Indian Stock Market News 27th August 2024
The gig economy, especially the quick commerce space, is gearing up for a bumper festive season. According to industry insiders, demand for gig delivery riders is expected to surge by up to 40% during peak festive days. According to them, the quick commerce segment led by platforms like Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, and Zepto is driving this growth and go on to onboard an additional 10-12 lakh gig workers.
“While quick commerce constitutes a small share of the total demand at the moment, with about 3-4 lakh riders, it is quickly changing, while for ecommerce and food delivery, which have been there for a longer period, the base is much larger at about 40-50 lakh gig workers, with about two-thirds of them working within the ecommerce framework,” says Balasubramanian Anantha Narayanan, Senior Vice President of TeamLease, a leading manpower solutions company.
At the core of this ballooning demand are the temporary gig workers, most of whom hit the workforce exactly during the festive season after being lured by those juicy bonuses. Surprisingly, everybody—from aircon technicians whose businesses are low in winter—finds gig work very lucrative for this kind of season. And many new workers from surrounding villages, attracted by the relatively higher earnings of this work and influenced by the experience of their relatives or friends who are delivery partners, are likely to take to this gig economy and get lured in by the promise of higher earnings that’s usually on offer during this festive season.
Of course, one definite trend that indicates how dynamic the Indian gig economy is would be quick commerce, picking up pace in the country, almost mirroring a change in broader consumer behavior and rising dependence on fast and reliable delivery services.
Recently, Union Minister Piyush Goyal highlighted the inherent potential that quality control orders have in helping to safeguard India’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises from sub-standard imports. He adds that such regulatory interventions are put in place to specify and enforce quality parameters for the differing categories of products so that the domestic manufacturers may not suffer at their hands.
The quality control orders have played a big role in making the MSMEs of India stronger by preventing the inflow of low-quality goods into the country. He said that the orders not only safeguard the interest of local establishments but also make them capable of producing high-quality output with their in-house arrangements, instead of getting into the tangles of expensive and complicated laboratory testings. It is part of the overall government plan to make the country self-reliant with enhanced domestic production capacity.
The MSME sector is one of the major employment-generating sectors after agriculture. In fact, it promotes self-employment and entrepreneurship with much less capital cost. The Ministry of MSME supports the sector with a plethora of initiatives apart from credit support, technology assistance, infrastructure development, and skill training programs.
It is this sector that has driven India’s growth through resilience and adjustability, and it contributes hugely to its GDP. Quality control orders are, however, going to be very macro in making products at high standards within the country rather than depending on imported goods.
However, the Indian gold market has seen a huge increase in prices this year by almost 10% in the international market, where the prices, however, went up by 18%. This rise in gold prices was attributed to strong and positive central bank purchases, rising geopolitical tensions, and growing expectations of a change in monetary policy stance by the Federal Reserve of the US.
However, one of the major factors driving this domestic price rise would be the cut in import duty of gold that has rekindled demand across India. The recently concluded India International Jewellery Show said bookings for retailers have been way up as they gear up for the festive and wedding seasons. The demand was picking up in the purchase of gold bars and coins from consumers and jewellers who are stocking up.
In previous years, demand from Indian consumers has shown potential to rise by another 50 tonnes or so in the second half of the year in the form of jewelry, bars, and coins. This is the period when the local prices marry the global rates to offer more attractive prices to consumers at that time of the year.
MARKEDLY, domestic gold prices, which have been ruling lower than international prices for quite a few months now, have turned positive and are quoting at a premium. This, followed by the recent Union Budget, where both the long-term holding period of investments was cut and the tax also reduced, made gold ETFs more attractive.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) also kept buying gold, albeit at a slower pace. Year-to-date, the RBI has added 44.3 tonnes of gold to its reserves, which have now risen to a record 849 tonnes, or 8.8% of its forex holdings, compared to 7.5% in the same period last year.
However, the domestic gold market was dented with a fall in prices after the import duty was cut, reflecting the complexity of the market and its links to local and global factors.
So, as one of the most important online delivery platforms in India, Zomato has allowed its customers to book food orders two days in advance. The feature, already available in some of its key cities, including Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Ahmedabad, comes in as a really complementary offering amidst many other services it offers.
This is demonstrated by Zomato’s new feature initiated by founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal, which is available only on orders above ₹1,000 from around 13,000 restaurants. This feature is in line with a larger effort by Zomato to enhance customer experience through wider customer convenience and flexibility.
Goyal also hinted that there is going to be an added feature on the website whereby all orders would be insurably covered with Zomato in more restaurants and cities—regardless of value. This will extend to a wider customer base and boost Zomato’s standing in the highly competitive food delivery marketplace.
