Schools Financial News

Wipro, India’s fourth largest IT major, bucked its headcount reduction trend with a marginal increase in its employee count by 337 during the first quarter ending June in the ongoing fiscal year 2025. The total employees at the end of June stood at 234,391 as compared to 234,054 employees at the end of March, during which the headcount had dropped by 6,180 employees, down for the sixth straight quarter.

Microsoft outage affected Windows devices and IT systems, halting airlines and disrupting office operations worldwide, the internet decided to look at the bright side of things. Memes flooded social media as corporate employees celebrated, thanking Microsoft for an «early weekend.» Due to a Crowdstrike update, Windows PCs and Microsoft's cloud services were impacted and threw up 'Blue Screen of Death' errors. This occurs on a Windows device when a critical issue forces the device to shut down or restart to prevent further damage.

«Gross taxes last year were much more stronger than was envisaged in the interim budget. They actually grew at a very healthy pace of 13.5%. So, even if you make conservative assumptions for this year, the government is likely to have more tax revenues than was envisaged back in February and then of course the RBI dividend that the government got was more than double of what had been budgeted back then,» says Sajjid Chinoy, India Chief Economist, JPMorgan. I understand that you have been part of certain meetings also with the finance minister, etc, and the ministry. Talk to me about what are the big focus areas and what they are talking or concerned about right now. Sajjid Chinoy: I think there are two issues to look for in next week's budget. The first is to look closer at the fiscal math and here the government enters next week's budget with significantly increased degrees of fiscal freedom. And what do I mean by that? If you look at compare next week's budget with one in February, I think the government over kind of delivered on fiscal consolidation last year, the budget deficit for last year was 5.8%, the actual number was 5.6 and the target for this year was set at 5.1.

With the post-election and pre-Budget rally taking Sensex towards uncharted zone of 81,000 level, Nimesh Chandan, CIO, Bajaj Finserv AMC, says elevated valuation level is forcing him to think contrarian. «Due to high valuations in certain pockets of the market, we may see some sector rotation by investors in the coming months,» says the Dalal Street veteran. In this chat with ETMarkets, he explains what to expect from the Budget, risks for investors and view on retail-favourite PSU stocks. How are you approaching the market ahead of the Budget? Do you think the bias towards capex, infra and PSU related themes will remain intact after July 23? We prefer to be cautious and think contrarian considering the current levels of the market and the valuations. We believe the government is going to come out with a budget that continues to focus on capex and infrastructure development. Additionally, we expect some stimulus to the rural economy and some tax incentives to the low-income groups. This should be favourable for the consumer sector in the country.

Indian edtech startups have been acquired in the past year, underscoring a challenging funding scenario for smaller firms and fuelling a wave of consolidation across the stressed industry. Google-backed edtech startup Adda247 acquired test prep firm Ekagrata Eduserv, Noida-based Schoolnet bought out Housing.com cofounder Advitiya Sharma's startup Genius Teacher, Allen Career Institute picked up Peak XV-backed Doubtnut, while mid-tier IT services firm Happiest Minds took over Macmillan Learning India, adding to the list of recently-closed deals.

Fibr, an artificial intelligence-powered personalisation platform, has raised $1.8 million in a funding round led by Accel. The round also saw participation from 2am VC and angel investors such as Cred founder Kunal Shah. Fibr will use the funds for enhancing its AI personalisation platform, expanding its customer base, and hiring talent including engineers, product marketers and sales and go-to-market (GTM) experts, top officials said.

Tata Communications’ overseas revenues have continued to outgrow its India revenues for three consecutive quarters and hold a 58:42 ratio as of end-June 24, chief executive AS Lakshminarayanan told ET. “In the US and European markets, we are a challenger, so there is a much bigger white space for us to chase and that's why two years ago we started making all these investments in sales and marketing and our products. All of that has started to pay dividends, and we are happy to see the results,” the executive said in a virtual conversation after the company declared its first quarter FY25 earnings.

ONDC) has shown that the ecommerce initiative has cornered about 3% of Swiggy and Zomato’s food-order volumes, according to people in the know. «Nationwide, ONDC now facilitates 60,000 orders per day in the food domain, capturing 3% of the total order volumes managed by Swiggy and Zomato across India individually, which receive 20 lakh orders each,» they said, adding that its total order volume touched 400,000 in a day, which included mobility bookings.

