India Financial News

Easy Trip Planners will be in focus on Monday as the company signed a share purchase agreement to acquire a 49% stake in Dubai-based Pflege Home Health Care Center for Rs 30 crore. The acquisition marks the company’s entry into the healthcare and medical tourism sector, a significant step toward diversifying its business portfolio. Pflege specializes in medical tourism and home healthcare services, catering to patients across India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

United Arab Emirates hosted the inauguralFounders' Retreat from 6 to 8 December. The Retreat brought together more than60 of India’s most prominent start-up founders and key UAE business leaders, investors, and policymakers to discuss new directions and opportunities in the bilateral investment partnership. Co-organised by the UAE Embassy in Delhi, Offline, and the UAE-India CEPA Council, the event marked a significant milestone in the UAE-India partnership, showcasing the two countries’ shared commitment to fostering innovation and economic growth. With participating retreat ventures averaging a valuation of USD 3.5 billion, alongside representation from founders of 13 Indian unicorn start-ups and five publicly listed companies,this first-of-its-kind platform facilitated transformative collaborations and highlighted the mutual benefits of closer investment ties between the two nations.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In 1914, Henry Ford startled his industrialist peers in the US. He raised the wages that Ford Motor Company paid its workers to $5-a-day, twice the market rate, on the rationale (or at least rhetoric) that they too should be able to afford the $440 Model-T cars they rolled off its assembly lines—a factory innovation that crushed unit production cost, cracked open a mass market and whose later adoption for military hardware gave the US an edge in warfare that made it the world’s top power.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The advent of single-expiry index options last week introduced a fresh layer of volatility to the Nifty, which witnessed dramatic price swings a day ahead of the Reserve Bank of India’s bi-annual policy announcement on 6 December.

The air quality of Delhi observed an improvement after several parts of the national capital witnessed light rain on Sunday evening, as a western disturbance persisted over central Pakistan and its surrounding areas. Various parts of Delhi, including Kota House, Akbar Road, and Pandara Park received light rain. In its latest forecast on Sunday, the IMD also predicted a cold wave across most of Northern India beginning December 9.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. One way of gauging how a country is faring is to track the wealth of its people. India, by that measure, is doing well.

Here's breaking down the pre-market actions:

Donald Trump on Sunday said he would go ahead with his plans to deport all illegal immigrants after entering the Oval Office and said at the same time he would make it easier for people to come in, a move that could be helpful to Indians who mostly enter the US legally. «I think you have to do it,» Trump told NBC News in an interview when asked if he plans to deport everyone who is here illegally over the next four years. «You have to have, rules, regulations, laws. They came in illegally. People that have been treated very unfairly are the people that have been online for 10 years to come into the country. We are going to make it very easy for people to come in terms of they have to pass the test. They have to be able to tell you what the Statue of Liberty is. They have to tell you a little bit about our country. They have to love our country,» Trump said. «They can't come out of prisons. We don't want people that are in for murder. So, we had 11,000 and 13,000 different estimates, 13,099 murderers released into our country over the last three years. They're walking down the streets. They're walking next to you and your family. They're very dangerous. You don't want those people in this country,» he said.

Q.Can real estate be a reliable hedge against inflation? Prableen Bajpai,Founder,FinFix Research and Analytics: Not always. Real estate growth in India varies widely. Returns often overlook CAGR, with a doubling of returns in 10 years reflecting just 7.2% pre-tax CAGR. While it can outpace inflation, high costs and uneven growth make guaranteed returns uncertain. Anuj Puri,Chairman and Founder, ANAROCK Property Consultants: Yes. Real estate offers inflation protection and stability, with less volatility than stocks or gold. Rising demand, scarcity, and costs drive property values and rental income. As per ANAROCK Research rentals in India’s top seven cities rose over 70% from 2021 to September 2024.

Nifty 50, to rank among the worst performing global markets (after France and South Korea), between 27 September 2024 and 5 December 2024, according to data sourced from Reuters-Refinitiv for 22 global indices. The global indices cover the US, Europe, Asia, Russia and Latin America. Moreover, despite recovery in the first week of December, the last 10 weeks performance has also dragged the year-to-date performance of the Indian equity benchmark. The index was ranked second among the 22 global indices (after the Nasdaq Composite) based on returns between 29 December 2023 and 26 September 2024 (the day the Nifty 50 closed at its all-time high). However, after including the performance since the last week of September, the Nifty 50 has dragged to rank 11 in year-to-date performance. The Nifty 50 has delivered -5.6% returns in the last 10 weeks (since 27 September 2024) and 13.7% returns year-to-date. The returns and rankings are based on 5 December 2024 closing values.

