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Huawei along with its subbrand Honor had 3% share in the Indian smartphone segment, with the bulk of sales accounted by Honor.

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NEW DELHI: Your take home salary could go up leaving you more to spend — though it could be at the cost of your savings — as the government is mulling lowering the social security contribution. A labour ministry committee working on the contributory ceiling by the government towards universal social security for all workers is likely to recommend a lower contribution, a government official told ET. The committee is expected to finalise its recommendation by the end of August, the person said. Initial estimate suggests that total contribution towards social security cover could be lower by at least 2 percentage points, with employers also contributing less. The labour ministry will hold consultation with stakeholders once the committee finalises its recommendations, following which they would be incorporated in the social security code, the official said. 65219176 Currently, social security contribution is 24% of an employee’s basic salary. This include 12% employee contribution, which entirely goes to provident fund account. Employer also contributes 12%, which is split among pension account, provident fund account and deposit linked insurance scheme. This contribution could fall to 10% for both, yielding a higher take-home salary for workers. The 10% contribution is already applicable to establishments with less than 20 workers. This could be made uniform for every establishment. “We are enhancing the scale of coverage by five-fold,” the official said. “Hence, we think that going forward the contribution by and for each worker eligible for a social security cover will come down, benefitting both employee and the employer.” The government expects to increase those covered under the social security scheme to 50 crore from the current base of about 10 crore people. In majority of cases, employer’s contribution to PF and insurance is factored in workers’ cost to company pay. In such cases, reduction in employer’s contribution might also become available to the employee under some other head, boosting their take home salary further. The higher salary will be available for spending or can be saved by the worker in other instruments. Employee unions have in general not favoured reduction in the social security contribution rate, reasoning it would reduce social security cover available to workers.

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Countrywide rainfall in this monsoon season remains 6% below normal levels at the end of July, as insufficient rainfall in east and northeast regions continues to weigh down on the overall performance, the weather office has said.Rainfall in July remained 6% below normal on the back of 5% deficit in June, the first month of the monsoon season that lasts till the end of September, according to data from India Meteorological Department (IMD).This is despite 83% area of the country receiving normal rainfall since June 1. East and northeast India has recorded 27% deficit since the start of the monsoon season.The situation is expected to improve because east and northeast India are getting good rains at present. “With the ongoing spell of heavy rainfall in the region likely to continue, it will help bring down the countrywide deficit,” said D S Pai, director for long-range forecasts at IMD.Experts said that while 6% deficit is a normal deviation from the normal range, distribution of rainfall is more important. “The distribution of the rainfall is a bigger worry than the quantum,” said DK Joshi, chief economist at leading rating firm Crisil. “Deficient rainfall in east and northeast India is a worry for crops like rice,” he said.However, rainfall in key crop growing regions of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh has improved this month. Rainfall this week is likely to remain concentrated over east and north-eastern states, Uttar Pradesh and few states in south peninsular region. In the remaining parts of the country, however, rainfall is likely to remain patchy, weather forecasters said.“This is a normal course of monsoon, with circulation shifting from one region to another. After a week or so, rainfall over Central India is likely to increase,” said Pai of IMD.This season’s rainfall figures dwindled after the southwest monsoon saw around 12 days’ hiatus in its course of progression in the third week of June.The fear of a similar hiatus in August looms large, independent forecasters Skymet and Accuweather have warned. “A break in monsoon happens usually during the month of August and sometimes it ends up being a prolonged one,” Skymet said on Tuesday.

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NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel’s enterprise, or `B2B arm’, will act as a major growth engine for which the company is digitising this business to spur growth and acquire new customers, a top executive said.“There’s a huge focus on the B2B part of the business. Data centres, managed services, cloud, security and IoT are a big growth engines for Airtel,” Ajay Chitkara, CEO of Airtel Business, told ET.Bharti Airtel’s enterprise business for India — Airtel Business — reported Rs 2,992.5 crore revenue for the first quarter ended June 2018, up 7% on a yearly basis.Its enterprise customer base has also increased by 1.4% yearon-year. “The process of making Bharti Airtel fully digital is not limited to the wireless part of the business alone, and we’ve extended it to our B2B side as well,” Chitkara said.Airtel aims to deliver every product riding on the digital platform for every segment and market to aggressively add new enterprise customers in India and in global markets as well.Having launched wholesale “voice on demand” to customers globally, the telco is now launching “bandwidth on demand” platform, aimed at international telcos, content companies, and startups. “The digital approach has helped Airtel get more than 300 new customers in the last three months for the wholesale voice service in 30 countries. The acquisition machinery is very fast,” Chitkara said.

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NEW DELHI: Chinese smartphone maker Huawei is aiming to be the highest selling premium smartphone in India currently ruled by Samsung, OnePlus and Apple and re-entered the segment recently with its Huawei branded P20 and P20 Pro phones, a top official said.The company is making a concerted push into the high-end segment through its “Huawei branded” smartphones, while its sub-brand, Honor, continues to compete with Xiaomi and Oppo in the sub-Rs 20K category.“Our target is to become the top player in the premium segment in India,” Allen Wang, director, product centre, Huawei India Consumer Business Group, told ET.OnePlus was the top premium smartphone brand (Rs 30,000 and above) in India, even as the overall premium phone market grew 19% on-year in the April-June quarter as more consumers upgraded to 2018 flagship launches by different Android brands in India.Huawei along with its subbrand Honor had 3% share in the Indian smartphone segment, with the bulk of sales accounted by Honor.“Huawei captured 4% of the premium smartphone segment within the first quarter of its launch, driven by Honor 10 and P20 shipments. It is using online as a channel to target premium smartphone users in Tier 1 cities,” said Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint.Wang said Indian and Chinese markets are similar in terms of consumer trends.

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A few month ago, bus ticketing platform Red Bus started sending ticket details for its customers over WhatsApp, enabling users to chat with customer support executives.

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The company said on Tuesday it had removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in "coordinated inauthentic behavior".

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Amazon rolled out a new feature for Alexa that lets users send Amazon Music from their phones to speakers.

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Facebook Inc has identified a coordinated political influence campaign through dozens of inauthentic accounts on its platform ahead of November's U.S. midterm election, the New York Times reported separately on Tuesday.The company said on Tuesday it had removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in "coordinated inauthentic behavior"."This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don't want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they're doing," the company said in a blogpost."We're still in the very early stages of our investigation and don't have all the facts -- including who may be behind this," Facebook said.The company told lawmakers this week that it detected the campaign as part of its investigations into election interference, the Times reported.

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By Mihir SharmaThe cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has finally been accepted as Pakistan’s next prime minister. I say “finally” because the election commission managed to add to widespread concerns about the elections by inexplicably delaying its announcement of the outcome. Almost all of Pakistan’s parties, other than Khan’s, have contested the results; Shehbaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, which won the last general election, tweeted about “manifest and massive irregularities” and argued that Pakistan’s democratization has been “pushed back decades.”Sharif is right. The past year saw the disqualification of his brother Nawaz, the democratically elected prime minister, and then an election campaign that was throughout very far from fair. Most outside Pakistan will agree with Sharif and his colleagues in other parties, and question whether a government brought to power in this manner should be considered legitimate. But where does that leave the rest of the world? Pakistan’s military establishment has, through its skillful management of this election, presented the world with a problem that has no easy solution.Khan has been in the public eye for decades — for more than 20 years as an aspirant prime minister, and before that as the charismatic captain of Pakistan’s cricket team. When that team won the World Cup more than 25 years ago, Khan famously delivered a speech that was stunning in its egotism: He actually forgot to thank his young teammates. After his election victory, his teammates in the powerful establishment — the “boys,” as some Pakistanis euphemistically refer to them — will surely expect more tangible thanks.But here’s the dilemma the rest of us face. On one hand, we have to continue to support Pakistan’s democratization — which means engaging with its civilian leadership, rather than the generals in Rawalpindi. On the other hand, do we want to help legitimize a government elected with the open support of the military?You could argue that we should wait to see what sort of prime minister Khan becomes. But, frankly, our expectations should be low. Khan’s political positions in the past have been troubling — particularly his flirtation with the obscurantist religious right, which in Pakistan is very obscurantist indeed. For example, he has voted in favor of religious laws that make it impossible to prosecute rape cases. During his campaign, he projected himself as a defender of Pakistan’s stringent and illiberal blasphemy law. It’s hard to imagine a Khan-led administration starting off doing anything other than what the military would want it to do — which is to protect those who carry out attacks in Afghanistan and India, defend the army’s entrenched economic interests, and keep the fires of anti-American sentiment burning.None of this is good news for ordinary Pakistanis, or for the rest of the world. Khan’s anti-West speeches may have been strident, but reality will overtake his rhetoric. Pakistan’s economy is teetering on the brink of a balance-of-payments crisis; sooner or later, and probably sooner, the new government will have to turn to the International Monetary Fund for support. Sooner or later, but probably later, the new prime minister will also realize that the robust “new Pakistan” that he has promised his voters will need him to complete the structural reforms that his predecessors have left unfinished.After all, Nawaz Sharif himself was once a creature of the military: He rose to power as an acolyte of the military dictator Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan in the 1980s. Sharif’s relationship with the Army, however, soured once he was in power and developed a small-business power base of his own that expected him to take on the entrenched interests that dominated Pakistan’s economy. It is not impossible that a similar dynamic will play out over the first years of Khan’s term.India and the West, therefore, should be cautious. Embracing Khan too early would be a mistake, as it would signal support for the military’s management of the electoral process. But we should be awake to any sign that Khan — a man with enough ego for an entire cricket team — is breaking with his powerful backers. After all, how long will a man like Imran Khan be satisfied by not being the captain of his own team?

