News

Amazon joins India startup story, backs gift cards company

E-commerce giant Amazon has led a $10-million (over Rs 60-crore) funding round in QwikCilver Solutions for a stake believed to be just under 15%. The investment marks Amazon's maiden investment in India's startup ecosystem, having invested in over two dozen companies globally over the past decade.

Existing investors Helion Venture Partners and Accel Partners also participated in the fund raise of Bengaluru-based QwikCilver, which provides end-to-end gift card solutions for retailers and corporate customers.

In June, TOI had reported how the Seattle-based Amazon had begun identifying startups in the tech and internet space in India.

Confirming the fund raise, Kumar Sudarsan, founder and director of QwikCilver said: "The motivation to get Amazon on board was that they will be able to bring in best practices and global strategies to help us scale the sector to the next level." He, however, declined to comment on the quantum of funds raised and the stake that Amazon has picked up in the company.

Article

Is It The Beginning of a Success Streak Called “Make in India” for Modi?

It is not Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping or Shinzo Abe or Angela Merkel - leaders of the five most powerful countries of the world - who are most sought after at the East Asia and G-20Summits. Instead it is Narendra Modi, elected to the high office only six months back, who has received maximum requests for bilateral meetings from his counterparts and heads of state on the sidelines of East Asia, ASEAN and G-20 Summits in Myanmar and Australia later this week. South Block officials told ET that several slots have been reserved for Modi's bilateral interactions on the sidelines of the Summits in both Nay Pyi Taw and Brisbane following requests from several leaders who have expressed interest to meet the Indian PM. "As some of the leaders are common in East Asia Summit and G20, the schedule for Modi's meetings are being worked out depending on the itinerary of his counterparts," an official informed. This is Modi's first outing in both East Asia and G20 Summit and understandably there's interest among other leaders to interact with him, sources claimed. "The interest is also due to the fact that these countries want to step up economic engagement with India and they sense an opportunity under the Modi government to increase trade and investments," an official indicated. 

Article

Selling the Chinese Dream the Xi Jinping Way at APEC Summit

Chinese President Xi Jinping emerged stronger after the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which was known to have been dominated by the United States in the recent past. APEC accepted two important proposals that were pushed by China to widen its own sphere of influence. 

India, which did not attend despite being invited to join as an observer, may have to consider the implications of China's achievements at the summit. Pakistan and Bangladesh attended as observers, according to diplomats based in Beijing. Xi had invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend during their meeting in September. 

Xi clearly stole the show at the summit, with US President Barack Obama talking about accommodating China, observers said. Leaders of Asia-Pacific countries agreed to move towards a new free-trade zone strongly backed by China. The Beijing-supported Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) is regarded as a challenge to the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), the US trade pact that excludes China and Russia. Though Obama said the US-backed TPP was not meant to contain China's influence, it was clear China had created a powerful rival to it in the form of the FTAAP. "Currently, the global economic recovery still faces many unstable and uncertain factors," Xi said."Facing the new situation, we should further promote regional economic integration and create a pattern of opening up that is conducive to long-term development." 

News

Odecee, Now a Cognizant Firm Post Acquisition

In yet another acquisition, Cognizant on Wednesday said that it will acquire Odecee, a provider of digital solutions to enterprises in Australia and New Zealand region. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Significantly, this is the second acquisition made by Cognizant in the digital space, after Cognizant last month bought Cadient Group, a digital marketing agency. 

Founded in 2007, Odecee delivers enterprise mobility, web and cloud solutions to clients in the financial services, insurance, healthcare, logistics, and communications industries. "This acquisition further strengthens Cognizant's digital business transformation expertise and expands its portfolio of tools and services to help clients create digital enterprises that capitalize on new business models, drive innovative products and services, enhance workforce productivity, and improve customer expands its portfolio of tools and services to help clients create digital enterprises that capitalize on new business models, drive innovative products and services, enhance workforce productivity, and improve customer experience," Cognizant's press statement said. As part of this acquisition, approximately 150 digital specialists with expertise across enterprise mobile, web and cloud services will join Cognizant. "This acquisition also brings to Cognizant intellectual property such as Velocedee, a platform that helps centralize highly secure mobile applications and enables rapid implementation of core business processes across a wide range of mobile devices," the statement added.

