Business News

India's diversified entity ITC plans to open more hotels overseas with neighbouring countries and the Middle East as primary target markets after ope...

Private sector lender Axis Bank on Wednesday reported a net profit of Rs 7,129 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2024. The bank had report...

The Indian IT services sector is staring at a second consecutive year of muted revenue growth due to modest increase in tech...

Expanding the scope of its hearing in the Patanjali Ayurved case, the Supreme Court on Tuesday took a stern view of misleadi...

Reliance Industries Ltd has got government approval for making additional investments in developing gas reserves in its KG-D...

Reliance Industries Ltd on Monday reported an almost flat March quarter net profit, while its annual earnings hit a record h...

India's largest telecom operator Reliance Jio on Monday posted a 13 per cent year-on-year rise in its standalone net profit at Rs 5,337 crore in March quarter. Its revenue from operations for Q4FY24 came in at Rs 25,959 crore, up 11 per cent over the year-ago period. The net profit was pegged at Rs 5,337 crore for just-ended quarter, up from Rs 4,716 crore in the fourth quarter of FY23, which translated into a 13.16 per cent increase.

The global landscape of wealth is ever-evolving! After a year of record wealth creation, most richest people on the globe saw their net worth rise sharply in FY 2023-24. Towards the end of last month, Forbes unveiled the top echelons of affluence – the ten individuals who reign supreme on the world's wealthiest list. India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani also features in this elite list of the world’s richest people.

Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency Ltd (IREDA) has opened an office in GIFT City at Gandhinagar which will specialise in providing debt options denominated in foreign currencies to facilitate natural hedging and significantly reduce the financing costs for green hydrogen and renewable energy manufacturing projects, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy said on Thursday.

Just ahead of its mega FPO opening to public investors, Vodafone Idea (VIL) has announced closure of its anchor book allocation, raising about Rs 5,400 crore from marquee global as well as domestic investors, according to a statutory filing by the telco. This could be the third-largest anchor book after One 97 Communications and Life Insurance Corporation (LIC).

In an abrupt move, Arjun Mohan, who was elevated as the embattled edtech firm Byju CEO just about seven months back, has quit to pursue other opportunities, the company confirmed on Monday.The company's Co-founder and CEO Byju Raveendran will take a more hands-on approach in spearheading the daily operations of the company after Mohan's resignation, who will be part of the edtech firm in an "external advisory role".

After facing significant flight disruptions recently, Vistara CEO Vinod Kannan on Thursday told the airline staff that the "worst is behind us" and operations have already stabilised. Pilot woes have forced the Tata Group airline to temporarily cut down capacity by 10 per cent, affecting about 25-30 flights daily. Kannan also said it has been a "learning experience".

Indian brands are turning cautious with their retail expansion. Hence, the leasing in the sector is expected to sustain at 6-6.5 million square feet in 2024, according to the latest report by the commercial real estate firm CBRE. The saturation follows the remarkable growth in 2023, as brands absorbed a little over 7 million sq ft. The supply environment in terms of retail space like malls and high streets is also expected to be stable in the current year. By the year-end, 5-6 mn. sq. ft. of investment-grade mall space will become operational in tier-I cities.

The country is in the midst of a real estate upcycle, yet the pace of new project launches has slowed down in the top four cities. The number of launches went down by 2% in Mumbai and 4% in Ahmedabad in the January-March quarter of 2024. National Capital Region (NCR) and Hyderabad showed a marginal 3% and 1% respectively, as per data launched by Knight Frank India. But, that’s only half the story.

Coffee shipments from India rose 13.35 per cent to 1,25,631 tonnes during January-March period of this year on higher demand for Robusta coffee, according to the official data. The country had exported 1,10,830 tonnes of coffee in the same period in 2023. India, Asia's third-largest producer and exporter, grows Arabica and Robusta varieties of coffee.

Online food delivery platform Swiggy has announced that it now delivers to tourists staying on houseboats on Dal Lake in Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir. The company has partnered with Shikara operators who will assist local delivery partners to deliver to the doorsteps of the houseboats. This opens up new opportunities for restaurants to reach customers in unique locations.

Indians have gotten habituated to fishing out their phones instead of cards, and that’s been fuelling a remarkable increase in UPI payments. Unlike their uppity cousins (credit cards), debit cards have been losing out on transaction value and volume. But all’s not lost for these ubiquitous cards. People seem to ‘still’ rely on debit cards for large-sized purchases, as per data by Worldline’s India Digital Payments Report.

Even as Indians’ love for buying homes refuses to die down, institutions seem to have a contra view of the real estate sector. In the Jan-March quarter, institutions poured $1 billion into the sector — which is a 40% drop as compared to the same quarter last year, says a report by Colliers.

Bidding to reduce their reliance on the exorbitant tankers — a necessary step after the exhaustion of half the city’s groundwater-fed borewells — many residential societies have begun innovating water-saving techniques, with varying degrees of success. However, for the several businesses and industries littering the metropolitan town, it seems like dark days are looming.

The era of ‘sensible shoes’ might be behind us, as sports shoes are picking up pace. As per brokerage reports, sports and athleisure sales can grow anywhere between 13-15% compounded annual growth rate for the next 8-11 years — as dressing styles evolve. Sports and athleisure (S&A) footwear growth is structural, says Goldman Sachs. “Demand for the athleisure footwear segment is being driven by the rising acceptance for casual clothing at workplaces, a trend that started post-Covid,” says the Goldman Sachs report.

Cities like Amritsar, Varanasi, Madurai, Puri, Guruvayur, etc. are leveraging their unique culinary traditions and local fashion expertise to give tourists a taste of town beyond spirituality. India’s retail boom has reached its most key religious centres too. There is a Spykar store in Somnath, while Shirdi’s tourists can now shop for FabIndia kurtas. You can spot a Blackberrys outlet in Bodh Gaya, and a Zudio in Varanasi.

K-pop and K-dramas have ushered in a new trend of K-beauty regimens, which have picked up across India too over the last decade. But it’s not the only Asian beauty trend that’s making inroads in this fast-growing market. Japanese beauty companies are also making a beeline for the Indian market to cash in on the ‘natural ingredient’ trend.