General Affairs
No Approval for Patanjali Instant Noodles, Says Food Safety Regulator
President Pranab Mukherjee Gives Message of Unity in Diversity in Vrindavan
Assam Rifles Denies Issuing Gag Order to Media in Nagaland
Nitish Kumar Invites PM Modi for Oath Ceremony on November 20
Early Antibiotics Help Kids With Respiratory Infections
Sensex ends below 25,500, down 382 points; Nifty at 7,731; IT, pharma stocks drag
Govt approves additional 10% stake sale of Coal India
Govt announces 3% interest subsidy to boost exports
All work and not much pay for India's manufacturers
One of the hottest sectors in e-commerce is going through an unprecedented churn. Is this the beginning of the bust?
No Approval for Patanjali Instant Noodles, Says Food Safety Regulator
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NEW DELHI: Central food safety regulator FSSAI today said yoga guru Baba Ramdev-promoted FMCG venture Patanjali did not have approval for its newly-launched instant noodles, which the company has vehemently denied.
Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) Chairperson Ashish Bahuguna said no approval or licence has been granted to Patanjali for its instant noodles.
"For instant noodles, the companies need to take prior approval. They (Patanjali Ayurved) have not taken approval for it," he said.
"Patanjali Ayurved has approvals for other products but they don't have approval for instant noodles. As of now only 10 companies have approval for instant noodles," Mr Bahaguna added.
Patanjali, however, strongly denied FSSAI's claims.
"We have licence for Pasta in central category from FSSAI. As per FSSAI, noodles come under the 'pasta' category. FSSAI has given us licence for relabeling in the pasta category," Patanjali said in a statement.
Based on the licence for pasta category, the company has entered into agreements with various companies that have licences for making noodles, it added.
The company further said FSSAI has already admitted that it was no longer possible for the regulator to continue with process of product approvals, which was facilitated through an advisory in May 2013, following a Supreme Court order in August this year that upheld an order of Bombay High Court on the issue.
According to FSSAI's May 2013 advisory, food products covering a broad spectrum including "novel foods, functional foods, food supplements, irradiated foods, genetically modified foods, foods for special dietary uses or extracts or concentrates of botanicals, herbs or of animal sources" should apply for product approval.
The High Court had ruled that the advisory does not have any statutory backing, but the FSSAI had approached the apex court against the verdict.
Patanjali had launched 'Atta Noodles' earlier this week in 70 gram packs priced at Rs. 15, claiming to be cheaper than competitors, with an eye to take on market leader Nestle's Maggi, which had returned to the shelves five months after FSSAI had banned it.
NEW DELHI: Central food safety regulator FSSAI today said yoga guru Baba Ramdev-promoted FMCG venture Patanjali did not have approval for its newly-launched instant noodles, which the company has vehemently denied.Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) Chairperson Ashish Bahuguna said no approval or licence has been granted to Patanjali for its instant noodles.
"For instant noodles, the companies need to take prior approval. They (Patanjali Ayurved) have not taken approval for it," he said.
"Patanjali Ayurved has approvals for other products but they don't have approval for instant noodles. As of now only 10 companies have approval for instant noodles," Mr Bahaguna added.
Patanjali, however, strongly denied FSSAI's claims.
"We have licence for Pasta in central category from FSSAI. As per FSSAI, noodles come under the 'pasta' category. FSSAI has given us licence for relabeling in the pasta category," Patanjali said in a statement.
Based on the licence for pasta category, the company has entered into agreements with various companies that have licences for making noodles, it added.
The company further said FSSAI has already admitted that it was no longer possible for the regulator to continue with process of product approvals, which was facilitated through an advisory in May 2013, following a Supreme Court order in August this year that upheld an order of Bombay High Court on the issue.
According to FSSAI's May 2013 advisory, food products covering a broad spectrum including "novel foods, functional foods, food supplements, irradiated foods, genetically modified foods, foods for special dietary uses or extracts or concentrates of botanicals, herbs or of animal sources" should apply for product approval.
The High Court had ruled that the advisory does not have any statutory backing, but the FSSAI had approached the apex court against the verdict.
Patanjali had launched 'Atta Noodles' earlier this week in 70 gram packs priced at Rs. 15, claiming to be cheaper than competitors, with an eye to take on market leader Nestle's Maggi, which had returned to the shelves five months after FSSAI had banned it.
President Pranab Mukherjee Gives Message of Unity in Diversity in Vrindavan
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VRINDAVAN: Living with diversity and finding unity in diversity is practised in India over centuries and it is part of our civilisational values, President Pranab Mukherjee said in Vrindavan today against the backdrop of debate on 'intolerance' in the country.
"Living with diversity, finding unity in diversity is practised in India over centuries. That is why many people wonder how is it possible in India, in one system of administration, in one Constitution, in one way of legal jurisprudence and functioning.
"Is it possible to accommodate, to absorb so much diversity. Many a time we are confronted with these questions," he asked and answered himself that "the answer lies in our civilisational values."
The president was speaking during a function to celebrate 500th year of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's advent in Vrindavan.
Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a revered monk and a reformer in the medieval India.
Mr Mukherjee said that (civilisational values) is the reason why we live with 128 crores of people, the second largest population of the world, with almost all major religions.
Seven major religions are practised in India, more than 100 languages are spoken and over 1,600 dialects are used in India, he said.
"All three major ethnic groups Dravidians, Caucasians and Mongolites. They live in one piece of land. In whole of north eastern India you will find the concentration of Mongolite people. Whole south India, you will find Dravidian people and in North and North West, people belonging to Caucasians group.
All these major ethnic groups live in one state.
"It had been possible because of our cultural values, civilisational values, which has taught us over centuries and which has descendant on us and we have nurtured it which is a part of life and therefore it is no cliche to us," the president said.
Ever since the Dadri lynching and subsequent events, Mr Mukherjee has been appealing for tolerance and pluralism.
Citing teachings of various spiritual leaders and poets, he asked people to accept the message of great saints and "recharge our society, retransform ourselves with love and harmony".
He said India's civilisation is 5,000 years old. "It has been contributed by many saints various sages but all converge into one vast ocean of humanity," Mr Mukherjee said.
Later, the president visited Sri Radha Raman Temple to pay obeisance.
VRINDAVAN: Living with diversity and finding unity in diversity is practised in India over centuries and it is part of our civilisational values, President Pranab Mukherjee said in Vrindavan today against the backdrop of debate on 'intolerance' in the country."Living with diversity, finding unity in diversity is practised in India over centuries. That is why many people wonder how is it possible in India, in one system of administration, in one Constitution, in one way of legal jurisprudence and functioning.
"Is it possible to accommodate, to absorb so much diversity. Many a time we are confronted with these questions," he asked and answered himself that "the answer lies in our civilisational values."
The president was speaking during a function to celebrate 500th year of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's advent in Vrindavan.
Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a revered monk and a reformer in the medieval India.
Mr Mukherjee said that (civilisational values) is the reason why we live with 128 crores of people, the second largest population of the world, with almost all major religions.
Seven major religions are practised in India, more than 100 languages are spoken and over 1,600 dialects are used in India, he said.
"All three major ethnic groups Dravidians, Caucasians and Mongolites. They live in one piece of land. In whole of north eastern India you will find the concentration of Mongolite people. Whole south India, you will find Dravidian people and in North and North West, people belonging to Caucasians group.
All these major ethnic groups live in one state.
"It had been possible because of our cultural values, civilisational values, which has taught us over centuries and which has descendant on us and we have nurtured it which is a part of life and therefore it is no cliche to us," the president said.
Ever since the Dadri lynching and subsequent events, Mr Mukherjee has been appealing for tolerance and pluralism.
Citing teachings of various spiritual leaders and poets, he asked people to accept the message of great saints and "recharge our society, retransform ourselves with love and harmony".
He said India's civilisation is 5,000 years old. "It has been contributed by many saints various sages but all converge into one vast ocean of humanity," Mr Mukherjee said.
Later, the president visited Sri Radha Raman Temple to pay obeisance.
Assam Rifles Denies Issuing Gag Order to Media in Nagaland
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KOHIMA: The Assam Rifles today denied that it had issued any "gag order" to the media in Nagaland on matters relating to NSCN(K), which was recently banned by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
"The Assam Rifles had written the letter to the editors of five media houses of Nagaland on October 24 highlighting the fact that NSCN(K) has been notified as an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 by the Ministry of Home Affairs and amplified some of the clauses of the Gazette Notification which have its own legal implications," a statement issued by the office of the Inspector General of Assam Rifles (North) (IGAR(N)) said in Kohima.
The Assam Rifles also said that a copy of the MHA Notification was enclosed with the letter and the editors of the newspapers were requested to publish articles of NSCN(K) in consonance with the Act.
Publishing an "extortion notice" of a "banned organisation" against business establishments is akin to abetting the "banned organisation" in collection of funds which will be used to carry out subversive activities against the government agencies and security forces, the IGAR(N) said.
"If media houses feel it is correct to issue them to public through their medium it's their call, and answer the Press Council of India for violation of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967," it said.
The media houses are free to publish any article about the NSCN(K) organisation which would add to the peace process, air their opinion about the security forces and their conduct of operations, it said.
The IGAR(N) also maintained that at no stage had the media been asked to dilute their free reporting.
The contents of the advisory making the media houses aware of the MHA notification and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act are being deliberately misinterpreted, the IGAR(N) statement said.
The intent of the letter was to prevent contact of NSCN(K) with the public for conveying their "extortion demands" or "extortion threats" through a medium of mass communication, it said.
The IGAR(N) said that the sequence of events over the past couple of days appeared to be a "well-conceived plan by vested interests" to use the press and muzzle the voice of the Assam Rifles, which, it said, was the only organisation that had "faced the full brunt of terrorist actions and achieved tangible results against a terrorist organisation."
Five newspapers in Nagaland were without any editorial on Monday while the Naga Press Association (NPA) extended support to the editors in protest against the alleged attempt of the Assam Rifles to suppress the freedom of media.
KOHIMA: The Assam Rifles today denied that it had issued any "gag order" to the media in Nagaland on matters relating to NSCN(K), which was recently banned by the Ministry of Home Affairs."The Assam Rifles had written the letter to the editors of five media houses of Nagaland on October 24 highlighting the fact that NSCN(K) has been notified as an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 by the Ministry of Home Affairs and amplified some of the clauses of the Gazette Notification which have its own legal implications," a statement issued by the office of the Inspector General of Assam Rifles (North) (IGAR(N)) said in Kohima.
The Assam Rifles also said that a copy of the MHA Notification was enclosed with the letter and the editors of the newspapers were requested to publish articles of NSCN(K) in consonance with the Act.
Publishing an "extortion notice" of a "banned organisation" against business establishments is akin to abetting the "banned organisation" in collection of funds which will be used to carry out subversive activities against the government agencies and security forces, the IGAR(N) said.
"If media houses feel it is correct to issue them to public through their medium it's their call, and answer the Press Council of India for violation of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967," it said.
The media houses are free to publish any article about the NSCN(K) organisation which would add to the peace process, air their opinion about the security forces and their conduct of operations, it said.
The IGAR(N) also maintained that at no stage had the media been asked to dilute their free reporting.
The contents of the advisory making the media houses aware of the MHA notification and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act are being deliberately misinterpreted, the IGAR(N) statement said.
The intent of the letter was to prevent contact of NSCN(K) with the public for conveying their "extortion demands" or "extortion threats" through a medium of mass communication, it said.
The IGAR(N) said that the sequence of events over the past couple of days appeared to be a "well-conceived plan by vested interests" to use the press and muzzle the voice of the Assam Rifles, which, it said, was the only organisation that had "faced the full brunt of terrorist actions and achieved tangible results against a terrorist organisation."
Five newspapers in Nagaland were without any editorial on Monday while the Naga Press Association (NPA) extended support to the editors in protest against the alleged attempt of the Assam Rifles to suppress the freedom of media.
