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Siddharth Mehta, Bay Capital's founder and CIO | Business Standard News

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Siddharth Mehta, Bay Capital's founder and CIO | Business Standard News

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Fintech Startups are the new unicorn of the market, says Siddharth Mehta

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New Delhi [India], April 4 (ANI/PNN): Modern customers' perceptions of finance have changed because of fintech. Fintech startups created new goods and services or altered existing ones by using technology says Siddharth Mehta, founder & CIO of Bay Capital, all with the primary objective of improving the customer experience.

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Role of Digital Technology in the Growth of Small Businesses

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Role of Digital Technology in the Growth of Small Businesses

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New Delhi: Eying growth and success in your business but not sure how to achieve it? "The best words of advice for you are - make sure you keep up with the trends and be watchful of what your competition is doing," says Naimish Sinha - the renowned technology mentor, digital transformation expert, and trainer.

The pandemic has taught us some really tough lessons in life. The last two and a half years have been full of challenges for all of us and businesses are no exception. Some businesses have seen exceptionally bad times while others came almost to a closure. However, there are some businesses that did not only survive the tough times but also flourished incredibly during the period.

Are you curious to know as to what was the magical formula that kept these businesses up and running at such a crucial time? Digital technology empowered them to meet the changing needs of their customers, employees, and partners. These businesses continued to excel just because they embraced technology when it was needed.

Digital and mobile technology have a massive impact on global businesses and some of the best ways in which digital technology empowered small businesses, in particular, to overcome the challenging times of the pandemic and excel are discussed hereunder for your quick reference:
Dynamic markets and adapting to a modern digital marketplace
Since the pandemic struck the world, life has changed drastically for all of us. The change can be seen almost everywhere - from shopping for clothes, footwear, and medicines to groceries and beyond. As consumer behavior has undergone a visible change in the past couple of years, modern businesses (SMBs) have also changed the way their employees were equipped and the ways in which they used to advertise, market, and deliver their products and services.

Thanks to mobile networks, tools, and devices, digital business models are a reality. The transformation would never have been possible without connectivity, analytics, applications, security, and personalization that's needed for a broad range of use cases.

Online ordering turned out to be an important route of revenue generation for even the small businesses as well during the pandemic as it is flexible, immediate, and inexpensive. With collaboration technology, it is now possible to work more efficiently with seamless connectivity even if people are working from multiple locations.
Prospects are promising
Digital transformation has allowed small business owners to spot new opportunities and expand their businesses. Modern small to mid-sized businesses can easily adapt to the changing needs of their customers. Digital connectivity enables them to find themselves capable of competing with large companies.
Remote working became easy
Remote working became so popular during the pandemic era and businesses of all sizes are attached to the remote/work from a home system mainly because of the safety aspect. With digital technology, businesses are able to allow their staff to work remotely from their homes when the environment outside is not safe for them.

The world has changed a lot after the pandemic and by not following the trends, you may be planning for an imminent failure.

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Role of Digital Technology in the Growth of Small Businesses

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New Delhi: Eying growth and success in your business but not sure how to achieve it? "The best words of advice for you are - make sure you keep up with the trends and be watchful of what your competition is doing," says Naimish Sinha - the renowned technology mentor, digital transformation expert, and trainer.

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Ajit Deshmukh is managing director and co-head - investment banking, Equirus.

The Indian Financial services sector was dominated by traders, brokers, and middlemen who used to conduct transactions on paper. Today, the buzz of a trading floor has been replaced by a cool silence of computers that conduct trades. And the need to rush to banks for the smallest of transactions has been replaced by a few taps on our mobile devices. All of this has been possible due to the rapid digitization of the Indian finance industry.

The easiest way to see this impact is to see how IT companies are benefiting from it. Today, 40% of the revenues that Indian IT companies such as TCS and Cognizant make are from the BFSI segment. IT companies such as Infosys are creating Core banking solutions such as Finacle which are being used by one of India's largest public sector banks, Bank of Baroda. Another public sector bank, State Bank of India underwent rapid digitalization by offering SBI YONO, which was developed by IBM. SBI YONO currently has 54 million Monthly active users. There has been a rapid shift in the way consumers view payments due to apps like YONO.