Team USA, brawns and brains will come together this year at the Paris Olympics, as the country's contingent boasts of rocket scientists, engineers, dieticians, which is rather uncommon when it comes to the teams being sent from other countries. The United States boasts of a holistic and overall development of its students, as well as its sportsmen, and this time, at the Paris Olympics 2024, this will be vividly visible.

Charlize Theron is in final talks to star in the Netflix thriller 'Apex,' with Baltasar Kormákur directing. The film, written by Jeremy Robbins, follows a rock climber being hunted in the wild.

William J. Stellmach, former head of the US Department of Justice's Fraud Section who now works at New York-headquartered law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. He is a partner at the firm's Washington office and leads its global investigations practice, often advising and defending companies featured in short seller reports.

Ashneer Grover, founder of BharatPe and Third Unicorn, advocates for a streamlined hiring process centered around the principle of "hire fast, fire fast." Speaking on the podcast 'Limitless with Ishan Sharma,' Grover argued that traditional lengthy hiring procedures and prolonged notice periods waste valuable time and resources, ultimately hindering company growth. The Traditional Hiring Process: A Time Sink Grover criticizes the conventional approach to recruitment, which involves multiple rounds of interviews and extended notice periods. «What I have basically understood about hiring, and a lot of people don’t agree with this thought, it’s hire fast, fire fast,» Grover stated. He emphasized that the extensive time spent in hiring is often counterproductive, as candidates tend to be on their best behavior during interviews, making it difficult to gauge their true performance.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI said on Thursday it was launching GPT-4o mini, a cost-efficient small AI model, aimed at making its technology more affordable and less energy-intensive, allowing the startup to target a broader pool of customers. Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the market leader in the AI software space, has been working to make it cheaper and faster for developers to build applications based on its model, at a time when deep-pocketed rivals such as Meta and Google rush to grab a bigger share in the market.

Canalys' latest research shows that the Indian smartphone market grew by just 1% in Q2 2024, reaching a total of 36.4 million units shipped. Inventory levels remained high, with some vendors launching new devices in higher price segments, while others focused on reducing existing stocks ahead of the festival season.

Rs 1,000 crore, including a greenshoe option of Rs 200 crore. A greenshoe option is a provision that allows a fund to raise more capital than originally targeted if investor interest exceeds initial expectation.

Infosys, India’s second-largest IT services giant, has seen a reduction in its headcount during the April to June period by 1,908 employees, marking the sixth consecutive quarterly decline in its total workforce. Its total employees for the period ending June stood at 315,332 as compared to 317,240 in the March quarter. The employee count declined by 20,962 from a year ago.

Byju's has moved the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) against the recent order of NCLT that allowed cricket board BCCI's petition for initiating insolvency proceedings against the once-famed edtech company, sources said. Sources privy to the development said that the company is seeking an urgent hearing on the matter. Byju's did not comment on the issue.

bill mandating reservation for Kannadigas in the private sector, sparking an uproar. The decision was taken at the Cabinet meeting held on Monday and was subsequently put on hold after backlash from business honchos and tech tycoons. Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said in a post on X, “The bill approved by the cabinet to provide reservation for Kannadigas in private sector organizations, industries and enterprises has been temporarily put on hold.”

Italy's antitrust agency said on Thursday it had launched an investigation into online search giant Google and its parent company Alphabet over alleged unfair commercial practices involving users' personal data. The request for consent that Google sends to its users to connect its multiple services «could constitute misleading and aggressive commercial practice», the watchdog said.

«Having said that, if you look at the valuations basically, we have started discounting FY26 and FY27, so that basically means that we are probably headed into a phase of time correction, consolidation, probably some amount of value correction that we should be prepared for,» says S Krishnakumar, Lion Hill Capital. Which camp are you in – the cautious, happy camp which has made a lot of money last three-four years and now taking it easy or still on the ball, completely looking for good ideas and not very cautious on the market. S Krishnakumar: I think I belong to the first camp and been cautious but invested, so we have been probably making good returns last three-four years. Of course, with all the news flow around us that we see, India is in a sweet spot in terms of foreign interest and also on domestic flows that are coming through.

Ukraine, a handful of startups are developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to help fly a vast fleet of drones, taking warfare into uncharted territory as combatants race to gain a technological edge in battle. Ukraine hopes a rollout of AI-enabled drones across the front line will help it overcome increasing signal jamming by the Russians as well as enable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to work in larger groups.