Daily Pulse India: Heated Debate on Surge Pricing, Muted Results From Wipro, Rajan Sticks To His Guns
Ramya Venugopal
#StrategicCommunications #StrategicPartnerships #Communities. Ex-Meta. Former LinkedIn editor, also ex-Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Economic Times
Pricing Woes: Taxi hailing companies Ola and Uber are locked in a battle with state governments over their surge pricing practices. The governments (Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi - three of the biggest taxi markets) firmly believe that surge pricing is bad for the consumer, while Uber and Ola have taken to email and blog campaigns to explain that that’s not the case. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said “blackmailing and overcharging won’t be tolerated.” Last heard, the Delhi government may put in place a price band within which dynamic pricing can operate. Both companies are in deep discussions with the states, and the voices on both sides are getting louder.
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Wipro Muted: While rival Infosys delighted the street with its results, Wipro, the last of the big 3 IT services giants had a rather muted quarter - 3 percent growth in profit and less than 4 percent in revenue. Most of its key client groups have shown a quarter-on-quarter decline, while the guidance for this year is conservative at best. In an attempt to keep investors happy, it has also set aside 25 billion rupees for a share buyback. New CEO Abidali Neemuchwala has a mammoth challenge ahead. This table by Mint says it all.
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Raghuram Rajan’s interview to Market Watch and the famous quote about the one eyed man in the land of the blind ruffled a few feathers at the government - ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Arun Jaitley in particular. Rajan is sticking to his guns though, as his comments yesterday show:
"Growth... is just one measure of performance. The level of per capita GDP is also important. We are still one of the poorest large countries in the world on a per capita basis, and have a long way to go before we reasonably address the concerns of each one of our citizens."
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GST Hopes: The Congress party, the main stonewaller of the crucial GST bill, said yesterday it will willing to back the bill if its conditions are met. While this may sound like a softening of its stance, it’s actually the same thing it has been saying all along. And the impasse continues.
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Bank results: Bank results may be better than expected after the RBI told them they don’t need to set aside money for loans to 20 companies, that were earlier classified as bad.
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Mallya Update: The missing tycoon has been convicted in a dishonored cheque case by a Hyderabad court (a cheque issued by his defunct Kingfisher Airlines to GMR which runs the Hyderabad airport bounced) and yet another arrest warrant has been issued against him. All this makes sense only if the ministry for external affairs succeeds in bringing him back from the UK.
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Cover Image: A two-day Shikara festival is underway in Kashmir as the government tries its best to promote tourism amid the conflict in the valley.
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Senior & Writing Editor | New & Print Media | Long Narratives | Desk Journalist | Industry Reports | B2B Content. Opinions are my own.
8 年There must be an upper bracket or the whole thing becomes a mayhem. Going by this business reality, all modes of transportation should have it, and public transportation with pre-determined fares becomes a huge joke. Should we be compelled to auctioned transportation, thanks to a couple of aggregation business? Pricing, however high, should be transparent to let passengers make their choice. That way, those who can't afford it won't opt for it. But the surprise element often gets nasty and should not be entertained.
My 2 cents here - Surge pricing is a business reality and it is a demand supply game. Even though personally I would like government to control any such pricing and never liked getting 3x or 4x type of pricing when you are standing for a cab, but the key question is whether is it in governments hand to control ? what is the side impact it is likely to have on the customer service.. After all Uber and Ola are just aggregation platforms, and the actual service or willing to serve depends on the cab drivers, and in the high demand scenario, they also have lot many other options to get better pricing than to continue serving the aggregation platform.
Founder/Director/General Secretary at Adharsha Social Service Trust of India
8 年i Would like to attend the up comming conference please do kindly send us details...,,,, Regards John Peter Rayappa