing their spending on digital technologies. The increased spending has led to more contracts valued at over $1 billion.

For instance, Mumbai-based TCS has won three mega deals since December, bringing in a combined $5.6 billion in revenue. Last week, Bengaluru-based Wipro won its largest contract valued at $1.6 billion.

“The early legs of any transformation are always challenging, and this we have seen in the last two years when all companies struggled for growth,” an executive at Cognizant said on condition of anonymity. “For all the five companies, digital is now a fourth of total revenue. So, without getting into the debate of digital definition, the heartening thing is that quality of revenue is only improving.”

Although all IT firms are moving away from a people-led model to a platform-based business approach, hiring by the largest IT firms continues to be a dominant indicator of their prospects. The five firms together employed 1.17 million at the end of the June quarter.

“Growth is back,” a senior executive at TCS said on condition of anonymity. “Companies were always spending more on digital in the past. But now, what we are seeing is that if the traditional business can be done efficiently and if you have solution offerings like data analytics and AI (artificial intelligence) platforms, you will be able to differentiate from others.”

“To us (TCS), the question of digital offsetting the loss in traditional is not relevant because there is enough and more work available and hiring is just one indicator,” said the executive cited above.

The June quarter net additions of the five firms is the highest in at least two years. They added 26,565 people to their workforce in the three months ended 30 June 2016.

Although TCS does not provide a growth outlook, it is expected to cross 10% growth this fiscal. It managed an 8.6% dollar revenue growth to end last year with $19.09 billion in revenue. Ditto for Wipro, which ended last year with $8.06 billion in revenue. It expects to get at least $80 million or 1% growth this fiscal from the $1.6 billion contract.

“I’m not sure with this ‘little upswing’ we are seeing but the mood is definitely more bullish over the last couple of months,” said Phil Fersht, chief executive officer of US-based HfS Research, an outsourcing research firm. His caution finds support from some industry executives.

“The biggest downside risk to this growth story is the uncertainty in the many of the first-of-its kind of projects,” said the Cognizant executive cited before. “The work in areas like IP (intellectual property) platforms runs the risk of IP infringement cases. You are offering data analytics solutions when debate on data privacy is gaining traction. The promised benefits from automation will be tested. So, any incidental issue and this can blow up, making many clients hold back on spending in these areas.”


20.1. TCS 2nd Indian firm to cross ₹ 8 trillion market cap after RIL
Livemint, 4 Sep. 2018, Ravindra N. Sonavane

TCS share prices rose 1.86% to a record high of ₹ 2093.2 on the BSE today, imparting the IT bellwether a market cap of ₹ 8.01 trillion. In intraday, the stock hit an all-time high of ₹ 2,100

Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s (TCS) market cap surged past the ₹ 8 trillion mark for the first time today, making it only the second Indian company after Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) to achieve the milestone. TCS share prices rose 1.86% to a record high of ₹ 2093.2 on the BSE today, imparting the IT bellwether a market cap of ₹ 8.01 trillion. In intraday, the stock hit an all-time high of ₹ 2,100.

Of the 50 brokers tracking the TCS stock on Bloomberg, as many as 22 recommend a “buy” rating, eight “sell” the stock 20 a “hold” rating.

The TCS stock, which has so far this year surged 54.6%, has been rising daily due to a share buyback offer on 6 September. The buyback will closed on 21 September. A weakening rupee has been benefitting the IT stocks, and TCS is no exception.

The ₹ 16,000 crore TCS share buyback will see the company purchase 76.19 million of its shares via a tender at ₹ 2,100 apiece. This aggregates to up to 1.99% of the paid-up equity capital.

According to a BSE notice, Tata Sons Ltd has expressed interest in participating in the TCS share buyback and may tender up to an aggregate 54.77 million shares, or 1.43% its stake, in the company. Tata Investment Corp. Ltd expressed to sell 20,978 shares, Tata Steel Ltd may tender 947 shares, Tata Industries Ltd 145 shares and Tata Power Co. Ltd 16 shares.

Share buybacks typically improve earnings per share and return surplus cash to shareholders, while supporting the stock price during sluggish market conditions.

For the June quarter, TCS reported 4.1% revenue growth in constant currency terms—highest compared to the preceding eight quarters. Net profit rose 1.1% to $1.08 billion in Q1 from $1.07 billion in the preceding three months, while operating margin narrowed 40 basis points to 25% from 25.4% in the January-March period. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.

“A portfolio of turnkey services offerings, traction in emerging markets, improving sales and marketing prowess, and willingness to take multiple big bets (different go-to-market models) are among the key drivers that should help TCS sustain its hi-growth trajectory in the long run”, said brokerage Edelweiss Securities said in its July report.

The banking, financial services and insurance sector, or BFSI, which contributes 30% of TCS’s revenue, has started growing at a higher pace. The company’s management is confident of double-digit growth in the BFSI segment in the near- to medium-term. The company has strong hiring plans for FY19, despite a lower attrition rate than peers.

“TCS is well-positioned to benefit from the growing demand for offshore IT services. Considering its greater experience than peers in implementing large, complex, and mission-critical projects, the company is a serious contender for large deals”, the Edelweiss report added.


20.2. Aurobindo agrees to acquire Novartis’s US generics business for $1 billion
Livemint, 6 Sep. 2018, Deborshi Chaki

An initial $900 million cash payment to the Basel-based Novartis could be followed by $100 million in performance-based payments

New Delhi: Aurobindo Pharma Ltd has agreed to buy the dermatology business and three manufacturing units of Sandoz, the generics unit of Swiss drug maker Novartis, for as much as $1 billion, the Indian company said, in a deal that makes it the second-largest maker of generic prescription drugs in the US.

An initial $900 million cash payment to the Basel-based Novartis could be followed by $100 million in performance-based payments. Aurobindo will finance the deal through a fully committed debt facility. The acquired business had sales of $1.2 billion in 2017.

The transaction, the largest outbound pharma deal by an Indian company, includes a portfolio of oral solid products, along with its commercial and manufacturing infrastructure, Aurobindo Pharma said in a statement on Thursday.

The transaction will catapult Aurobindo to the second position in the dermatological drugs segment as well as the second-largest generics company in the US by prescriptions, said N. Govindarajan, managing director of Aurobindo Pharma.

“Acquiring these businesses from Sandoz will allow us to expand our product offering and become a leading player in the generic dermatology market,” Govindarajan said. “We expect a seamless integration of the acquired businesses with the rest of the Aurobindo group, given the success we have achieved in our acquisitions to date.”

This is the second overseas acquisition by Aurobindo in less than two years. In January 2017, it had agreed to buy Portugal’s Generis Farmacêutica SA from Magnum Capital Partners for €135 million.

Mint was the first to report on the Sandoz transaction on 7 May. The report said Aurobindo was the only Indian bidder for Novartis’s assets. The transaction also drew interest from several global private equity players, as well as strategic bidders.

“The acquisition will add approximately 300 products, including projects in development, as well as commercial and manufacturing capabilities in the US,” the company said.

Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan, who took over the reins of the Swiss drug maker on 1 February, plans to focus on higher-margin drugs.

Aurobindo’s acquired generic dermatology portfolio will include a wide range of therapeutic areas, including topical antibiotics, gynaecological and dermatological anti-fungal agents, anti-acne agents, local anaesthetic analgesics, anti-itch, and a dermatological chemotherapeutic agent. The oral non-dermatological portfolio, which is being acquired, spans a wide range of therapeutic areas, including autoimmune disease, antineoplastic agents and hormonal agents.

The previous largest outbound deal by an Indian company in the pharma segment was the acquisition of Gavis Pharmaceuticals Llc and Novel Laboratories by Lupin Ltd for $880 million in 2015.

In 2016, Aurobindo unsuccessfully bid for Teva’s Actavis UK Ltd and Actavis Ireland Ltd units. It was pipped to the post by domestic rival Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd, which paid close to £600 million (around ₹5,000 crore) to bag the deal.

Other notable transactions in the outbound pharma space in recent years include Cipla Ltd’s acquisition of three products from Teva in the US. In November 2016, Aurobindo Pharma had also acquired a few products from Teva’s France portfolio.


INDIA AND THE WORLD


21.1. Govt mulls duty-free import of capital goods to skirt WTO
BusinessLine, 20 Aug. 2018, Amiti Sen

Jobs-linked scheme may replace export incentives that are in breach of trade rules

The government is working on a scheme to allow duty-free import of capital goods by the domestic industry, a measure that may be linked to employment generation.

The initiative could be an alternative to some of the export incentive schemes that will now have to be phased out or withdrawn because of their incompatibility with global trade rules, a government official told BusinessLine.

“At present, exporters can import capital goods duty free under the Export Promotion Capital Goods (EPCG) scheme and also under initiatives for EOUs (export oriented units) and SEZ (Special Economic Zone) units. However, these schemes are no longer compatible with World Trade Organisation (WTO) norms and have to be phased out or withdrawn. The new scheme is being designed to offer similar benefits to manufacturers within the boundaries of WTO norms,” the official said.

A team led by the Directorate-General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) and including trade experts and industry representatives is fine-tuning the scheme, which will finally be included in a Cabinet note on alternative incentive schemes for the domestic industry and exporters.

Since India’s per capita Gross National Income (GNI) exceeded the threshold of $1,000 for three years in a row in 2015, it can no longer extend export subsidies, under WTO rules.

With India still continuing with many of its export sops, the US dragged the country to WTO’s dispute settlement body earlier this year, complaining that its export subsidies were harming American companies. It identified five popular export promotion schemes, including the merchandise export from India scheme (MEIS), the EPCG scheme, and some incentives available to EOUs and SEZ units, as being in violation of the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.

“The idea now is to replace these schemes with ones that are not directly linked to exports. The duty-free import of capital goods scheme being designed will be available to all domestic producers and would be linked to criteria other than exports — such as employment. This will ensure that exporters will continue to get duty-free benefits along with other domestic producers,” the official said.

The average level of import duty on capital goods is around 7.5 per cent. Bringing it down to zero for the domestic industry that meets certain criteria like employment generation will provide relief for manufacturers, especially those who have newly set up their plants.

The catch
There are, however, a couple of glitches in the execution of the scheme. A scheme to incentivise capital goods import could go against the interests of the domestic capital goods industry. “The government is clear that the ultimate objective is to give a fillip to ‘Make in India’. This can be done by giving the industry more benefits if they procure domestically,” the official said.

The Finance Ministry would also suffer a revenue loss if a duty-free import scheme is implemented as capital goods are a source of generation of income from Customs duty, the official added.

“All these factors have to be taken into account before finalising the scheme. Hopefully the scheme will be given a final shape soon,” the official said.


21.2. India is standing still as global trade changes
Livemint, 10 Sep. 2018

New Delhi would be better served by focusing on structural reforms, such as rationalizing India’s tariff structure

Donald Trump, Nitin Gadkari and Suresh Prabhu have vastly different remits. Between them, however, they summed up India’s trade dilemmas last week. It makes for a worrying scenario.

On 7 September, the US President signalled his intention to go all in in his trade war with China. If he goes ahead with the tariffs on an additional $267 billion worth of Chinese goods, in addition to previous tariffs that have been put in place or proposed, it will cover the entirety of imports from China. Admittedly, there is no certainty this will play out as Trump might want. The previous tranche of tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods is still in the ether because of the pressure brought by US companies alarmed at the prospective hit to their investments and value chains.

