• Skip to main content

Search

Just another WordPress site

Business is booming

UK spectacles designer eyes nationwide launch of pop-up shops

June 26, 2022 by www.independent.co.uk Leave a Comment

A British eyewear designer favoured by celebrities including Robert Downey Jr has revealed plans to launch a chain of pop-up shops after seeing sales boom amid the trend to look good on Zoom calls in the pandemic.

Kirk & Kirk – founded by husband and wife duo Jason and Karen Kirk 30 years ago – said it is aiming to make its first “foray into retail” this autumn.

The move will see it enter the UK retail market directly, building on its current tie-up with 100 independent optical retailers in Britain and more than a further 300 around the world.

Mr Kirk told the PA news agency: “We’re opening our first pop-up store, our first foray into retail, in September, in Shoreditch.

Recommended

  • By-elections show voters have run out of patience with Boris Johnson

“Our plan is to be nimble and grow pop-up stores. We then expect to open half a dozen stores next spring in different locations across the UK and then from that will identify opportunities abroad.”

The group is looking to hire more staff to oversee the pop-up shops in the UK, while it is also set to expand its team of independent representatives worldwide to 25.

The expansion has been largely credited to the pandemic, which saw Kirk & Kirk’s sales grow 42% in the first year of the Covid crisis, while this year’s growth is expected to be 30%.

Mr Kirk added: “The pandemic from a business perspective has been amazing for us.

“Most people have been having conversations over Zoom and FaceTime and so glasses become almost the only way of expressing yourself through clothing.

“More people turned to bigger glasses, more expressive glasses and more colourful glasses to invest in themselves,” he added.

The company is the only brand in the world to create handmade frames from acrylic, which have been designed in partnership with a factory, in the north-west of France , which they have worked with for the past 10 years from “start to finish” during the production process.

“Acrylic is roughly a third of the weight of acetate (what most glass frames are made of) and allows us to have big shapes and quite chunky glasses at a fraction of the weight,” said Mrs Kirk.

Mr Kirk said seeing stars like Iron Man actor Downey Jr wearing the firm’s glasses “made a massive difference” over the pandemic.

Recommended

  • Sugababes announce first tour for over 20 years
  • Government ‘misleading’ over role in rail strikes, legal advice suggests
  • Abbott and McDonnell urge Starmer to ‘come off the fence’ over strikes

He said: “The impact of somebody with that sincerity, in the way that they dress with that genuine personality coming through, that’s our audience – that talk to our audience – so that drives our sales up immediately.”

The business continues to reap the benefits from the switch online in the pandemic, with its virtual try-on feature – which allows customers to play around with frames – used by 6,000 people last week alone.

Filed Under: Business Business

India Inc’s capital expenditure slows despite jump in net profits

June 22, 2022 by www.rediff.com Leave a Comment

The stellar rise in corporate earnings in financial year 2021-22 (FY21) and FY22 did not result in a corresponding boom in capital expenditure (capex), with listed companies’ investment in fixed assets rising just 2.3 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in FY22, growing at the slowest pace in the last six years.

Capex

In comparison, the firms’ combined net profit jumped 63.5 per cent YoY in FY22, while net sales increased 31.1 per cent — the fastest pace in over a decade.

The 955 non-financial companies in Business Standard ’s sample reported combined net profit of Rs 7.18 trillion in FY22, compared with Rs 4.39 trillion in FY21 and Rs 2.59 trillion in FY20.

The companies’ combined net sales jumped to Rs 87 trillion in FY22 from Rs 66.43 trillion in FY21 and Rs 69.9 trillion in FY20.

In all, the annual corporate earnings rose 66 per cent from the pre-Covid level of Rs 4.32 trillion in FY19.

However, in the same period, India Inc’s fixed assets grew around 22 per cent from around Rs 41 trillion at the end of FY19 to Rs 49.8 trillion at the end of FY22.

These numbers suggest that rather than funding capex, companies used the jump in their earnings and cash flows to build cash reserves and pay higher dividends to shareholders.

