A new report by BetterPlace, a platform for blue-collar workforce management, has revealed some interesting trends. Average monthly salaries for blue collar or frontline workers have reduced to Rs 21,000 in FY23, and jobs have declined by 17.5 percent. Women participation increased by 100 percent since last year, a good sign, but still remains at 6 percent of the entire workforce. Pravin Agarwala, co-founder and CEO of BetterPlace, takes us through the key trends, including new migration patterns, upskilling opportunities and the impact of AI on frontline workers
Walmart-owned PhonePe has announced the Indus App Store, a Made-in-India alternative to the Google Play Store for Android users in India, inviting local app developers with no commission for in-app payments. In contrast, Google charges developers 6 percent to 30 percent of all in-app purchases. Can Indus take on Google? Prachir Singh, senior research analyst at Counterpoint Research, says there's a good chance they might, and here's why
The Bill reserves 1/3rd seats for women in the Lok Sabha, state assemblies and the national capital territory of Delhi. Tara Krishnaswamy, co-founder of Political Shakti, a collective working for greater representation of women in Indian politics, pulls no punches when she says that the Bill in its current form actually shields men from having to devolve power to women in the political arena, in conversation with Forbes India's Divya Shekhar
India's newest airline is facing rough winds, seemingly rattled by a pilot exodus. Mark Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Consulting, an aviation consultancy, minces no words on today's episode, about how this is a symptom of the airline's mismanagement, and how they have painted themselves into a corner. How did they get here? Forbes India's Manu Balachandran and Mark Martin take us through the ride
The HDFC Bank shares witnessed the steepest single-day drop in four months, trading 4 percent lower on Wednesday. This is after a supposedly disappointing analyst meet on Monday, following which, brokerages such as Nomura downgraded the stock. What's going on? Forbes India's banking expert, Salil Panchal, joins us for more
Vikram Karakoti, head of the life sciences business unit at TCS, says critical transformational projects have not seen any pullbacks by customers in this sector in the US, the IT services industry's biggest market, where high interest rates and fears of a recession have prompted companies to cut back on tech spending. He also talks about TCS recently joining the Living Heart project, a consortium led by Dassault Systemes, to work on software simulations of the heart to advance medical care of cardiac diseases
The government of Saudi Arabia is considering setting up an office of its Sovereign Wealth Fund in India, and hoping to invest in Indian startups through venture capital. Arun Natarajan, founder and managing director, Venture Intelligence, reveals why this is big news for India, and why there's growing interest from the Middle East
Private equity firm KKR has invested Rs 2,069.5 crore (about $250 million) as additional capital into Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, at a valuation of around $100 billion. The KKR deal makes Reliance Retail Ventures one of the top four Indian companies in terms of equity value in the country. This news comes on the heels of funding by the Qatar Investment Authority a couple of weeks ago. Where does this place Reliance Retail, and are they likely to IPO soon? Our in-house Reliance watcher, Samar Srivastava, unpacks what this means
As India readies its own deep tech startup policy, this is episode eight in a short series of conversations with some entrepreneurs and VC investors building this ecosystem in the country. In this episode, Venkat Vallabhaneni and Jatin Desai, founding managing partners at Inflexor Ventures, talk about how the current funding slowdown is affecting India's nascent deep tech ecosystem. They are also enthused by the government's draft policy on the sector and point to the importance of a strong labs-to-markets orchestration mechanism
Apple's iPhone 15 event, the Wonderlust, is later today, where we might get to see the company's first smartphone with the standard USB-C port. The event is at 10:30 p.m. India time and you can catch it on Apple's website. Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research, joins us to unpack the top rumours about the new features and innovations we are likely to see in this next iteration of the iPhone. We also very briefly discuss the Huawei Mate 60 Pro that's taken the industry by surprise, and Apple's complicated challenges in China
Every year, we come up with a special issue highlighting the contribution of family businesses to India's economic and cultural growth. This year the focus is on Gujarat—a state that has given us big names such as Ambani, Adani, Lalbhais of Arvind, Modis of Cadilla Pharmaceuticals, Engineers of Astral, and many others. In this podcast, Naandika Tripathi and Naini Thaker talk about their experience anchoring the issue and writing the stories about the impact of these family businesses.