Weekly News Roundup at 10:00 am on 25th November 2023

The most-awaited initial public offering of the year, Tata Technologies Ltd, opened for subscription this week on November 22, and closed on Friday, November 24. Tata Technologies IPO subscription status on Day 2 was 14.85 times. The retail investors portion was subscribed 11.19 times, NII portion was subscribed 31.03 times, and Qualified Institutional Buyers portion was booked 8.55 times. Employee portion has been subscribed 2.36 times Portion reserved for the shareholder has been booked 20.02 times. The IPO has created a record of attracting the highest number of applications on its issue among private sector companies. Tata Technologies IPO, till only the second day of its issues, had overtaken major private companies such as Zomato, Reliance Power, Nykaa, and others.

In some more market news, the Indian Railways is poised to add 200 to 250 new trains annually, in addition to the 400 to 450 Vande Bharat trains slated for inclusion in the coming years. Railway stocks have surged by as much as 32% in the past month, accompanied by a more than tenfold rise in average trading volumes. In response to the escalating passenger numbers attributed to population growth, the Indian Railways has unveiled a robust plan to introduce an additional 3,000 trains over the next four to five years. This strategic move articulated by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, aims to augment the current annual passenger capacity from 800 crore to 1,000 crore.

Meanwhile, Vaishnaw this week also asked all social media platforms to present their plan of action within the next 10 days to curb the growing menace of deepfakes and other misuse of AI generated technologies. The minister who earlier in the day held a meeting with all the platforms which included the likes of Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Telegram, industry body Nasscom and several AI academicians, said that their inputs would be incorporated by the government in framing new regulations that may impose penalties on both creator and platform hosting deepfakes. The platforms have been asked to present their plans on four pillars – detection of deepfakes and misinformation; how to prevent the spread of misinformation; how to strengthen reporting mechanisms; and increasing awareness.

Over to banking. Public sector lenders State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda has received encouraging response from customers for the Central Bank Digital Currency or digital rupee. Country’s largest lender has recorded over 900,000 transactions from 400,000 lakh users since December 1 last year. The number of CBDC users for Bank of Baroda has reached 250,000. Balaji Rajagopalan, Chief Technology Officer, SBI on the sidelines of banking conference FIBAC 2023 organised by FICCI said that the pilot of CBDC has been successful. They have 900,000 plus transactions from December 1 last year and have onboarded over 40,000 merchants.

Moving on. Honasa Consumer, the parent company of the popular beauty and personal care brand Mamaearth, witnessed a remarkable 20 percent surge in its shares, reaching Rs 422.5 per share on November 23. This surge follows the company’s impressive Q2 financial results, which revealed a doubling of net profit to Rs 30 crore. Jefferies, a leading financial services firm, responded positively to Honasa Consumer’s Q2 performance and reiterated a ‘buy’ rating on the stock. The brokerage firm has set a target of Rs 530 per share, indicating a substantial 25 per cent upside from the current levels. In addition to the ‘buy’ rating, Jefferies has also upgraded its earnings per share estimates on Honasa Consumer stock by 5-6 per cent.

Next up, money matters. Credit card spends rose 38.3% year-on-year to an all-time high of Rs 1.8 trillion in October aided by strong festival season spends. The 38.3% y-o-y growth witnessed in October was the highest in nine months. Spends rose 25.4% month-on-month, which is the highest in two years. Spend per card rose nearly 16% y-o-y to an all-time high of Rs 18,898 in October. It rose 23.2% month-on-month. BankBazaar.com Chief Executive Officer Adhil Shetty said, quote, “We have seen two big use cases. Around 65% of credit card spends occur online. The ticket sizes online tend to be much higher than the average,” unquote. He added that features like no-cost EMI have also gained traction in recent times.

Sam Altman, who was fired by the OpenAI board on Friday last week, dramatically returned as the CEO this week. His return at OpenAI took place a day after his appointment at Microsoft where he was to lead a new advanced AI research team. While Nadella had confirmed Altman’s hiring, Altman himself had posted about it saying, quote, “satya and my top priority remains to ensure OpenAI continues to thrive,” unquote. A day after his shocking return, Altman sacked the entire OpenAI Board that fired him last week. The Board that ousted the OpenAI co-founder has been completely replaced. The only exception of Altman’s purge – Quora’s CEO Adam D’Angelo.