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Narendra Modi's visit on Monday for the launch of LIC's Bima Sakhi Yojana, officials said. Modi will also be laying the foundation stone of the main campus of the Maharana Pratap Horticultural University. The initiative of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is designed to empower women aged 18-70 years, who are class X pass, they said. This will be Modi's second visit to Haryana after the formation of the BJP government in October. Earlier, he had attended the oath-taking ceremony of Nayab Singh Saini as the chief minister and his Cabinet on October 18 in Panchkula.

Ranjit Babu, head of consumer electronics at Amazon India and former chief executive of its largest seller–Cloudtail, has resigned, adding to the ongoing senior-level churn in the ecommerce marketplace, people said. Babu's resignation follows a restructuring in the company after the exit of its former India head Manish Tiwary recently. Babu has over the years emerged as one of the key executives at Amazon India, dabbling in various roles that oversaw top revenue-grossing categories. He has been associated with Amazon for more than a decade, including his stint at Cloudtail, which was key to the success of Amazon's India operations.

TikTok, which was banned in India in 2020, is now a step closer to meeting the same fate in the United States. A US federal court last Friday rejected TikTok’s appeal challenging a law requiring it to divest from its Chinese parent company or shut up shop next month. ET explains the case and what’s in store for the platform. Why does the US government want to ban TikTok?

Flipkart, India’s largest ecommerce firm valued at $36 billion, is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in the coming year with a definite timeline of 12-15 months, multiple people aware of the development said. The proposed listing, which is likely to be the largest share issue by a new-economy company, will mark a seminal moment for the country’s startup sector that is now regarded as the third largest worldwide. The Walmart-owned firm has secured internal approvals to move its domicile from Singapore to India, regarded as a first step to an IPO, and is targeting a public sale of shares by the end of the next calendar year or within the first quarter of 2026, people in the know told ET. “The process has begun and there is clear understanding that in this timeline the company should be public,” one of the sources said.

AgriStack initiative, for rolling digital farm lending in Uttar Pradesh for its eight crore farmers, the State government is currently working with the International Finance Corporation for providing APIs of the state’s land records and farm boundaries to SatSure and a couple of other companies. Bengaluru-based Space tech company SatSure provides satellite-based risk scoring and ratings reports at both farm and village level. It extracts patterns from satellite imagery using AI algorithms which can identify what crop is growing within a land parcel. It tracks changes in health, productivity, and provides insights on how these changes are related to climatic variables like rainfall, temperature, and humidity. These insights help banks understand the farmer’s income from the land and his ability to repay a loan.

global capability centres (GCCs) in India, states are eager to grab a piece of the action. Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are among those drafting their own GCC policies to attract multinationals with incentives to create back-office hubs outside the traditional hot spots of Bengaluru and NCR. In August, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mohan Yadav travelled to Bengaluru to meet industry leaders to showcase the state and discuss expansion plans. He also extended invitations for Regional Investor Conclaves across the state as well as the Global Investors Summit 2025 in February, said people aware of the matter. Uttar Pradesh has already drafted a policy that highlights its «strategic location, young workforce, and rapidly developing infrastructure, (which) is well-positioned to benefit from this growth.» The state aims to attract GCCs «by focusing on infrastructure development, talent enhancement, and financial incentives.»

How can India and its businesses navigate the rough seas that threaten fortunes built over decades through innovation and hard work? A distinguished panel led by Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani will discuss ways of facing the coming disruption that will be sparked by tectonic shifts in political economy that look set to rewrite the laws of global trade, at ET’s CEO Roundtable on Wednesday, December 11.

Technical indicators point to a bullish trend as the Nifty breaks out of a five-week consolidation, paving the way for an extended rally toward 25,200 in coming weeks, according to analysts. Stocks like Reliance, SBI, Infosys, L&T, Axis Bank, PFC, Titan, National Aluminium, Natco Pharma, MCX, CDSL, BSE, and Indian Hotels are poised for short-term upside, they added.

Industry experts, however, note that the exercise is also undertaken by automakers every year in December to shore up sales volume in the last month of the year, as customers postpone buyouts to later months to get the new year manufactured units. «We have seen a few cycles of price increase in India. It happens at the beginning of the calendar year and financial year, but few OEMs pick the timing based on their planned launches as well,» Deloitte India partner Rajat Mahajan said.

LG Electronics India is concerned that its South Korean parent may in the future start separate businesses in India which could compete with the former since there is no exclusivity arrangement between the two of them. India's largest home appliances maker highlighted the apprehensions in its draft prospectus filed with the market regulator on Friday for a planned initial public offering (IPO). The mega public issue will see LG Electronics sell a 15% stake in the Indian subsidiary to raise around ₹15,000 crore, potentially making it India's fifth-largest IPO after Life Insurance Corporation, Hyundai Motor, Paytm and Coal India.