For instance, in India, the volume, as well as the value of UPI transactions, have doubled post covid. In FY 21 UPI had processed 22.3 billion transactions with a value of Rs 41 trillion. In FY 22 the total number of transactions was 46 billion transactions with a value of Rs 84 trillion. In India MSMEs were the most impacted due to such transactions as 87.3 percent of the 41.4 lakh transactions conducted across the MSME ministry were done digitally.

Consumers have not only hugely benefited from the digitization of payments but by the revolutionization of investing. Around 10.7 million Demat accounts were opened by retail investors between April 2020 and January 2021. This has allowed the Indian stock markets to reach $3 Trillion in 2021, within 4 years which has been unprecedented. Another reason for this milestone is the digital transformation of trading institutions like the NSE. NSE NEAT (National Exchange for Automated Trading) has more than 181,000 terminals across India that allow traders to make high volumes of trade with minimal latency.

Furthermore, the stock market in India has also been impacted by the rise of fintech platforms like Sharekhan which allow retail investors to buy and sell stocks easily. The number of monthly active users in Sharekhan has almost tripled from 275,000 in FY 2014 to 764,000 in FY 2022. Similarly, financial institutions like Equirus have also been transformed by digital transformation by offering apps such as Equirus Wealth, which allows retail investors to invest in Mutual funds in a hassle-free manner. Along with that, trading is also computerized in Equirus Portfolio management services (PMS) which coupled with the steadfast leadership of experienced individuals has allowed the Equirus Long Horizon fund to achieve a return of 19.48 percent.

Digital Transformation has caused Indian banks to invest more in their electronic channels. HDFC bank has invested in its PayZapp mobile app and internet banking platforms, which turned out to be a great investment for them as they found that 57% of customer visits were through mobile. Apart from that, they had 234 million visits on their website in Q4 of FY 2022. However, in India, Legacy firms like Kotak, HDFC, and Axis have invested only 7 to 9 % of total operating expenses in technological spending. While their International peers such as UBS are spending around 10% of revenues on tech spending. So, we are only at the tip of the iceberg of digital transformation in the Indian finance industry. Hence, we believe that Indian financial firms can acquire more tech firms to increase their technological capabilities.

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Digital transformation in the Indian financial sector

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Ajit Deshmukh is managing director and co-head - investment banking, Equirus. The Indian Financial services sector was dominated by traders, brokers, and middlemen who used to conduct transactions on paper. Today, the buzz of a trading floor has been replaced by a cool silence of computers that conduct trades.

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Siddharth Mehta of Bay Capital's Talking Point

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Siddharth Mehta of Bay Capital's Talking Point

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Founder of Bay Capital, Siddharth Mehta believes that businesses should start adapting digital platforms if they want to compete and grow in an Indian market as consumers are moving digital day by day.

#siddharthmehtabaycapital #siddharthmehta #baycapital #siddharth #mehta #digitaltransformation

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Talking Point with Bay Capital's Siddhartha Mehta

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Follow the latest in business and stock markets on BloombergQuint. Our digital streaming service includes comprehensive live programming on a daily basis, from global and domestic markets, coverage to views from the most influential newsmakers in business and finance.

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India over the next 10 years will see a dramatic increase in FDI: Bruce Flatt, CEO, Brookfield

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India over the next 10 years will see a dramatic increase in FDI: Bruce Flatt, CEO, Brookfield

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Anuj Ranjan (L) and Bruce Flat