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Promoters of Hathway Cable & Datacom, one of the leading cable TV and broadband services providers, are set to infuse Rs 350 crore in the company over the next 18 months.Hathway, which has a daunting task ahead in terms of protecting its turf as Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio is set to disrupt the broadband market with its JioFibernet, is looking to deleverage its balance sheet by Rs 500 crore by March 2020.“Promoters will be investing Rs 350 crore in the business in form of equity as well as long-term unsecured loans,” Rajan Gupta, managing director, Hathway Cable told reporters on Tuesday.This, Gupta said, will be in tranches. While the company has already received Rs 100 crore in the month of July, another tranche of Rs 100 crore will be received by end of August.“Balance Rs 150 crore will come in by March 2020, while the additional Rs 150 crore will be generated from operations over the next 18 months,” Gupta informed.Hathway’s net debt as on March 31, 2018, was at Rs 1,617 crore.The company has close to 800,000 broadband consumers with almost 90% using high-speed (over 40 mbps) plans. Hathway’s ARPU from broadband business stands at around Rs 710 per month.“We have a broadband home pass of 5.2 million homes, out of which just 16% are currently using broadband. We see a big market here, Gupta said.

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Century Textiles and Industries' decision to demerge the cement business into UltraTech Cement and transfer the viscose filament yarn business to Grasim will help it reduce the debt and focus on textiles, pulp and paper and real estate businesses, a top company official said.Century Textiles and Industries (CTIL) in May this year announced plans to demerge its cement business into Aditya Birla group firm UltraTech Cement.The company last year also entered into a deal with Grasim Industries to manage and operate its viscose filament yarn (VFY) business for a period of 15 years. The agreement would provide Grasim the right to use the relevant assets of CTIL, however, the ownership of assets to remain with CTIL.Grasim would be paying Rs 600 crore royalty and a refundable security deposit of Rs 200 crore, to be done through internal accruals."This will help the company in reducing its debt," CTIL vice chairman Kumar Managalam Birla told shareholders at the annual general meeting today.The company's debt is estimated at around Rs 4,100 crore at present.Currently, CTIL has exposure to the cement, textiles, pulp and paper and real estate businesses.Its VFY plant is located at Shahad, Thane, having a capacity of 25,000 tonne, which includes 19,000 tonne of VFY and 6,000 tonne in rayon tyre yarn."CTIL has also decided to demerge 13.4 million tonne cement capacity to UltraTech Cement which will enable transfer of debt of around Rs 3,000 crore," Birla said, adding UltraTech is in a growth phase and the acquisition will give the company ready capacities in growing markets.Shareholders of CTIL will receive one share of UltraTech for every eight shares held."This transaction will help the firm in deleveraging balance sheet and creating an opportunity for its growth in the remaining businesses especially in unlocking the value in the real estate portfolio," he said.Currently the company has around 30 acre in Worli area in the city, besides around 100 acres in Kalyan.It also has land parcel in Pune, which will be developed at a later stage, the company said.The company yesterday reported a net profit of Rs 162.66 crore for the three months to June, against Rs 120.24 crore in the year-ago period.

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MUMBAI: The State Bank of Mauritius (SBM) is awaiting the final go-ahead from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to merge its existing operations with the newly registered local SBM Bank (India) Ltd as it seeks to become the first foreign bank to incorporate a local subsidiary in the country.SBM Bank India plans to open six new branches to add to its four branches in India and start operations later this year. “We missed the shift from baby steps to giant strides between 1991 and 2016. India is now preparing to leapfrog from a giant stride and we do not want to miss this opportunity. Our growth has to come from outside Mauritius,” said Moses Harding John, CEO India and East Africa at SBM Holdings, the holding company for the India subsidiary.SBM is the second largest bank in Mauritius, which has a GDP of just about $13.34 billion and a growth rate of around 4% in an economy that does not leave much room for the lender to expand.“India is linked to Mauritius through an umbilical cord because 90% of the Mauritian population is of Indian origin. Our Indian subsidiary will complement our African units and help us to build scale and business,” said John.Earlier this year SBM concluded its purchase of Chase Bank in Kenya, which together with its Madagascar and Indian subsidiaries makes up the three banking arms for the bank outside its home market.The bank will have an 11-member local board in India including John, India CEO Siby Sebastian and former SBI executives Sudha Ravi and Sanjay Bhattacharyya. Five members will be from the parent company, in addition to two Indian members who are yet to receive the final approval from RBI.“The controls will be within India, which means we will have flexibility for all decisions including hiring. Local control will mean business will gain speed and will reflect in the enterprise value for the bank, like we are seeing in some Indian private sector banks,” said John.Mauritius is the biggest source for foreign portfolio investors (FPI) investing in India and John expects to take advantage of that link as well. “We can service FPI clients both from Mauritius and India. Initially we will look to service mid-market clients in India together with retail and business banking. We can also tap dollar liquidity from our subsidiaries abroad. We are in readiness to start operations in September and we do not think it should take more than three months for a final RBI nod,” said John.

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After Trai chief's Aadhaar stunt, UIDAI has issued an advisory advising people to refrain from posting the unique number on social media and internet."People are advised to refrain from publicly putting their Aadhaar numbers on internet and social media and posing challenges to others," UIDAI tweeted a while back.This advisory has come with reference to some news items appearing on social media reporting few people publicly posting their Aadhaar numbers on internet and social media and posing challenges to others. "Such activities are uncalled for and should be refrained as these are not in accordance with the law. Aadhaar is a unique identity which can be authenticated to prove one’s identity for various services, benefits and subsidies," UIDAI added."Also, it is advised that doing Aadhaar authentication through somebody else’s Aadhaar number or using someone else’s Aadhaar number for any purpose may amount to impersonation and thereby a criminal offence under the Aadhaar Act and Indian Penal Code."UIDAI has also warned that any person indulging in such acts or abetting or inciting others to do so "makes themselves liable for prosecution and penal action under the law". Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) Chairman R S Sharma had earlier dared hackers to harm him by posting his Aadhaar number on Twitter.While many on Twitter claimed victory over 'leaking' Sharma's personal details post the challenge, the Trai chief asserted through multiple tweets and replies that the challenge had never been about phone numbers and other information but for causing harm using knowledge of his Aadhaar number.

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WASHINGTON: The Federal Reserve is expected to keep interest rates unchanged on Wednesday, but solid economic growth combined with rising inflation are likely to keep it on track for another two hikes this year even as President Donald Trump has ramped up criticism of its push to raise rates.The U.S. central bank so far this year has increased borrowing costs in March and June, and investors see additional moves in September and December. Policymakers have raised rates seven times since December 2015.The Fed will announce its decision at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on Wednesday. No press conference is scheduled and only minor changes are anticipated compared with the Fed's June policy statement, which emphasized accelerating economic growth, strong business investment and rising inflation."They've got expectations pretty much where they want them," said Michael Feroli, an economist with JPMorgan. "They may need to finesse how they word the language on inflation, but I think the ultimate message is going to be the same."The U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in nearly four years in the second quarter as consumers boosted spending and farmers rushed shipments of soybeans to China to beat retaliatory trade tariffs, Commerce Department data showed on Friday.The Fed's preferred measure of inflation - the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding food and energy components- increased at a 2.0 percent pace in the second quarter, the data also showed. The latest monthly figures released on Tuesday showed prices in June were 1.9 percent higher than a year earlier.The core PCE hit the U.S. central bank's 2 percent inflation target in March for the first time since December 2011.U.S. labor costs, a key measure of how much slack is left in the market, posted their largest annual gain since 2008 in the second quarter, the Labor Department said on Tuesday.TRUMP CRITICISMEconomic growth has been buoyed by the Trump administration's package of tax cuts and government spending, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has said overall the economy is in a "really good place."The unemployment rate stands at 4.0 percent, lower than the level seen sustainable by Fed policymakers.The central bank is expected to continue to raise rates through 2019 but policymakers are keenly debating when the so-called "neutral rate" - the sweet spot in which monetary policy is neither expansive nor restrictive - will be hit.Rate setters are closely watching for signs that inflation is accelerating and they are expecting economic growth to slow as the fiscal stimulus fades.They also remain wary of the potential effects of a protracted trade war between the United States and China which could push the cost of goods higher and hurt company investment plans.The Fed's policy path will see interest rates peak at much lower levels than in previous economic cycles. Even so, Trump, in a departure from usual practice that presidents do not comment on Fed policy, said he was worried growth would be hit by higher rates.Administration officials played down the president's comments, saying he was not seeking to influence the Fed.On the campaign trail, Trump criticized Powell's predecessor as Fed chief, Janet Yellen, for keeping rates too low.Trump appointed Powell and Fed Governor Randal Quarles, and he has three other nominees to the rate-setting committee awaiting U.S. Senate confirmation. Almost all have been seen as mainstream in their attitude to economic policy. Economists say Trump has little influence over Fed policy beyond the personnel changes he has already made.Trump's tweets are a far cry from the 1970s when then-President Richard Nixon told the Fed chairman to kick rate setters "in the rump" to keep rates low until after an election. That stoked inflation and eventually strengthened the Fed's independence, something that has become even more entrenched since."Powell is obviously someone who values the Fed's independence," said Paul Ashworth, an economist with Capital Economics. "I don't expect them to change tack because of political pressure."