The companies’ cash and bank balance rose 13.4 per cent YoY to a record Rs 7.54 trillion at the end of FY22, while their dividend pay-out to shareholders increased 18.8 per cent YoY to Rs 3.05 trillion last fiscal. Dividend includes cash outlay for share buybacks.

The companies in the sample returned Rs 33,254 crore to their shareholders in FY22 by way of share buybacks, down 3 per cent YoY from Rs 34,271 crore in FY21.

The overall dividend pay-out was, however, 22.2 per cent higher YoY at Rs 2.71 trillion in FY22 from Rs 2.22 trillion a year ago.

This analysis is based on the annual profit and loss and balance sheets of a common sample of 955 companies that are part of the BSE500, BSE MidCap and BSE SmallCap indices.

The sample excludes companies in the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) space.

It also excludes the listed subsidiaries of listed holding and operating companies to avoid double counting.

All the numbers are on priority consolidated basis and as reported by the companies.

Analysts attribute the divergence between earnings growth and corporate capex to the “peculiar nature” of growth last fiscal.

“Most of the growth in corporate revenue and profits in FY22 came from higher prices rather than volumes, and the growth was led by commodity producers such as mining, metals and oil and gas companies.

“This means that the capacity utilisation in the manufacturing sector remains below the threshold level,” says Dhananjay Sinha, managing director and chief strategist at JM Financial.

According to him, many companies also utilised higher earnings and cash flows to prepay debt and deleveraged their balance sheet rather than risk their capital on new projects or capacity expansion.

“There is still a high level of uncertainty in the economy with rising inflation and commodity prices.

“The volatility in revenue growth is now 5 times the average annual growth, which makes it tough for companies to project future growth.

“This makes companies reluctant to invest in new projects,” adds Sinha.

Others highlight the relatively faster growth in the services sector.

“Most of the incremental growth in the economy in the last two years came from the services sector, especially IT services, which doesn’t require too much investment in fixed assets or capex,” says Shailendra Kumar, chief investment officer of Narnolia Securities.

Analysts expect the capex trend to change over the next two years.

“We believe India is on the verge of a big recovery in the capex cycle, led by large public spending and subsidies such as the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme,” Amnish Aggarwal and Anushka Chhajed of Prabhudas Lilladher wrote in a recent report.

Economists, however, question the government’s ability to fund public capex, given the additional expenditure on food, fertilisers, and cooking gas subsidies and the cut in excise duty on petrol and diesel, among other measures taken in light of the surge in inflation.

“If global commodity prices remain higher for longer, there is a risk of reallocation of limited fiscal space towards the provision of a social safety net to low-income households, leading to some capex cuts in H2FY23,” says Tanvee Gupta Jain, economist at UBS India Securities.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Business news, business news India, India business news, Indian economy news, Indian financial news, ..., NET PROFITS, working capital expenditures, capital expenditure examples, government capital expenditure, net profit margin formula, net profit definition, net profit margin ratio, net profit vs gross profit, net profit margin calculator, net profit calculator

Gig workers in India to top 23 million by 2029-30: Niti Aayog

June 27, 2022 by auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com Leave a Comment

Gig workers in India to top 23 million by 2029-30: Niti Aayog
NEW DELHI: India ‘s gig workforce is expected to expand to 2.35 crore by 2029-30 from 77 lakh in 2020-21, a Niti Aayog report said on Monday, and recommended extending social security measures for such workers and their families in partnership mode as envisaged in Code on Social Security.

The report titled ‘India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy’ further said gig workers are expected to form 6.7 per cent of the non-agricultural workforce or 4.1 per cent of the total livelihood in India by 2029-30.

Gig workers can be broadly classified into platform and non-platform workers. Platform workers are those whose work is based on online software apps or digital platforms while non-platform gig workers are generally casual wage workers, working part-time or full- time.

Gig workers prefer a flexible work schedule, typically with low to middle level of education. Income through gig work is not their primary source of income and they are often holding another regular job.

According to the NITI report, it is estimated that in 2020-21, 77 lakh workers were engaged in the gig economy and they constituted 2.6 per cent of the non-agricultural workforce or 1.5 per cent of the total workforce in India.

