Amazon, Flipkart, and others clock $8.3 billion in festive gross sales

wayne 5 days ago


E-commerce giants Amazon, Flipkart, and others witnessed blockbuster festive season sales this year. The pandemic accelerated the shift to e-commerce, with an increasing number of consumers shopping online at a higher frequency.


India’s online festive sale for a month — during October-November — raked in $8.3 billion in gross sales, including for brands and sellers, up by 65 per cent year-on-year, exceeding forecasts, according to a report by consulting firm RedSeer.



“The overall growth story has been very bullish this festive season,” said Mrigank Gutgutia, director at RedSeer. “We had forecast $7 billion in sales but the actual figures surpassed our expectations clearly, showing how comfortable consumers have become with shopping online even in a pandemic-hit year.”


The festive season this year saw 88 per cent customer growth from last year, which was driven by 40 million shoppers from tier-2 cities and beyond. Mobile phones continued to dominate across all the products, and with the rising share of users from tier-2 cities and beyond, GMV (gross merchandise value) per customer dropped to Rs 6,600 from Rs 7,450 in the last festive season.



Additionally, the gross

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Police Clash With Fans At Maradona’s Wake

wayne 5 days ago

Riot police fired rubber bullets and tear gas in clashes Thursday with football fans near the wake for Argentine football legend Diego Maradona in Buenos Aires.

Officials earlier ordered Maradona’s coffin to be moved to another room inside the presidential palace after fans took over an inner courtyard and disrupted his lying in state.

The government had early announced a three-hour extension to the wake to allow time for thousands of fans to pay their respects.

Tens of thousands of people had queued from early morning to file past the star’s coffin, draped in the Argentine flag and the player’s No.10 jersey, at the presidential palace.

Many of the mourners were in tears, and some wore replicas of the World Cup winner’s jersey as they gathered at the Casa Rosada palace to see his coffin.





Crowds wait to pay their respects to late football legend Diego Maradona in Buenos Aires
 AFP / ALEJANDRO PAGNI

But as the day wore on, fans queueing outside the palace grew increasingly impatient and some took over a courtyard inside the palace, where they chanted slogans.

Officials moved Maradona’s coffin to another room as a security precaution, a government source told AFP.

At the same

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PM suggests state-specific export plan; reviews projects worth Rs 1.41 trn

wayne 6 days ago


Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday asked states to develop a state-specific export strategy and reviewed development projects worth Rs 1.41 lakh crore spread across 10 states and union territories.


Reforms are beneficial only when one performs, and this is the way forward to transform the country, Modi said as he chaired the meeting of PRAGATI — an ICT-based multi-modal platform for Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation involving central and state governments.



In the PRAGATI meeting, multiple projects, grievances and programmes were reviewed, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.


In the previous 32 such meetings, a total of 275 projects worth Rs 12.5 lakh crore have been reviewed, along with 47 programmes/schemes and grievances across 17 sectors that were taken up.


The projects, taken up at the 33rd such PRAGATI meeting on Wednesday, were of the Ministry of Railways, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, and the Power Ministry, the statement said.


These projects, with a total cost of Rs 1.41 lakh crore, were related to 10 states and union territories — Odisha,

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Amazon-Future tussle: Singapore’s arbitration court rejects Biyani’s plea

wayne 6 days ago


Future Retail Ltd’s plea to be excluded from being a party to the Amazon-Future Coupons’ arbitration proceedings has been turned down and the Court of Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) has ordered that the arbitration shall proceed, according to sources.


In October, a single-judge bench of V K Rajah had given an interim arbitration award, barring Future Retail Ltd (FRL) from taking any step to dispose of or encumber its assets or issuing any securities to secure any funding from a restricted party.



According to the sources close to the development, FRL had approached the Court of SIAC saying the arbitration proceedings were part of a contract to which the company is not a party. The company had pleaded that it be excluded from being a party on account of jurisdiction objection.


However, the Court of SIAC has decided that the arbitration process shall proceed and accordingly, a tribunal will be constituted in this matter.


Queries sent to Amazon and Future Retail Ltd did not elicit any response.


In August last year, Amazon bought 49 per cent in one of Kishore Biyani-led Future Group’s unlisted

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R&D Tax credit claims could pay 178k UK salaries for a year

wayne 6 days ago

While growth in R&D tax relief claims has increased by 35% annually since inception in 2001 to over £4bn last year the scheme is yet to be fully utilised by UK business.

However, even with many remaining unaware that the work they are doing could qualify, the number of claims made does demonstrate the huge amount of innovative work taking place across the UK.

To highlight this great work and put the sums claimed into perspective, R&D specialists RIFT Research and Development has looked at how many people this sum could employ based on the average annual net salary and which region is top when it comes to R&D Tax Credit claims.

The research shows that there has been a huge £4.3bn claimed across all R&D tax credit schemes to date and with the average net salary currently sitting at £24,365, that’s enough to pay the wages of 177,711 for a whole year!

As you might expect, London is home to the largest number of claims with £1.2bn submitted and even with the higher annual salary of £31,567, the R&D work going on throughout the capital could employ 39,281 for a year.

R&D claims in the South East and East

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