Author: root

Gigforce raises $3 million in pre-Series A from Endiya Partners, Unitus Ventures

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Gigforce, an on-demand staffing platform providing gig workers to various enterprises, raised $3 million in pre-Series A funding led by Endiya Partners. Existing investor Unitus Ventures and key angel investors also participated in the round.

Gigforce offers curated and pre-trained gig staff on a task, hourly, weekly, or monthly basis. It connects available gig workers to short gigs in their locality spanning from a day up to a few months. Gigforce also ensures gig workers get proper training, documentation, and payouts.

Commenting on the fundraise, Chirag Mittal, Co-founder and CEO, Gigforce, said, “The market is underserved today because of the lack of suitable technology to manage scale. India’s top five staffing companies together just about manage a workforce of one million. This is set to change with strong tailwinds, including the proliferation of inexpensive smartphones, ubiquitous internet access for blue and grey collar workers, maturing technology platforms, simplification of labor codes, and the huge growth trajectory India will witness in the next ten years.”

Fund usage

With this fundraise, the company plans to strengthen its team and technology and rapidly scale pan-India in the next few quarters. Within a short span of twelve months, Gigforce has achieved an annual run-rate (ARR) of ₹25 crore. The company is growing 2-fold on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis. With a huge demand surge since post-Covid recovery, Gigforce is set to grow at a rapid rate to cross ₹100 crore ARR soon.

“Gigforce, well beyond the product-market fit, is clearly emerging as a category leader in tech-driven staffing for gig workers. While there are players focusing on recruitment (discovery), fulfillment or adjacent services, there’s no market leader for on-demand, B2B, platform-driven staffing. With a potential to service up to 90 million jobs in India and contribute an incremental 1.25 per cent to India’s GDP over 8 to 10 years, there exists a huge opportunity waiting to be tapped,” said Abhishek Srivastava, Director, Endiya Partners.

Surya Mantha, Senior Partner, Unitus Ventures, said, “Gigforce is disrupting the over $10 billion staffing industry by architecting the “future of work”. Over the last few years, Indian businesses have experienced the need for and recognized the potential of gig work. The speed at which Gigforce has catered to the rapid and diverse demand created during the pandemic shows their future-ready approach and scalability. And this is only the beginning.”

Gigforce differentiates itself in the market on its data and tech-driven approach to allocate skilled gig workers to the right gigs, while also managing rewards, recognition, behavior, payouts, and benefits. The platform can manage the complete lifecycle of a gig, from sourcing, onboarding, e-KYC, rostering, tracking, and payouts, on the single platform.

Gigforce follows a vertical-specific strategy and currently focuses on the logistics sector. It already has more than 20 enterprise clients in this category across e-commerce, food, and grocery deliveries. It serves aggregators, marketplaces as well as direct-to-consumer brands. Delhivery, Flipkart, BigBasket, FreshToHome, and Grab are among its many clients.

Gigforce also focuses on specialised and fast-growing categories like electric vehicle (EV), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and operators. Zyngo, MoEVing, ETO Motors and Zypp Electric are a few of their clients in this category. The company aims to scale up its platform and business to manage the full lifecycle of over one million gigers by 2025 and is targeting a flow of over $1 billion on the platform.

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5 Pharma Company Stocks Working On COVID-19 Vaccines

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5 Pharma Company Stocks Working on a Coronavirus Vaccine

Pharma Company Current Market Price Vaccine
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Rs 4,903 Sputnik V
Wockhardt Rs 419 Sputnik V
Panacea Biotec Rs 312 Sputnik V
Cadila Healthcare Rs 552 ZyCov-D
Cipla Rs 944 76. Moderna

Dr. Reddy's Laboratories

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories stock is in the spotlight today as the pharma giant announced that it has reached an agreement to sell its rights to an anti-cancer medication to Citius Pharmaceuticals of the United States. Apart from that, the corporation has stated that it will launch the Sputnik V vaccine, which is made in India, in India between September and October of this year.

If the Sputnik V vaccine gains widespread approval, it will benefit the company in the medium term, especially if it becomes a big exporter this year.

