Himachal Pradesh adjure Centre to include Shimla in Smart City Mission
Himachal Pradesh government has urged the Centre to include Shimla in Smart City mission and Dharamshala under Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT). HP Minister Sudhir Sharma yesterday met Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu in Delhi and urged him to include Shimla in Smart City Mission as it was a famous international tourist destination, besides being the state capital. “Shimla’s pre-eminent position as largest city of the state and heritage status qualifies it for Smart City tag,” the Himachal Pradesh Urban Development Minister said. Shimla had already been included under AMRUT, Sharma said. Sharma also demanded inclusion of Dharamshala, which was already included under Smart City mission, under AMRUT Mission and said a proposal in this regard had been submitted under fast-track mode to the Centre. He also urged the Union Minister to adopt a cluster approach to include more towns by clubbing small towns like Kullu-Manali and Mandi-Sundernagar under AMRUT. Sharma also demanded funds for Dharamshala sewerage scheme and informed the Union Minister that Municipal Corporation, Dharamshala has prepared a detailed report with estimated expenditure of Rs 101.36 crore for providing sewerage facility in the left out areas of the town. Donte Moncrief Authentic Jersey
Third eye: Western influence in Smart City initiative
The urban development ministry’s Smart City initiative came under fire in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday as BJP MP Bhola SIngh pointed out that cities from east and south have not found a place in the first list of 20 chosen through a competition. The MP from Bihar said that though all knowledge is concentrated in east and south India, western cities have been favoured. Regulation issues at UGC Differences of opinion over the overhaul of regulations of deemed universities said to have derailed the UGC meeting scheduled for Monday. In fact, the meeting was cancelled after some UGC members had arrived at the UGC Office. It is learnt the HRD ministry had strong views on the amendments to the regulations proposed by UGC. Well-groomed minister Union minister Venkaiah Naidu is on a roll these days addressing meetings in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. His speeches, filled with alliteration, frequent shifting to Telugu and his pace of delivery, have struck a chord with the audience. What amused his audience was how he quickly moved the comb over his head minutes before PM Modi came on the stage. New headache for KVs As if it was not facing enough pressure on student admissions references, the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) is now faced with staff transfer requests backed with ‘strong references’. So much so that the Commissioner KVS has issued directions that stern disciplinary action under Rules 16 of CCS conduct will be taken against any staffer who now on “tries to bring outside pressure/recommendations or extraneous influence”. Josh Martin Authentic Jersey
Delhi-Meerut Expressway widening gets nod Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has given its approval for development of 14 laning of Delhi-UP border and Dasna section of Delhi-Meerut Expressway on NH-24. The cost is estimated to be Rs 1983 crore including cost of land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation and other pre-construction activities. The total length of the road will be approximately 19 kms. The project will be awarded under the newly conceived hybrid annuity model. The project will help in expediting the improvement of infrastructure in Uttar Pradesh and in reducing the time and cost of travel for traffic, particularly heavy traffic, plying between Delhi and Meerut. The project is expected to take three years to complete. The road transport and highways ministry has broken the 90 km Delhi-Meerut expressway into four packages- Nizammudin to UP border, UP border to Dasna, Dasna to Hapur and new alignment between Dasna and Meerut. The cost of the total project is expected to be Rs 7000 crore. Josh Martin Jersey
Smart City programme: Ambassadors of 150 countries invited to Investment Summit
In a major international outreach to garner investments in the flagship Smart City programme, the Narendra Modi government has invited ambassadors of all 150 missions in India to a grand investment summit on May 19. The government would pitch projects worth Rs 50,560 crore across 20 cities, chosen through a competitive process conducted all over India, to be developed as smart cities in the first phase. According to sources, most countries have confirmed their participation in the summit, which is being held at Taj Mansingh hotel. Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu would inaugurate the summit and invite countries for investment opportunities. The day-long summit would see presentations from the urban development ministry and participation of state governments. Representatives of six major countries — United States of America, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, France and Spain —have agreed to give presentations at the investment summit regarding interests, opportunities and concerns of business community. Apart from the 20 cities, another 23 cities, which had missed the bus in the first competitive round of selection, have submitted their re-worked plans. Sources indicated that the urban development ministry would include more cities in the first phase from these 23 cities. A senior official confirmed to ET, “This decision would be taken by May 15. At the investment summit we may have projects from more than 20 cities for investment. The final list would be released by the minister before the summit.” The urban development ministry is eager for investments from international players. So far, US and France have agreed to develop three smart cities each in India. United States has vouched its support to develop Vishakhapatnam, Allahabad and Ajmer as smart cities. Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpur will be developed as smart cities with the help of France. The initiative was launched on June 25 last year. The ministry is keen that with an international push some projects would be initiated when the programme completes its first anniversary. The Centre is monitoring the progress of states regularly. Ahead of the international investment summit, the state governments are now busy in converting their smart city plans into actionable projects to be pitched for investment. Lanny McDonald Authentic Jersey