Nitish Kumar Invites PM Modi for Oath Ceremony on November 20
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PATNA: Bihar Chief Minister designate Nitish Kumar today extended invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the oath ceremony of his new government on Friday.
Mr Kumar talked to the PM over telephone and extended his invitation for the oath function at Gandhi Maidan at 2 pm on November 20, sources in the Chief Minister's office said.
With the four-day Chhath festival ending this morning, Mr Kumar telephoned prominent leaders personally to invite them for the swearing-in ceremony of the new government.
Bihar JD(U) President Basistha Narayan Singh said inviting the Prime Minister was a political etiquette and it was now on him whether to come or not.
On being asked about the invitation, Bihar BJP Vice President Sanjay Mayukh told PTI that PM due to his "prior fixed programmes" might not be able to attend the ceremony.
He said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu and Minister of State (Independent Charge) Rajiv Pratap Rudy would represent the Union government at the swearing-in function.
The PM had congratulated Mr Kumar on the day of the poll results on November 8 over the grand secular alliance's massive victory in Bihar.
The sources in CMO said Kumar had also telephoned Union Home minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and other central ministers and invited them for the oath ceremony.
State Congress President Ashok Choudhary told PTI that party Vice President Rahul Gandhi in all likelihood would attend the swearing-in function.
Rahul had played an important role in cementing bonds between three parties JD(U), RJD and Congress and also in naming Mr Kumar the Chief Minister face of the grand secular alliance. He had addressed eight rallies in favour of secular alliance candidates during the poll campaign.
Chief Ministers of other states like Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, Tarun Gogoi and Akhilesh Yadav are expected to attend the ceremony to display a picture of unity among parties opposed to BJP.
Samajwadi Party lawmaker from Mainpuri Tej Pratap Yadav, who is in Patna in connection with Chhath observed by his mother-in-law Rabri Devi, confirmed that Mr Yadav would attend the ceremony.
Mr Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad wish to make the oath ceremony a big event by bringing together leaders of different parties which are opposed to BJP.
PATNA: Bihar Chief Minister designate Nitish Kumar today extended invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the oath ceremony of his new government on Friday.Mr Kumar talked to the PM over telephone and extended his invitation for the oath function at Gandhi Maidan at 2 pm on November 20, sources in the Chief Minister's office said.
With the four-day Chhath festival ending this morning, Mr Kumar telephoned prominent leaders personally to invite them for the swearing-in ceremony of the new government.
On being asked about the invitation, Bihar BJP Vice President Sanjay Mayukh told PTI that PM due to his "prior fixed programmes" might not be able to attend the ceremony.
He said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu and Minister of State (Independent Charge) Rajiv Pratap Rudy would represent the Union government at the swearing-in function.
The PM had congratulated Mr Kumar on the day of the poll results on November 8 over the grand secular alliance's massive victory in Bihar.
The sources in CMO said Kumar had also telephoned Union Home minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and other central ministers and invited them for the oath ceremony.
State Congress President Ashok Choudhary told PTI that party Vice President Rahul Gandhi in all likelihood would attend the swearing-in function.
Rahul had played an important role in cementing bonds between three parties JD(U), RJD and Congress and also in naming Mr Kumar the Chief Minister face of the grand secular alliance. He had addressed eight rallies in favour of secular alliance candidates during the poll campaign.
Chief Ministers of other states like Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, Tarun Gogoi and Akhilesh Yadav are expected to attend the ceremony to display a picture of unity among parties opposed to BJP.
Samajwadi Party lawmaker from Mainpuri Tej Pratap Yadav, who is in Patna in connection with Chhath observed by his mother-in-law Rabri Devi, confirmed that Mr Yadav would attend the ceremony.
Mr Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad wish to make the oath ceremony a big event by bringing together leaders of different parties which are opposed to BJP.
Early Antibiotics Help Kids With Respiratory Infections
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NEW YORK: Giving children a common antibiotic at the first sign of cold symptoms can reduce the risk of the episode developing into a severe lower respiratory tract illness, new research has found.
Children whose colds tend to progress and lead to severe wheezing and difficulty in breathing are generally given oral corticosteroids as rescue therapy.
"Oral corticosteroids such as prednisone have become the standard of care for these situations," said lead study author Leonard Bacharier, professor of pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
"But there are some studies that suggest these treatments do not consistently work for young children. That's why we want to find ways to prevent upper respiratory infections from progressing to lower respiratory tract illnesses," Bacharier noted.
The researchers conducted a test with the antibiotic azithromycin against placebo in 607 children at nine academic medical centres in the US.
The children were aged 12 months to six years and had histories of developing severe lower respiratory tract illnesses but otherwise were healthy.
Of the 92 whose illnesses was deemed severe because they required oral corticosteroids, 57 were in the placebo group compared with 35 in the group receiving azithromycin.
"We chose this antibiotic dose in order to try to maximize the anti-inflammatory effects," Bacharier explained.
The researchers worked with each family to identify a set of early symptoms that would indicate the parents to begin the treatment at the earliest signs of cold symptoms.
"Our study suggests we can reduce the risk of severe respiratory illnesses by giving azithromycin treatment earlier," Bacharier noted.
Among children who developed severe illnesses while on azithromycin, overall symptoms were less severe than in those who received placebo, the findings showed.
The study appeared online in the journal JAMA.
NEW YORK: Giving children a common antibiotic at the first sign of cold symptoms can reduce the risk of the episode developing into a severe lower respiratory tract illness, new research has found.Children whose colds tend to progress and lead to severe wheezing and difficulty in breathing are generally given oral corticosteroids as rescue therapy.
"Oral corticosteroids such as prednisone have become the standard of care for these situations," said lead study author Leonard Bacharier, professor of pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The researchers conducted a test with the antibiotic azithromycin against placebo in 607 children at nine academic medical centres in the US.
The children were aged 12 months to six years and had histories of developing severe lower respiratory tract illnesses but otherwise were healthy.
Of the 92 whose illnesses was deemed severe because they required oral corticosteroids, 57 were in the placebo group compared with 35 in the group receiving azithromycin.
"We chose this antibiotic dose in order to try to maximize the anti-inflammatory effects," Bacharier explained.
The researchers worked with each family to identify a set of early symptoms that would indicate the parents to begin the treatment at the earliest signs of cold symptoms.
"Our study suggests we can reduce the risk of severe respiratory illnesses by giving azithromycin treatment earlier," Bacharier noted.
Among children who developed severe illnesses while on azithromycin, overall symptoms were less severe than in those who received placebo, the findings showed.
The study appeared online in the journal JAMA.
Business Affairs
Sensex ends below 25,500, down 382 points; Nifty at 7,731; IT, pharma stocks drag
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The domestic markets ended the day sharply lower in trade on Wednesday as lingering concerns about earnings and the worsening global risk environment hit blue chips across the board.
The S&P BSE Sensex slipped below its crucial psychological level of 25,500, while broader CNX Nifty settled below its key support level of 7,750.
The 30-share index ended the day 381.95 points lower at 25,482.52. The broad-based 50-shares index quoted 7,731.80, down 105.75 points at close.
Market breadth remained fairly negative with 26 of the 30 Sensex stocks ending the day in red.
Hindalco was the worst performer on the Sensex and fell 5.5 per cent on the BSE.
Infosys shares ended 4 per cent down and hit its lowest level since July 20, continuing to reel after India's second-largest IT software exporter warned on Monday that reduced spending from top clients was pressuring margins.
"Index heavyweights, particularly IT and pharma, are finding strong headwinds," said Deven Choksey, managing director at KR Choksey Securities.
Shares of SpiceJet, Jet Airways and Interglobe Aviation wiped out all losses after slipping up to 4 per cent after Competition Commission on Tuesday imposed penalties totalling Rs 258 crore on airlines accusing them of cartelising in fixing fuel surcharge on air cargo.
Meanwhile, foreign investors were seen as extending their selling spree. They have been net sellers in November, selling around $648 million worth of equity shares during the month so far.
European shares fell in trade today, retreating back from solid gains made in the previous session, as a new fall in the price of copper caused mining stocks to lose ground.
There appeared to be limited market reaction to news that French authorities had killed two suspects after last week's attacks in Paris which killed more than 120 people.
Among Asian markets, China's Shanghai Composite settled the day 1 per cent down, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 0.34 per cent. Japan's Nikkei ended with an uptick of 0.09 per cent.
Overnight, US stocks ceded earlier gains to end almost flat. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.04 per cent, to 17,489.5, the S&P 500 lost 0.13 per cent, to 2,050.44 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.03 per cent, to 4,986.02.
Lowdown on markets today
02:10 pm
Sensex at 25,595.39, down 269.08 points
Nifty at 7,756.55, down 81.00 points
01:00 pm
Sensex at 25,771.91, down 92.56 points
Nifty at 7,812.55, down 25.00 points
12:10 pm
Sensex at 25839.10, down 25 points
Nifty at 7831.30, down 6 points
11:20 am
Sensex at 25803.99, down 60 points
Nifty at 7819.05, down 18 points
9:24 am
Sensex at 25,860.44, down 4.03 points
Nifty at 7,829.10, down 8.45 points
The domestic markets ended the day sharply lower in trade on Wednesday as lingering concerns about earnings and the worsening global risk environment hit blue chips across the board.
The S&P BSE Sensex slipped below its crucial psychological level of 25,500, while broader CNX Nifty settled below its key support level of 7,750.
The 30-share index ended the day 381.95 points lower at 25,482.52. The broad-based 50-shares index quoted 7,731.80, down 105.75 points at close.
Market breadth remained fairly negative with 26 of the 30 Sensex stocks ending the day in red.
Hindalco was the worst performer on the Sensex and fell 5.5 per cent on the BSE.
Infosys shares ended 4 per cent down and hit its lowest level since July 20, continuing to reel after India's second-largest IT software exporter warned on Monday that reduced spending from top clients was pressuring margins.
"Index heavyweights, particularly IT and pharma, are finding strong headwinds," said Deven Choksey, managing director at KR Choksey Securities.
Shares of SpiceJet, Jet Airways and Interglobe Aviation wiped out all losses after slipping up to 4 per cent after Competition Commission on Tuesday imposed penalties totalling Rs 258 crore on airlines accusing them of cartelising in fixing fuel surcharge on air cargo.
Meanwhile, foreign investors were seen as extending their selling spree. They have been net sellers in November, selling around $648 million worth of equity shares during the month so far.
European shares fell in trade today, retreating back from solid gains made in the previous session, as a new fall in the price of copper caused mining stocks to lose ground.
There appeared to be limited market reaction to news that French authorities had killed two suspects after last week's attacks in Paris which killed more than 120 people.
Among Asian markets, China's Shanghai Composite settled the day 1 per cent down, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 0.34 per cent. Japan's Nikkei ended with an uptick of 0.09 per cent.
Overnight, US stocks ceded earlier gains to end almost flat. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.04 per cent, to 17,489.5, the S&P 500 lost 0.13 per cent, to 2,050.44 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.03 per cent, to 4,986.02.
Lowdown on markets today
02:10 pm
Sensex at 25,595.39, down 269.08 points
Nifty at 7,756.55, down 81.00 points
01:00 pm
Sensex at 25,771.91, down 92.56 points
Nifty at 7,812.55, down 25.00 points
12:10 pm
Sensex at 25839.10, down 25 points
Nifty at 7831.30, down 6 points
11:20 am
Sensex at 25803.99, down 60 points
Sensex at 25803.99, down 60 points
Nifty at 7819.05, down 18 points
9:24 am
Sensex at 25,860.44, down 4.03 points
Nifty at 7,829.10, down 8.45 points
Govt approves additional 10% stake sale of Coal India
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The cabinet has cleared the sale of another 10 per cent stake in state-run Coal India Ltd that could raise as much as $3 billion, a minister said on Wednesday, as the government seeks more funds to spend on infrastructure.
