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1.Housing.com CEO Gives Away Rs 200 crore Stake to Employees
A week after withdrawing his resignation, Housing.com Chief Executive Rahul Yadav in a surprise move decided to allot all his personal holdings in the company worth Rs 150-200 crore to the employees.
Rahul Yadav has decided to allot all his personal shares worth Rs 150-200 crore to the employees of Housing.com who number 2,251, the housing portal said in a late evening statement.
I’m just 26 and it’s too early in life to get serious about money.
2.Tatas Bet on Innovation With $2.6 bn R&D spend – TOI
In what could be the highest research and development (R&D) expenditure by an Indian conglomerate, the salt-to-software Tata Group spends Rs 16,000 crore, or $2.6 billion, on innovations as the Cyrus Mistry-led enterprise bets big on new technologies to boost growth.
The diversified Indian multinational spends 2.5% of its revenue on R&D, which is much higher than the government’s R&D spend of 0.9% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Read the Times of India article here.
3.Flipkart Stocking up on $550 m in Fresh Funds at $16-b Valuation - ET
Flipkart is on the verge of closing a funding round Rs 3,500 crore at a of $550 million (valuation of nearly $16 billion. Two people with knowledge of the development said the funding will be closed before the month-end, with participation from existing investors. This is the first time Flipkart is raising money in 2015 after frenetic fund-raising last year,
– as per Economic Times.
Tiger Global, the largest investor in India’s top online marketplace, is leading the round with $100 million. The other investors in the company include Qatar Investment Authority , DST Global, GIC, Naspers, Accel Partners and Steadview Capital.
Read the rest of the Economic Times article here.
4.Nitesh Estates Buys Pune Mall from Israeli Co for Rs 250 cr
Nitesh Estates has bought the one million sq ft Plaza Centre Mall in Pune from Israeli firm Elbit Imaging in a deal valued at Rs. 250 crore. Talks had been going on for over a year as the companies couldn’t agree on a valuation.
The mall is in Pune’s upmarket Koregaon Park area but it has not been doing very well since it became operational in 2012. Initially, it got its mix of tenants wrong by putting in too many high-end brands.
Read the rest of the Economic Times article here.
5.Govt Clears NTPC, IOC Stake Sale, May Mop up Over Rs 13k cr –PTI
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved proposals to divest its 5 per cent stake in state-owned NTPC and 10 per cent in Indian Oil (IOC), which may fetch the government over Rs 13,000 crore at current market price.
The proposed share sale of 5 per cent in NTPC would fetch the government Rs 5,565 crore while that of 10 per cent in IOC would bring in Rs 7,932 crore. Thus, the stake sale in both companies would help the government mop up over Rs 13,000 crore.
6.India Crosses a Billion Telephone Numbers in April – BS
The number of telephone connections in India crossed one billion at the end of April. India is behind China, which had 1.28 billion mobile subscribers and 246.94 million fixed-line subscribers at the end of February.
Though we crossed the one-billion-connection mark in April, we have to also look at the numbers in a different way as many subscribers hold multiple SIMs.
– said Rajan Mathews, director-general of the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) to Business Standard.
He added many Indians remained unconnected in remote villages and in the Naxal-affected parts of the country, where mobile services were yet to reach.
Read the rest of the Business Standard article here.
7.India Underperforms in BRICS Pack – BS
India has fallen from among the best-performing in emerging markets last year to the only one in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) pack which has given negative returns for the year.
Brazil is up 13.6 per cent, Russia is up 21.4 per cent and South Africa by 9.2 per cent. The first two had negative returns in 2014 and South Africa a gain of six per cent. The biggest gainer is China, up 35.3 per cent. India, in comparison, is down 0.9 per cent, after a year in which India gave 30 per cent return, with many individual stocks up multiple times.
A combination of prices of commodities such as oil, adverse currency movements and unfavourable local factors have made India less of an investor favourite in 2015 than last year.
Read the rest of the Business Standard article here.
8.Reliance Jio Infocomm raises $750 million – Livemint
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (R-Jio) on Wednesday said it has raised $750 million (around Rs.4,815 crore) from a consortium of nine banks to finance goods and services procured from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd andAce Technologies Corp., two of its main vendors.
The company is setting up a country-wide telecom network set to provide high-speed Internet connectivity, communication services and various other digital services in areas such as education, healthcare, security, financial services, government-citizen interfaces and entertainment.
Read the rest of the article here.
9.HSBC Cuts India Ratings to “Underweight”
In the first major downgrade for Indian markets in the past one year, global brokerage HSBC today changed its stance on the country to “underweight”, saying corporate earnings may remain muted, monsoon could be weak and odds are against further rate cuts.
HSBC further said that India has become the second most expensive and one of the most over-owned markets in Asia, after a strong rally on the back of reform optimism generated by the Modi government over the past one year.
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