Archive: October 1, 2021

Snapdeal announces “Toofani Sale” Season

Snapdeal, India’s leading value e-commerce company, on September 30 announced its first “Toofani Sale” of the season will kickstart from October 3.

“Toofani Sale” will go live on October 3 and will continue till October 10, 2021. Through the sale week, there will be thousands of amazing deals on a vast selection of products covering fashion apparel including sarees, kurtis, suits, shirts, t-shirts, jeans, kids wear, and fashion accessories like watches, jewelry, eyewear, and wallets, home and kitchenware, kitchen appliances, home furnishing, beauty & personal care, health & fitness.

During Snapdeal’s first “Toofani Sale” customers will discover deals and savings on items from categories and brands like

• Women’s Fashion: Globus, ZIvame 109 F, Fusion Beat, Sugr, RUPA, AKS, Juniper, Jaipur Kurti, Rama’s, KSUT
• Men’s Fashion: Duke, Bullmer, Veirdo, Cherokee, Alcis, Jokey, VIP, Gritstone, Liberty, Paragon, Campus, Red Tape
• Home & Kitchenware: Syska Led, Phillips, Everready Prestige, Trueware, Oilveware, G-PET, Nirlon, Singer
• Kids Fashion: Gini and Jony, Cherokee, Colt, Donut, Hopscotch, Trase, Solethreads, Paragon, Lancer, Campus
• Beauty and Personal Care: Cosmos by Bewakoof.com, Vi-john, Coloressence, Faces Canada, Maate by Suresh Raina & Priyanka Raina, Mother Sparsh, Little’s, Bombay Shaving Company, Super Smelly, Good vibes

“By spreading the deals over multiple days and making our best deals available online for a longer period of time, we wanted to give our customers the flexibility to plan their shopping around their schedules and convenience, as well as multiple opportunities to take advantage of the best offers and deals,” said Snapdeal spokesperson

Other interesting features of the first Toofani Sale are:

• Theme-based shopping days built around popular categories such as Fashion, Home & Kitchen, Health & Beauty
• As many as 40 “Deal of the day” on products from different categories
• Exclusive deals that will refresh every three hours
• Additional discounts for shoppers using Rupay, AU Bank, Dhani cards, and Paytm wallet.

Recent reporting by global consulting firm, Kearney and India’s RedSeer have highlighted the growing importance of buyers from Tier II, III, and smaller cities. This is expected to be one of the key drivers of e-commerce growth in India, including in the festive season set to commence in a few days.

Given that a lot of Snapdeal’s users are from non-metro cities, in the run-up to Diwali season, Snapdeal has been working to deliver a smooth and seamless shopping experience for its customers from smaller cities and towns.

This year, Snapdeal added 130 additional logistic hubs across India. The expanded network is designed such that it will cater to the surge in demand that is typical of the festive season starting in India and will serve the growing demand for online shopping from smaller cities such as Baramulla (J&K), Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh), Khammam (Telangana), Alwar (Rajasthan), Sambalpur (Odisha), Tumkur (Karnataka), Latur (Maharashtra), Dimapur (Nagaland) and is designed to speed up deliveries for customers in these cities and in surrounding areas.

Currently, Snapdeal services over 26,000 pin codes, reaching over 90% of Indians across India, including metros, Tier 1 & 2 cities, and most of Tier 3 and 4 towns of India, with no minimum order value restrictions for free shipping.

While its website and mobile app were already available in eight Indian languages, it recently announced that its customer support services via call centers are also now available in Indian languages like Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, and Bengali, other than Hindi and English.

Edelweiss AMC launches Edelweiss NIFTY PSU Bond Plus SDL Index Fund – 2027 on September 30, 2021

Hyderabad: Edelweiss Asset Management Limited, one of India’s fastest growing AMCs, today announced the launch of their next target maturity index fund – Edelweiss NIFTY PSU Bond plus SDL Index Fund – 2027. Passively managed, this index fund will invest in AAA-rated PSU Bonds as well as State Development Loans (SDL).