That said, the implications for the World Trade Organization (WTO) are not encouraging. Trump’s earlier steel and aluminium tariffs were imposed under Section 232, a provision of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. This piece of US legislation allows national security exceptions to WTO free trade obligations, invoked under Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The targeted countries have lodged a complaint at the WTO. There is no good end to this. If the WTO allows the tariff, similar tariffs on the ostensible basis of national security are bound to mushroom among its members. If it disallows the tariff, it challenges a country’s sovereign right to define its national security, a sure path to irrelevance.

The proposed $200 billion tariffs, meanwhile, are even more likely to run into heavy weather at the WTO. They have been imposed under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, which allows for unilateral measures. However, the US had agreed in 2000 to impose punitive tariffs only after a WTO ruling. It has not done so here. The tariffs Trump mooted on 7 September will doubtless face the same problem. All of which is to say that bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements might get even more of a push. They have become increasingly important as the Doha Development Agenda deadlock has stalled progress at the WTO. Little wonder the number of regional trading agreements (RTAs) has exploded over the past decade.

Potentially one of the highest value RTAs is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), accounting for 25% of global gross domestic product and 30% of global trade. Last week, Union minister for commerce and industry Suresh Prabhu revealed that RCEP members have agreed to New Delhi’s long-standing demand that liberalization in services accompany trade liberalization in the negotiations. But that doesn’t mean an end to India’s coyness about signing on the dotted line, as Prabhu made clear.

The pushback against the RCEP within the government and from Indian industry is not entirely baseless. The steel and pharma industries, for instance, have reason to be worried about being swamped by Chinese imports. It isn’t the only one. However, some perspective is useful. RCEP’s detractors point to the free trade agreements (FTAs) with Japan and Korea. After signing on them, India’s trade deficit with both countries has risen over the past few years. True enough. But, as Naushad Forbes has pointed out in Business Standard, the deficit with China, with which India has no FTA, has risen much more sharply over the same period. Plainly, the problem goes beyond FTAs. 

For one, the rupee’s real effective rate has appreciated by 20% over the past four years. More broadly, as the NITI Aayog put it in its April note cautioning against the RCEP, opening the Indian market would be dangerous because “proper standards and processes are not in place in India.” The nature of India’s export basket doesn’t help, dominated as it is by goods of relatively low sophistication. This prevents it from developing dense “clusters” of exports, which typically accrete around more sophisticated goods, and, in turn, from gaining the competitive edge required to boost export numbers.

Union minister for road transport, highways and shipping Nitin Gadkari’s statement last week that the government is working on an import substitution policy for industrialization is exactly the wrong way to address these problems. We have seen how this story ends in the decades before 1991. It is also a violation of the basic economic truth that a tariff on imports is an equivalent tax on exports. Unfortunately, the Narendra Modi government has been moving in a protectionist direction since at least 2016. The Union budget this year brought that shift front and centre.

In the past, this newspaper has advocated playing hardball on the RCEP when it comes to liberalizing services. It seems New Delhi is gaining ground on that front. Doubtless, it still has tough negotiating ahead of it when it comes to deciding what percentage of tariff lines to cut duties on—the RCEP wants 92% while New Delhi is holding firm at 86%—and lower market access for China.

That is not, however, reason enough to give in to the increasingly loud domestic constituency advocating trade protectionism. New Delhi would be better served by focusing on structural reforms, such as rationalizing India’s tariff structure, as recommended by the Chelliah Committee back in 1993, and plugging the many gaps in the Foreign Trade Policy 2015-2020. Global trade is changing, and swiftly. New Delhi must keep up.


22.1. Global alliance to create 50 mn jobs, 10 mn entrepreneurs in India by 2030
Business Standard, 22 Aug. 2018

The coalition, called Global Alliance Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), has received initial funding commitment of Rs 1 billion over three years
GAME eyes creation of 10 mn entrepreneurs, 50 mn jobs by 2030 in India Entrepreneurship scenario not as enthusing as Modi govt would want: Study Lunch with BS: Meet BoB's Ravi Venkatesan, the master of his time Singapore's e-government to skill Indians across new age technologies India's rising entrepreneurship culture

A group of Indian and international partners on Tuesday announced the formation of a coalition that aims to catalyse a mass entrepreneurship movement in India with the aim of creating 10 million new entrepreneurs and 50 million new jobs by 2030.

The coalition, called Global Alliance Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), has received initial funding commitment of Rs 1 billion over three years from several Indian and global donors, a statement from GAME said.

The announcement was made at a day-long workshop here organised by The Rockefeller Foundation.

Endorsement and support for the alliance have come from many organisations.

"My ministry fully welcomes and supports this initiative and hopes to benefit by these ideas," K.P. Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, said in a statement.

"Helping more Indian families rise out of poverty remains a challenge we're committed to tackling; creating thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs is key to that. This alliance can make that goal a reality," said Christine Heenan, Vice President for Policy, Partnerships and Communications, The Rockefeller Foundation.

Announcing the formal launch of the initiative, Ravi Venkatesan, former Chairman of Bank of Baroda and Microsoft India and Founder of GAME said, "With GAME, we aim to create a focused autonomous organisation, bringing together a consortium of public, private and civil society organisations."


22.2. Successful businessmen should invest in start-ups, says Kris Gopalakrishnan
BusinessLine, 20 Aug. 2018, K. V. Kurmanathi

India needs ‘an out-of-the-box model’ for rural entrepreneurship

Those who made it big in business should offer a helping hand to fledgling firms, said Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the founders of Infosys. He also asked those successful in businesses to allocate small amounts of money and support at least one or two start-ups. “This can spread across the country. This will go a long way in building the start-up ecosystem,” Kris said.

The soft-spoken IITian had served Infosys as its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer during 2007 and 2011, which incidentally was a turbulent phase for the IT industry.

Kris, along with another Infosys co-founder SD Shibulal, set up a ₹200-crore investment firm Axilor Ventures to invest in tech-based start-ups. “When a successful entrepreneur spares some amount on start-up investments, it will create a whole new generation of entrepreneurs,” he pointed out.

