Thought of the Day:
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right”
Henry Ford
Did you know?
Singapore has the world’s highest percentage of millionaires. One out of every six households has at least $1,000,000 US dollars.
India:
International:
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right”
Henry Ford
Did you know?
Singapore has the world’s highest percentage of millionaires. One out of every six households has at least $1,000,000 US dollars.
India:
- Ad Sales for IPL Frozen: Media-buying firms have frozen all ad sales of the Indian Premier League for the next 48 hours as they await clarity on the future of the tournament, two top officials of leading media buying firms said. They said advertisers are considering either re-negotiating ad rates for the IPL, or considering pulling out of the twenty20 tournament and putting their money on elections instead, after the Supreme Court on Thursday recommended suspension of two teams — Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals. Gautam Kiyawat, CEO at media buying firm Madison Media group, said the development will hit the sentiments of marketers. “There was a bit of skepticism from the beginning with some matches being moved out of the country and now with the potential disappearance of two star teams, advertiser sentiments are going to tank even further,” he said. Media buyers, which represent some of the country’s biggest advertisers, are of the opinion that if 20-30% of the IPL matches are scrapped, it would bring down the overall revenues of the popular twenty20 tournament by half. Multi Screen Media-run Sony Entertainment, which holds broadcasts rights for the tournament, would also face a similar quantum of losses because advertising airtime would also shrink with less number of matches, said the CEO of a top media buying firm.
- Decathlon Queues Up for Online Foray in India: In the first move of its kind by a foreign retailer, French singlebrand sports goods company Decathlon has sought the government’s nod to sell products online from its store even as India is debating whether to allow overseas investment in e-commerce. The retailer, which secured approval for a wholly-owned, singlebrand retail venture last February, has written to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) to allow it “captive e-retail trading” as well. “The company has written… It’s being examined,” said a government official aware of the deliberations. Prajval Ray, head of ecommerce for Decathlon India, did not respond to an e-mailed questionnaire or text messages and phone calls. The proposal, in form of a representation, seeks an amendment in the single-brand approval given to the company and emphasised that the online selling would be a “marginal extension” to the retail route. The company has proposed online sales from its stores to provide access to customers in farflung areas. The company currently operates 11 stores and is slated to open its 12th in Noida in June. The sporting goods giant operates more than 500 stores in about two dozen countries.
- Motorola Considers a Retail Course After E-tail Success: Handset maker Motorola Mobility is banking on a strong brand recall and its online sales model for success in India, a market which it had quit in August 2012 and re-entered late 2013 with Android smartphone Moto G and which could hold the key to the company’s rebound globally. The company that will soon be owned by Lenovo has had discussions with retailers who want to sell Motorola phones in India, where the brand still has strong consumer recall, said Magnus Ahlqvist, corporate vice-president, EMEA and APAC at Motorola Mobility. “I have an open dialogue with many of the key players in the industry on the large format retail side and also with the operators. All of them are showing a lot of interest because they’re all seeing that Motorola is a highly relevant brand for Indian consumers,” said Ahlqvist. The company is getting a lot of interest from retailers to stock its products – Moto G and Moto X, said Ahlqvist, adding that though it may consider options in the future, it will continue with its present strategy to sell online, which is working extremely well.
- Online Retailers Turn Big Ad Spenders Offline Now: They may have been operating on shoestring budgets out of garages or home-offices till just a couple of years ago, but in recent months several Indian e-commerce firms including Flipkart, Jabong and Quikr have emerged big spenders on television commercials. Top e-commerce companies in India, which on an average spent a measly . 10 lakh each on advertising in 2010-2011, have increased it to anywhere between . 25 and . 75 crore, said a top official at one of India’s leading media buying and planning agencies. Some of the biggest spenders in the space include Olx, Flipkart, Quikr, Snapdeal, Jabong and Myntra, that hold a meaty portion of the estimated . 18,000-crore online retail industry, the person said. They have hired advertising firms such as Lowe and Partners, Scarecrow Communications and Happy Creative Services to steer their campaigns. While the primary objective is the build the brand and create top of mind brand recall value, industry observers say e-commerce companies also use television commercials to attract talent and investors.
