India Business News Headlines 14th Feb 2018

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Here are the India Business News Headlines 14th Feb 2018:

SBI is geared to act tough on Videocon Industries and is seeking direction from Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India if it needs to file separate IBC cases against certain affiliates of Videocon Industries, who are jointly liable for loan repayments. A consortium of banks led by SBI had entered into a loan arrangement with the company in 2011, which made Videocon and some of its affiliates, a total of 14 companies, jointly and separately liable for loan repayments.

Amazon India is looking to expand its private label business to close the gap with Flipkart, which is aggressively launching its own private labels. Amazon has so far launched a few private label brands in fashion and apparels, hard-lines or categories such as small furniture and home appliances and smartphones.

As per an EY report, PE/VC deals have doubled to $3.5 billion in January. Compared to December 2017, investments grew by 32% in value terms. Out of the above, five deals of value greater than $100 million, aggregating $2.78 billion, accounted for 79% of total investments made in January, the top deal being for $1.7bn investment in HDFC.

Littlemore Innovation Labs, a Singapore-based education technology company, has raised Rs20 crore from Kalpavriksh, a private equity fund of Centrum Group. Littlemore provides digital and scalable solutions for conducting paperless descriptive exams online. The company plans to utilize the funds for R&D, filing patents and copyrights and expand its presence in Southeast Asia and Middle East.

Drivezy, a Mumbai-based online car rental platform, has raised $5 million from its first round of initial coin offering (ICO). Existing investors and HNIs from Japan and Singapore participated in the round. An Initial Coin Offering is an unregulated means of raising money from potential investors using crypto currencies such as Ethereum, Bitcoin and others. ICO route is used by start-ups to circumvent regulatory steps required by VC funds, PE investors and banks. The funds are planned to be used to add 800 cars and bikes to firm’s platform.

HC has upheld Delhi airport’s order on IndiGo and SpiceJet to shift operations from T-1 to T-2 and has directed them to approach Delhi airport within one week regarding shifting.

Hike has partnered with Ola to allow its users to book taxis from within its app. The service will go live today. The Ola integration is in line with Hike’s strategy to offer services that users can access natively and pay through Hike’s own payments platform.

Tata Steel has been recognized as ‘World’s Most Ethical Company for the year 2018’ by Ethisphere Institute, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices. The company has received this award for the sixth time in the ‘Metals, Minerals and Mining’ category.

As per an IDC report, mobile phone shipments in India registered an annual growth of 16% with 288 mn shipments happening in 2017. Samsung led overall market with 24.7 per cent share in smartphone category and 20.5 per cent share in feature phone category for 2017.

Hindustan Unilever, India’s largest advertiser, has warned social media platforms like Google and Facebok, that it will reduce its spends on their platforms if they don’t filter out content which creates divisions, exploits children and hurts religious sentiments. Last year spend of HUL on global marketing was $9.4 billion .

*News as published in Business Standard, Live Mint and Economic Times.

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