CII, FICCI oppose 85% pictorial warning on tobacco products
Industry bodies CII and FICCI has made representations to union health ministry to reduce the pictorial health warning for cigarettes from current 85% of the pack arguing that it will flourish the sales of illegal and smuggled cigarettes in the country. The chambers in their representation argued that tobacco regulation in India has led to proliferation of illegal and contraband products, increased unscrupulous trade activity and has become a threat to livelihood for millions of farmers and legal industry as compared to its objective of tobacco control. CII and FICCI in their letters to the ministry requested the government to take a balanced view on the issue of graphical warning and take steps to curb illegal trade and production, thereafter address the requisite level of regulation based on the assessment of the prevailing situation. “Over regulation in every industry drives trade underground and defeats the purpose. Until we are able to rein in the illegal trade in the sector effectively, it would be desirable to maintain the status-quo on pictorial warning,” CII director general Chandrajit Banerjee wrote in his letter. The Supreme Court has recently asked cigarette makers to produce packs with 85% pictorial warning till the Karnataka High Court passes its judgement on the fate of the various writ petitions filed by the industry challenging this rule. The apex court has asked the High Court to pass its judgement within eight weeks. Till now, cigarette packs are required to carry graphical warning covering 40% of the front of the pack. The Indian legal cigarette industry has been facing a continuous drop in demand because of high taxation and the growth of duty evaded illegal cigarettes that do not carry pictorial warnings. Since 2012-13, the excise duty on cigarettes, at a per unit level, has gone up cumulatively by 118% with increase in taxation in every successive year. As a result, legal cigarettes today represent only 11% of tobacco consumption in India. As per estimates, the industry is down from 110 billion sticks sold per year to 95 billion sticks a year, even though total tobacco consumption has gone up. Jori Lehtera Womens Jersey
Invested $300 million in supply chain, logistics in 18 months: Snapdeal
E-commerce major Snapdeal has pumped in $300 million (about Rs 1,990 crore) over the last 18 months to strengthen its supply chain and logistics and facilitate the increase in shipment volumes. The city-based firm has seen 1.9 times increase in shipment volumes from 1.29 lakh daily shipments last year to 2.5 lakh this year. “We have seen a significant increase of 1.9 times in shipment volumes. This is on account of increase in assortment on Snapdeal from 12 million to 35 million over the year. We have also expanded our seller base which helped increase shipments,” Snapdeal Chief Customer Experience Officer Jayant Sood told PTI. He added that reports by PwC and RedSeer Consulting suggest that Snapdeal’s promised delivery time is the shortest across India. “The number of sellers on our platform has increased three fold from 1,00,000 at the beginning of 2015 to more than 3,00,000 in 2016… We have invested $300 million towards logistics and customer experience,” he said. He added that the company has 2 million sq ft of warehousing space across 63 sites and 45 cities. Sood said the seller expansion has also led to a huge increase in the goods available on its platform. “Unlike other competing marketplaces, which have their own sellers under various arrangements, we have no such conflicting interests. This makes Snapdeal more attractive for sellers,” he said. He said the company has seen 60 per cent month-on-month increase in FMCG sales, while the books category grew by 300 per cent. Also, there is a strong increase in uptake in the home decor category. “This blend of expansion of high frequency categories drives high repeat usage, which is enabled by reliable experience each time,” he added. Besides, sharp focus on repeat users and initiatives like same day refunds is helping Snapdeal “chart a distinct course”, he said. Brad Richardson Jersey
India’s startup ecosystem mostly software driven, rarely about hardware
India’s startup successes are mostly about software firms such as Flipkart and Ola, and rarely about hardware product companies. ET spoke with product entrepreneurs who have been there and done that for lessons the industry can tap into When the founders of electric scooter maker Ather Energy and medical diagnostics firm Achira Labs had not much more than concepts of their eventual products, they turned to familiar environments for direction. For Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, that was their alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras; and for Dhananjay Dendukuri of Achira Labs, it was his employer. “We reached out to one of our professors in engineering design at IIT Madras and told him we wanted to build a battery and maybe a full vehicle and put in a lot of engineering effort doing that. He immediately offered to support us 100%,” said Mehta, chief executive of Ather Energy that is set to roll out its S340 smart electric scooter this year. “If we hadn’t had that support, our starting would have been 10x harder and 10x longer.” Dendukuri got support from Connexios Life Sciences, where he was a lead scientist; the company incubated his microfluidics startup so he could tinker and experiment with developing a low-cost diagnostics device. That’s lesson 1 on building a product startup, an area where India has a woefully poor record. Unlike software ideas, even simplistic ones, that can find ready backers, products have to climb a steep arc to prove their worth in a market not known for its manufacturing prowess. Products have to evolve from being a concept to a physical prototype and undergo various