Top headlines: FM Sitharaman at G20, hiring in India's aviation, and more

The firm associated with former Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey has seen a declining revenue since it was said to be engaged in illegal phone-tapping. The highest revenue iSec Services recorded over the last decade was Rs 4.6 crore in 2012-13.  India should be allowed to export foodgrains from its public stockholding to countries facing a hunger crisis, something which is in contravention of current World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday.

Let India export foodgrains from public stock: FM Sitharaman at G20

India should be allowed to export foodgrains from its public stockholding to countries facing a hunger crisis, something which is in contravention of current World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday. Sitharaman was speaking on the sidelines of the meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors (FMCBG) in Bali, Indonesia. Read more
 

Hiring takes off in India's aviation sector as air traffic revives

A simple, straightforward advertisement appeared in newspapers this week. It read, “Alliance Air invites applications for various posts”, with “various posts” highlighted in bold. Before that, last month, a call from Jet Airways inviting cabin crew applications brought in over 700 CVs in five hours flat, the airline’s CEO Sanjiv Kapoor tweeted. And on July 2 when another airline, Air India, held job interviews, the cabin crew of IndiGo skipped work en masse to participate. Read more

Phone-tapping at NSE: Mumbai ex-top cop's firm saw biz dip in recent years

The firm associated with former Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey has seen a declining revenue since it was said to be engaged in illegal phone-tapping. The highest revenue iSec Services recorded over the last decade was Rs 4.6 crore in 2012-13. The 2020-21 revenue of Rs 1.6 crore was a 66 per cent drop from then; the firm’s profit was Rs 64 lakh. This is 53 per cent lower than the Rs 1.35-crore profit in 2011-12, the highest over the last 10 years. Read more 
 

One year of startup listings: Exuberance tapers as firms lose grip on gains

On July 16, 2021, Zomato’s Rs 9,375-crore initial public offering (IPO) garnered over 30 times subscription, laying to rest the debate on whether the Indian public markets were ready for share sales by loss-making firms with no clear visibility on when they would turn profitable. Any doubters left were silenced by a 66 per cent surge in Zomato’s stock price on its listing day. This opened the gates for more start-up IPOs. Within months, marquee new-age companies such as Nykaa, Policy Bazaar, and Paytm rolled out their IPOs, underpinned by easy liquidity conditions thanks to the post-pandemic stimulus measures. Read more
 

Can LIC maintain dominant mkt share, improve growth in profitable segments?

PSU giant Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has released some key data points. Its embedded value (EV) for 2021-22 has worked out to be Rs 5.41 trillion, which is marginally above Rs 5.39 trillion as projected in September 2021, though the Street had been expecting a higher number. Read more

BA.5 Omicron subvariant 4 times more vaccine-resistant, says study

The BA.5 Omicron subvariant, now the dominant coronavirus strain in the US, is four times more resistant to Covid-19 vaccines, according to a new study published in Nature. The study found the variant is four times more resistant to messenger RNA vaccines than earlier strains of Omicron, which include Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, Xinhua news agency reported. Read more