- DLF Cybercity MD Sanka Quits: Ramesh Sanka, managing director of DLF Cybercity Developers, which houses the real estate developer DLF’s rental and leasing business, has put in his papers. Sanka, a mechanical engineer and a management graduate, had been with the group for more than a decade helping India’s largest real estate developer raise . 9,200 crore from the public market in 2007, played a key role in selling some of its non-core assets, and helped the company comply with regulatory policies. As head of the rental division, Sanka also steered the revenues of the rental income from . 100 crore in 2007 to over . 2,000 core now. Sanka will continue in his present position till July 31. “At the outset, we would highlight the fact that Ramesh Sanka has expressed his desire to exit DLF and pursue his new entrepreneurial venture,’’ said Sanjey Roy, senior vice-president corporate communication DLF. “As mutually agreed, he will continue to be associated with the company in a different capacity.’’
- Shoppers Stop’s same store sales remain under pressure: Shoppers Stop Ltd’s shares have underperformed the broad market by about 15% this year, partly because of the disappointment with the company’s December quarter earnings. Same-store sales had increased at a tepid rate of 5.5% last quarter. While things have improved on the back of increased promotions, it’s nothing to get excited about. Same-store sales, or sales at shops that have been open more than one year, are expected to remain soft at mid single-digit levels in the near term, owing to a continued weakness in consumer sentiment, analysts at JPMorgan Chase and Co. said in a note to clients this month. Same-store sales growth in the next financial year is expected to be in the mid-to-high single digits, company executives told analysts. The company’s like-to-like growth in the first half of this fiscal year was in double-digits. So growth has come off considerably, and even if growth rates improve slightly compared with the December quarter (5.5%), it will not excite shareholders. Apart from the impact on demand, weak consumer sentiment is leading to higher discounts. “Ebitda margin, which was flat in the December quarter, should contract 20 basis points in the March quarter, given higher discounts,” analysts at IIFL Research said in a note this week.
- Nadella brings MS closer to Apple: Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella made his public debut on Thursday, pulling the wrapper off the company’s latest thrust into cloud and mobility — Office for iPad. In a live webcast from San Francisco, the India-born self-confessed cricket fan said Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Power Point), which will soon go live in Apple App Store, would provide users with a high fidelity Office experience. The strategy marks a shift from one of keeping Office within the walls of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Office will be available as a free download on Apple’s iPad. Users can view word documents and give presentations with Office for free, but editing may require a subscription to Office 365, a subscription-based online suite. “The vision for Office 365 is for the ‘1 billion Office users and growing’ to be able to access applications everywhere,” he said. Nadella, who has now spent 52 days as CEO of Microsoft, described his stint so far as “amazing” for someone who has spent 22 years of his adult life in the company. “You relearn the place,” Nadella said. He described how computing would continue to become more ubiquitous. “Every interaction we have with humans will be digitized more rapidly than ever.” He spoke about the magical intersection of the cloud and the mobile. “It’s important for the cloud to interact with the real world. The cloud that is not connected to devices is just latent potential,” he added.
International:
- WhatsApp too much? You can get WhatsAppitis: What if you are told that excessive chatting or texting on ‘WhatsApp’ messenger service can hamper your health to an extent that you get a thumb disease! “WhatsAppitis” is real, and happening. A report in the medical journal, The Lancet, said that “WhatsAppitis” is a credible disease, after a doctor in Spain diagnosed a 34-year-old female patient with bilateral wrist pain induced by excessive use of ‘WhatsApp’. “She held her mobile phone for at least six hours and continuously used both thumbs to send messages to relatives and friends,” Spanish physician Ines M Fernandez-Guerrero wrote in the journal. The next morning, that woman woke up with aching wrists. “The diagnosis for the bilateral wrist pain was ‘WhatsAppitis’,” Fernandez-Guerrero added. He treated the woman with non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs and asked her to completely avoid using the cell phone to send messages. “Initially reported in children, such cases are now seen in adults. ‘Tenosynovitis’ caused by texting with mobile phones could well be an emerging disease,” the doctor has warned.
