Abhishek Securities

With three of the four Religare Group entities having achieved turnaround since 2018, Religare Finvest Ltd. — the NBFC arm of listed holding firm Religare Enterprises Ltd. (REL) — is heading for a resolution in two quarters, a top company executive said. The resolution of this hardest hit of the Religare group’s firms includes debt restructuring, roping in a new investor, and recovering substantial dues from the erstwhile promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh, who had allegedly siphoned off funds and are currently in jail. “The debt restructuring proposal of ₹4,000 crore loan is currently with the committee of creditors for REL, and it is expected to get approval soon,” said Nitin Aggarwal, Group CFO, REL. “We are also close to getting a strategic investor with the approval of the regulator. Talks with a few investors are proceeding positively and resolution is expected in two quarters,” he said. In March this year, TCG Advisory Pvt. Ltd., a part of The Chatterjee Group, was se...

Reliance Retail  posted a 17% fall in first quarter sales, as half the stores of the  Reliance Industries   NSE -1.98 %  unit were shut and another 29% operated only partially during the  lockdown  period. Operating profit of the country's biggest retailer by revenue almost halved in the quarter, as its fixed cost remained almost similar to the pre-lockdown period despite store closures. The company posted net sales of ₹31,633 crore in the three months ended June 30. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation fell 47% to ₹1,083 crore. Reliance Retail said almost 80% of its nationwide network of 11,800 outlets remained either completely or partially shuttered during the lockdown. Against the backdrop of a challenging environment, where store functioning and  digital commerce fulfilment  were severely impacted by lockdown and restrictions, the performance, “whilst muted by the operating context, was well ahead of market,” t...

Fino Payments Bank plans to double the value of its gold loan sourcing business in the current fiscal and will partner with banks and NBFCs to source gold loans on their behalf. It plans to carry out over  ₹ 2,000 crore of gold loan referral business this fiscal, said Amit Jain, Head (Alliances and PMO), Fino Payments Bank. In FY20, it had facilitated gold loan sourcing worth  ₹ 1,000 crore as a corporate business correspondent for a leading bank. More than 30,000 customers availed the service, with the average ticket size ranging from  ₹ 50,000 to over  ₹ 5 lakh. “Fino is in talks with a few leading NBFCs to unlock the gold loan potential by leveraging its extensive retail network,” it said in a statement on Tuesday. The bank’s retail network of over 2.25 lakh points comprising branches and merchants will also facilitate gold loan referral, along with a range of banking services. The network also includes more than 8,000 outlets of the bank’s strategic partner Bhara...

Reliance Retail is also poised to raise money from investors in a Jio-like format, and its earnings will set the ball rolling for many conversations. Retail made for a quarter of RIL’s revenue last year and it may get bigger ⁠ — partly, due to the oil shock and partly, due to the efforts to increase focus on consumer businesses. While competing with the likes of Amazon and Walmart, Reliance Retail has to show that it could thrive during the pandemic and the resulting lockdown. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries (RIL) ⁠ — with its businesses ranging from refining and petrochemicals to retail, media and telecom ⁠ — has seen a bustling quarter. There is a lot of intrigue around the company and many of its plans including the proposed acquisition of rival retail Big Bazaar, the planned fundraising, as well as the progress of the e-commerce venture aside from oil slipping into negative for a short while during the last quarter. The digital business under Reliance Jio has already rai...

Fintech major Paytm on Sunday said Paytm Payouts has processed over Rs 1,500 crore in salaries and other benefits for medium and large enterprises. Paytm Payouts is a digital money transfer service for businesses to help them make payments to their employees, vendors and business partners. "During this ongoing lockdown, over 5,000 companies have used Paytm Payouts to pay salaries and food allowances to employees, incentives and rewards to housekeeping, labourers and other contractual staff, and even for expenses like utility bills of their offices," Paytm said in a statement. Launched this year, Paytm Payouts offers APIs (needed to make apps) or Paytm for Business Dashboard to make bulk payments to bank accounts, UPI addresses, and Paytm Wallets instantly. "Within 3 months of lockdown, Paytm Payouts has transferred over Rs 1,500 crore either to the Paytm wallet, food wallet, gift voucher, or bank account of millions of beneficiaries," the statement said. Companies l...

