Walmart eyes stake in Flipkart, stock market is fuelling private wealth boom, and more trending news

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Walmart wants a piece of India’s biggest e-tailer Flipkart. Citing people in the know, the Economic Times reports that the retail giant is in advanced talks to buy 15 to 20% in the homegrown e-commerce firm. A deal is expected by March, and it will likely see primary and secondary share sales by some "long-standing investors." The move will strengthen Flipkart's push into grocery, which, experts feel, is a powerful hook to onboard online shoppers. Walmart has been snapping up companies of late — in September, it completed the $3-billion acquisition of New Jersey-headquartered e-tailer Jet.com.

India is wealthier than Canada, Australia and even France. A report by New World Wealth shows India is the sixth richest country in the world, with total private wealth rising a steep 25% to $8,230 billion in 2017 thanks to a booming stock market. The US tops the list with total wealth of $64,584 billion, followed by China, Japan, the UK and Germany. India’s total wealth has risen 160% over the past decade, and the country is now home to 330,000 high-net-worth individuals (those with net assets worth $1 million or more).

The Delhi High Court has allowed Daiichi to recover Rs 3,500 crore from former Ranbaxy promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, BloombergQuint reports. This is a huge win for the Japanese pharma major, which had filed a plea to enforce the Singapore tribunal's arbitration award. The Singh brothers had argued that the award was not valid under Indian law. The case dates back to November 2013 — Daiichi had accused the duo of concealing wrongdoings at Ranbaxy while selling it to the Japanese firm for $4.6 billion in 2008. 

Delhi and Mumbai see maximum call drops in India, according to telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan. Things are equally bad in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the country's most populous states. Sundararajan said the government has directed telcos to fast-track resolution of poor call quality issues. A 2016 survey had shown that the average call drop rate in India stood at 4.73%, higher than the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's 2% cap. In October, TRAI imposed steep penalties on telcos failing to meet voice quality benchmarks, but the ongoing price war has led to a worsening of the situation.

Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies — including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and initial coin offerings — in a bid to crack down on scams and fraud on the platform. Many companies advertising such products are “not currently operating in good faith,” the social network said in a statement; the crypto boom has brought with it an influx of scammers, notes Recode. Bitcoin is down about 29% in January to $10,172, its worst monthly slide since February 2014. Ripple and Litecoin have plunged 45% and 29%, respectively, but Ethereum has gained 47%.

Idea of the Day:  Getting people (and companies) to change is hard. And the “carrot-and-stick ways of ‘motivating’ people are so ‘last century,’” says Keith Ferrazzi of Ferrazzi Greenlight — even a financial incentive won’t necessarily get people to embrace a new way of working. So what does motivate workers to embrace change? It’s all about the personal connection.

“No matter how loyal your employees are, or how much pride they have in the company, they won’t be motivated to change just for the company's sake. For your employees to be engaged, they need to see how they can realize their own goals through the collective change the company wants to make.”

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Nirajita Banerjee / Share this using #DailyRundown