Business

New Delhi, May 7 (IANS) Apple, followed by Samsung, led the global tablet market in the first quarter of 2023, together making up nearly 58 per cent of the market even with the changing landscape post-pandemic, a report has shown.

Apple shipped 10.8 tablets with 35.2 per cent share in Q1, followed by Samsung at 23.1 per cent share and shipping 7.1 million units.

Huawei was third with 6.6 per cent share (2 million units), according to preliminary data from from the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Worldwide tablet shipments posted decline of 19.1 per cent (year-over-year) in the first quarter of 2023, reaching 30.7 million units.

The low shipment volume is now comparable to pre-pandemic levels. Shipment volume in 1Q23 was comparable to the 30.1 million units shipped in Q1 2019 and 31.6 million in Q1 2018.

"Tablet vendors entered the first quarter of 2023 with caution. As expected, both commercial and consumer volumes were low as macro environment remained uncertain throughout Q1," said Anuroopa Nataraj, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers.

According to the report, sell-in shipment in the first half of 2023 is expected to be low, with vendors focusing on clearing out their inventory before the launch of newer models.

Chromebook shipments also continued to contract in Q1 with shipments totalling 3.8 million units for a year-over-year decline of 31 per cent year over year.

"Despite the downturn in tablet shipments, there's some reason for optimism as more vendors are paying attention to the space," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager.

"OnePlus' recent launch and the upcoming Pixel Tablet from Google are clear signs that there's appetite from the supply side," he added.

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) The Nifty, after a weak run in the last four months, bounced back in April with 4.1 per cent MoM gain, Motilal Oswal Financial Services said in a report.

Notably, the index was extremely volatile and swung around 776 points before closing 705 points higher. Nifty50 has been underperforming the emerging markets and the world indices in CY23YTD amid varied global macro headwinds viz., inflation, interest rates, and currency, the report said.

While most of the global equity markets are rising 5-20 per cent in CY23YTD, India is flat in local currency, the report said.

The Nifty Midcap 100 (+5.9 per cent MoM) and Nifty Smallcap 100 (+7.5 per cent) outperformed the Nifty50 during the month.

FIIs recorded inflows for the second consecutive month.

FIIs remained net buyers for the second straight month at $1.9 billion in Apr'23, after recording inflows of $1.8 billion in Mar'23; YTD outflows stood at $0.6 billion. DII inflows ebbed in Apr'23 at $0.3 billion, and stood at $10.4 billion YTD.

All major sectors end higher in Apr'23: Real Estate (+15 per cent), PSU Banks (+12 per cent), Automobiles (+8 per cent), Capital Goods (+7 per cent), and Telecom (+7 per cent) were the top gainers, while Technology (-3 per cent) was the only laggard, the report said.

India was among the top-performing markets in Apr'23.

Among the key global markets, Russia (+9 per cent), India (+4 per cent), the UK (+3 per cent), Japan (+3 per cent), Brazil (+3 per cent), Indonesia (+2 per cent), China (+2 per cent), the US (+1 per cent), and Korea (+1 per cent) closed higher in Apr'23, while Taiwan (-2 per cent), and MSCI EM (-1 per cent) ended lower in local currency terms.

Over the last 12 months, the MSCI India index (-1 per cent) has outperformed the MSCI EM index (-9 per cent). Over the last 10 years, the MSCI India index has outperformed the MSCI EM index by 167 per cent, the report said.

Corporate earnings so far have been in line with the performance of heavyweights, such as Reliance Industries, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and TCS, driving the aggregate.

The spread of earnings has been decent with 79 per cent of universe either meeting or exceeding profit expectations.

However, the growth is being led by BFSI, Technology, and O&G, while Metals, Healthcare, and Telecom recorded a YoY earnings decline for the quarter, the report said.

--IANS
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By Venkatachari Jagannathan
Chennai, May 3 (IANS) With the Wadia group's low cost Go Airline (India) Limited squarely blaming engine supplier, the US-based Pratt & Whitney for its financial woes and taxiing it to file bankruptcy petition, the latter has responded.


"Go First has a lengthy history of missing its financial obligations to Pratt," a spokesperson for the aircraft engine supplier Pratt & Whitney responded to IANS list of questions.

However, the official declined to elaborate further on its allegation against Go Airline.

"Pratt & Whitney is committed to the success of our airline customers, and we continue to prioritize delivery schedules for all customers. P&W (Pratt & Whitney) is complying with the March 2023 arbitration ruling related to Go First. As this is now a matter of litigation, we will not comment further," the company spokesperson said.

