Business Today

Winds of change are brewing at one of India’s best-known companies—the ₹14,000-crore biscuits major Britannia Industries. The company—a household name that commands a market share of 33 per cent in the organised biscuits market (Parle Products is second with 28 per cent)—is now hungry for more. And this is playing out by way of a strategy to morph into a foods player from being primarily a biscuits company. In a way, the move makes eminent sense as the Indian foods sector has several high-growth segments. But Britannia, led by former PepsiCo veteran Varun Berry, is picking its segments carefully since it does not want to lose out on its current high margins of about 12 per cent. Berry’s strategy entails getting Britannia into segments that have clear adjacencies to the…

SET FOR A TRILLION Like FY22, India’s total trade this year (10MFY23) has surpassed the past 10-year average of $0.78 trillion TOTAL TRADE ($ TRILLION) India’s yearly trade data STATUS QUO Despite rising trade, the ratio between exports and imports has remained largely the same in the past 12 years SHARE IN TOTAL TRADE (%) 10MFY23: First 10 months of FY23 (April 2022-January 2023) A TROUBLING TRAJECTORY India’s trade deficit—the difference between exports and imports—has crossed $200 billion in the April 2022-January 2023 period TRADE DEFICIT ($ BILLION) DEFICIT AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL TRADE (%) 387 PER CENT The surge in total imports from Russia to $37.55 billion in April 2022-January 2023 compared to $7.71 billion in the year-ago period 80 PER CENT The rise in imports from China in value terms in the past 10 financial years—to $94 billion in FY22. The trade…

▶ FOR THE GLOBAL start-up and venture capital (VC) community, it was a chaotic weekend. After Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)—the trusted banking partner of the tech ecosystem—went down on March 10, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seizing its assets, scores of founders and investors who had hundreds of millions of dollars locked into deposits, scrambled to make sense of it all. There was panic as immediate working capital concerns pinched start-ups all over the world. At least a dozen India-born SaaS unicorns—and several other B2B start-ups—are headquartered in the US and have subsidiaries elsewhere in the world. Most early- to mid-stage start-ups typically put all their monies into SVB accounts as soon as they raise venture funding. According to the US-based VC body National Venture Capital Association, over 37,400…

▸ SILICON VALLEY BANK (SVB) WAS POPULAR AMONG START-UPS AND VCs FOR ITS “TECH-FORWARD” APPROACH TO BANKING. SVB HAD REDUCED COMPLIANCE AND EVEN ALLOWED START-UPS TO OPEN ACCOUNTS WITHOUT SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS ▸ MORE THAN 37,400 START-UPS AND SMALL BUSINESSES HAD DEPOSITS OF OVER THE FDIC-INSURED LIMIT OF $250,000 IN SVB AT THE END OF 2022, PER NATIONAL VENTURE CAPITAL ASSOCIATION ▸ UNINSURED DEPOSITS AMOUNTED TO NEARLY 90 PER CENT OF SVB’S TOTAL DEPOSITS OF $175.4 BILLION ▸ ALMOST 100 PER CENT OF Y COMBINATOR-BACKED START-UPS GLOBALLY, INCLUDING 60+ IN INDIA, HAD EXPOSURE TO SVB ▸ INDIAN FINTECHS LIKE GETVANTAGE, RAZORPAY, RECURCLUB, ETC., ARE ASSISTING AFFECTED FOUNDERS WITH INTEREST-FREE CREDIT LINES AND ACCOUNT OPENINGS IN NEO-BANKS, TO MEET WORKING CAPITAL NEEDS…

▶ CITI INDIA CUSTOMERS can finally bank with Axis Bank. One year after the big-ticket Axis Bank-Citi retail assets transaction was completed, the country’s third-largest private sector bank is finally integrating the foreign bank’s operations. So, what exactly is Axis Bank gaining from the deal in which rival lenders like HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank had refused to outbid the price (₹11,603-crore) it paid for the assets? For context, the addition to Axis Bank’s deposits is less than 5 per cent. But another part of the deal grows Axis Bank’s credit cards portfolio by 20 per cent and private and wealth management assets by over 33 per cent, with the employee count growing by less than 4 per cent. These figures, though, only scratch the surface of the deal. So,…

▶ ’TIS THE AGE of short videos. Due to the declining attention spans of internet users, brands are increasingly relying on quick, snappy, audiovisual content on their social media channels to communicate with the target audience. As a result, short-video apps in India have exploded in the past few years. From home-grown apps such as Sharechat’s Moj, Dailyhunt’s Josh, MX Player’s Takatak, InMobi’s Roposo to global ones like Reels on Meta’s Instagram and YouTube Shorts by Google, Indians just cannot have enough of them. Studies estimate that more than 275 million users in India hop on to short-video apps every month, and spend roughly 33 minutes per day on them. Nearly two-thirds (66 per cent) of these monthly active users hail from Tier II+ cities, says a recent Redseer study. This…