Emerging from a Canadian industrial conglomerate, Brookfield is today among the top three alternative asset managers in the world with over $800 billion in assets under management (AUM) across real estate, infrastructure, renewable power, private equity and credit. It is also among the world's largest owners and operators of hard assets--pipelines, port terminals in Brisbane and Sydney among others, airports, office blocks such as Canary Wharf in London, telecom towers such as T-Mobile's in Germany, solar parks and data centres. In India, it has already deployed $22 billion in 12 years in Reliance Jio's telecom towers and RIL's gas pipeline in Andhra Pradesh, 50+ million square feet in office properties in key Indian cities along with 3,400 hospitality keys (Hotel Leelaventure). Last year, Brookfield Global Transition Fund (BGTF) raised $15 billion, making it the world's largest private fund dedicated to facilitating the global transition to a net-zero carbon economy. As of February, approximately $7 billion had already been invested or committed. Chief executive officer Bruce Flatt and Anuj Ranjan, president, private equity, spoke to Arijit Barman & Bodhisatva Ganguli about Brookfield's global outlook and its plans for India. Edited excerpts:

Till last year, the firm's investments, including dividends, have returned more than 3,700% since you took over. That compares with about 500% for the S&P 500 Index. You invest in hard assets such as toll roads, airports, ports, utilities and real estate. How have you managed to outperform so consistently? And is this sustainable considering the volatility that we currently find ourselves in?
Bruce Flatt: Our business is about buying, uh, good businesses in good places, holding for long periods of time. We are focused on backbone of the economy across the world. What we have found, is by entering those businesses or buying those type of assets and operating them well and selectively selling them at sometimes greater than what the fair value is very important. There are two things that are highly relevant to most businesses and in particular to what we do. One is the value of an asset, which is generally determinable by the discounted cash flow of an asset and second is the price. But the price, that's in the stock market is often affected by things which are out of the ordinary. You just saw what happened in the United States recently with regards to Silicon Valley Bank. The stock markets went down by 5% on Friday and 3% on Thursday and 2% on Wednesday. That's 10% down for the week. But that had nothing to do with value of most businesses. Therefore, the price and value are very different and our goal over time is to make investments where we get good value. So, if we can, we buy assets or businesses when the price is lower than its value and sell them when the value is higher. Or at least when the price is greater than the value.

So, I'd say the returns that we have been generating over the last 20, 25 years has been a combination of that investing style and the building of an asset management business for alternatives.

But the alternative asset management business has been relatively a new phenomenon?
Bruce Flatt: When we started alternatives, there wasn't really a business. Institutional clients across the world invested originally in bonds, then they invested in equities. And 20-25 years ago, we, and a few others started introducing other products to them. And when I say other products -- it's investments in real estate, infrastructure, renewables, private equity, credit, energy transition all of those types of products. Our returns are both the investment success for our own balance sheet, but also what we have done for our clients, as those clients have institutionalized their business into alternatives as well. I guess we have ridden this wave of institutionalization of alternatives. The number of alternatives when we started out 25 years ago was at 2% and today that 2% has become something like 16%, but for some institutions it's 60%.

Does the current global volatility throw up a lot of buying opportunities for Brookfield?
Bruce Flatt: The short answer is yes. The longer answer is we're quite positive on the markets and the environment today. That's not a common opinion these days. Part of the reason is because of what we do. Part of it's also the fact that we raised $100 billion of capital last year for investing. We'll raise another $100 billion this year. So, we have a lot of capital. And the entry point for investments is always important. Both bonds and equities are more fairly valued today than they were before. Growth stocks are more fairly valued today than they were before just like technology's more valued than were before and PE multiples broadly are more are more valued than they were before. So, it's a much better environment to enter in for new investments and that presents opportunities because of what I just argued about value versus price. It just means maybe you are buying at a discount to value and at a fair point as opposed to 18 months ago when a lot of things were overvalued in both private and public markets and that potentially compromised returns over a longer term. So, it's a much better point today.

If you were to buy companies today, which sectors would they be in? And in which geographies?
Bruce Flatt: India for sure. But I will come to that in a bit. We are in 30 countries around the world. What we do is establish a business in a country where we have attributes that we think are favourable to investments over the longer term. We stay and operate in those countries and buy assets in those countries that fit all of our areas of operation, when it makes sense. Last year, we put $60 billion to work across all our businesses. This year I think we'll probably put $30, $40, $50 billion to work.

If you set up a vast global business across six or seven businesses (verticals), it allows us to respond to opportunities in a flexible manner. So, our funds don't say, for example, you have to invest in India for this period of time because you have money available for a certain period of time. The number one mistake people make is if they have money and are forced to make investments within a certain period of time. But sometimes it's the wrong time to invest.