Kris, who is actively working with start-ups in the last few years, has identified three broad areas for the development of the ecosystem. In his personal capacity and with Axilor Ventures, Kris has made about 65 investments in start-ups so far.

Kick-starting start-ups
Answering a question on concentration of start-ups in a few cities and the challenges in spreading the ecosystem to other geographies, Kris said there were several issues to be tackled. “I agree that the start-up ecosystem is concentrated in a few metropolitan cities. We need to create such ecosystems in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. We also need to create such ecosystems in the engineering colleges. We should also promote rural entrepreneurship as well,” he said..

“Each of these has a different set of challenges. In Tier-II and Tier-III cities, the challenge is mentoring and angel investors. How do you get them started? They need small amounts of money to set the ball rolling. Successful businessmen should make small investments,” he observed.

“Mentoring is slightly more difficult. We should also look at technologies and manage the mentoring part using video-conferencing facilities wherever it is necessary. We need a culture of academicians trying their hand in entrepreneurship. We need to coach them. I see no reason why our research should not be converted into products,” he said.

With regard to rural entrepreneurship, Kris felt that the country needed an out-of-the-box model. “We need to think differently. Any business is a start-up. We need to create business plans that can be replicated. They need seed funding in the form of a grant,” he said. “We need to create business plans, handhold them for 1-2 years. We need to create opportunities for them to share experiences so that others can learn from experiences. It will help create rural entrepreneurial ecosystems,” he observed.

‘Great opportunity’
To a question on the investments he and his investment firm made, Kris said investments had been made in a spectrum of start-ups which were in different stages of growth. The investments range from ₹5-20 lakhs in early stage start-ups, some could be a few crores in others, he said.

Kris felt the quality of start-ups had gone up. “We have seen a lot more deep tech start-ups coming in. I’m very keen to see academic research getting translated into start-ups. It’s a great opportunity for us in India. It’s an exciting period for me,” he said.

“For one, we’ve invested in a healthcare technologies start-up that came up with a thermal imaging screening solution for breast cancer. One, it’s a new way of doing the screening. Two, costs are significantly lower. And, three, it suits the cultural nuisances of India,” he said. “All this at one-tenth of the cost as it disrupts the traditional way of screening. I feel this can change the way breast cancer screenings are done,” he said.

Technology and jobs
Replying to a question on growing job losses due to automation and reducing employment opportunities for Indian job seekers in the United States, Kris said newer technologies would always mean losses in jobs.

“There will be job losses. There were always job losses. As and when new technologies are introduced, the nature of jobs change. It is a continuous process of disruption. Repetitive jobs, especially the jobs that will require processing large amounts of data, will go. But new jobs will be created,” he said.

“For one, Facebook is hiring in large numbers to look at images and certifying images. New jobs in curation of data and data massage are getting created. What we should do is to equip people with skills required for the newer jobs,” he summed up.


23. Amazon India unveils Hindi website, app to take on Flipkart
Livemint, 4 Sep. 2018, Aakanksha Ahuja

Amazon Hindi gives an edge to the online retailer as none India’s other leading e-commerce portals—Flipkart, Snapdeal or Paytm Mall—currently have a local language version of their apps or websites

New Delhi: Online retailer Amazon India today launched its services in Hindi, with the aim of capturing the next 100 million consumers in the e-commerce battle against Walmart’s Flipkart. The move could give Amazon access to tens of millions of new customers in India’s small towns and villages. The service is currently available on Android OS and the mobile website and will soon be available on Apple devices and desktops.

“My mother keeps saying why we cannot shop in Hindi. This is the customer feedback we have been getting and it was time to move towards the next evolution,” Manish Tiwary, vice president (category management) at Amazon India, told reporters at a news conference. “What we believe is, Amazon in Hindi is a critical step to actually address the next 100 million customers.”

The announcement of the Amazon Hindi app and website comes ahead of the festive season, which is traditionally the peak sales season for India’s retail sector—online or offline. India’s e-commerce market is tipped to grow to $150 billion by 2022, according to a report by Nasscom and PwC.

None of India’s other leading e-commerce portals—Flipkart, Snapdeal or Paytm Mall—currently have a local language version of their apps or websites, Reuters reported. Snapdeal did launch a mobile website in Hindi and Telugu in 2015 and conducted pilot runs for 12 regional languages, but the plan was shelved after six months due to lack of interest.

Amazon too is keen to expand in other regional languages. “We are starting with Hindi and as we learn (from) the experience and become rock-solid, we would be in position to understand the other languages,” said Kishore Thota, director (customer experience and marketing) at Amazon India. The focus will be on Hindi over the next year and Amazon may delve into regional languages like Bengali and Tamil after that.

According to Thota, an internal team called “Reach” is working on how to tap the next million users.


24.1. US now has greater confidence in sharing technologies with India: Arun Singh
Livemint, Sep. 10, 2018

New Delhi: The inaugural “2+2” dialogue between the defence and foreign ministers of India and the US, which took place last week, has brought the spotlight back on the positives in bilateral ties, according to Arun Singh, a former Indian ambassador to the US. The signing of the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) is not so much about India aligning with US interests, as some critics have said, but shows that the US has greater confidence in sharing high-level technologies with India, which would contribute to building it capabilities, he said. Edited excerpts:

What was the outcome of the first ever “2+2” dialogue? How far has the India-US relation reached in terms of forging strategic trust and discarding long-held prejudices?
The “2+2” served its purpose at this stage amid some dissonance in bilateral relations, and flux in global order. With the “2+2” having been postponed twice, and President (Donald) Trump’s priority focus being elsewhere, differences on tariffs, market access, intellectual property had acquired centre stage in setting the tone for the relationship. This meeting once again highlighted the positive, the convergence in interests, particularly in the Indo-Pacific and in the fight against terrorism. Several decisions, such as signing of the COMCASA, agreeing to the first tri-services joint exercises, and establishment of hot lines between the foreign and defence ministers and their counterparts, were taken. This would provide additional mechanisms for enhancing coordination and confidence.