Despite the fact that pricing pressure in the US markets has been easing, the incoming administration in the United States has a track record of lowering medicine prices. If this were to happen on a regular basis, export margins might be harmed. Because of the low margins in Q1-FY22, the price risk has resurfaced.

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories exercised stock options and distributed 14,284 fully paid up equity shares worth Rs 7.28 crore to various workers. According to a regulatory filing, the ESOP consists of 6,774 equity shares of Rs 5 each under the Dr. Reddy’s Employees Stock Option Scheme and 7,510 equity shares of Rs 5 each under the ADR Stock Option Scheme.

The stock returned 86.74 percent over three years, compared to 48.94 percent for the Nifty 100. Over a three-year period, the stock achieved an 86.74 percent return, compared to 36.87 percent for Nifty Pharma.

Wockhardt

Wockhardt

Wockhardt previously announced that it had reached an agreement for the manufacture and supply of the Sputnik V/Sputnik Light vaccine against Covid-19 with Enso Healthcare DMCC (Enso), a company based in Dubai, UAE, and Human Vaccine LLC (HV), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian Federation’s sovereign wealth fund (RDIF).

The single-dose Sputnik Light Covid-19 vaccine is likely to launch shortly in India, according to Russian diplomat Nikolay Kudashev, as quoted by news agency ANI.

Only 4.14 percent of trading sessions in the last 16 years had intraday drops of more than 5%. In the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021, the company delivered a ROE of 20.31 percent, surpassing its five-year average of -2.56 percent. The company’s QoQ revenue increase was 34.67 percent, the greatest in the prior three years. Over a three-year period, the stock returned -37.79 percent, while Nifty Pharma returned 36.87 percent to investors.

Panacea Biotec

Panacea Biotec

Panacea Biotec’s stock jumped 5.74 percent to Rs 311.50 after the business announced the first shipment of 1 million doses of the second component of Panacea Biotec’s Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine for sale in India.

This is the first batch of the company’s second component, which is manufactured and supplied in India. Panacea Biotec’s state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing plant in Himachal Pradesh produced the doses for the second component of Sputnik V.

Stock returned 20.82 percent over three years, compared to 39.62 percent for the Nifty Smallcap 100. Over a three-year period, the stock returned 20.82 percent, while Nifty Pharma returned 36.87 percent to investors.

Cipla

Cipla

The Moderna vaccine will be available as a ready-to-use injectable vaccine starting in. After the vial is opened, it can be stored for seven months at a specified temperature and for 30 days at room temperature.

Nonetheless, the company’s Chief Monetary Officer has acknowledged that there is currently “nothing conclusive.”

Moderna and the Indian government are working together to determine the vaccine’s indemnification points. 14 days following the first dosage, the Moderna vaccine had a 94.1 percent efficacy rate.

Cipla’s web revenue increased by 24% year over year in the second quarter of 2021. The company’s revenue also increased by 27% year over year, thanks to a jump in demand for Covid-19 medications as a result of the pandemic’s second wave.

With Remdesivir, Favipiravir, and Toclizumab, the business has been aggressive in creating a Covid-care portfolio. As covid cases rise again, their influence should be noticeable until the first half of FY 22. The company has an opportunity to pursue because one of its primary advantages is its inexpensive price.

Cadila Healthcare

Cadila Healthcare

According to a health ministry official, Cadila Healthcare, a pharmaceutical business, would begin providing coronavirus vaccine to children aged 12 to 17 in October.

Before the Zydus Cadila vaccine is handed out in October, the details of the Covid-19 immunization for youngsters aged 12 to 17, including prioritizing those with health difficulties, will be announced, according to reports.

According to the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), ZyCoV-D is the world’s first DNA-based coronavirus vaccine, which when administered creates the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s spike protein and stimulates an immune response that aids in disease prevention and viral clearance.

The stock returned 30.73 percent over three years, compared to 48.94 percent for the Nifty 100.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Investing in equities poses a risk of financial losses. Investors must therefore exercise due caution. Greynium Information Technologies, the author, and the brokerage houses are not liable for any losses caused as a result of decisions based on the article. The above article is for informational purposes only and is picked from the brokerage report of Sharekhan.



