Business

New Delhi, Sep 3 (IANS) Bollywood star Ranveer Singh has made his first startup investment in the direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand SUGAR Cosmetics, the company announced on Saturday. It, however, did not divulge the investment figure.

SUGAR Cosmetics started off as a D2C brand in 2015 and then ventured into offline trade in 2017.

Currently, it is clocking annual sales of more than Rs 550 crore with a physical presence with more than 45,000 retail touch points across the country.

"I have admired SUGAR's ability to build a tremendous fan-following over the years and I'm excited to be a part of this journey and help the brand achieve its mission of providing Indian women access to premium and quality makeup products specially formulated for them," said Singh.

In June, SUGAR Cosmetics raised $50 million in series D funding led by the Asia fund of L Catterton. The round also saw participation from existing investors: A91 Partners, Elevation Capital and India Quotient.

The new investment by Ranveer "is expected to further boost SUGAR's expansion in other potential markets," it said.

"SUGAR is the makeup of choice for bold, independent women who refuse to be stereotyped into roles and if someone shares the same DNA as ours, it is Ranveer," said Vineeta Singh, Cofounder and CEO, SUGAR Cosmetics.

"This will help supercharge our growth trajectory as we continue scaling SUGAR aggressively to build it into a large and much-loved makeup & beauty brand," added Kaushik Mukherjee, Cofounder and COO.

Ranveer's actor-wife Deepika Padukone has invested in several startups, via her investment arm KA Enterprises, like Epigamia, Nua, Blu Smart, Bellatrix Aerospace and Atomberg Technologies, etc.

--IANS
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By Venkatachari Jagannathan
Chennai, Sep 2 (IANS) The share warrants issued by a company are negotiable instruments and the holder of such warrants can exercise the option of conversion within the time frame, said a Supreme Court advocate and a company law expert said.


He said when queried about the Adani Group's steps to takeover over NDTV based on the information that is available in the public domain.

"Share warrants are negotiable instruments and the issuance of share warrants presupposes the underlying equity shares of the issuer company as per such warrants," D. Varadarajan, a Supreme Court advocate specialising in company/competition/insurance laws, told IANS.

The holder of share warrants, in this case Vishvapradhan Commercial Private Ltd (VCPL), a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd, is at liberty to exercise the option of converting the warrants into shares within the window of time frame as stated and inbuilt in the warrants, he added.

"Hence, the issuer company (in this case RRPR Holding, the investment vehicle of NDTV founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy and holding 29.18 per cent) would know prior hand and should have envisaged the contingency of conversion of share warrants into shares," Varadarajan said.

According to Varadarajan, the maximum extent of acquisition of equity shares by conversion of share warrants is premeditated by the issuing company.

"Hence, it is unconscionable to raise hue and cry on various pretext and stifle the automatic process of conversion of warrants into equity, after having enjoyed the money represented by share warrants by the issuer company by willingly issuing the warrants at the outset."

On August 23, VCPL issued a notice to RRPR Holding of its decision to convert the share warrants issued to it in 2009 into equity shares and the Adani Group issued an open offer to acquire 26 per cent stake in NDTV.

The conversion of warrants into equity would lead to Vishvapradhan Commercial gaining control of 99.5 per cent of RRPR Holding that holds 29.18 per cent stake in NDTV.

Ever since the warrant conversion notice, RRPR Holding and NDTV's founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy have been claiming that the transaction needs permission from Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Income Tax Department.

They also said the decision to convert the share warrants into equity shares in RRPR Holding by VCPL was not discussed with them.

The VCPL has asked RRPR Holding to cease and desist from repeating the misconceived and misleading statements, suggestions, inferences and assertions made by it.

The VCPL has again called upon RRPR Holding to take all necessary steps and perform its obligations as specified in the Notice, forthwith and without any further delay.

A shareholder having 26 per cent stake in a company can stop the passing of a special resolution that needs a minimum of 75 per cent of members voting in its favour.

If the share warrants of Vishvapradhan Commercial are converted to equity in RRPR Holding, then the former will control over 26 per cent stake in NDTV.

Meanwhile the share prices of NDTV continued its upward spiral on Friday to touch Rs 515.10.

"Who the share buyers are will be known only when the buyers approach NDTV for name transfer," Varadarajan said.

On August 25, NDTV in a regulatory filing had said the SEBI has restrained its Founder-Promoters Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy from accessing the securities market, and further prohibiting buying, selling, or otherwise dealing in securities, directly or indirectly, or being associated with the securities market in any manner whatsoever for a period of two years, which expires on November 26.

