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nasscom foundation is one such organisation working towards creating an environment that supports entrepreneurial aspirations which are crucial for economic growth and social development. The foundation’s Women Entrepreneurship Program (WEP) is designed to enable women entrepreneurs — particularly those involved in agriculture, artistry and running micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in rural areas — access technology and digital skills for their business growth, says Nidhi Bhasin, CEO, nasscom foundation. In 2022, the foundation impacted over 6.4 lakh lives through 15 skilling projects, offering courses in foundational, emerging and advanced technologies. In an interaction with ET digital, Bhasin explains how the foundation is creating access to technology at the grassroots level via the (government’s) Aspirational Districts Programme.

In both cases, most of those charged were Muslim, leading human rights groups and tech experts to criticise India's use of the AI-based technology to target poor, minority and marginalised groups in Delhi and elsewhere in the country.

Sandip Sabharwal, asksandipsabharwal.com, says, “there is no gold at the end of the rainbow for REC, PFC and all these companies. Nothing much has changed for them. It is just that there is some euphoria in the PSU stocks. So can it last? Since the overall equity view for the next two years is still constructive, it could last, but this kind of outperformance might not sustain.”Is private banking, the large two, three names, more like a no-brainer trade now? They are cheap, they have not participated, nothing is wrong, underlying bullishness of the economy is going to only help them. Is Kotak Mahindra Bank and HDFC Bank more like a must-have or go-to trade immediately?HDFC Bank has underperformed after having a run-up post the merger approval. Now in the near term, it should do reasonably well, given that ICRR uncertainty has been reduced. Now, we need to see the actual impact of the merger on the margins over the next one or two quarters to finally say what kind of mojo it can retain and come back with.

India (RBI) is working with lenders to introduce new features to popularise the central bank digital currency (CBDC), the so-called e-rupee, according to six people familiar with the matter. Retail CBDC transactions are averaging close to 18,000 a day, way short of the RBI's one million-a-day target by 2023 end. The features include allowing digital rupee transactions when a customer is offline and linking the e-rupee to India's popular Unified Payments Interface (UPI), three of the people quoted above said. UPI is an instant real-time payments system that allows users to transfer money across multiple banks without disclosing bank account details. The sources declined to be identified as they are not authorised to speak to the media.

Sandip Sabharwal, asksandipsabharwal.com, says people who are buying speculative stocks at this stage should be a bit careful. But I do not see a very deep sell-off in the sense that it is not going to be a 10-15% kind of correction. A moderate correction will give opportunities to buy. Overall equity outlook is still constructive.What has been keeping you busy apart from enjoying a break from the markets?Markets are very interesting in the sense that we have seen, again, a break in correlation of Indian markets with the global markets, which happens but it does not sustain. So, that is something we need to watch out for. The result season went and came and went and I think to that extent, all of that got factored in. Now, there are some concerns related to valuation, the impact of monsoon not being as good etc. But overall, my base case view always was that October-November will be the time when we should see some sort of correction in the market which should happen because the rise in the midcap indices has been quite euphoric. Typically that has to be followed by some sort of correction

SaaS fintech company Perfios on Monday announced that Kedaara Capital will invest $229 million in its Series-D funding round, through the combination of a primary fund raise and a secondary sale. Perfios said it plans to deploy the funds to fuel its continued global expansion plans in North America and Europe. The company also plans to invest in new-age technologies to enhance its comprehensive stack of Decision Analytics SaaS products to solve the entire end-to-end customer journey across banking, insurance, and embedded commerce.

Vinod Karki, Equity Strategist, ICICI Securities, says “the universe of value stocks is falling by the day. There is nothing which is bombed out at this point in time. Everything is rising and which is a typical bull market scenario where everything keeps rising. One has to keep looking at sectors where the growth continues.”Let us talk about the power space, especially PFC, REC, which have seen a 10-12% move. The REC management told ET Now that they would go net debt-free and valuations from 0.5 book have become close to one time book. Do you see scope for a further expansion of valuations in PFC, REC because of stemming of T&D losses and good recoveries?Yes, the price to book ratio has strong fundamental correlation with the return equity and now the earnings will look ahead. In fact, a lot of these companies which are driven by book and are at reasonable price to book and as the outlook for return equity and growth continue to pick up, I do not see why the price to book should contract, especially when they are not way above the one or two level.

India and France on Sunday decided to focus on early finalisation of the Defence Industrial Roadmap when PM Narendra Modi met French counterpart Emanuel Macron over a lunch meeting here following the G20 Summit. The leaders reiterated their commitment to strengthen the defence cooperation through partnership in design, development, testing and manufacture of advanced defence technologies and platforms, and expand production in India, including for third countries in Indo-Pacific and beyond. In this context, they also called for early finalisation of the Defence Industrial Roadmap, according to a joint statement issued following the talks. Laying emphasis on areas such as digital, science, technological innovation, education, culture, health and environment cooperation, both leaders called for strengthening of institutional linkages in these domains, on the model of the Indo-French Campus for the Indo-Pacific.

In the last few months, Indian equities have seen a sharp run-up across market segments, particularly the midcap and smallcap stocks, where the bull run is still continuing. In this backdrop, the market valuation looks a bit stretched, according to Shreyash Devalkar, Head — Equity, Axis Mutual Fund. “Stock selection will hold the key in these markets. For investors, this period of consolidation can be used to rebalance portfolios as we play longer term themes,” he said in an interview with ETMarkets. Edited excerpts:Inflation and rate hike concerns are making a comeback both on the domestic and global fronts. Is this likely to dampen the Indian market momentum in the near term?Inflationary risks have been a concern primarily due to increased vegetable prices and the run-up in oil prices. However, food related price pressures are expected to subside with the arrival of fresh stock, the government banning rice and onion exports and taking measures to bring down tomato prices. So, we believe the current inflation levels are transient.

