Amazon eyes Ninjacart stake
What's the news?
Amazon has held discussions with Bengaluru-based B2B fresh produce supply chain company NinjaCart for a potential investment, as it looks to get a foothold in the sector.
Why is this significant?
The latest developments come at a time when Amazon has been closely evaluating its entry into the fresh produce segment, widely perceived as one of the biggest, yet underserved and complex categories.
Amazon had said that the company expects groceries and consumables to contribute more than half of its business over the next five years in Asia’s third-largest economy.
The company has pumped in Rs 240 crore into its Indian food-only retail business, which acts as a seller of groceries and other packaged food products to the company’s local e-commerce marketplace, signaling its intent to stamp its presence in the space. The company currently sells select grocery items through Amazon Now and Amazon Pantry. Read more.
Debit card ownership dips
What's the news?
Debit card ownership has been falling consistently over the last six months, at a time when the government is pushing banks to deploy more card terminals for faster adoption of digital payments. The number of debit cards in the country fell to 884.7 million in April this year, down 11% from 998 million as of October last year, according to data sourced from the Reserve Bank of India.
What are the challenges?
The biggest challenge is being faced by public sector banks that deal with rural customers where awareness about debit cards is low. Since these customers may be irregular users, it is possible they have not realized that their debit cards have been deactivated. Hence, they may have not approached banks to collect their new cards. Banks had previously phased out magnetic stripe cards and replaced with chip and pin ones as per the central bank’s instructions.
Another issue could be that a chunk of Jan Dhan accounts might have become dormant and a few debit cards linked to these accounts could have expired. The challenge among bankers and payment executives is to make consumers start using these cards for payments directly, rather than only for ATM withdrawals, bankers in the know of the matter told ET. Read more.
Congress data debacle
What's the news?
Congress's data analytics platform Shakti became a serious handicap for the party in the recently concluded elections, with local party leaders gaming the system and the GOP relying on it too much to decide political strategy
What was the issue?
Fake data was one of the key issues since there was heavy pressure to collect data at the booth level and the party incentivised data collection, linking preferential treatment to data volume. The platform was also in a silo of its own and access to data was restricted, however, it had a big influence in political decision-making. Read more.
Revival of Panaya
What's the news?
More than a year after Infosys put automation software company Panaya up for sale and failed to find a buyer, the company has now begun to invest in the company again. Over the past three months, Infosys has appointed a new CEO at Panaya, brought in executives from outside and is looking to hire a slew of salespeople in the United States.
Why does it matter?
The Panaya buyout was the main flashpoint for the corporate governance battle between former chief executive Vishal Sikka and Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy. Questions were asked over whether there were conflicts of interest in the buyout and whether the company had overpaid. Infosys had paid $200 million to buy Panaya in February 2015.
Analysts said that Panaya had always been a good acquisition and would fit into Infosys’ current digital strategy. Read more.
Wipro's IP focus
What's the news?
Wipro is pushing technology solutions based on its intellectual property to efficiently deliver software services to its customers and tap growth opportunities in newer digital services with IP as the differentiator.
Why is the company doing this?
While Wipro continues to get a major portion of its revenue from traditional software maintenance work, the company has been pushing delivery managers to use its IPs and platforms to improve profitability from these services for the past two years. The IT firm has set an internal target to achieve $150 million in IP revenue in FY19. Read more.