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In 1995, Jackie and Mike Bezos plowed $245,573 into their son’s fledgling e-commerce website, according to a prospectus two years later. It was a big gamble, Mike Bezos, the stepfather of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, recalled onstage during a 2015 event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.“I want you to know how risky this is,” the son told his parents, “because I want to come home at dinner for Thanksgiving and I don’t want you to be mad at me.”He’s probably welcome to extra helpings of turkey -- and all the gravy. One IPO and three stock splits later, his parents’ stake could be worth almost $30 billion today. That would make them wealthier than Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, the 30th-richest person on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.The parents’ holdings haven’t been publicly disclosed since the end of 1999. While it’s unclear how much they still own, continuing donations of Amazon stock to their charitable foundation suggest they still control a healthy chunk of the world’s second-most valuable company.They’ve donated 595,027 shares to the Bezos Family Foundation from 2001 through 2016, according to filings available on GuideStar, which collects data on nonprofits. The 25,000 shares they gifted in 2016 were worth about $20 million at the time. The foundation focuses on education for young people.If they haven’t sold or donated anything else, the pair would own about 16.6 million shares, or 3.4 percent of the firm, making them the second-biggest individual owners after their son.65216411 Their total return in that case would be about 12,000,000 percent, a performance that would make even the most celebrated venture capitalists blush. SoftBank’s $20 million bet on Alibaba has returned about 720,000 percent since 2000, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Sequoia Capital’s WhatsApp investment returned roughly 36,000 percent by the time Facebook Inc. bought the messaging service for $22 billion in 2014.“We were fortunate enough that we have lived overseas and we have saved a few pennies so we were able to be an angel investor,” Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who also goes by Miguel, said in Philadelphia. “The rest is history.”He bought 582,528 shares in February 1995, according to the 1997 prospectus. Five months later, Jackie Bezos bought 847,716 shares. The wider Bezos family held this stock through four trusts at the end of 1999, another filing shows. The Jacklyn Gise Bezos 1996 Revocable Trust held 8.9 million shares, followed by the Miguel A. Bezos 1996 Revocable Trust with 4.8 million shares, while the Bezos Family Trust and the Bezos Generation Skipping Trust held 2.9 million and 675,000, respectively.Any self-respecting wealth adviser likely would have pressed the family to diversify their holdings given the "heightened consequences of such extreme individual company exposures," according to Eduardo Gruener, co-founder of Miami-based multi-family office GFG Capital.Siblings’ WindfallAfter applying historic selling patterns and accounting for the disclosed donations, Jackie and Mike Bezos would still control $10 billion of shares, according to an analysis by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s on top of their son’s $147 billion fortune, which easily makes him the world’s richest person. He’s added $48 billion to his fortune so far in 2018 as Amazon shares have risen 52 percent through July 30.Even if they had unwound all of their Amazon holdings at the lowest possible price, they still would have reaped about $100 million.The filing also suggests a windfall for Jeff Bezos’ siblings Mark and Christina. They each bought 30,000 Amazon shares for $10,000 in 1996. If they haven’t sold any of those shares, their stakes would be worth about $640 million apiece.The Bezos Family Foundation didn’t respond to email and telephone messages requesting comment. Amazon declined to comment.Wozniak’s LargesseWith Amazon, Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc. approaching market values of $1 trillion, the world could have myriad unknown tech billionaires. Only corporate insiders or shareholders with stakes exceeding 5 percent are required to report their interests. In the case of Apple, that means individuals with positions up to $46.7 billion wouldn’t be required to disclose their holdings.Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak held a 7.9 percent stake in 1980, which shrank over time as he sold options at low prices to mid-level employees and gifted shares to those he felt had been shortchanged. His remaining stake is thought to be in the millions rather than billions.Or take Google parent Alphabet. An early investor was reportedly none other than Jeff Bezos, who put $250,000 of his own money into the internet-search startup in 1998, according to the New Yorker. Those shares, valued at about $280 million at the IPO, would be worth more than $8 billion today.That pales in comparison to the returns potentially reaped by his parents, who hit the jackpot backing their boy.“Extraordinary returns don’t come around often” said Gruener, the wealth adviser.“Replace Amazon with nearly any other name in the market and the ending may have turned out as a nightmare.”

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NEW DELHI: Vistara today announced unbundling of services on its flight with the launch of ‘Vistara Freedom Fares’ that allows passengers to book fares without frills, including complimentary meal onboard.“Effective August 2, 2018, travellers will have the freedom to choose from thoughtfully designed bundles of features and services at different price points for their preferred flight and class of service or select them à-la-carte,” said the airline in a release.As part of unbundling, Vistara introduced ‘Lite’ fares that will be available in Economy Class only, and for customers seeking simply the lowest fares that do not include complimentary meals. “However a buy-on-board option of snacks and drinks will be available. While ‘Economy Lite’ customers will continue to earn Club Vistara points, they will not earn elite-qualification ‘tier points’. ‘Economy Lite’ fares are not upgradeable, non-changeable and non-refundable (though taxes are always fully refundable). The free checked baggage allowance remains at 15kg, but is restricted to one piece of checked baggage only,” the release added.This move by Vistara, which was launched as a full service carrier, is likely to help it boost ancillary revenues in an aviation market, where airlines are not able to charge fares in commensurate with the cost due to high capacity.“Consumers today have a vast range of options and the one-size-fits-all approach is increasingly becoming redundant. It is the age of flexibility; of deciding for yourself; of doing things at your own terms. We observed this consumer behaviour over a period of time and are delighted to bring ‘Vistara Freedom Fares’ to the discerning travellers, while also further enhancing our product and service portfolio with ‘Vistara World’,” airline CEO Leslie Thng was quoted in the release. Additionally, the airline announced the introduction of ‘Vistara World’, its free in-flight entertainment system with video and audio content of more than 70 hours streamed wirelessly onto personal handheld devices and laptops.‘Vistara World’ will be rolled out fleet-wide in August 2018, subject to regulatory approvals, the airline said.“Together with the introduction of wireless streaming of in-flight entertainment content, the attractive bundled features will provide more choices and value to customers and also help us enhance overall customer satisfaction and experience,” Sanjiv Kapoor, Chief Strategy & Commercial Officer, Vistara was quoted in the release.

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NEW DELHI: Tata Motors today said it has decided to stop manufacturing operations in Thailand citing viability issues but would continue to sell vehicles in the country through imports.As part of this ongoing review, the company has undertaken a reassessment of its business model in Thailand to ensure it is sustainable over the long term, Tata Motors said in a statement."The business as it stands today is sub-scale and not sustainable. We have hence decided to cease the current manufacturing operations in this financial year," it added.Going forward, the company shall continue to address the Thailand market with a revamped product portfolio, suitable to local market needs, delivered through a completely built unit (CBU) distribution model, Tata Motors said.Tata Motors is committed to the ASEAN region wherein Thailand is an important market and the company endeavours to continue serving customers as it transitions to the new operating model, it added."It was becoming unviable business for us. Therefore, we decided to cease manufacturing operations," Tata Motors Group CFO P Balaji said.The company had incurred a loss of Rs 170 crore on the business last year, he added.

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The company showcased how to build customer experiences on PTC’s ThingWorx Industrial Innovation Platform using KPIT accelerators.

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Pune headquartered KPIT Technologies said that it has launched the first Center of Excellence (CoE) in the US for PTC at it’s Raleigh, North Carolina facility. Probodh Chiplunkar, Head of Digital Business at KPIT said, “It is the first of its kind in the US, and the second CoE that PTC and KPIT have collaborated on globally. Companies today want to create digital experiences for their users that are fast to build, yet scalable for the enterprise. Enabled by our accelerators built on PTC technologies, companies can quickly integrate IT and Operations Technologies for a connected manufacturing experience and better business outcomes, like a safer workplace, improvement in manufacturing OTD and unparalleled customer service.The company showcased how to build customer experiences on PTC’s ThingWorx Industrial Innovation Platform using KPIT accelerators. "KPIT is building solutions that the provide value for discrete and process manufacturing industries," said Mike DiTullio, executive vice president, marketing and sales, PTC. "With an engaging user experience, KPIT’s accelerators integrate diverse systems using PTC’s ThingWorx, Navigate and Vuforia products. KPIT has shown true collaboration with the launch of this second CoE worldwide.”Catherine Kniker, Chief Revenue Officer, ThingWorx and Vuforia, said, “This customer experience center at KPIT’s location in Raleigh offers one of the best ways for customers to try out PTC technology. Being co-located with the talent KPIT has put together in manufacturing, engineering and digital technology, the CoE showcases digital innovation while producing assets that can be easily replicated by customers.”

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What's the deal with all of the fancy sheets out there?

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Big-bang sales by e-commerce companies may soon be over. A government think tank headed by commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu has prepared a draft e-commerce policy that sounds the death knell for deep discounts during online sales. If the draft policy becomes the rule, it will be difficult for big online marketplaces to shower discounts on customers. Here's what this means:What the draft saysTo address anti-competitive issues in e-commerce effectively, the draft e-commerce policy recommends several strategies. Two of these aim at regulating online prices. First is a sunset clause. The draft says, "A sunset clause, which defines the maximum duration of differential pricing strategies (such as deep discounts) that are implemented by e-commerce platforms to attract consumers, would be introduced." The sunset clause might restrict the ability of e-commerce companies to offer deep discounts. Another strategy aims at restricting the ability of the e-commerce marketplace companies to influence prices of goods. "The restriction imposed on e-commerce marketplace, to not directly or indirectly influence the price of sale of goods and services, would be extended to group companies of the e-commerce marketplace," says the draft.Why the restrictions?The restriction on pricing are aimed at curbing the practice of foreign-funded companies bypassing laws to use foreign money to offer huge discounts. Discounts help e-commerce companies gain loyal subscribers. Domestic retailers have raised the issue of foreign money funding discounts which makes it difficult for the local retailers to compete. Ensuring a level-playing fieldIn April this year, a group representing brick-and-mortar retailers, including Future Group and Reliance Retail, alleged that e-commerce companies were violating India’s foreign investment regulations by influencing prices on their platforms and illegally funding abnormal discounts. The Retailers Association of India alleged in a letter to Prabhu that Amazon and foreign-funded companies in India, including Flipkart, Shopclues and Snapdeal operated models under which 100% foreign investment was allowed only to provide platforms to other retailers and vendors to conduct business. Similar letters were sent to Prabhu by a group of small vendors that sells on e-commerce sites and by the Indian Cellular Association, a lobby of handset makers representing Apple, Micromax, Nokia, Vivo, Lava and Lenovo. They urged the government to take action against Amazon and Flipkart for violating FDI norms by offering discounts — directly or indirectly — on mobile phones and other products through intermediaries or partner companies. Flipkart and Amazon had denied the allegations.Curbs on related partiesThe draft e-commerce policy also places curbs on "related parties". "Bulk purchase of branded goods such as electronic products (especially mobile phones), white goods, branded fashion by related party sellers which lead to price distortions in a market place would be prohibited," says the draft policy. Related party sellers are the online sellers who already have a business relationship with the e-commerce company. A foreign-funded e-commerce company is not allowed to keep inventory but some companies might circumvent this rule by funding their sellers and offer discounts through them. Deep discounts hurt local retailersIn April, Future Retail joint MD Rakesh Biyani said there was a level-playing field imbalance happening due to improper discounts. He said the government policy stated that e-commerce players should not be allowed to participate in pricing and should not invest money in discounting. "If one particular channel is misusing its money power to discount the product at a faster rate and the other channel is unable to match the price, it shrinks the market," he said. Last year, when asked at a company event why e-commerce companies should not offer discounts when his own brick-and-mortar stores too offer heavy discounts, Future Group founder and CEO Kishore Biyani said, "This is an Indian company, with Indian money and discounts. That is foreign funding." The draft e-commerce policy clearly states that it is aimed at creating a level-playing field. It takes note of "the need to preserve flexibility and create a level-playing field to enable formulation and implementation of appropriate policies in the future for encouraging domestic innovation and boosting the domestic digital economy to find its rightful place with dominant and potentially non-competitive global players".