“I might sound very conservative in my thinking here, but how I think about a multibagger is a 25% CAGR for about 5 years’ time which is a 3x in 5 years,” says Puneet Khurana, CIO & Fund Manager, Stoic Investment Managers. In an interview with ETMarkets on the sidelines of Investing Accelerator Summit 2023, Khurana said: “In our experience and corroborated from our research, that you increase the odds when you are in the 3000-15000 crore market cap space with companies having strong historical fundamentals, exciting valuation zones and growing companies” Edited excerpts:Multibaggers no matter how much/many someone wants – it will never be enough. Why is finding a multibagger tough for retail investors? In a way, this question is ironic. In the sense that by the very definition of “Multibagger”, it is not just about finding the right stock but riding through the journey that a stock takes on its way to be a multibagger.

Also Read: G20 Summit: ‘Game-changing regional investment,’ says Joe Biden on India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor During a media briefing, Macron discussed the strategic partnership between India and France, highlighting that it goes beyond just bilateral cooperation. He stressed the importance of both countries collaborating to counter the global trend of increasing fragmentation.

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Japan’s Casio has become the latest megabrand to take the NFT plunge with the release of “Virtual” G-Shock tokens based on its popular watches.

The new rules could require UK based crypto asset businesses to withhold some crypto transfers. If an inbound payment is received by a virtual asset service provider (VASP) from a country that has not implements the new rules, the VASP is required to make a risk based assessment around whether to make the assets available to the recipient.

Startup20 engagement group, which was launched under India’s presidency, will continue under the next presidency, according to the G20 leaders’ declaration in New Delhi. Stakeholders in the startup system welcomed the move, saying group will work on implementing the recommendations made over the next few years. “We recognise that startups and MSMEs are natural engines of growth. They are key to socio-economic transformation by driving innovation and creating employment. We welcome the establishment of the Startup20 Engagement Group during India’s G20 presidency and its continuation,” the declaration said. The engagement group had formed three task forces under it—foundation and alliances, finance, and inclusion and sustainability—and was chaired by Chintan Vaishnav, mission director of Niti Aayog’s flagship entrepreneurship initiative, Atal Innovation Mission. Peak XV Partners MD Rajan Anandan, who was also the cochair of the finance taskforce, said one of the most significant recommendations is that every G20 nation should invest 1% of their GDP into startups by 2030.

The G20 Summit under India’s presidency succeeded in bringing Africa to the table, put the spotlight on climate action and focused on the reform of multilateral development banks, among other key achievements, International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Kristalina Georgieva said in an interview to ET. Edited excerpts:What are the key takeaways from India’s G20 presidency? India brought the G20 together, but it did more than that. It invited countries and international organisations; so, we can say the whole world came together. The very first important achievement is the African Union being accepted into G20, which gives a whole continent a voice. I think Prime Minister Modi and the rest of G20 did the right thing to welcome that voice. Second, the Indian presidency brought up ambition on climate action. There was a much stronger sense of urgency to move. Third, on financing, the Indian presidency advanced reform of multilateral development banks and the World Bank, and brought the role of these institutions — as mobilisers of private finance — much more in focus. Four, we have seen the India presidency rallying everybody, (which brought) pledges for lending special drawing rights through IMF to vulnerable middle- and low-income countries to fruition. It started with the Italian presidency, moved to the Indonesian presidency, and now, the pledge has materialised. That means more resources for developing countries.

India has got a lot of things right,World Bank president Ajay Banga said in an interview with ET, adding that he’s more optimistic about the country economically than he was 20-30 years ago. Banga, who was in Delhi for the G20 summit, spoke about the changing vision of the World Bank, climate finance, the Delhi Declaration consensus and India's trajectory.Edited excerpts:How do you view the outcome of the G20 summit? I think the fact that the leaders all came together showed the willingness to compromise on different parts of a declaration, and brought a way to put it together, was pretty good. And I think a few days ago, nobody would have given any chance for that to come together.

V Anantha Nageswaran has said. The Indian G20 presidency has significantly added momentum and direction to future work in a number of critical areas, he told Deepshikha Sikarwar in an interview.

leadership changes, Dream Sports is also looking at a significant restructuring of the NFT (non-fungible token) startup and has let go approximately 60% of its workforce, highlighting the depth of the internal conflicts and challenges. “There was a board meeting on Wednesday, following which Harsh Jain (co-founder of Dream Sports) fired the founder and co-founder of Rario. More than 60% of staff also got laid off," said a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

New Delhi: India will evaluate the recommendations made in a paper authored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the G20’s risk watchdog, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), outlining a roadmap for regulating crypto assets and integrating digital assets into digital financial systems before deciding its stance, Ajay Seth, secretary of the department of economic affairs, said. On the sidelines of the G20 summit on Sunday, Seth said the leaders have endorsed the required regulations, oversight and supervision for unbacked crypto assets.

OMG 2, Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahaani and Drishyam 2, Viacom18 Studios, the film production and distribution arm of Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd, aims to achieve ₹1,000 crore in annual revenue from various projects, spanning theatrical, satellite, and digital platforms, Ajit Andhare, chief operating officer, Viacom18 Studios said. The studio will focus on both high-budget and mid-scale productions for theatrical releases.