Air India employees protest delay in disbursement of retirement dues

Air India employees have protested the delay in disbursement of retirement dues and benefits in violation of the violation of the Gratuity Act and the PF Act.

Aviation Industry Employees Guild in a letter to Rajiv Bansal, Chairman and Managing Director, Air India said, "Even basic entitlements like provident Fund and Gratuity which are statutory social security schemes are delayed for no justifiable reasons and in violation of the Gratuity Act and the PF Act".

Pointing to an office order of 2015 in this regard, the Guild said, "In this connection, we would like to point out that the provisions of the office Order have been violated in respect of employees of the company who have retired from the month of March-2020 onwards. Whilst we understand that some delay is possible due to the pandemic, total disregard to the commitments made in the Office Order is causing severe hardships for our recent retirees."

The letter pointed out that Air India employees who have served the company sincerely and dedicatedly for more than three decades are made to run from pillar to post thereby putting them to considerable embarrassment and humiliation.

"The situation is all the more grave as far as Air India employees who have retired from subsidiary Companies are concerned," it added.

The employees have asked the Air India CMD to intervene in the matter urgently and ensure that retirees are given their final settlements in terms of the Office Order.

National Education Policy highlights: 10 reforms in colleges, universities

The Union Cabinet on July 28 gave its nod to a new education policy, called the National Education Policy 2020. The policy has, among other things, renamed the Human Resource Development Ministry as the Education Ministry and brought about ‘large-scale, transformational reforms’ in school and higher education sectors.

Here's all you need to know about reforms in the new education policy in higher education

1. UG Programme: 3-year and 4-year (FYUP) programmes

Under the NEP 2020, undergraduate degree will either be of a 3- or 4-year duration, with multiple exit options within this period. Colleges will have to give a certificate after completion of one year in any discipline or field, including vocational and professional areas; a diploma after two years of study; and a Bachelors’ degree after a three-year programme. For example, after completion of the first year of college, one could get a certification for that course, an advanced diploma after completing the second year, a bachelors’ degree after third years, and a bachelors’ degree with research after fourth year.

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Govt will also establish an Academic Bank of Credit for digitally storing academic credits earned from different higher education institutions so that these could be transferred and counted towards the final degree earned. This would also allow students who have to drop out of their courses due to unavoidable circumstances to resume their programme at a later time from where they left it, rather than having to start over from the beginning of the course.

2. Target of 50% Gross Enrolment Ratio by 2035

The new education policy and reforms aim to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher educations, including vocational education, from 26.3% (2018) to 50% by 2035. For this, 35 million new seats will be added to higher education institutions.

3. Govt to set up National Research Foundation

The government will set up a National Research Foundation (NRF) with the aim to catalyse and energise research and innovation across all academic disciplines, particularly at the university and college levels.

4. SAT-like college test

The National Testing Agency (NTA) will conduct a common college entrance exam twice every year.

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5. No affiliation

Over the next 15 years, colleges will be given graded autonomy to give degrees. Affiliation with universities will end, and these institutions will be given the status of ‘deemed to be university’.

6. NEP 2020: Cap on college fees

The New Education policy suggests a cap on fee charged by private institutions of higher education.

7. Going international

Top-rated global universities will be facilitated to come to India. Similarly, top Indian institutions will be encouraged to go global.

8. MPhil to be discontinued

MPhil would be discontinued, paving the way for students with masters' degrees to get PhD.

9. National Institute for Pali, Persian and Prakrit

To ensure the preservation of all Indian languages, the NEP recommends setting up an Indian Institute of Translation and Interpretation, National Institute (or Institutes) for Pali, Persian and Prakrit, strengthening of Sanskrit and all language departments in higher education institutions.

10. Adult education under NEP

The National Education Policy (NEP 2020) aims to achieve 100 per cent youth and adult literacy.

Hospitals struggle to get healthcare workers as Covid-19 cases spike

Government and private hospitals are finding it difficult to recruit new and additional healthcare workers to care for Covid-19 patients even as the number of people testing positive continues to grow--1.59 million as of July 30, 2020--our reporting in five cities found.

The Covid-19 pandemic has added to the stress of an overburdened healthcare workforce. India has one medical doctor for every 1,404 people and 1.7 nurses per 1,000 people, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW). This is lower than the World Health Organization (WHO) benchmark of one doctor and three nurses per 1,000 people.

During the early weeks of the outbreak in India in March and April, a combination of caution and fear pushed many healthcare professionals to return home. At the same time, small hospitals and healthcare facilities, which were shut for varying periods during the lockdown, cut down staff due to reduced revenues and uncertainty. This led to a shortage of personnel when they reopened.

As a result, nurses, ward boys, lab technicians, sanitation workers and other staff have been finding themselves stretched due to longer shifts and inadequate protection against Covid-19, medical and healthcare professionals told IndiaSpend in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata. At the same time, fewer people are applying for vacancies for such jobs because of short-term contracts, low wages and poor working conditions, we heard from hospital staff, union representatives and city authorities.

State and private healthcare facilities that IndiaSpend reached out to have each sought to add at least a few hundred healthcare workers to ramp up care in Covid-19 wards since May.

“Not many people are applying for ancillary health positions possibly due to fears of Covid,” Abhishek Agarwal, a senior professor in the Department of Medicine at the Rajasthan University of Health Sciences (RUHS), a dedicated Covid-19 facility in Jaipur, Rajasthan, told IndiaSpend. “In some private hospitals, the number of staff has decreased, and doctors did not receive salaries for the lockdown months. In some other hospitals, doctors’ contracts have been changed from monthly salary basis to per patient basis.”

Low pay, short-term contracts

Hiring new health workers in the early days of the pandemic and the lockdown was difficult because of the fear of the infection spreading, said M. M. Prabhakar, superintendent of the state-run Ahmedabad Civil Hospital in Gujarat.

In West Bengal, more than 300 nurses quit their jobs in the early weeks of the Covid-19 outbreak to return to Manipur. To prevent a full-blown crisis, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced on May 18 that locals would be hired as helpers to replace nurses and trained to perform their basic functions in seven days.

In the same month, Ahmedabad was becoming a Covid-19 hotspot. The city's biggest Covid-19 facility, the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, which has a daily requirement of 1,600 nurses according to hospital superintendent Prabhakar, had to rely on a pool of 125 nurses roped in from nearby hospitals and districts to complement their 1,308 nurses.

In June, the hospital attempted to recruit nurses on a three-month contract at a salary of Rs 13,400 per month, doctors and local nurses unions told IndiaSpend. The candidate turnout, they said, was low.

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“This [Rs 13,400 per month] is not commensurate with the risk associated with [Covid-19] work,” said Vanraj Chauhan, general secretary of the All Gujarat Nursing Union (AGNU); the union has 7,000 members across the state from public and private hospitals.

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has since offered incentives along with salaries, and the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital has been able to hire staff to replace the healthcare workers who had been pooled from nearby districts, Prabhakar told IndiaSpend. The recruitment is still ongoing and salaries are in line with those specified by the state government, he said.

The southern states have been facing similar challenges. In June, the Telangana government sought to hire 509 healthcare workers, including 88 staff nurses, five pharmacists and 59 lab technicians, on contract for a year. The salaries on offer were Rs 23,000 per month for nurses, Rs 21,000 per month for pharmacists and Rs 17,000 per month for lab technicians, as per the state’s notification.

Starting salaries for trained nurses in Hyderabad range between Rs 35,000 and Rs 40,000 per month, Shrikant Kalaskar, a Hyderabad-based public health professional, told IndiaSpend. “Government hospitals cannot expect staff nurses or doctors to work at a low salary in a metro city,” he said. “Raising the salary is a general requirement to hiring a professional, and this becomes more important during a pandemic.”

IndiaSpend reached out to J. Venkati, the district medical and health officer for Hyderabad, to understand the challenges in recruiting healthcare workers during the Covid-19 outbreak. This report will be updated as and when we receive a response.

In Karnataka’s capital, Bengaluru, the civic body, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), announced on July 21 that it would host walk-in interviews to hire doctors, nurses, health assistants and other medical staff--on a “purely temporary” basis--to manage Covid-19 patients in primary health centres. The BBMP hired 58 people in one day, N. Manjunatha Prasad, the BBMP Commissioner, noted in a tweet a day after the first walk-in interviews were held.

IndiaSpend reached out to Prasad and the BBMP to find out how many healthcare workers the city needs and the challenges in recruiting them. This report will be updated if and when they respond.

Recruitment announcements from the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike. A similar recruitment drive was conducted in Hyderabad.

Delayed salaries

Existing healthcare workers are unwilling to take on Covid-19 work due to poor working conditions in many public and private hospitals including long shifts and delayed and reduced salary payments, IndiaSpend found. This is despite guidelines issued in June by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to prevent workers from being exposed to Covid-19 and the Supreme Court’s June 17 order on the timely payment of salaries.

There has been a reduction in salaries in several private hospitals across India. Healthcare staff in private hospitals in Kerala are facing a “forced loss of pay”, since the lockdown because private hospitals have restricted the number of days that staff work so that they are paid for fewer working days, said Roshan Radhakrishnan, a Kochi-based consultant anaesthesiologist. “This has been going on since March-April. We do not see an end to this.”