Bankers have already put in bids to manage a similar stake sale in the company as part of New Delhi's aim to raise more than $10 billion by March by selling minority stakes in state firms. The government owns about 79 per cent of the world's largest coal miner.
India has raised just about $2 billion, or less than 20 per cent of its divestment target, so far this year.
The timing of the latest Coal India stake sale will be decided by the finance ministry, Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal told reporters after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The divestment could raise as much as Rs 20000 crore ($3.02 billion), he said.
Goyal also said government would launch an initial public offering of Cochin Shipyard Ltd, which runs a yard that can build and repair big vessels.
The cabinet has cleared the sale of another 10 per cent stake in state-run Coal India Ltd that could raise as much as $3 billion, a minister said on Wednesday, as the government seeks more funds to spend on infrastructure.
Bankers have already put in bids to manage a similar stake sale in the company as part of New Delhi's aim to raise more than $10 billion by March by selling minority stakes in state firms. The government owns about 79 per cent of the world's largest coal miner.
India has raised just about $2 billion, or less than 20 per cent of its divestment target, so far this year.
The timing of the latest Coal India stake sale will be decided by the finance ministry, Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal told reporters after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The divestment could raise as much as Rs 20000 crore ($3.02 billion), he said.
Goyal also said government would launch an initial public offering of Cochin Shipyard Ltd, which runs a yard that can build and repair big vessels.
Govt announces 3% interest subsidy to boost exports
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Concerned over continuous decline in exports, the government on Wednesday announced 3 per cent interest subsidy scheme for exporters which will have a financial implication of about Rs 2,700 crore.
The decision to help boost overseas shipments was taken at a meeting of Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The CCEA has given its approval for "Interest Equalisation Scheme (earlier called Interest Subvention Scheme) on Pre and Post Shipment Rupee Export Credit with effect from 1st April, 2015 for five years", an official statement said.
The rate of interest equalisation would be 3 per cent, it said, adding that it will be evaluated after three years.
Financial implication of the proposed scheme is estimated to be in the range of Rs 2,500 crore to Rs 2,700 crore per year, it said.
However, it added that the actual implication would depend on the level of exports and the claims filed by the exporters with the banks.
Funds worth Rs 1,625 crore in the non-plan head of account are available under Demand of Grants for 2015-2016 and would be made available to the Reserve Bank, it said.
The scheme would be available to all exports of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) and 416 tariff lines. But it would not be available to merchant exporters.
"We believe that this will give a big boost to exports particularly for the MSME sector, handicraft, agri-products and food processing," Power Minister Piyush Goyal said after the Cabinet meeting.
He said the previous government had discontinued the interest subvention scheme, which has made the country's exports uncompetitive. Under the scheme, exporters get loans at affordable rates, which helps them ship more goods to foreign markets.
India's exports remained in the negative territory for the 11th month in a row in October, registering a dip of 17.53 per cent to $21.35 billion due to a demand slowdown, although trade deficit showed some improvement.
The scheme would be implemented through funds available with the Department of Commerce under non-plan during 2015-16 and the restructured scheme would be funded from plan side from 2016-17 onwards.
It said that the Commerce and Industry Ministry may place funds in advance with RBI for requirement of one month and reimbursement can be made on a monthly basis through a revolving fund system.
"On completion of three years of operation of the scheme, Department of Commerce may initiate a study on impact of the scheme on export promotion and its further continuation," it said adding the study may be done through one of the IIMs.
The operational instructions of the scheme would be issued by RBI.
The scheme will help the identified export sectors to be internationally competitive and achieve higher level of export performance.
It covers mostly labour intensive and employment generating sectors like processed agriculture/food items, handicrafts, handloom products, coir, jute, readymade garments, sports goods, paper and stationary, leather, medical instruments, auto components and engineering.
Concerned over continuous decline in exports, the government on Wednesday announced 3 per cent interest subsidy scheme for exporters which will have a financial implication of about Rs 2,700 crore.
The decision to help boost overseas shipments was taken at a meeting of Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The CCEA has given its approval for "Interest Equalisation Scheme (earlier called Interest Subvention Scheme) on Pre and Post Shipment Rupee Export Credit with effect from 1st April, 2015 for five years", an official statement said.
The rate of interest equalisation would be 3 per cent, it said, adding that it will be evaluated after three years.
Financial implication of the proposed scheme is estimated to be in the range of Rs 2,500 crore to Rs 2,700 crore per year, it said.
However, it added that the actual implication would depend on the level of exports and the claims filed by the exporters with the banks.
Funds worth Rs 1,625 crore in the non-plan head of account are available under Demand of Grants for 2015-2016 and would be made available to the Reserve Bank, it said.
The scheme would be available to all exports of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) and 416 tariff lines. But it would not be available to merchant exporters.
"We believe that this will give a big boost to exports particularly for the MSME sector, handicraft, agri-products and food processing," Power Minister Piyush Goyal said after the Cabinet meeting.
He said the previous government had discontinued the interest subvention scheme, which has made the country's exports uncompetitive. Under the scheme, exporters get loans at affordable rates, which helps them ship more goods to foreign markets.
India's exports remained in the negative territory for the 11th month in a row in October, registering a dip of 17.53 per cent to $21.35 billion due to a demand slowdown, although trade deficit showed some improvement.
The scheme would be implemented through funds available with the Department of Commerce under non-plan during 2015-16 and the restructured scheme would be funded from plan side from 2016-17 onwards.
It said that the Commerce and Industry Ministry may place funds in advance with RBI for requirement of one month and reimbursement can be made on a monthly basis through a revolving fund system.
"On completion of three years of operation of the scheme, Department of Commerce may initiate a study on impact of the scheme on export promotion and its further continuation," it said adding the study may be done through one of the IIMs.
The operational instructions of the scheme would be issued by RBI.
The scheme will help the identified export sectors to be internationally competitive and achieve higher level of export performance.
It covers mostly labour intensive and employment generating sectors like processed agriculture/food items, handicrafts, handloom products, coir, jute, readymade garments, sports goods, paper and stationary, leather, medical instruments, auto components and engineering.
All work and not much pay for India's manufacturers
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In the office of the small paint factory he helps run, Pramod Patel is clear on the problem holding back India's manufacturing growth: cash, or a lack of it.
Clients, he says, are taking months to pay, sometimes 150 days compared to the standard 30, choking up businesses like his Reliable Paints and hampering the creation of much-needed jobs.
"We have a lot of potential in our business, but we have no confidence in the payments," says Patel, speaking over the noise of a mixer whirring behind him. Workers around him prepare paint to be decanted by hand into cream and grey coloured cans.
While there is no comprehensive data for the cash cycle of India's manufacturing industry, manufacturers interviewed by Reuters in the industrial heartland of Gujarat say cash is moving at a glacial pace.
All those interviewed by Reuters reported clients delaying payments, sometimes for the best part of a year, evidence of an uneven recovery and of India's credit drought as banks tackle $100 billion of troubled loans.
Central bank data shows that loans to medium-sized industrial companies were down 10 per cent by mid September, compared to the start of the financial year in April. Loans to small companies dropped more than 3 per cent in the period.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who once ran Gujarat as chief minister, India has sought to improve life for manufacturers. He wants to boost a sector that accounts for under a fifth of the economy, compared to a third for China, the world's largest manufacturer.
But the reality on the ground is tough.
Even India's industrial bellwether, Larsen & Toubro, has reported deterioration. Chief Financial Officer R Shankar Raman says payments take around 100 days after they fall due, compared to a standard 60-75 days.
That is hovering around the longest payment period in over a decade, he said.
"MADE IN INDIA"
India badly needs manufacturing to fuel its recovery and create jobs. After all, India will be home to a working age population of 900 million people by 2020, roughly a fifth of the world's potential workers.
Modi's government has promised to make it simpler to operate in the country, with plans for a unified bankruptcy code, a unified goods and service tax, and more flexible labour laws. Last week, it lifted restrictions on foreign investment in 15 sectors, including defence.
But in this corner of Gujarat - a state that was ranked top in a World Bank-supported study on the ease of doing business in India's 29 states - manufacturers say the smallest and weakest among them could be pushed to the wall, unless reform is implemented and recovery arrives swiftly.
A plethora of different taxes still wrap small firms like Reliable Paints in red tape. Others report battling outdated factory rules: some are fined for a lack of spittoons, for example, in areas where spitting on the floor is forbidden.
There are signs of hope. L&T's Raman says he expects the numbers to have hit the bottom, provided promised government spending kicks in and banks pass on lower rates.
"The way the recovery is structured right now, it is not broad based," said economist Sonal Varma at Nomura. Government spending, however, could improve cash flows even for smaller firms within six to 12 months, she estimates.
Gujarat, for one, has pushed taxes online, cutting down on the paperwork and opportunities for corruption, and manufacturers say that had made processes smoother.
But until reforms come in, the bureaucracy is overhauled and real spending starts, factory managers in this baked corner of Gujarat - where paints, pumps and engineering parts dominate production - say their clients will continue to struggle.
"Our big problem is client liquidity," said the director at one European firm supplying the construction industry. "And of course we have to deal with bureaucracy and corruption."
Four years after shutting an office in Mumbai, he said he was still battling to conclude the process.
And with lots of workers, India needs more skilled ones.
"We have a young workforce," said Vivek Sarwate, who runs plants outside the city of Vadodara for Schneider Electric, making components for the Indian power sector.
"But if this young country is not a skilled country, instead of an asset, this becomes a liability."
In the office of the small paint factory he helps run, Pramod Patel is clear on the problem holding back India's manufacturing growth: cash, or a lack of it.
Clients, he says, are taking months to pay, sometimes 150 days compared to the standard 30, choking up businesses like his Reliable Paints and hampering the creation of much-needed jobs.
"We have a lot of potential in our business, but we have no confidence in the payments," says Patel, speaking over the noise of a mixer whirring behind him. Workers around him prepare paint to be decanted by hand into cream and grey coloured cans.
While there is no comprehensive data for the cash cycle of India's manufacturing industry, manufacturers interviewed by Reuters in the industrial heartland of Gujarat say cash is moving at a glacial pace.
All those interviewed by Reuters reported clients delaying payments, sometimes for the best part of a year, evidence of an uneven recovery and of India's credit drought as banks tackle $100 billion of troubled loans.
Central bank data shows that loans to medium-sized industrial companies were down 10 per cent by mid September, compared to the start of the financial year in April. Loans to small companies dropped more than 3 per cent in the period.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who once ran Gujarat as chief minister, India has sought to improve life for manufacturers. He wants to boost a sector that accounts for under a fifth of the economy, compared to a third for China, the world's largest manufacturer.
But the reality on the ground is tough.
Even India's industrial bellwether, Larsen & Toubro, has reported deterioration. Chief Financial Officer R Shankar Raman says payments take around 100 days after they fall due, compared to a standard 60-75 days.
That is hovering around the longest payment period in over a decade, he said.
"MADE IN INDIA"
India badly needs manufacturing to fuel its recovery and create jobs. After all, India will be home to a working age population of 900 million people by 2020, roughly a fifth of the world's potential workers.
Modi's government has promised to make it simpler to operate in the country, with plans for a unified bankruptcy code, a unified goods and service tax, and more flexible labour laws. Last week, it lifted restrictions on foreign investment in 15 sectors, including defence.
But in this corner of Gujarat - a state that was ranked top in a World Bank-supported study on the ease of doing business in India's 29 states - manufacturers say the smallest and weakest among them could be pushed to the wall, unless reform is implemented and recovery arrives swiftly.
A plethora of different taxes still wrap small firms like Reliable Paints in red tape. Others report battling outdated factory rules: some are fined for a lack of spittoons, for example, in areas where spitting on the floor is forbidden.
There are signs of hope. L&T's Raman says he expects the numbers to have hit the bottom, provided promised government spending kicks in and banks pass on lower rates.
"The way the recovery is structured right now, it is not broad based," said economist Sonal Varma at Nomura. Government spending, however, could improve cash flows even for smaller firms within six to 12 months, she estimates.
