Country Financial News

India's e-commerce industry is experiencing rapid growth, fueled by the country's digitization and expanding internet user base. Advancements in technology, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, are expected to revolutionize the online shopping experience. According to Google's latest report, India's internet economy is projected to reach a staggering $1 trillion by 2030, a sixfold increase from $175 billion in 2022.

Gujarat has only about six per cent of India's geographical area and nearly five per cent of the population, the state has become an engine of the country's development with world-renowned firms coming here for business, according to officials. As per the official website of the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit (VGGS), the state has over 200 industrial estates with close to 100 private industrial parks. The 10th edition of VGGS, the state's biennial investors' meet, is scheduled to be held next month in the capital Gandhinagar.

Hiren Ved, Director & CIO, Alchemy Capital, says: “ From Covid, 31st March 2020 to December 2023. We have gone up 3.25x as a broad market and in that Covid shutdown, Covid recovery, wars, interest rate, oil prices, you name everything. If you take the total aggregate profits of the top 500 companies in March 2020 was about Rs 3,63,000 crore, roughly around Rs 4 lakh crore. In the first half this year, we did Rs 6.5 lakh crore. If I annualise it – usually the second half is better in India – we are talking about Rs 13 lakh crores. So, aggregate profits of the top 500 companies have gone from Rs 4 lakh crore to Rs 13 lakh crore, that is 3.75x.” Ved also says: “Market cap growth in last three-and-a-half years reflects earnings power of India Inc.” What a fantastic year it has been. You have been investing for so many years, more than two-and-a-half decades now. I think 2023 in a sense has been a record year of all sorts. Hiren Ved: Yes, it does. 2022 was so tough, the smallcap index was down 14%, Nifty was up only 4% or 5%, so obviously when you come off a low base things look pretty good and the first quarter of this calendar year was not that great. We started Feb-March at a low and then from April we have seen a significant lift off. So, yes, I cannot complain. It has been a great year and I know there is this popular perception that people have that markets have run up very aggressively.

Amazon Pay, the digital payments arm of ecommerce giant Amazon reported flat growth in operational revenue at Rs 2,093 crore in fiscal 2023 compared to Rs 1,998 crore a year ago. The company's net losses dipped 13% to Rs 1,499 crore in FY23, from Rs 1,740 crore in FY22, mostly driven by a reduction in expenses.

Sebi) moved to a T+1 settlement system. Rishi Joshi writes about this monumental change. In January, many Indians also learnt about the concept of short selling, or betting against a company's performance.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday emphasized the need to shape international relations with Indian characteristics. He highlighted that his "major preoccupation" is to dedicate more time to exploring India's reservoir of culture and knowledge.

Saurabh Bharadwaj on Friday said that the BJP-led central government has declined the tableaux of Delhi and Punjab for the Republic Day parade, viewing it as a move to “exact revenge on the AAP," the ruling party in both the capital and the border state. As reported by PTI, during a press conference, Bharadwaj highlighted that the Centre has rejected Delhi's tableaux for three consecutive years. “The last time Delhi's tableau featured in the Republic Day parade was in 2021.

Keki Mistry, Former VC & CEO, HDFC, says “there is a massive potential to grow, not just for mortgages, but for every single financial service product. If you look at retail credit to GDP in India, we are at around 18%. If you look at credit card penetration in India, it is extremely low by global standards. So whichever way, whichever product you look at, the growth opportunities in the banking system are phenomenal.” Banking is a bit of a cyclical business, where do you think we are in this cycle? Are we past the peak or at least very close to the peak? What is your analysis? Keki Mistry: I do not think we are anywhere even remotely close to the peak. The growth opportunities which are there for the economy as a whole and the banking sector is obviously part of the economy is phenomenal. I do not think any country in the world today has the potential to grow the way India has the potential to grow. We have demonstrated that consecutively year after year.

Civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday said tomorrow will be a historic day for the country with the inauguration of the Ayodhya airport, which will be expanded hugely in the second phase by augmenting overall area and increasing the runway length. The Ayodhya airport, which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, is built over an area of 6,500 square metres. In an interview to PTI, Scindia said the connectivity from the Ayodhya airport will only grow in the days to come.

Engineering and construction firm Kalpataru Projects International said the company along with overseas subsidiaries and joint ventures bagged new orders worth Rs 3,244 crore and also announced its foray into underground metro rail tunnelling segment. The company said it secured an order for design and construction of an underground metro rail project, marking its foray into electric mobility business with TBM (tunnel boring machine) tunnelling scope. According to a statement, Kalpataru Projects International Ltd (KPIL) along with its joint ventures (JVs) and overseas subsidiaries has secured new orders/notification of awards of Rs 3,244 crore. It has also got orders in the buildings & factories (B&F) business, including KPIL's largest ever design and building contract for a residential project in south India with a built-up area of approximately 13 million square feet from a reputed developer. Besides, the company got orders in the Transmission & Distribution (T&D) business from overseas markets. «We are delighted to announce strategic order wins across diverse businesses.

Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) conducted a security check following the receipt of an email claiming the presence of explosives on a plane at the airport, according to the authorities. The city police revealed that Mangaluru was one of several airports across the country that received similar emails on Tuesday night, all purportedly sent by a terrorist group named 'Funing'. The email, sent from the address '[email protected]', stated: «There are explosives inside of one of your planes.

SPIEF says its June 2023 event in St. Petersburg (Russia) witnessed 900 investment agreements worth about $47.6 billion, and 43 agreements between Russian and foreign businesses. Amidst global economic upheavals, SPIEF has been spearheading alliance building/ fostering alliances between Russia and its trade partners, including India.

here. In September 2022, I wrote that Web3 as a concept had many positives—at least in theory. DeFi, or decentralised finance, to begin with, is likely to be the first killer app of Web3, which could dramatically increase the level of control borrowers have on their data.

By Sudarshan Varadhan

By Khanh Vu

Indian economy, banking sector showed resilience: SBI chairman Khara Carter’s INQQ ETF's top holding is Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries, the conglomerate behind the affordable smartphone boom. “No other country on the planet has anything like this in terms of a digital foundation for their entire economy," Carter told cnbc.com.

In October 2023, Pope Francis allowed women to vote at the Synod of Bishops for the first time. Allowed to attend only as observers in the past, five religious sisters were allowed to vote at the Papal advisory body in a momentous shift for the Roman Catholic Church, which has been male-dominated for centuries. With this historic move, Vatican City became the last country in the world to give its women the right to vote.

Rahul Gandhi received tremendous support for its ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ which the Congress MP started in September 2022 from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. This time Rahul Gandhi will undertake a 150-day-long Bharat Nyay Yatra from Manipur in the northeast to Mumbai in western India. “This Yatra will cover a distance of 6,200 km.

Mint in the week gone by. India's current account deficit (CAD) declined to 1% of the gross domestic product in the September quarter, down from 1.1% in the last quarter. The mutual fund industry's assets under management climbed to a new peak in 2023 as growth in folio count and unprecedented inflows from systematic investment plans (SIPs) indicate growing investor confidence.

US presidential primary election, according to Reuters reports. With this, it has become the second state to bar the former president for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

diesel buses, more than a third of the total on roads, with electric ones over the next seven years. Apart from lowering vehicular emissions, this is also expected to catalyse investments in the electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem in the country. The replacement plan includes 200,000 electric buses for state transport undertakings (STUs), 550,000 for private operators, and 50,000 for schools and employee transportation by 2030, top government sources told ET. Designed to electrify the country's public transport systems, the plan is likely to replace the third leg of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing Electric Vehicles (FAME) incentive programme and pitch India as a global manufacturing hub for EVs. To put the plan in context, about 138,000 electric buses were sold in China and 4,000 in Europe in 2022. «Replacing diesel buses with electric ones will not only address environmental concerns but also help create an ecosystem for electric vehicles,» said one of the persons cited above.