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EU supervisors call for implementation of global banking rules, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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A group of bank supervisors from across the European Union called on Tuesday for the bloc to implement global banking rules agreed to prevent a repeat of the global financial crisis.

In an open letter to the European Commission, nearly two dozens central banks and regulators defended the Basel III rules, which have been the object of intense lobbying from a banking industry keen to reduce its capital requirements.

“We, as prudential supervisors and central banks in the EU, very much support a full, timely and consistent implementation of all aspects of this framework,” the signatories said.

“The pandemic shows that more resilient banks are better able to support the real economy, even during times of crisis.”

The signatories came out in defence of the “output floor”, which limits banks’ discretion in setting their own capital requirements and of a standardised approach to credit risk, while adding that EU-specific deviations should be minimised.

Signatories included institutions from all large EU countries with the exception of France. (Reporting By Francesco Canepa Editing by Balazs Koranyi)



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Reserve Bank of India – Press Releases

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(Amount in ₹ crore, Rate in Per cent)
  Volume
(One Leg)		 Weighted
Average Rate 		Range
A. Overnight Segment (I+II+III+IV) 379,773.20 3.07 1.00-5.15
     I. Call Money 7,340.80 3.15 1.95-3.40
     II. Triparty Repo 281,610.20 3.05 3.04-3.37
     III. Market Repo 90,547.20 3.09 1.00-3.25
     IV. Repo in Corporate Bond 275.00 3.42 3.25-5.15
B. Term Segment      
     I. Notice Money** 452.85 3.22 2.50-3.40
     II. Term Money@@ 123.50 – 3.20-3.40
     III. Triparty Repo 0.00 – –
     IV. Market Repo 0.00 – –
     V. Repo in Corporate Bond 2,010.98 3.48 3.43-5.35
  Auction Date Tenor (Days) Maturity Date Amount Current Rate /
Cut off Rate
C. Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF) & Marginal Standing Facility (MSF)
I. Today’s Operations
1. Fixed Rate          
     (i) Repo          
    (ii) Reverse Repo Tue, 07/09/2021 1 Wed, 08/09/2021 627,660.00 3.35
    (iii) Special Reverse Repo~          
    (iv) Special Reverse Repoψ          
2. Variable Rate&          
  (I) Main Operation          
     (a) Reverse Repo          
  (II) Fine Tuning Operations          
     (a) Repo          
     (b) Reverse Repo Tue, 07/09/2021 7 Tue, 14/09/2021 50,008.00 3.38
3. MSF Tue, 07/09/2021 1 Wed, 08/09/2021 17.00 4.25
4. Special Long-Term Repo Operations (SLTRO) for Small Finance Banks (SFBs)£          
5. Net liquidity injected from today’s operations
[injection (+)/absorption (-)]*		       -677,651.00  
II. Outstanding Operations
1. Fixed Rate          
     (i) Repo          
    (ii) Reverse Repo          
    (iii) Special Reverse Repo~ Fri, 27/08/2021 13 Thu, 09/09/2021 6,574.00 3.75
    (iv) Special Reverse Repoψ Fri, 27/08/2021 13 Thu, 09/09/2021 611.00 3.75
2. Variable Rate&          
  (I) Main Operation          
     (a) Reverse Repo Fri, 27/08/2021 13 Thu, 09/09/2021 300,027.00 3.42
  (II) Fine Tuning Operations          
     (a) Repo          
     (b) Reverse Repo          
3. MSF          
4. Long-Term Repo Operations# Mon, 17/02/2020 1095 Thu, 16/02/2023 499.00 5.15
  Mon, 02/03/2020 1094 Wed, 01/03/2023 253.00 5.15
  Mon, 09/03/2020 1093 Tue, 07/03/2023 484.00 5.15
  Wed, 18/03/2020 1094 Fri, 17/03/2023 294.00 5.15
5. Targeted Long Term Repo Operations^ Fri, 27/03/2020 1092 Fri, 24/03/2023 12,236.00 4.40