Reliance Brands  has bought out the stake of Ronnie Screwvala-owned Unilazer Ventures in leading lingerie retailer  Zivame  and is in talks with other partners to take full control of the firm.   People close to the development said Reliance Brands, which sells several premium and luxury labels such as Jimmy Choo, Tiffany, Diesel and Mothercare in India, could pay up to $160 million - or about Rs 1,200 crore - for acquiring Zivame.  Zodius Capital  and Malaysian sovereign fund  Khazanah Nasional  Berhad will exit the firm, these people added.   "The deal is as good as done," a person with direct knowledge of the matter told ET. "Reliance would be buying 100% stake in the company," he said. Reliance Brands and Zivame did not respond to emails seeking comments till press time Monday. Emails to Zodius and Khazanah Nasional Berhad went unanswered. In an emailed response to ET, Unilazer Ventures founder  Ronnie Screwvala  sai...

Mukesh Ambani 's  Reliance  Industries Ltd will pay between Rs 24,000-27,000 crore ($3.2-$3.6 billion) to buy the Indian retail chains owned by  Future Group , according to a Mint report on Tuesday. The paper cited two sources familiar with details of the deal. Ambani has been buoyed by investments close to $20 billion from backers including  Google  and  Facebook  in his oil-to-telecoms conglomerate, and is seeking to strengthen his hand in India's huge retail sector. Future's interests are spread across various entities, including six listed companies. RIL is reportedly looking to acquire the retail, supply-chain and related businesses of Future, which will mark the end of founder  Kishore Biyani 's play in India's modern retail, an  industry  he pioneered. A point under discussion has been Biyani's role after the deal. Reliance's existing retail operation already runs close to 12,000 stores, including a cash-and-carry wholesale busine...

Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive officer of the country's largest private sector lender  HDFC Bank   NSE 0.66 %  has sold 95% of his stake valued Rs 843 crore in the bank this week. According to insider trading data published by the stock exchanges on Saturday,  Aditya Puri  has sold 74.2 lakh shares of the bank between July 21 and Jul 24. Before this transaction, Puri held 77.96 lakh shares or 0.14% of banks equity capital.   Puri received 6.82 lakh ESOPs in FY2020. Shares of HDFC Bank rallied 46% since its yearly low of Rs 765 touched on March 24.   Puri who took home Rs 18.92 crore salary including perquisites but excluding stock options in the financial year 2019-20 sold shares worth Rs 200 crore in HDB Financial Services, the unlisted NBFC arm of the private lender in December last year. These shares were held through a family trust Vistra ITCL (India). In 2013, he transferred his shares to his family as part of the succe...

Paytm founder   Vijay Shekhar Sharma  on Thursday said the company is witnessing up to 3.5X growth in transactions on its platform amid the COVID-19  pandemic  and resultant  lockdown  as users turned to  digital payments  to make payments in a safe manner. Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest 2020, Sharma said the company has also seen a growth in the average number of transactions being conducted in a week. "If a customer was doing X transactions before, right now he's doing 2.5-3.5X transactions. Customers who are used to digital are getting engaged deeper and newer customers are coming on the platform...the number of customers who are on the platform and are doing more number of transactions has phenomenally increased...At a week-level, an active customer is doing two transactions," he said. Sharma said  Paytm  has been able to expand its user base even after discontinuing cashbacks on its platform. "In the monetisation journey, we fi...

The new BIS standards for helmets — which has done away with the weight limit for rider and pillion rider helmets — will help reduce costs by 10%-20% and will lead to a whole new range of low cost and low price helmets in the Indian market said Two Wheeler Helmet Manufacturers Association president Rajeev Kapur.   “Around 90%-95% of helmet sales, which are in the entry level category, will now be in the 700gm to 1.2 kg category where prices will be less Rs 1,000,” he said. The heavier and more expensive and will be restricted to the small niche of speciality riders, he added. Kapur’s Steelbird Helmets, has already launched a 700 gm light weight open face helmet priced at Rs 759 and another 800 gm open face helmet for Rs 849. “Earlier the weight restrictions meant that you could not sell to Department of Transportation (US standard DOT) or ECE (Economic Commission for Europe) certified helmets in India. We were exporting 1,400-1,500 gm speciality helmets to Korea, Philippines fo...

Tata Technologies  has put a portion of its employees on the bench in wake of the ongoing Covid-19  pandemic . The company said that fewer than 400 employees had been put on the bench, on paid leave, followed by unpaid leave. “In response to the changed business environment, we are focused on making Tata Technologies a nimble, responsive and flexible organization. Consequently, we have undertaken several actions including optimization of our bench resources,” said a Tata Technologies spokesperson. The employees continue to be on the rolls of the company and the families will be covered under the company health insurance policy till the end of the year. The National Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) has filed a complaint on behalf of the employees with the Labour Commissioner in Pune, requesting it to take appropriate legal action against the company.   Harpreet Saluja, general secretary, NITES said that the employees had been asked to respond to an ema...