In April, the United Nurses Association (UNA), a national union representing 380,000 nurses, filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking the government’s intervention to frame a policy for their welfare, including regarding non-payment of salaries, lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) in hospitals, long shifts and lack of access to adequate testing and quarantining. The court disposed of the petitions on April 15 after noting that the Central government had already established a helpline number for healthcare workers’ grievance redressal.

Later, in a judgement on a separate petition by Arushi Jain, a doctor, the Supreme Court on June 17 directed the central government to issue a notification so that health workers facing delayed salary payments could file a complaint against the hospital management under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code, making the delayed payment of salaries a criminal offence.

“However, we still do not have established mechanisms for grievance redressal,” said UNA’s legal counsel Subhash Chandran K. R.

For instance, Chandran pointed out, the Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences & Research (HIMSR) and its associated Hakeem Abdul Hameed Centenary Hospital (HAHC) in New Delhi had “abruptly fired 84 nurses on July 11 and that on the same day, it issued a walk-in interview notice to recruit nurses for a 12-month period at a lower pay scale”. The ousted nurses challenged their dismissal in the High Court of Delhi.

The nurses’ contracts had already expired and could not be renewed due to the lockdown, HAHC’s medical superintendent Sunil Kohli said in a letter to the Delhi government.

Subsequently, Kohli said, 30 of the 84 nurses were given offers to extend their contracts after a reassessment.

“A lot of healthcare workers are jobless. The hospitals are using the pandemic as an opportunity to make more profits,” said Chandran, citing reports of hospitals overcharging for Covid-19 treatment. “But they are not paying their staff in time.”

The pandemic has also brought to the fore the differences in salaries and facilities that contracted healthcare workers and their peers employed on a permanent basis are entitled to. For instance, in Bihar’s capital, over 700 contract nurses at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Patna, struck work on July 23, bringing hospital operations to an absolute halt.

The strike came nearly a week after the contract workers sent a letter to the Institute’s director, Prabhat Kumar Singh, seeking provisions that are already available to the 120 regular nurses, including higher standard of care if they were to fall sick, increased remuneration and provision for leaves similar to that of permanent workers.

The central government, not the hospital director, is responsible for decisions regarding conversion to permanent status and salary hikes, Sanjeev Kumar, nodal officer for Covid-19 at AIIMS Patna, told IndiaSpend. The strike was called off after the hospital administration guaranteed that workers could avail free Covid-19 treatment at AIIMS Patna, increased the number of leaves for contract workers to eight days per month (four weekly offs and four leaves for doing night duties, which are carried out by all staff) and assured them that their contracts would be reviewed for the next one to two years barring disciplinary action, said Kumar.

Nurses will willingly work provided the government does not cut salaries, Prasanth Narayan, UNA general secretary in Karnataka, told IndiaSpend.

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Lack of PPE usage guidelines

Healthcare workers across cities told IndiaSpend that they are bristling at the insensitivity regarding usage of PPEs and the absence of PPE guidelines.

The use of N95 respirator masks, which are a part of the PPE, should be avoided for longer than four hours, state the WHO guidelines on the rational use of PPE for coronavirus disease. The guideline does not specify any such usage limit for the complete protective suit.

The nursing staff often get dehydrated and suffer from low-blood pressure due to long and continuous wearing of PPEs, M. Rajeswari, a professor and president of the Telangana branch of the Trained Nurses Association of India (TNAI), told IndiaSpend.

“I work for 8-10 hours daily. We are given a replacement only if our PPE tears,” Akash Pillai, a nurse with Global Hospital, a private facility in Mumbai, and the general secretary of UNA Maharashtra, told IndiaSpend.

There is no shortage of PPEs in the hospital, an official from the branding and communications department of Global Hospital told IndiaSpend, on condition of anonymity. “We follow all protocols issued by the government but there is no standard guideline regarding the minimum time of usage for a complete PPE kit.” She refused to comment when IndiaSpend asked how many PPE suits one worker could use on a single shift.

“I work for 8-10 hours daily. We are given a replacement only if our PPE tears,” says Akash Pillai, a nurse with Global Hospital, Mumbai, and the general secretary of UNA Maharashtra.

In West Bengal, the government capped the price that hospitals could charge patients for PPE in June. “Some private hospitals have since been limiting the availability of PPEs to health workers as they are unable to pass on the cost to the patients,” said Ranjith K. Raju, president of the UNA’s Kolkata chapter.

Quarantine measures are crucial to prevent transmission of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 from those believed to be exposed to it. Healthcare workers told IndiaSpend that they do not have space to isolate themselves as they live with their families. Across Karnataka, including in state capital Bengaluru, for instance, “there are no separate quarantine zones or accommodation facilities provided to nurses and doctors”, said Karnataka UNA’s Narayan. “This puts everyone at the hospital as well as their own families at risk.”

“Unless hospitals provide quality safety kits and implement quarantine protocols, health workers will not turn up for work even if they wish to,” said Kolkata UNA’s Raju.

Right incentives

Some states have managed to retain and recruit healthcare employees by offering incentives, increased salaries and boarding and lodging facilities.

In Maharashtra’s capital, Mumbai, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) calculated the bed-to-doctor and bed-to-nurse ratio to calculate the additional staff requirement, said Daksha Shah, the civic body’s deputy health officer. “We offered a strong remuneration package, ensured the availability of PPEs and guaranteed the safety of doctors and nurses. I think this strategy worked,” Shah told IndiaSpend. The BMC also recruited qualified ayurvedic and unani doctors for supervision purposes and hired nurses who were qualified and waiting for their degree, Shah said.

Shah was unable to state how many vacancies the civic body had filled, nor could she state the number of additional recruitments that have been made due to Covid-19. IndiaSpend also contacted Mangala Gomare, the BMC deputy executive health officer, but did not receive a response. This report will be updated if and when we receive a response.

One of the civic body’s recruits, Namrata Roy, explained how and why she ended up as a healthcare worker with the BMC. The 29-year-old has been working as a nurse at the Korba Mithaghar Municipal school, an isolation centre for asymptomatic patients in central Mumbai’s Wadala neighbourhood since May. She was employed a day after she sent an application to the BMC on May 21, and was asked to report for duty from the following day.

Roy is on a six-month contract with the BMC on a salary of Rs 50,000 per month. The civic body provides her free accommodation and food in a three-star hotel near the isolation facility, she said. “I am happy with the salary. I feel everyone is doing their best in this difficult time and so am I,” Roy told IndiaSpend on July 23, adding she is yet to receive her salary for the month of June. “I would have worked even if the salary was lower but as long as the government provided us with basic facilities and ensured our safety.”

Namrata Roy works as a nurse at a civic body-run centre for asymptomatic Covid-19 patients in Wadala, central Mumbai. She is on a six-month contract with the civic body, and receives free accommodation and food.

In Telangana, the state government provided a one-time incentive to employees of the health and medical departments, including to sanitation staff, under the Telangana Chief Minister’s Special Incentive plan in April. This has since been extended. “We received the 10% initiative,” said K. Vijayesh Kanth, a staff nurse at the Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad. “This was a good boost for permanent employees but not so much for contract employees as their gross salary is low.”

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Gujarat too relied on one-time incentives for doctors and nurses in government hospitals. “The AMC has brought in an incentive programme where doctors receive Rs 25,000 per month in addition to their salaries, and nurses and other medical staff get an additional Rs 15,000 per month,” Ahmedabad Civil Hospital’s superintendent Prabhakar told IndiaSpend.

When the Rajasthan state government faced difficulties in recruiting lab technicians to join the state’s Covid-19 labs in April, it chose to recruit them at more than double the pay grade under a different title. “The pay for technicians is Rs 7,000 but the government advertised for a research assistant position with a salary of Rs 18,000 and was then able to fill all vacancies,” said Sudhanshu Kakkar, the principal and controller of RUHS, the dedicated Covid-19 facility in capital Jaipur.

In Jaipur, timely provision of on-demand testing for Covid-19, quarantine facilities, protective gear, and humane work conditions with fixed shifts and on-time salary ensured that the health workforce stayed motivated through the ongoing pandemic, as IndiaSpend reported on July 27.

Private hospitals can hire staff on longer contracts or recruit on a permanent basis to deal with the shortage of staff, say many healthcare professionals. Permanent hiring at increased salaries will also incentivise experienced professionals to apply for new positions, as opposed to the majority of current applicants who are fresh graduates with little-to-no experience, said AGNU’s general secretary Vanraj Chauhan, adding that Gujarat has 6,000-8,000 trained nurses that enter the workforce every year.

Longer contracts would also incentivise applicants. “Job security is important for everyone. Even if it is a contract position, it should be for a longer duration, say three or four years, to create a sense of security for the person,” said Hyderabad-based Kalaskar.

Those working in intensive care units should get special incentives as they work with the most critical patients, said Kakkar of RUHS.

Healthcare workers should also be provided with term life insurance and pay as per the Central Government Health Services (CGHS) scale, Giridhar Babu, professor and head of Life Course Epidemiology at the Public Health Foundation of India, told IndiaSpend. “They should be able to access dedicated beds, and new recruits should get incentives.”

“The pandemic is highlighting the importance of nurses worldwide,” and the WHO has declared 2020 the year of nurses and midwives, said Rajeshwari of TNAI Telangana. “If nurses are paid better, we will be better respected in society. Their status will rise, and there will be more people taking up nursing as a profession.”