News

Slowdown in Inflation Makes Case for Rate Cut before Christmas

Rapidly cooling inflation is building the case for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to cut interest rates as soon as its next monetary policy meeting on December 2, say economists. Consumer prices rose a slower-than-expected 5.5 percent on year in October, following a 6.5 percent increase in the previous month, led by a fall in local food prices. This was the slowest pace since the index was launched in January 2012. Inflation is now well below the central bank’s target of 8 percent for January 2015 and even dropped below the 6 percent target for January 2016. The data indicates "interest rate cuts are likely to come onto the agenda sooner than most currently seem to expect, perhaps even as early as the RBI’s next meeting in December," Shilan Shah, India economist at research firm Capital Economics wrote in a note. Consensus expectations are for the first rate cut to come in the second quarter of next year, according to Capital Economics. India’s benchmark repo rate has been unchanged since January, when the central bank increased it by a quarter percent point to 8 percent. Shah is not alone in his rate outlook. "The data is in line with our view that the RBI will cut rates in December," Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist and strategist, Asia ex. Japan, Crédit Agricole said in a note published after the inflation figures were released. 

Article

Infosys CEO Makes the Pitch for Moving Up From Cost Based to a Value Based Model for Indian IT Firms

More than 100 days as the chief executive of India’s second-largest information technology (IT) services company Infosys, Vishal Sikka on Wednesday said he was upset at the sector. He added there was a “better direction” the industry must look to take. Sikka, who comes from a software product background and was the chief technology officer at Germany-based SAP, said he found the IT services sector a “tale of two cities”. On the one hand there were several opportunities, but on the other there was a “depressing reality” of focus on cost arbitrage and lowering costs. “I was not deeply familiar with the services industry till recently,” Sikka said in his pre-recorded video keynote address at the CeBIT India conference in Bengaluru on Wednesday. “I find all of us in the industry in a downward spiral. It’s like a treadmill of increasingly lower cost, hiring people faster and faster, from more and more mediocre places, training people less and less, putting them into job faster and faster. I think that is a wrong direction.” Sikka added the sector should not look at “doing old things cheaper” and instead look at doing “new things”. Infosys on Wednesday said its revenue an employee would go up in two years. Though the company has said it wanted to increase revenue an employee, this is the first time it has set a horizon. Sikka made the comment while addressing the Axis Capital investors’ meet on Wednesday. “Our revenue per employee will go up from here in the next two years. If we are not able to do this, then we have a problem,” he said. At present, the revenue per employee at Infosys is around $50,000. 

Sikka also said this should be possible with several of the initiatives that the company has put in place. One of them is increasing automation and use of technologies such as artificial intelligence. He also added that the company is already working on at least 40 projects that were signed in the last 60 days in the predictive maintaince and Big Data space.

Advertising Article

Cut short the long-format ads, understand your responsibility towards the viewers

3.33. 3.53. 4.40. 7.16. Before you shut this paper and run a mile, we will have you know that this isn't a complicated math problem coming your way, but the durations of some of the ads you've been seeing of late. With our daily dose of listicles masquerading as news for our seriously short attention spans, one would think quick and easy fixes are the way to go.

The world of advertising begs to differ, though, offering a paradox. A spate of really long ads are the not-so-new kids on the block, where brands are taking the liberty to take as long as seven minutes to narrate their mostly heartwarming stories, The year is seeing a lot of the films that take their time to tell the tale, both internationally and back home.

Most recently, KitKat and Pepsi jumped on the Diwali bandwagon, and two much talked about long-format films were born. They are usually released online, making it an inexpensive medium to tell powerful stories. But with such ads clearly becoming a regular trend, we have to ask; are brands really justifying the length of their communication with stories that are compelling enough? And do they work?