There was some kind of a question mark over whether India can do business with the US, especially after the Trump administration took office. Have those doubts been set to rest?
It would be a mistake to think that differences and challenges in India-US relations will disappear after this one meeting. There are many areas where our approaches differ. In India, the US focus on India’s US-specific trade surplus is seen as not reasonable. We have an overall trade deficit. Domestic politics driven by US sanctions on Iran and Russia can have collateral negative consequences for India. We will need to carefully watch the US’s engagement with the Taliban as it would have consequences for Indian interests in Afghanistan. Every country takes its decisions in its own interests. An effective strategy for us would be to see the convergences, and work on those while doing what we can do to protect our interests. While dealing with the differences, the overall perspective must also be kept in view. It was clear from the public comments that while India made its concerns known on the H-1B visa issue, it made the argument in terms of how it helped innovation and profitability in the US and deepened economic linkages between the two countries. It also said how it would contribute to India’s economic strength, which US defence secretary (James) Mattis described as a “stabilizing force on the region’s geographic front lines”.

Is the signing of the COMCASA a turning point in India-US defence ties? What does it mean for India? How will it impact ties with Russia and China, the two countries with whom we seemed to have had a course correction this year? Does it signal a deeper alignment with the US?
I would not say it was a turning point in ties. It is one more step in the gradual consolidation of defence and other cooperation, which will enable higher levels of technology releases. In 2016, the US had declared India as a major defence partner. The two countries had signed a logistics exchange memorandum of agreement. Earlier this year, the US placed India in the Tier 1 category of the licence exemption strategic trade authorization, on a par with its closest allies and partners. COMCASA will enable India to source high-level communication technologies from the US for our defence platforms, which would enhance their effectiveness. It signals not so much about India aligning with US interests, but as US having greater confidence in sharing high-level technologies with India and contributing to building our capacities. It is a decision that clearly India has taken in its own interest, after extended negotiations to fine-tune the text accordingly. Other interlocutors have to recognize this.

What is the significance of the Indian military having exchanges with the US central command? And the exchanges between the US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) and the Indian Navy?
On the military side, India presently has cooperation and exchanges with the US Indo-Pacific command, which focuses on the region from west coast of India to the West Coast of the US. This has been helpful, from our point of view, since the US sees convergence in our interests in the Indo-Pacific region. We do the Malabar series of naval exercises, and meet also in the trilateral India-US-Japan framework, and the quadrilateral, with the inclusion of Australia. While having strong economic relations, every country is trying to build networks of cooperation to deal with the consequences of a rising China. But India’s interests are not confined to the Indo-Pacific alone. Issues related to Afghanistan, Iran and the Gulf have a bearing on our security and economic interests on account of terrorism, energy imports, diaspora presence, etc. For the US, this region is in focus for the CENTCOM (Central Command). Engaging with the decision-making in CENTCOM to protect our interests would also be useful.

Do you think the differences over how India views the Indo-Pacific and how the US views it, and wants India to play a role in balancing China, were bridged at the “2+2”? 
There was clearly a difference in perception with India saying that the Indo-Pacific was “open and inclusive” and the US’s stress on countering China.

No two countries can have a 100% alignment in their interests, more so countries as diverse as India and the US, with different histories, geopolitical location, and varying global role and presence. However, there is some similarity in how both try to balance between competition, cooperation and hedging in their relations with China. US trade of $500 billion, and Chinese investment of $1 trillion in US securities is a far higher order of economic linkage. The US now sees a challenge from China’s growing military strength and assertiveness, and aspirations for high technology absorption in its industry. “Free and open Indo-Pacific” is a term that has been used by both India and the US, suggesting that China’s rise should not lead to its curtailing options for other countries.

There were also differences between India and the US over Iran and Russia, on the question of India’s fuel imports and Chabahar in the case of the former, and the acquisition of the S-400 from Russia. Do you think the US will be willing to allow India any latitude in either case?
We have to see how this plays out. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in Delhi that they understand that countries need a “winding down” period as they reduce oil imports from Iran so as to avoid unilateral US sanctions. US will need to show an understanding for India’s economic compulsions in face of rising oil prices, and the fall in the value of the rupee. Similarly, on Russia there has to be a recognition of India’s legacy linkages, and avoid US being seen as an unreliable partner, when the effort is to deepen relations.

How did the discussions on the H-1B visa issue proceed?
Trade issues are being discussed in greater detail elsewhere. US under secretary of commerce had talks with our commerce secretary earlier this week. The Trade Policy Forum at ministerial level is scheduled to meet in early November. At this meeting, the economic relations would have been mentioned from the strategic perspective, and the role of H-1B visas in deepening linkages was flagged. Trump’s latest comment challenging continuation of GSP benefits to India reflect the current challenges, but it would be best to address the issue in a transactional manner at this stage, while keeping the long-term view and overall interests in mind.

Pompeo said US will practise “partnership economics” with India and then went on to say that he hoped Westinghouse will be able to finalize pacts with India to provide clean fuel. What does this mean?
“Partnership economics” would clearly imply more business dealings between Indian and US entities. Recently, Lockheed Martin entered into an agreement with the Tatas to provide parts for their global F-16 supplies. Working for such deals, including in nuclear energy, will provide for a more solid underpinning to the strategic ties.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.


24.2. Cases of diabetes, heart diseases and cancer surging unabated in India: Study
Livemint, 12 Sep. Neetu Chandra Sharma

The study was based on an analysis of all identifiable epidemiological data from India between 1990 and 2016, as part of the Global Burden of Disease study

New Delhi: While the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascular ailments, cancer, diabetes, stroke and chronic respiratory diseases, is surging unabated in India, suicide remains the leading cause of death among the youth, especially women.