Gujarat, for one, has pushed taxes online, cutting down on the paperwork and opportunities for corruption, and manufacturers say that had made processes smoother.
But until reforms come in, the bureaucracy is overhauled and real spending starts, factory managers in this baked corner of Gujarat - where paints, pumps and engineering parts dominate production - say their clients will continue to struggle.
"Our big problem is client liquidity," said the director at one European firm supplying the construction industry. "And of course we have to deal with bureaucracy and corruption."
Four years after shutting an office in Mumbai, he said he was still battling to conclude the process.
And with lots of workers, India needs more skilled ones.
"We have a young workforce," said Vivek Sarwate, who runs plants outside the city of Vadodara for Schneider Electric, making components for the Indian power sector.
"But if this young country is not a skilled country, instead of an asset, this becomes a liability."
One of the hottest sectors in e-commerce is going through an unprecedented churn. Is this the beginning of the bust?
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In mid-October, replenishments for the coffee machines in restaurant aggregator TinyOwl's Gurgaon office stopped flowing. Payments to milk vendors had been held back. On October 31, the general managers of the company were asked to rush to the Mumbai headquarters for a meeting. A town hall was announced on November 2 and then called off just two hours before its scheduled start at five in the evening. If that was not enough to raise suspicions among employees, that very night they received a mail from the HR head announcing that Saurabh Goyal, the 25-year old co-founder of the 21-month old company, would visit the office on the following day - it was to be a dark Diwali for about 40 of TinyOwl's workforce.
"Everyone around the office was getting Diwali bonuses. We got post-dated severance cheques. 'It was nice working with you; move on!' - that was the tone of the message," a former employee told Business Today. TinyOwl started its operations in the National Capital Region (NCR) in May 2015 and, soon after, hired 80 people. It took just three months for things to spiral out of control. On August 31, the start-up fired half its workforce. The rest were asked to go on November 3. Goyal cited "tough decisions that had to be taken".
Hiccups
- TinyOwl scales down operations in four cities; fires staff
- Zomato fires 300; says its revenue hasnt kept up with the growth in its sales team
- Bangalore-based food tech firm Dazo shuts operations
- SpoonJoy merged with grocery and fresh food delivery company Grofers
- Foodpanda runs into execution issues; customers take advantage of its refund policy
- Many small food start-ups are closing down or pivoting to new business models
- Investors on a wait-and-watch mode; may not fund food tech start-ups for next six months
On the same day in Pune, where the company was scaling down operations, things took a nasty turn when around 23 employees held Gaurav Choudhary, another co-founder, hostage for 48 hours demanding settlements. Long after he was freed, Choudhary kept mumbling, "Mujhe ghar jana hai" (I want to go home), a staff said. He had to be administered sedatives and may have to undergo counselling for stress and anxiety. The company said the demands made by the agitating employees exceeded the commitments mentioned in the appointment letter.
Gurgaon was surprisingly genteel - something that was not very common in this part of the world where a Maruti executive was killed in 2012 during a labour flare-up in Manesar. "We pressed Goyal to answer questions. But it looked like he would cry," another employee said. "The founders are kids (TinyOwl has four founders aged 23-26 years). They had no clue, no professional experience.
They were running the company like an IIT project," he added.
The layoffs, however, left a sour aftertaste. Not just for the employees, but also for the entire food tech community - a young industry that is trying to revolutionise the way India eats and orders food, primarily through mobile apps. This also exposed a soft underbelly; some of capitalism's worst disease at a micro level - investor pressure, wild business projections, numbers-at-any-cost, a hire-and-fire culture, and broken promises.
To be fair, TinyOwl is not the only company in trouble. The sector is now rife with stories of start-ups which burnt venture money way too fast, but was unable to raise funds any further. Bangalore-based food tech company Dazo shut operations recently. According to Apra-meya Radhakrishna, an investor, the team will venture into a new business. SpoonJoy, another Bangalore start-up with star investors, such as Sachin Bansal and the backing of SAIF Partners, merged into hyper-local grocery and fresh food delivery company, Grofers. The takeover appeared to be a case of 'aqui-hire' - an acquisition primarily done for the skills rather than the products and services the company offered. Grofers absorbed 40 SpoonJoy employees on its rolls, but did not pay anything apart from dolling out ESOPs, said Grofers co-founder Albinder Dhindsa.
Smaller start-ups, such as Mealme, Tumm Tumm (Gurgaon), and PotJoy (Mumbai), have either downed shutters, or are experimenting with a new model. Even established players such as Zomato, which had revenues of nearly Rs 100 crore in 2014/15, and Germany-headquartered Foodpanda, backed by e-commerce incubator Rocket Internet, have run into rough weather. Zomato fired 300 employees, mostly in the US, shut down its cashless business in Dubai, and restructured its markets into two - full stack (high traffic and monetisation through ads) and enterprise (low traffic and monetisation through new approaches such as table reservations). In a blog post on October 16, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal wrote: "The next few months are going to be hard for all of us. But we'll stick together, hustle, and not spend time over-thinking things or being unnecessarily creative, so that we can get to where we want to be." A leaked mail from Goyal talked about the underperformance of its sales teams. "We have grown tremendously over the past few months and our sales team has more than quadrupled in 2015. The hard reality of this growth, however, is that our revenue hasn't kept up with the growth in our sales team." In e-mail responses to a Business Today questionnaire, Goyal, however, played down the letter saying what leaked to the media was one dimensional and was taken out of context. "Every sales team needs pressure to work and the email that I sent out was an internal email that is part of regular conversation that we all have with our teams. There was a lot of context behind that email which was missing in what people read. Internally, people got it. They were actually quite kicked at reading that email and there have been a lot of positive conversations around that email," he said.
The loss of jobs was not about cost restructuring, said Goyal. "We are getting smarter with the effort that we have been putting into our content operations. Almost 40 per cent of the restaurants on Zomato account for over 90 per cent of our traffic. In that light, we have had to rethink our processes to make sure that the frequency of our data updates goes up in multiples for the top 40 per cent of restaurants. This led to a cut in about 60 per cent of our content teams across the world," he said.
Zomato's "tremendous growth" over the past two years illustrate the food tech sector's rise. The company quickly ascended to the top of the world's restaurant discovery platforms, making nine acquisitions between July 2014 and April 2015 - US-based NexTable, Indian firm MaplePOS, Turkey-based Mekanist, Urbanspoon in the US, MenuMania in New Zealand, Lunchtime.cz in the Czech Republic, Obedovat.sk in Slovakia, Gastronauci in Poland, and Cibando in Italy. This frantic bout of inorganic activity ensured Zomato's presence in 23 countries. Zomato's restructuring could be strategic, but that is not the case with most other start-ups.
Now, all of a sudden, one of the hottest sectors of 2015, where marquee investors, such as Temasek, Vy Capital, Sequoia Capital, Accel India, DST Global, Matrix Partners and Kalaari Capital, among others, poured in $177 million till October-end, appears to be heading for the freezer section.
Are the current woes a precursor to the pricking of the food tech bubble? Or, is it a mere correction? Are the problems more company-specific rather than generic? Possibly, the woes of food tech are a mere symptom of a much larger rot; something that market watchers have been warning of for several months now - a valuation bubble in the Indian tech start-up world, particularly in e-commerce. But, is the current implosion in food tech start-ups the beginning of an end-game?
In 2015, India has seen a surge in investments. According to lobby body Nasscom, there has been 100 per cent growth in the number of private equity, venture capitalists and angel investors in the country. Together, they have pumped in nearly $5 billion in India-based start-ups, a growth of 125 per cent over 2014. This translates into almost $100 million of money flowing in every week into start-ups. Today, India has nine unicorns - start-ups with valuations of $1 billion or more - including Zomato. All this is good news, but market watchers feel most of the investments were guided by the principle of momentum investing, which is leading to flawed valuations. A momentum investor bets on the prolongation of an existing trend and buys stocks that are rising.
In a report, valuation and investment banking firm, RBSA Advisors, said that momentum investing is hexing the demand supply curve. "India is experiencing a wave of prefix investing, which involves a market bias for companies with an 'e-' as a prefix or '.com' as a suffix. To keep up with the growth experienced, there is a need for endless innovation to engage and exploit the market. Still, drawing comparisons between the present-day valuation boom and the dot-com bubble infers notable similarities: extraordinary rates of cash burn, colossal losses, ambitious assurances of steep growth trajectory and feeble due diligence by investors under the fear of missing out (FOMO)," the report said.
1. BUSINESS MODEL: Zomato
Zomato Founders Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal (Photo: Vivan Mehra). Zomato is the only Indian food tech company with a valuation of over 1 billion dollar.
Restaurant Discovery
Listing of restaurants with details of menu, addresses, phone numbers and user reviews.
RBSA's report 'The Great e-Commerce Valuation Crash of 2018' drew up possible endgame scenarios between 2015 and 2018. It predicted that by 2017, investors will start exiting small players, who will run out of cash and be forced to down shutters. By 2018, "upon going for an IPO, a company's listed price shall not match its valuation at the last round of funding. This is going to cause a major crash where early exits will be lauded and a lot of investors are going to be an unhappy lot". If the food tech quagmire is any indicator, such a catastrophe could occur earlier.
A Holiday in Afghanistan?
Investors are losing appetite. According to a report by YourStory.com, a media platform for entrepreneurs, seven food tech deals worth $74 million materialised in April this year. In August, the numbers had dipped to five totalling $19 million. The following month saw only two deals.
Fahad Moti Khan started a food tech company called Khana, a marketplace for daily meals, two months ago in Delhi. Between puffs of cigarette, he recollected a meeting with a prospective investor. The question-and-answer session was short but not so sweet: "Would you explore investments in food tech?" he asked. The answer was brisk and piercing: "You are asking me for a holiday in Afghanistan?"
Even in half-jest the statement touches a raw nerve. The stakes are already very high. According to data from Venture Intelligence, only $177 million was invested in the food tech sector in 2015, the cumulative investments are far higher. Zomato has raised $225 million thus far. And, if you add Foodpanda's investments (the company does not disclose India investment figures, but globally it has raised $310 million), the overall fund flow in food tech would be over half a billion dollars. Besides, Venture Intelligence data does not include angel investments - there could easily be over 100 food tech start-ups in the country, many funded through angel money. Half a billion is not a small amount. Globally, food tech companies have raised only about $3 billion in 2015, according to research firm Tracxn.
2. BUSINESS MODEL: EazyDiner
Eazydiner Managing Director Sue Reitz (Centre) with her team (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). 'We are not IT-wallas,' she says. The company is mostly run by hospitality industry veterans.
Discovery, Restaurant Bookings, Deals
Listing of restaurants with booking and deal discovery; focussed on wooing consumers to restaurants.
To add to the confusion, the market is crowded with too many "me-too" companies. Everyone wants a pie because of two reasons: the entry barrier is low and, two, the food services market is a salivating proposition. Sample this: A National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI)-Technopack report pegged the size of the total Indian food services market at $48 billion in 2013. It is projected to grow to $78 billion by 2018. The report goes on to list many reasons for this growth: increasing disposable income of the consumer, a larger population of younger people, growth of consumers in Socioeconomic Classifications A and B, widening exposure to new cultures and cuisines, increased propensity of eating outside, growing popularity of delivery services and the emergence of brands.
There is another reason. The biggest disruption, according to some, is happening in the kitchen. Working moms have a guilt that they are not being able to feed their children well. There is pressure on time. That makes it a good time to be in the food tech game - by serving meals at different price points, at the touch of a button. However, food tech is beyond just an app, a kitchen or a bunch of restaurant listings. It is the food business, after all. Scaling up is proving to be an uphill task for most start-ups. Once in the game, it is all about operational excellence. Techie founders who think technology first, and not food, often miss the wood for the trees, and stumble. Of course, there is a significant tech play and it can be more complicated than one imagines before starting up.
