Idea-Vodafone say merger complete, now India's largest telco with 408 million active users

Aditya Birla Group on Friday said that Vodafone India and Idea NSE 3.44 % Cellular have completed the merger to create the countey's largest telecom company with 408 million active subscribers and a revenue market share of 32.2%.

“We wish to inform you that pursuant to filing of the NCLT orders with the relevant Registrars of Companies on 31st August, 2018, the Scheme has become effective on even date and the merger of VMSL (Vodafone Mobile services Ltd)and VIL (Vodafone India Ltd) with the Company has been completed,” said Idea Cellular in a regulatory filing on Friday.

Idea shares were up 0.5% at Rs50.10 on the BSE Friday in late trade.

The new board of 12 directors (including six Independent directors ) of just merged Vodafone Idea met on Friday morning with Kumar Mangalam Birla as the chairman.

“Today, we have created India’s leading telecom operator. It is truly a historic moment. And this is much more than just about creating a large business. It is about our Vision of empowering and enabling a New India and meeting the aspirations of the youth of our country,” said Birla. “As Vodafone Idea, we are partnering in this initiative by building a formidable company of international repute, scale and standards,” he added.

The new company will be headed by Balesh Sharma who said that the “company has the scale and resources to ensure sustainable customer choice and introduce new technologies”. He added that the new team will cater to both retail and enterprise customers with “new products, services and solutions”.

Vodafone Idea will have a spread of 15,000 branded stores and 1.7 million retail touchpoints across the country.

:GoITWay

India finalising proposal to send defence teams to Silicon Valley

India and the US are finalising a proposal that will enable defence teams to visit and liaison with a cutting-edge defence innovation unit in Silicon Valley.

The unit identifies and funds emerging military technologies. Final touches are being given to the proposal ahead of the ‘2+2 dialogue’, which will involve the defence and foreign affairs ministries of the two nations.

The proposal, first made by the US side last year, will involve Indian teams coordinating with the US Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) in Mountain View, California.

The plan is to engage with the newly set up Indian Defence Innovation Organisation (DIO) that is looking to foster emerging technologies domestically for the armed forces and is modelled closely on the US organisation that has been operational since 2015.

“A liaison has been offered with the Silicon Valley unit that is developing and identifying defence applications from the private sector. This can be a big opportunity to work together in future defence technologies,” an official aware of the developments told ET.

The DIUx has identified and is backing a number of companies in the Silicon Valley that offer solutions in a range of areas from artificial intelligence to space, robotics and information technology.

:GoITWay

How inaccurate location data can damage your brand

Imagine you have scheduled a quick meeting at a coffee shop near you, but you get there and find out that the place is closed. You ask around, and you get to know they've been shut down for two months now and that they have relocated to another location. Don't we all hate it when we are given inaccurate or inconsistent data while we are making a decision?

As a business owner, have you ever thought about how much inconvenience you're causing to your existing and potential customers by providing inaccurate business data online?

It really doesn't matter how successful your business is if you have inaccurate or obsolete data floating around on the internet. Data is the heart of any business, and bad data can have a lasting impact on everything about your business - from the customer experience that you provide to your revenue.

May it be a retail store or a huge, multi-location car wash enterprise, customers evaluate a business' trustworthiness by looking at online reviews and star ratings before they make a purchase decision. According to reports, 91% of people check online reviews regularly or occasionally, while 84% of people trust online reviews as much as they would trust a word-of-mouth recommendation.

Unfortunately, businesses focus on other, more mainstream digital  marketing activities to stay on top of the competition; so much so that maintaining the accuracy of their business listings, directories and citations sometimes take a backseat. And because of this, their online reputation (reviews and star ratings) also take a hit, because a) Customers are not able to find the business they want to review on the internet, and b) Inaccurate listings online lead to bad customer experiences like the one we mentioned earlier.

According to reports, most popular method for finding a local business, product or service, is through "Search engines."

:GoITWay

Google parent Alphabet records surge in profit, but costs also go up

Alphabet got a boost from how it values investments in Uber Technologies Inc and other startups. That accounting change and a one-time benefit cut its effective tax rate nearly in half.

Strong growth in ad sales on Google search and YouTube were not enough to offset a surge in costs at parent Alphabet Inc that shrank the first-quarter operating margin, leaving shares flat after hours on Monday.

Alphabet got a boost from how it values investments in Uber Technologies Inc and other startups. That accounting change and a one-time benefit cut its effective tax rate nearly in half.

Investors are uncertain about future profit at Alphabet as the company navigates the move to a phone-based computing world and invests in small, fast-growing initiatives from self-driving cars to selling hardware and cloud computing services. The quarterly results did not clarify the outlook.

Alphabet's operating margin of 22 per cent, down from 27 per cent a year ago, missed expectations because of the growth in expenses.

Alphabet is investing to keep pace with Amazon.com Inc and having to share more of its revenue with phone and browser makers, said James Cordwell, analyst at Atlantic Equities. "The jump in profits is purely due to one-time items," he said.

Longer-term capital expenditures nearly tripled to $7.3 billion in the first quarter from $2.5 billion a year ago.

