Bit by Bit 16th Feb || Exporters need to be receptive towards impact of recession: FM Sitharaman & more

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MARKET UPDATE

• NIFTY 50 : ₹17,893.45 (+0.12%)

• BSE SENSEX : ₹60,806.22 (+0.23%)

• NIFTY BANK : ₹41,554.30 (+0.04%)

• USD/INR : ₹82.490 (-0.19%)

• BRENTOIL : $84.17 (-1.08%)

• MCXGOLD : ₹56,796 (-0.58%)

• FII Net Cashflow : - ₹145 crores

• DII Net Cashflow : - ₹205 crores

(Market Data as of 11:00 PM on 09/02/2022)

BFSI

Exporters need to be receptive towards impact of recession: FM Sitharaman

According to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday, the global slowdown and a likely recession in the West could pose a threat to India's trade. She urged exporters to actively interact with the Centre in order to protect themselves against any bad consequences.

The FM spoke at a number of post-Budget discussions with various industry organisations. She also stated that the long-awaited changes of putting petroleum products under the goods and services tax (GST) might take effect if states reach an agreement.

Sitharaman also stated that a number of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) continue to rely on crucial components that must be imported from other countries.

FMCG

India is rapidly growing into a beauty epicenter of the world: L'Oréal global CEO

L'Oréal SA, the world’s largest cosmetics company, said India is rapidly growing into a beauty epicenter of the world where it can reach a €1 billion revenue mark in the next few years.

"From a €500 million business today, I think we can take it to €1 billion in the next foreseeable future. So very excited about India," Nicolas Hieronimus, chief executive officer at L'Oréal told investors. "I don't think India will never ever look like China, but it's still a very promising market for us. We have high ambitions. Middle classes are rising in a major way. It's still not as developed as we would like in terms of distribution, but it's really accelerating and our shares are growing.”

The French cosmetics firm has about 8% share in India’s face care market and about 10% including e-commerce where Hindustan Unilever is by far the market leader with over 40% share. The company, which sells aspirational products globally, has been trying hard to compensate for its late-mover disadvantage by selling affordable packs and sachets but the distribution is largely restricted to urban markets.

"What's interesting is to look at this upper part of the Indian middle class, which is today, let's say 200 million to 300 million people, but which is set to double in the next five to 10 years," Alexis Perakis-Valat - president, consumer product division at L'Oréal told analysts. "I have seen changes in the last two years like never before in terms of - in terms of sophistication of the market, in terms of change of the distribution, thanks to e-commerce. And all that powered by a super digital ecosystem. So, we are very, very bullish about India.”

The beauty space is already seeing interest from retailers including Tata, Shoppers Stop and Reliance with plans to open physical stores to sell beauty products. Rival online beauty product retailers Nykaa and NewU have already built an offline presence

TECH

Paytm Payments Bank launches UPI LITE for faster transactions

In a bid to boost small unified payment interface (UPI) transactions, Paytm Payments Bank, the banking arm of fintech Paytm, has launched the UPI LITE interface in its app. This means that users can make payments without entering a password. The UPI LITE feature was enabled by the National Payments Corporation of India on the app.

"Our associate Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPBL), has gone live with UPI LITE, a feature enabled by National Payments Corporation of India for multiple small value UPI transactions. It enables faster real-time transactions with a single click through Paytm. With UPI LITE, our Bank aims to drive the adoption of digital payments across the country," Paytm says in a statement.

"UPI LITE is a new payment solution that leverages the trusted NPCI Common Library (CL) application to process low-value transactions that have been set at below ₹ 200. The solution runs off existing UPI ecosystem protocols for mobile phones to ensure commonality, compliance, and system acceptance. UPI LITE experience is intended to be a customer-friendly approach to enabling low-value transactions

Anything Interesting

Does Geography impact students

The Story

Students are deeply affected by their educational environment. Where they grow up, which schools they attend, and the curriculum they learn impacts much of their primary education.It’s an interesting debate: We don’t really know if we’re appropriately identifying students for special education services nor which services and placements are appropriate for students with disabilities.

The consideration of academic services and placements is buffered against an ethical consideration, which is that IDEA defines a standard for free and appropriate education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE) which asserts a preference for students with disabilities to be with their peers. It’s an interesting reflection of what we civically value in education.More broadly, if you think about it, special education involves medical issues so the conversation also extends to our conception of healthcare. We talk about special education students having access to a free and appropriate public education, but we don’t necessarily extend that idea to say everyone should have access to free and appropriate healthcare. So it’s interesting to see how these conversations translate across different domains when they have relationships to each other.