As long as it's in one of the places that we've endorsed as an investment, has investment merit, our funds are agnostic to where the opportunities are. Often, they switch across geographies to markets where the valuations are reasonable and to places where we are doing better.

But inevitably, half of our money goes to the United States. It has the largest GDP, most liquid market, with most companies with the most capitalisation and the most opportunity. And therefore, almost 40 to 60% of every fund goes into the United States, 20% goes to Europe, 20% goes to Asia, India and a small portion to South America. I do think India over the next 10 years will see a dramatic increase in FDI from foreign investors just because of what's going on geopolitically.

Do you see significant opportunities in China as they are opening up post zero Covid?
Bruce Flatt: Relatively speaking we have a modest business in China. Here in India, we have $22 billion in assets. In China we have something like $15-$22 billion across businesses. So, it's not big compared to our global business. I'd say globally, people are interested in FDI into India. For China, investors around the world are split into two camps. Those that are interested in China and those that are not. So, our strategy depends on who we invest for. We have the luxury of having many clients and we can change our strategies and fund types to be able to accommodate each of our investors.

The $60 billion that you put to work last year and the investments planned for this year would be predicated upon a low interest rate regime. But that's changing and inflation is a genuine concern. Would you agree?
Bruce Flatt: Inflation is actually a good thing and most of what we own are positively disposed to inflation. If you buy a regulated utility and you buy it at the rate base and you're supposed to get an 8% return, it's an 8% return on a real basis. So, you get 8% plus inflation. And when we bought the asset, we assumed you were going to get a 2% increase in inflation. Well, guess what? We're getting 6%. And therefore, when you compound at 8% and you add 2% or you add 6% over a number of years, it's highly positive to your numbers because it compounds.

It's more expensive to build solar and wind facilities today. It's, uh, more expensive to build real estate. Ultimately that gets affected by the contract values. In utilities and infrastructure, you earn on a monthly basis whereas in real estate, you actually get it when the lease rollovers happen. Retail sector has been doing very well in the United States in the last 18 months because of inflation. Stores pay a percentage of sales to us as rent. So as the value of the goods they sell is going up, you get 15% of those sales.

None of the investments we have made or will make are predicated on 0% interest rates. They will never be. Now if rates go up by 500 basis points more from here -- which they will not -- then maybe I think your question would have a different answer. Also remember, interest rate increases are a one-time event whereas real return assets may take a hit on incomes for a short period of time, but then they just keep going. They're not bonds. If you own a 30-year bond, you lose your value because you have locked in a 2% return for the next 30 years, or seven or five or whatever it is. That's what happened to these regional banks. But the real return assets, you don't, the cash flows keep going up, keep compounding away. That's the big difference in owning these types of assets.

Remember a lot of the assets we have 30-year fixed rate financing, so there's no increase in financing costs.
Anuj Ranjan: We are an operations-oriented investor. Meaning, across our portfolio, we have about 180,000 operating people, 25,000 here in India. And how we generate our returns is by operating these businesses or assets better. Interest rates and inflation are higher than they were in the past. They're probably closer to normal or maybe slightly higher than normal today. But for a long-term investor like us, we're betting on our people's capability to operate assets or businesses and deliver better returns.

Considering the rates have moved 500 bps, are you surprised there hasn't been more accidents?
Up until a fortnight, I was surprised there hadn't been an accident and then I found one. We found a misallocation of capital that got caught out during a period of time of interest rate increases. I take this as a large positive that we're now seeing. It's one more example of getting excesses out of the system. And that's a good thing. We had put too much into the system because we did not know how to deal with deflation. There's a very simple way to get inflation out of the system, which is to slow the economy and you slow the economy by exactly doing what they're doing. And sometimes there are some small things that get affected on the way.