"It is about the complexity of operations at multiple levels. If I have to re-order, it should not take more than 30 seconds. What's the optimum level to do this? All this needs time, research and analytics. Yes, it is complexity, but not only of the last-mile. There is complexity of technology and of partnerships since we are a marketplace. Partners have to be coached in the right way, and hand-held to manage the scale," said Saurabh Kochhar, CEO India, Foodpanda. The company was itself in the news recently for faltering on execution. Among other things, some consumers started taking advantage of its refund policy. "We will keep finding more issues. We have been solving them one by one," he added. There were, however, no signs of a war-torn Afghanistan the day this reporter landed up at the Foodpanda office in Gurgaon. The floor was decked up in orange and white balloons and buzzed with employees in ethnic wear. A Diwali party would begin in a few hours; music was in the air, so was the aroma of food.
3. BUSINESS MODEL: Foodpanda
Saurabh Kochhar, CEO India, Foodpanda (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). Kochhar has been finding and solving issues at the company
Restaurant Aggregation and Food Ordering
Companies not only aggregate restaurants on their platforms but take orders for home delivery.
Currently, there are many flavours to food tech and every business model has its pros and cons. Those who are part of the aggregator model, aggregate restaurants on their platforms and take orders through apps or websites (Foodpanda, Swiggy, TinyOwl, Zomato). Here, delivery is often outsourced. Then there is a chef/home-chef marketplace model where start-ups aggregate home chefs (Holachef, Bite Club, CyberChef). The 'kitchen-in-the-cloud' model does not have a physical store. The menu is limited and orders are taken online and delivered from a centralised or distributed kitchen network (InnerChef, Yumist, Eatonomist). Yet another model is 'ready-to-cook', where raw ingredients for a recipe are neatly packed and despatched for a consumer to cook (Cook Gourmet). While most food tech start-ups have focussed on delivering food at the customer's doorstep, EazyDiner, which opened its doors to Delhi in January 2015, does just the opposite. It helps people select and book tables at restaurants.
Among all the business models we have seen so far, the Indian market may not be ready for the ready-to-cook model, while others have their own limitations. The kitchen-in-the-cloud model is capex-intensive because every new neighbourhood the company seeks to serve may need a new kitchen for the food to be served fresh and hot. Many companies are already struggling with the home-chef model, because it involves higher delivery costs - food has to be first picked up from the home chef, brought to a central warehouse, and then finally dispatched to the consumer. Home-chefs are also inconsistent. "Unlike e-hailing or e-commerce, we are dealing with commodities. It is perishable," said Alok Jain, co-founder of Yumist, and the former head of marketing at Zomato.
The conversation at Starbucks over a cup of double espresso goes on about the culinary habits and its effects on the food tech business. "Every person has his own taste. The dal will differ from every home you pick up. There are issues with food science. Then, if the food is between five degrees and 60 degrees for more than two hours, it will lead to bacteria formation. So, it (home chef aggregator model) is scalable from an excel sheet perspective."
4. BUSINESS MODEL: Eatonomist/ InnerChef/ Yumist
Eatonomist founders Anisha Dhar (left) and Nupur Khanna (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). The challenge is to educate customers on its 'healthy gourmet' meals.
Rajesh Sawhney, Co-Founder, Innerchef (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). Sawhney believes companies with bad unit economics will die.
Yumist Founders Alok Jain (left) and Abhimanyu Maheshwari (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). Jain and Maheshwari believe that consolidation in the food tech sector is imminent.
Kitchen-In-The-Cloud
Companies don't have a physical store; orders are taken online and delivered at home.
The restaurant aggregator model has the big guys, who are well capitalised. Apart from Zomato that raised $110 million in 2015, TinyOwl pocketed $24 million and Swiggy got $16.5 million. Aggregator models do appear scalable but is rife with cut-throat competition. Here, there is a Darwinian fight to the finish.
Survive six months. Be a stud!
That brings us back to TinyOwl. The start-up operated in six cities: Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. But the company decided to scale back operations in four of these cities. In a response to a questionnaire mailed by Business Today, TinyOwl said that the scaling back was "in line with the current organisational focus" and that the focus was "optimisation of resources across verticals". "This development has been made on a strategic level as a step towards sustainability and growth for the brand in the current challenging market scenario. While TinyOwl will continue to operate in six cities, the new model will be initially tested in Mumbai and Bangalore," it said. However, there is little clarity on the new model. Nevertheless, the "challenging scenario" can be illustrated by how it lost the battle for NCR.
TinyOwl's May launch coincided with Zomato's entry into the online ordering space. But the company, according to Rohan Diwan, co-founder of hyper-local delivery company Quickli, had another "Waterloo moment". Rival and bigger restaurant aggregator Foodpanda started heavy discounting, which included discounts of Rs 250 for a minimum order of Rs 400. TinyOwl couldn't keep up. "We were packed with Foodpanda boxes. TinyOwl was killed," said Diwan, whose company was engaged by many restaurants for delivery services. Foodpanda is now in 200 Indian cities and, according to its CEO, is growing 30-40 per cent every month. TinyOwl, on the other hand, was perhaps cash-strapped and couldn't discount unlike the super-rich Foodpanda. It raised $16.25 million in February 2015 and another $ 7.75 million in October. This implies that it may have burnt $16 million in seven months. That is Rs 100 crore, or enough money to provide for 12.5 crore Akshaya Patra mid-day meals to children.
5. BUSINESS MODEL: Bite Club
Founder trio Aushim Krishan, Siddharth Sharma and Prateek Agarwal (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). Investors have quizzed the start-up on differentiation, scalability and delivery.
Chef/Home-chef Marketplace
Start-ups promote home-chefs and professional chefs on their platforms.
Now, investors have realised the limitations of the aggregator model and is on a wait-and-watch mode. "Anyone who can survive the next six months to one year will be a stud," said Avinash Victor, Founder and CEO of start-up MealHopper, adding: "VCs now want to see if we can survive the next six months before funding."
According to Revant Bhate, Head of Marketing at Pune-based food tech company, Faasos, one needs a bigger heart and an even bigger pocket to look at aggregators. "The excitement around the aggregation model has reduced. Funding in food tech will dry up for aggregators." Aggregators operate at a very low margin. Restaurants, typically, don't agree to commissions of more than 8-10 per cent. So on an order of Rs 300, for instance, an aggregator like TinyOwl can earn only Rs 30. "Then there is discounting to woo the customer. This makes the unit economics per order difficult," added Bhate.
Bubble or Froth?
There is no better person to explain the crisis in unit economics for food tech start-ups than Rajesh Sawhney, founder of a tech start-up accelerator and angel investor to 50 companies. Two of his investments saw star exists - Viki, a video start-up, was acquired by Japanese Internet giant Rakuten for $225 million in 2013, while Little Eye Labs, a company that built performance tools for app developers, was taken over by Facebook in 2014.
In early 2015, when the delicate aromas of food tech were getting stronger, Sawhney co-founded Inner-Chef with a hybrid model of kitchen-in-the-cloud and home-chef aggregation. His colourful office in Gurgaon has a poster that defines 'Hangry' - anger fuelled by hunger.
6. BUSINESS MODEL: Cook Gourmet
Founders Daman Singh Kohli (left) and Sanny Chaudhary (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). The business is more scalable than the cooked-food model, the founders claim.
Ready-To-Cook
Raw ingredients for a recipe are packed and despatched for a consumer who wants to cook.
Right now, he is hungry for growth. InnerChef operates in four cities - Gurgaon, Delhi, Noida and Bangalore. He runs three kitchens and, with the $1.7 million he recently raised, seven more kitchens are expected to go live. Today, he serves between 500 and 700 meals a day, a number he is sure will go up because much of his competition will bite the dust. "Inevitably, consolidation will happen in this market. We shouldn't worry about it. This is the nature of the venture industry, the nature of Internet markets. So companies will pivot, change and merge," he said, adding that the current climate is "not a bubble, but just froth".
The froth is about the poor mathematics by some of the food tech companies. The salt and pepper haired Sawhney, snatched this reporter's notepad to draw up a chart. "What happens when people sell meals for Rs 50-100? They will bleed because of negative margins." His premise: assuming that food cost is Rs 30, packaging Rs 20 and delivery Rs 50, there is no way any company can make money. Besides, there are kitchen staff, kitchen rent, technology expenses, as well as marketing costs.
"The companies that are struggling the most are the ones that have gone for the lowest hanging fruit - Rs 50-60 for food. The mindset was to get the numbers, and VCs will fund. That mindset will take them to bankruptcy," said Sawhney. His rivals such as Yumist, however, do not agree. The company targets the daily meal segment with price points ranging between Rs 65 and Rs 95. Co-founder Alok Jain thinks that at scale, he can reduce delivery costs per order to below Rs 20. They are coming up with a secret sauce - "control of the entire supply-chain and use of technology in smart ways" is all they would comment as of now.
But, if companies with bad unit economics are getting funded, shouldn't venture capitalists be held responsible? Market watchers feel that many VCs have pumped in too much money into too young companies and too early. "Think of TinyOwl and Swiggy. They are two years old," pointed out Sawhney. "VCs believe in a winner-take-all market, so they pump in money fast and say 'download lao' (get the app downloads). But, how will the entrepreneur get downloads? He will employ more people, go to 30 markets instead of three, and incentivise consumers with discounts." In short, start the whole cycle of over hiring and cash-burn.
Many blame investors for FOMO which drives them to invest too soon. But Mukul Singhal, Principal at SAIF Partners, defended the approach. "The job of risk capital is to take risks and invest early. Five years back, people used to say VCs are risk-averse. Now, we are investing and people say they are in a rush to invest. Some investments will work, others won't," he said. Singhal is, however, absolutely certain of what he is up to. When he was asked about what went wrong with SAIF's investments in SpoonJoy, which went sour, pat came the reply: "It didn't work out. Everything does not need to be an issue. One thousand people will start, 100 will get funded and one company will make it to the IPO phase." He also rubbished the idea that the food tech sector can be written off, and drew an analogy from the e-commerce world. "In e-commerce, 2008/09 saw a lot of investments. In 2011/12, nobody was willing to write a cheque to these companies. It was a time for consolidation. But big cheques were back in 2013/14. These are cycles in any investment journey," he explained, adding: "Food is a very big sector. If you bring efficiencies to the table, why will you not make money?"
A consolidation, nevertheless, will not be a bad thing. According to Jain of Yumist, a consolidation will "bring sanity". Vanity metrics will take a back seat - the sort that prioritises number of downloads, growth of 100 per cent every week, a hockey stick curve. "2016 will be the year when we will see founders building real businesses with a focus on the basics, rather than scaling up for the next round of funding," he said. Basics would mean deeper metrics, including user retention, gross margins and the parallel lines of business one can get into. That should work for both entrepreneurs and their employees. Once the spilling froth is sponged off, you can sip in real beer. Perhaps, many more would drink to a happier Diwali next year.
In mid-October, replenishments for the coffee machines in restaurant aggregator TinyOwl's Gurgaon office stopped flowing. Payments to milk vendors had been held back. On October 31, the general managers of the company were asked to rush to the Mumbai headquarters for a meeting. A town hall was announced on November 2 and then called off just two hours before its scheduled start at five in the evening. If that was not enough to raise suspicions among employees, that very night they received a mail from the HR head announcing that Saurabh Goyal, the 25-year old co-founder of the 21-month old company, would visit the office on the following day - it was to be a dark Diwali for about 40 of TinyOwl's workforce.
"Everyone around the office was getting Diwali bonuses. We got post-dated severance cheques. 'It was nice working with you; move on!' - that was the tone of the message," a former employee told Business Today. TinyOwl started its operations in the National Capital Region (NCR) in May 2015 and, soon after, hired 80 people. It took just three months for things to spiral out of control. On August 31, the start-up fired half its workforce. The rest were asked to go on November 3. Goyal cited "tough decisions that had to be taken".