More strong recovery steps like Anil Ambani group in order: YES Bank

Private lender YES Bank will take more aggressive steps to recover bad loans like it did in the case the Anil Ambani group, whose headquarters it took over in the financial capital, for failure to repay dues.

“In the coming months, you will see more such instances across various categories of borrowers. In resolution and recoveries, the bank needs to follow due legal process. The bank has initiated action on each and every account (bad loan) for recoveries,” YES Bank CEO Prashant Kumar told Business standard.

The private sector lender took possession of two flats owned by Anil Ambani group in South Mumbai for non-payment of dues by Reliance Infrastructure.

Kumar said the private lender is disposing some of the properties in many other cases as well. He, however, declined elaborate on borrowers against whom such action was underway.

The lender's gross NPAs stood at 17.3 per cent in Q1FY21, as against 16.8 per cent in March 2020. The GNPA Ratio increased sequentially on account of decrease in advances, which declined due to a variety of reasons like sell-downs, repayments and lack of fresh disbursements.

Referring to the bank's Q1 performance, Kumar said a year-on-year comparison was not appropriate as the bank was under moratorium four months ago. The sequential comparison would be more appropriate. There was growth in deposits and infusion of capital.

Its net profit for Q1FY21 stood at Rs 45.44 crore, against a net loss of Rs 3,668.3 crore in Q4FY20.It had booked a net profit of Rs 113.76 crore in Q1FY20. Sequentially, the total deposits rose to Rs 117,360 crore in June 2020 from Rs 105,364 crore in March 2020. In deposits were at Rs 225,902 crore.

The bank, now an associate entity of State Bank of India, saw capital infusion of Rs 10,000 crore as part of a rescue package hammered out by the Reserve Bank of India. Later, bank raised Rs 15,000 crore in equity capital through follow-on-public offer. Yes Bank stock closed 1.7 per cent higher at 11.95 per share on BSE.

Pay doctors on time, don't treat quarantine period as leave: SC to govt

Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka and Tripura haven't followed directives to pay salaries to healthcare workers engaged in Covid-19, the Centre on Friday told the Supreme Court.

The court directed the Centre to issue necessary directions for releasing salaries of doctors and frontline healthcare workers engaged in Covid-19 duty on time.

A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, R Subhash Reddy and M R Shah asked the Centre to also clarify on treating compulsory quarantine period of healthcare workers as leave and deduction of their salaries for the same period.

"If the states are not complying with the directions and orders of the Central government, you are not helpless. You have to ensure that your order is implemented. You have got the power under the Disaster Management Act. You can take steps also", the bench told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre.

Mehta said that after the top court's directions on June 17, necessary orders were issued on June 18 to all the states, with regard to payment of salaries to healthcare workers.

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He said that many states have complied with the directions but some of them like Maharashtra, Punjab, Tripura and Karnataka have not paid salaries to the doctors and healthcare workers on time.

Senior Advocate KV Vishwanathan, appearing for petitioner Arushi Jain, said the high risk and low risk classification made by the Centre has no basis and the government advisory of June 18 after the top court's order has no rationale basis.

He said that there is still non-payment of salaries to healthcare workers.

The bench was hearing a plea of Dr Arushi Jain, a private doctor questioning the Centre's May 15 decision that 14-day quarantine was not mandatory for doctors.

The top court also took note of an application filed by United Resident Doctors Association (URDA) through advocates Mithu Jain, Mohit Paul and Arnav Vidyarthi that salaries of doctors are being deducted for the period of compulsory quarantine treating it as leave period.

To this, Mehta conceded that "the said period can't be treated as leave" and said that he would take necessary instructions on the issue.

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He said the Central government will take steps to ensure that the salaries of doctors and healthcare workers is paid on time.

The top court posted the matter for further hearing on August 10.

On June 17, the top court had directed the Centre to issue orders in 24-hours to all states and Union Territories for payment of salaries to doctors and healthcare workers as also for providing suitable quarantine facilities for those who are directly engaged in treatment of Covid-19 patients.

It had said, The Central Government shall issue appropriate direction to the Chief Secretary of the States/ Union Territories to ensure that the orders are faithfully complied with, violation of which may be treated as an offence under the Disaster Management Act read with the Indian Penal Code."

Dr Jain had also alleged in her plea that frontline healthcare workers engaged in the fight against Covid-19 are not being paid salaries or their wages are being cut or delayed.
The Centre had earlier told the top court that the May 15 circular on Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) will also be modified, doing away the clause for non-mandatory quarantine for healthcare workers engaged in Covid-19 duty, and they will not be denied the quarantine.

On June 12, the top court had observed, In war, you do not make soldiers unhappy. Travel an extra mile and channel some extra money to address their grievances.

It had said that the courts should not be involved in the issue of non-payment of salary to healthcare workers and the government should settle the issue.

Tata Capital to pick minority stake in Biocon Biologics for $30 million

Private equity (PE) player Tata Capital is set to pick up a minority 0.85 per cent stake for $30 million in the biologics arm of biopharmaceutical major Biocon, the Bengaluru-based company said on Friday.

This new round of equity infusion will happen at a valuation of around $3.5 billion for Biocon Biologics.

“This equity infusion is the next step in our journey of unlocking value. Through prudent investments in R&D and high-quality manufacturing infrastructure we are confident of achieving our aspiration of serving 5 million patients through our biosimilars portfolio and achieving a target revenue of $1 billion in FY22,” said Christiane Hamacher, CEO, Biocon Biologics.

Post the completion of this transaction, Biocon will hold 95.25 per cent stake in Biocon Biologics.

The fund infusion by Tata Capital is part of a larger $200-300 million round the company plans to raise over the next few months as it is planning to float an IPO in the next three years to unlock the value in the subsidiary. Earlier in January, homegrown PE fund True North had also acquired 2.4 per cent stake in Biocon Biologics for $75 million.

Biocon Biologics is in talks with few other private equity firms interested in acquiring a minority stake in the company, the company’s Executive Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw had earlier told Business Standard.

The company said the equity infusion by Tata Capital will enable Biocon Biologics’ future growth through prudent capital allocation, while it continues investments in R&D and manufacturing to meet the growing demands of patients worldwide.

“The investment brings together 150 plus years of brand equity of Tatas and a very strong R&D based entrepreneur in Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw with a golden track record of conceptualizing, investing and creating billion-dollar businesses by a meticulous combination of R&D strengths and an exceptional management team,” said Akhil Awasthi, Managing Partner, Tata Growth PE.

Biocon’s Biologics has been the fastest growing arm for the Bengaluru-based company. It registered a growth of 19 per cent y-o-y at Rs 692 crore for the first quarter of FY21 after reporting a de-growth of 21 per cent during the previous quarter because of Covid-19 related operational challenges. Going beyond medicine, the subsidiary recently diversified and entered the digital therapeutic segment as part of its global strategy by collaborating with healthcare solutions company Voluntis to develop and distribute a digital product for diabetic patients.

It currently has a product pipeline of 28 molecules, of which it partners with Mylan for 11 of them. Overall, the company is targeting to have at least eight biosimilars being sold in developed markets by the end of FY22 addressing a market opportunity of $33 billion. Biocon Biologics is seeking to continue to deliver at least three additional molecules between FY23 and FY25 and after which it is looking to launch two molecules per year.

Pichai says 'Google cares', Bezos 'can't remember' in Congressional hearing

Four big tech CEOs -- Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google and Tim Cook of Apple -- pushed back against accusations during a US Congress panel hearing capping a yearlong investigation into these companies' market domination online.

Amid intense grilling on issues that centred on market power derived from uninhibited collection and access to data, all four CEOs focused their attention on the value of their innovations and services to consumers. They testified via video link to lawmakers in Washington, DC.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai struggled to deflect accusations of anti-conservative bias and retreated multiple times to a "Happy to engage with you" answer in response to questions that went deep into the working of the company's mighty algorithms.

Pichai squirmed when asked whether he signed off on the company's 2016 decision to merge data from the advertising company Double Click -- bought in 2007 -- with Google's own data. Rep. Val Demings described this move as one that effectively "destroyed users' anonymity" on the internet.

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"I reviewed at a high level all the important decisions we make," Pichai said. He talked up how Google "cares" about privacy and security of users and noted that Google no longer uses data from Gmail for ad targeting, a relatively recent change.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos repeatedly offered "I don't remember" or "We are looking into it" as an answer to lawmaker concerns about how the company might be killing off small businesses, poaching ideas from competitors or employee testimony that there is "nobody enforcing" policies in a company that has become a "candy shop" of seller data.

For years, Amazon has been dogged by allegations that it uses its dominance to identify and enter into new product categories using its unique lens into inside information on third party seller data.

Pushed on this question by Pramila Jayapal, who represents the district in which Amazon is headquartered, Bezos sidestepped saying he could not answer yes or no. "I can tell you we have a policy against using seller-specific data to aid our private label business but I can't guarantee you that that policy has never been violated."

Facebook CEO under fire
Facebook CEO Zuckerberg faced fire over the company's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, a pervasive strategy of copying competitors' features, selling user data to third parties and the forest fire analogy of how fake news and conspiracy theories go wild on the mighty platform.