How do you see the meltdown of Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate's implosion? One-off events or precursors to bigger and macro-level busts? Shares of larger banks including Citi, JPM, Bank of America dropped along with SVB, and so did the broader US markets.
I don't know if these are one-time events but it's a small piece of the financial sector in the United States. What's happening in the asset management, insurance and banking industry in the US is another round of consolidation. Money is flowing into the large players as we have seen it in our funds. You just continue to see this in tougher times. Consolidation to the bigger, more trusted and better brands.

One of the biggest trends has been around globalisation. To what extent do you see this decoupling of supply chains and the China+1 strategy play out in the Brookfield portfolio?
There are three large trends that we're capitalising on: Decarbonisation... what's going on around the world of getting carbon out of the system. Deglobalisation to answer your question and digitalisation of everything.

It will take tens of trillions of dollars of investment across the world to get carbon out of the industry. Sixty to 70% of carbon is produced in the power-generation business. And in the next 20 years, we're going to take coal out of most countries and natural gas out of some.

Digitisation... you see a mobile handset but behind that machine are billions and billions of investments in hardware, in the chips and the software. We paid $8 billion for Jio's towers. But that's just one country's, one operator's towers. We just put up an $18 billion investment to buy T-Mobile's towers in Germany. But the data centres, the fibre to the home, the wi-fi systems, like everything behind the delivering data is witnessing a dramatic investment for the past 10 years. With the cloud companies, it's even increasing.

On de-globalisation, I'd say we went through a 25-year push for many products to be outsourced to India and China, and other countries. Initially, China took large, more sophisticated, electronic and sophisticated parts of the manufacturing value chain and India was originally at the lower end. But India is industrialising too. But with what's gone on politically in the world, most companies, especially US companies are thinking they need to diversify their supply chains and are diversifying either back to the United States or to places like India, which I think is an amazing opportunity for your economy. Machine goods, semiconductors are going back to the United States. So, we just financed a $16 billion partnership to build a plant in Arizona with Intel. And I think that's just the start of a big trend of reindustrialisation of the United States.

It's not that nothing will be built in China going forward. But it will largely be for China, a little bit for exports, but India will be a big beneficiary of this diversification of the supply chain.

Is India doing enough to make it easier to do business here?
Anuj Ranjan: Absolutely. I'd say we have invested about $22 billion largely over the last eight years, and a lot of it has been enabled by many of the positive reforms of the government across real estate, infrastructure and just general FDI investing. Our capital's been quite welcome and we have so far had a great journey investing here in building up the business.

In the recent budget, they have quadrupled infrastructure spend, and it was really focused on capex. I think they've identified the areas that need FDI from groups like us. We as an investor are going to be a beneficiary, I think, of all of these policies that are already in place.

From being one of the largest owners of office blocks in the country to the two Reliance deals, you have made several marquee bets in India. Do you have an India allocation number in mind?
Anuj Ranjan: It's hard to put a number. But I would say we went from effectively zero dollars invested in the country to $22 billion over eight years. And a lot of that was large-scale transactions. We are investing across all the sectors we've already gone into. So, real estate across all the different sectors like offices and hospitality. In infrastructure, we had a road platform. Of course, then we have taken big bets in telecom and in data centre infrastructure. Renewables are a big focus for us globally. We have built 4.5 GW in a measured and thoughtful way. We plan to do a lot more in India, given the size of the market and its growth prospects. We are well positioned to capture a significant part of that growth going forward, both through greenfield development and opportunistic M&A-but we are patient and will maintain that discipline as we grow.

In PE, we continue to focus on technology, financial and business services in a big way. But we can scale all of that up pretty dramatically in the next five years.

Bruce Flatt: I talked about the big focus on the reindustrialisation of the United States but I think an equally sized opportunity is there to help the global corporates come to India and both provide them the operating skills to be able to get plants and real estate and infrastructure and renewables built for them. We deal with all those companies around the world as they use our office buildings but now want to bring plants to countries like India and this is a big investment opportunity for them, for India and also for us. This is going to be an enormous build out and we also have the capital, operating capabilities on the ground here to support it.