- Turkey moves to block YouTube: Turkish authorities were moving to block access to YouTube on Thursday following similar action against Twitter, the country’s state-run news agency said. The ban comes after an alleged audio recording of a meeting between the Turkey’s foreign minister, intelligence chief and top military and foreign ministry officials was leaked on YouTube. The four are allegedly heard discussing a military intervention in Syria. While state-run Anadolu news service said the national telecommunications authorities had instituted the block, the website was still accessible following the announcement on Thursday. A telecommunications authority webpage gave the following information for You-Tube.com: “After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the law, administrative measure has been taken for this website.” The move against blocking YouTube is likely to provoke further outrage in Turkey, where social media is widely used.
- CCI Fines Google 1 Crore For Not Co-operating: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has fined Google . 1 crore for failing to co-operate in an on-going investigation, the quasi-judicial body said in a statement on Thursday. CCI is investigating a 2012 complaint that alleged Mountain View, California-based Google was abusing its dominant position in online search and search advertising. “The order was passed on a reference made by the DG to CCI alleging inter alia non-cooperation by Google in the pending investigations,” CCI said in its order. Google has failed to comply with the directions given by the director general seeking information and documents, the CCI said in its March 27 order. “We’re disappointed by this development. While we are confident that our products are compliant with competition law in India, we continue to cooperate fully with the CCI’s extensive and ongoing investigation,” Google said in a statement. The company was yet to receive the order, Google said. Last year, Google reached settlements with competition regulators in the US and Europe in probes that included concerns similar to those in India. These include alleged preferential treatment in the hierarchical presentation of results of ‘Google’ searches, favouring the company’s own products and services over those of rivals.
- Twitter to launch mobile advertising product for apps: Report: Twitter Inc plans to release a mobile-advertising product in the next few weeks that will allow app-makers to encourage downloads of their software, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter. The format will lead users to the advertiser's page in a mobile app store where they can download the software, Bloomberg said. There had been speculation that Twitter and other internet firms would try their hand at this sort of marketing, which has proven lucrative for Facebook. Twitter expects the app-install advertisements to attract advertisers in the e-commerce and gaming industries, according to Bloomberg. Twitter representatives were not immediately available to comment.
- Adidas Revamps Originals Fashion Stores Digitally: Adidas has launched a new store blueprint for its Originals fashion brand with a WiFi-equipped lounge and mobile charging points, aiming to persuade younger shoppers to linger longer and spend more in its high-margin, own-run outlets. The world's No 2 sportswear maker behind Nike wants to lift sales from its own shops, which accounted for 24% of its 2013 revenue of 14.5 billion ($20 billion), because they are more profitable than those made through third parties. The revamped Originals store in the heart of Berlin is part of a drive to encourage 16-24 year-olds to browse longer. "Shopping for this generation is very social. They need to have a place to hang out. The longer the consumer stays in the store, the more likely they are to buy," Ted Mager, Adidas global head of retail environments, told Reuters. The shift from wholesale to retail helped boost the German firm's gross margin by 1.5 percentage points to 49.3% in 2013 compared with 43.6% for Nike, which makes less than a fifth of sales from its own stores and online.
- Walmart sues Visa for $5 bn for rigging card fees: The world's largest retailer Walmart has sued credit card giant Visa for more than $5 billion for conspiring with banks to fix fees that merchants pay for accepting Visa card payments. In the suit filed this week in Arkansas, where Walmart is based, the retailer said Visa worked with some of the largest US banks "to illegally fix the interchange fees and inflate the network fees that Walmart and other merchants pay on Visa charge card transactions." It said that Visa and the banks as well worked together to set rules that prevent retailers from protecting themselves against such fees. Walmart said the banks agreed with Visa to establish one inflexible interchange rate regime, and suggested this prevents it from any ability to negotiate what would be a market rate. "Visa has used its price-fixing schemes to establish, maintain and enhance its long-held market power," said Walmart in the suit.