The NDTV has postponed its 34th Annual General Meeting to September 27 from the earlier fixed date of September 20.

Due to change in the date of the AGM, the Register of Members and the Share Transfer Book of the Company will now remain closed September 20-27 (both days inclusive), NDTV had said.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be reached at v.jagannathan@ians.in)

--IANS
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By Yashwant Raj
Washington, Sep 2 (IANS) Global coffee chain Starbucks has named Indian-born Laxman Narasimhan its next CEO.


Narasimhan, who currently heads health and hygiene company Reckitt, will join Starbucks in October and take over from its iconic interim CEO Howard Shultz in April.

Narasimhan joins the growing ranks of Indian-descent CEOs heading leading US corporate giants such as Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe, Punit Renjen of Deloitte and Raj Subramaniam of FedEx. Major former Desi CEOs include Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo and Ajay Banga of Mastercard.

The incoming Starbuck CEO studied mechanical engineering at the University of Pune and then he headed west, picking up Masters in German and International Studies from The Lauder Institute at The University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania.

"Starbucks commitment to uplift humanity through connection and compassion has long distinguished the company, building an unrivaled, globally admired brand that has transformed the way we connect over coffee. I am humbled to be joining this iconic company at such a pivotal time, as the reinvention and investments in the partner and customer experiences position us to meet the changing demands we face today and set us up for an even stronger future," said Narasimhan, adding, "I look forward to working closely with Howard, the Board, and the entire leadership team -- and to listening and learning from Starbucks partners -- as we collectively build on this work to lead the company into its next chapter of growth and impact."

He will relocate to Seattle, Washington, from London and will work closely with Shultz before taking over formally in April.

"Laxman is an inspiring leader. His deep, hands-on experience driving strategic transformations at global consumer-facing businesses makes him the ideal choice to accelerate Starbucks growth and capture the opportunities ahead of us. His understanding of our culture and values, coupled with his expertise as a brand builder, innovation champion, and operational leader will be true differentiators as we position Starbucks for the next 50 years, generating value for all our stakeholders," said Shultz.

Shultz's handpicked successor Kevin Johnson retired in April after five years and Shultz returned to take back control of the company as interim CEO and a search got underway for a long-term head, which ended with Narasimhan being announced on Thursday.

Shultz will remain a member of the Starbucks board, the company said and he will "remain closely involved with the company's reinvention and act as an ongoing advisor to Narasimhan".

Narasimhan previously worked with PepsiCo, including as global Chief Commercial Officer, as a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, before that. At McKinsey he had been focused on its consumer, retail and technology practices in the US, Asia and India.

--IANS
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San Francisco, Sep 1 (IANS) Tech giant Apple may use "hybrid" OLED technology, which incorporates rigid and flexible OLED panel materials, as part of its rumoured plans to switch to OLED technology for upcoming iPad models.

The tech giant is hesitant to rely solely on the flexible OLED technology it employs in its iPhone models since the panels tend to "crumple", and the effect is more evident as displays get bigger, MacRumors reported citing The Elec.

"When it became known that Apple plans to apply hybrid OLED to the first OLED iPad, the industry has assumed that the cause was cost reduction," the report said.

However, it is understood that there is a reason why Apple preferred hybrid OLED other than this cost reduction.

An official from the parts industry said: "Apple hated the fact that a part of the product screen could look wrinkled to the user's eyes when using a flexible OLED.

"iPhone OLED has a 5-7 inch screen, so these characteristics are not well revealed, but it is relatively noticeable in large-screen (10-20 inch) IT products."

While the hybrid OLED technology has yet to be perfected and will take at least a year to become commercially viable before it could be incorporated into an OLED iPad by around 2024, the report said, adding that both Samsung and LG are pursuing ultra-thin glass substrates measuring just 0.2 mm thick to be used with the technology, down from the current standard of around 0.5 mm.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Aug 31 (IANS) Offering seamless connections and increased opportunities for frequent fliers, Virgin Atlantic and IndiGo announced a new codeshare between the UK and India.

The codeshare partnership will mean customers booking a Virgin Atlantic ticket will be able to fly on the airline's flights from London's Heathrow to Delhi and Mumbai and connect to and fro to seven additional cities in India.

Later this year the agreement will be expanded to cover a total of 16 destinations throughout India, as well as connections onto Virgin Atlantic's extensive US network operated via London Heathrow. The agreement will allow Virgin Atlantic to sell seats to passengers connecting onto IndiGo flights.