In his responses, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook has "certainly adapted features that others have led in" but countered that the company's moves were not anti-competitive.

"I have always been clear that we viewed Instagram as both a competitor and as a complement to our services," Zuckerberg said.

The Facebook's CEO used his time during opening remarks to knock competitors. "In many areas, we are behind our competitors," he said.

"The most popular messaging service in the US is iMessage. The fastest growing app is TikTok. The most popular app for video is YouTube. The fastest growing ads platform is Amazon. The largest ads platform is Google."

"Apple CEO Tim Cook contended that his company does not have a dominant market share "in any market where we do business" and prioritises the quality of product versus scale.

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Apple, whose iPhone is the world's third-largest selling phone, is facing EU investigations over fees charged by its App Store and technical blockades that allegedly shut out competitors to Apple Pay.

Cook said, "In the more than a decade since the App Store debuted, we have never raised the commission or added a single fee. In fact, we have reduced them for subscriptions and exempted additional categories of apps. The App Store evolves with the times, and every change we have made has been in the direction of providing a better experience for our users and a compelling business opportunity for developers."

Gold jewellery demand in India slumps 74% in June quarter on Covid-19

The demand for gold jewellery in India tanked a massive 74 per cent in the April – June quarter of the calendar year 2020 (Q2-2020) at 44 tonnes (t) and sharply higher than the 33 per cent drop seen in China at 90.9 t during the same period, suggests the latest gold demand trends report by World Gold Council (WGC) released July 30. The fall in demand in both India and China – the biggest gold consumers in the world – led to an overall 53 per cent drop in the global demand for gold jewellery at 251.5 t during the recently concluded quarter, WGC said.

Global jewellery demand almost halved in the first half of the calendar year 2020 (CY20), falling 46 per cent y-o-y to a new low in their series at 572 t. Jewellery demand, WGC said, measured in value terms was similarly weak, despite the strength in gold prices over the period; the H1 value of $30.1 billion was the lowest since 2009 – a time when the US dollar gold price was roughly 50 per cent of recent levels.

“China and India were the biggest contributors to the decline in H1 demand: their size relative to the rest of the gold jewellery market means weakness in these two countries has an overwhelming impact on global demand,” the WGC report notes.

Gold demand-WGC
The strict lockdown imposed in late March eclipsed the gold buying festival of Akshaya Tritiya – one of the most auspicious days for buying gold in India. As a result, physical store sales were not possible, and only those retailers with an online presence were able to cater to demand.

“As restrictions eased mid-quarter, activity started to recover in select regions. June saw further improvement, with the release of some pent-up demand. However, a lack of weddings and auspicious days in the month, along with recurring lockdowns in certain regions and the high and rising gold price, prevented a meaningful recovery in demand,” WGC said.

China, on the other hand, saw an uptick in demand in the June 2020 quarter as the country opened up for business after the Covid-19 induced lockdown. However, the overall demand in the first half remained muted. Most retailers in China, according to the WGC report, attributed the continued weakness to a combination of high and rising gold prices, falling disposable incomes and an increased preference for lighter-weight gold jewellery products.

Inflow into ETFs up

The uncertainty over the pandemic and its impact on the other asset classes saw investors rush to gold as a safe-haven asset. Global investors, according to WGC, added record amounts of gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to their portfolios in the first half of 2020.

“Inflows into these products reached 734t by the end of June, taking total global holdings to a new record high of 3,621t, with assets under management (AUM) hitting a record $205.8 billion. Q2 saw inflows of 434 t, almost matching the Q1-2009 quarterly record of 465.7 t seen during the depths of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC),” the WGC report said.

Gold investment-WGC
These flows helped lift the gold price, which gained 17 per cent in US dollar terms over the first half and hit record highs in many other currencies. On an overall basis, gold demand across the globe slumped 11 per cent y-o-y to 1,015.7t in the June quarter, while demand for the first half year was 6 per cent weaker at 2,076 t.

Tamil Nadu extends lockdown till Aug 31, announces fresh restrictions

The Tamil Nadu government on Thursday extended the coronavirus-induced lockdown till August 31.
The government has announced fresh restrictions and relaxations, a day after the Chief Minister held a meeting with all district collectors.
CM Edappadi K Palaniswami said the decision was taken after series of discussions and reviews.

"All educational institutions, theatres, gyms, shopping malls, swimming pools, beaches, tourist places will remain shut. All e-commerce deliveries are being allowed in Chennai. E-pass mandatory to travel between districts in TN and inter-State travel," according to the state government release.
Metro and other train services will continue to remain shut. International flights, except the ones that are allowed by the Center under Vande Bharat mission, will not be operated.
All private offices, industrial establishments and export-oriented units can function with 75% strength. Earlier it was 50 per cent.

Restaurants will be allowed to operate between 6 am and 7 pm, but with only 50 per cent occupancy. Parcel services will be allowed till 9 pm. Working hours of fruits and vegetables shops have been extended for one more hour to 7 pm. Earlier, it was between 6 am and 6 pm.
The state administration said Section 144, which restricts more than five people to gather, will continue.

Mukesh Ambani's trusted aide PMS Prasad pledges 94% of his shares

In a curious move, Reliance Industries’ (RIL) executive director and Mukesh Ambani’s trusted aide PMS Prasad (pictured) pledged 600,000 shares of the company last month, which is 93.75 per cent of the total shares he owns in RIL.

Prasad owned a total of 640,000 RIL shares and his compensation stood at Rs 11.15 crore in FY20.

Typically, professional corporate executives pledge shares when they need to raise cash to exercise stock options in the company’s shares or invest the money elsewhere.

Neither Prasad nor RIL responded to Business Standard’s queries on the reason for the pledge.

According to stock exchange filings, Alok Agarwal, chief financial officer (CFO), RIL, had pledged 1.44 million shares in September 2019 and revoked the pledge on 940,000 shares even as he pledged another 225,000 shares last month. He acquired a little over 100,000 shares through the rights issue last month.

Interestingly, Prasad’s last trading activity, prior to the pledge was in September 2017, when he sold 136,666 shares.

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HDFC Bank’s managing director (MD) Aditya Puri, who was recently in the news for exiting 95 per cent of his stake in the bank, had also pledged his shares in 2018 and 2019 to exercise stock options.

Prasad is considered one of RIL’s senior most executives, often credited for the Jamnagar refinery complex establishment and later steering RIL’s gas business ambitions.

RIL’s shares have nearly doubled in the last four months. On March 27, the stock was trading at Rs 1055.9 per share. RIL on Wednesday, closed at Rs 2095.85 a share on BSE. The company has been on a stake sale spree for its digital business Jio Platforms, with minority stakes sold to global giants such as Google, Facebook and a slew of financial institutions.

RIL has so far raised a total of Rs 2.13 trillion through the combined investments in Jio Platforms, a rights issue, and investment by BP.

Gold price today: Rs 52,465 per 10 gram, silver price at Rs 62,730 per kg

Gold price on Wednesday dipped Rs 69 to trade at Rs 52,465 per 10 gram while prices of silver fell over Rs 2,500 to settle at Rs 62,730 per kg, according to Indian Bullion and Jewellers Association.
Both gold and silver have witnessed decline after seven days of gain, according to HDFC Securities.

Gold jewellery prices vary across India, the second-largest consumer of the metal, due to excise duty, state taxes, and making charges.
In New Delhi, the price of 22-carat gold rose to Rs 51,250 per 10 gram. Gold in 24 carat in the national capital was retailing at Rs 52,450. In Chennai 22-carat climbed steadily to Rs 50,370 while the price of 24-carat gold price in Chennai was at Rs 54,940. In Mumbai, the rate was Rs 50,760 for 22 carat gold, according to the Good Returns website.
On MCX, August gold futures climbed over 1% to Rs 52,649 per 10 gram while silver September futures slipped 0.41% to Rs 65,260 per kg.
MCX has decided to accept gold and silver bars refined at domestic refineries for deliveries, subject to final regulatory approval.
MCX received the approval of Sebi for the launch of Gold Mini options with Gold Mini (100 grams) bar as underlying, MCX said in a statement.
In the international market, gold gained on Tuesday ahead of a US Federal Reserve policy meeting which is expected to provide more monetary stimulus to support the coronavirus-hit economy, though bullion pulled back from an all-time high reached earlier.
As of 11:10 a.m EDT (1510 GMT), spot gold was up by 0.3% at $1,947.51 per ounce, while U. S. gold futures rose 0.93 % to $1,949.00 per ounce.
ALSO READ: Gold prices decline after 7 days of back-to-back gains; silver falls 9%
Gold surged to a record high of $1,980.57 an ounce earlier in the session, but prices have retreated as much as 3.7% since then as investors booked profits and the dollar bounced back.
"When you get a strong momentum coming in, you get a lot of speculators who are looking to turn a quick profit," said Michael Matousek, head trader at U. S. Global Investors.
"Nothing has changed fundamentally at all, the deficits and lower interest rates stoking inflation are still going to be here, so there is no reason not to own gold really."
Investors now eye the two-day Fed meeting beginning Tuesday, where it is widely expected to reiterate its accommodative policy stance.
The Fed announced extension of several of its lending facilities through the year-end.
Rising Covid-19 infections, simmering China-US tensions, massive stimulus and a low interest rate environment to aid pandemic-hit economies has helped gold rally 28% so far this year.
Gold prices are expected to rise to $2,300 per troy ounce over the next 12-month horizon, Goldman Sachs said, as concerns around the longevity of the US dollar as a reserve currency have started to emerge.
"We have long maintained gold is the currency of last resort, particularly in an environment like the current one where governments are debasing their fiat currencies and pushing real interest rates to all-time lows," Goldman said.