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NEW DELHI: Growth of eight core sectors expanded to 7-month high of 6.7 per cent in June due to better performance by cement, refinery and coal segments, as per official data released today.The eight sectors, which also include fertilisers, steel, natural gas, electricity and crude oil, had expanded by 1 per cent in June last year.The previous high rate of growth was recorded in November 2017 at 6.9 per cent.The growth rate in May was 4.3 per cent.As per the data released by the commerce and industry ministry, the expansion in cement, refinery products and coal was 13.2 per cent, 12 per cent and 11.5 per cent respectively, year-on-year basis.Crude oil and natural gas registered a negative growth of 3.4 per cent and 2.7 per cent respectively in June compared to the year-ago period.The expansion in the electricity generation was 4 per cent in June compared to 2.2 per cent in the same month of the last fiscal.Steel sector, however witnessed a slower growth of 4.4 per cent compared to 6 per cent in June 2017.The data revealed that expansion rate in the fertiliser segment was 1 per cent, better than negative growth recorded in the year ago month.During the April-June quarter of the current fiscal, the eight core industries recorded a growth of 5.2 per cent as against 2.5 per cent in the same period last year.These eight core industries comprise 40.27 per cent of the weight of items included in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP). 65214792

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NEW DELHI: After stumbling in the first half of the trade, the bulls roared back with full force in the second half on Tuesday, and lifted benchmark indices to fresh record highs on a closing basis. Heavy buying in RIL, HUL and Infosys gave S&P BSE Sensex a 112-point lift to 37,606. NSE’s Nifty50 pack added 37 points to close at 11,356, with 30 constituents ending in the green and 20 in the red. With this, the benchmark indices have gained 6 per cent each this month.Here’s a quick look at Tuesday’s top newsmakers of Dalal Street: - IndiGo crashes post Q1 numbersInterGlobe Aviation plunged nearly 13 per cent in intraday trade after the low-cost airline reported a 97 per cent plunge in June quarter profit due to adverse impact of foreign exchange, high fuel prices and a competitive fare environment. The stock closed 7.49 per cent lower at Rs 929.05 apiece, wiping out Rs 4,352 crore of investor money. Broader market rises tooThe S&P BSE Midcap index gained 0.33 per cent to 16,013 with Adani Power (up 7.92 per cent) being the top gainer and Bank of India (down 8.75 per cent) the worst laggard. The S&P BSE Smallcap pack ended 0.26 per cent higher at 16,584. Earnings impactShares of LG Balakrishnan shot up 12.3 per cent during the day after the company reported a 96 per cent YoY jump in June quarter profit at Rs 21.6 crore. The stock settled 6.63 per cent higher at Rs 555 piece on BSE. FMCG firm Dabur India on Monday reported 24.59 per cent rise in consolidated profit at Rs 330 crore for the quarter, driven by volume growth in key categories. The stock settled 6.96 per cent high at Rs 420.Bharat Electronics (BEL) reported 43.4 per cent rise in profit at Rs 179 crore. The stock jumped 7.76 per cent to settle at Rs 115 apiece. BASF gained a solid 10 per cent to Rs 1,938 apiece on BSE after it reported June quarter PAT at Rs 24.4 crore against Rs 68 lakh YoY. Insider tradeMax Ventures Investment Holdings, the promoter group of Max Financial Services, revoked 6,28,000 pledged shares on Tuesday. Another promoter group Mohair Investment and Trading Company revoked 72,000 equity shares. This apart, Y Srinivasa Rao, the director of Everest Industries, disposed of 1,813 shares. Most active stocksAdani Power, Reliance Communications, HDIL, JP Associates, Idea Cellular and Bank of India were the most active stocks in terms of volume. RIL, Axis Bank, SBI, InterGlobe Aviation, Dabur India and HDFC emerged the most active in terms of value. Eicher skidsShares of Eicher Motors, parent company of motorcycle manufacturer Royal Enfield, fell as much as 2.84 per cent amid reports that American motorcycle major Harley Davidson is turning aggressive on Asia and hopes to unveil a lightweight motorcycle for India through an alliance with an Asian manufacturer. The stock settled 2.62 per cent down at Rs 27,820. READ MORE New milestones!Reliance Industries on Tuesday knocked off TCS as India’s largest company in terms of market capitalisation. Brokerages are bullish on RIL post June quarter numbers. Goldman Sachs has the highest target of Rs 1,400 on the scrip while Nomura India's Rs 1,220 is the lowest among major foreign brokerages. At close, RIL’s m-cap stood at Rs 7,51,415 crore, while that of TCS was Rs 7,43,222 crore. Shares of RIL shut shop at Rs 1,185, up 3.14 per cent and those of TCS at Rs 1,941, down 0.19 per cent. D-Mart at new peakAvenue Supermarsts, the parent company of retail chain D-Mart, hit a fresh lifetime peak of Rs 1,663.80 apiece on BSE after reporting a 43.4 per cent surge in net profit at Rs 251 crore for the June quarter. The stock settled 3.77 per cent higher at Rs 1,652 apiece on BSE, helping the company reclaim the Rs 1 lakh crore market-cap mark. Call/Put writingOn the options front, maximum Put OI was at 11,000 followed by strike price 11,200 while maximum Call OI was at 11,500 followed by 11,400. Put writing was seen at 11,000 and 11,200 strike whereas call writing was seen at 11,400 followed by 11,700.Fiscal deficitIndia reported a fiscal deficit of $62.57 billion for April-June, or 68.7 per cent of the budgeted target, for the financial year compared with 80.8 per cent a year ago. Net tax receipts in the first quarter of financial year 2018-19 that ends in March, 2019, were Rs 2.37 lakh crore, government data showed. READ MORE Block dealsHDIL shares jumped 20 per cent to Rs 24.05 apiece on BSE after 27.8 lakh shares changed hands in two block deals. Inox Leisure settled at Rs 192.50, down 1.69 per cent after 41 lakh shares (4.2 per cent equity) changed hands in a block deal on BSE, Bloomberg reported.

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If edge-to-edge, displays turn into a trend, the next OnePlus smartphone could feature it.

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By Harshal Dewangan

At the crux of any data protection law are definitions of personal data and sensitive personal data.

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Realme would focus on offering strong performance and stylish designs to young people at affordable prices.

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As per Amazon's banner, there was no sign of the Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite, but only Xiaomi Mi A2.

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Huawei's Kirin 980 chipset is said to be among the first to be built on TSMC's 7 nm process.

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The lawsuit argues that publishing blueprints would allow criminals easy access to weapons.

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The amount of unclaimed insurance money has been increasing. According to a report of PTI, as much as Rs 15,167 crore of policyholder's money was lying unclaimed with 23 life insurers as on March 31, 2018. Compared to this, for the year 2012-13, Rs 4,865.81 crore was the unclaimed amount for the entire industry. This is a 25 percent increase annually over the past five years in unclaimed money by policyholders. According PTI, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) data, out of the total unclaimed amount, insurance behemoth Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) is sitting on Rs 10,509 crore, while the 22 private sector insurers account for the remaining Rs 4,657.45 crore. Among the private insurers, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has 807.4 crore of unclaimed insurance claims followed Reliance Nippon Life Insurance (Rs 696.12 crore), SBI Life Insurance (Rs 678.59 crore), and HDFC Standard Life Insurance (Rs 659.3 crore). What happens to unclaimed amount?In July 2017, the Irdai had asked all insurers having unclaimed amounts of policyholders for a period of more than 10 years as on September 30, 2017 to transfer the same to the Senior Citizens' Welfare Fund (SCWF) on or before March 1, 2018. The fund shall be utilised for such schemes for the promotion of the welfare of senior citizens in line with the National Policy on Older Persons and the National Policy on Senior Citizens.Why claims go unclaimedNominees not aware of the policy: The nominees may not be aware that the policyholder had such an insurance policy or whereabouts of the policy document. Thereafter, on the death of the policyholders, the dependants may not be in a position to claim the amount. To avoid such a scenario, the nominees should not only be aware but they should also be in the know of where the policy document is. Also, make sure to update nominations in the policy.Change in address: Where the settlement of claims happens through payments made by cheque, any change in the address of the policyholder/claimants will delay the process. To avoid this, ensure that the address is updated in the insurer's records. Cheque misplaced: Cheque payments can become time-barred or misplaced leading to delays. Most insures have initiated claims payments through electronic transfer of funds, hence make sure to enrol for it in all the existing policies. For new policies issued after 2014, insurers insist on electronic transfer of funds and thus asking for blank cancelled cheque at the time of application itself. How to findIrdai had asked the life insurance companies to provide a search facility on their websites to enable policyholders or beneficiaries or dependents to find out whether any unclaimed amounts due to them are lying with these companies. Policyholders/beneficiaries are required to enter the details like policy number, PAN of the policyholder, name of the policyholder, date of birth or Aadhaar number, in a window provided on the website of the insurer to find out the unclaimed amount. The insurers have to update information regarding unclaimed amounts on their websites on a half-yearly basis.ConclusionDespite the clear guidelines by Irdai in 2014 and a strict monitoring of unclaimed amount every six months, the figures are rising. Insurers need to ensure that every amount goes to the rightful claimant at the right time as intended by the policyholder at the time of buying it. Policyholders, too, need to make sure that the family members are well aware of the policy details and their rights as nominees.

