Federal Bank joins with Star Health Insurance

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December 10, 2021

Federal Bank has partnered with Star Health and Allied Insurance Co Ltd as a corporate agent to offer a diverse range of innovative health insurance products to the bank’s 8.90 million customers, served through 1,291 banking locations around the country. Customers of the bank can use Star Health’s retail and group affinity products through the bank’s various distribution channels, allowing them to meet all of their financial needs in one place.

“The bank’s customers can avail benefits of Star Health’s retail products and group affinity products through the bank’s various distribution channels,” they said in a statement on Friday.

Commenting on the new tie-up, Shalini Warrier, Executive Director & Business Head – Retail at Federal Bank, said, “We are delighted to tie-up with Star Health Insurance, one of the leading players in the stand-alone Health Insurance industry in India. This is a significant milestone for both Star Health and Federal Bank. Through this partnership, we will be in a position to offer our customers a wide range of affordable health insurance products. We look forward to the alliance with Star Health Insurance.”

Speaking on the tie-up for bancassurance, Anand Roy, Managing Director, Star Health and Allied Insurance Co. Ltd, said, “We at Star Health believe that health insurance is essential for every citizen. Our strategic tie-up with Federal Bank will help us reach out to their customers and enable them to safeguard themselves from rising healthcare costs. It brings us great joy in announcing this tie-up with Federal Bank, one of the prominent commercial banks in the private sector and we look forward to a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership.”

Prodapt buys UK-based SLR Dynamics

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December 10, 2021

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Prodapt, a networking consulting, technology, and managed services provider announced on Wednesday that it had acquired UK-based SLR Dynamics for an undisclosed sum, marking the company’s second acquisition of the year. Prodapt purchased Silicon Valley-based Innovative Logic in August of this year.

The purchase of SLR Dynamics would bolster Prodapt’s leadership in the connectivity sector. Prodapt’s acquisition of SLR Dynamics would assist deliver greater value to its worldwide customers as the TMT industry accelerates digital transformation journeys using technologies like 5G, cloud, computing, and the internet of things, according to a statement from the firm.

“The acquisition will result in protecting over 100 jobs at SLR Dynamics. Over the next three years, Prodapt plans to grow the team in the United Kingdom by adding 400-500 employees and plans to invest GBP 50 million. I am excited to welcome Salim (Salim Raza, SLR Dynamics CEO) and the SLR Dynamics team to the Prodapt family. The capabilities of SLR Dynamics in cloud, security, IoT and product design will play an important role as Prodapt continues to become the preferred digital transformation partner to the enablers of hyper-connectivity”, Prodapt Chairman Vedant Jhaver said.

“SLR Dynamics has always focused on building teams with deep domain knowledge and delivering high-quality services to our customers,” Salim Raza said. “Joining Prodapt will enable us to offer much deeper capabilities, take on larger engagements, and deliver significantly enhanced value to our global telecom customers,” he added.

Microsoft launches Azure Cloud availability zones in central India

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December 9, 2021

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Microsoft India announced new Azure availability zones in its central India data centre area on Wednesday, increasing the resiliency and redundancy of client workloads on its cloud.

Azure availability zones are physically and logically distinct data centres with their power, network, and cooling systems. If one becomes unavailable, the others ensure that the system remains operational.

The new Azure availability zones in Pune, according to the company, provide uptime of up to 99.99 percent, allowing Microsoft customers in India to spread their infrastructure and applications across many data centres, enhancing security and accessibility.

“We are continually upgrading the infrastructure in India to provide support for customers building and operating applications and workloads,” said Rajiv Sodhi, Chief Operating Officer, Microsoft India.

“From facilitating architectures for modern cloud applications to meeting data residency requirements, the new Azure Availability Zones in Central India will bring resilience to businesses as they accelerate digital transformation,” he added.

Azure availability zones enable enterprises to distribute their infrastructure and applications across many data centres, providing additional safety and isolation against localized failures such as mechanical or electrical issues, building fires or flooding, or any other unforeseen disaster.

Microsoft claims it considers more than 30 viability and risk-based criteria when deciding how availability zones should be configured.