Similarly, it estimated that there were 68 lakh gig workers in 2019-20, using both principal and subsidiary status, forming 2.4 per cent of the non-farm workforce or 1.3 per cent of the total workers in India.

The report pointed out that the employment elasticity to GDP growth for gig workers was above one throughout the period 2011-12 to 2019-20, and was always above the overall employment elasticity.

To harness the potential of the gig-platform sector, the report recommended accelerating access to finance through products specifically designed for platform workers, linking self-employed individuals engaged in the business of selling regional and rural cuisine, street food, etc, with platforms to enable them to sell their produce to wider markets in towns and cities.

Other recommendations include undertaking a separate enumeration exercise to estimate the size of the gig-platform workforce and collecting information during official enumerations.

As per the report, in terms of industrial classification, about 26.6 lakh gig workers were involved in retail trade and sales, and about 13 lakh were in the transportation sector.

About 6.2 lakh were in manufacturing and another 6.3 lakh in the finance and insurance activities, it added.

At present, about 47 per cent of the gig work is in medium skilled jobs, 22 per cent in high skilled, and about 31 per cent in low skilled jobs.

According to the report, the trend shows the concentration of workers in medium skills is gradually declining and that of the low skilled and high skilled is increasing.

It may be expected that while the domination of medium skills would continue till 2030, gig work with other skills will emerge, the report added.

The report noted that the rapidly burgeoning gig workforce is ushering in a new economic revolution globally.

India – with its demographic dividend of half-a-billion labour force and the world’s youngest population, rapid urbanisation, widespread adoption of smartphones and associated technology – is the new frontier of this revolution, it added.

The report pointed out that there is an emerging positive trend that suggests women are more likely to take up platform jobs after their education and marriage.

It suggested bridging skill gaps by carrying out periodic assessments and partnering with platform businesses for onboarding skilled women and persons with disabilities.

The report pitched for incentivising inclusive businesses – women led-platforms or platforms that encourage recruitment of women employees and those with disabilities.

Speaking on the occasion, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Suman Bery said the report will become a valuable knowledge resource in understanding the potential of the sector and drive further research and analysis on gig and platform work.

Filed Under: Uncategorized india, suman bery, social security, Niti Aayog, Gig workers in India, 1 billion 23 million, spend 30 million in 30 days movie, directory niti aayog, 23 going on 30, discretionary grants niti aayog, ipod disabled 23 million minutes, ashutosh jain niti aayog, nourishing india niti aayog, schemes by niti aayog, reforms niti aayog

Insurance penetration requires improving awareness and trust, say industry leaders ahead of National Insurance Awareness Day

June 27, 2022 by bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com Leave a Comment

The Covid-19 pandemic may have done what no amount of marketing by insurers has done but there’s still an urgent need to do more to create awareness, build trust, enhance ease of process, and improve access to boost penetration levels in India, the chief executives of several insurance companies said in an ET CEO Roundtable, ahead of the National Insurance Awareness Day .
Insurance penetration requires improving awareness and trust, say industry leaders ahead of National Insurance Awareness Day Insurance penetration in India – measured as the percentage of insurance premium to GDP – has seen a steady rise to 4.2% in FY21, according to the Economic Survey 2022, but this still remains far less than the global average of 7.2%. Life insurance penetration in India was pegged at 3.2%, almost on par with the global levels of 3.3 percent, while non-life insurance stood at 1.0%, lagging the global penetration of 3.3 percent.

Ahead of National Insurance Awareness Day on June 28, at an ET CEO Insurance Roundtable on ‘Simplifying Insurance for India: Rethinking Products and Processes’, industry leaders Amit Malik, CEO and MD of Aviva Life Insurance Co Ltd , Satishwar Balakrishnan, CEO and MD of Aegon Life, Tapan Singhel , MD and CEO of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, and Mahesh Kumar Sharma, MD and CEO of SBI Life Insurance deliberated on how Indian insurance companies need to leverage technology to drive insurance penetration in India and cater to the changing needs of customers.

At the ET CEO Insurance Roundtable – which is among a series of discussions that are part of an ET.com initiative to boost financial literacy for the next billion users – the CEOs of insurance companies also highlighted steps that need to be taken to build greater customer trust in the insurance industry as well as improve access to insurance for Bharat or first-time online users from across beyond the metros.