My mother had me when she was 17: Jeff Bezos testifies before US Congress

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, spoke about his personal life and narrated the difficulties his company faced in its initial years when he testified before the US Congress.
"I'm Jeff Bezos. I founded 'Amazon' 26 years ago with the long-term mission of making it Earth's most customer-centric company. My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was difficult for her," he said in his testimony before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law .
The world's richest man said that when the school tried to kick out his mother, his grandfather went to bat for her.
"After some negotiation, the principal said, "OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she can't do any extracurricular activities, and she can't have a locker." My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished high school, though she wasn't allowed to walk across the stage with her classmates to get her diploma," he said.
He further revealed that determined to keep up with her education, she enrolled in night school, picking classes led by professors who would let her bring an infant to class.
'My dad's name is Miguel'
"She would show up with two duffel bags--one full of textbooks, and one packed with diapers, bottles, and anything that would keep me interested and quiet for a few minutes. My dad's name is Miguel. He adopted me when I was four years old," said the Amazon CEO.
"He was 16 when he came to the United States from Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan, shortly after Castro took over. My dad arrived in America alone. His parents felt he'd be safer here. His mom imagined America would be cold, so she made him a jacket sewn entirely out of cleaning cloths, the only material they had on hand," added Bezos. "We still have that jacket; it hangs in my parents' dining room."
He mentioned that his dad spent two weeks at Camp Matecumbe, a refugee centre in Florida, before being moved to a Catholic mission in Wilmington, Delaware.

ALSO READ: Jeff Bezos adds record $13 billion in single day to his fortune
"He was lucky to get to the mission, but even so, he didn't speak English and didn't have an easy path. What he did have was a lot of grit and determination. He received a scholarship to college in Albuquerque, which is where he met my mom. You get different gifts in life, and one of my great gifts is my mom and dad. They have been incredible role models for me and my siblings our entire lives," said Bezos.
He stated that the concept for Amazon came to him in 1994. "The idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles--something that simply couldn't exist in the physical world--was exciting to me. At the time, I was working at an investment firm in New York City."
The Amazon CEO said the initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, who invested a large fraction of their life savings in something they didn't understand.
"They weren't making a bet on Amazon or the concept of a bookstore on the internet. They were making a bet on their son. I told them that I thought there was a 70 per cent chance they would lose their investment, and they did it anyway," he said.
ALSO READ: Elon Musk calls Jeff Bezos a 'copycat' over Amazon's acquisition of Zoox
"It took more than 50 meetings for me to raise $1 million from investors, and over the course of all those meetings, the most common question was, "What's the internet?"," added Bezos.
The Amazon founder also narrated the hardships the company faced during its initial years.
He said: "Amazon's success was anything but preordained. Investing in Amazon early on was a very risky proposition. From our founding through the end of 2001, our business had cumulative losses of nearly USD 3 billion, and we did not have a profitable quarter until the fourth quarter of that year.

PM Modi to hold review meeting with banks, his first since Covid outbreak

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to hold a meeting with the chief executives of state-owned and private banks on Wednesday.
This is the first meeting that the Prime Minister (PM) is going to hold with the brass of financial institutions after the Covid-19 pandemic. The meeting will be held through video conferencing, a bank executive said.

“The agenda of the meeting hasn’t been circulated yet. But it is expected that the PM will discuss credit flow to the economy, especially the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and map the progress of the government’s Covid-19 package,” another bank executive said, requesting anonymity.
A finance ministry official said that the announcements of the government so far relied heavily on restarting economic activities with the help of financial institutions and the PM wants to take stock of the progress. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is also expected to attend the meeting.
Apart from major public sector banks, top executives of some private lenders such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and the Indian Banks’ Association are also expected to be present in the meeting on Wednesday.
Earlier in June, Sitharaman had held separate meetings - one with PSBs and the other with private banks and non-banking financial companies. The FM had discussed ways in which the Rs 3 trillion Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme could be effectively implemented for the MSME sector. She had also urged the state-owned banks to go for better interest rate transmission.
On Monday, Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das had said in a public event that bank should raise money proactively and build up adequate capital buffers, along with urging the corporates to look beyond banks to fund infrastructure projects.

MoD procurement policy proposes ban on import of specific weapons

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Tuesday issued a second draft of the Defence Procurement Procedure of 2020 (DPP-2020) and solicited comments by August 10, four months after it put out the first draft of the new manual that will supersede and update the current DPP-2016.
“Based on inputs received from the environment, DPP-2020 has now been titled as Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020,” stated the MoD. Driving this terminological change is the conviction that the policy should look beyond procurement (purchase) of equipment and provide for alternatives such as leasing and upgrading.
The draft DAP-2020 retains the first draft’s emphasis on promoting higher indigenous content in equipment manufactured in India, including under licence from foreign vendors. For most acquisition categories, the DAP-2020 will demand 10 per cent higher indigenisation than under DPP-2016. (see graphic)
For the first time, the MoD proposes to incorporate into official policy a ban on import of specific kinds of weapons and platforms.
“With a view to promote domestic and indigenous industry as also align the DAP with the reforms enunciated in the Atmanirbhar Abhiyan (self-reliance campaign), the MoD will notify a list of weapons/platforms banned for import, updated from time to time,” the draft states.
It is unclear whether this “no import list” will be aligned with the MoD’s Defence Production Policy (DPrP) of 2018, which mandates self-reliance by 2025 in the production of helicopters, fighter aircraft, warships, tanks, and missiles.
DPrP-2018 also stipulates raising exports to $5 billion annually by 2025, and producing goods and services worth $26 billion to create employment for 2-3 million people.
The MoD has also introduced a new procurement category, entitled Buy (Global — Manufacture in India). This stipulates indigenisation of at least 50 per cent of the contract value of a foreign purchase bought with the intention of subsequently building it in India with technology transfer.

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Meeting this would require vendors to supply only the minimum necessary numbers from abroad in ready-built condition, while manufacturing a larger share in India.
The category also allows vendors to meet the indigenous content requirement through manufacturing spares and assemblies, or setting up maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facilities for the equipment, including through the foreign vendor’s subsidiary in India.
The draft DAP-2020 details the procedures for “leasing” of equipment and platforms. Leasing is expected to save money by permitting the military to rent back-up equipment and services, such as air transport, mid-air refuelling, MRO and simulator training, rather than incur huge capital outlays in buying outright.


In addition to a full new chapter on “leasing”, the draft DAP-2020 also incorporates a new chapter for procuring equipment and platforms based on software and information and communications technology (ICT). Given the rapid obsolescence of ICT-based systems, more flexible procurement processes are needed to keep up with change.
Another new chapter deals with ‘post-contract management.” This lays down guidelines and processes for issues that arise during the contract period, which typically last for several decades in defence contracts.
While aiming at speeding up procurement, the new procedure marginally slows the Fast Track Procedure, which is designed for emergency purchases. DPP-2016 mandated a maximum period of 112-169 days for concluding a contract, including the time for trial evaluation. DAP-2020 stipulates a slightly longer period of 122-231 days. In both cases, delivery of equipment would take another 3-12 months from the date of contract signing.
The new procedure is being drafted by an MoD committee headed by its acquisitions chief, Apurva Chandra.

Business 24Seven: Store chain clocks 80% rise in business in pandemic

For most businesses, the pandemic has been a curse but for Delhi-based convenience store chain 24Seven, it has been a blessing, bestowing a staggering 80 per cent surge in business in the capital.
Since late March, the K K Modi Group venture has seen profits grow by double digits, fuelled by the fact that, with very few stores operational at the start of the lockdown, the dozens of 24Seven outlets proved a lifeline for consumers needing packaged food, hygiene and sanitary items, and cigarettes. Samir Modi, founder and managing director of the venture, is now hoping to register a ...

Coronavirus LIVE updates: Odisha Covid-19 tally crosses 28,000-mark

Coronavirus update: India recorded 47,703 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, taking its total to 1,484,136. The country's current Covid-19 death toll stands at 33,448. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have both crossed the 100,000-case mark, while Tamil Nadu's Covid tally has risen to 220,716.
Coronavirus world update: As many as 16,629,652 people around the world have been diagnosed with Covid-19. While more than 10,217,573 have recovered, 655,873 have died so far. The US on Monday recorded 60,500 new cases and Brazil 23,467.
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02:00 PM
Puducherry reports 141 new Covid-19 cases; CM and Ministers test negative
Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy, his cabinet colleagues and legislators of various political parties here tested negative for coronavirus on Tuesday. The results came negative after testing of the swabs collected from them at a special camp held on the premises of the Assembly Monday.

The testing of the CM, Speaker, Ministers and MLAs besides the staff of the Assembly Secretariat and of offices of the Ministers was necessitted after opposition AINRC legislator N S J Jayabal, who had attended the recent budget session, had tested positive and hospitalised.