The initial codeshare destinations in India include Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Goa, Delhi, and Mumbai. The additional destinations will include Kochi, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Pune, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Vadodara, Indore, and Visakhapatnam.

The new codeshare agreement will allow Virgin Atlantic's Flying Club members to reach their rewards faster, with opportunities to earn both Virgin Points and Tier Points available on every codeshare with IndiGo. The codeshare flights will be available this week for booking for travel beyond September 27, subject to government approval.

Juha Jarvinen, Chief Commercial Officer at Virgin Atlantic, said: "IndiGo is India's largest airline and its extensive network will offer Virgin Atlantic customers even more choice when travelling between the UK and India, as well as offering seamless connections for onward travel across our extensive US route network."

Ronojoy Dutta, Chief Executive Officer and Wholetime Director, IndiGo said, "This will not only help offer a seamless travel experience from London to as many as 16 destinations in India, but also open up international trade opportunities throughout the country via enhanced accessibility."

--IANS
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New Delhi, Aug 31 (IANS) Bloomsbury Plc which recently acquired the UKs leading independent publisher Head of Zeus (HoZ) will start selling its titles in the Indian subcontinent through its wholly owned subsidiary (Bloomsbury India) from September and will include books from its widely famous imprints Aria, Apollo, Zephyr, Aries and Ad Astra.

This will give readers in India access to bestselling HoZeus books by authors including Dan Jones, Cixin Liu, Min Jin Lee, Ben Okri, Sally Gardner, and Elodie Harper.

The India foray is in line with the globally planned roll-out of Head of Zeus books following the strategic acquisition of the leading independent publisher by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in May 2021.

Head of Zeus is an independent publisher of genre fiction, narrative non-fiction and children's books, based in London. It has published many bestsellers, won literary prizes and industry awards. Its author Cixin Liu's bestselling science fiction trilogy, "The Three-Body Trilogy", is being adapted for Netflix by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of HBO's 'Game of Thrones'.

"The recent acquisitions of publishing companies like Red Globe Press and Head of Zeus by our parent company will help us continue to expand our range in the academic, professional and trade division and support our long-term consumer growth strategy, with new high-quality authors and effective publishing across all formats, including e-book and audio," Bloomsbury India said.

Welcoming this eagerly anticipated move, Bloomsbury India Managing Director Rajiv Beri said: "Since the acquisition of Head of Zeus we have been waiting to launch their amazing list in India. The richness, diversity and uniqueness of their titles will delight all."

"I'm delighted to be working with Bloomsbury India as they take the reins of our sales and distribution in that territory," said Head of Zeus, CEO Nicolas Cheetham.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Aug 31 (IANS) Google has launched a new bug bounty programme where it will award up to $31,337 (nearly Rs 25 lakh) to researchers who spot vulnerabilities in the company's Open Source projects.

Depending on the severity of the vulnerability and the project's importance, rewards will range from $100 to $31,337.

The larger amounts will also go to unusual or particularly interesting vulnerabilities, "so creativity is encouraged," said Google while launching its Open Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Programme (OSS VRP).

As the maintainer of major projects such as Golang, Angular, and Fuchsia, Google is among the largest contributors and users of open source in the world.

Last year, Google saw a 650 per cent year-over-year increase in attacks targeting the open source supply chain.

With the addition of Google's own vulnerability reward programme (VRP), researchers can now be rewarded for finding bugs that could potentially impact the entire open source ecosystem.

The original VRP programme was one of the first in the world and is now approaching its 12th anniversary.

"Over time, our VRP lineup has expanded to include programmes focused on Chrome, Android, and other areas. Collectively, these programs have rewarded more than 13,000 submissions, totalling over $38 million paid," Google said in a statement late on Tuesday.

Google said its OSS VRP is part of "our $10 billion commitment to improving cybersecurity, including securing the supply chain against these types of attacks for both Google's users and open source consumers worldwide".

--IANS
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New Delhi, Aug 31 (IANS) Twitter reportedly planned to monetise adult content on its platform this year, by allowing adult creators to sell subscriptions on the micro-blogging platform, and become profitable in a jiffy.

According to The Verge, Twitter was set to become a competitor to adult creator website OnlyFans by allowing adult creators to use its platform in the spring of 2022.

Some adult creators still reportedly rely on Twitter as a means to advertise their OnlyFans accounts, as posting porn doesn't violate its guidelines.

However, an 84-employee "Red Team" discovered that Twitter cannot detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) at scale if it allows adult content to stream via its platform.