You talked about decarbonisation. But that means many things today. From utility scale solar parks to mobility solutions to batteries to green hydrogen. What's the scope for Brookfield?
Bruce Flatt: The unique thing about wind but in particular solar, in most countries of the world today, it is the lowest cost energy. Period. No subsidies. And that's a really important thing. People want to do good, but they even want to do good more when it's the lowest cost. You need to assist companies to decarbonise. We raised a fund last year for $15 billion. We've been putting it to work. Our fund is for tradition transitioning to lower carbon. We're helping steel companies decarbonise. We are helping industrial companies decarbonise. We're the largest counterparty to Amazon to get carbon out. Our goal is to help them give them money and give them operating skills to be able to decarbonise.

We're not early-stage investors in any major degree, not because we don't want to be but our skill is putting large sums of money to work and operating them well in major countries in the world. And so, I would say hydrogen will come, batteries are coming. We're using them all. We're funding some things. We are funding battery projects, we're putting batteries with our solar facilities, but we're doing all those things in small degrees until we know it's economic and we can make money. And at that point, we can come in. And we did that with solar. We started small but ramped up big.

You are among the largest landlords of offices worldwide. But post-Covid are offices still attractive?
Bruce Flatt: I will tell you what has changed. Office rents in high-quality office properties are more desired, fuller and going at much higher rents than in were pre-Covid. The disparity between good and bad has always been there but it's even greater today as there is a flight to quality for everything.

After selling your Indian road portfolio last year, how are you planning to bulk up your infrastructure vertical. Will highways still be at the key investment thesis or newer areas like ports, data centres etc, be the next big growth opportunity?
Anuj Ranjan: We are one of the largest infrastructure investors in the country, and we expect many new opportunities to emerge from the "three D's": digitalization, decarbonization, and deglobalization. India presents a tremendous opportunity for investment around these strong thematic tailwinds, and across all these sectors. We will continue to look at all assets on both a risk-adjusted and absolute return basis where our operations-oriented approach can add value.

You have 2 successful and scale InviTs with Reliance Industries. Are you looking to replicate that with other infrastructure developers, conglomerates or build ground up or buy into existing InvITs?
Anuj Ranjan: Given that we now manage two large Invits, we are very familiar with the structure, and are flexible. Buying into a formed existing Invit is easier from an execution timeline perspective, but building Invits is not challenging for us at this point.

Are you actively looking at opportunities that are emerging due to the govt's asset monetisation exercise. Hotels like Ashok, Concor, Power Trading Corporations, airports are all primed for divestment? Do they interest you?
Anuj Ranjan: We like areas where we can deploy capital at scale, manage operations through our in-house expertise and add value. We are excited for the initiatives from the National Monetization Pipeline and National Infrastructure Pipeline as and when the government brings them to market.

Your private equity business in India is relatively young and smaller compared to your peers. How are you planning to ramp it up in the coming years? How will Brookfield's private equity strategy differ from other bulge bracket PE firms?
Anuj Ranjan: Our India private equity strategy is able to leverage the Brookfield ecosystem very well, and we want to back amazing companies and management teams where we can add value. Today we are focused on buyout deals and providing strategic capital solutions in specific sectors where we have deep operational expertise, including business services, industrials, technology, and financial services. We have a strong team on the ground and we have had early success in our investments. We now believe that we can significantly scale our current platform.

Our PE business has had real success in India, and the challenges at Indostar have been resolved. It has not dampened our appetite to grow private equity at all. We have continued to build deep operational expertise, and this gives us confidence that we can create value across situations and market cycles.

Private credit has for a long time been called a massive opportunity in India but the market growth has been lacklustre. You have been playing in this market for a while now, what has been your experience, what are the challenges that you see for growth of private credit business here, whether performing or non-performing credit?
Anuj Ranjan: We have established a strong track record with our Special Investments business in India. There is a real opportunity to bridge the gap between private equity and traditional Bank / Non-Bank (NBFC) credit. We see a need for structured & flexible capital solutions to meet corporate objectives, including carveouts, stressed situations and value unlocking by conglomerates. We allow these companies to drive growth without relinquishing control and share our global best practices with them. As the market matures, we expect our Special Investments business to scale significantly in the region.