Meanwhile, 141 fresh COVID-19 cases and four related deaths were reported in the Union Territory during the last 24 hours ending 10 a.m. on Tuesday, taking the tally to 3,011.
01:48 PM
Odisha's coronavirus tally crosses 28,000-mark, death toll climbs to 154
Odisha's COVID-19 tally breached the 28,000 mark with 1,215 new cases, and the death toll climbed to 154 as seven more patients, including a five-year-old boy, succumbed to the infection, a Health Department official said on Tuesday.

The state's virus caseload now stands at 28,107 as 1,215 positive cases have been reported from 28 of 30 districts of the state. While 753 cases have been reported from different quarantine centres, the remaining 462 are local contacts.

Contact tracing and follow-up action is underway, said the Health and Family Welfare Department.
01:43 PM
Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren inaugurates Plasma Donation Centre for seriously ill Covid-19 patients
01:25 PM
Himachal Pradesh's Covid-19 case tally rises to 2,282. There are 1,029 active cases, 1,224 recovered cases and 12 deaths: State Health Department
01:22 PM
Gold hits record peaks on profit taking, helps dollar regain value
Gold hurtled to record peaks on Tuesday before the sheer scale of its gains drew a burst of profit taking, which in turn helped the dollar from two-year lows and curbed early equity gains.

The precious metal had stormed almost $40 higher at one point to reach $1,980 an ounce, only for a wave of selling to slap it back to $1,940 in wild trade. Read on...
01:19 PM
Pakistan's coronavirus tally reaches 274,908
Pakistan's coronavirus tally reached 274,908 with the detection of 936 new cases in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

Twenty-three more people died overnight due to coronavirus-related complications, pushing the nationwide death toll to 5,865.

As many as 242,436 patients have recovered so far in the country, the ministry said.
01:18 PM
Nitrogen dioxide levels fell by more than 70% during Covid-19 lockdown in New Delhi: UN
Levels of nitrogen dioxide fell by more than 70 per cent during the lockdown in New Delhi, a UN policy brief said on Tuesday, warning that the environmental gains could be temporary if the cities re-open without policies to prevent air pollution and promote de-carbonisation.
12:58 PM
Conduct last rites of coronavirus suspects without waiting for test report: Odisha govt to Collectors
The Odisha government has instructed all district collectors, SPs, municipal commissioners and health officials to conduct the last rites of COVID-19 suspects without insisting on testing of swab or waiting for the report, an official said. The state government issued a letter on Monday after it was noticed that cremation of bodies were being delayed as officials waited for the corona test reports of the victim after his/her death, the official said.

In Ganjam district, the body of a policeman was allegedly abandoned at the hospital and nobody touched it because his corona test report was awaited. "It is clarified that as we are in the midst of a global pandemic, as a measure of abundant precaution, in all such cases the dead body may be disposed of as per COVID norms, in compassionate consultation with the family of the deceased," Additional Chief Secretary of Health Department PK Mohapatra said in the letter to all district collectors and municipal corporation commissioners.
12:56 PM
Coronavirus update: Bengaluru cases rise to 46,923
12:55 PM
Head of China CDC gets injected with experimental coronavirus vaccine
The head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention says he has been injected with an experimental coronavirus vaccine in an attempt to persuade the public to follow suit when one is approved.

I'm going to reveal something undercover: I am injected with one of the vaccines, Gao Fu said in a webinar Sunday hosted by Alibaba Health, an arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant, and Cell Press, an American publisher of scientific journals.

I hope it will work. The Associated Press reported earlier this month that a state-owned Chinese company injected employees with experimental shots in March, even before the government-approved testing in people a move that raised ethical concerns among some experts.

The Indian-American doctor behind the disputed coronavirus data

A college degree at 19. A medical school graduate with a Ph.D. at 27.
By the time he completed training in vascular surgery in 2014, Dr. Sapan Desai had cast himself as an ambitious physician, an entrepreneur with an M.B.A. and a prolific researcher published in medical journals.
Then the novel coronavirus hit and Dr. Desai seized the moment. With a Harvard professor, he produced two studies in May that almost instantly disrupted multiple clinical trials amid the pandemic.
One study’s findings were particularly dramatic, reporting that anti-malaria drugs like hydroxychloroquine, which President Trump promoted, were linked to increased deaths of Covid-19 patients. But that study and another were retracted in June by the renowned journals that had published them, weeks after researchers around the world suggested the data was dubious. Dr. Desai, who declined to share the raw information even with his co-authors, claimed it was culled from a massive trove acquired by Surgisphere, a business he started during his residency.
The now-tainted studies helped sow confusion and erode public confidence in scientific guidance when the nation was already deeply divided over how to respond to the pandemic. And the anti-malaria drugs cited in the papers have continued to generate controversy, as new research prompted some scientists to petition for expanding their use against the coronavirus, despite Food and Drug Administration warnings against them.
ALSO READ: Coronavirus LIVE: 100,000+ tests in UP in a day; India testing 12553 per mn
While the journal debacle has shaken the broader scientific community, many people who have known Dr. Desai, 41, described him as a man in a hurry, a former whiz kid willing to cut corners, misrepresent information or embellish his credentials as he pursued his ambitions.
In interviews, more than a dozen doctors who worked with him during training and residency said they had often found him to be an unreliable physician, who seemed less interested in patient care than in the medical journal he founded and his company, branded early on as a medical publishing business.
“You couldn’t trust what he said,” said Dr. Vanessa Olcese, a former chief resident who worked with Dr. Desai at Duke University Medical Center. “You would verify everything that he did and take everything he did with a grain of salt.”
His performance there and during a later fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center raised questions about whether he would be permitted to move to the next level of training. In both instances, he was.
More recently, in February, Dr. Desai left his job at a community hospital in a Chicago suburb where he had worked as a surgeon since 2016. He was named as a defendant in three medical malpractice lawsuits last year, court records show. His spokeswoman said he “deems any lawsuit naming him to be unfounded.”
covid, coronavirus, vaccine, drug, pharma, medicine, cure
The New York Times interviewed more than two dozen people who have known Dr. Desai over the past two decades.
Dr. Desai, who declined to be interviewed for this article and did not respond to repeated requests for comment, has defended his company’s data. In an interview in late May, he said it was his “life’s work” to build a company that could provide lifesaving clinical insights to make “the world a better place.”
“We did this because it was an opportunity to help. We’re not making any money from this,” he said. “This is why I went into medicine.”
‘A Giant Roadblock’
Dr. Desai was always a striver. During high school in the Chicago suburbs, he took 13 Advanced Placement classes, according to an article in The Daily Herald, a local newspaper. He acquired enough college credits to graduate from the University of Illinois at Chicago at 19.
“His goal was to be the first person at U.I.C. that ever graduated college in one year,” said Peter Okkema, a biology professor in whose lab the young undergraduate worked. He seemed eager to impress people, the professor recalled, but never sought advice or guidance.
He entered a joint M.D.-Ph.D. program at the university; his doctoral adviser, Prof. Anna Lysakowski, remembers him as “very bright, very quick.” She also said he told her he was enrolled at John Marshall Law School. (The school has no record of him, a spokeswoman said, and the degree is not on his résumé.) Several doctors who knew Dr. Desai after he moved to Duke for his residency in 2006 recalled his saying he had a law degree and described his license plate listing his supposed credentials: M.D., J.D. and Ph.D.
Over the next five years, his performance and a pattern of behavior at the North Carolina hospital worried colleagues, according to physicians who worked with him there.
In interviews, Drs. Olcese, Mani Daneshmand, Dawn Elfenbein and 10 others — who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media or feared retribution from their employers or Duke — said there were broad concerns inside the surgery department about Dr. Desai.
The doctors, many of whom were also residents, said they could not trust information he provided about patients’ medical conditions or test results. Several doctors said it became standard practice to double check anything Dr. Desai said about a patient, such as how the person had fared overnight or whether a test had been ordered.
Several former colleagues said that often he did not follow through on directives about treating patients, and that when he was questioned about it, he sometimes passed blame or offered implausible explanations.
In one instance, Dr. Desai did not respond to pages from nurses during an overnight shift while on call, recalled Dr. Olcese. When she asked about the missed pages, he said he had been resuscitating an infant by performing a rare, complicated procedure — an incident the charge nurse said never occurred, according to Dr. Olcese and another doctor present for Dr. Desai’s explanation.
“He was essentially a giant roadblock that you had to work around,” said Dr. Olcese, now a neurocritical care doctor at Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. “You didn’t want him to bring you down with him.”
In 2008 or early 2009, Dr. Olcese and another chief resident shared concerns about Dr. Desai with their supervisors — senior physicians and faculty at Duke — during discussions about whether to promote him to the next year of residency. It is unclear what the faculty members discussed during their private deliberations, but ultimately, Dr. Desai was moved up. A Duke spokeswoman would confirm only his time there.
After his residency, Dr. Desai obtained an M.B.A. in three months from Western Governors University, an online university based in Salt Lake City, the school confirmed. Then, after starting a vascular surgery fellowship at the University of Texas at Houston, he ran into trouble. He had so antagonized some supervisors that they asked the department chairman to expel him, said Dr. Hazim Safi, who was then in that role.
“Some of the attending staff didn’t like his behavior, and didn’t want him to graduate,” Dr. Safi said in an interview.
While Dr. Safi said that Dr. Desai could be abrasive, he had worked on papers with the younger physician and was convinced the complaints were driven by personality differences and professional jealousy, not substantive deficiencies in surgical skill or patient care. Instead of failing him, he said, he gave Dr. Desai an opportunity to work on his professionalism and interpersonal skills.
“I intervened and he graduated,” the former chairman said.
At Dr. Desai’s most recent post at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, Ill., he became involved in at least four medical malpractice cases that are still pending, including three filed in 2019.
Those suits include a claim that he failed to properly perform surgery to restore circulation to an accident victim’s leg, which later required partial amputation. Another alleges that negligent treatment by Dr. Desai and other doctors resulted in the removal of a substantial portion of a patient’s bowel.
Big Data, Big Dreams
By the time Dr. Desai left the hospital earlier this year — a hospital spokeswoman said he voluntarily resigned for personal reasons — the novel coronavirus was raging in China and spreading to other countries.
For Dr. Desai, whose entrepreneurial projects had grown to include a health data analytics company, the crisis was an opportunity to fulfill his dream of using big data to study outcomes and improve care. The public’s appetite for information was insatiable and journals were publishing studies faster than ever.
Over the years, Surgisphere had developed a product called QuartzClinical that offered health centers a platform using data analytics to improve outcomes. Dr. Desai said the product had enabled Surgisphere to amass a giant registry with anonymized electronic health records from more than 1,200 hospitals and health centers, with data about more than 240 million patient encounters in 45 countries.
While the existence of the database has not been confirmed — Dr. Desai cited contractual obligations to keep confidential the identities of participating hospitals — he said he had been building it for a decade with fewer than a dozen employees. Few people were needed, he said, because hospitals could easily input anonymized patient data from disparate electronic health record systems, translating the information into a single, homogenized registry without technical assistance.
One former Surgisphere employee, Ariane Anderson, was surprised by Dr. Desai’s assertion, given the difficulties of combining information from disparate institutions with various electronic records systems. Ms. Anderson, who was hired to market QuartzClinical to hospitals and other health centers in 2019, said in an interview that generating interest in the company had been an uphill battle, and that entering data into Surgisphere’s system was laborious. When one hospital wanted to try out the system last July, she said, she spent two days there extracting data from a sampling of 200 patients to put into a spreadsheet.
By the end of 2019, Ms. Anderson said, she knew of only one hospital that had signed a contract with QuartzClinical, declining to identify it.
The new coronavirus put the company on the map. One of Dr. Desai’s projects early this year was to develop a Covid-19 severity scoring tool using data he said came from tens of thousands of registry patients. He offered the tool free to a nonprofit based in Cape Town, South Africa, saying it could identify high-risk patients and help allocate scarce medical resources in remote areas. (The group, the African Federation for Emergency Medicine, rescinded its endorsement of the tool after the studies were retracted.)
Dr. Desai also teamed up with Dr. Mandeep Mehra, a Harvard Medical School professor, and several others to turn out papers about Covid-19 that were ostensibly based on the patient registry. In May, he won the equivalent of academic medicine’s jackpot: publication in two of the world’s most prestigious journals.
The first paper, citing data from 8,910 Covid patients at 169 hospitals in Asia, North America and Europe, reported that cardiovascular disease increased the risk of bad outcomes, but put to rest concerns that blood pressure medications were harmful (it even seemed to suggest a benefit). It was published May 1 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The next paper, published May 22 in The Lancet, evaluated anti-malaria drugs that Mr. Trump has promoted as antidotes to the coronavirus. The researchers claimed to have analyzed the outcomes of nearly 100,000 Covid-19 patients from 671 hospitals on six continents. The results were sensational: Patients treated with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were up to five times as likely to have abnormal heart rhythms as other patients — and were at higher risk of dying.
Though it was an observational study, considered to provide relatively weak scientific evidence, the paper’s impact was felt around the world. A physician commenting on CNN called it “the mother of all studies,” and investigators including the World Health Organization halted clinical trials of the drugs. (Some have since resumed.)
The paper soon drew scrutiny from scientists who demanded to know more about the data and began questioning the New England Journal study too. Dr. Desai’s co-authors, conceding they had never seen the raw data, called for an independent review, but Dr. Desai balked, invoking confidentiality agreements. On June 4, both journals retracted the studies.
Surgisphere’s flashy website has been dismantled. Dr. Desai, who gave several interviews before the studies were retracted, has gone silent.