The launch of the feature comes immediately after Zomato recently stopped the intercity delivery service offered under its Legends category, a development that signaled even stronger determination to forge ahead better than its competitors. Targeted to enhance satisfaction and loyalty among users, the future plan will guarantee easier accessibility to favorite orders without any last-minute rush.
This latest feature, at its core, is no less than the testament by the company of providing innovative solutions that will address the shifting needs of the customer and ensure that the platform remains the number one choice for getting food delivered across the country.
In a new-age food delivery market that has increasingly seen its companies fall out of grace, mark-downs, quick commerce start-up Zepto has managed to do the exact opposite, nearly quadrupling its value in just a year. Analysts attribute the remarkable growth to strong execution by the company and sound unit economics.
Rising three years ago, Zepto has emerged as one of the favorite contenders in the quick commerce space and is already garnering quite a direct foothold in the rising market for investors. Zepto is the only one among Blinkit and BBNow that has not received significant funding or hasn’t been integrated into a larger overall operation. This individuality makes Zepto a very interesting play for venture capitalists.
On the latest and closing funding round for Zepto, adding $310 million, bringing the company on the way to $5 billion, up by 40% since the last days in June 2023, and that on the back of a year when Zepto expanded impressively. Indeed, pulling in $665 million and the valuation of $3.6 billion more than doubled from August 2023.
Zepto’s success is further underscored in its store-level profitability status and IPO bound label. In fact, by May 2024, about 75% of the stores belonging to Zepto were fully Ebitda positive, with plans to take its store count to double the current amount by March 2025.
The startup, wherein two young blooded entrepreneurs supported each other, namely, Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, has pulled in great investment from the leading venture capital firms Lightspeed Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners with backing from StepStone Group. Analysts feel that Zepto’s intense focus on execution and unit economics, coupled with exponential market expansion, may be able to deliver multipliers on growth for the next several years.
It’s the tale of Zepto and the quick commerce sector in India. First movers with strong execution capabilities in this field will secure a high market share and attract substantial investment.
It covers the dynamism of the Indian market, with sectors like gig work, MSMEs, gold, food delivery, and quick commerce only growing and transforming. These data changes reflect the futuristic view of the scenario with business and investment opportunities in India.
LG Electronics, a leading consumer electronics company based in South Korea, is considering creating an initial public offering for its Indian subsidiary. This was indicated by the company’s CEO, William Cho, in an interview last week.
LG Electronics is keeping a close eye on the buzzing Indian IPO market, Cho said. “We are closely watching the developments in the Indian market, more specifically relating to IPOs within our industry,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
Public offerings have been on the rise in the Indian market of late, and their acceptance has been good among investors. According to LSEG data, more than 150 companies have raised nearly $5 billion through public issues this year alone.
While the prospect of an IPO in India is on the cards, Cho said nothing has been finalized. The company has not yet decided on the valuation at which it would go ahead with a public issue, he added. The IPO is one in a raft of options as the company works its way toward an ambitious target of $75 billion revenue.
Amar Kaushik’s highly-awaited sequel, Stree 2, has become a rage at the Indian box office and is performing way better than the original part. Starring Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Abhishek Banerjee, and Aparshakti Khurana, the film has entered the ₹400 crore club in just merely 12 days of its release.
If 2018’s film Stree was a massive success, its sequel has marred several folds of the original, according to box office collections. According to the report of Sacnilk.com, the net India collection of the film has crossed ₹400 crores and is already emerging as one of the biggest hits of the year.
Stree 2 goes on to keep attracting huge audiences, and the strong returns at the box office only point to the pre-release popularity the movie and the cast hold within them. With such an impressive run, the movie is undoubtedly going to end up as the highest-grosser of the year.
PCB chief Mohsin Naqvi also showed his discontent following the national cricket team’s defeat in a shocking 10-wicket victory by Bangladesh in the Rawalpindi Test. The defeat is the first of its kind for Pakistan against Bangladesh in the longest format of the game, which has left many-from the fans to the analysts-in a state of dumbfoundedness.
Naqvi didn’t mince words and pointed to a number of reasons that made this outfit perform so dismally: From Shan Masood’s captaincy and poor top-order batting by Babar Azam to the dud performances of Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah with the ball, problems seemed plentiful.
The former cricketers also held similar views of indignation, faulting the selectors for their failure to represent the most deserving lot from the domestic circuit. However, Naqvi blamed the lack of quality in the domestic pool when defending the selectors.
“It was a very disappointing loss,” Naqvi said, according to the Associated Press. “The selection committee faces challenges due to the scarcity of talents in the domestic circuit.”
This defeat has sparked off a countrywide debate over the position of cricket in Pakistan, and many persons are demanding that far-reaching changes should be brought into the team’s structure and selection process.
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Source: Google
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