- Tory Burch Talks Expansion, in Europe and Beyond: Tory Burch has launched her latest expansion arrow — Europe — from a quiver bulging with new projects. The American designer was in Paris on Thursday to ready her new pop-up space for its April 1 opening at Galeries Lafayette, the precursor to a permanent 300-square-foot shop-in-shop at the landmark department store on Boulevard Haussmann. Construction has also begun on a 4,400-square-foot Paris flagship in a seven-story building at 412 Rue Saint-Honoré, which is slated to open in early 2015, with stockrooms and offices on the three top floors. Burch arrived in the French capital following the official opening Tuesday night of a like-sized flagship in Munich — her first freestanding unit in Germany, and the one with the largest footwear department across her global network of 121 stores.
- Hugo Boss Goes Big in Hong Kong: Hugo Boss celebrated the opening of its two new Boss stores in Hong Kong with a glitzy harbor-front party Wednesday night. The stores — one in Central and the other in Tsim Sha Tsui — are on either side of the city’s harbor. “We’ve been doing business in Hong Kong for 30 years, but never with the presence we’ve now gained. We expect a lot of Mainland Chinese customers as well as those from Hong Kong,” said Hugo Boss chief executive officer Claus-Dietrich Lahrs. The German fashion house is moving away from selling through partners to running its own stores, where it has more control over the way the clothes are presented and the price points.
- Strong Start to 2014 for Versace: Gianni Versace SpA closed 2013 with growth in profits and revenues and is kicking off 2014 with a double-digit increase in retail sales in the first quarter and further growth prospects through an expansion of its retail network. “We are keeping Made in Italy high,” said an upbeat Gian Giacomo Ferraris, chief executive officer of Versace, during an interview about the group’s year-end figures. “The year 2014 is shaping up to be a good one, on a like-for-like basis, as the closing with Blackstone will take place on April 3. The effects will be seen in the second part of the year. The year 2013 puts me in the condition to start well, in a favorable way.”
- Lululemon Income, Sales Rise in Q4: Shares of Lululemon Athletica Inc. rose 6.1 percent Thursday following a fourth-quarter report that was better than analysts expected and the disclosure of an international infrastructure plan for overseas expansion. For the three months ended Feb. 2, net income rose 0.3 percent to $109.7 million, or 75 cents a diluted share, from $109.4 million, or 75 cents, a year ago. The consensus estimate was 72 cents. Net revenue gained 7.3 percent to $521 million from $485.5 million. Analysts were expecting $515.1 million for the quarter. Comparable-store sales fell 2 percent in the period, but total comps including direct-to-consumer rose 4 percent. For the year, net income rose 3.3 percent to $279.5 million, or $1.91 a diluted share, on a net revenue gain of 16.1 percent to $1.59 billion.
- Retail Stocks Slip for Seventh Straight Day: Retail stocks declined for the seventh consecutive session, pulling back 0.4 percent as the major U.S. indices suffered smaller losses. The S&P 500 Retailing Industry Group declined 3.92 points to 883.26, putting it 5 percent below its 929.86 on March 18, its last day of gains. Retail stocks are now down 6 percent for the year as investors adjust to the uncertain climate for retail sales that has been evident since Thanksgiving weekend. The balance of sessions with advances versus those ending with declines for the retail index now stands at 28 and 31, respectively.
Currency:
· 1 USD= ₹ 60.028
· 1 EUR= ₹ 82.537
· 1 GBP= ₹ 99.755
· 1 AUD= ₹ 55.652
Glitter Meter: India
Gold (INR/10g) | Silver (INR/kg) | |||
City | Current | Change | Current | Change |
Chennai | 28810.00 | -170 | 42670.00 | -265 |
Mumbai | 28360.00 | -160 | 42670.00 | -265 |
Delhi | 28130.00 | -160 | 42670.00 | -265 |
Kolkata | 28240.00 | -160 | 42670.00 | -265 |
World Indices:
Exchange | Last | Change |
DJIA | 16264.23 | -4.76 |
FTSE 100 | 6588.32 | -16.98 |
CAC 40 | 4379.06 | -6.09 |
DAX | 9451.21 | +2.63 |
Nikkei | 14623.80 | +0.91 |
Hang Seng | 22113.55 | +279.10 |
Sensex | 22279.30 | +64.93 |
NASDAQ | 4151.23 | -22.35 |
*Disclaimer:
World One Consulting Pvt Ltd will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information contained within this newsletter including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals.
World One Consulting Pvt Ltd will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information contained within this newsletter including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals.