SoftBank Group said on Monday it is selling or monetising up to 4.5 trillion yen ($41 billion) in assets to buy back 2 trillion yen of its shares and reduce debt, sending its stock soaring to its biggest daily gain in nearly 12 years. The share buyback will be in addition to the up to […]
Coronavirus outbreak: Uber, Ola suspend services in Delhi till March 31
Services of Ola and Uber will not be available in Delhi till March 31 amid the lockdown announced by the Delhi government to contain the spread of coronavirus infection. The state government on Sunday said the city will be in lockdown from March 23 to 31, under which no public transport, including private buses, taxis […]
Telcos want streaming firms to cut load
Phone companies have sought the joint intervention of the telecom department and the home ministry to coax over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services to expedite steps to ease pressure on telco networks amid a surge in video consumption as vast swathes of the workforce work from home amid the Covid-19 outbreak. These services include Netflix, Amazon […]
SC to conduct hearings via video conferencing from today
The Supreme Court will formally begin on Monday tackling its work through video-conferencing in a bid to further limit human interface and the spread of Covid-19 in the court. A full court meeting has also been called by the CJI to discuss further measures to prevent the spread of the corona virus. In a first, […]
State curbs choke ecommerce supplies
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi Ecommerce operators were forced to cancel or reschedule lakhs of orders for essential goods such as food, groceries and medicines across several cities on Sunday as local authorities and the police ordered them to shut warehouses, blocked trucks carrying supplies and dissuaded delivery agents from moving around on the streets. The action […]
Edtech on an ad spree as schools and colleges shut
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi “India’s learning won’t stop. Every student will now have free access to our live online classes & premium content.” The full-page print advertisement dated March 19 from live tutoring platform Vedantu was one among many by education technology firms, which have been on advertising overdrive over the past few weeks. Several other […]
Vertical e-commerce numbers fall 20% as users curb spending
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi Specialized online retail verticals, such as Lenskart, Myntra, Nykaa, Pepperfry, FirstCry and Zivame, which have a significant offline presence, have seen sales fall as much as 20% over the last two weeks, investors in the know and industry experts told ET. In some cases, the decline has been as high as 35%, […]
India Inc pulls out all stops to make it work
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi Companies across sectors are scrambling to enforce ‘work from home‘ practices, as the government has ‘strongly advised’ India Inc to implement this policy and limit the spread of coronavirus. The companies are also trying to ensure that their operations are disrupted to a minimum. “We have asked our companies in India to […]
Living in the golden age of social distancing
I’ve been described – well, accused of– being a professional homebody, preferring to work from home, rather than working from a place where there are urinals instead of just a commode, and more elbows in the vicinity than I would care for. It turns out that because of my experience, I have become somewhat of […]
New listing rules to aid founders of startups, PEs
In a major change of rule, the government has allowed superior voting shares to list on exchanges in the same way as other shares, helping promoters and early-stage investors and private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) funds retain some advantages. The new norms were put in place on Thursday, through an amendment to the […]