Tag: tata group

No HC relief for Tatas on use of their trademark as crypto coin, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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Bitcoin may be a household name today, but there are various types of cryptocurrencies that exist. Ever heard of a cryptocurrency bearing the trademarks ‘Tata coin’ or ‘$Tata’?

Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, was unsuccessful in its bid to seek a permanent injunction from the Delhi high court restraining Hakunamatata Tata Founders and others from using the trademark ‘Tata’ as part of the name under which the cryptocurrency was made available to the public or as part of their corporate or domain name.

The domain names tatabonus.com and hakunamatata.finance that enabled the purchase and sale of the ‘Tata’ cryptocurrency were set up in June and May of 2021 respectively. The reason Tata Sons could not succeed is because it could not prove to the satisfaction of the court that the foreign parties (the defendants) intended to target India as a customer base.

No HC relief for Tatas on use of their trademark as crypto coinThe defendants in this lawsuit, filed by Tata Sons with the Delhi high court, were companies based in the US and the UK with no India presence. They were located outside the sovereign borders of India and statutorily outside the reach of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908. In this backdrop, the “intention to target India as a customer base was of paramount importance” for Tata Sons to make its case.

“The mere fact that the defendants’ cryptocurrency can be purchased by customers located in India and that, as a result, the plaintiff’s brand value may be diluted, even seen cumulatively, cannot in my view justify this court interfering with the defendants’ activities, or with its brand or mark,” held Justice C Hari Shankar.

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Apparently, the defendants’ cryptocurrency could be purchased — using the QR Code and the methodology indicated on the defendants’ website — by a customer located anywhere in the world. This factor therefore, too, cannot indicate any conscious targeting of the Indian customer base by the defendants. Nor do the websites or social media accounts prove any intent to target customers covered by the high court’s jurisdiction. “If at all they target customers, they target customers across the world,” the judge observed.

Tata Sons didn’t respond to an emailed query on the issue. Sources told TOI that Tata Sons is considering to pursue this case in the UK court.

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BoB step up on super app play, faces a tough competition, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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The race for financial super apps in India is getting hotter.

Bank of Baroda will position its new digital platform bob World as the main bank and all banking channels will be an adjunct to the primary platform. The public sector lender is adopting a strategy similar to SBI, which is working to integrate all services on its Yono platform.

Bank of Baroda MD & CEO Sanjiv Chadha has said that post-pandemic, the bank has seen a surge in digital transactions and twice the number of branch visits are happening on the app. “So rather than being an adjunct to the bank, it will be the bank and the other parts of the lender will become an adjunct. The thought was to enable everything that can be done in the branch within the app,” said Chadha.

Here are other few banks and companies that are building up the super app.

Tata Group

BoB step up on super app play, faces a tough competition

Tata Group is planning to come up with its own super app and bring its various consumer businesses under one digital umbrella and offer a seamless omnichannel experience. It is also making acquisitions such as Bigbasket and 1mg to bolster its digital presence.

“It will be a super app, a lot of apps in apps and so on … We have a very big opportunity … How do we give a simple online experience connecting all of this, and at the same time a beautiful omnichannel experience? That is the vision,” N Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons had said.

The company is looking to leverage its huge consumer base which is spread across various categories and build a “world-class platform out of India to serve the Indian consumer”.

Tata Group has a host of consumer-facing brands that include grocery items, fashion brands, and electronics brands.

In terms of financial services, Tata Group has an insurance company as well as a consumer finance arm, which can be easily integrated into its super app.

Paytm

BoB step up on super app play, faces a tough competition

Paytm, which lacks services such as ride hailing, food delivery, and online groceries, is the leader in the race at present. The app had 85.49 million monthly active users in March 2020. The company has launched a mini-apps store and partnered with companies like Ola, Domino’s, and Decathlon.

It plans to have a million such apps on its store by 2021. Mini apps are custom-built web apps that give users an app-like experience without needing to download one. The listing and distribution of these mini apps within the Paytm app is free of charge, and users can use the Paytm wallet, Paytm Payments Bank, UPI, or net banking for payments at no charges, and credit cards at a 2% fee. These apps are low-cost and quick to build, using HTML and JavaScript.

The company claims it has 325 million registered wallets, which is higher than the 200 million active UPI handles that have been created in the country.

Now the company has set its sights on using the platform to sell multiple financial services such as digital gold, mutual funds, insurance, and consumer and business loans.

SBI Yono

BoB step up on super app play, faces a tough competition

State Bank of India (SBI) is looking to build its super app Yono into a wider platform that can be used by rival lenders. The bank’s plans to create a platform for Yono that will be integrated with regional rural banks or cooperative banks. The plan is to turn the app into a platform where all banks, including SBI, can offer their products and services. The bank feels that the product will be more valuable to investors once the app is fully built out as a platform.