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CHENNAI: Cloud-based customer engagement software maker Freshworks has become the most recent member of the country’s unicorn club after securing $100 million in a fresh round of funding led by Sequoia capital and Accel Partners with participation from CapitalG, bringing the total amount of capital raised to $250 million, since the company’s inception in 2010.The latest funding round has taken the San Bruno, California and Chennai-based SaaS Company’s valuation to $1.5 billion, according Freshworks. The cash infusion will be used to further expand Freshworks’ worldwide footprint and for continued investments into its integrated SaaS products.“When we started Freshworks in 2010, we were a single product company with a goal of offering better, easier-to-use customer service software than what was in the market. We’ve since scaled our company to $100m in annual recurring revenue and built a full SaaS platform where all of our products - like Freshsales, Freshdesk, and Freshservice - work together seamlessly, without requiring additional integration resources or consultants to make the software simply work,” said Girish Mathrubootham, Co-founder and CEO, Freshworks.The company had recently crossed the $100 million mark in annual recurring revenue scaled by growth in the company’s flagship customer support product Freshdesk and growing revenues clocked by its IT services management product Freshservice and customer relationship management product Freshsales.Sequoia was an early investor in the company, flushing in $55 million into Freshworks in 2016. Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors, Mohit Bhatnagar said "Girish and his team have worked relentlessly to build Freshworks into a leading SaaS company from India – one that is truly global with customers across 127 countries. The investment reinforces the Sequoia principle of being a long term business partner to founders and supporting them at every stage of their company’s growth.”Freshworks has also hired former AppDynamics Vice President of Finance & Treasury, Suresh Seshadri as its Chief Financial Officer. Further, Mathrubootham indicated that the company may not be looking for further funding.“With the addition of Suresh leading our financial management and strategy towards a path of free cash flow breakeven and our latest, and likely last, private funding round in place, we believe we have a unique opportunity to attract customers from around the globe who have been let down by legacy solutions,” said Mathrubootham.Suresh Seshadri, the company’s new CFO, who was behind AppDynamics’ initial public offering in - before it was acquired by Cisco in 2017, said “Coming on board to work with Girish and the rest of the executive team is an incredible opportunity and I am confident that we are well-positioned to reach the next phase of Freshworks’ expansion.”The company’s products are used by more than 150,000 businesses including the NHS,Honda, Rightmove, Hugo Boss, Citizens Advice, Toshiba and Cisco.

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Home-grown auto major M&M today said its new multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) will be called 'Marazzo', which will compete with segment leader Toyota Innova Crysta.Built on a completely new platform, the 7/8-seater Marazzo is the automaker's first passenger car developed at its North American technical centre along with Mahindra Research Valley (MRV) in Chennai.The new vehicle will be manufactured at the company's Nashik facility and will be rolled out by September, said Pawan Goenka, managing director, M&M."A collaborative effort of Pininfarina, Mahindra Design Studio, MNATC and MRV, Marazzo is born of a vision to design a global vehicle with quality and refinement," he said.Goenka did not disclose the price or the investment that has gone into the making of the new vehicle but said that typically the creation of a new platform entails an investment of Rs 800-1,600 crore.The current MPV market stands at around 10,000-12,000 units per month and M&M looks to corner a sizeable pie of it, the company said.Goenka said that with the new launches, Mahindra is filling the gap in its product portfolio, adding that the company will also be rolling out a sub-four metre SUV as well as a large G4 SUV in the premium segment, with its pricing higher than any other Mahindra vehicle this year."One of these two SUVs will be rolled out before Diwali this year," he added.Besides Innova Crysta, Marazzo will also be competing with other brands in the segment such as forthcoming second-gen Maruti Ertiga and Ranault Lodgy.The Mahindra Design Studio in Kandivili in Mumbai and and Italian design house Pininfarina have collaborated closely during the design development process of the new vehicle, the company said.

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NEW DELHI: IIFL Asset Management has announced the appointment of Anup Maheshwari as the joint CEO and Chief Investment Officer with effect from mid-August 2018.Maheshwari has over 24 years of investment experience and is an alumnus of IIM Lucknow. He was earlier working with DSP BlackRock Investment Managers since July 1997. According to a release, Maheshwari will play a key role in meeting the company's aggressive growth goals as well as product development and devising innovative investment strategy.“Maheshwari’s successful experience in investment management, both offshore and onshore, will be highly advantageous to IIFL AMC. He brings with him incredibly strong knowledge and experience which will be vital as we chart out ambitious plans to grow and develop our asset management business,” Karan Bhagat, Founder, MD & CEO of IIFL Investment Managers, said.

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Huge growth ahead in consumer space and within that in FMCG space, Mahantesh Sabarad, Head, Retail Research, SBI Cap Securities, tells ET Now.Edited excerpts: Can Dabur continue to beat itself or is this quarter’s results a one- off? If they are reporting volume growth of 21% in Q1, which has surpassed their 65213681 65210291 65212306 own expectations, what does one pencil in for the remaining three quarters? Basically, in consumer space and within that in the FMCG space, there is huge growth ahead. That can be partly seen because rural incomes are getting better. We have a normal monsoon although the spatial distribution is not so great. There is a situation where a lot of GST rates have been moderated. Some of this is applicable for consumer durables but that is translating into a consumption boost which will continue to have momentum for two-three quarters more. While the growth rate in terms of volumes that we have seen from the likes of Levers, Daburs and Asian Paints have been in double digits, those double digit growth numbers will moderate because the base effect will catch up. The numbers, nevertheless will be strong. In an FMCG company, one has volume growth plus the pricing advantage and then comes the premiumisation effect. All three combined would drive growth on the top line and that growth will be in double digits.Harley is now eyeing Royale Enfield’s turf. Although CLSA believes that they may not quite harm Royal Enfield’s market share and may not really target a very large market size, I guess pricing is the key. Could this escalate into a deeper problem for Eicher? No not really. There is a separate niche that Eicher enjoys in the bike space in the light-weight categories. Harley while it is graduating from the heavy weights to middle weights and then the light-weights now, is not really going to affect Eicher in a big way because distribution is the key for such bikes. While the product is great, if you do not have great distribution network, your ability to generate sales is limited which is what Eicher has been targeting over the years. Now they have been expanding their distribution reach and they are becoming quite strong now. They were earlier the south-based distribution reach company. Now they have a well established distribution base. Overall, Eicher should not be worried about Harley coming into India in the light-weight category.What do you make of Bajaj Auto? Are they doing the right thing by coming out in the open and saying that we will do whatever it takes to regain market share? They have become number four. I can sense the desperation in the management. But will the bid to regain market share come at a price? Is the stock pricing in a margin erosion and a price war?Let me split your question into three parts. One is the strategy that is being employed by Bajaj Auto. It is in the right direction because you have to necessarily react to market pressures. The two-wheeler space is competitive and you cannot just stand by the way side. The second part of your question was will this really affect the company in terms of its margins and thereof? While the company has guided that they will not have 20% kind of margins for the next two or three years, I tend to believe that there are enough margins levers available with Bajaj Auto because of its diversified nature of business that can eventually take it to 20% margin.The third part of your question is whether the stock price is reflecting all this. I would say no. The stock price is not reflecting the potential that Bajaj Auto has in terms of growth ahead. It is fairly cheap at this juncture relative to the peers and relative to the broader market as well for the kind of return ratios, balance sheet strength and the kind of management quality they possess.Can Bank, Bank of Baroda have come out with excellent set of numbers. The PSU banks doing pretty well for themselves. But with Bank of India numbers, again all the factors which were looking positive for the space have turned bit negative. Should one be stock specific in PSU space? We continue to like the PSU space as a whole but then you have to be very stock specific even within that space because RBI is intervening and there are lots of banks under prompt corrective action. That means there will be a period of virtually no growth for those companies and for investors those are not the companies to look at. That leaves the other set of PSU banks which appear quite promising because now the NPA worries are going to be over. Also, it is not about NPA issue alone, it is about growth as well. Unless and until you have strong capital, you really cannot grow and therefore you cannot arrest the slide. For us, there are three or four PSU banks that we like -- Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank, Indian Bank and Can Bank seems to be coming into our radar right now. That space is generally good. The moment any bank comes out of the prompt corrective action, that would be something one should be watching out for.

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More evidence has come to light that Microsoft is planning some kind of dual-screen device, with another patent relating to such a piece of hardware having been spotted, hot on the heels of yesterday’s ‘video calling on hinged multi-screen device’ patent.

The fresh patent was also discovered by Windows Latest and was published by the Patent and Trademark Office over in the US last week, and it again illustrates a dual-screen folding mobile device, with both displays connected by a hinge.