A joint initiative of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), in collaboration with the ministry of health and family welfare on Wednesday released a comprehensive report, India State-level Disease Burden Initiative, which analyses several major NCDs and suicide cases for every state in India.

The study was based on an analysis of all identifiable epidemiological data from India between 1990 and 2016, as part of the Global Burden of Disease study. The findings are also reported in a series of five research papers published in The Lancet.

According to the report, prevalence of ischemic heart disease and stroke has increased by over 50% from 1990 to 2016, with an increase observed in all states. The prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in 2016 was the highest in Kerala, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu, followed by Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa and West Bengal.

The rate of increase in the burden of ischemic heart disease and diabetes was the highest in less developed states, where the burden of chronic obstructive lung disease and infectious conditions was already high, the report stated.

The prevalence of diabetes in adults aged 20 years or older also increased from 5.5% in 1990 to 7.7% in 2016, which was highest in the more developed states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala and in New Delhi.

“Major concern is that the highest rate of increase in ischemic heart disease and diabetes is in the less developed states of India, which already have a high burden from chronic obstructive lung disease and from a range of infectious and childhood diseases. So, the control of non-communicable diseases in these states has to be boosted without delay,” said Balram Bhargava, secretary in the department of health research, and director general, ICMR.

The proportional contribution of cancers to the total health loss in India also doubled from 1990 to 2016, but the incidence of different types of cancers varies widely across states.

The report has highlighted that pollution is an endocrine disrupter, contributing to diabetes and around 43% lung cancers were because of pollution. While cancers of the cervix, stomach and oesophagus have shown a decline, breast and liver cancers have increased dramatically, despite the fact that nearly 60% cancers can be prevented. Similarly, the number of chronic obstructive lung disease cases in India has increased from 28 million to 55 million in the 26-year period.

Suicide is the leading cause of death in the 15-39 year age group, with 37% of the total global suicide deaths among women occurring in India, the study revealed. Suicide death rate among the elderly has also increased over the past quarter of a century.

“The ten-fold variation between the states in suicide death rate for women emphasizes the need to better understand the reasons behind these suicides and make concerted efforts to reduce this avoidable loss of predominantly young lives,” added Bhargav.


25.1. Asian Games 2018: 10 Indian athletes to watch out for
Livemint, 17 Aug. 2018, Suprita Das

The 18th Asian Games start in Indonesia on Saturday. Here are some of India’s most exciting prospects

In the spring of 1951, 491 athletes from 11 Asian national Olympic committees descended on the Indian capital to participate in the first Asian Games. Sixty-seven years and 17 editions of the quadrennial event later, India is sending 572 athletes to participate in the world’s second-biggest multi-sport event that starts in Indonesia on Saturday.

India’s best performance at the Asiad was in Guangzhou 2010, where the country won 65 medals, including 14 golds. In Incheon 2014, Indian athletes won 57 medals, comprising 11 golds. India will be hoping for a better show from the 572 athletes who will compete across 36 sporting events in Jakarta and Palembang from 18 August-2 September.

India’s best hopes lie in disciplines such as athletics, wrestling, shooting, boxing and badminton. The rise of badminton has been one of the greatest success stories of Indian sport recently. And despite the competition from the Chinese, Malaysians and Indonesians, Indian players are capable of winning medals in each category. “We go in with a chance in every event and very rarely (has) this happened with the Indian team...,” PTI quoted chief badminton coach Pullela Gopi Chand as saying earlier this week.

In athletics, fresh from her gold medal in the World U20 Championships, Hima Das will be leading the charge. Keeping her company will be Dutee Chand. In field events, expectations are high from Neeraj Chopra, 20-year-old Commonwealth champion javelin thrower, and Seema Punia, the seasoned discus thrower. Athletics has been one of India’s strongest suits at the Asiad, and this edition should be no different.

This Asian Games could also prove to be the platform for India’s women wrestlers to redeem themselves. Only Vinesh Phogat could manage a gold at Gold Coast. The rest of the contingent would be eager to change the colour of the medals. Meanwhile, the men, spearheaded by veteran Sushil Kumar, would be looking to continue their good show from Australia.

All eyes, however, will be on the shooters, who have had an unforgettable year so far. Expect fireworks again from teenage sensation Manu Bhaker, who has won a gold medal in every competition she has participated in this year, and seasoned campaigners like Heena Sidhu.

But beyond the Sushil Kumars and Sindhus, there is a sea of talented athletes representing India in Indonesia. Here’s a list of 10 such athletes who have emerged in the past year or are making a comeback that we are most excited about.

- Bajrang Punia, 24
Wrestling (freestyle), 65kg

With three consecutive gold medals in international events this year, he has become a force to reckon with in his weight category

With a hat-trick of golds (the Commonwealth Games in Australia, Yasar Dogu International in Turkey, Tbilisi Grand Prix in Georgia) in his kitty, Punia (right, in blue) could not have asked for a better build-up to the Asian Games. In Turkey, in fact, he decided to fight above his weight category (in 70kg). “It was a conscious decision so that I had the time and comfort to lose weight and return to normal for the Asiad and give my best,” he says. Punia knows that the Asian Games competition will be way stiffer than the Commonwealth Games, almost as tough as the World Championships, but he’s hoping a tip or two from his mentor, Olympic bronze medallist Yogeshwar Dutt, will come in handy.