Earlier this year in March, Edelweiss AMC launched India’s first fixed income Index Fund – Edelweiss Nifty PSU Bond Plus SDL Index Fund – 2026 with a unique target maturity structure and successfully managed to reach landmark AUM of over Rs. 3,000 Cr in less than 6 months. To follow up on its success, the AMC is now launching Edelweiss Nifty PSU Bond Plus SDL Index Fund – 2027. The total AUM of Target Maturity Index Funds/ETFs managed by Edelweiss AMC is almost Rs. 40,000 Cr as on 22nd September 2021**.

“After the successful foray into passive fixed income space with the launch of Edelweiss Nifty PSU Bond Plus SDL Index Fund – 2026 in March-21, we are pleased to announce the second in a series – Edelweiss Nifty PSU Bond Plus SDL Index Fund – 2027 fund. Our investors & partners have appreciated the simplicity, transparency, liquidity and low cost of our fixed income passive funds and we strive to deliver more in future and continue our leadership position. These traditional savings instruments provide safety, stability, and diversification in investment portfolio and suits need of many investors who today invest in Fixed Deposits,” commented Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO, Edelweiss Asset Management Limited.

The Edelweiss NIFTY PSU SDL Index Fund – 2027 NFO will be open for subscription between 30th September 2021 to 8th October 2021.

With an investment amount that is as low as Rs.5000/-, the fund will have a defined maturity date of 30th April 2027. At maturity, investors will get back their investment proceeds. 100% of the fund’s proceeds are invested in AAA CPSE instruments and State Development Loans. Taxed at 20% post-indexation, this fund will be more tax efficient as compared to traditional avenues.

The passively managed debt index scheme yields better returns as compared to other fixed instruments. The target maturity fund structure helps in better allocation, building high quality portfolio and efficient taxation. It is a target maturity open ended fund which provides investors exposure to a diversified portfolio. This is suitable for investors seeking exposure to a fixed income and bond like stable instrument, and for investors having a medium-term investment horizon looking to diversify in line with the index’s maturity period.

This open-ended Target Maturity Index Fund will predominantly invest in the constituents of NIFTY PSU Bond Plus SDL April 2027 50:50 Index. The Proportion of investments of AAA PSU Bonds and SDLs will be equally divided with a weightage of 50% each. Exposure to any single company’s bonds or loans would be capped at 15% of the corpus. Subsequently, there will be a quarterly rebalancing and review of the index constituents.

Walkaroo leads innovation in Formal shoes

Bengaluru: Walkaroo, the most popular Indian footwear brand launches a new range of non-leather Formal Shoes designed and manufactured using a first of its kind machine in India, aimed at disrupting the formal shoe market.

Traditionally, the durability of the formal shoes has been dependent on the adhesion between the uppers and the outer soles, this would lead to numerous instances of sole detachment. The new process at Walkaroo uses state-of-the-art machinery from Italy. It uses in-situ moulding of uppers with outer soles, previously seen only in the premium performance wear footwear. The machine is capable of moulding a shoe even with double density, with a soft midsole and a hard outer sole, where the upper is directly moulded to the sole.

Combining this innovative process with best-in-class components, this new range from Walkaroo helps in ensuring detach-free products that offers durability and comfort while also retaining the style quotient of traditional hand-crafted products. Another advantage of this product is that it is all-weather formal shoes as uppers are made of synthetic leather material and no adhesives used for joining uppers with outer soles. This carefully curated collection includes modern variants of Classic derby, Brogue and Roman shoes that are priced at starting price of Rs.599.

Mr. VKC Noushad, Director, Walkaroo International Pvt. Ltd says, “We, at Walkaroo, have always been striving to democratise fashion. We are very happy to bring this range of value formal footwear that combines stylish designs and comfort to the Indian consumer for all-weather usage. ”

Shop these stylish shoes from your nearby footwear outlets. You can also shop them at Walkaroo.in, Amazon and Flipkart.

Existing Investors, Prime Securities and Team India Managers Ltd. lead pre-Series A round in Fantasy Sports Platform Fantasy Akhada

New Delhi: Gurgaon-based Fantasy Akhada, an online Fantasy Sports platform, has secured about USD 2 mm in a pre–Series A round through Prime Securities, Team India Managers Limited, and existing investors. Fantasy Akhada will use the funds to focus on enhancing the in–house tech capability, be aggressive with their user acquisition & retention strategies and for scaling up the organization. Fantasy Akhada is one of the most customer centric fantasy sports platforms in the country and drives the vision of the company to “enhance sports engagement among sports fans.”