Need for more awareness creation
Insurance in India has always been focused on traditional products from the beginning but it was due to the Covid-19 pandemic that people understood the need for insurance to ‘future-proof’ their lives, rather than looking at it merely as a savings tool or an investment product, Mahesh Kumar Sharma, MD and CEO, SBI Life Insurance, said at the panel discussion moderated by Miloni Bhatt, Digital Broadcast Editor, Economictimes.com.

Outlining the reasons for low insurance penetration in India compared to other countries, Sharma said, “One of the things that we need to rectify going forward, is to educate people about the importance of insurance in one’s life and the need to explain to them why insurance should be a part of their entire investment or future proofing philosophy,” said Sharma.

The increasing digital penetration in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the resultant change in the consumer behavior is reshaping the insurance industry in India, with digitally savvy customers looking for personalisation and flexibility, among other facilities in their insurance products. Besides, a boom in the insurtech industry and an ecosystem push towards the use of new age technology like AI, big data, etc. is changing the way insurance has traditionally been provided in India.

Still, more needs to be done to improve insurance penetration among different sections of the population, including the self-employed, as a large percentage of India’s population currently exists outside of the insurance safety net, said Satishwar Balakrishnan, CEO and MD of Aegon Life.

Balakrishnan pointed out that close to 80-90% of the people in our country are not insured and even within the 10% population which is insured, a large chunk of it consists of people who are salaried. This means that insurance penetration is especially low among the self-employed section of the Indian population, which accounts for a significant portion of the working population.

Leveraging digital to reach Bharat
“This whole gap can be filled out only if we make insurance 1) very easy and 2) very accessible. And the only way we can reach out to this population is using digital. And digital is the only medium that I think can have the speed and the scale to reach our vast country and actually get into the interiors,” Balakrishnan said.

He further added that this was in fact based on the way digital has actually made inroads into a lot of rural and small towns in India. For example, rural India actually has a 20% higher presence of internet users than the urban parts of the country.

“Just to sum it up, if I actually look at the entire population, which is (made up largely of the) self employed and the larger population in the country, what we call as the Bharat space, those people are totally getting left out,” said Balakrishnan.

A study conducted by Policybazaar earlier this year – to understand the changing consumer sentiment towards insurance purchase, household finances, and investments over the last two years of the pandemic – also found that people from tier-2 and tier-3 cities are now showing an interest in insurance products.

Improving access to insurance
Beyond technology, there is a need for insurance companies to work towards building greater customer trust in the industry and improving access to insurance by rethinking various processes and rules, such as the GST rate for insurance products, the CEOs of various insurance companies said during the ET CEO Insurance Roundtable, launched as part of an ET.com initiative to boost financial literacy for the next billion Indian online users.

Visit Website: ET Financial Literacy

Sharing his views on the 18% GST rate, Amit Malik, CEO and MD of Aviva Life, said that it is vital that the GST rate be reconsidered for insurance products.

“ The new chairman of the regulator has laid out a vision of saying, ‘insurance for every Indian,’ which is very good and it’s very positive. To expand the market, I think it’s important that there is a prudent call that is taken as to what’s the right GST percentage there, (which) will surely make the product more accessible,” said Malik.

Echoing similar views, Tapan Singhel, MD and CEO of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, said, “I strongly believe that things which are for social good can’t have high GST. If you look at GST for healthcare, which is much lower, and health insurance (which is at) 18% GST, there is a clear mismatch. I think that has to be looked into and is not something that we should be shy of talking about.”

Building trust in the industry

On building customer’s trust in the insurance industry and simplifying the whole claim settlement process, Singhel said that the problem for the industry to solve is to actually make the process of claiming payments frictionless for customers.

“Let’s say, 20 to 40 years back, you had no means but to send physical people to be there to look into stuff; you had no means to be able to process claims in a frictionless manner because now when you have cameras all across, you have digital submission of documents, you have so many evidences which is there, you can make the process of claims very frictionless and very straightforward,” said Singhel.