Piyush Pandey executive chairman and creative director, Ogilvy & Mather India and South Asia, the man behind Fortune Oil's emotive four-minute 'Ghar ka khaana' ad, believes, "With long-format, your single responsibility is to the viewer. It's like people who make movies. A viewer of a long-format ad has made the effort to click on your film. It's not like he was sitting around watching something else and the ad came on. It's your responsibility to make sure he feels rewarded after the time spent and says 'I must share this with my friends.' I am assuming as professionals we know that we have a responsibility to the brand." 

Marketing Article

Brands go social to enhance capabilities, woo customers

It was a simple brief from the Swissheadquartered Nestle when it asked its digital agency to help build a digital culture in the organisation. The outcome has been the DAT (Digital Acceleration Team), established by Maxus at the multinational's corporate office in Gurgaon.

Reckitt Benckiser, to step up the focus on digital in India for it's key brands like Dettol and Durex, has set up a hub recently backed by sharp analytic tools to monitor conversations real-time and evaluate the sentiments around the brand on a daily basis, to feed into its content and communication pipeline.

Mindshare has The Loop; a data infused 'war room', first introduced in the US around the Super Bowl, followed up by its India launch this year. The USP of the Loop is to enable clients to take real time decisions using real time insights.

According to Ravi Rao, leader - South Asia, Mindshare, "Loop is an enabler to make individuals and teams actually scan what consumers are talking or commenting upon and consciously come out with some breakthroughs in either solving an issue, overcoming a barrier, creating an idea, developing a content strategy or real-time optimisation."

News

Fiscal Consolidation on the Radar: Jaitley Eyes 79 Sick PSUs

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s Wednesday statement that the government is open to privatizing sick public-sector undertakings seems to offer hope on 79 state-run companies that had an accumulated loss of Rs 55,656 crore in 2012-13, according to the latest available numbers. By the government’s definition, a central public-sector enterprise (CPSE) is considered sick if its accumulated loss in a financial year is equal to or more than 50 per cent of its average net worth in the four immediately preceding years, and/or if it can be termed sick by the meaning in the Sick Industrial Companies (Special Provisions) Act, 1985.

The public-sector enterprises survey for 2012-13 shows that the number of sick CPSEs, 90 in 2004-05, came down to 66 in March 2012 but again climbed to 79 in March 2013. The result for the 2013-14 survey is not yet out. The survey also shows that the number of operating CPSEs registered with the Board for Industrial & Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) was stable in 2012-13, at 44. The good part was that their accumulated loss fell from Rs 65,642 crore the previous year. The number of sick CPSEs fell, albeit marginally, during this period — from 64 to 63. According to the survey for 2011-12, the 64 sick CPSEs as of that year had a combined employee strength of 226,188.

Article

Will Raghuram End The Self-Imposed Exile on Hiking Interest Rates?

The chorus for a rate cut is unlikely to prompt Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor to take any action at the bi-monthly review of its monetary policy on December 2. "The pressure from all quarters is huge but Rajan is unlikely to respond," a senior financial-sector player said. Markets have the habit of front-loading rate cuts, and it is no exception this time. Since October 13, when the retail inflation data for September were release, yields on the 10-year benchmark bond have softened by 23 basis points to a 14-month low.

The expectation of a rate cut has also gained momentum due to softening of crude oil prices, which has fallen 14 per cent since the previous policy review on September 30. Economists say a 25-basis-point cut in interest rate at this juncture, which has already been factored in, will not boost investments all of a sudden, given the structural bottlenecks. And Rajan, who has a penchant for surprising the market, might rather go for deep rate cuts when he has inflation firmly under his control. But market players say a closer look at the numbers shows why Rajan would refuse to budge on the rate front this time. The rate of Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation has fallen 330 bps since last September. Of this decline, 185 bps has been due to softening of food prices and another 100 bps on account of falling oil prices. So, of the 330-bp fall, 285 bps is accounted for by commodity prices, which could move either way in the coming months. The decline in inflation has not been due to a demand compression.