Still, worldwide sales increased to $31.1 billion, above the average analysts' estimate of $30.3 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Those ad sales showed investors that there were no immediate signs that rising global privacy concerns had affected profits, even as concerns over Facebook Inc's use of privacy cast some suspicion on Google.

Officials across the world seek to force changes in Google's business practices, such as giving customers more control over their data.

"The strong economy has companies spending more on advertising," said analyst Ivan Feinseth from Tigress Financial Partners. "Google continues to dominate both mobile and desktop search" and there will be "very little effect" from Facebook privacy data fallout, he said.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told analysts Monday that, "It's important to understand that most of our ad business is search, where we rely on very limited information, essentially what is in the keywords to show a relevant ad."

STARTUP INVESTMENTS BOOST PROFITS
Alphabet's quarterly profit of $9.4 billion, or $13.33 per share, exceeded estimates of $6.56 billion, or $9.28 per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

About $2.4 billion in earnings were attributable to a new accounting method for unrealized gains in Alphabet's investments in startups such as Uber and Airbnb Inc.

Alphabet now records estimates of the current value of its startup investments rather than waiting to report income once it has opportunity to sell those shares. That change and a one-time benefit drove the effective tax rate in the quarter to 11 per cent from 20 percent a year earlier.

Excluding the investment-related gains and other items, adjusted earnings were $9.93 per share.

Google had several one-time costs including acquiring 2,000 employees in Taiwan for $1.1 billion from HTC Corp and moving up when it awards equity to employees.

Continuing cost increases came from acquiring streaming rights for YouTube's new TV service and marketing new products.

Google executives say the spending to install powerful computers and internet cables is necessary to keep up with demand for YouTube, its Google Assistant virtual helper service and data analytics tools within its Google Cloud services.

Revenue from Google's non-advertising units was $4.4 billion in the first quarter.

Alphabet is paring back on "other bets," a set of ancillary projects in areas such as medical technology and drones. Operating loss from "other bets" fell to $571 million, from $703 million a year ago.

Investors are counting on one other bet, the Waymo self-driving vehicles effort, to generate noteworthy revenue this year as it begins offering ride-hailing services.

Google revealed smart thermostat maker Nest generated about $726 million in revenue in 2017, above some analysts' estimates. Financial results for Nest had not been released since its acquisition in 2014.

 -GoITWay

TCS says 24,000 jobs offered this year, automation has led to on-demand hiring

In 2015, TCS had made offers to 44,000 students, which fell to 35,000 offers and then 20,000 in the next two years. This year, too, it has made offers to 20,000 students during on-campus recruitments. Its off-campus hiring stood at 4,000.

Worried about robots taking over your job? One of the fields where this is a clear concern is information technology (IT), and one of the biggest employers in the space, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has just hinted that increased automation in the software delivery process has led to a dip in hiring currently.

The number of job offers made by the IT major backs that up. According to The Times of India, in 2015, TCS had made offers to 44,000 students, which fell to 35,000 offers and then 20,000 in the next two years. This year, too, it has made offers to 20,000 students during on-campus recruitments. Its off-campus hiring stood at 4,000. "Analytics, IoT [Internet of Things] and automation is changing the entire delivery process. We are going for hiring in an agile way, which is on-demand," Ajayendra Mukherjee, Global HR head and EVP of TCS, said at a news conference yesterday. The company boasts a total headcount of 3.94 lakh globally and has a presence in 50 countries.

The good news is that the company believes that in the long run, automation will create more job opportunities in the fields of data science, artificial intelligence, robotics and analytics.

Better still, Mukherjee ruled out any chances of lay-offs, going forward. He also talked about the massive re-skilling drive that the company has undertaken, pointing out that TCS found it more cost-effective to give training for re-skilling people in-house rather than hiring from outside. "So far, 2.10 lakh people have been trained and skills upgraded," he added.

Referring to hiring in the US and other developed markets, Mukherjee said that TCS had been facing challenges as fewer numbers of the younger generation were opting for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects there. To address the problem, TCS has rolled out two ambitious student reach-out programmes in these markets. "We have started two CSR programmes named 'goIT' and 'Ignite My Future' to encourage students in the ninth standard to opt for STEM subjects," he explained, adding, "We have developed Fresco Play - a learning platform - to enable employees to learn digital courses on the go."

The daily added that IgniteMyFuture is meant to reach out to at least one million students (Class V-VIII) and 20,000 educators in partnership with 'Discovery in Education' in the US. On the other hand, GoIT is getting mid-level school students (of Class IX to XII) hooked to simple robotics, analytics and reasoning via various problem-solving and challenge-based aptitude-building methods.

However, Mukherjee believes that the problem is a temporary one and that hiring in the US had not gone down. On media queries whether TCS can substitute its workforce in the US, the HR head reportedly said it was always preferable to employ the local populace.

In the last quarter of FY'18, TCS' dollar terms growth stood at 11.7 per cent and margins at 25.4 per cent, which he said were lower than expectations due to currency fluctuations.

(With PTI inputs)
      -GoITWay