Yono user base has nearly doubled to 32 million at the end of December 2020 from 17 million a year ago.

SBI disbursed personal loans worth Rs 15,996 crore through more than 1 million Yono loan accounts between April and December 2020. It is now looking to extend it to home loan customers and make the entire process online. It is also planning to go big with its multi-lingual Yono Krishi platform that offers services such as Yono Khata, Yono Bachat, Yono Mitra and Yono Mandi to its farm customers. It wants to expand Yono Business through which it has made it easier for corporate customers to apply for letters of credit and bank guarantees.

Reliance Retail

BoB step up on super app play, faces a tough competition

Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd’s acquisition of a controlling stake in business-to-business (B2B) search engine Just Dial (JD) will provide it with access to a large merchant base for its new commerce platform JioMart. It will also allow it to harness JD’s evolution into a super app that will help book flights, train and bus tickets, cabs and hotel rooms and pay bills, as well as provide other services.

Reliance Retail plans to onboard 10 million merchant partners for its new commerce initiative over the next three years. The acquisition will allow RRVL to leverage JD’s database of 30.4 million business listings and its consumer traffic of 129 million quarterly unique users as on March 31, 2021.

JD’s B2B platform, JD Mart, matches wholesalers and manufacturers with retailers and industrial buyers, according to Credit Suisse.

Also, Facebook and telecom giant Reliance Jio are coming together to figure out the possibility of a super app, similar to the multipurpose Chinese platform WeChat. They are reportedly hoping to develop the app using the WhatsApp platform as well as its huge user base.

The platform would be a place for users to chat, while also letting them shop for groceries from Reliance Retail stores, for clothes and apparel and make digital payments using JioMoney.

WhatsApp

BoB step up on super app play, faces a tough competition

WhatsApp has a vast user base in India, but it has too few services to offer and must build and maintain its fintech muscle. The variety of its product portfolio and the speed of implementation will determine whether it can topple the incumbents in India. It may also have to face regulatory hurdles in India.

Bajaj Finance

BoB step up on super app play, faces a tough competition

Bajaj Finance has recently stepped up its wallet business. Its cross-sell franchise has about 27 million customers with around 70% of all no-cost EMI loans given for offline consumer durable purchases being through it.

Bajaj has recently launched a payments app and looks to be on the way to build a super app. The launch of the digital wallet is part of a broader strategy by the consumer NBFC to expand its digital finance offerings. The company has been rolling out ‘Bajaj Pay’ in phases to expand into the payments segment.



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State Bank may look to finance Tata group’s Air India bid, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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State Bank of India is likely to support Tata Sons‘s bid to acquire state-owned carrier Air India.

The bank may subscribe to Tata Sons debentures or fund the special purpose vehicle (SPV) set up by Tata Sons for the acquisition, according to a report.

Tata Sons’s Air India buy may cost Rs 15,000 crore. The bank will subscribe to the debentures as Indian banks do not provide loans to corporates for acquisitions.

The lender is banking on the Tata Sons AAA rating, which signifies high safety and the prospects of Air India under the Tatas.

Tata Sons has a shareholder approval to raise Rs 40,000 crore while it Rs 10 lakh crore stake in TCS gives it financial heft to go for such a big acquisition.

Air India finances

Air India’s accumulated losses ballooned to Rs 70,820 crore in FY20. The earnings for FY21 haven’t been reported yet but the annual loss is expected to touch Rs 10,000 crore, from Rs 8,000 in the previous year.

Its revenue in FY21 more than halved year-on-year to Rs 12,139 crore. Air India’s total debt (according to provisional figures for FY20) stood at Rs 38,366.39 crore after transfer of debt amounting to Rs 22,064 crore to the special purpose vehicle, Air India Assets Holding Ltd, in FY20.

Tata group airlines

If it acquires Air India, the airline will compete directly with Vistara, another airline from the Tata stable. Bringing Vistara under the holding company with Air India could help with operational synergy and economies of scale.

Vistara’s loss for the year narrowed to Rs 1,612 crore, from Rs 1,814 crore a year earlier, having widened from Rs 831 crore in FY19. Its total liabilities at the end of FY21 were Rs 11,491 crore, while its net worth was a negative Rs 6,088 crore.

According to its latest annual report, Tata Group’s budget carrier AirAsia India’s net loss almost doubled in FY21 to Rs 1,532 crore and its net worth slipped into negative territory as the pandemic hit aviation globally.