Curiously, Go Airlines had said that it has been forced to apply to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for voluntary bankruptcy after Pratt & Whitney, the exclusive engine supplier for its Airbus A320neo aircraft fleet, refused to comply with an award issued by an emergency arbitrator appointed in accordance with the 2016 Arbitration Rules of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC).

"That order directed Pratt & Whitney to take all the reasonable steps to release and dispatch without delay to Go First at least 10 serviceable spare leased engines by April 27, 2023 and a further 10 spare leased engines per month until December 2023, with the objective of Go First returning to full operations and achieving its financial rehabilitation and survival," the airline said on Tuesday.

Continuing further, Go Airlines had said that even if Pratt & Whitney complied with the arbitration award, it would be able to resume full operations by August/September 2023.

"Despite the emergency arbitrator's order, however, at the date of this press release, Pratt & Whitney has failed to provide any further serviceable spare leased engines at all, and has stated that there are no further spare leased engines available for it to comply with the emergency arbitrator's award," Go Airlines had said.

The airline has filed a case in a US court against Pratt & Whitney to comply with the Arbitration Award.

The airline said it has resorted to approaching NCLT despite the infusion of Rs 3,200 crore by the promoters into the airline in the last three years, of which Rs 2,400 crore was injected in the last 24 months, and Rs 290 crore in April 2023 alone.

Thus, the total promoter investment in the airline since its inception is approximately Rs 6,500 crore.

The airline has also received significant support from the Government of India's Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme, the company said.

The grounding of close to 50 per cent of its A320neo fleet due to the serial failure of Pratt & Whitney engines, while it continued to incur 100 per cent of its operational costs, has set the airline by Rs 10,800 crore in lost revenues and additional expenses.

Moreover, the airline has paid Rs 5,657 crore to the lessors in the last two years of which approximately Rs 1,600 crore was paid towards lease rent for non-operational grounded aircraft from the funds infused by the promoters and the Government of India's Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme.

In order to recover these (and other) losses, Go Airlines sought compensation of approximately Rs 8,000 crore in the SIAC arbitration.

The airline is yet to respond to IANS queries on its response to Pratt & Whitney's charge of missing its financial obligations, its total debt to Indian banks and other lenders and dues to its employees.

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

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) Twitter on Wednesday backtracked on its decision to put its application programming interface (API) behind a paywall, and will allow emergency and transportation service providers to access its APIs for free.

Twitter in February announced to stop offering free access to its API and instead launch a paid version for developers worldwide.

After the controversial decision, Several emergency and transportation accounts encountered issues posting alerts to the platform.

The US Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) also experienced disruptions to their API access.

Now, the Elon Musk-run platform has reversed its decision for some users.

"One of the most important use cases for the Twitter API has always been public utility. Verified gov or publicly-owned services who tweet weather alerts, transport updates and emergency notifications may use the API, for these critical purposes, for free," said the company.

What the platform means by "verified" is still unclear.

MTA responded: "Glad that Twitter got the message. We're happy that they've committed to making API access free for the MTA and other public sector agencies. In light of this reversal, we're assessing our options for service alerts going forward".

Other affected services, including the NWS, United States Geologic Service, and the US Forest Service, had directed users to other ways to receive real-time alerts.

With the free version of Twitter's API, users can only post 1,500 automated tweets per month.

--IANS
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San Francisco, May 3 (IANS) Ride-hailing major Uber reported a 24 per cent increase in trips to 2.1 billion during the first quarter of 2023, or approximately 24 million trips per day on average.

According to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the company significantly accelerated Q1 trip growth to 24 per cent from 19 per cent last quarter, with "mobility trip growth of 32 per cent as a result of improved earnings and consumer engagement".

"Looking ahead, we are focused on extending our product, scale and platform advantages to sustain market-leading top and bottom-line growth beyond 2023," he said during the company's quarterly earnings call late on Tuesday.

Gross bookings grew 19 per cent year-over-year to $31.4 billion, or 22 per cent on a constant currency basis, with mobility gross bookings of $15 billion (40 per cent increase YoY).

Revenue grew 29 per cent YoY to $8.8 billion and the net loss was $157 million, which includes a $320 million net benefit (pre-tax) primarily due to net unrealised gains related to the revaluation of Uber's equity investments, the company informed.

"We delivered record profitability and free cash flow in Q1, and we are poised to expand profitability again in Q2," said Nelson Chai, CFO.