Mumbai airport scam: ED searches GVK promoters' residences, offices

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted extensive search operations at the residence and office premises of GVK group Chairman G V K Reddy and his son G V Sanjay Reddy in Mumbai and Hyderabad, in connection with the alleged Rs 705-crore Mumbai airport scam.
The move follows the money laundering case registered against the promoters of the GVK group of companies, officials of Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL), and a few other entities early this month.

Confirming the development, an ED official said the searches are underway in about nine locations in Hyderabad and Mumbai, including some entry operators connected to the MIAL.
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ED had pressed Section 3 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), which deals with concealing proceeds of a crime where the accused shall be guilty of money laundering.
The ED action follows the criminal case registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on June 27 against Reddys and others. The case also includes the names of some Airports Authority of India (AAI) officials and nine other private firms.
The case is related to allegations of irregularities amounting to Rs 705 crore in developing Mumbai Airport. The investigative agency alleged that the money was siphoned off by the accused, causing a loss to the exchequer between 2012 and 2018.
Sources in the ED indicated that the people connected with the case would be summoned and quizzed in the coming weeks.

Here's why CLSA and Edelweiss have downgraded Reliance Industries' stock

It has been a dream run for Reliance Industries' (RIL) stock in calendar year 2020 (CY20). From hitting a low of Rs 868 on March 23, the stock has skyrocketed over 150 per cent to a record high of Rs 2,199 on July 27. The stellar rally came on the back of a series of big-ticket investments by marquee names such as Facebook, Google, Intel Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures into RIL's digital arm, Jio Platforms. Further, the company's announcement of becoming a net-debt free entity way before its schedule of March 31, 2021, made Street in awe of RIL, thus firing up the stock price.
However, not everyone looks convinced with the current valuation of the stock and believes that the market is way too optimistic on Mukesh Ambani-controlled RIL, overlooking the risks associated with it.

For instance, Edelweiss Securities, in its report dated July 27, notes that the stock’s primary triggers — deleveraging, asset monetisation and digital momentum — have already played out. Also, the current exuberance witnessed in the stock seems redux of euphoria seen earlier, in 1994 (India liberalisation), 2000 (Y2K bug), and 2008 (KG-D6 offshore gas field), which suggests associated risk is high. Edelweiss has downgraded the stock to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ with the target price of Rs 2,105.
Edelweiss Securities notes that its two-stage reverse-discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis of RIL stock shows that the market is baking in high earnings per share (EPS) growth, particularly for Jio Platforms - 35 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and 31 per cent for Reliance Retail sustaining over the next ten years, which by any measure is a tall ask.
The brokerage notes that the Street has prematurely fired up the valuation of the entire consolidated entity—RIL—to those commanded by major tech companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google, popularly known as FAANG stocks / companius. "This unhindered run-up in the stock price is primarily fueled by a slew of big-ticket investments in Jio Platforms at heady valuations. The cutting-edge FAANG companies boast large free cash flows already. In contrast, RIL is still primarily an oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business that shall continue to generate the bulk of cash flows over the medium term, the brokerage says.
Another issue raised by the brokerage firm is that RIL has ventured into multiple business verticals, right from telecom, e-commerce, entertainment to the education sector; however, what matters is the ability to achieve leadership in these areas. That apart, the business integration process, Edelweiss believes, will be a long-drawn affair.
“Although RJio launched its entertainment apps at an early stage of business evolution, invested aggressively in business, and forged the right partnerships, it has not been able to achieve leadership in any of these businesses," the brokerage notes. In the entertainment ecosystem, too, RIL faces a Herculean task to displace the existing market leaders while in the healthcare and internet of things (IoT) ecosystems too, RJio, is lagging. Further, in the Education vertical, taking on BYJU’s is again a tall order.
Those at CLSA, too, have shared similar concerns and have downgraded the stock from ‘buy’ to ‘outperform’ even as they project Reliance’s market cap to rise to $220 billion by March 2022 as per their valuation framework.
“Despite a lenient valuation framework, our new target of Rs 2,250 (Rs 1,753.38 earlier) offers only 4 per cent upside, which sees us downgrade our rating from BUY to outperform. Following a 400 per cent rally over the past seven years and over 150 per cent in four months, the stock may take a pause. Its promising long-term story and underweight positioning in institutional portfolios should provide support. Any big surprise beyond $70 billion, if and when the stake in Retail is sold, could be needed to justify large immediate upside," wrote Vikash Kumar Jain and Surajdev Yadav, of CLSA in a July 28 note.

Govt must close 'legal disputes' hurting telecom: Sunil Mittal on AGR dues

Indian telecom is not “out of the woods” despite proving itself indispensable in the weeks-long lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, said Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal on Tuesday, urging the government to "close long-standing legal disputes”.
The Supreme Court rejected on July 20 telecom companies’ demand for re-assessing their dues linked to adjusted gross revenue (AGR) and said it will decide later a government's plea to give the carriers a 20-year staggered payment timeline. The court upheld the amount to be paid by Bharti Airtel at Rs 25,976 crore and by Vodafone Idea at Rs 50,399 crore, factoring in the companies' payments of Rs 18,004 crore and Rs 7,854 crore.