Twitter also lacked tools to verify that creators and consumers of adult content were above the age of 18.

The discovery by the Red Team actually derailed the project at Twitter.

"Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale," the Red Team found.

As a result, in May, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced to buy Twitter for $44 billion, the company delayed the project indefinitely, the report mentioned late on Tuesday.

"Allowing creators to begin putting their content behind a paywall would mean that even more illegal material would make its way to Twitter -- and more of it would slip out of view. Twitter had few effective tools available to find it," the report noted.

Twitter's yearly revenue is nearly $5 billion, a tiny amount compared to a company like Google, which earned $257 billion in revenue last year.

Google and Meta have more sophisticated technology to identify CSAM, and still these systems are not full-proof.

"Twitter has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation. We aggressively fight online child sexual abuse and have invested significantly in technology and tools to enforce our policy," according to Twitter which is fighting a legal battle with Musk after he terminated the $44 billion takeover deal over the presence of bots.

--IANS
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Noida, Aug 30 (IANS) Realty firm Supertech, whose illegally constructed twin towers in Sector 93-A, Noida, was brought down on Sunday, will now spend over Rs 43 lakh on disposing of the debris generated after the demolition of the high-rises which were even taller than the Qutub Minar, an official said on Tuesday.

As per the agreement between Supertech and Edifice Engineering -- the Mumbai-based firm that along with Jet Demolition razed the twin towers to the ground -- Edifice will deliver the debris to the disposal plant while Supertech will bear the cost of around Rs 43,68,000 for the disposal of 28,000 tonnes of debris at Rs 156 per tonne.

The debris will be disposed at the construction and demolition waste management plant here in Sector 80. The process of disposing the debris will begin in the next two days.

Two types of processing fees are charged by the plant.

If the debris is picked by the plant staff, the processing fee is Rs 500 per tonne while if Edifice delivers the debris, Supertech will have to pay Rs 156 per tonne as processing fee.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Aug 30 (IANS) Nearly a decade later, Amazon India's report card is decidedly mixed, foreign brokerage Bernstein said in a report.

India is often the dream prized market of many global internet companies, yet also one of the most challenging to unlock -- just ask the Chinese apps.

"Who can forget Jeff Bezos' 2014 visit standing on top of a colorful lorry announcing a $2 billion investment? But nearly a decade later, Amazon India's report card is decidedly mixed," the report said.

The country is one of Amazon's biggest overseas markets and also one of its fastest growing with a best-in-class customer experience and large Prime customer base.

Yet this growth has come at a high cost of over $6.5 billion plus invested to-date while profitability remains elusive (-5-10 per cent EBITDA margins), the report said.

The company also faces immense competitive pressure in fast growing categories, a weaker value proposition in 'New' commerce, limited traction in tier 2/3 cities, and an unfavourable regulatory environment for outsiders, it added.

India is one of few large and under penetrated e-Commerce markets with retail penetration of only 5 per cent, well below the global average (14 per cent).

eCom spending is expected to 2x to $130 billion+ in GMV by 2025, with online shoppers projected to increase by 2x to 300 million. Growth is expected to be led by new online shoppers - primarily from tier 2/3 cities - and continued online migration of key categories, including fashion and grocery.

"Within grocery, we're already seeing a shift from slow eCom to quick/instant delivery. In fashion 'social' commerce and D2C brands are gaining share," the report said.

While India is a three-player market - Amazon, Walmart/Flipkart and Reliance's JioMart - the market remains quite fragmented with meaningful market differences by market tier, product category, and distribution models. Amazon leads on core categories (consumer electronics, media) and has done quite well in tier 1 cities with 5 million prime subs, the report said.

Reliance leads in eGrocery/O2O categories with 15,000 store retail footprint and a stronger 1P model. Flipkart has maintained leadership in the apparel category with 2x size of the nearest competition. But newer players like the Softbank-funded Meesho ($5 billion GMV) are winning the faster growing tier 2/3 cities where Amazon has struggled to gain traction given low pricing and 'zero commissions'.

Regulations don't allow for an inventory led / 1P model for a foreign entity like Amazon. The company has made investments into Shoppers Stop (fashion), More (grocery), and rumored stake in Ecom Express (logistics), but integration has been limited as the regulations don't allow for full control, the report said.

Key competitor Reliance has scaled up its e-Commerce operations (~19 per cent of core retail sales) utilising its strong footprint of stores (15,000) and an inventory led model.

--IANS
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