Housing sales up 6% during Jul-Sept in nine big cities: PropEquity

Housing sales rose by 6 per cent during July-September in nine major cities at 51,142 units on demand recovery post demonetisation, new real estate law and GST impact on the real estate market, according to PropEquity data.

Nine cities tracked by real estate data, research and analytics firm PropEquity include Gurgaon, Noida, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Thane and Chennai.

Launches of new homes grew by 12 per cent to 32,870 units during the third quarter of 2018 calendar year.

"In the last one year, prices have corrected and the realty market has started to somewhat revive. With festive season coming up, developers will dole out discounts, finance schemes and freebies to push housing demand further," said Samir Jasuja, founder and managing director of PropEquity.

Automakers offer discounts, schemes to woo buyers during festive season

.

Passenger vehicle makers are pulling all stops to woo buyers with attractive schemes and offers this festive season that began with Navratra on Wednesday after the dry spell of Shraadh. The period of festivals till Diwali is critical for auto companies as they account for almost a third of their annual sales. The sales push this year comes in a market that has seen demand sputter amid rising petrol prices, high-interest rates and floods in some states. Not leaving anything to chance, automakers are offering schemes even on best-selling models that are relatively new in its life-cycle.

In Maruti Suzuki’s case, Mumbai buyers can avail benefit up to Rs 25,000, including exchange bonus and accessories on the company’s best-seller Baleno. Similarly, Hyundai Motor India too is offering benefits up to Rs 40, 000 on the new Verna.

Consumers of the new Honda Amaze can avail extended warranty worth Rs 12,000 for the fourth and fifth year. Even Mahindra XUV500 customers can benefit up to Rs 36,000. Even Toyota Yaris is also offering to grant profit worth Rs 20,000 as an exchange bonus.

Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal may buy 10% in Ola for $100 mn: report

Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal is in talks with Ola to invest about $100 million for a 10% stake in the cab hailing major.

Bansal will be buying new shares in the company, according to sources close to the development. The purchase may also include a small secondary component where he buys a part of shares held by some investors.

This will be the largest personal investment for Bansal, who has several early-stage bets under his hood.

In the past, he had invested in learning platform Unacademy, news app Inshorts and electric scooter-maker Ather Energy, to name a few companies. The potential deal suggests Bansal wants to remain clued into the country's thriving internet entrepreneurial ecosystem, after he moved out of Flipkart, the e-commerce behemoth he co-founded in 200

Taxiing into new zones: Soon, Uber to deliver grocery at your doorstep

Global ridesharing major Uber might soon move into the burgeoning grocery delivery space. After launching its food delivery service in India Uber Eats almost three years back, sources close to the firm said Uber might launch a few pilots for grocery delivery in India as early as next year.

The development comes soon after its global Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi during an event in Los Angeles said the company moving towards grocery delivery after food is the next logical step in the evolution of the Eats vertical. The grocery vertical would be added to the Uber Eats app.

“With Eats, we’re getting into the business of moving food around. I think this product of delivering great quality food to you at home in 30 minutes or less is magical and is going to move into grocery in a way that’s fundamental and a lot more people are going to be eating at home… you can absolutely see grocery as being an adjacency,” he said at the international event.

Eli Lilly plans expansion, looks to grow presence in Indian market

Eli Lilly will bring its pipeline of oncology and diabetes drugs to India as it looks to grow its presence in the market. The US-headquartered drug maker which has been relying on partnerships to sell its drugs in India, on Wednesday launched its patented rheumatoid arthritis drug Olumiant that they plan to market on their own.

In the last three years, it has launched eight products while in the last 22 years of its presence in the country it launched 10 products (molecules and molecule variants).

The US-headquartered company has a pipeline of seven molecules that are currently in phase III clinical development and around ten are in phase II clinical testing. Eli plans to bring some of its molecules from the global pipeline to India, especially in the oncology and diabetes space.

Currently, diabetes is the largest therapy segment for Eli in India. Data from AIOCD AWACS showed that Eli had clocked a 51.4 per cent growth in sales value over the last one year (MAT September 2018). This data, however, does not include the revenue from partnerships. Luca Visini, managing director of Eli Lilly and Company, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh said that, “We want to launch drugs in any country as soon as we can.”

Foodpanda takes 2,000 seats in GoWork's co-working centre at Gurugram

Co-working operator GoWork Thursday said online food delivering platform Foodpanda has taken 2,000 seats in its centre at Gurugram.