Prime Securities Limited was an exclusive Investment Banker to this transaction.

The financing round was led by Prime Securities, Team India Managers Limited and existing investors which included a group of highly successful professionals, including Jyotivardhan Jaipuria (ex-Bank of America Merrill Lynch), the family of Harsha Bhogle (renowned cricket commentator), Sunil Sood (ex-MD & CEO, Vodafone) and Atul Kasbekar (eminent photographer/producer). Nikunj Doshi (Managing Partner – Bay Capital) also participated in this round in his personal capacity.

Fantasy Akhada has seen phenomenal growth over the last 6 months after their fund raise in the month of April 2021. The user base has doubled over this period to touch almost 6 lakhs and the Annualized Gross Gaming Revenues have seen a 21x growth on the back of intelligent user acquisition and retention techniques. During this period, Fantasy Akhada has also been visible on top sports channels like Star Sports & Sony Sports Network, with properties like the English Premier League and the Indian Women Cricket Team’s tour of Australia.

Mr. Amit Purohit, Founder of Fantasy Akhada, welcomed all the incoming investors and said, “We are absolutely delighted to welcome our new set of investors. Prime Securities has been a true partner for us over the last 6 months and we could have not asked for a better Investment Banker on board in this journey. We will be leveraging this fund raise to drive our vision of enhancing sports engagement in sports fans and the entire team is absolutely kicked about this development, at the most opportune moment, just before the heavy duty T20 cricket season.”

Mr. Nischay Saraf, Senior Vice President, Early-Stage Financing, Prime Securities, delighted with this association, said, “At Prime, we like to identify high growth potential early-stage companies and partner with them. Fantasy Akhada has been one such example, where we had recently raised about US 1 mm in April 2021. The operational metrics have outperformed even the best-case scenarios of the management team, accelerating the estimates by 18 months. This phenomenal growth has led to the current round in a matter of six months backed by Prime’s network of HNIs and family offices. Given the understanding of the user life cycle and user experience that the team has, we are certain that they will be able to carve out a clear niche for themselves in this rapidly developing ecosystem.”

Cholamandalam Investment & Finance Company Limited Reiterates Partnership with Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospitals for Free Child Heart Surgeries

Cholamandalam Investment & Finance Company Limited (Chola), the financial services arm of Murugappa Group, today reiterated its alliance with Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospitals to provide free cardiac treatment and care to children of drivers, cleaners and mechanics of Commercial Heavy Vehicles, from anywhere in the country. The company has announced an outlay of INR 120 lakhs this fiscal (2021 – 2022) towards this noble cause which will help treat 80 children who are born with congenital heart disease.

In the 2020 – 2021 fiscal, Chola had pledged to support the surgical heart procedures for these children whose ages ranged from new born upto 18 years with a total outlay of INR 120 lakhs.

Commenting on the initiative, Mr. Ravindra Kumar Kundu, Executive Director, Cholamandalam Investment & Finance Company Limited said, “Trucking is today one of the most important links that facilitates productivity and competitive efficiency, leading to rapid economic development of the country. It also plays a key role in bringing about the development of the remote regions by opening them to trade and investment and integrating them with the mainstream economy. Yet the lives of truck drivers, cleaners and mechanics are adversely affected by inconveniences, poor facilities, and the absence of empathy. The stressful and challenging nature of the work adversely influences their physical as well as mental health. This initiative is a small step from our end to bring some relief and help these families enter a better life. This World Heart Day (September 29), and always, we hope and pray for a healthier world.”

As part of the arrangement, Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospitals located in Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Palwal (Haryana) and Kharghar (Maharashtra) provide world class pediatric cardiac care for the children of road transport staff totally free. From diagnostics to open heart surgery, post-operative care, medication, diet…all services will be provided without any charge.
Speaking on the partnership with Chola, Dr. Subramanian Chellappan, Director, Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospital (Palwal, Haryana) said, “In India, every year around 2.4 Lakh children are born with congenital heart disease (CHD) with this being one of largest cause of child mortality and the treatment would cost INR 4-5 lakhs in private hospitals which is absolutely not affordable to socio-economically backward families like drivers and mechanics. During the COVID Pandemic, children suffering with congenital heart disease (CHD) were vulnerable to both COVID and CHD. While this treatment was unavailable in both Private and Govt Hospitals during the Pandemic, Sai Sanjeevani Hospitals continued to offer these life saving surgeries with COVID protocols. We value our partnership with Chola who supported children of trucking community with CHD, in these critical times. From 2019 till Sept 2021, Chola has given new life to over 150 children whose families have been uplifted financially, socially and emotionally.”

Chola is committed to identifying and supporting programmes aimed at empowerment of the disadvantaged sections of the society through education, access to and awareness about financial services and the like; provision of access to basic necessities like healthcare, drinking water & sanitation and the like to underprivileged; working towards eradicating hunger and poverty, through livelihood generation and skill development; supporting environmental and ecological balance through afforestation, soil conservation, rain water harvesting, conservation of flora & fauna, and similar programme; promotion of sports through training of sportspersons; undertaking rural development projects; and any other programme that falls under their CSR policy and are aimed at the empowerment of disadvantaged sections of the society.

Truck drivers, cleaners or mechanics whose children are suffering from congenital heart disease may approach Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospitals at 8010119000 to avail of the free treatment.

Have the operational agility to absorb cyclical volatility, says NMDC Chairman at the company’s 63 Annual General Meeting

Hyderabad, 30th September 2021: NMDC, the Navaratna PSE under the Ministry of Steel held its 63rd AGM on Thursday during which it shared highlights of its spectacular performance achieved during very difficult times.

The pandemic has accelerated some key trends that will bring about a shift in steel demand. “The iron & steel industry will see exciting opportunities from rapid developments through digitalisation and automation, infrastructure initiatives, reorganisation of urban centres and energy transformation. At NMDC we have the required operational agility to absorb the cyclical volatilities in the iron ore and steel sector and stay ahead on a growth trajectory,” said Shri Sumit Deb, Chairman and MD, NMDC.

Addressing the company’s shareholders via video conference, Shri Deb shared the many records set by the NMDC team during FY 21, including a record turnover of Rs 15,370 crores, the highest since the company’s inception. Profit before tax (PBT) from operations was Rs 8,902 crores compared to Rs 6,123 crores in the CPLY – an increase of 45.37%. Profit after tax (PAT) witnessed a rise of 73.21%, from Rs 3,610 crores in FY 20 to Rs 6,253 crores.

As India’s largest iron ore miner, NMDC was prepared to meet the unexpected surge in domestic demand and was further supported by the Government’s proactive measures for a quick recovery. Shri Deb pointed out that record production and sales had also been achieved by the NMDC team not spared by the pain of a tough second wave of this pandemic. During the financial year NMDC achieved its highest ever production of 34.15 MT and sales of 33.25 MT.

The company has a capital expenditure of ₹ 3,720 crores planned for FY22. Sharing the progress of the company’s projects – additional screening plant, doubling of railway line and upgradation of conveyor pipeline and slurry pipelines, Shri Deb also stresses on the digital transformation of the company.

“NMDC has made IT and digitalisation a strategic priority, synergising its efforts to significantly enhance competitive advantage and efficiency. We expect technology, automation and data analytics will reinvent all aspects of our business – from mineral exploration to mining, the processing of ore to the sales and distribution of the product,” he said. NMDC is the first CPSE to implement, despite Covid-19 challenges, the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution on SAP S/4 HANA in 21 months with minimal to near zero disruption to business activity.
The digital transformation at NMDC will include a fleet management system, automatic sampling, vision enhancement systems to avoid accidents under foggy weather and 3D volumetric laser scanners, improving productivity and enhancing operational safety.

In the current fiscal, NMDC expects to achieve production of 47 MT. It will also begin mining coal from the two blocks it has been allotted by Q4 of FY22. The first quarter of FY22 was an extremely rewarding one, NMDC achieved production of 8.91 MT and sales of 9.45 MT respectively – its best Q1 since inception. Total revenue from operations stood at Rs 6512 crore & PAT at Rs 3193 crore in Q1, also the best ever.