The patent shows the device’s various modes of usage, including a ‘laptop’ mode whereby one screen becomes a virtual keyboard. If both screens are placed down flat, the interface – i.e. the operating system UI, web browser, or whatever software you happen to be using – will expand to fill both displays, and the resolution can be increased appropriately.

Just like a hybrid notebook, this product would also be deployable in a ‘tent’ mode for watching videos and the like, and the patent actually cites an example whereby the device would display the time and act as an alarm clock (with both screens showing the time, so as to potentially be visible from more points around the room).

And of course the hardware can be folded up (closed) to a very compact size for portability. Obviously the hinge would be designed to be sturdy enough to maintain the position of the device when in laptop or tent mode, so the hardware wouldn’t be prone to toppling over when used in either of those fashions.

Patent not product

As ever, we must bear in mind that patents aren’t necessarily filed with the expectation that such a device will eventually exist – these are often rather speculative things, and projects are often abandoned.

And the latest buzz on the grapevine concerning Microsoft’s rumored dual-screen Andromeda device is that it isn’t in the pipeline for the near future by any means, and there’s still a good deal of work to do on both the hardware and software front.

It seems the company wants to get this piece of hardware right before putting it in front of the public, which is certainly understandable. Microsoft has made many serious mistakes in the mobile phone arena, so it makes sense that the firm would want to get its crack at a supposedly new category of mobile computer (or ‘pocketable’ PC, as has also been previously rumored) spot-on.

We certainly keep hearing plenty about a dual-screen device, and as we mentioned at the outset, we reported yesterday on another patent on such a product designed for video calls and to better facilitate three-way conversations (using the device for two people, having a screen and camera each, with a third person on a remote PC).

Top image credit: US Patent and Trademark Office

• These are the best laptops of 2018

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Auto major Tata Motors on Tuesday reported a consolidated loss of Rs 1,863.57 crore for June quarter on account of Rs 1,125.70 crore deferred tax credit against ET Now poll estimate of Rs 1,500 crore profit.The auto major had reported Rs 3,199.93 crore profit in the year-ago quarter.Revenue for the quarter came in at Rs 65,956.78 crore compared with Rs 58,766.07 crore in the year-ago quarter. As far as Indian operations (standalone) were concerned, revenue jumped 83 per cent YoY to Rs 16,830 crore. Profit after tax stood at Rs 1,188 crore.The luxury unit of the Indian auto firm, Jaguar Land Rover, reported a loss of 210 million pounds in June quarter.JLR's revenues fell 6.7 per cent YoY for the quarter to 5.2 billion pounds due to lower wholesales and increased incentives in China in advance of the July 1 duty reduction.65214170 The lower wholesales and higher China incentives combined with unfavourable balance sheet currency revaluation and higher depreciation and amortisation resulting from continuing investment led to a pre-tax loss for the quarter of 264 million pounds, the company said."With regards to JLR, we faced multiple challe4nges including issues like China duty impact as well as the market issues like diesel concerns in UK and Europe," said Chairman natarajan Chandrasekaran.JLR's total investment spending for the quarter stood at 1.1 billion pounds. This investment spending and seasonal working capital outflows of 1 billion pounds led to negative operating cash flow of 1.7 billion pound, the company said.The company said its closing net debt soared to Rs 62,436 crore as of June 30 from Rs 39,977 crore as of March 31 due to negative free cash flow at both Tata Motors and JLR, and continued investments. Net Automotive debt rose to Rs 32,977 crore for the quarter compared with Rs 13,889 crore in March quarter.

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By: P R SanjaiIndia is on the greatest toilet-building spree in human history, and it’s a windfall for companies.Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s $20 billion “Clean India” mission aims to construct 111 million latrines in five years. Besides promising to improve the health, safety and dignity of hundreds of millions of Indians, the national hygiene drive has spurred an 81 percent jump in sales of concrete building materials and 48 percent increase in bathroom and sanitaryware sales, according to Euromonitor International. That’s benefiting firms from Tata Group, the nation’s largest conglomerate, to cleaning-products maker Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc.Almost 80 million household toilets are estimated to have been built since Modi’s 2014 pledge to ensure universal sanitation coverage by October 2019, which will mark 150 years since the birth of independence leader Mahatma Gandhi. The scale-up of latrines and a nationwide campaign to encourage their use is driving a market for toilet-related products and services that’s predicted to double to $62 billion by 2021.“It’s the biggest, most successful behavior-change campaign in the world,” said Val Curtis, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Environmental Health Group, who has worked on the program in India. “Every time I go there, I feel like I can’t sit down for weeks after because I’m excited about what they’re doing. It’s incredible.”Bollywood StarBollywood celebrity Akshay Kumar, star of the sanitation-promoting movie “Toilet: Ek Prem Katha” (or “Toilet: A Love Story”), was appointed brand ambassador this month for Harpic, the bowl-cleaner made by Reckitt Benckiser. The Slough, England-based company, which also sells the disinfectant Dettol, dominates the toilet-care market in India, with sales climbing 11 percent to $105.7 million last year, Euromonitor data show.“We are one of the most trusted brands in India, and we’ve always managed to outperform the market with Dettol,” Rakesh Kapoor, Reckitt Benckiser’s India-born chief executive officer, said on a conference call in April. The company has been able to increase awareness of its cleaning products by working with open-defecation-free communities and households to promote sanitation and hygiene. 65207056 That’s a common theme across suppliers of home-care products, according to Sowmya Adiraju, a research analyst at Euromonitor in Bengaluru. For example, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. entered the low-cost toilet cleaner market with a new powdered product, and has been trying to make toilets accessible and affordable through its Domex Toilet Academy.Hygiene AwarenessCompanies are investing heavily on spreading awareness about better hygiene products, aiding the penetration of home care products in India, which is still low by global standards, Adiraju said in an email.The “Clean India” mission has had a “largely positive” impact on suppliers of sanitaryware and tiles, sales of which are predicted to expand about 11 percent annually through 2022, according to Adiraju. The sanitation campaign was anticipated initially to provide a bigger sales boost, but some companies have partnered with governments more as a social initiative than a business opportunity, she said. 65207061 Before Modi began the Clean India program, known locally as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan mission, the country accounted for more than half of the world’s 1.1 billion people who routinely relieve themselves in fields, beaches and other open spaces.Economic ImpedimentSo-called open defecation contaminates food and drinking water, and spreads diarrheal diseases that cause chronic malnutrition and childhood stunting -- a burden the World Bank estimated costs India 6.4 percent of its gross domestic product.“Sanitation is a basic need that is denied to a majority of the Indian population,” said Rajeev Kher, chief executive officer of SaraPlast Pvt Ltd., a closely-held manufacturer, supplier and cleaner of restrooms, including portable toilets for rent. Kher has also converted aged buses into mobile toilets to provide a “clean and safe toilet experience” for women in a collaboration with municipal authorities in the western city of Pune. 65207066 For individual households, Japan’s LIXIL Group has supplied tens of thousands of twin pit toilet systems that costs $10 or less apiece to facilitate the safe management of excreta in the absence of a sewage connection.$300 Million OrdersIncreased government spending on toilets and sanitation augers well for Indian Hume Pipe Co., according to Pallav Agarwal, an analyst with Antique Stock Broking Ltd. in Mumbai, who rates the pipe company a buy. It secured a dozen major work orders for water supply and sewerage projects across six states in the 2018 fiscal year, totaling 20.9 billion rupees ($300 million), Agarwal said in a July 5 report.Mumbai-based Tata Group’s steel division makes Nest-In, a modular toilet that comes with an option for a bio-digester. The company has been focusing on products for end-users, including modular housing and toilets, and in March opened public toilet blocks at rest stops along a national highway.“Private sector enterprises have to pitch in to make the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan successful,” said Prabhat Pani, head of partnerships and technology at Tata Trusts, which owns two-thirds of Tata Sons, the apex company of Tata Group.

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NEW DELHI: The government on Tuesday sought parliament approval to inject Rs 980 crore ($142.87 million) in ailing national carrier Air India during the current fiscal year, after efforts to find a buyer for its 76 per cent stake in the carrier failed.The government has "sought funds for infusion of equity in Air India under (its) turn around plan," a statement tabled in Lok Sabha said.To fund the capital infusion in Air India and other sectors, the government has sought parliament's approval for an additional net spending of 59.51 billion rupees, on top of the budgeted Rs 24.42 lakh crore for 2018/19.India last month shelved a plan to sell a majority stake in the beleaguered airline due to lack of interest from bidders, in the latest setback in its ambitious efforts to rescue the carrier that has been kept afloat for years using taxpayer funds.The sale was also key to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's plans to help keep the fiscal deficit at 3.3 per cent of GDP, a goal already under pressure from giveaways to farmers and other welfare benefits ahead of the 2019 national elections.An Air India source told Reuters on Monday that it had sought Rs 2,121 crore ($309 million) of additional equity from the government for 2018/19 to make pending payments to its vendors.Junior Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha had said last month the government will continue to support the loss-making airline's financial requirements while it works on alternatives. The minister didn't give a specific timeline for a new plan.Air India, which employs some 27,000 staff, said this month it was seeking a short-term loan of Rs 1,000 crore ($148 million) so it can continue day-to-day operations.The carrier had debt worth Rs 48.781 crore ($7.16 billion) as of March 31, 2017.