GoWork has two co-working centres in Gurugram spread over 8 lakh square feet with a capacity of 12,000 seats.

The company was founded in June last year by Sanjeev Mahajan (Chairman), Sudeep Singh (Chief Evangelist and co-founder) and Nimit Mahajan (co-founder).

GoWork said in a statement that it has "acquired leading food-tech startup Foodpanda as a client."

Foodpanda has initially taken up 2,000 seats in GoWork's centre at Udyog Vihar in Gurugram under the 'built to suit' enterprise format, with expansion plans of up to 4,000 seats, it added.

Data privacy rules in Asia major stumbling blocks for fintech boom: Report

Data privacy rules in Asia are limiting the spread of financial technology, an industry body said on Thursday, calling on regulators to set out broad principles rather than precise rules.

Companies around the world want to make better use of the large pools of data they have to both cut costs and offer additional services. But governments and regulators in Asia and elsewhere are tightening rules on how that data is used.

"Governments in Asia say that they support fintech, and they want fintech firms to enter their market, but data privacy rules are a major stumbling block," Paul Hadzewycz, senior associate at the Asian Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (Asifma), told Reuters.

AT&T's WarnerMedia plans to launch new subscription video service in 2019

AT&T Inc is preparing to launch a subscription video service by the end of 2019 that will offer movies and TV shows from Hollywood's biggest library, as well as licensed programming from other companies and, within a year, original content, a top executive told Reuters.

The service, to be anchored by HBO, will include everything from film classics like "Casablanca" to the "Harry Potter" and "Batman" franchises to TV series "ER" and "Pretty Little Liars."

It is still in the planning phases and AT&T, the No. 2 US wireless carrier, has not yet articulated how it will be structured or how it will be staffed.

The announcement of the service delivers on a promise AT&T made in June after shareholders approved the telecom company's $85 billion purchase of Time Warner in order to make more money selling products directly to consumers rather than just go through middlemen such as cable companies.

"When we first discussed the benefits of combining WarnerMedia with AT&T, we saw the ability to create new consumer choices centered on unmatched options, value, quality, and experiences," John Stankey, WarnerMedia Chief Executive, wrote in the memo.

Why health activists are against Coca-Cola sponsoring Youth Olympics

Eleven-year-old Martin wants to become a sports star. Like Virat Kohli, Sachin Tendulkar, or Ronaldo. And make pots of money.

He will, however, never become a sportsman, because he is grossly obese. He is also addicted to fizzy cola drinks, which he has to have at every meal, starting from breakfast. He sits before the TV for endless hours, watching telecasts of the IPL, World Cups, Wimbledon and other gala international events, fantasising about his own future in sports.

Connect this boy’s lifestyle and health to the fact that the ongoing 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has the multinational soft drink giant Coca Cola as one of its main sponsors and you see how it all adds up, to trash the dreams of thousands of Martins around the world. A declaration condemning Coke’s sponsorship, released by health activists around the world, had received, at last count (August 2018) an impressive endorsement from 241 supporters (including five international associations of nutritionists as signatories) from Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, New Zealand, Colombia, El Salvador and Ecuador. The signatories demand that the multinational withdraw its sponsorship.

After failed stake sale bid, govt has new plan for Air India: Will it work?

Earlier this year, the government failed to privatise Air India when its offer to offload its 76% stake in it drew a blank. Thereafter, the Niti Aayog advised the government to first turn the national carrier around and then sell it to get a decent price.

A recent report in Business Standard, quoting unnamed government sources, carries a fairly detailed account of what the Centre wishes to do to turn Air India around.

The idea is to give it an autonomous board and empower it suitably, thus enabling it to put in place a professional management. The board already has the benefit of the advice of top industrialists who are independent directors.

The aim will be to ensure that the suitably empowered autonomous board will get the company to stop making cash losses and therefore not need further government cash support beyond the current financial year. This is sorely needed because, over the five year period from 2012 to 2017, the carrier has posted a massive loss of Rs 270 billion and received capital infusion (cash to keep it going) totalling almost Rs 240 billion.

JSW Steel output up 6% to 4.18 mn tonnes in Sep quarter; shares slump 4%

JSW Steel Thursday said its crude steel output grew 6 per cent to 4.18 million tonne (MT) during the quarter ended September 30, 2018.

The Sajjan Jindal-led company had produced 3.94 MT crude steel in July-August 2017, it said in a statement.