Hiccups
- TinyOwl scales down operations in four cities; fires staff
- Zomato fires 300; says its revenue hasnt kept up with the growth in its sales team
- Bangalore-based food tech firm Dazo shuts operations
- SpoonJoy merged with grocery and fresh food delivery company Grofers
- Foodpanda runs into execution issues; customers take advantage of its refund policy
- Many small food start-ups are closing down or pivoting to new business models
- Investors on a wait-and-watch mode; may not fund food tech start-ups for next six months
On the same day in Pune, where the company was scaling down operations, things took a nasty turn when around 23 employees held Gaurav Choudhary, another co-founder, hostage for 48 hours demanding settlements. Long after he was freed, Choudhary kept mumbling, "Mujhe ghar jana hai" (I want to go home), a staff said. He had to be administered sedatives and may have to undergo counselling for stress and anxiety. The company said the demands made by the agitating employees exceeded the commitments mentioned in the appointment letter.
Gurgaon was surprisingly genteel - something that was not very common in this part of the world where a Maruti executive was killed in 2012 during a labour flare-up in Manesar. "We pressed Goyal to answer questions. But it looked like he would cry," another employee said. "The founders are kids (TinyOwl has four founders aged 23-26 years). They had no clue, no professional experience.
They were running the company like an IIT project," he added.
The layoffs, however, left a sour aftertaste. Not just for the employees, but also for the entire food tech community - a young industry that is trying to revolutionise the way India eats and orders food, primarily through mobile apps. This also exposed a soft underbelly; some of capitalism's worst disease at a micro level - investor pressure, wild business projections, numbers-at-any-cost, a hire-and-fire culture, and broken promises.
Smaller start-ups, such as Mealme, Tumm Tumm (Gurgaon), and PotJoy (Mumbai), have either downed shutters, or are experimenting with a new model. Even established players such as Zomato, which had revenues of nearly Rs 100 crore in 2014/15, and Germany-headquartered Foodpanda, backed by e-commerce incubator Rocket Internet, have run into rough weather. Zomato fired 300 employees, mostly in the US, shut down its cashless business in Dubai, and restructured its markets into two - full stack (high traffic and monetisation through ads) and enterprise (low traffic and monetisation through new approaches such as table reservations). In a blog post on October 16, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal wrote: "The next few months are going to be hard for all of us. But we'll stick together, hustle, and not spend time over-thinking things or being unnecessarily creative, so that we can get to where we want to be." A leaked mail from Goyal talked about the underperformance of its sales teams. "We have grown tremendously over the past few months and our sales team has more than quadrupled in 2015. The hard reality of this growth, however, is that our revenue hasn't kept up with the growth in our sales team." In e-mail responses to a Business Today questionnaire, Goyal, however, played down the letter saying what leaked to the media was one dimensional and was taken out of context. "Every sales team needs pressure to work and the email that I sent out was an internal email that is part of regular conversation that we all have with our teams. There was a lot of context behind that email which was missing in what people read. Internally, people got it. They were actually quite kicked at reading that email and there have been a lot of positive conversations around that email," he said.
The loss of jobs was not about cost restructuring, said Goyal. "We are getting smarter with the effort that we have been putting into our content operations. Almost 40 per cent of the restaurants on Zomato account for over 90 per cent of our traffic. In that light, we have had to rethink our processes to make sure that the frequency of our data updates goes up in multiples for the top 40 per cent of restaurants. This led to a cut in about 60 per cent of our content teams across the world," he said.
Zomato's "tremendous growth" over the past two years illustrate the food tech sector's rise. The company quickly ascended to the top of the world's restaurant discovery platforms, making nine acquisitions between July 2014 and April 2015 - US-based NexTable, Indian firm MaplePOS, Turkey-based Mekanist, Urbanspoon in the US, MenuMania in New Zealand, Lunchtime.cz in the Czech Republic, Obedovat.sk in Slovakia, Gastronauci in Poland, and Cibando in Italy. This frantic bout of inorganic activity ensured Zomato's presence in 23 countries. Zomato's restructuring could be strategic, but that is not the case with most other start-ups.
Now, all of a sudden, one of the hottest sectors of 2015, where marquee investors, such as Temasek, Vy Capital, Sequoia Capital, Accel India, DST Global, Matrix Partners and Kalaari Capital, among others, poured in $177 million till October-end, appears to be heading for the freezer section.
Are the current woes a precursor to the pricking of the food tech bubble? Or, is it a mere correction? Are the problems more company-specific rather than generic? Possibly, the woes of food tech are a mere symptom of a much larger rot; something that market watchers have been warning of for several months now - a valuation bubble in the Indian tech start-up world, particularly in e-commerce. But, is the current implosion in food tech start-ups the beginning of an end-game?
In a report, valuation and investment banking firm, RBSA Advisors, said that momentum investing is hexing the demand supply curve. "India is experiencing a wave of prefix investing, which involves a market bias for companies with an 'e-' as a prefix or '.com' as a suffix. To keep up with the growth experienced, there is a need for endless innovation to engage and exploit the market. Still, drawing comparisons between the present-day valuation boom and the dot-com bubble infers notable similarities: extraordinary rates of cash burn, colossal losses, ambitious assurances of steep growth trajectory and feeble due diligence by investors under the fear of missing out (FOMO)," the report said.
1. BUSINESS MODEL: Zomato
Zomato Founders Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal (Photo: Vivan Mehra). Zomato is the only Indian food tech company with a valuation of over 1 billion dollar.
Restaurant Discovery
Listing of restaurants with details of menu, addresses, phone numbers and user reviews.
RBSA's report 'The Great e-Commerce Valuation Crash of 2018' drew up possible endgame scenarios between 2015 and 2018. It predicted that by 2017, investors will start exiting small players, who will run out of cash and be forced to down shutters. By 2018, "upon going for an IPO, a company's listed price shall not match its valuation at the last round of funding. This is going to cause a major crash where early exits will be lauded and a lot of investors are going to be an unhappy lot". If the food tech quagmire is any indicator, such a catastrophe could occur earlier.
A Holiday in Afghanistan?
Investors are losing appetite. According to a report by YourStory.com, a media platform for entrepreneurs, seven food tech deals worth $74 million materialised in April this year. In August, the numbers had dipped to five totalling $19 million. The following month saw only two deals.
Fahad Moti Khan started a food tech company called Khana, a marketplace for daily meals, two months ago in Delhi. Between puffs of cigarette, he recollected a meeting with a prospective investor. The question-and-answer session was short but not so sweet: "Would you explore investments in food tech?" he asked. The answer was brisk and piercing: "You are asking me for a holiday in Afghanistan?"
Even in half-jest the statement touches a raw nerve. The stakes are already very high. According to data from Venture Intelligence, only $177 million was invested in the food tech sector in 2015, the cumulative investments are far higher. Zomato has raised $225 million thus far. And, if you add Foodpanda's investments (the company does not disclose India investment figures, but globally it has raised $310 million), the overall fund flow in food tech would be over half a billion dollars. Besides, Venture Intelligence data does not include angel investments - there could easily be over 100 food tech start-ups in the country, many funded through angel money. Half a billion is not a small amount. Globally, food tech companies have raised only about $3 billion in 2015, according to research firm Tracxn.
2. BUSINESS MODEL: EazyDiner
Eazydiner Managing Director Sue Reitz (Centre) with her team (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). 'We are not IT-wallas,' she says. The company is mostly run by hospitality industry veterans.
Discovery, Restaurant Bookings, Deals
Listing of restaurants with booking and deal discovery; focussed on wooing consumers to restaurants.
To add to the confusion, the market is crowded with too many "me-too" companies. Everyone wants a pie because of two reasons: the entry barrier is low and, two, the food services market is a salivating proposition. Sample this: A National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI)-Technopack report pegged the size of the total Indian food services market at $48 billion in 2013. It is projected to grow to $78 billion by 2018. The report goes on to list many reasons for this growth: increasing disposable income of the consumer, a larger population of younger people, growth of consumers in Socioeconomic Classifications A and B, widening exposure to new cultures and cuisines, increased propensity of eating outside, growing popularity of delivery services and the emergence of brands.
There is another reason. The biggest disruption, according to some, is happening in the kitchen. Working moms have a guilt that they are not being able to feed their children well. There is pressure on time. That makes it a good time to be in the food tech game - by serving meals at different price points, at the touch of a button. However, food tech is beyond just an app, a kitchen or a bunch of restaurant listings. It is the food business, after all. Scaling up is proving to be an uphill task for most start-ups. Once in the game, it is all about operational excellence. Techie founders who think technology first, and not food, often miss the wood for the trees, and stumble. Of course, there is a significant tech play and it can be more complicated than one imagines before starting up.
"It is about the complexity of operations at multiple levels. If I have to re-order, it should not take more than 30 seconds. What's the optimum level to do this? All this needs time, research and analytics. Yes, it is complexity, but not only of the last-mile. There is complexity of technology and of partnerships since we are a marketplace. Partners have to be coached in the right way, and hand-held to manage the scale," said Saurabh Kochhar, CEO India, Foodpanda. The company was itself in the news recently for faltering on execution. Among other things, some consumers started taking advantage of its refund policy. "We will keep finding more issues. We have been solving them one by one," he added. There were, however, no signs of a war-torn Afghanistan the day this reporter landed up at the Foodpanda office in Gurgaon. The floor was decked up in orange and white balloons and buzzed with employees in ethnic wear. A Diwali party would begin in a few hours; music was in the air, so was the aroma of food.
3. BUSINESS MODEL: Foodpanda
Saurabh Kochhar, CEO India, Foodpanda (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). Kochhar has been finding and solving issues at the company
Restaurant Aggregation and Food Ordering
Companies not only aggregate restaurants on their platforms but take orders for home delivery.
Currently, there are many flavours to food tech and every business model has its pros and cons. Those who are part of the aggregator model, aggregate restaurants on their platforms and take orders through apps or websites (Foodpanda, Swiggy, TinyOwl, Zomato). Here, delivery is often outsourced. Then there is a chef/home-chef marketplace model where start-ups aggregate home chefs (Holachef, Bite Club, CyberChef). The 'kitchen-in-the-cloud' model does not have a physical store. The menu is limited and orders are taken online and delivered from a centralised or distributed kitchen network (InnerChef, Yumist, Eatonomist). Yet another model is 'ready-to-cook', where raw ingredients for a recipe are neatly packed and despatched for a consumer to cook (Cook Gourmet). While most food tech start-ups have focussed on delivering food at the customer's doorstep, EazyDiner, which opened its doors to Delhi in January 2015, does just the opposite. It helps people select and book tables at restaurants.
Among all the business models we have seen so far, the Indian market may not be ready for the ready-to-cook model, while others have their own limitations. The kitchen-in-the-cloud model is capex-intensive because every new neighbourhood the company seeks to serve may need a new kitchen for the food to be served fresh and hot. Many companies are already struggling with the home-chef model, because it involves higher delivery costs - food has to be first picked up from the home chef, brought to a central warehouse, and then finally dispatched to the consumer. Home-chefs are also inconsistent. "Unlike e-hailing or e-commerce, we are dealing with commodities. It is perishable," said Alok Jain, co-founder of Yumist, and the former head of marketing at Zomato.
The conversation at Starbucks over a cup of double espresso goes on about the culinary habits and its effects on the food tech business. "Every person has his own taste. The dal will differ from every home you pick up. There are issues with food science. Then, if the food is between five degrees and 60 degrees for more than two hours, it will lead to bacteria formation. So, it (home chef aggregator model) is scalable from an excel sheet perspective."
4. BUSINESS MODEL: Eatonomist/ InnerChef/ Yumist
Eatonomist founders Anisha Dhar (left) and Nupur Khanna (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). The challenge is to educate customers on its 'healthy gourmet' meals.
Rajesh Sawhney, Co-Founder, Innerchef (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). Sawhney believes companies with bad unit economics will die.
Yumist Founders Alok Jain (left) and Abhimanyu Maheshwari (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). Jain and Maheshwari believe that consolidation in the food tech sector is imminent.