iterations before they can hit the market. And then the market has to want the product. Which is why getting that first person to believe in your idea and give you the space to experiment is critical. Product entrepreneurs should gain indepth understanding of the problem that they want to solve and its magnitude, and determine how it can be solved best. Niche problems might seem exciting but may not earn your startup the money it will need to sustain. “We never started to become a medical device company. We felt that the magnitude of preventable blindness was really high. Then we went about understanding the limitations. Why is there such a high prevalence of preventable blindness?” said K Chandrasekhar, CEO of low-cost eye screening devices maker Forus Health. “We were then convinced that technology is the only way we can solve this problem.” The next steps are finding a core team and raising funds, because developing a product requires money. While seeking funds, have a working prototype ready. “As a hardware company, one of the trump cards that one has is to be able to show a prototypean actual, tangible, physical thing. The impact that a physical product has is unparalleled. You cannot do the same by making presentations,” said Ather’s Mehta. Since the product startup sector is only picking up now, finding core team members might need time along with foresight and ingenuity. Find people who are as passionate about the field you are working on as you are. Dendukuri of Achira Labs went to various colleges to deliver lectures and took in members who seemed passionate about microfluidics. “I went to IIT-Delhi to give a talk. Somebody there was doing his Ph.D in microfluidics. He attended the talk and then he stayed back to ask questions and now he’s been with me through the entire journey,” said Dendukuri. “The other important pick we made was through a scientific adviser.” Dendukuri offers more suggestions: Scout for Indians abroad who might be seeking interesting options at home to come back to. Non-resident Indians working abroad come with interesting expertise and cutting-edge knowledge, he said. Also, hire consultants or advisers from the first generation of hardware companies as they will have experience in managing an entire product lifecycle. Finding the right vendors for different components is a challenge of its own. Understand the sourcing ecosystem and reach out to vendors who can understand your vision and will want to be involved for the long haul. Akash Gupta, chief technology officer of robotics enterprise GreyOrange, holds one advice from the company’s experienced Germany-based cofounder Wolfgang Holtgen close to his heartthere is a lot of difference between cheap and economical. “There is a big difference between a cheap product and a viable product. Viable products cater to the market, not the cheap. This was drilled into us by Wolfgang. A lot of our supply chain is from Germany, Taiwan and Japan, so it is possible to make products which have really good components and still be viable enough,” Gupta said. It is critical to get the pricing right. Chandrasekhar reached out to experts in the eye care industry to determine the pricing for Forus’s ophthalmic imaging devices. “We were able to understand what would be a typical price a customer would be interested (to pay) and we got a particular price point. That price point was definitely not very profitable for us to sell at that point of time, but then we went about announcing it at that price point, which helped us to make inroads into the market,” he said. Finally, as all success stories go, it is the underlying passion that can take you through the arduous journey of building a product startup. “I started the company pretty late. Before that I was into racing. We named the team as Tork and remained in that space for fourand-a-half years. And then I had a bit of free time (when) I built a prototype,” said Kapil Shelke, founder of Tork Motorcycles, a Pune-based maker of electric motorcycles that is backed, among others, by Ola cofounders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati. “The perception of electric motorcycles was not good then. So I wanted to build and show that it is possible. It worked well.” Stephen Piscotty Jersey
Indians are the most demanding, yet most loyal customers globally: Study
Indians are some of the most demanding, but loyal customers in the world, according to new research launched by Collinson Group. The Group polled 6,125 of the top 10-15% of earners from Australia, Brazil, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the United Arab Emirates. The study reveals that 83% Indian customers expect high quality, consistent customer service irrespective of how they interact with a brand, while 81% expect brands to be easy to do business with. The numbers compare with the global averages of 69% in both categories. Further, the research states that once loyal to a brand, India consumers become dedicated customers. 81% agree that programmes make them purchase more, and 82% would recommend a brand that offered a loyalty programme. This is also well above the global averages of 66% and 65% respectively. It can be noted that brands, however, are failing to tap into this loyal behaviour. In India, there has been a 24% drop in membership of loyalty programmes among the affluent middle class since 2014. Collinson Group surveyed attitudes to programmes run by supermarket and grocery stores, airlines, credit card providers, retailers, hotels, telecom and media companies, coffee shops, and banking. Membership was down across all industries. Some key findings: – 47% hold frequent flyer memberships, down from 71% – 63% participate in credit card programmes, down from 69% – 65 percent are members of supermarket loyalty programmes, down from 77% – Retailers also performed poorly, with a drop in members to 59% from 75% – Telecoms and media providers were the only sector to enjoy a rise in membership, up 2% to 47% “This is a critical wake-up call to brands using points-based programmes offering only generic rewards. Given the importance of affluent middle class consumers on the fortunes of companies, brands must lift their game and rethink how they recognise, engage and