Business Today

The problems in India's financial systems started showing up in 2015, shortly after the then RBI governor Raghuram Rajan forced banks to go for the Asset Quality Recognition exercise. The bad loans given by banks, which were hidden by the process of

Q. The biggest challenge you faced in your career A. The biggest challenge came in 2004/05 when we were raising an initial capital of Rs 2.7 crore for Ujjivan to apply for an NBFC licence and start our operations. It took us over a year to persuade f

Adecade ago, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mooted the idea of new differentiated banking licences to ensure financial inclusion. The idea was junked as policy makers decided against tinkering with the 70s commercial banking model. Today, differenti

Just about a year ago, the non banking financial sector (NBFC) was on a tear. It was also the darling of stock markets. NBFCs were growing rapidly in many cases faster than banks and their chiefs were feted like star bankers. A year later, things

Amit Kumar, Co founder, GalaxyCard, a digital credit card start up, had just gone live with a non banking finance company (NBFC) when the IL&FS default crisis erupted in September 2018. The NBFC, which had started discussions with GalaxyCard in Janua

India's fintech ecosystem has witnessed rapid growth. Fintech firms saw a fourfold increase in investments, from ?276.21 million in 2015 to ?1.39 billion in 2018. The number of VC deals rose by 61.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2019 compared to t

In the next five years, the Indian banking system will probably have fewer public sector banks (PSBs) from the current two dozen as the consolidation drive accelerates to create a few large banks. There would also be some serious effort to delink the

1) The Founder After getting an engineering degree from UCLA and an MBA from the Wharton School, Nivesh Khandelwal worked for a healthcare firm but soon realised how fast rising out of pocket expenses made it difficult for people to avail of quality

Let us face it. Gargantuan social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram may not be our cup of tea any longer. When social media came into existence for the first time, the idea was to connect people to replicate offline communities digi

Will jet airways fly again? That's the question everyone has been asking ever since it shut operations in mid April. The only meaningful assets that it has, airport slots (about 766), will go permanently to rivals by July end if it is unable to find

In early June, employees at the Gurgaon office of Huawei Technologies had a good laugh over a joke doing the rounds on the social media. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has practically banned the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker from doing

Balabhadra Panda, a priest at the Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha, anxiously waits to escort pilgrims into the sanctum sanctorum of the 10th century temple. A month after the devastating Cyclone Fani hit Odisha, there is visible desperation on his f

Ludhiana based IOL Chemical, the largest maker of ibuprofen active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) in the world with annual capacity of 12,000 metric tonnes, is in a sweet spot, a rarity these days in a segment such as API manufacturing, where China

Most of Ajay Piramal's moves, since he took charge of the Piramal Group four decades ago, have greatly benefitted it. One such was the deal to sell Piramal's pharma formulations business in 2010, then worth around Rs 2,000 crore, to Abbott for a whop

Sitting at the office desk at least eight hours a day, five days a week, staring at all sorts of displays most of the time (PCs, phones, tabs or even televisions) and gorging on wrong foods and drinks make it difficult to stay healthy. Artificially l

It is a common practice for many companies to be concerned about their employees' health and offer annual or bi annual healthcare check up plans. Most of these are in the range of Rs 10,000 25,000, and are offered through tie ups with corporate hospi

You started your career as an investment banker but now are in retail? I started in corporate finance and M&A. So, I did a lot of IPO work. Then, I transitioned to consumer product and retail. I covered many consumer product, retail and FMCG companie

The existing wellness and nutraceutical market in India has an issue. Most of the products are solution driven, which means when people fall ill, they take medicines and nutritional supplements to get well. But compared to the West, the preventive he

India stands tall for its unbridled potential and is well poised to be a leading economy very soon. However, an insidious enemy is lurking the looming threat of non communicable diseases (NCDs) and we need to work together to strike it down. A re

Strategic leaders, being at the highest level of an organisation, are responsible for charting its path to success. They visualise an ideal picture of their enterprise in a futuristic environment, capture it into a pragmatic vision and translate it i

Throughout the world, marketers are becoming more focussed on health. Be it energy, auto, chemicals or food, the focus is shifting to health and sustainability. Greater thrust on non fossil energy sources, or cola majors moving from traditional bever

When you pick up a book on 'the story of the Indian economy, and the political drama behind it', the foreword of which has been written by Bibek Debroy, Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, and the epilogue by Amitabh Kant

Think Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sergey Brin, Mukesh Ambani, N. Chandrasekaran, Anand Mahindra. They, and a few other top honchos of India Inc., have all redefined stamina, which reflects in the long hours that they manage to put at work, hours that s

Sci fi legend Isaac Asimov used the word robotics for the first time in his 1942 short story Runaround. Ever since, Asimov and many of his ilk have imagined agricultural worlds where superintelligent machines carry out farm production. Make no mistak

Beware of the silent killers. You could be prone to severe health risks but might not be aware of them until you are on the watch and paying attention to subtle early signs. In India, non communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart conditions, high

Globally, industries are changing fast by adopting new age technologies like artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, 3D printing and other digital tools. Infrastructure companies are also catching up and adopting these for better execution, cost

Let us admit it. There is nothing more frustrating when our smartphones, laptops or tablets (yes, even the premium Apple products) slow down, freeze and start crashing. Life in the slow lane is unenviable when the world is getting ready for super fas

Buying a gas connection, bargaining with vendors, living in a joint family, navigating traffic, getting admission to a good school/college or securing a job the Generation X who grew up in India had experienced them all and also witnessed their par

Sitting at the office desk at least eight hours a day, five days a week, staring at all sorts of displays most of the time (PCs, phones, tabs or even televisions) and gorging on wrong foods and drinks make it difficult to stay healthy. Artificially l

Think Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sergey Brin, Mukesh Ambani, N. Chandrasekaran, Anand Mahindra. They, and a few other top honchos of India Inc., have all redefined stamina, which reflects in the long hours that they manage to put at work, hours that s

It is a common practice for many companies to be concerned about their employees' health and offer annual or bi annual healthcare check up plans. Most of these are in the range of Rs 10,000 25,000, and are offered through tie ups with corporate hospi