Author
Ashish Sinha is an experienced business journalist who has covered FMCG, auto, infrastructure, tourism, telecom among several other beats. Ashish has keen interest in the regulatory scenario impacting different sectors. He writes on aviation, railways, post and telegraph, infrastructure, defence, media & entertainment, among a wide variety of other subjects.
Corinne Saunders, CEO, Emerging & Developing Markets, Wolters Kluwer, talks to BW Businessworld about the company’s goals and strategies in India.
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Indian Railways has signed the formal contract agreement with USA based GE (for Marhowra) and France based Alstom (for Madhepura) on November 30, 2015. It was described as the single largest foreign direct investment (FDI) deal in manufacturing
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Airtel's big ticket announcement of investing Rs 60,000 crore to improve its network service and customer experience has created a ripple. A similar move is also expected from Reliance Jio
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For Salman Khan, 2015 is probably one of those years in which he featured in the two biggest box-office grossers, Bajrangi Bhaijan and Prem Ratan Dhan Paayo
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Despite the delayed release in India, Spectre, the latest edition of James Bond franchisee is expected to cross Rs 100 crore in collections making it the biggest release for 007
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It is generally said that if a government policy pleases more people than it upsets, the devil lurks in the fine print. This could be the case with the draft National Civil Aviation Policy unveiled on October 30.
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Prem Ratan Dhan Payo's two-day collections overshoot Bajrangi Bhaijaan's two-day collection and is on way to cross Rs 100 crore mark by Sunday or even before that.
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India Post is not new to banking-like services like opening accounts, taking deposits, allowing withdrawals and sending money. With Payment Banking licence for India Post, there will be some changes reports Ashish Sinha In order to meet the regulatory and legal requirements of operating a payments bank, Department of Post has initiated steps to hive off its postal arm - India Post as and set it up as a 100 per cent subsidiary company – a mandatory requirement for operating a Payments Bank. “Steps have been taken to hive off India Post as a separate unit. Payments banking via India Post should be operational any time after April 2016,” said a senior official. In order to set up a 100 per cent subsidiary of department of posts, an approval from the Union Cabinet is a must. The modalities of the entire process of how India Post will operate as a separate entity will be worked out in a draft Cabinet note, which will then go before the Cabinet for approval. Communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad envisages the creation of around five lakh jobs for rural and tribal Indians within the proposed network of India Post Payments Banking services. India Post is among the 11 chosen ones selected by the Reserve Bank of India to offer a payments bank. The 11 names who have been granted the Payments Bank licence are India Post, National Securities Depository Ltd, Tech Mahindra, Vodafone, Reliance Industries Ltd, Airtel, Aditya Birla Nuvo, Fino Paytech, Cholamandalam, Dilip Sahnghvi, and Vijay Sharma. What is a Payments Bank? What are its dos and don’ts?Payments banks are institutions that will offer most of the banking services except loans and credit card products to retail customers. Payments bank cannot accept deposits of more than one lakh Rupees per account. Payments banks cannot pay high interest on their deposits as they are required by law to maintain 75 per cent of their deposits in government securities, where the interest are typically less than eight per cent or so.Payments banks will be allowed to set up automated teller machines or ATMs as they are popularly known. But withdraws via ATMs can be chargeable. Advantage India Post Payments bankIndia Post, by virtue of its widespread network covering a large part of the country stands to gain from the first day, experts said. This is because as against a network of less than 40,000 branches of all scheduled commercial banks, department of posts has a network of 1.5 lakh post offices, with a lion’s share in rural India. While others in the payments banking business are expected to run their respective operations for commercial purposes, India Post, by virtue of being under Government of India, may not. Payments bank can also offer life insurance. But the department of post has been providing postal life insurance, since 1884, and rural postal life insurance since 1995. The experience is going to give India Post a big head start over others, experts said. There is one disadvantage too. Since RBI norms on payments banking does not allow the service provider to grant loans, this vast network of post offices may go waste, especially when it comes to granting smaller loans to very poor and tribal Indians, who are otherwise outside the normal banking services network. Till some years ago, the department of post was aggressively working towards obtaining a full banking licence. In fact, the department had applied to RBI for a banking licence for its fully-owned subsidiary, India Post. However, the financial situation of the department, by virtue of always under a deficit, worked against it. As per the official figures, the department of post has witnessed a steady escalation in its annual deficit – from Rs 5,339 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 6,665 crore in 2015-16. As a result, the payments banking licence was granted to a separate entity called India which will further need to be set up as a 100 per cent subsidiary for undertaking the payments banking operations. ashish.sinha@businessworld.in