  Fri, 03/04/2020 1095 Mon, 03/04/2023 16,925.00 4.40
  Thu, 09/04/2020 1093 Fri, 07/04/2023 18,042.00 4.40
  Fri, 17/04/2020 1091 Thu, 13/04/2023 20,399.00 4.40
6. Targeted Long Term Repo Operations 2.0^ Thu, 23/04/2020 1093 Fri, 21/04/2023 7,950.00 4.40
7. On Tap Targeted Long Term Repo Operations€ Mon, 22/03/2021 1095 Thu, 21/03/2024 5,000.00 4.00
  Mon, 14/06/2021 1096 Fri, 14/06/2024 320.00 4.00
  Mon, 30/08/2021 1095 Thu, 29/08/2024 50.00 4.00
8. Special Long-Term Repo Operations (SLTRO) for Small Finance Banks (SFBs)£ Mon, 17/05/2021 1095 Thu, 16/05/2024 400.00 4.00
  Tue, 15/06/2021 1095 Fri, 14/06/2024 490.00 4.00
  Thu, 15/07/2021 1093 Fri, 12/07/2024 750.00 4.00
  Tue, 17/08/2021 1095 Fri, 16/08/2024 250.00 4.00
D. Standing Liquidity Facility (SLF) Availed from RBI$       28,295.80  
E. Net liquidity injected from outstanding operations [injection (+)/absorption (-)]*     -194,574.20  
F. Net liquidity injected (outstanding including today’s operations) [injection (+)/absorption (-)]*     -872,225.20  
G. Cash Reserves Position of Scheduled Commercial Banks
     (i) Cash balances with RBI as on 07/09/2021 610,424.43  
     (ii) Average daily cash reserve requirement for the fortnight ending 10/09/2021 628,268.00  
H. Government of India Surplus Cash Balance Reckoned for Auction as on¥ 07/09/2021 0.00  
I. Net durable liquidity [surplus (+)/deficit (-)] as on 13/08/2021 1,132,933.00  
@ Based on Reserve Bank of India (RBI) / Clearing Corporation of India Limited (CCIL).
– Not Applicable / No Transaction.
** Relates to uncollateralized transactions of 2 to 14 days tenor.
@@ Relates to uncollateralized transactions of 15 days to one year tenor.
$ Includes refinance facilities extended by RBI.
& As per the Press Release No. 2019-2020/1900 dated February 06, 2020.
* Net liquidity is calculated as Repo+MSF+SLF-Reverse Repo.
# As per the Press Release No. 2020-2021/287 dated September 04, 2020.
^ As per the Press Release No. 2020-2021/605 dated November 06, 2020.
€ As per the Press Release No. 2020-2021/520 dated October 21, 2020, Press Release No. 2020-2021/763 dated December 11, 2020, Press Release No. 2020-2021/1057 dated February 05, 2021 and Press Release No. 2021-2022/695 dated August 13, 2021.
¥ As per the Press Release No. 2014-2015/1971 dated March 19, 2015.
£ As per the Press Release No. 2021-2022/181 dated May 07, 2021.
~ As per the Press Release No. 2021-2022/177 dated May 07, 2021.
ψ As per the Press Release No. 2021-2022/323 dated June 04, 2021.
Ajit Prasad
Director   
Press Release: 2021-2022/824

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PayPal heats up buy now, pay later race with $2.7 billion Japan deal, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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FILE PHOTO: The PayPal logo is seen at an office building in Berlin, Germany, March 5, 2019. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

US payments giant PayPal Holdings Inc said it would acquire Japanese buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Paidy in a $2.7 billion largely cash deal, taking another step to claim the top spot in an industry witnessing a pandemic-led boom.

The deal tracks rival Square Inc’s agreement last month to buy Australian BNPL success story Afterpay Ltd for $29 billion, which experts said was likely the beginning of a consolidation in the sector.

The BNPL business model has been hugely successful during the pandemic, fuelled by federal stimulus checks, and upended consumer credit markets.

These alternative credit firms make money by charging merchants a fee to offer small point-of-sale loans which shoppers repay in interest-free instalments, bypassing credit checks.