During the said quarter, there was a rise of 2 per cent in production of flat rolled products at 2.96 MT as against 2.89 MT in the year-ago quarter, it said.

The company also registered 17 per cent growth in the output of its long rolled products at 0.91 MT as compared to 0.77 MT it had produced in year-ago quarter, JSW Steel added.

JSW Steel is a leading integrated steel company in India with an installed steel-making capacity of 18 MTPA.

The company's plant at Vijayanagar in Karnataka is the largest single location steel producing facility in the country with a capacity of 12 MTPA.

Shares of the company were trading 3.96 per cent down at Rs 361.20 apiece on BSE.

One chairman-CEO or two separate roles, Citigroup has to decide soon

JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America Corp have placed the jobs of chairman and chief executive in the hands of one person, and now No. 3 Citigroup Inc must decide whether to follow suit.

The matter will be resolved in the next few months as the current chairman, Mike O'Neill, reaches 72, the company's retirement age for directors. Citigroup CEO Mike Corbat will soon know if he will be taking on the additional duties of chairman or working for a new boss.

"The change in the chairman is the biggest corporate governance decision at Citigroup in six years," said analyst Mike Mayo of Wells Fargo. "That's important given what we see as worst-in-class returns, efficiency and stock market valuation." Citigroup, the third-biggest U.S. bank by assets, reports third-quarter results on Friday. Investors will be watching its progress toward cost efficiency and return on equity targets, as well as revenue from its big U.S. credit card business.

Six years ago O'Neill became chairman and shortly after he led the board to replace then-CEO Vikram Pandit with Corbat.

Flipkart does not aspire to play a role in global markets: Binny Bansal

Even though it now has the backing of global retail giant Walmart, home-grown e-commerce major Flipkart says it does not aspire to play a role in global markets. It would instead continue to bet on India, where opportunities are immense.

In a fireside chat with Sudhir Sethi, founder and chairman of IDG Ventures India, on Tuesday evening, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal said that e-commerce and retail were very local businesses and it was difficult to take the model and apply outside. Calling India a land of opportunities, Bansal said the country was the last big market and there were no such markets to take the model into.

“There are too many opportunities in India to build around e-commerce, such as financial services. We want to do more around Indian customers rather than stretch ourselves to markets where competition might be more,” Bansal added.

Opening up about the US retail giant Walmart’s deal with Flipkart, Bansal said since it was not a full acquisition, the deal went quite smoothly.

Indiabulls Ventures standalone net profit declines 54.59% in Sept quarter

Indiabulls Ventures has reported consolidated net profit growth of 60.6 percent quarter-on-quarter to Rs 1.40 billion, driven by strong business from broking and financing segments.

Profit in previous quarter period stood at Rs 877 million, the company said.

Consolidated revenue during the quarter increased 38.2 percent sequentially to Rs 4.76 billion with 20 percent QoQ growth in broking business and 46 percent in financing segment.

EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) surged 45.4 percent quarter-on-quarter to Rs 309.2 crore and margin expanded by 320 basis points to 64.9 percent in Q2FY19.

However, at 14:51 hours IST, the stock price was locked in 5 percent lower circuit at Rs 374.90 despite strong earnings.

India to get free CCTV cameras under $1.5Bn 'Secure Our City' campaign

UAE based by Secure Cam IT Solutions has announced the launch of their major campaign to equip more than 1.5 million buildings worldwide with security camera solutions.

The first phase of the campaign by Secure Cam IT Solutions will be rolled out across 13 countries, starting with India and the UAE.

In India, the campaign will begin with Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. While the key focus of the campaign will initially be on major metro cities, cities from the states of Kerala and Goa will also benefit from it.

Secure Cam IT Solutions has already partnered with companies in India to execute the campaign. The company plans to enter India by the end of 2018.

"We aim to focus on the metros and a few other cities. Our idea is to secure at least one city in every country by the end of 2025. We plan to install a maximum of 10,000 cameras in each city. The total cost of the project is estimated at around  $1.5 billion," said Rijoy Thomas, Chairman and CEO of the Abu Dhabi-based Secure Cam IT Solutions.

Snapdeal has $125 million with run-time of a decade, says Kunal Bahl

It has been a roller-coaster ride for Snapdeal, the Gurugram-based online marketplace. From a valuation of $6.5 billion to backing by global investors and employing 10,000 at its peak, the Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal-led entity has seen it all.