“So I think the problem to solve is how do you make the process of claims so frictionless that the customer feels, ‘wow, it was so good to insure’. The industry is paying claims, it’s not that they’re not paying claims. It is the frictionless part, where the trust part comes in, that needs to be solved,” Singhel added.

Insurance customers on digital today enjoy better service due to end-to-end digital experiences that leverage technological applications, which, in turn, is expected to drive growth for the industry. The insurance market is expected to reach nearly $222 billion by fiscal 2026, with new online distribution models such as business to consumer (B2C), business to business (B2B), and business to business to consumer (B2B2C) set to be key drivers of growth, according to a recent RedSeer report.

To be clear, the CEOs of Indian insurance majors agree on the need to leverage technology to reach large swathes of the population and fulfill the insurance regulator’s goal of providing insurance for every Indian.

For more such conversations that are part of the ET.com initiative to promote Financial Literacy for the Next Billion , please visit our website.

Filed Under: Uncategorized tapan singhel, policybazaar, national insurance awareness day, md of aviva life insurance co ltd, sbi life insurance, Neddforawarnesscreation, ..., national metastatic breast cancer awareness day, national pancreatic cancer awareness day, national brain cancer awareness day

Silicon Valley braces for the good times to end

June 9, 2022 by edition.cnn.com Leave a Comment

(CNN) For much of the past two decades, the ethos of Silicon Valley was largely defined by Facebook’s former motto: “move fast and break things.” But in a sudden and dizzying shift, the current mood in the tech sector could perhaps best be described with a far more restrained mantra: “cut costs and try to survive.”

The tech industry is facing a new reality check as broader economic conditions have deteriorated. Each week seems to bring concerning headlines of tech companies laying off employees and implementing hiring freezes while tech stocks get battered, cryptocurrencies crash and people inside and outside the industry warn about a possible recession .
Silicon Valley is also arguably more sensitive than some other industries to shifting economic conditions, including from rising interest rates , given how many tech companies rely on easy access to funding to pursue their ambitious projects before making a profit, or in some cases, even generating revenue.

Elon Musk threatens to walk away from Twitter deal

Elon Musk threatens to walk away from Twitter deal

In recent weeks, investors and industry vets have been trying to raise alarms about the economic environment with a number of memos, tweets and other public statements. “The boom times of the last decade are unambiguously over,” venture capital firm Lightspeed, an early backer of Snapchat, said in a recent blog post . “No one can predict how bad the economy will get, but things don’t look good,” tech startup accelerator Y Combinator warned in a letter to founders, before adding: “The safe move is to plan for the worst.”

Bill Gurley, a prominent venture capitalist, summed up the shifting mood in a tweet last month seemingly directed at tech startups who may be in denial: “The cost of capital has changed materially, and if you think things are like they were, then you are headed off a cliff like Thelma and Louise.”
Read More

While nobody can predict the length or severity of the current market downturn — and most industry watchers don’t expect it to be as damaging as the 2000 tech crash — the new rhetoric marks a stark reversal in tone for a high-flying industry. The tech sector, already dominant in our lives, only seemed to expand even more as the pandemic pushed people to work, shop and socialize through a screen. The number of unicorns, or startups valued at $1 billion or more, topped 1000 globally in February, roughly doubling from before the pandemic. Access to easy money, thanks in part to the low interest rates meant to buoy the economy, only seemed to fuel even more buzzy, cash-burning ventures.
Then came a seemingly perfect storm: inflationary pressures, the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, rising interest rates and recession warnings have wreaked havoc on the stock market , and in the tech sector specifically. The S&P 500’s Information Technology sector shed 19% since the beginning of the year, as of Wednesday, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index has fallen more than 20%. In one sign of the times, Apple was unseated last month by oil giant Saudi Aramco as the world’s most valuable company.

There are indications of pain points for private tech companies, too, from reports of valuation markdowns to tougher fundraising rounds. There has also been a wave of layoffs across the industry, including at trading platform Robinhood , fintech unicorn Klarna and multiple ultra-fast delivery startups.
“These corrections are always vicious and sudden, and it is amazing how quickly all of the experts and pundits and gurus change their tune,” Vasant Dhar, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, told CNN. “The market always has amnesia.”
Dhar, who has worked in tech for decades, said he’s weathered several booms and busts during his career, including the Dot-Com Bubble in 2000 and financial crisis in 2008. But, he said, “it’s always the younger people coming in who, as Bob Marley says, don’t know their history and get ahead of themselves. And then things correct — and things correct very, very suddenly.”