reward customers,” said Anurag Saxena, India country manager, ICLP, owned by Collinson Group. “Despite lower membership numbers, the results show that personalised and relevant loyalty initiatives do positively influence consumer behaviour. Three quarters of respondents who are actively engaged in a loyalty programme said it encouraged them to spend more.” Globally, the affluent middle class is also now less likely to repeat purchase, recommend a brand to friends or refrain from switching to a competitor as a result of generic loyalty programmes. India, Brazil and China however buck this trend, as per the research, suggesting these societies are yet to experience the frustration of uninspiring programmes seen in more mature Western markets. “There is a clear appetite for loyalty and customer engagement initiatives, but consumers are turning their backs on programmes that no longer resonate with them. The affluent middle class value spending time with, and providing for, their families, as well as saving for the future. These rank far higher than driving a good car or going on a luxury holiday. Brands should seek to tap into what motivates their customers, instead of reaching for only discounts or material goods as rewards,” continued Saxena. “Brands that are not innovating and addressing evolving customer expectation will simply be left behind.” Gabriel Gagne Jersey
Ecommerce companies say GST will be taxing for customers
The ecommerce industry wants lower overall tax for the industry once the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill gets passed, so as to avoid an increase in costs for the end consumer. It also asked the government to sort out the state-level “entry-tax” issues. A joint report by industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and consultancy Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), shared exclusively with ET, has identified and made 15 recommendations pertaining to online marketplaces and ecommerce under the proposed GST regime. “The overall GST rate should be lower, especially since currently services are taxed at 14.5%, and any increase beyond 18% could make services extremely expensive for the end customer,” noted the report. One of the key concerns of ecommerce companies is the state value-added tax (VAT). “One of the provisions to this effect should clearly state when and for which transaction the ecommerce company or vendor on the ecommerce platform is liable to pay GST. In a marketplace model, it should be clarified that the ecommerce company is liable to pay tax on the amount charged by the company from the vendors for providing various services,” says the report. “The ‘one-tax, one-market’ concept on which the GST is based, should be a welcome step for online marketplaces. To create clarity in terms of the tax treatment of online marketplace sector transactions, sector-specific provisions need to be introduced in the GST regime,” said Sandeep Ladda, partner and leader, technology & ecommerce, PwC India. The report further says that specific rules should be framed regarding when a service will be interstate or intrastate. “This is imperative for ecommerce transactions as it is difficult to identify interstate transactions in the case of services provided over the internet,” noted the report. The recommendations include defining ecommerce appropriately to remove the ambiguity and confusion with “aggregator” and “intermediary” under indirect tax laws. Another point highlighted by the report is defining ‘location of service provider’, where place of supply for ecommerce service providers should be based on the location of the service provider in the case of B2C transactions and that of the service recipient in the case of B2B transactions. It further adds that online marketplaces should only be liable to pay taxes on the service fees they earn. The seller would be liable to pay GST on goods being sold in an online marketplace. The industry has also asked for clarity on whether services provided in Jammu and Kashmir would be taxable under GST. The state is currently considered outside taxable territory. Danny DeKeyser Authentic Jersey
World’s biggest aircraft An-225 Mriya likely to make India debut on Friday
The world’s largest wide body cargo aircraft-Mriya (Dream), an An-225, is expected to make its India debut with its landing at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad on Friday. The Ukraine-based, Antonov Company’s aircraft is powered by six turbofan engines and is the longest and heaviest airplane ever built, with a maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes. Built first in the 1980s, it also has the largest wingspan of any aircraft in operations. Specially built to undertake transcontinental route airlifting load between 180-230 tonnes, the aircraft will be coming in to Hyderabad from Turkmenistan, according to a press release. Partnership agreement Reliance Defence had last month signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with the Ukraine firm for assembly, manufacture & MRO of Antonov platforms in India, both for the commercial and military markets. India needs over 200 medium lift turbofan aircraft valued at Rs. 35,000 crores which is the backbone of all tactical Logistic Transport Support Role as well as Route Transport Role of the Air Force, Army and Para military forces, the release said. The joint venture between Reliance-Antonov will address various requirements including the 50-80 seat passenger aircraft programme of HAL, in its basic configuration and in all its variants such as transport, maritime patrol and other military roles. Antonov aircraft Antonov or An class of aircraft have served the Indian Air Force and Navy for over five decades. Currently, the IAF has more than 100 An-32 aircraft on its inventory. The joint venture would provide the benefits of quality and low-cost solution for 50-80 seater aircraft. It also envisages design and manufacture of the medium lift dual use turbofan aircraft in India with transfer of niche technologies. Low level tactical missions by this aircraft are aided by modern day avionics and navigation systems powered by fly-by-wire systems in all weather round-the-clock operations. Jordy Nelson Womens Jersey