Business News at 05:30 pm on 7th February, 2024

Let’s begin. With the RBI’s crackdown on Paytm Payments Bank on January 31, for not complying with regulations, downloads of rival payment apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, and MobiKwik have seen double-digit growth, while Paytm has seen a decline of 32 per cent. According to data from app intelligence platform AppTweak, Walmart-owned PhonePe has so far been the biggest beneficiary of the uncertainty that has gripped merchants and consumers. Its downloads jumped 40 per cent post-January 31. Between February 1-6, the app saw 3.75 million downloads across Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, compared to 2.68 million downloads in the six days before the notice. PhonePe has even said that it is seeing a surge in inbound requests from merchants for QRs and SmartSpeakers.

Meanwhile, Buoyed by high demand for residential properties after the pandemic, top property developers have gone on a land-buying spree in the last couple of years. These include both listed and unlisted players. For instance, listed players Godrej Properties, Oberoi Realty, Prestige Estates, and Brigade Enterprises have purchased over 400 acres whereas even private developers such as Birla Estates have bought around 35 acres. According to data from Anarock Research, around 180 deals spanning 5,215 acres have been done in the past two years. This comes at a time when in 2023, residential sales hit a decadal high. According to TruBoard Partners, leading the pack of land buyers is Godrej Properties, which has acquired 250 acres of land in the last two years.

Over to banking. Fintechs have expressed concern that higher costs and a weak technology infrastructure have made the know-your-customer process challenging, especially in tier-3 cities and below. Recent amendments to the Reserve Bank of India’s KYC norms in 2023 have left lenders with no choice but to conduct a video customer identification process or an offline process, which has led to a rise in costs. Digital Lenders Association of India chief executive officer Jatinder Handoo said, quote, “The business model of fintech lenders is digital with minimum physical footprint, thus any physical due diligence in non face-to-face customer onboarding increases the turnaround time and affects uptake of financial services,” unquote. In 2023, RBI tagged the centralised KYC database and DigiLocker as high-risk.

Moving on. India is seriously exploring strategic storage facilities for gas across the West Coast, and studies for this are in an advanced stage, sources said. Exhausted oil wells across the West coast of the country may be used for the purpose, they added. According to the information, GAIL and ONGC have conducted studies which are almost complete, and a notice inviting tender for the same is expected to come out soon. However, it is immediately clear which entity will be floating out the tenders. The new reserves are to be set up on the lines of the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a government-run body responsible for maintaining the country’s strategic petroleum reserves, sources said along the sidelines of India Energy Week.

Over to economy. To ensure insurance for all by 2047, a Parliamentary panel has recommended a slew of measures including a reduction in the GST rate on health and term insurance from 18%, the introduction of composite licensing to undertake all types of insurance business, and allowing the Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme for the middle class on a paid basis. In its report on the performance review and regulation of the insurance sector tabled in the Lok Sabha, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance recommended strengthening public sector general insurance companies and reserving a portion of 50-year government bonds for insurers to cater to their long-term investment requirement.

In the industrial sector, Bharti Airtel’s CEO and managing director Gopal Vittal has said that the company’s capital expenditure will come down in FY25 as it has completed a vast part of the 5G rollout as well as made planned investments to improve its market share in rural areas, in the current financial year ending March. While Vittal did not share details about how much the capex is expected to come down, analysts expect the company’s capex intensity in the country to come down to Rs 15,000-16,000 crore in FY25 from the expected Rs 30,000 in FY24, a fall of near 46%. Till December, the telecom operator has spent about Rs 25,000 crore largely due to the rollout of 5G networks and rural expansion.

Lastly, let’s see which are the stocks in focus today. These include UPL, Nykaa, Lupin, Berger Paints, Britannia Industries, Biocon, and Power Finance Crop. For those who don’t know, Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded UPL’s senior unsecured rating from ‘Baa3’ to ‘Ba1’ due to a deterioration in the agrochemical industry fundamentals. On the other hand, Biocon has received tentative approval from the U.S. FDA for Dasatinib tablets, a crucial development in the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome.