Business

If the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was still looking for obvious signs of a slowdown, it cannot get find another better than this one. India's new car sales in October fell the most in more than a decade in the face of rising fuel costs, expensive loans, and prolonged inflationary pressures. Sales of passenger cars were down 23.8 per cent, while production dropped 28.1 per cent when compared to the same period last year, according to the Society of Indian Automobile...

Wipro has retained the top slot in environmental NGO Greenpeace's latest Guide to Greener Electronics. HCL Infosystem is placed second in the Indian version. The international version ranks the IT manufacturing company HP at the top, taking the lead over Dell and Nokia. Three new companies are included in the latest version of the guide. Research in Motion (RIM), manufacturer of the Blackberry phone, is included in the international version while Chirag Computers and SAI InfoSystem are included...

ndia ranks 19th among 28 countries where public officials have to be bribed when doing business abroad, according to a survey of 3,000 business executives from developed and developing countries. Transparency International’s 2011 Bribe Payers Index, released today, ranks 28 leading international and regional exporting countries by the likelihood of their firms to bribe abroad. Companies from Russia and China, who invested US $120 billion overseas in 2010, are seen as most likely to pay bribes...

Indian retailers suffered the highest loss of stocks to theft in the world for the fifth year in a row in 2011. Half of this loss was attributed to shoplifting by customers. The silver lining here was that India is the world’s only country where the shrink rate (loss of stocks because of thefts by customer, employees and supplier) came down in 2011, according to the Global Retail Theft Barometer 2011. The shrink rate as a percentage of sales was 2.38 per cent, costing local retailers Rs 3,470...

The Indian luxury market, estimated at $5.8 billion (nearly Rs 28,500 crore), is spreading beyond the big cities as adoption of global trends is fast catching up in smaller cities. According to India Luxury Review 2011, published by the Confederation of India Industry (CII) and AT Kearney, the luxury bug has not bitten big cities alone. One in four luxury stores are established outside Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru. This could very well be the trend for the next few years, what with the Indian...

Did Berkshire Hathaway, one of the largest insurance companies in the world resort to a back-door entry into India in order to circumvent caps on foreign direct investment (FDI) in the insurance industry? A closer look at the facts indicate enough grounds for suspicion. Berkshire India Private Limited is a majority owned non-direct subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc incorporated in India, with 100 per cent FDI in paid-up capital. It is a licensed corporate agent of Bajaj Allianz General...

This should come across as good news to one and all – Adidas has joined Nike and Puma in committing publicly to eliminate all discharges of hazardous chemicals throughout their supply chain and across the entire lifecycle of their products by 2020. The move from Adidas comes after a relentless detox campaign waged by environmental organisation Greenpeace International on the issue since July this year. Adidas acknowledged that Greenpeace had directed its campaign towards sporting goods companies...

The Reliance Communications website describes itself as India’s number one network. It certainly isn’t if you consider the number of subscribers it has lost in the first five months since the mobile number portability (MNP) facility was introduced in India – it lost a whopping 1,166,643 net subscribers till June 30. Reliance’s loss is more than double the second company in the dubious rankings – state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), which lost 573,142 subscribers. The third is Tata...

Vodafone Essar’s decision to shoot off a legal notice to a customer for purportedly defamatory comments on his Facebook page goes beyond the legal nitty-grities of publishing comments in cyberspace – it is a frontal attack on free speech, and shows utter contempt for consumer dissent. At the dawn of the social-networking phase of the Internet age, corporates had wallowed over what all wonderful things social media could do for them. They had gone to town about empowerment of citizens, and...

The online travel audience in India is rising, according to comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world. It found that the number of visitors to travel sites increased 32 per cent in the past year to 18.5 million visitors as more Indians are turning to the web for their travel needs. “The online travel category continues to show strong growth in India,” Kedar Gavane, comScore Director for India said on Friday. “The convenience of booking trips and locating travel information online...