However, the company founders claim to be finally getting its groove back. Thanks to the plan they’d put in place last year, when talks for a sale to Flipkart fell flat.

The company’s effort to reshape its business model, dubbed ‘Snapdeal 2.0’, is seen to have helped, sources said. In a turnaround of sorts, it has grown its order volume four-fold in the past 10-12 months, from a low of 35,000 daily orders in August last year to now shipping 150,000-175,000 a day.

According to a blog written by Kunal Bahl, from near-death to generating cash, it took a lot of courage, focus and discipline to turn the ship around sharply. “And, we achieved all this with a nimble 800-plus member team —in a flat, agile structure, responding in real time to external and internal needs. Healthy, rejuvenated and in control of its own destiny, Snapdeal is now sailing ahead towards brighter horizons. And, we also just moved into our brand-new, open-plan office, which means no cabins for anyone.”

Firms could lose over Rs 100 billion due to rupee fall: CARE Ratings

Firms could be incurring an additional interest outflow between Rs 106 billion and Rs 128 billion on account of rupee depreciation this financial year, according to a study by CARE Ratings.

“This is the additional burden for the corporates having borrowed funds via the ECBs (external commercial borrowing) route and is purely based on the assumption of no hedging. This could be unfavourable for corporates as the profitability of such companies will be adversely impacted,” the study, done by Madan Sabnavis, chief economist, and Sushant Hede, associate economist at the rating agency, said.

The additional interest outflow on account of the local currency, which has fallen 13.6 per cent so far this financial year, would be 1-1.3 per cent of the total interest expenses of Rs 9.3 trillion, reported by a sample of 2,700 companies for FY18, including banks

How some of India's biggest companies faltered on industrial safety

Tuesday’s explosion at SAIL’s Bhilai plant is not the first that shocked the nation, which faces serious concerns over industrial safety. One of the most recent ones include an explosion at Bharat Petroleum Corporation Mumbai refinery in August, in which 21 people were reported to be injured. Here is a recall of some major fatal incidents reported in the past few years...

Jul 27, 2005: An offshore platform of ONGC in Bombay High gutted, killed at least 4

Oct 29, 2009: Fire at IndianOil's oil depot tank holding 8,000 kl in Jaipur killed 12 and injured 200

Sep 23, 2009: Collapse of a 275-m chimney being constructed at Vedanta's Bharat Aluminium plant killed at least 45

Jun 27, 2014: A fire after a blast at a GAIL underground gas pipeline in Nagaram, Andhra Pradesh that killed 18 and injured 40

Nov 2, 2017: Explosion in a boiler at NTPC's Unchahar plant in Rae Bareli district that claimed more 45 lives

Microsoft boasts of a security win ahead of Pentagon cloud computing bids

Microsoft Corp. is on track to catch up with Amazon.com Inc. by obtaining top federal security authorizations early next year, bolstering the company’s position in the Pentagon’s winner-take-all competition for a multibillion-dollar cloud computing deal.

The software company said Tuesday that it will earn the certification required to host the government’s most sensitive and classified information -- a distinction previously held only by Amazon Web Services -- by the end of the first quarter of 2019.

Microsoft’s announcement comes just four days before tech companies submit bids for the Defense Department’s cloud contract, which is widely seen to favor Amazon. The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Bids for the project, which could last as long as 10 years and be valued at as much as $10 billion, are due on Oct. 12.

No more cyber bullying: Instagram will now use AI to detect abusive content

Instagram has added more weapons to battle cyber bullying, using artificial intelligence to scan photos for abusive content at the Facebook-owned service.

The move comes after Facebook also increased anti-harassment measures, following a survey which said young victims of online abuse feel social media firms aren't doing enough to fight the problem.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri Tuesday said artificial intelligence is being used to detect signs of bullying and then automatically flag content for review by staff from the image-oriented social network.

"This change will help us identify and remove significantly more bullying," Mosseri said in a blog post. "

It's a crucial next step since many people who experience or observe bullying don't report it." Rolling the technology out across the entire social network is expected to take a few weeks.

In another move, a filter that enables Instagram users to detect and hide bullying remarks from Instagram feeds or profiles was extended to comments on live videos, according to Mosseri.

In the spirit of inspiring people to be nice to one another, Instagram also added a camera effect which can be used to adorn images with hearts or the word "kindness" in a variety of languages.