Kitchen-In-The-Cloud
Companies don't have a physical store; orders are taken online and delivered at home.
The restaurant aggregator model has the big guys, who are well capitalised. Apart from Zomato that raised $110 million in 2015, TinyOwl pocketed $24 million and Swiggy got $16.5 million. Aggregator models do appear scalable but is rife with cut-throat competition. Here, there is a Darwinian fight to the finish.
Survive six months. Be a stud!
That brings us back to TinyOwl. The start-up operated in six cities: Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. But the company decided to scale back operations in four of these cities. In a response to a questionnaire mailed by Business Today, TinyOwl said that the scaling back was "in line with the current organisational focus" and that the focus was "optimisation of resources across verticals". "This development has been made on a strategic level as a step towards sustainability and growth for the brand in the current challenging market scenario. While TinyOwl will continue to operate in six cities, the new model will be initially tested in Mumbai and Bangalore," it said. However, there is little clarity on the new model. Nevertheless, the "challenging scenario" can be illustrated by how it lost the battle for NCR.
TinyOwl's May launch coincided with Zomato's entry into the online ordering space. But the company, according to Rohan Diwan, co-founder of hyper-local delivery company Quickli, had another "Waterloo moment". Rival and bigger restaurant aggregator Foodpanda started heavy discounting, which included discounts of Rs 250 for a minimum order of Rs 400. TinyOwl couldn't keep up. "We were packed with Foodpanda boxes. TinyOwl was killed," said Diwan, whose company was engaged by many restaurants for delivery services. Foodpanda is now in 200 Indian cities and, according to its CEO, is growing 30-40 per cent every month. TinyOwl, on the other hand, was perhaps cash-strapped and couldn't discount unlike the super-rich Foodpanda. It raised $16.25 million in February 2015 and another $ 7.75 million in October. This implies that it may have burnt $16 million in seven months. That is Rs 100 crore, or enough money to provide for 12.5 crore Akshaya Patra mid-day meals to children.
5. BUSINESS MODEL: Bite Club
Founder trio Aushim Krishan, Siddharth Sharma and Prateek Agarwal (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). Investors have quizzed the start-up on differentiation, scalability and delivery.
Chef/Home-chef Marketplace
Start-ups promote home-chefs and professional chefs on their platforms.
Now, investors have realised the limitations of the aggregator model and is on a wait-and-watch mode. "Anyone who can survive the next six months to one year will be a stud," said Avinash Victor, Founder and CEO of start-up MealHopper, adding: "VCs now want to see if we can survive the next six months before funding."
According to Revant Bhate, Head of Marketing at Pune-based food tech company, Faasos, one needs a bigger heart and an even bigger pocket to look at aggregators. "The excitement around the aggregation model has reduced. Funding in food tech will dry up for aggregators." Aggregators operate at a very low margin. Restaurants, typically, don't agree to commissions of more than 8-10 per cent. So on an order of Rs 300, for instance, an aggregator like TinyOwl can earn only Rs 30. "Then there is discounting to woo the customer. This makes the unit economics per order difficult," added Bhate.
Bubble or Froth?
There is no better person to explain the crisis in unit economics for food tech start-ups than Rajesh Sawhney, founder of a tech start-up accelerator and angel investor to 50 companies. Two of his investments saw star exists - Viki, a video start-up, was acquired by Japanese Internet giant Rakuten for $225 million in 2013, while Little Eye Labs, a company that built performance tools for app developers, was taken over by Facebook in 2014.
In early 2015, when the delicate aromas of food tech were getting stronger, Sawhney co-founded Inner-Chef with a hybrid model of kitchen-in-the-cloud and home-chef aggregation. His colourful office in Gurgaon has a poster that defines 'Hangry' - anger fuelled by hunger.
6. BUSINESS MODEL: Cook Gourmet
Founders Daman Singh Kohli (left) and Sanny Chaudhary (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh). The business is more scalable than the cooked-food model, the founders claim.
Ready-To-Cook
Raw ingredients for a recipe are packed and despatched for a consumer who wants to cook.
Right now, he is hungry for growth. InnerChef operates in four cities - Gurgaon, Delhi, Noida and Bangalore. He runs three kitchens and, with the $1.7 million he recently raised, seven more kitchens are expected to go live. Today, he serves between 500 and 700 meals a day, a number he is sure will go up because much of his competition will bite the dust. "Inevitably, consolidation will happen in this market. We shouldn't worry about it. This is the nature of the venture industry, the nature of Internet markets. So companies will pivot, change and merge," he said, adding that the current climate is "not a bubble, but just froth".
The froth is about the poor mathematics by some of the food tech companies. The salt and pepper haired Sawhney, snatched this reporter's notepad to draw up a chart. "What happens when people sell meals for Rs 50-100? They will bleed because of negative margins." His premise: assuming that food cost is Rs 30, packaging Rs 20 and delivery Rs 50, there is no way any company can make money. Besides, there are kitchen staff, kitchen rent, technology expenses, as well as marketing costs.
"The companies that are struggling the most are the ones that have gone for the lowest hanging fruit - Rs 50-60 for food. The mindset was to get the numbers, and VCs will fund. That mindset will take them to bankruptcy," said Sawhney. His rivals such as Yumist, however, do not agree. The company targets the daily meal segment with price points ranging between Rs 65 and Rs 95. Co-founder Alok Jain thinks that at scale, he can reduce delivery costs per order to below Rs 20. They are coming up with a secret sauce - "control of the entire supply-chain and use of technology in smart ways" is all they would comment as of now.
But, if companies with bad unit economics are getting funded, shouldn't venture capitalists be held responsible? Market watchers feel that many VCs have pumped in too much money into too young companies and too early. "Think of TinyOwl and Swiggy. They are two years old," pointed out Sawhney. "VCs believe in a winner-take-all market, so they pump in money fast and say 'download lao' (get the app downloads). But, how will the entrepreneur get downloads? He will employ more people, go to 30 markets instead of three, and incentivise consumers with discounts." In short, start the whole cycle of over hiring and cash-burn.
Many blame investors for FOMO which drives them to invest too soon. But Mukul Singhal, Principal at SAIF Partners, defended the approach. "The job of risk capital is to take risks and invest early. Five years back, people used to say VCs are risk-averse. Now, we are investing and people say they are in a rush to invest. Some investments will work, others won't," he said. Singhal is, however, absolutely certain of what he is up to. When he was asked about what went wrong with SAIF's investments in SpoonJoy, which went sour, pat came the reply: "It didn't work out. Everything does not need to be an issue. One thousand people will start, 100 will get funded and one company will make it to the IPO phase." He also rubbished the idea that the food tech sector can be written off, and drew an analogy from the e-commerce world. "In e-commerce, 2008/09 saw a lot of investments. In 2011/12, nobody was willing to write a cheque to these companies. It was a time for consolidation. But big cheques were back in 2013/14. These are cycles in any investment journey," he explained, adding: "Food is a very big sector. If you bring efficiencies to the table, why will you not make money?"
A consolidation, nevertheless, will not be a bad thing. According to Jain of Yumist, a consolidation will "bring sanity". Vanity metrics will take a back seat - the sort that prioritises number of downloads, growth of 100 per cent every week, a hockey stick curve. "2016 will be the year when we will see founders building real businesses with a focus on the basics, rather than scaling up for the next round of funding," he said. Basics would mean deeper metrics, including user retention, gross margins and the parallel lines of business one can get into. That should work for both entrepreneurs and their employees. Once the spilling froth is sponged off, you can sip in real beer. Perhaps, many more would drink to a happier Diwali next year.
General Awareness
GENERAL AWARENESS STUDY MATERIAL FOR ALL BANK EXAMS
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1. India-born Harjit Sajjan became the Defense Minister of which of the following countries in
November 2015?
1) Fiji
2) Canada
3) Kenya
4) UK
5) New Zealand
2. Shaktikanta Das has been nominated as a Director to the Central Board of Directors of the
Reserve Bank of India. He is presently working as?
1) Economic Affairs Secretary
2) Finance Secretary
3) Financial Services Secretary
4) Tourism Secretary
5) Agriculture Secretary
3. Who became the first cricketer in Ranji Trophy history to complete 10,000 runs in Ranji Trophy in November 2015?
1) Amol Mazumdar
2) Mithun Manhas
3) Wasim Jaffar
4) Virendra Sehwag
5) Devendra Bundela
4. Who was named the Most Powerful Person in the World by the Forbes magazine in November 2015?
1) Barack Obama
2) Angela Merkel
3) Pope Francis
4) Xi Jinping
5) Vladimir Putin
5. Who won the Norway chess tournament in June 2015?
1) Veselin Topalov
2) Viswanathan Anand
3) Magnus Carlsen
4) Vassily Ivanchuk
5) Vladimir Kramnik
6. The theme of which of the following Summits held in 2015 was ‘Think Ahead. Act Together’?
1) G7
2) BRICS
3) SCO
4) G4
5) ASEAN
7. Who was awarded the Bjornson Prize for freedom of speech by Norway in June 2015?
1) Malala Yousafzai
2) Edward Snowden
3) Kailash Satyarthi
4) Dalai Lama
5) None of these
8. Hwang Kyo-ahn assumed office as the Prime Minister of which of the following Asian countries on June 18, 2015?
1) North Korea
2) South Korea
3) Vietnam
4) China
5) Laos
9. Christopher Lee passed away recently. He was a famous?
1) Actor
2) Footballer
3) Photographer
4) Musician
5) Author
10. Who won the Commonwealth chess title in New Delhi on June 30, 2015?
1) K. Sasikiran
2) Arghyadip Das
3) Abhijeet Gupta
4) Parimarjan Negi
5) Deep Sengupta
11. Who is the author of the book “Gandhi at First Sight”?
1) Thomas Weber
2) Daniel Bell
3) Jonathan Gil Harris
4) Patrick French
5) None of these
12. Pandit Haridutt Sharma Award is an annual award given in the field of?
1) Sculpture
2) Journalism
3) Films
4) Music
5) Theater
13. Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti launched ‘Jal Kranti Abhiyan’ on June 5, 2015 in?
1) Varanasi
2) Lucknow
3) Jaipur
4) Gwalior
5) Jhansi
14. Who became the second Indian umpire after S. Venkataraghavan to be inducted into the Elite
Panel of International Cricket Council (ICC)?