"We continued to actively manage our balance sheet, exiting our equity position in Yandex. Taxi and refinancing our term loans, and remain focused on disciplined capital allocation over the coming years," he added.

For Q2 2023, Uber anticipates gross bookings of $33 billion to $34 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $800 million to $850 million.

Ride-hailing major Uber last month sold its stake worth $400 million in Careem, the Middle East-based ride-hailing company that it bought in 2019, to boost its super app business.

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) Google on Tuesday announced the second edition of its 'Startups Accelerator: Women Founders' to enable women entrepreneurs in India who are using technology to solve complex problems and are making a positive impact on society.

The three-month programme includes mentorship, workshops, access to resources and networks for startups from across all sectors, including but not limited to healthcare, education, finance, and e-commerce.

"The programme includes specific modules to support women entrepreneurs in areas such as seeking mentorship and advice, hiring talent and tapping networks for help, with the intention of building confidence where cultural conditioning can sometimes create self-doubt," said Paul Ravindranath G, Programme Manager, Google for Startups Accelerator, India.

Applications for the second edition of the programme are open until June 4.

Additionally, selected participants will receive support from experts and mentors both from Google and external networks in areas such as technology, product strategy, people, growth and fundraising.

The programme also includes access to Google's global network of mentors, investors and industry leaders.

The first cohort that recently graduated, included startups working on a range of innovative solutions, such as AI-powered diagnostic tools for healthcare, an app for menstrual hygiene management, a platform for rural artisans to sell their products online and many more.

"The programme is a great opportunity for women entrepreneurs to receive support and guidance as they navigate the challenges of scaling their startups," said Ravindranath.

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) In the first case of a Big Tech giant paying a heavy penalty to the Indian regulators as the government aims to bring in an inclusive Digital India Act (DIA), Google has paid the entire penalty amount of Rs 1,337.76 crore imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in the Android case.

Reliable sources told IANS on Tuesday that the entire penalty amount has been deposited in the Consolidated Fund of India, within the 30-day deadline given by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in its order.

The Indian market regulator had imposed the penalty on Google in October 2022 for allegedly exploiting its dominant position in the Android market.

Dr Ritesh Malik, Director, Alliance for Digital India Foundation (ADIF), who has been at the forefront of helping Indian startups fight against the global Internet giants, told IANS that Big Tech firms started taking the fines/penalties as 'cost of doing business' and prefer to pay the same rather than making the ecosystem more fair and non-discriminative.

"It is important to note that Google has made the payment after spending all possible avenues, including reaching out to the SC and the NCLAT. The paramount concern is whether Google is complying with the CCI rulings in letter and spirit, which has not been the case today," Malik added.

Earlier this year, Google announced to comply with the CCI's directives for Android.

"The CCI's recent directives for Android and Play require us to make significant changes for India, and we've informed the CCI of how we will be complying with their directives," Google had said in a statement.

"We're updating the Android compatibility requirements to introduce changes for partners to build non-compatible or forked variants," said Google.

Through user choice billing, developers can offer users the option to choose an alternative billing system alongside Google Play's billing system when purchasing in-app digital content.

The changes came as a Supreme Court bench said that the findings by the CCI cannot be said to be "without jurisdiction or with manifest error" and affirmed the NCLAT order, declining to grant interim relief to Google.

The bench directed the NCLAT to dispose of Google's appeal by March 31, and granted Google seven days to deposit 10 per cent of the Rs 1,337.76 crore penalty imposed by the CCI.

Google had alleged that the CCI copy-pasted parts of a European court order without examining associated evidence in India.

The CCI has also imposed a penalty of Rs 936.44 crore on Google in a separate case for abusing its dominant position with respect to its Play Store policies.

In response to Google's announcement of implementing its new Google Play payments policy, the ADIF had expressed deep concern over the policy change and has demanded that the new policies must be put on hold, since Google charging a nearly 30 per cent service fee on app developers will prove to be a significant blow to the Indian startup ecosystem.

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) Full-stack fintech services provider BharatPe Group on Tuesday announced it has completed a majority stake (51 per cent) acquisition in Trillion Loans, a Mumbai-based non-banking financial company (NBFC), for an undisclosed sum.

The company appointed veteran banker Ravindra Pandey, CFO and interim CEO of BharatPe Nalin Negi and Sabyasachi Senapati, part of the leadership team at BharatPe who heads its banking vertical, on the board of Trillion Loans which will operate as an independent entity with its own team under the supervision of the board.