“We believe this launch of a new Azure Central India Availability Zones from Microsoft will further enhance the resiliency and availability of mission-critical applications for us, as well as our clients in the region,” said Abhijit Mazumder, VP, and Chief Information Officer, Tata Consultancy Services.

SoftBank to capitalize $50 mn in SaaS company SenseHQ

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December 6, 2021

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SoftBank Vision Fund2, funded by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp, would invest $50 million in software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm SenseHQ at a valuation of more than $500 million, a senior company executive said.

SenseHQ, run by Sense Talent Labs Inc., is a talent engagement and staffing platform powered by HR technology that allows businesses to employ and engage with applicants in bulk.

“With this funding, we will continue to ramp up our go-to-market strategy and increase awareness with companies that hire at scale across rapidly growing industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and retail,” Sanjay Dharmani, managing director of Sense’s Indian unit, said.

Sense has now raised a total of $90 million in funding. SenseHQ is based in San Francisco, although it has established a Telangana-based subsidiary. The company is mostly focused on the US market, and it has primarily worked with staffing organizations to hire candidates on a large scale. It will now invest in places such as Western Europe, the United Kingdom, and other English-speaking countries, according to Dharmani.

He added that Sense seeks to attain an annual run rate of $100 million over the next 18 to 24 months. The revenues will be used to invest more in its machine learning and data science platforms and expand its product and engineering teams.

Anil Dharni and Pankaj Jindal launched the company in 2015 to provide an enterprise-ready solution for talent acquisition teams in businesses. In a Series A round in 2017, it received funding from Accel Partners and GV, formerly known as Google Ventures, and other investors such as Signia Venture Partners, IDG Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.

Paytm, Snapdeal, Ola, Oyo, Flipkart, Swiggy, Delhivery, and Lenskart are SoftBank’s India portfolio firms. Several portfolio firms are planning initial public offerings in the coming year.

American Airlines and IndiGo enter into a codeshare agreement

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December 6, 2021

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According to a senior official of the Texas-based carrier, American Airlines is in the process of obtaining the necessary clearances from the US government for its codeshare agreement with IndiGo Airlines, and the relationship is expected to be operational by March 2022.

In September, American Airlines and IndiGo announced the signing of a codeshare agreement, allowing the former to sell seats on the Indian carrier’s 29-route flights through its distribution system.

After a ten-year hiatus, the Texas-based carrier restarted its New York-Delhi trip on November 12.

In an interview with PTI, American Airlines’ Managing Director (Sales) Tom Lattig said that the carrier’s Seattle-Bengaluru trip would begin operating on March 25 instead of January 4, as previously stated.

“We have not seen much corporate travel recovery yet. We know that route (Seattle-Bengaluru) in particular will depend heavily on corporate traffic, and we have made the decision to push the date,” he mentioned.

He added that the airline has over 2,000 agreements in place with various companies in the United States.

“Any of our big technology firms in North America, on the west coast in particular, which is where we expect to get traffic from for our Seattle-Bengaluru flight, we already have those corporate agreements in place,” he mentioned.

According to Lattig, American Airlines would go to those companies and offer special pricing on its new service to India. Gulf carriers such as Qatar Airways and Emirates carry a major share of traffic on India-US and India-Europe routes through their one-stop flights.

When asked how he sees the competition posed by the Gulf carriers on the India-US routes, Lattig replied: “We certainly expect to be able to take traffic on our non-stop services. To the extent the pie is going to grow — it is going to be a bigger market — we will certainly be able to take traffic and build traffic there.”

“I do expect we would be able to take traffic from airline that carry passengers via third countries (one-stop flights). Certainly, that will be the target for us,” Lattig added.

He said there is much pent-up demand for travel between India and North America.

“We see that (pent up demand) in our forward bookings. We want to fly more and more flights,” Lattig added.

When asked if the Indian government should resume scheduled international flight services, Lattig said, “It’s really up to the government to decide when they are going to open and how many flights they are going to allow.”

“We certainly hope to move towards open skies,” he added.

According to him, American Airlines is obtaining the necessary clearances from the US government for their codeshare arrangement with IndiGo.

“Once we get all the approvals, we will move into the implementation phase and we expect that to be in the first quarter of 2022,” he said.