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Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) today bagged 20 per cent of the Rs 2,500 crore global tender by the Indian Railways to supply long rails, its Chairman Naveen Jindal today said.The national transporter had invited the global tender for procuring around 4.87 lakh metric tonnes of rails to meet the shortfall of supply from the state-run Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL).This is the first time in three decades that rail procurement has been opened for the private sector.JSPL Chairman Jindal, during a conference here on 'Steel Scenario: Today and Tomorrow', informed that his company has won 20 per cent of the tender floated by the Railways."We got the order for the rail.... We have been in business since 2003. After 15 years, for the first time, we are amongst the one ... As only the second Indian producer (after SAIL), we have got 20 per cent of the order," Jindal said during the conference where Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh stressed on the need for participation of Indian companies in major infrastructure projects.Sources said that the value of the order bagged by JSPL comes to about Rs 536 crore.The financial bids for the order were opened last week in which seven foreign steel companies and JSPL from India had submitted its bids.JSPL was the only Indian steel maker in the fray, and was expected to get an assured order of 20 per cent under the 'Make in India' clause."It is a historic moment for the company. We were trying for long. It is a proud moment for India. We will start supplying soon," Jindal said after the conference.N A Ansari, CEO, JSPL Steel Business said the company would dispatch the first consignment in August.JSPL is the only private company that produces rails in India. It was already supplying rails to various countries like Iran and Bangladesh.The company has a capacity to produce about 1 million tonne per annum (MT) of rails at its Raigarh facility.The foreign entities, which participated in the global tender are Sumitomo Corporation, Angang Group International, Voestalpine Schienen, East Metals, CRM Hong Kong, British Steel France Rail and Atlantic Steel.Till now, the national transporter was procuring rails from government-owned SAIL.It decided on an extra global tender after anticipating that SAIL would not be able to supply the 7,17,000 tonnes required for 2017-18 and 2018-19, as estimated at that time.The Indian Railways is looking at 4,000 km of track renewal in each of the next two financial years, 2018-19 and 2019-20. Its estimated cost for 2018-19 is a little above Rs 10,000 crore.

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We would not like to give any particular guidance but the 14% growth in Q1 is in part driven by the effects of a lower base, Vivek Gambhir, MD & CEO, Godrej Consumer, tells ET Now.Edited excerpts:Volume growth of 14% is very impressive. How much of that is because of the GST base effect and how much is real demand? We are very happy that the recovery is underway and the platform is set for a much stronger growth for the remaining quarters. On a two-year CAGR basis, our volume growth was in the highest single digits and on a one year basis, it is 14% growth. Even if you strip away the effects of a low base quarter, growth is trending towards the right direction and our hope is that if this momentum continues, this will be a year of double digit volume growth. Do you think you can do better than 14% on domestic volume growth? We would not like to give any particular guidance but the 14% growth is in part driven by the effects of a lower base. That impact would no longer be then the quarter’s head. Certainly, our hope would be that the industry should get to a low double digit volume growth and our efforts would be to try and get towards 13% to 14% volume growth for the year as a whole. Though it has not been as robust when it comes to Africa, Middle East or US regions, what would you attribute that to? Is it just a fraction of the currency movement or is it something more to that? We have been very pleased with the recovery in Indonesia, The recovery is underway. We regained some of the share that we had lost over the course of last year. A lot of good building blocks have been put into place. While the economy remains challenging, we are hopeful of a much stronger year from Indonesia this year. In Africa, the first quarter was relatively on the softer side, primarily driven by very weak macroeconomic conditions in South Africa. Our West Africa business and our East Africa business did quite well. Having said that, though the team is putting in a lot of corrective actions in place to deal with the macroeconomic flux and the second half of the year should be much better for Africa both on a top line and a bottom line basis. We always tend to focus on growth and volume dispatch numbers and where the volume growth is coming from but look at the other side of the equation. What has been the cost savings and what has been the margin expansion which you have enjoyed because of GST? Do you think that one-time GST margin expansion is in the price or is that an ongoing process and incrementally will keep on increasing every quarter? We have seen some very good benefits from GST as we have passed on some of the pricing benefits to our consumers. That has led to a better demand and better operating leverage. At the same time, we are also seeing benefits in terms of logistics and transportation. But it is still early days. There is still more work to be done in terms of reconfiguring a supplier and a manufacturing network. Over the next one or two years, we do expect to see continued benefits from the GST implementation. Also as ease of business improves and the playing field gets more levelled, some of the smaller, less organised players will find it difficult to do business. We do expect share gains to be derived by the larger players and over the next one or two years, GST will continue to provide us with more incremental benefits. Which are some categories where you have gained market share because of unorganised sector moving towards organised sector? Which are categories where you would say that you have gained a market share purely because of your product profile? Across the board, our share gains have come from a combination of various factors new innovations, product launches, effective micro marketing and genuinely stronger execution. Having said that, it is anecdotal largely because the data is difficult to fully capture our belief whether some of the share gains in the soap segment in particular have come from share shifts from smaller unorganised players to more organised players. Are you optimistic because we will get into the festive season come October. Diwali being in November this year, from a demand perceptive, things will only look up then, especially consumption driven by the rural economy? We are very optimistic that demand will look better in the quarters ahead. A lot of the indicators in building blocks are in place. As you mentioned, in Q1, our urban growth was about 13%, rural growth was around 17%. We expect rural growth at about 1.4 to 1.5 times urban growth on the back of remonetisation. With the settling of the GST implementation and the impact of some of the government’s efforts to stimulate the economy, we are quite hopeful that demand will further improve in the quarters ahead.

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BMW is joining Daimler and Audi, both of which have car plants in Hungary.

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By Harshal Dewangan

OnePlus 6 was the best-selling model in premium segment followed by S9 Plus and OnePlus 5T.

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By Harshal Dewangan

The MacBook Air is expected to pack a Retina display and be priced in line with current variants.

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By Harshal Dewangan

Twitter to remove suspicious accounts which repeatedly post abusive comments on livestreams.

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By Harshal Dewangan

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) Chairman R S Sharma — who accepted the dare on Twitter to make his Aadhaar number public and then challenged hackers to show how they could harm him due to this — says he hopes this would put an end to the scaremongering so that the common people could benefit from the technology and go about their lives in peace. "Would it be too much to expect an honest admission of these facts from the so-called hackers or critics of Aadhaar?" Sharma wrote in an article in The Indian Express. "One interesting hack was to deposit one rupee in my account through the marvel of a system called UPI, which has been built by our country to enable financial inclusion on the scale we need. The world is in awe of this technology. But if you define crediting a rupee to an account as hacking, well more people might be happy to be hacked. In the last two days, there have been hundreds of attempts at false authentication from UIDAI servers and not even a single one of them has succeeded. Thus far I have not lost the challenge and I’m very confident that I will not. Yes, some distress may be caused to me by the concerted effort of so many people. However, for that Aadhaar is not to blame," he wrote.Sharma, former UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) director general, has been an ardent supporter of the Aadhaar programme, vouching for the safety of the system, and dispelling privacy concerns over Aadhaar even during his current tenure as Trai chief. While many on Twitter claimed victory over 'leaking' Sharma's personal details post the challenge, the Trai chief asserted through multiple tweets and replies that the challenge had never been about phone numbers and other information but for causing harm using knowledge of his Aadhaar number. "The truth is that people are proving their identity today through the Aadhaar online platform. This is empowering millions of people who get subsidies into their account or obtain other benefits. (People are also providing a copy of their Aadhaar cards to various service providers, though this is neither required nor desirable.)," Sharma wrote in the article. On Sunday, ethical hackers — including Elliot Alderson, Pushpendra Singh, Kanishk Sajnani, Anivar Arvind, and Karan Saini — pointed out that nearly 14 items had been leaked so far. This includes Sharma's mobile numbers, residential address, date of birth, PAN number, voter ID number, telecom operator, phone model, and Air India frequent flyer ID.But Sharma says the hackers got the details through Google search and 'social engineering' and not with the knowledge of his Aadhaar number. "You have found information about me that other users could have obtained by a determined Google search without the benefit of knowing the Aadhaar number. Having failed to penetrate the UIDAI’s system, you have tried to hack my email accounts (unsuccessfully) and to subscribe me to a large number of services. Many of these services take reasonable precautions and have sent me innumerable OTPs in their attempt to authenticate my ID. That’s been a waste on their part and a waste of my time. Your time is wasted too, but apparently you don’t care," Sharma wrote.