BharatPe said it has also infused a substantial amount of investment into Trillion Loans to enable the NBFC to grow its loan book.

"We had launched our merchant lending vertical in 2019 and it has grown exponentially over the course of the last 3+ years. Today, we facilitate loans of over Rs 500 crore every month to our merchant partners," said Shashvat Nakrani, Founder and COO, BharatPe.

"Acquiring controlling stake in Trillion Loans is aligned to the BharatPe Group's larger purpose and will enable us to facilitate access to capital to a wider set of underserved and unbanked businesses as well as customers," he added.

Trillion Loans will work independently and will be technology-driven NBFC. It will be open to partner with other fintechs and startups, so as to offer their customers a quick and streamlined experience," Nakrani added.

Trillion Loans offers a range of secured and unsecured loans to SMEs, including small business loans as well as working capital loans. Additionally, the company also offers a range of products for consumers, such as auto, gold, and education loans.

"I believe that there is a huge opportunity for Trillion Loans to further grow and address the close to US$ 380 billion MSME credit gap as well as meet the diverse consumer credit demand in the country that has the largest youth population in the world," said Nakrani.

BharatPe currently serves 1 crore merchants across more than 400 cities, the company is a leader in UPI offline transactions, processing over 30 crore UPI transactions per month (annualised transaction processed value of over $24 billion in payments).

--IANS
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Chennai, April 15 (IANS) Private sector HDFC Bank Ltd on Saturday said it had closed FY23 with a 19.3 per cent increase in net profit and the Board has proposed a dividend of Rs 19 per share.

The HDFC Bank said it had closed FY23 with a net profit of Rs 44,107.7 crore (previous year Rs 36,961.33 crore) on a total income of Rs 192,800.4 crore (Rs 157,263 crore).

Net revenues (net interest income plus other income) for the year ended March 31, 2023 were Rs 118,057.1 crore, as against Rs 101,519.5 crore for the year ended March 31, 2022.

The company's provisions for FY23 stood at Rs 11,919.67 crore (Rs 15,061.83 crore).

While the gross non-performing asset (GNPA) as on 31.3.2023 stood at Rs 18,019.03 crore (Rs 16,140.96 crore) the net NPA as on that date was at Rs 4,368.43 crore (Rs 4.407.68 crore).

The Board of Directors at its meeting held on April 15, 2023, proposed a dividend of, 19.00 per share (Rs 15.50 per share).

The Bank's total Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) as per Basel III guidelines was at 19.3 per cent as on March 31, 2023 (18.9 per cent as on March 31, 2022) as against a regulatory requirement of 11.7 per cent which includes Capital Conservation Buffer of 2.5 per cent, and an additional requirement of 0.2 per cent on account of the Bank being identified as a Domestic Systemically Important Bank (D-SIB), HDFC Bank said.

--IANS
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New Delhi, April 15 (IANS) As tech layoffs continue unabated in 2023, Amazon and Google CEOs have hinted at more layoffs as the companies continue to evaluate business.

In a letter to company shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that they reprioritised where to spend resources, which ultimately led to the hard decision to eliminate 27,000 corporate roles.

"There are a number of other changes that we've made over the last several months to streamline our overall costs, and like most leadership teams, we'll continue to evaluate what we're seeing in our business and proceed adaptively," the Amazon CEO wrote.

Jassy said that the company had to conduct a thorough analysis of each business and invention within the company to determine whether they had strong potential to generate revenue, operating income, free cash flow, and return on invested capital in the long run.

Meanwhile, Pichai said that the company is "literally looking at every aspect of what we do" in an effort to re-engineer its cost base permanently.

In a recent interview with Wall Street Journal, the Alphabet and Google CEO said: "We are trying to accomplish that across many different ways. We're literally looking at every aspect of what we do, and as we said on our last earnings call, we're thinking about how to re-engineer our cost base in a durable way."

"We are definitely being focused on creating durable savings. We are pleased with the progress, but there's more work left to do," he was quoted as saying.

Google had in January laid off 12,000 employees in its first round of layoffs.

"We've decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We've already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices," Pichai had said in a statement.

Amazon initially eliminated 18,000 positions in January, saying that as "we completed the second phase of our planning this month, it led us to these additional 9,000 role reductions".

In March, the e-commerce giant announced to lay off another 9,000 employees in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Twitch, advertising, and HR.

--IANS
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