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India over the next 10 years will see a dramatic increase in FDI: Bruce Flatt, CEO, Brookfield

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Emerging from a Canadian industrial conglomerate, Brookfield is today among the top three alternative asset managers in the world with over $800 billion in assets under management (AUM) across real estate, infrastructure, renewable power, private equity and credit.

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Digitalization and Innovation: The driving forces behind NBFC growth in India - Elets BFSI

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Digitalization and Innovation: The driving forces behind NBFC growth in India - Elets BFSI

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Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) have been an integral part of India's financial ecosystem. They are financial institutions that provide a wide range of banking services like loans, credit facilities, investments, and other financial products. NBFCs have played a significant role in the Indian economy's growth story, especially in the rural and semi-urban areas. They cater to the financial needs of small and medium-sized businesses, entrepreneurs, farmers, and individuals who do not have access to traditional banking services. In this article, we will explore the future of NBFCs in India.

One of the major factors that have contributed to the growth of NBFCs is the increasing demand for credit in the Indian economy. As per the RBI's data, the credit growth of banks has been sluggish over the past few years. This has resulted in a credit gap that NBFCs have been able to fill. NBFCs have been able to cater to the financial needs of small and medium-sized enterprises, which have been underserved by traditional banks.

Another factor that has contributed to the growth of NBFCs is the government's initiatives to promote financial inclusion. The government has launched various schemes like Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), Mudra Yojana, and Stand-Up India to provide financial services to the unbanked and underbanked population. NBFCs have played a crucial role in implementing these schemes and providing credit to the beneficiaries.
Also Read | NBFCs trying to anticipate stressful situations with hazards growing every day: Kunal Kathpal, CRO, Hinduja Leyland Finance
The rise of digitalization has also been a significant contributor to the growth of NBFCs. With the increasing adoption of digital platforms, NBFCs have been able to reach out to a wider customer base. Digital platforms have also enabled NBFCs to streamline their operations, reduce costs, and enhance their customer experience. This has resulted in NBFCs being able to offer competitive interest rates and customized products to their customers.
Challenges:
However, the NBFC sector in India has also faced challenges over the past few years. The sector has been hit by a series of defaults by some of the prominent players like IL&FS and DHFL. These defaults have led to a liquidity crisis in the sector, resulting in a slowdown in credit growth. The RBI has also tightened the regulatory framework for to prevent any further defaults and to ensure the stability of the financial system.
Future of NBFCs:
Despite the challenges, the future of NBFCs in India looks promising. The sector is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.5% between 2021 and 2026, according to a report by ResearchAndMarkets.com. The growth is expected to be driven by various factors like the increasing demand for credit, the government's initiatives to promote financial inclusion, and the rise of digitalization.

The latest developments and trends in NBFCs
Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is one of the significant trends that has affected the financial services industry, including NBFCs in India. With the proliferation of smartphones and the internet, digital platforms have become a crucial medium for providing financial services. NBFCs have been quick to adopt digital technologies to enhance customer experience, streamline operations, and reduce costs.

They have developed online platforms for loan applications, disbursals, and repayments. They have also adopted artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms for risk assessment and credit scoring. The digital transformation has resulted in a significant increase in operational efficiency, enabling NBFCs to provide faster and more reliable services to their customers.
Innovative Products
NBFCs in India have been offering innovative products to cater to the evolving needs of their customers. For instance, gold loans have become increasingly popular as a means of raising short-term finance, with NBFCs leading the way in this segment. They have also been offering loans against securities, education loans, and consumer durable loans. The innovation has helped NBFCs to diversify their loan portfolio and reach new customer segments, resulting in a sustainable growth rate.
Also Read | NBFCs navigating challenges with higher focus on liquidity, provisioning buffers: Jugal Mantri, ED & CEO, Anand Rathi Global Finance Regulatory Framework
The regulatory framework for NBFCs has undergone significant changes over the past few years. In 2018, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introduced new regulations to strengthen the sector's financial stability and prevent the recurrence of default incidents. The regulations mandated higher capital adequacy ratios, tighter liquidity norms, and a stricter classification system. The new regulations have increased the cost of compliance for NBFCs, resulting in a slowdown in growth in the short term. However, they have also created a more robust regulatory framework that has increased investor confidence and reduced the risks associated with the sector.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) have played a crucial role in India's financial ecosystem, catering to the financial needs of small and medium-sized businesses, entrepreneurs, farmers, and individuals who do not have access to traditional banking services. The increasing demand for credit, government initiatives to promote financial inclusion, and the rise of digitalization have contributed to the growth of the NBFC sector in India. However, the sector has also faced challenges in recent years, with defaults leading to a liquidity crisis and tighter regulations by the RBI. Nevertheless, the future of NBFCs in India looks promising, with expected growth driven by various factors like digital transformation, innovative products, and a robust regulatory framework.