1) Ram Babu Gupta
2) I. Shivram
3) M.R. Singh
4) Sundaram Ravi
5) Raman Sharma
15. Which of the following has become the world’s first billion dollar football brand in June 2015?
1) Manchester United
2) Manchester City
3) Chelsea 4) Arsenal
5) Real Madrid
16. Who is the present Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting?
1) Venkaiah Naidu
2) Jual Oram
3) Arun Jaitley
4) J.P. Nadda
5) Prakash Javdekar
17. Which is the first private bank to launch a voice password facility for its customers recently?
1) HDFC Bank
2) ICICI Bank
3) Axis Bank
4) Yes Bank
5) Kotak Mahindra Bank
18. Whose autobiography is titled ‘The Test of My Life’?
1) Steve Waugh
2) Shane Warne
3) M.S. Dhoni
4) Yuvraj Singh
5) M. Amarnath
19. Serena Williams defeated who among the following to win the women’s singles tennis title in the 2015 French Open?
1) Maria Sharapova
2) Ana Ivanovic
3) Lucie Safarova
4) Victoria Azarenka
5) Petra Kvitova
20. Who is the only Indian sportsman featured among the 2015 Forbes magazine’s 100 highest paid athletes in the world?
1) Virat Kohli
2) Sachin Tendulkar
3) Leander Paes
4) Viswanathan Anand
5) Mahendra Singh Dhoni
21. Lal Thanhawla is the current Chief Minister of which of the following States?
1) Meghalaya
2) Tripura
3) Mizoram
4) Nagaland
5) Arunachal Pradesh
22. The Groningen gas field is the largest natural gas field in Europe. It is in?
1) Netherlands
2) Denmark
3) Switzerland
4) Germany
5) Sweden
23. Keoladeo Ghana National park is located in which of the following States?
1) Gujarat
2) West Bengal
3) Odisha
4) Rajasthan
5) Uttar Pradesh
24. The Global Times is a daily tabloid published in?
1) China
2) Singapore
3) UK
4) USA
5) Russia
25. Kalinga Stadium is a multipurpose stadium located in?
1) Indore
2) Bhubaneswar
3) Nagpur
4) Patiala
5) Mohali
26. Bhitarkanika wildlife sanctuary is located in which of the following States?
1) Odisha
2) West Bengal
3) Goa
4) Maharashtra
5) Jharkhand
27. Who is the author of the book ‘Eternal India’?
1) Jawaharlal Nehru
2) Indira Gandhi
3) Lal Bahadur Shastri
4) Atal Behari Vajpayee
5) I.K. Gujral
28. How many persons won the Bharat Ratna award so far?
1) 49
2) 54
3) 45
4) 55
5) 57
29. Which is the capital of the union territory Dadra & Nagar Haveli?
1) Amini
2) Kavarati
3) Kalpeni
4) Silvassa
5) Amboli
30. Sukanya Samridhi Yojana (SSY) account can be opened in the name of a girl child who is not more than?
1) 5 years old
2) 7 years old
3) 9 years old
4) 10 years old
5) 15 years old
31. Who is the recipient of the 2015 Genesis Prize?
1) Michael Douglas
2) Sylvester Stallone
3) Mel Gibson
4) John Travolta
5) Arnold Schwarzenegger
32. The Genesis Prize was founded in 2012 by the office of the Prime Minister of?
1) Canada
2) Israel
3) New Zealand
4) Australia
5) Netherlands
33. Who among the following Indians has not made to the Forbes list of the world’s 100 Most Powerful Women?
1) Arundhati Bhattacharya
2) Chanda Kochchar
3) Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
4) Shobhana Bhartia
5) Shikha Sharma
34.Identify the mismatched pair?
1) General Motors – Mary Barra
2) Google – Sheryl Sandberg
3) YouTube – Susan Wojcicki
4) Yahoo – Marissa Mayer
5) IBM – Ginny Rometty
35. Suleyman Demirel died on June 17, 2015. He served as the President of which of the following countries from 1993 to 2000?
1) Yemen
2) Syria
3) Lebanon
4) Libya
5) Turkey
36. Charles Correa died in June 2015. He was a renowned?
1) Tennis player
2) Hockey player
3) Film actor
4) Architect
5) Author
37. Which of the following Academy Award winning films was based on the life of John Nash, a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician?
1) Chicago
2) No Country for Old Men
3) The Hurt Locker
4) The Artist
5) A Beautiful Mind
38. Which of the following has released the Financial Stability Report (FSR) on June 25, 2015?
1) World Bank
2) Reserve Bank of India
3) International Monetary Fund
4) World Economic Forum
5) Securities and Exchange Board of India
39. Genesis Prize is also known as?
1) Green Nobel
2) Asia’s Nobel Prize
3) Jewish Nobel Prize
4) Green Oscar
5) Alternative Nobel Prize
40. Matt Prior retired from all forms of cricket in June 2015. He played for?
1) Australia
2) West Indies
3) South Africa
4) England
5) New Zealand
ANSWERS:
1) 2 2) 1 3) 3 4) 5 5) 1 6) 1 7) 2 8) 2 9) 1 10) 3
11) 1 12) 2 13) 3 14) 4 15) 1 16) 3 17) 2 18) 4 19) 3 20) 5
21) 3 22) 1 23) 4 24) 1 25) 2 26) 1 27) 2 28) 3 29) 4 30) 4
31) 1 32) 2 33) 5 34) 2 35) 5 36) 4 37) 5 38) 2 39) 3 40) 4
- 1. India-born Harjit Sajjan became the Defense Minister of which of the following countries in
November 2015?
1) Fiji
2) Canada
3) Kenya
4) UK
5) New Zealand
2. Shaktikanta Das has been nominated as a Director to the Central Board of Directors of the
Reserve Bank of India. He is presently working as?
1) Economic Affairs Secretary
2) Finance Secretary
3) Financial Services Secretary
4) Tourism Secretary
5) Agriculture Secretary
3. Who became the first cricketer in Ranji Trophy history to complete 10,000 runs in Ranji Trophy in November 2015?
1) Amol Mazumdar
2) Mithun Manhas
3) Wasim Jaffar
4) Virendra Sehwag
5) Devendra Bundela
4. Who was named the Most Powerful Person in the World by the Forbes magazine in November 2015?
1) Barack Obama
2) Angela Merkel
3) Pope Francis
4) Xi Jinping
5) Vladimir Putin
5. Who won the Norway chess tournament in June 2015?
1) Veselin Topalov
2) Viswanathan Anand
3) Magnus Carlsen
4) Vassily Ivanchuk
5) Vladimir Kramnik
6. The theme of which of the following Summits held in 2015 was ‘Think Ahead. Act Together’?
1) G7
2) BRICS
3) SCO
4) G4
5) ASEAN
7. Who was awarded the Bjornson Prize for freedom of speech by Norway in June 2015?
1) Malala Yousafzai
2) Edward Snowden
3) Kailash Satyarthi
4) Dalai Lama
5) None of these
8. Hwang Kyo-ahn assumed office as the Prime Minister of which of the following Asian countries on June 18, 2015?
1) North Korea
2) South Korea
3) Vietnam
4) China
5) Laos
9. Christopher Lee passed away recently. He was a famous?
1) Actor
2) Footballer
3) Photographer
4) Musician
5) Author
10. Who won the Commonwealth chess title in New Delhi on June 30, 2015?
1) K. Sasikiran
2) Arghyadip Das
3) Abhijeet Gupta
4) Parimarjan Negi
5) Deep Sengupta
11. Who is the author of the book “Gandhi at First Sight”?
1) Thomas Weber
2) Daniel Bell
3) Jonathan Gil Harris
4) Patrick French
5) None of these
12. Pandit Haridutt Sharma Award is an annual award given in the field of?
1) Sculpture
2) Journalism
3) Films
4) Music
5) Theater
13. Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti launched ‘Jal Kranti Abhiyan’ on June 5, 2015 in?
1) Varanasi
2) Lucknow
3) Jaipur
4) Gwalior
5) Jhansi
14. Who became the second Indian umpire after S. Venkataraghavan to be inducted into the Elite
Panel of International Cricket Council (ICC)?
1) Ram Babu Gupta
2) I. Shivram
3) M.R. Singh
4) Sundaram Ravi
5) Raman Sharma
15. Which of the following has become the world’s first billion dollar football brand in June 2015?
1) Manchester United
2) Manchester City
3) Chelsea 4) Arsenal
5) Real Madrid
16. Who is the present Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting?
1) Venkaiah Naidu
2) Jual Oram
3) Arun Jaitley
4) J.P. Nadda
5) Prakash Javdekar
17. Which is the first private bank to launch a voice password facility for its customers recently?
1) HDFC Bank
2) ICICI Bank
3) Axis Bank
4) Yes Bank
5) Kotak Mahindra Bank
18. Whose autobiography is titled ‘The Test of My Life’?
1) Steve Waugh
2) Shane Warne
3) M.S. Dhoni
4) Yuvraj Singh
5) M. Amarnath
19. Serena Williams defeated who among the following to win the women’s singles tennis title in the 2015 French Open?
1) Maria Sharapova
2) Ana Ivanovic
3) Lucie Safarova
4) Victoria Azarenka
5) Petra Kvitova
20. Who is the only Indian sportsman featured among the 2015 Forbes magazine’s 100 highest paid athletes in the world?
1) Virat Kohli
2) Sachin Tendulkar
3) Leander Paes
4) Viswanathan Anand
5) Mahendra Singh Dhoni
21. Lal Thanhawla is the current Chief Minister of which of the following States?
1) Meghalaya
2) Tripura
3) Mizoram
4) Nagaland
5) Arunachal Pradesh
22. The Groningen gas field is the largest natural gas field in Europe. It is in?
1) Netherlands
2) Denmark
3) Switzerland
4) Germany
5) Sweden
23. Keoladeo Ghana National park is located in which of the following States?
1) Gujarat
2) West Bengal
3) Odisha
4) Rajasthan
5) Uttar Pradesh
24. The Global Times is a daily tabloid published in?
1) China
2) Singapore
3) UK
4) USA
5) Russia
25. Kalinga Stadium is a multipurpose stadium located in?
1) Indore
2) Bhubaneswar
3) Nagpur
4) Patiala
5) Mohali
26. Bhitarkanika wildlife sanctuary is located in which of the following States?
1) Odisha
2) West Bengal
3) Goa
4) Maharashtra
5) Jharkhand
27. Who is the author of the book ‘Eternal India’?
1) Jawaharlal Nehru
2) Indira Gandhi
3) Lal Bahadur Shastri
4) Atal Behari Vajpayee
5) I.K. Gujral
28. How many persons won the Bharat Ratna award so far?
1) 49
2) 54
3) 45
4) 55
5) 57
29. Which is the capital of the union territory Dadra & Nagar Haveli?
1) Amini
2) Kavarati
3) Kalpeni
4) Silvassa
5) Amboli
30. Sukanya Samridhi Yojana (SSY) account can be opened in the name of a girl child who is not more than?
1) 5 years old
2) 7 years old
3) 9 years old
4) 10 years old
5) 15 years old
31. Who is the recipient of the 2015 Genesis Prize?
1) Michael Douglas
2) Sylvester Stallone
3) Mel Gibson
4) John Travolta
5) Arnold Schwarzenegger
32. The Genesis Prize was founded in 2012 by the office of the Prime Minister of?
1) Canada
2) Israel
3) New Zealand
4) Australia
5) Netherlands
33. Who among the following Indians has not made to the Forbes list of the world’s 100 Most Powerful Women?
1) Arundhati Bhattacharya
2) Chanda Kochchar
3) Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
4) Shobhana Bhartia
5) Shikha Sharma
34.Identify the mismatched pair?
1) General Motors – Mary Barra
2) Google – Sheryl Sandberg
3) YouTube – Susan Wojcicki
4) Yahoo – Marissa Mayer
5) IBM – Ginny Rometty
35. Suleyman Demirel died on June 17, 2015. He served as the President of which of the following countries from 1993 to 2000?
1) Yemen
2) Syria
3) Lebanon
4) Libya
5) Turkey
36. Charles Correa died in June 2015. He was a renowned?
1) Tennis player
2) Hockey player
3) Film actor
4) Architect
5) Author
37. Which of the following Academy Award winning films was based on the life of John Nash, a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician?
1) Chicago
2) No Country for Old Men
3) The Hurt Locker
4) The Artist
5) A Beautiful Mind
38. Which of the following has released the Financial Stability Report (FSR) on June 25, 2015?
1) World Bank
2) Reserve Bank of India
3) International Monetary Fund
4) World Economic Forum
5) Securities and Exchange Board of India
39. Genesis Prize is also known as?
1) Green Nobel
2) Asia’s Nobel Prize
3) Jewish Nobel Prize
4) Green Oscar
5) Alternative Nobel Prize
40. Matt Prior retired from all forms of cricket in June 2015. He played for?
1) Australia
2) West Indies
3) South Africa
4) England
5) New Zealand
ANSWERS:
1) 2 2) 1 3) 3 4) 5 5) 1 6) 1 7) 2 8) 2 9) 1 10) 3
11) 1 12) 2 13) 3 14) 4 15) 1 16) 3 17) 2 18) 4 19) 3 20) 5
21) 3 22) 1 23) 4 24) 1 25) 2 26) 1 27) 2 28) 3 29) 4 30) 4
31) 1 32) 2 33) 5 34) 2 35) 5 36) 4 37) 5 38) 2 39) 3 40) 4
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