"The company…is of the view that the telecom price-wars changed the landscape of the industry we have known and operated in till date and the Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues have caused significant distress in business sustainability for industry players," he said.
“The government must also look at rationalising the levies on the sector and close the long-standing legal disputes which are a drag on operators' performance,” Mittal said, apparently referring to the AGR dispute.
"While it’s clear that the worst may be behind for India’s telecom industry, we are yet to emerge from the woods. India still has some of the lowest data tariffs globally and the industry is barely able to cover the cost of capital. It requires much more support to repair the deep damage to its finances and make it viable for telecom operators to invest in future technologies," Mittal said in a message to Airtel shareholders.
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"Though the recent tariff increase has provided some cushion to the industry, we are still way below the levels to make the industry viable, said Mittal, 62.
"Given the commendable job it (telecom industry) has done to keep India connected, I hope the Government will look into the urgent needs of the operators."
Airtel’s Annual Report 2019-20 said that despite the coronavirus and lockdowns to contain the disease, the company has held on to its market share.
The company said it raised more than USD 8 billion over the year through rights issue, Airtel Africa IPO, Perpetual Bond, QIP (qualified institutional placement) and FCCB (foreign currency convertible bonds).
"The Indian telecom industry is now at a crucial transformational stage. From multiple players trying to claim shares of the market, now, after extensive consolidations, we have entered a 3+1 player arena. Yet, if our journey till date is any indication, we are confident about holding our ground," said the company’s report.
Bharti Airtel had more than 423 million customers across its operations at the end of March 2020. It owns and operates more than 42,053 telecom towers under its subsidiary Bharti Infratel Limited (on a standalone basis) with presence across all 22 telecom circles.

Huawei to ByteDance: Big tech firms in a spot as China riles US, India

Huawei Technologies' founder Ren Zhengfei's global ambitions are marked in bricks and mortar at a new company campus in southern China, where the buildings are replicas from European cities.
Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, the operator of short video app TikTok, has plastered his Beijing headquarters with posters including a cover of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's book "How Google Works", and has long said he will build a global firm that can compete with U.S. tech giants.
But the two companies which best exemplify China's ambitions to challenge U.S. tech dominance are now stymied by strains in relations between China and countries including the United States, India, Australia and Britain.
Chinese companies with world-beating technology -- including drone-maker DJI, artificial intelligence firms Megvii, SenseTime and iFlytek, surveillance camera vendor Hikvision and e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group -- are also among those losing access to markets.
Smaller companies are being forced to re-think too.
"What we are experiencing now is unprecedented," said a Chinese startup founder who has operations in the United States and India but asked not to be identified as he is now considering walking away. "My entrepreneurial spirit has been dampened due to all this, let alone global ambitions."
It's a big shift from even a year ago, when the U.S.-led trade war with China and security concerns about Huawei were having little impact on most Chinese tech champions.
SenseTime and Megvii, backed by U.S. investors, were eyeing big IPOs. ByteDance's TikTok unit was enjoying unfettered global growth. Alibaba was touting the global prospects for its cloud business, and DJI was consolidating domination of the drone business.
But then came new U.S. sanctions against Chinese tech firms last October, prompted in part by repression of the Muslim Uighur population in the Western province of Xinjiang.
U.S. President Donald Trump has ratcheted up anti-China rhetoric as he seeks re-election and Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken a tough line. Tensions have also risen between Beijing and other countries over new security laws passed for Hong Kong, and a border skirmish with Indian troops led to an India government ban on 59 Chinese apps.
Now China's top tech players are having contracts cancelled, products banned and investments blocked, with more restrictions on the horizon.
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ByteDance could be forced to sell TikTok as Washington considers following India in banning the short video app, a global product that analysts say is worth at least $20 billion.
Huawei is set to lose billions of dollars a year in revenue from bans on its network equipment, and more countries could follow the United States, Britain and others in blocking the company's gear.
The U.S. Interior Department has grounded the privately held DJI's fleet and halted additional purchases because of data security risks, and more restrictions could be in the offing.
Alibaba Group is cutting staff at its UC Web subsidiary in India after its popular mobile Web browser was banned by the government. DJI has put IPO plans on ice.
The companies are watching geopolitical developments "with white knuckles," said Daniel Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities.
Huawei, Alibaba, SenseTime and Megvii declined to comment. ByteDance and Tencent did not respond to requests for comment.
China's foreign ministry said it encourages and directs the country's "strong, reputable companies" to invest overseas in a compliant manner, and hopes other countries will safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.
"International investment is an important engine driver for economic growth. As the global economy is under tremendous downward pressure, all parties should take strong measures to jointly further liberalise and facilitate trade and investment, and create a fair, transparent, and predictable investment environment," it said in a fax.
Bright spots
Investors said some less sensitive sectors such as gaming are still open to Chinese players.
Tencent Holdings has had some of its apps in India banned, but not popular games such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. The company recently launched a new California-based gaming studio and plans more such operations.
A huge domestic market is by far the biggest profit centre for China's tech firms, and some countries remain keen to accept Chinese investment.
"Global markets are big and Southeast Asia and Europe should still be open to Chinese companies," said one Beijing-based, internet-focussed hedge fund investor.
But some startups in Southeast Asia that were previously open to taking Chinese money are becoming more reluctant, said David Chang, managing director of Hong Kong-based MindWorks Capital.
"For example, if I take ByteDance on my (equity) capitalization table and then ByteDance gets blocked and blacklisted in the U.S., my dream of listing on the Nasdaq is limited," he said, referring to the U.S. stock exchange popular with tech firms.

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Efforts by Chinese companies to change the minds of the foreign regulators have had little effect in the absence of policy changes by Beijing.
ByteDance says it has ring-fenced TikTok from its China operations and poached a Disney executive to head the unit. That has failed to assuage Washington.
"That's about all you can do," said Mark Natkin, managing director at Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting. "Push the public relations as hard as you can, hire managers that give you more of a foreign feel, and keep your fingers crossed that there isn't another geopolitical flashpoint."

Health ministry not to use Itolizumab in clinical protocols for Covid-19

The National Task Force on Covid-19 has decided against including Itolizumab drug in clinical management protocols for treating the disease even though the DCGI has approved its "restricted emergency use" in infected patients, official sources said.
Considering the unmet medical needs in Covid-19, Itolizumab, an already approved drug of Biocon, used for treating psoriasis - a skin condition - was approved for "restricted emergency use" in the treatment of coronavirus by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) recently.
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The permission to market the drug was granted for the treatment of cytokine release syndrome in moderate' to severe' Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome patients due to Covid-19. "The issue of including the drug in the clinical protocols was discussed in a meeting held on Friday.
A majority of the members of the task force opined that there was not enough evidence currently to get the drug included in the clinical management protocols for Covid-19," said an official source.

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A domestic biopharmaceutical company, Biocon, has been manufacturing and marketing Itolizumab, a monoclonal antibody, for the treatment of patients with moderate to severe chronic plaque psoriasis since 2013, under the brand name ALZUMAb, the Union health ministry had earlier said.

Multiplex operators in focus; PVR, Inox Leisure up over 5% in a weak market

Shares of multiplex operators PVR and Inox Leisure were trading over 5 per cent higher in an otherwise weak market on the BSE on Monday amid expectation that cinema halls would be opened as part of 'Unlock 3'.
Inox Leisure has rallied 10 per cent to Rs 265 on the BSE on back of over 5-fold jump in trading volumes. At 10:20 am, the stock was trading 8 per cent higher with a combined 1.25 million shares changing hands on the NSE and BSE.

Shares of PVR were up 6 per cent to Rs 1,172 on the BSE, as compared to 0.6 per cent decline in the S&P BSE Sensex.
The Multiplex Association of India (MAI) has urged the central government to allow operation of cinema houses in non-containment zones in the country. The country went into lockdown from March 25 to contain the spread of coronavirus pandemic. As the Central government’s 'Unlock 2' is coming to an end on July 31, the Ministry of Home Affairs is preparing guidelines for 'Unlock 3'.
According to reports, the MAI is certain that cinema halls will be allowed to reopen for the public in the next phase of unlock. Earlier the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had proposed the reopening of cinema halls to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Analysts at Edelweiss Securities continue to maintain confidence in multiplexes’ long-term story owing to under penetration; cinemas, and multiplexes in particular, continue to remain the major revenue source for content producers; and tailwind to a shift from unorganised to organised retail.
“We believe business to resume once COVID-19 cases subside materially, thereby leading to a gradual pikcup in occupancy rates. We do believe that India remains highly under-pentrated in terms of screens or screens per million, implying ample room for expansion for leading players. In addition, we expect single screens to decline faster given survival issues in tough times. Single screens constituted 66 per cent of total screens in India in CY19 verus 78 per cent in CY15," the brokerage firm said in sector update.
“Although the prospects of cinema opening in the near term are high, there is uncertainty around movie releases and occupancy trends. Inox’s balance sheet provides some comfort, especially in terms of liquidity (in the process of raising Rs 75 crore in debt). Going forward, agreements with mall owners on rental costs and revenue sharing will be watched out for,” analysts at Emkay Global Financial Services said in company update.