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In most cases, it has been a win for the incumbents who have been alive to the risk and have grabbed the opportunity, Aditya Narain, Head of Research, Institutional Equities, Edelweiss Securities, tells ET Now. 65209324 65191921 65175874 Edited excerpts: Is it looking good for corporate banks or is this looking good because of the base? After one quarter, we realise that the hole only has got deeper. There are two ways of looking at it. One is in terms of the current asset quality cycle and this is reflective of the fact that you have reached the bottom or are reaching the bottom and that incremental stresses have already been captured or they are diminished. In that sense, this is very illustrative of what has happened. The second part is when are these guys are going to be ready to go and put out money. When they have the risk appetite to go and lend is really the next phase that you need to look at and the jury is out on that. Most of these people have had a really rough ride over the last couple of years and risk appetite often comes back a little slowly. That is going to be the challenge rather than the numbers suddenly deteriorating in any material manner going forward. Did you think that they would manage to get that gumption because someone on the Street believes it may not be PSBs because they are going to tighten their purse strings further and that share could actually be taken away by NBFCs? That is absolutely my point. It is one thing to say that the asset cycle is ending. There is a story there. You have seen some response in terms of stocks. You will see more of it. The second bit is do they have the appetite to go out and lend? Also, where do they lend? They obviously have some appetite but if it is going to be completely at the top end where there is no margin, it is not going to have the same impact in terms of stocks. You have to think about how you are going to play rather than that the asset quality cycle is done. A large part of that will depend on corporates wanting to borrow and which has not come through? Yes in any case, you are right. But that is something where the change in risk appetite has been more gradual. Risk appetite has tended to build up a little bit. There is a little bit more appetite there but the reality is it has to be matched from a supplier side also. If they are going to stay out, then it is the private banks who have the appetite and who are actually going to get a disproportionate share. In two-wheelers, the cycle may be great but there is fight for market share. Within the four-wheeler space, there is talk of electric vehicles and the disruption it could have. For the commercial vehicles, there are axle loading norms which in the short term will ensure that demand will remain subdued. Is the near and medium-term outlook looking slightly shaky for the sector across the board? If you were to look at an extended cycle, where you need to be really watchful about competition is when you have new entrants or people who want to change their positioning entirely. That is not the case as far as two-wheelers is concerned. It is a fairly consolidated market. You had this problem three-four years ago when Honda was coming in. As far as the four-wheelers is concerned, Maruti continues to be dominant. There is simply not enough disruption going on in that space. As far as the CV space is concerned, you could see a little bit of it again but it is basically a two-player or a three-player market. While you can have a quarter or two in terms of disruptive pricing or disruptive strategies, these disruptions do not sustain for too long in an oligopolistic kind of structure. They happen when the market is tending to widen. In the NBFC space and housing finance space, you could have a lot of distortion. There is a possibility that you have new players who are going from zero to wanting to get to two or four. They can try and sustain it a lot. In segments where you have a fairly well entrenched competitive landscape, disruptive pricing seldom goes on for an extended period of time. Bajaj Auto historically has been a profit- and margin-conscious company. They have gone on record saying they were not there for market share. They wanted to be India’s most profitable two- wheeler company. Rajiv Bajaj in the past has said that his margins at 21% were very good. The same guy comes out and says sorry I would do whatever I can to regain market share. Eicher has been the darling of everyone and now Harley says that I am going to come and hit you on the same turf, even BMW. So, within the two-wheeler space, there is competition and there are new entrants. But as I said, when you have relatively limited players, it is unlikely that two players are going to drag themselves completely down into a ditch… Will you be a buyer in autos? Yes. In the two-wheeler space we are more neutral. We want the dust to settle down but if you ask me whether it is going to be as competitive four to eight quarters down the line as it is expected to be upfront, first of all, I would say no. Second, in these spaces, because brands and products are more entrenched, the impact can be somewhat limited and is going to be a test of the brand and the product. So, obviously, the next couple of quarters is going to be a little tense. But I will be surprised if this extends for an extended period of time. You will have a two-four quarter period when they will try. If it works, then you will have some kind of a base reset. If it does not, then they revert to normal.One of the darlings of the market, the hottest sector till about six months back was aviation. We always talk about the fact that irrespective of what crude is doing, some of these aviation companies have not been able to adjust pricing according to the spike in crude prices. What happens to aviation now which was being looked at as a quasi consumption play? Aviation is something that is very influenced by the external environment. It is a volatile consumption play rather than a pure consumption play as seen in the Indian context. To that extent, you have to be watchful about the external developments.If you compare the competitive landscape in aviation vis-à-vis two wheelers, it is very different. Here the competitive landscape is such that it allows you to go down a lot but caps how much you can effectively charge. This is more a volatile kind of consumption play and you have to be cognisant of the external environment. Is it avoidable right now? Right now, those prices have taken a beating but unless you have a greater sense of where crude is going, it does become a little bit of a challenge. If this was a two-player market, it would be a different story. The demand has actually been very resilient even as prices have gone up a little bit. The traffic numbers have actually continued to be good but people are taking it on the jaw when it comes to the profitability that is there. This is something that is a little bit more cyclical. Consumption is a demand side, profitability is the external side for this one. We Have a Preference for IT LargecapsAre IT and pharma the definitive alpha opportunities right now in the market? We have been very bullish on the IT space for the last two quarters or so. This is really a three-four year trend and it is going to sustain. We are very clear that what will happen within the sector is that business will tend to shift to the larger businesses and the large caps and the smaller ones. We have a distinct preference for larger ones like Infosys over midcap stocks where we believe there is a certain amount of overvaluation. You prefer Infosys to TCS as well? Why? There is a valuation gap, there is a catch up game that is effective. Purely on valuation parameter? Valuation and a certain amount of catch up in terms of business momentum. To some extent, IT is a little bit more of beta simply because the whole sector has got a huge amount of tailwind and there we prefer the larger caps to the midcaps. As far as pharma is concerned, it is a little bit more alpha there. I do not think it is necessarily a sectoral tailwind. There still remains fundamental challenges as far as the US market is concerned, but there are specific stock opportunities like Dr Reddy’s where they are lined up in terms of their product profile.Reliance is up more than 10% after the AGM and now everyone is saying they are trying to achieve what Tencent has achieved globally by becoming an AI company. Are markets right in giving the extra PE multiple or the perception benefit to Reliance? In many senses, Reliance is falling in a very sweet spot and we have been pretty bullish on the stock for the last year and a half. That has played through but the interesting thing is the old business is not getting rusty. The cash is coming and at an incremental pace from the older businesses that are continuing to expand on new platforms. The sweet spot lies there. In between, the cash that had been invested in telecom is now actually looking after itself fairly well. Getting on to that oil data in a new oil kind of economy, AI is the option on it. If you get that backbone going, it looks after itself and doing everything that they promised.It is a sweet spot if you say that the move is on the back of all the AI talk. I would say it has run ahead of itself but if you were to combine the fact that the old business, even though a lot of it is new, is generating a huge amount of cash; if you look at the invested business which is telecom and that is getting decent revenue numbers and traction. AI is more in the option value that they are seeking having created the platform as far as the data economy is concerned.Leaders Get All Growth & Profitability Right now, there is a disproportionate amount of premium which some of the consumer names and private banks are enjoying. The second one is a mega trend. About 15 years ago, if you bought into private banks, you hit a homerun. 10 years ago, it was retail managed NBFCs that made you rich. What do you think will work for next three years and what is the mega trend in the making for next five years? Market leadership is really going to be the defining feature of businesses that do better and generate higher profitability. Largecaps or midcaps, wherever you have market leadership, you are going to get disproportionate growth and profitability. That is really the mega trend. Give me an example. All the market leaders – be it consumer, banks or automobiles are market leaders and tend to grow faster. It is being able to do so on its own profitability. You attribute that to scale, brand and efficiency, but effectively a lot of that is coming through and that is the key that you really need to look at over the next couple of years. But you yourself are betting on Infy not TCS? Aditya Narain: Between large businesses, you have to balance between valuation and between… Number one and two? Yes. By market leadership, I do not mean number one. The top three or four in every sector are what really going to count, and it is not whether it is a largecap or it is a smallcap. You can have a lot of smallcaps that look very attractive but are number 15th in their sector. Be a little more watchful about the valuation. Even if they get a lot of growth rather than a number two who is actually a very small player. But the fact is he is meaningful in that market. Are L&T and ACC examples of that? Absolutely. L&T is a classic case that business will move towards there. Why is not the market giving them value then? It is giving them a fair amount of value relative to a lot of the others. It is a question has a stock moved enough or not? Has it been valued up for a while? Are they getting a disproportionate share of every business that they are entering? I think they are. Instead of market leadership, we are using the word disruption that is challenging the market leaders. A lot of market leadership patterns which are intact and where we thought they had a moat around them and nothing is going to change are getting disrupted by a range of products, services and technology offerings. That is very valid but disruption by a new player entirely, whether in entertainment (Netflix, Balaji) or consumption goods (Patanjali), most of the market leaders are agile and have actually gone into these spaces themselves.They have the basic flow, they have the cash and it is not very hard to get into a disruptive business when you can hire people and technologies off the floor. It can be a Tesla kind of a product but all the auto manufacturers are also getting into the same thing. Tesla might have changed the way the world looks at things, there may have been disruptors but other than a few global guys, for the rest, it has been a win for the incumbents who have been alive to the risk and have grabbed the opportunity. Look in the media space. Anything that is net based or YouTube based, all the existing guys have become very strong or have entered new segments very aggressively. Patanjali was big but the Ayushs of the world are all coming back very aggressively. It is true. Volume growth is back for Lever’s and Britannia. Yes. Do you think Airtel has managed to do it in the telecom space? Effectively they have also come back very strongly in that space. So, there is not a standalone differentiator who has been able to disrupt the whole business in a meaningful manner. Disruptors end up being monocline and invariably they are back to some extent with cash but not by the same amount of cash and to some extent they invariably lack the experience in that space.The peak of disruption by a new player has more or less happened. You are getting plenty of existing guys who do not want to necessarily disrupt and kill their own business at the possibility of a new business but all of them are there in that new business space. That is why you are tending to see that the big boys are continuing to get a little bigger and market shares have not changed in a lot of these spaces. Nor have opportunities gone up. You have a Paytm, which has come up in a particular manner but again there are those three-four names in most of the other spaces where the incumbent, who has been ready to change and has managed to make a reasonable foray into these areas. A lot of businesses are thinking like this now. When you talk about Reliance’s AGM being about AI, it gives you a sense of the fact that this is a refining company which is talking AI because that is why they see the disruption. They see that they have made the investments and they should be leading it or at least being part of it in a meaningful manner. What about the overall market construct? The micro is definitely improving. Besides earnings, there has been a recent bout of correction as well. But the macros continue to be challenging -- be it currency, be it crude. Tomorrow is policy day and we may have an interest rate hike as well? We see the market in a range of about 10500 to 11500 on the Nifty. We have visualised it as a half circle because the micro has come half circle from being bad to beginning to look good and the macro has actually tended to reverse and is somewhere in the middle.At some level, it is very well balanced and that can explain why the markets have been weak a month ago because the macro was looking like it was going to go full circle right and has actually arrested itself and it is hanging around somewhere there whereas the micro actually is getting more convincing.In the backdrop of elections, this is a fair range for the market. For the range to change, the macro has to fall back quite a bit and start heading much lower. For it to hit much higher, you got to have the macros suddenly saying okay this is it, the currency pressure is over, the interest rate pressure is over and a year and a half down the line, you are going to be where you were six months down the line. Otherwise, it is reasonably well balanced.In the last couple of weeks, there was a little bit of a tailwind from the micro and again a couple of weeks back, there was a little bit of tailwind or at least the easing of headwinds on the macros.

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