- Lalremsiami, 18
Forward, women’s hockey

She played a key role in the Indian team reaching the quarter-finals of the Women’s Hockey World Cup in London that concluded earlier this month

The best of India’s attacks in London were centred around the Mizo girl Siami, as her teammates refer to her. She has the ability to influence a match at every stage and keep her team in the contest. During last year’s Asia Cup campaign, she realized that not knowing Hindi was a drawback. “We made Rani (Rampal) her roommate,” says Harendra Singh, who was the team’s coach at the time. Her Hindi might have improved only marginally since but her game has evolved quite a bit, as was evident in the World Cup. India have beaten teams from China, Japan and Korea across tournaments recently, but penalty corner conversions could be the key for them in Jakarta.

- Dipa Karmakar, 25
Artistic gymnastics

A gold-winning return after a long injury layoff has given her a shot in the arm for the Asian Games

Karmakar, and the rest of India, could not be more relieved at her return from the career-threatening injury she sustained in 2017. In her comeback tournament, the Gymnastics World Challenge Cup in Turkey in July, the gymnast from Agartala wasn’t facing just the pressure that comes with a comeback, but also a changed scoring system. Returning to action with a Handspring 360 and a Tsukuhara 720, she won India’s first gold in a global gymnastics event. “A lot can happen in two years, and the mental comeback is as tough as the physical one,” she says. But India expects no less from the daredevil who is giving the dangerous Produnova a break for the moment. She goes up against the defending vault champion, China’s Liu Jinru, in a field that’s filled with talent.

- P.R. Sreejesh, 30
Goalkeeper, men’s hockey

The ‘wall’ of Indian hockey came into his own in the Champions Trophy, where India finished runners-up to Australia

When Sreejesh returned to the Indian team after an eight-month injury layoff, there were concerns over his fitness and form. There was also a threat in the form of young and emerging goalkeepers who were doing well in his absence. But Sreejesh is an old hand. Not only did he win his place back in the team, he also regained the captaincy. In his captain-goalkeeper dual role, he gives the forwards confidence to press harder. “I tell them, you guys manage it in front, I am here at the back,” he says. The Champions Trophy performance in Breda earned him the Best Goalkeeper Award, which will give the team, the defending champions, confidence as they start their campaign against Hong Kong on 22 August. Anything less than the gold will, in fact, be an upset.

- Hima Das, 18
Athletics, 200m and 400m

She won India’s first gold medal in an international track event

In an athletics career less than two years old, Das has dashed past all expectations. If her sixth-place finish in the 400m final at the Commonwealth Games this year was commendable, the gold at the World U20 Championships in Finland in July, where she clocked 51.46 seconds, was nothing short of a dream. “I don’t run after medals, I run after time,” the Assam girl says. Das’ personal best remains 51.13 seconds, a fair bit less than the world’s fastest sprinters currently, who all run under 50 seconds. In Jakarta, her biggest competitor in the 400m will be Bahrain’s 20-year-old Salwa Eid Naser, who has run the five fastest times in Asia this year. In the 200m, Das could be competing with compatriot Dutee Chand for a medal

- Gaurav Solanki, 21
Boxing, 52kg

He followed up his Commonwealth Games title with a gold in the Chemistry Cup recently

The boxer from Ballabgarh has been tactically impressive this year, winning gold in Gold Coast and earning the tag of “Iron Chin”. At the Chemistry Cup in Germany in June, Solanki (above, in blue) beat the experienced Alejandro Merencio of Cuba, giving himself a big confidence boost ahead of the Asiad. “His footwork is great and he responds well to a good training environment with things such as video analysis,” says the Indian team’s high-performance director, Santiago Nieva. After the forgettable 2014 Asiad campaign, where India’s male pugilists won just bronze medals, Nieva has every reason to be more hopeful this time around.

- Manika Batra, 23
Table tennis

She had a dream run at the Commonwealth Games with four medals

The Delhi girl who rose to prominence at the competition in Gold Coast this year with four medals from four events, including two golds, will have an uphill task in Jakarta, where the Chinese challenge awaits her. At the Australian Open recently, she lost in the first elimination round. Batra is keeping her Asiad goals realistic. “I know there are expectations, and that adds to the pressure, but right now the aim is to reach the quarter-finals,” she says, knowing very well that Korea, Japan and Singapore will not be easy opponents either. After the Commonwealth Games success, plenty has been spoken about the pimpled-rubber racket Batra uses to fox her opponents. She has added a new trick or two to her armoury, which her opponents will get to see only at the competition.

- Neeraj Chopra, 20
Javelin throw

He’s fresh off a gold in the Savo Games, Finland

The reigning Commonwealth Games gold medallist, Chopra is also the Asian season leader. What will give him confidence going into the Asian Games is the fact that he beat Chinese Taipei’s Chao-Tsun Cheng to gold in Finland with a throw of 85.69m. Cheng is the only Asian who has managed to throw the javelin beyond 90m, but his season’s best has been an 84.60m in Sweden, compared with Chopra’s 87.43m in Doha. The Indian has had a superbly consistent season, with the five best Asian throws to his name, and will start out as a favourite. “There’s no reason to take the competition lightly,” he says. “The throwers from Qatar, Japan and China are good too. But I don’t take pressure either, it shifts my focus.” No Indian has won a gold for javelin throw at the Asian Games till date. No pressure then.

- Manu Bhaker, 16
Shooting, 10m air pistol, 25m sport pistol, mixed air pistol

She has won a medal at every competition she has participated in this year

At the age of 16, Bhaker has already won an incredible 10 gold medals in her short career. So far, she has also managed to keep at bay the off-field distractions that come with winning gold medals at international sporting events. “I am technically feeling more confident than I was before the Commonwealth Games,” she says. That’s good news for the Indian contingent. Bhaker will start the 10m pistol event as one of the favourites and her biggest challenge will come from the higher-ranked Qian Wang of China. The Chinese top the charts in the 25m event too, and the teenager from Haryana will battle fellow Indians Rahi Sarnobat and Heena Sidhu for a medal.