Heavyweights like Apple Inc and Goldman Sachs are the latest heavyweights that have been reported to be readying a version of the service.

Paypal, already considered a leader in the BNPL market, also entered Australia last year, raising the stakes for smaller companies such as Sezzle Inc and Z1P.AX Co Ltd, stocks of which were down in midday trading on Wednesday.

“The acquisition will expand PayPal’s capabilities, distribution and relevance in the domestic payments market in Japan, the third largest ecommerce market in the world, complementing the company’s existing cross-border ecommerce business in the country,” PayPal said in a statement on Tuesday.

After the acquisition, Paidy will continue to operate its existing business and maintain its brand. Founder and Chairman Russell Cummer and President and Chief Executive Riku Sugie will continue to hold their roles in the company, PayPal said.

The Financial Times had reported last month that Paidy was considering becoming a publicly listed company.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021, and will be minimally dilutive to PayPal’s adjusted earnings per share in 2022.

BofA Securities was the sole financial adviser to PayPal on the deal, and White & Case was lead legal adviser. Goldman Sachs advised Paidy, and Cooley LLP and Mori Hamada & Matsumoto provided it legal counsel.

(Reporting by Anirudh Saligrama in Bengaluru; Writing by Sayantani Ghosh; Editing by Ramakrishnan M. And Kim Coghill)



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Gold steadies below $1,800 as firm dollar, yields weigh, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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Gold prices steadied on Wednesday, after slipping 1.6% in the previous session when it breached the key psychological level of $1,800, as gains in the dollar and a rise in US Treasury yields hurt bullion’s appeal.

FUNDAMENTALS
Spot gold rose 0.1% to $1,796.03 per ounce by 0116 GMT, hovering slightly above the more than one-week low of $1,791.90 hit on Tuesday.

US gold futures were steady at $1,799.40.

The dollar hovered near a one-week peak against major peers.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose as high as 1.385% on Tuesday for the first time since mid-July, increasing the opportunity cost of holding non-interest bearing bullion.

US President Joe Biden will present on Thursday a six-pronged strategy intended to fight the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant and increase vaccinations.

Japan’s economy grew faster than the initially estimated in the April-June quarter, helped by solid capital expenditure, although a resurgence in COVID-19 is undermining service-sector consumption and clouding the outlook.

Russia’s Nornickel, world’s largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel, has extracted additional metals from waste products as part of new technology it tested to support its 2021 output from its Arctic mines that were hit by flooding, it said on Tuesday.

Venezuela’s gold reserves fell by three tonnes in the first half of 2021 to their lowest level in 50 years, central bank data showed on Tuesday, as President Nicolas Maduro’s cash-strapped government continues selling gold as a source of income.

Silver rose 0.1% to $24.32 per ounce, platinum edged 0.3% higher to $1,001.36 and palladium was up 0.2% to $2,376.37.



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SGX Nifty up 45 points; here’s what changed for market while you were sleeping, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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Domestic indices look set to open on a positive note on Wednesday. But indecisiveness among market participants at highs may keep any such gains capped. Asian markets are largely mixed as the dollar hovered near a week’s high level. US stocks closed mostly lower in overnight trade. Here’s breaking down the pre-market actions:

STATE OF THE MARKETS

SGX Nifty signals a positive start
Nifty futures on Singapore Exchange traded 46.5 points, or 0.27 per cent, higher at 17,425.50, signaling that Dalal Street was headed for a positive start on Wednesday.

  • Tech View: Nifty50 on Tuesday snapped a three-day winning run and formed an indecisive candle on the daily scale, the second time in a row, suggesting a halt in the positive momentum.
  • India VIX: The fear gauge gained eased over a per cent to 14.90 level on Tuesday over its close at 15.10 on Monday.

Asian stocks mixed in early trade
Asian markets opened mixed on Wednesday as investors sought to lock in profits after recent rallies and US Stock settled mixed after an extended weekend. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down by 0.11 per cent.

  • Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.45%
  • Korea’s Kospi shed 0.17%
  • Australia’s ASX 200 tanked 0.31%
  • China’s Shanghai edged up 0.02%
  • Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.29%

US stocks closed mostly lower
The S&P500 index closed lower while the Nasdaq Composite edged higher to a record high, as investors balanced worries about the slowing pace of economic recovery with expectations that the Federal Reserve will maintain its accommodative monetary policy.

  • Dow Jones declined 0.76% to 35,100
  • S&P 500 shed 0.34% to 4,520.03
  • Nasdaq added 0.07% to 15,374.33

Dollar near one-week high
The dollar hovered near a one-week peak on Wednesday against major peers, buoyed by higher Treasury yields and a weaker euro amid caution before a European Central Bank policy decision.

  • Dollar index held at 92.553
  • Euro flat at $1.1843
  • Pound slipped to $1.3783
  • Yen declined to 110.28 per dollar
  • Yuan depreciated to 6.463 against the greenback

FPIs sell shares worth Rs 145 crore
Net-net, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) turned sellers of domestic stocks to the tune of Rs 145.45 crore, data available with NSE suggested. DIIs were net sellers of Rs 136.57 crore worth equities, data suggests.

MONEY MARKETS
Rupee: The rupee plunged by 32 paise to close at a more than one-week low of 73.42 against the US currency on Tuesday due to dollar buying by corporates and importers and the greenback’s gain in overseas markets.

10-year bond: India 10-year bond yield jumped 0.36 per cent to 6.19 after trading in 6.17 – 6.20 range.

Call rates: The overnight call money rate weighted average stood at 3.15 per cent on Tuesday, according to RBI data. It moved in a range of 1.95-3.40 per cent.

DATA/EVENTS TO WATCH

  • JP Current Account JUL (5:20 am)
  • JP GDP Growth Rate QoQ Final Q2 (5:20 am)
  • JP GDP Price Index YoY Final Q2 (5:20 am)
  • AU RBA Chart Pack (7 am)
  • AU RBA Debelle Speech (1:40 pm)
  • US MBA 30-Year Mortgage Rate 03/SEP (4:30 pm)
  • US MBA Mortgage Applications 03/SEP (4:30 pm)
  • US Redbook YoY 04/SEP (6:25 pm)
  • US 10-Year Note Auction (10:30 pm)

MACROS

DoT moots 4-yr moratorium on AGR, spectrum payments
The telecom department (DoT) has proposed a four-year moratorium on adjusted gross revenue (AGR) and spectrum payments apart from a reduction in spectrum usage charge (SUC) prospectively, among measures to improve the health of the debt-laden sector and retain a three-private player market.

Sebi wants T+1 settlement for trades
The Securities and Exchange Board of India has proposed a ‘trade-plus-one’ (T+1) settlement cycle from January 1, where the trades will get settled the day after the transaction. Initially, exchanges can pick stocks where they want to offer the next-day settlement. Under T+1, the buyer would get shares in the demat account and the seller the sale proceeds the day after the trade.

Cheaper smartphones could fire up Jio ARPU
After a sluggish movement since March, the stock of Reliance Industries (RIL) has gained nearly 18% within a month ahead of the company’s launch of affordable smartphones on September 10. Nearly a quarter of the total smartphones are priced below Rs 7,500 per unit. This may help the company to reach the 500 million subscriber base by FY24 and improve ARPU by 10-15%. India’s largest company by revenue and market capitalisation is slated to launch an entry level smartphone priced between Rs 5,000 and Rs 7,500 in partnership with Google.

Probe into PSB frauds on hold
Investigations into alleged fraud caused to public sector banks totalling over Rs 50,000 crore have been put in abeyance by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for want of general consent from states. Of these, complaints over Rs 20,000 crore are from Maharashtra alone, ET reported. Claiming vendetta by the Centre, eight states ruled by non-NDA parties including Maharashtra, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Kerala, Rajasthan and Punjab in the last one year have withdrawn general consent accorded to the CBI under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act to probe cases in their jurisdictions.