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When the railway minister gets up to present his second railway budget, Indian Railways would have more than just a blue print of modernisation and development, says Ashish SinhaMostly good reasons every one may agree that there is a buzz around Indian Railways. Not a week goes by without the official machinery of the railways coming out with some announcements here or a new initiative there. For citizens and travellers of Indian Railways, the key takeaways are: its newsy, new initiatives are in abundance and a lots of plans are in motion. By any means, Indian Railways under the Union railways Minister Suresh Prabhu is no longer the ministry that it used to be or had become under some of his predecessor’s which only made news for broadly two reasons - on the day of Railway budget presentation and again on days of any tragic events connected with rail travel. Ashish SinhaIt is not the case now. Stinking washrooms on trains may become a thing of the past with the railways launching the trial run of vacuum toilet on Dibrugarh Rajdhani from Monday (14 September). Now it is in news more often for projects like Vacuum toilets, a first in railways, and on the lines of airplanes. Vacuum toilets are currently on trials in Dibrugarh Rajdhani. In the past 15 months, IR has initiated and implemented a number of customer-centric projects like Passenger Helpline No. 138 and security helpline 182, e-catering service in trains, Smart card for cashless travel, SMS Alerts to passengers, mobile security app for woman on Mumbai suburban trains, Braille Signages on coaches, CCTV on coaches, R.O. drinking water at stations, Facility of ‘Wi-Fi’ services on Railway stations, 100 per cent FDI in identified areas of Railway, Global Positioning System(GPS) for unmanned level crossings among several others. Some of these projects have been implemented, while the work has been initiated on others. Now Japan has been convinced to pump in $140 billion over the next five years for revamping the IR network. Prabhu was in Japan recently. As part of the deal with Japan, around 400 stations have been listed in the modernisation project of the Indian public transporter network. Japan will provide its expertise in solving problems of sanitation including the development of waterless, odourless toilets in trains and stations. Some may argue about Indian Railways creating similar buzz around a decade back with Lalu Yadav at the helm of affairs. At that time too, Indian Railways was in news. Business media was following every rupee earned or proposed to be spent on railways. Stations revamp was one of the priority areas back them too. Even high speed trains or the concept of aping a high-speed train for domestic tracks was spoken about. But there is a difference. A decade back, coalition politics was at the centre stage of India. And it had its own ‘compulsions’ as often described by the political leaders back then. Coalition politics also took its toll on IR and its functioning back then. But no more now. Now, even the ministers know that if work-on-ground is not visible, the voters can be unforgiving during elections. But set aside that politics and compulsions, Prabhu is striving hard to set as many balls in motion, as possible. Efforts of Rail Bhawan and its divisions are being sensed outside India too. Reports say the Internet search engine giant Google has decided to partner with IR for 'Project Nilgiri' and is set to bring in free Wifi access across 400 stations in India. Reports say Google Fiber will be making its way to India. In US, Google Fiber provides high speed broadband. In about five months, when the railway minister gets up to present his second railway budget, Indian Railways would have more than just a blue print of modernisation and development else the buzz could simply translate into noise and chaos.
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Hindi general entertainment channel (Hindi GEC) Colors edges past Star Plus in week 34 to emerge as the genre leader, shows the latest BARC ratings. Will it be able to maintain its leadership position remains to be seen, says Ashish Sinha The Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) space is witnessing a lot of action in the past few weeks. For the first time, perhaps, since the new television measurement matrics have come in - BARC Ratings - that Viacom 18's Colors channel has edged past the genre leader Star Plus. Based on ratings data for the Week 34 - August 22 to August 28, Hindi Speaking Market: NCCS All - Cable & Satellite 1 Lakh plus - Colors took the top spot, followed by Star Plus, Zee TV, Life OK, and Sony SAB. Colors surged to the top spot with gross viewership of 360 million, one million more viewership than Star Plus (359 million). The channel had posted gross viewership of 365 million in Week 33. There was a huge gap in viewership between Colors and Star Plus at the top and Zee TV (264 million) followed by Life OK (224 million) and Sony SAB (186 million) Colors can thank some of its more popular shows for helping it edge past Star Plus. Shows like Udaan and Swaragini consistent performance. There are others too like Meri Aashiqui and Sasural Simar Ka that have added to the viewership and popularity. In fact, in week 34, four out of top five shows were on Colors, the BARC data showed. Among the leading shows on Hindi GECs, Zee TV’s ‘Kumkum Bhagya’ topped the list with 6.6 TVM (Television Viewership in Millions). The next four programmes all belonged to Colors with ‘Sasural Simar Ka’ getting 5.4 TVM, while ‘Meri Aashiqui Tum Se Hi’ returned into the top five, taking the third spot with 5.3 TVM. ‘Swaragini’ fetched 5.3 TVM, but was marginally behind ‘Meri Aashiqui Tum Se Hi’. ‘Udaan’ was at fifth position with 5.2 TVM. Not a single show from Star Plus featured among the top 5 shows in Week 34. However, media planners point to a 24 GRP drop for the Hindi GEC in the Week 34 with all major players playing their role in this drop. "No doubt shows on Colors have a huge fan following in the Hindi speaking markets. Shows like Udaan, Swaragini and others need to do a bit more to maintain the eyeballs. With realty shows like Bigg Boss waiting to happen, the festive season is up for some close contest between Colors and Star Plus," says a senior media planner. Experts said Star Plus, though very strong in loyal viewership, has to do more in its programming mix to bounce back. While the Hindi GEC genre as a whole has shown a gradual decline in viewership, Star Plus had witnessed a big drop in week 32 (over week 31 data) when its viewership dropped to 409 million (from 417 million). For week 33, Star Plus has posted gross viewership of 387 million. With a narrow gap separating the top two channels, everyone is waiting for the next week when data for week 35 comes.
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