Investor takes over at Flipkart, Infosys’ new bet and other news from India

Rejig: The top echelons of Flipkart have been shaken up once more. Months after Sachin Bansal stepped away to make room for co-founder Binny Bansal as CEO, there has been another change. Kalyan Krishnamoorthy, representing investor Tiger Global, has taken over as CEO, leaving Binny in the role of group CEO while Sachin remains the group chairman. Industry watchers say they saw it coming as Flipkart’s losses are mounting, fresh funding was hard to come by and global giant Amazon has been nipping at its heels. It remains to be seen if Kalyan’s new gig helps give Flipkart the direction it’s been desperately looking for.

Demonetization fallout: Indirect taxes hit a speed-breaker in December as the growth in collections slowed to 14 percent from a year ago, from 23 percent in November and 26 percent in October. However the robust growth before demonetization has ensured that budget estimates will be exceeded. Property sales in Mumbai though, fell to a six-year low as customers preferred to wait and watch, expecting prices to crash further. Real estate transactions used to be notoriously skewed towards cash deals, which means that is the market that has been hardest hit by demonetization. Here’s a chart from Business Standard on tax collections.

What should the focus be? The finance ministry asked Twitter users in a poll about what they should focus on in the budget later this month. The response: Farmers. Two third of the 21,000 votes were in favor of a focus on agriculture. Although, it must be noted that 21K votes does not a country’s voice make.

Sikka’s new bet: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka is trying to move the company away from its big enterprise business model and build mass-use software, to increase its customer base. Right now, it gets a lion’s share of its money from just 250 clients which makes it more vulnerable to competition as well as market turbulence.

World’s Worst Airline? According to FlightStats magazine, which tracks on-time performance of airlines, India’s own state-run carrier Air India stood third among the worst performers of 2016. Air India has disagreed with the report and is looking into it, an official said.

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