It will be a fantastic relationship for us because it will allow us to connect passengers from North America to anyplace in India and Indian passengers to anywhere in the United States, he added.

NeML associates with FINCHAIN for trade financing

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December 3, 2021

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NCDEX e-markets Ltd (NeML) said that it had signed an agreement with FINCHAIN Technologies to provide collateral-free trade finance to participants on its platform at competitive rates. FINCHAIN will make bill discounting and trade-financing alternatives available to buyers and sellers on various NeML online spot delivery-based platforms, according to the agreement, the business stated in a statement.

Mrugank Paranjape, NeML’s Managing Director, and CEO claimed the company’s different platforms report transactions of over Rs 10,000 crore.

“The tie-up with FINCHAIN while offering one more attractive trade financing option at preferential rates to participants will also bring in greater liquidity resulting in better, robust, and transparent price discovery on our e-market platforms,” he said.

NeML has the largest database of active trade participants in agri-commodities e-markets in the country, according to FINCHAIN Technologies Co-founder Joseph Abraham.

“FINCHAIN is proud to offer a bouquet of collateral-free trade financing options which ensures NeML’s trade participants get access to easy and hassle-free trade financing options from our Lending Partners ranging between Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 crore at competitive rates,” he said.

Through various partnerships, FINCHAIN would take this opportunity to empower underbanked MSMEs and boost financial literacy and inclusion in the agri-commodity segment across India, he added.

NCDEX’s commodity exchange, NeML, is a wholly-owned subsidiary. FINCHAIN is an emerging Indian fintech specializing in anchor-led supply chains and invoice-backed finance.

Inflation in the eurozone reaches a new high of 4.9 percent

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December 1, 2021

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According to official data, consumer prices in the 19 nations that use the euro currency are climbing at an all-time high.

Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics department, said on Tuesday that annual inflation in the eurozone reached 4.9 percent in November, the highest level since records began in 1997.

Records began to be compiled two years before the euro’s official debut in 1999, which fixed several of Europe’s currencies, including the French Franc and the German Deutschmark. The first time euro notes and coins were subjected to speculation was in 2002.

The increase in inflation in November was mostly due to a substantial increase in energy expenses, and it was up from 4.1 percent in October, which was the previous peak.

The eurozone, which consists of 19 nations including France and Germany, is seeing significant price increases due to the economic recovery from the coronavirus epidemic and supply chain disruptions.

The core inflation rate, which excludes potentially volatile commodities like alcohol, energy, food, and cigarettes, also increased in November, rising to 2.6 percent from 2%.

This suggests that the headline rate is already having second-round impacts, such as increased salaries.

Under normal conditions, the rises would put further pressure on the European Central Bank to consider lifting its main interest rate from its record low of zero. The bank’s mission is to determine policies to achieve a 2% inflation objective.

However, the recently identified omicron version of the coronavirus has sparked some concern about the global economic outlook, prompting central banks throughout the world to postpone any major policy adjustments for the time being.

Many economists believe that the recent surge in inflation will revert next year when base effects from the steep drop in prices during the epidemic last year, notably in energy, are removed from yearly comparisons.

Tata-owned 1mg, PharmEasy plan to go offline

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November 30, 2021

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Two of India’s largest online pharmacies are going offline to expand their user base by having an omnichannel presence.

According to persons briefed on the matter, Tata-owned 1mg is expected to launch its first physical store in Gurugram next month. At the same time, rival PharmEasy has begun to expand throughout the offline channel through franchise locations. They noted that the two companies had taken different approaches to go offline, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out. This will place established offline brands like Apollo Pharmacy and Medplus in direct competition with 1mg and PharmEasy, known for their online presence.

“1mg will open around a dozen stores in the next three to four months. They will see how it goes operationally, but they want to scale it across India significantly with about 500 stores in the next three years or so, if all goes as per plan,” a person aware of the matter said.

PharmEasy is offering its name and branding to pharmacies who want to open their storefronts in exchange for a fee on sales. PharmEasy will also use its distribution network to supply items to these stores according to persons familiar with the situation.