- Jyothi Surekha Vennam, 22
Compound archery, individual and team

Her prolific form in the current season can help Indian women improve on the colour of the medal

It has been a terrific World Cup season for the youngster from Vijayawada, with three silver medals and as many bronzes, the latest from the Berlin World Cup in July. Success has come a bit late for Vennam, who made her international debut at the age of 13, but that’s because she gave equal importance to academics. Now that she has completed her BTech degree, archery is getting more attention. None of her medals, however, has come in the individual category so far. A jinx she is keen to break in Jakarta, though it will be tough, given the competition offered by the Koreans and the foot injury she hasn’t yet fully recovered from. “She soaks in pressure well. So, in the team event, if someone has hit a bad shot, she has the ability to make up for her,” says coach Jiwanjot Singh.


25.2. In memory of Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul
Livemint, 24 Aug. 2018, Sanjoy Narayan

Aretha Franklin’s extraordinary vocal range and ability to traverse genres made her one of the greatest vocalists in contemporary music

Two days before Aretha Franklin died at 76 on 16 August amidst reports that she was gravely ill, The New Yorker aired a special bonus edition of its podcast on which the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, spoke about the singer. The podcast was first streamed in 2016, when The New Yorker had published Remnick’s excellent profile of Franklin, in which he wrote about her place in music and in American history. In both the podcast and the profile, Remnick mentions a performance by Franklin in 2015 at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, where she sang (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, a song that Carole King and Gerry Goffin had written for her in the late 1960s.

The event at the Kennedy Center was held to honour King, and in the audience, besides King, of course, were several other luminaries, including the then-president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. On YouTube there is a video of Franklin’s performance, and if you read Remnick’s profile of the singer, he says: “Watch it if you haven’t: in under five minutes, your life will improve by a minimum of 47 per cent.” If you have watched it, you will have seen Franklin, then 73, come on stage in a floor-length mink coat and sit at the piano to play and sing; a full orchestra accompanied her from the pit, and she had her crew of backup vocalists. Age didn’t diminish her astonishing voice, and as she sang with soulful passion, the reactions of the audience said it all. You can see Obama wiping away the tears; and King, who wrote the song years ago, completely in its thrall.

Franklin was known as the Queen of Soul and it isn’t hard to see why. Her career, spanning more than 60 years, began when she was a child, singing gospel at a Baptist church in Detroit where her father, C.L. Franklin, was a celebrated pastor known for his stirring sermons—in a style called “whooping”, in which the reciting of scriptures reaches a frenzied and ecstatic climax. The pastor’s influence on his daughter’s singing was pronounced—both in terms of style as well as otherwise. Pastor Franklin was well-connected in the gospel, soul and R&B world and Aretha Franklin grew up with frequent house guests such as Mahalia Jackson, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, and B.B. King, who would all play and sing at the Franklins’ home. The pastor was also a civil rights activist and a friend of Martin Luther King Jr, who would visit his home.

Growing up in such a heady atmosphere of music and politics must have surely left its impression on the young singer, but it was her extraordinary vocal range and ability to traverse genres that made her one of the greatest vocalists in contemporary music. She could sing notes spanning more than three octaves and once when Luciano Pavarotti had a sore throat before a performance, Franklin stood in for the famous operatic tenor and sang Nessun Dorma on stage. Franklin’s most requested song was Respect. Written and sung originally by Otis Redding, after Franklin took the song and put her own imprint on it, Respect became a feminist anthem. Redding was so impressed by Franklin’s way of singing his song that he stopped singing it himself. “It’s hers now,” he’s believed to have said.

Beginning with gospel, Franklin quickly crossed over to soul and R&B. She even dabbled in pop and rock and hip hop. But to hear her best work you have to turn to her gospel albums. Such as 1972’s Amazing Grace, a double album recorded live in a Baptist church in Los Angeles. Get the “Complete Recordings” version with 27 tracks, including remarks by her father. The songs are from Franklin’s basic repertoire of standards and include the title track, Amazing Grace, Mary Don’t You Weep, and God Will Take Care of You, but the joy, abandon and passion with which Franklin sings them is stunning. The album marked a return to gospel by Franklin after many years of traversing a career in soul and R&B.

Franklin’s 1967 album I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You is commonly recommended as her best. Its 11 tracks, including Respect, Soul Serenade, Dr. Feelgood, and a Sam Cooke civil rights classic, A Change Is Gonna Come, showcase a repertoire that demonstrates her eclectic talent and ability to easily sing pretty much anything she wanted to. My personal choice of the best Aretha Franklin album, however, is a different one. It’s Aretha Live At Fillmore West, recorded in 1971. The live music scene on the west coast of America then was at its psychedelic peak; and under concert promoter Bill Graham, the Fillmore West in San Francisco was its headquarters.

In that scenario, a soul singer at the Fillmore could seem oxymoronic. Yet the concert was a stupendous hit. There are 10 songs on the original release of the album, all of them great but some that are just outstanding. Franklin does her version of Stephen Stills’ Love The One You’re With; and a cover of The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby. But what takes your breath away is her cover of Paul Simon’s Bridge Over Troubled Waters. It’s a deeply moving performance that music lovers simply cannot afford to not listen to. There’s a lot more going for the album: Franklin plays a Fender Rhodes electric piano on several songs; and Ray Charles appears on a track to sing a duet with her. It’s brilliant.

Franklin won 18 Grammys and was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. For us she has left behind nearly 50 studio and live albums, besides dozens of compiled ones. RIP.

*****

The Lounge List
Five tracks to bookend this week
  1. ‘Amazing Grace’ by Aretha Franklin from ‘Amazing Grace: The Complete Recordings’ (Live)
  2. ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ by Aretha Franklin from ‘Aretha Live At Fillmore West’
  3. ‘Respect’ by Aretha Franklin from ‘I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You’
  4. ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ by Aretha Franklin from ‘Aretha In Paris’
  5. ‘Ol’ Man River’ by Aretha Franklin from ‘Soul Sister’
* * *