Weekend Bites: A week of pauses, pivots, profits, and big interviews

In which we munch over the week's platter of news and views

Four months ago, on April 6, after the six-member monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) unanimously decided to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said: “It’s a pause, not a pivot.”
 
The markets were expecting another 25-basis-point rate hike since the inflation rate based on the consumer price index in January and February was above 6 per cent, the higher end of the tolerance band of the central bank.
 
The question this week is, how many times does the MPC’s fingers have to tap the pause button before it becomes a pivot.

 

Story of the week
 
On Thursday, the RBI announced the MPC’s unanimous decision to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent. This is the third tap on the pause button.
 
Governor Das brushed aside the sudden rise in CPI-based inflation, driven by food prices, even though he raised the inflation projection for the current financial year.
 
There was another thing to warm the hearts of borrowers. Concerned about loan-repayment periods becoming unreasonably long, the RBI will put in place a transparent framework for resetting interest rates on floating-interest loans such as home loans.
 

Along with Deputy Governors Michael Debabrata Patra and T Rabi Sankar, the governor spoke on a range of issues.
 
The market seemed happy. The bond yield dropped marginally after the policy announcement.
 
However, if we take a long shot, the landscape looks different, says our banking columnist, Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
 
"India is uniquely placed to benefit from the ongoing transformational shift in the global economy," Governor Das said on Thursday. However, he added that the monetary policy transmission was still underway as headline inflation remained higher than 4 per cent.
 
So, the first ‘p’ is still not yet a pivot.

 
In other news…
 
It should surprise no one that big corporate honchos open up to Business Standard. Here are three examples from this week.
 
Maruti Suzuki India is aiming for 20 per cent of its sales to be electric by 2031, its chairman, R C Bhargava, told us. He also discussed the need to acquire Suzuki Motor Gujarat and the reorganisation.
 
The tendering process for awarding construction contracts by the government is broken and needs to be fixed urgently to reduce cost overruns to the tune of trillions of rupees, Anil M Naik, the outgoing chairman of Larsen & Toubro, India’s largest construction and engineering conglomerate, told us.

 
It has been more than five years since Salil Parekh took the hot seat at Infosys. In these years, he has stabilised the information technology major and is trying to make it more relevant to clients. Parekh spoke to us about the company’s vision for the next five years, its bet on artificial intelligence, and the macro environment.
 
Air India unveiled a new logo and livery, incorporating shades of red, gold, and violet, on Thursday as part of a rebranding. The Maharajah, its mascot since 1946, will now play a more “background” role.
 
Tech that: Word from the world of technology and start-ups

 
It is not only the corporate honchos who like talking to us.
 
“I think we will give different timelines for the transition to different types of platforms. The smaller ones may take a little longer. Big Tech companies certainly don’t need a long transition timeline,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, told us. He was talking about the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, which passed the Rajya Sabha test on Wednesday and moved a step closer to becoming a law. Chandrasekhar discussed aspects of the Bill, its compliance timeline, and the Centre’s decision to impose an import licence on laptops and notebooks.

 
Watch it: From The Morning Show
 
What does Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma want? Watch it here.
 
What is Suveen obsessing over?
 
First it rained unicorns in India. The rainy season gave way to the funding winter. Now comes the spring of profits.
 
In the last few days alone, Meesho, MobiKwik, and Zomato have said they have become profitable. That takes the number of profitable unicorns in India to at least 21, out of the total 92. Others such as Paytm and Delhivery have presented a clear path to profitability.
 
This is a pleasant surprise to those fretting over the long periods of growth and losses startups endure. What has changed? Here is how Indian unicorns are forging profits out of the funding winter's ice.
 
This is Suveen signing off. Please send tips, comments, news, or views about anything from pauses and pivots, to profits, to suveen.sinha@bsmail.in.
 
(Suveen Sinha is Chief Content Editor at Business Standard)