Business News at 10:00 am on 10th July, 2024

Let’s begin. India’s food services market, currently valued at Rs 5.7 trillion, is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.1%, reaching Rs 7.76 trillion in four years, according to a report by the National Restaurant Association of India released on Tuesday. The organised segment will grow at a CAGR of 13.2% between 2024 and 2028. By 2028, India’s food services market will surpass Japan, trailing only the US and China, NRAI said. It will also be the second-fastest growing market after Brazil, employing 10.3 million people by 2028. The market, which includes the organised segment valued at Rs 2.49 trillion and the unorganised segment valued at Rs 3.19 trillion, currently employs 8.5 million people.

Meanwhile, The government is likely to come up with a Production Linked Incentive scheme for underground mining equipment and heavy earth-moving machinery by 2025-26, an official source told FE. The scheme shall be implemented over five years, and would be designed to bolster the largely unexplored under-ground coal mining in the country. The source said, quote, “We have more or less prepared the draft. It now needs to be discussed with the ministries concerned, get finalised, and approved by the government,” unquote. Currently, Coal India imports high-capacity equipment such as electric rope shovels, hydraulic shovels, dumpers, crawler dozers, drills, motor graders, and front-end loaders wheel dozers to conduct its mining operations.

Over to aviation sector. Air India plans to introduce a voluntary separation scheme for around 600 employees whose roles are expected to be redundant after the merger with Vistara. However, the entire flying crew will be retained as the airline plans massive operational expansion post-merger, sources said. Air India did not respond to an email query. In the recent past, Air India’s management has communicated to the employees that several jobs might become redundant after the merger. To minimise job losses, the Tata Group is trying to offer some employees new roles by upskilling them and placing others in different group companies. The sources said that the scheme might get implemented by the middle of this month. And that the board will deliberate on it.

In some more aviation news, a division bench of the Delhi High Court has issued a show cause notice to SpiceJet as to why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against it for non-compliance of its order asking it to return engines to its lessor TWC aviation. Justice Rajiv Shakder told SpiceJet’s lawyer senior advocate, quote, “We are still warning you. If you comply with the order in nine days, we will not go ahead with the contempt. If you don’t we will proceed with the contempt proceedings,” unquote. SpiceJet has been asked to furnish a list of its directors to the registry of the high court in order to issue summons to them.

Next up, industry. HCLTech is likely to report a 2% quarter-on-quarter decline in its revenue in the June quarter on the back of a combination of annual productivity pass-backs to clients and planned ramp-downs in IT services. The average of five brokerage firms expect HCLTech’s revenue to fall Rs 27,866 crore in April-June from Rs 28,499 crore in March quarter. The company will announce its Q1 earnings on July 12. ICICI Securities has forecast a 1.9% revenue decline, emphasising the impact of productivity gain sharing in significant deals. The company’s management had citied that increased offshoring pressures and ramifications from its significant deal with financial services firm State Street as key factors that could curb growth for FY25.

Moving on. It’s not that only homegrown micro-blogging platform, Koo had to down shutters recently due to funding issues. Voice-based social networking platform, Hoote (now Huut), launched by Soundarya Rajinikanth has gone inoperative just over two years since its inception. Similarly, even Arattai, a chat and calling app, launched by Sridhar Vembu’s Zoho Corporation as an alternative to WhatsApp has failed to gain traction with just over 100,000 downloads since its launch in 2021. While Hoote has not made any official announcement regarding its app status, it neither accepts new user sign-ups nor allows existing users to log in.

Lastly, let’s have a look at the stocks in focus today. These include Reliance Industries, Wipro, ONGC, RVNL, Mahindra & Mahindra, Bansal Wires, and Emcure Pharma among others. Wipro has resolved a lawsuit filed by Wipro Ltd against its former chief financial officer, Jatin Dalal. According to a US SEC filing dated July 2, 2024, Cognizant’s board of directors approved a payment of $505,087 to cover the settlement and legal fees related to the dispute. ONGC has announced plans to invest approximately Rs 2 lakh crore to establish renewable energy sites and green hydrogen plants, aiming to achieve its net-zero carbon emission goal by 2038. As part of this initiative, the company will invest Rs 97,000 crore by 2030.