Business News at 10:00 am on 27th May, 2024

With a sharp 62% decline in net foreign direct investment to India in FY24 and a looming crisis in finding non-Budget funds to finance infrastructure projects, the Centre is preparing a multi-pronged action plan to attract long-term capital of an additional $50 billion per year from abroad. Patient capital, as both debt and equity, is being sought to be tapped. According to official sources, talks have been initiated with many countries, including the US and key European nations, where finance capital is parked. A complementary plan is to create a couple of Funds under the NIIF to pool investments in specific infrastructure projects. The action plan involves readying a clutch of large “investible projects”, where the investors have little to worry about return on investments.

Meanwhile, With the RBI pushing fintech firms towards calibrated growth, investors in them companies are turning cautious. In a recent meeting, the banking regulator asked lending-focused fintechs to cut down growth. Entities growing at over 30% have been asked to keep growth at 15-20%, say industry sources. Anisha Patnaik, Founder, LexStart Partners said that this directive is a double-edged sword for fintech start-ups. While it is vital to have robust systems and practices in place; investors also seek high growth rates in a promising sector like fintech. As per data from The Digital Fifth, investments in fintech segment fell to $203 million in first four months of 2024, indicating a more selective approach towards the segment.

Moving on. While China emerged as India’s largest goods trading partner, outdoing the US by a modest $ 116 million in the last financial year, it is the US that has delivered consistent trade surpluses for India year on year. Merchandise trade with China stood at $ 118.4 billion in FY 24 on the back of 4.04% growth while with the US there was a contraction of 8.59% to $ 118.2 billion. India’s exports to the US had dropped 1.3% to $ 77.5 billion while imports were down 19.8% to 40.7 billion. In China’s case the exports grew 8.8% to $ 16.6 billion and imports were up 3.29% to $ 101.7 billion. That is, trade deficit with China crossed the $85 billion mark.

Over to industry. Boston Consulting Group will prepare a three-year roadmap to transform state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam so that it can effectively compete with private telecom operators. BSNL will be paying BCG Rs 132 crore for the advisory service, sources said. The key areas on which BCG will advise the loss-making telecom service provider include reducing operational cost, improving revenue, providing better customer experience, leveraging emerging technologies to improve sales, and sales & marketing strategies in line with industry benchmarks. Sources said BCG will devise strategies and also help implement them.

JSW Energy is evaluating over half a dozen deals in the renewable energy space where financial investors are looking to sell their investments. Ritesh Vinay, chief financial officer and director, said that fund lives are ending for some of these investors. Seven such sale processes are underway and they are looking at all of them. While he did not name the deals, these projects/companies have a capacity between 500 MW to 3000-4000 MW each. The company has renewable capacity of 7.3GW now and plans to reach 10GW by FY25 and 20 GW of RE by 2030. To put these numbers in context, its peers Adani Green Eneegy and Renew have either crossed 10GW mark or looking to cross the milestone shortly in operational RE capacities.

In the tech world, YouTube seems to be rolling out the ‘humming’ music search game for you. Android’s YouTube Music app is rolling out the said letting users easily find that tune stuck in their head, the lyrics of which they just can’t recall. YouTube Music introduces a new AI feature that will allow you to find songs by humming or singing, even without knowing the lyrics. The feature lets you hum, whistle, sing, or play a recording of a song to figure out what it is. The new feature can search songs quite faster than Shazam. Report from 9to5Google suggests that it has officially spotted the new feature in the YouTube Music application for Android (with version 7.02 or higher).

Lastly, let’s look at the stocks in focus today. These include Adani Ports, Cochin Shipyard, Divi’s Lab, NTPC, Aurobindo Pharma, Manappuram Finance, and Hindustan Copper among others. State-run power generator NTPC Ltd reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 6,490.05 crore for the fourth quarter of FY23-24, marking a 33% increase from Rs 4,871.5 crore in the same period last year. On the other hand, Hindustan Copper, a state-owned enterprise, announced a 6% decline in its consolidated net profit to Rs 124.33 crore for the March quarter. This compares to a consolidated net profit of Rs 132.31 crore reported in the corresponding period last year.