‘A major sea change’

It’s been so long since the last prolonged downturn in the tech industry that some elder statesmen in Silicon Valley are using their platforms to try to remind the many tech workers who may never have worked in that environment what it was like.
“Nobody can predict what is going to happen over the next 12 months but we haven’t had a real bad tech downturn since 2000,” Mike Schroepfer, who founded a startup in 2000 and later served as CTO at Facebook, wrote in a Twitter thread last month. “I have no idea if now is going to be the same, better, or worse than the 2000s crash. But bad times can last multiple years and if you can make decisions now that extend your runway that’s probably the right call.”
For much of the last decade or so, access to easy money combined with the rise of smartphones helped power a wave of ambitious and disruptive tech companies able and willing to burn through millions, if not billions, in venture capital in search of fast, global growth. A slew of tech startups from Uber to WeWork became household names while never turning a consistent profit. This era inspired multiple recent Hollywood productions, all glamourizing the excess founders enjoyed amid what seemed like a never-ending bull market run. But in another sign of the times, Uber signaled last month that it, too, intends to cut costs and “treat hiring as a privilege” as investor optimism recedes.
A trader works at his post on the New York Stock Exchange floor, Wednesday, June 1, 2022.

A trader works at his post on the New York Stock Exchange floor, Wednesday, June 1, 2022.

“This is a major sea change,” said Matt Kennedy, the senior IPO market strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of pre-IPO research and IPO-focused ETFs. “For years, startups generally followed the same playbook, which was grow as fast as possible at whatever the burn rate. That’s what their investors wanted to see. Capital was cheap, so losses didn’t matter.”
“But that’s changed. Once again, profits matter,” he added. “I think that investors are looking a lot closer at the bottom line.”
A more difficult startup and fundraising environment is not necessarily detrimental for all companies, though it may be “worse for the frothy ones,” Dhar said. The riskier ventures and earliest stage startups tend to suffer in these difficult economic times, Dhar said, but late-stage VC-backed companies might find the sudden evaporation of “pesky competition” advantageous.
Kennedy added that many fast-growth tech startups “need funding to survive” and more pain could be in store for some. “They’ve operated only as high-loss businesses, and that’s a difficult pivot to make,” he said. “As a result, I think we’ll see layoffs and down rounds. Some of these businesses will fold, others will be acquired.”

More resilient than Dot-Com era

While many comparisons have been made to the anguish wrought by the burst of the Dot-Com bubble, the tech sector is far more developed now than it was in the past, according to Dan Wang, an associate professor at Columbia Business School.
“Large tech companies, even though they’re tightening their belts, are still in a financially advantageous position,” Wang said. “And furthermore, a lot of the services that tech platforms, especially, provide are ones that consumers regard as indispensable.”
This “makes it very difficult to compare the two eras, or to suggest that what happened 20 years ago might be predictive of what happens in the next several months,” Wang added.
Despite the fearful rhetoric and concerning daily headlines in the tech world, Dhar said he still sees the sector eventually bouncing back. “In the long run, tech is the future,” he said.

In the meantime, corrections can even be beneficial for the tech sector, both by ensuring more financially viable companies end up going public and by eliminating some of the froth and excess in the market.
“To be honest, some of the pitches I’ve heard over the last year have sounded like completely absurd,” Dhar quipped. “I have no idea why they would have valuations like that.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized tech, Silicon Valley braces for the good times to end - CNN, avalon at silicon valley, t.j. miller silicon valley, maxlinear silicon valley, paul cominsky silicon valley bank, html t shirt silicon valley, shockley silicon valley, william b. shockley silicon valley, wrappup silicon valley, show silicon valley, silicon valley execs limit screen time

Copyright © 2022 Search. Power by Wordpress.
Home - About Us - Contact Us - Disclaimers - DMCA - Privacy Policy - Submit your story