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FM asks India Inc to look beyond banks for finance, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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Mumbai: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told India Inc on Tuesday that there is a move to enable the industry to meet its funding needs from markets rather than banks. Among alternate financing measures, the government is looking at allowing insurance bonds instead of bank guarantees, a senior government official said.

In her first visit to Mumbai after the second wave of the pandemic, the finance minister addressed industry leaders at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) interaction on Tuesday evening. Later, she attended a dinner meeting with industry chiefs, including Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran.

The FM said that industry dependence on banks would be further reduced by the operationalisation of the new development finance institution, which will take over long-term lending and also provide competition to banks. The FM emphasised the need for government and industry to work together to “create India’s own equity capital”.

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From Amazon to Zomato, a big crowd at RBI doors for payment aggregator licence, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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Mumbai: A slew of companies harbouring fintech ambitions have made a beeline to the Reserve Bank of India to become licensed Payment Aggregators (PAs) under the central bank’s upcoming regulatory regime for non-bank payment providers.

Firms that have applied for authorisation or in advanced stages of submitting their proposals to the RBI include the Tata group, Amazon, Reliance Industries, Dutch payments startup Adyen, Paytm, BharatPe, PhonePe, CC Avenue, Razorpay, Cred, Zomato, PayU, Worldline, Pine Labs and CAMSPAY, sources involved in the diligence process told ET.

At least 30 firms are learnt to have submitted their proposals, sources said, indicating that the number of applicants could increase before the September 30 deadline for existing and new non-bank firms to apply.

The firms that will be authorised to operate as PAs in India will be under the direct purview of RBI in rendering payment services to merchants, in a step that many industry insiders said would lead towards a more standardised and regulated payments ecosystem.

“For long, the operations of PAs in India have been seen as a blind spot for regulations,” said a payments industry insider. “RBI’s PA/PG rules in this regard were introduced to ensure a standard for those firms offering payment service to merchants.”

“There is a feeling that any internet firm with a mass consumer base will be applying for a PA licence as the eligibility barrier is low and missing out on approval can limit any future expansion in offering fintech services,” the source said.

Under the new rules, any firm acquiring merchants would compulsorily need RBI approval to operate as a licensed PA, the source added.

The central bank’s new Payment Aggregator/Payment Gateway guidelines – introduced formally in March 2020 – mandate that only firms approved by RBI can acquire and offer payment services to merchants. Regulated banks do not need any separate approvals.

As per RBI rules, the eligibility criteria for a firm applying for PA authorisation is a minimum net worth of Rs 15 crore in the first year of application and going up to Rs 25 crore by the second year.

The firm also must fulfil ‘fit and proper’ criteria as well as be compliant with global payment security standards under PCI DSS, an information security protocol maintained by payment firms across the world.

“PhonePe has been operating as a Payment Aggregator, offering payment services to merchants on our network. In line with the RBI guidelines, we would be applying for the PA licence to continue offering payment services to our merchant partners,” a PhonePe spokesperson said.

According to Ramesh Narasimhan, Head – Digital Commerce, Worldline India, “Ingenico ePayments India – a Worldline brand, is in the process of directly applying for the Payment Aggregator license well before the deadline as we remain committed to deepening the reach of online payment solutions in India.”
Spokespersons for Adyen, Razorpay and Cred did not offer comment. Other firms cited earlier in the story did not respond to ET’s email. RBI also did not comment.

Newly listed Zomato said in exchange disclosure that it had already incorporated a wholly owned subsidiary to handle digital payments and payment gateway services.

Sources told ET that many leading e-commerce marketplaces, global payment firms, existing PGs and domestic consumer internet firms are also in line to apply for authorisations.

ET could not independently confirm these names.

“There is almost a sense that RBI is inundated with the rush of applications,” a second source aware of the matter said. “The indication has been that RBI will take a ‘First In, First Out’ approach in scrutinising different proposals. This means that the overall scrutiny process is likely to take a few months.”

“The regulator will also allow firms to continue their operations until they communicate the fate of the respective proposals. For a PA operating in India whose application has been turned down, the expectation is that RBI will offer a window to wind down its operations,” the source, who is the chief executive of one of the firms applying for authorisation, told ET.

RBI defines PAs as entities that facilitate e-commerce sites and merchants to accept various payment instruments from the customers for completion of their payment obligations, without the need for merchants to create a separate payment integration system of their own.

PGs are defined as entities that provide technology infrastructure to route and facilitate processing of an online payment transaction without any involvement in handling of funds.

The motive of the new PA/PG guidelines could also be to have a better supervisory control over payment operations of internet and e-commerce firms in India.

The applicability for PA/PG authorisation could be made ‘on-tap’ after the initial set of approvals, a third source said.



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