Rocky start for Bitcoin as legal tender
El Salvador faced a rocky transition in its adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender on Tuesday. The government’s app for facilitating transactions — its “digital wallet” — went offline temporarily, protesters took to the streets of the capital to denounce the move, and the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply, demonstrating the volatility of the cryptocurrency market. The country is the first to use Bitcoin as an official currency, encouraging businesses and citizens to use it in everyday transactions, and authorities struggled to smooth out glitches in the new system.



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NPCI, Fiserv to open RuPay API platform, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has tied up with Nasdaq-listed fintech firm Fiserv to launch an application programming interface (API) platform for startups and banks looking to build credit card-based products on top of the RuPay rails, said senior company executives.

They said the collaboration will help faster and cheaper onboarding of customers and merchants by banks as well as enable fintech firms to build out new models of digital interfaces for customers launching RuPay credit card products.

“We are trying to expand the credit ecosystem in India, where a lot of great work has happened on the debit side,” Rishi Chhabra, head of India and Sri Lanka at Fiserv, told ET.

The Wisconsin-based firm, which has been operating in India for over a decade, works with seven of the top ten credit card issuing banks in India.

“While collaborating with NPCI one of the shared visions is to expand credit issuance in India,” said Chhabra. “Our tech stack on RuPay will support scalability from an onboarding perspective for both banks and fintechs. We have hundreds and thousands of micro-APIs for the fintech firms to code, consume and onboard and launch their services at scale.”

The collaboration comes at a time when card networks Mastercard and American Express have been barred by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from issuing any new cards owing to non-compliance with data localisation mandate resulting in a clutch of card-issuing banks migrating their networks to Visa and NPCI’s homegrown RuPay.

According to Nalin Bansal, the chief of corporate relationships and fintechs at NPCI, the collaboration with Fiserv will help RuPay build an ecosystem around its credit card products, thereby attracting more fintech firms to innovate and scale these offerings.

“In India what we have achieved on debit, we haven’t been able to emulate on credit. The need now is how to make credit more affordable for a larger set of customers,” said Bansal. “The platform will help onboard fintech firms at a fairly reasonable cost and speed. These need not be high-end, premium products. It could be a credit card with lower feature sets and limits to the broad-based credit market in India.”

The platform, called ‘nFiNi’, will power RuPay cards by offering access to services through the NPCI network and Fiserv’s microservices-based platform-as-a-service with a set of APIs. This stack, among other things, will support orchestration of the digital user experience, enable push alerts for in-app, mobile messaging app and SMS notifications, simplified integration options and instant digital card provisioning, allowing customers to transact immediately after being approved for a card.



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Top bankers may only get bonus after new RBI rule, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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The Reserve Bank of India‘s directive to treat grant of employee stock options as an expense is having an unintended impact.

Banks are doing away with ESOPs and adding deferred bonus payments to the senior managerial staff as the new rules could add significant costs to banks, eroding their quarterly earnings.

The shares are required to be valued at a fair value that may add to the costs. Though it is a non-cash cost, it still results in a higher expense in the P&L for the bank, impacting its profits and earnings.

The RBI directive

The RBI said last week the fair value of the share-linked incentives paid to chief executive officers, whole-time directors and other key functionaries by the private banks should be recognised as an expense during the relevant accounting period.

Issuing a clarification in this regard, the RBI said, “the fair value (of share-linked incentives) …should be recognised as expense beginning with the accounting period for which approval has been granted”.

In terms of the extant guidelines, share-linked instruments are required to be fairly valued on the date of grant using the Black-Scholes model.

The Black-Scholes model, also known as the Black-Scholes-Merton model, is a mathematical model for pricing an options contract. In particular, the model estimates the variation over time of financial instruments.

Treatment as expense

The RBI issued the clarification saying “it has been observed” that banks do not recognise grants of the share-linked compensation as an expense in their books of account concurrently.

The RBI also asked all banks, including local area banks, small finance banks and foreign banks to comply with its directions for all share-linked instruments granted after the accounting period ending March 31, 2021.

The central bank had issued guidelines on the compensation of whole-time directors/ chief executive officers/ material risk takers and control function staff in November 2019 in which it had said that share-linked instruments will be included as a component of variable pay.



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