“They (PharmEasy) have started it in non-metros and have plans to scale it widely. The initial feedback has been encouraging, and it is being tested more across these markets. But they don’t want to set up their stores but do it through a franchise model,” one of the people said.

“It will work on the take-rate model on all sales and they (retailers) get to buy from PharmEasy for assured supply. If it works, it will be scaled massively and could be big for the company in the long run,” a second person aware of the matter said. In the long run, it plans to offer a click-and-pick model, in which customers may pick up medications from neighbouring stores after ordering them online using the PharmEasy platform.

1mg’s growth into the offline channel is also in line with parent Tata Digital’s objectives for its online businesses to establish an omnichannel presence. PharmEasy and 1mg compete in online pharmacy and the broader e-healthcare market with Reliance Industries’ Netmeds, Amazon India, and new entrant Flipkart, which recently purchased a majority share in Kolkata-based online pharmacy SastaSundar.

Drunken Monkey aims to open 200 stores

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November 30, 2021

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Drunken Monkey, a smoothie chain established in Hyderabad, is preparing to expand internationally, with plans to open over 50 locations in three countries, primarily in the West and Southeast Asia.

However, by the end of the fiscal year 2022, it plans to open 200 smoothie bars. The company’s growth strategy also includes the introduction of new smoothies with a longer shelf life that may be sold in Indian supermarkets.

Drunken Monkey was founded in 2016 and is now present in 57 cities across India, with a turnover of INR 60 crore in 2020-2021. Except for two company-owned stores, the rest are all franchisees.

“We want to make smoothie bars a trend in India so that the youth can see it as a place of leisure accompanied with healthy food. We are now on a mission to spread our wings to multiple areas,” said Samrat Reddy, the founder and MD, Drunken Monkey.

“I want to start a subscription model for smoothies and make smoothies a part of everyday life. Smoothies are like fruits packed in a bottle,” he added. He believes that once people get hooked on smoothies, the market will boom.

The brand’s position as a pioneer in the natural smoothie market was secured by effective use of the ‘first-mover advantage.’ The firm sources all of its ingredients locally, but it also has personnel in each city to ensure smooth operations.

However, for the brand, establishing a pan-India presence, which requires dealing with perishable and seasonal fruits and vegetables, has been a difficult task. The corporation conducts audits regularly to ensure uniformity and quality of its items across all its outlets around the country.

Drunken Monkey now sells its products as a single smoothie or a bowl, with prices ranging from NR 80 to INR 200. While the brand does not specify a certain age or gender for its target customer, its language and strategy are more geared toward 18 to 35-year-olds.

Voltas aims to invest Rs 500 crores in a compressor manufacturing factory

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November 29, 2021

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According to a top company official, leading domestic air-conditioner manufacturer Voltas aims to build up a compressor manufacturing unit in conjunction with an international partner and would invest around Rs 500 crore.

According to Pradeep Bakshi, Managing Director and CEO of the Tata Group, the company plans to invest in a joint venture company with an international partner, which will require PN3 (Press Note3) approval. Bakshi did not provide any information on its international partner but stated that it is one of the world’s largest compressor makers.

“For that, we have already filed for PN3 approval and we are waiting for it. Once it is done, we will be setting up the plant,” Bakshi said.

When asked about the investment, he said: “We plan to invest a minimum of Rs 350 crore on compressor manufacturing and another Rs 150 to 200 crore for air-conditioning.”

“We have committed an additional investment of around Rs 450 crore to 500 crore to the government on the basis of the approval of PN3,” he added.

The company is currently waiting for the PN3 application to be finalised before deciding on a location for its compressor production factory. “Once PN3 is approved, we will decide on other things,” Bakshi added.

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, the government made prior approval required for foreign investments from countries that share a land border with India to prevent opportunistic takeovers of domestic enterprises. China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar, and Afghanistan all have land borders with India. According to that judgement, FDI bids from these nations must be approved by the Indian government before they can invest in India in any industry.

Voltas’ bids for producing Cross Flow Fans (CFF), Heat Exchangers, and Plastic Moulding components under the PLI plan have already been authorized by the government. The government stated earlier this month that it had chosen 26 proposals for the air conditioning sector, with a total committed investment of Rs 3,898 crore.

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