Elets The Banking and Finance Post Magazine has carved out a niche for itself in the crowded market with exclusive & unique content. Get in-depth insights on trend-setting innovations & transformation in the BFSI sector. Best offers for Print + Digital issues! Subscribe here➔ www.eletsonline.com/subscription/

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Digitalization and Innovation: The driving forces behind NBFC growth in India - Elets BFSI

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Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) have been an integral part of India's financial ecosystem. They are financial institutions that provide a wide range of banking services like loans, credit facilities, investments, and other financial products. NBFCs have played a significant role in the Indian economy's growth story, especially in the rural and semi-urban areas.

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Digital transformation: Supercharging the Indian economy and powering an Aatmanirbhar Bharat

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Digital transformation: Supercharging the Indian economy and powering an Aatmanirbhar Bharat

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Digital transformation: Supercharging the Indian economy and powering an Aatmanirbhar Bharat

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According to estimates, approximately one million skilled professionals will be required in AI and data science roles alone by 2024. A quick look at the current situation reveals that the country’s IT sector employs approximately five million people and generates approximately $225 billion in revenu…

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Siddharth Mehta of Bay Capital shares about the digital growth in India | BQ Prime

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Siddharth Mehta of Bay Capital shares about the digital growth in India | BQ Prime

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Talking Point with Bay Capital's Siddhartha Mehta

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Follow the latest in business and stock markets on BloombergQuint. Our digital streaming service includes comprehensive live programming on a daily basis, from global and domestic markets, coverage to views from the most influential newsmakers in business and finance.

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Microsoft boss Satya Nadella gives substantial approval to India's digital story, calls it 'golden age' of tech

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Microsoft boss Satya Nadella gives substantial approval to India's digital story, calls it 'golden age' of tech

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Microsoft boss Satya Nadella gives substantial approval to India’s digital story, calls it ‘golden age’ of tech

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Microsoft boss Satya Nadella gives substantial approval to India’s digital story, calls it ‘golden age’ of tech - Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella dubbed cloud as a big game changer and said that there is...

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Asia’s Productivity Needs a Boost That Digitalization Can Provide

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Asia’s Productivity Needs a Boost That Digitalization Can Provide

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Asia's strong economic rebound from the pandemic is losing steam as tightening financial conditions, reduced export demand, and China's sharp and uncharacteristic slowdown dim the outlook.

More broadly, deep economic scars from the pandemic and thelackluster productivity growth that preceded it are weighing on the region's longer-term growth prospects. But despite these challenges, we see a promising path for boosting Asia's productivity that runs through a landscape in which it has a history of leadership: digitalization.

Digital technologies can increase the efficiency of the public and private sectors, expand financial inclusion, improve access to education, and open new markets by allowing companies to serve distant customers. For instance, during the pandemic, digitalization improved the allocation of precious resources for health and social benefits, allowing a prompt provision of relief while keeping leakages of public spending in check. Digitalization has helped support resilience during the pandemic, where, combined with large fiscal support, remote work and online sales protected workers, students and businesses.

Asia as digital powerhouse

Asia's digital landscape has swelled in recent years, encompassing a broad range of innovations, from manufacturing automation to e-commerce platforms, all the way to digital payments. The region accounted for 60 percent of patents in digital and computer technologies right before the pandemic, up from 40 percent two decades earlier. The manufacturing powerhouse enjoys a wide global lead in installation of industrial robots. China is the single biggest robot user, accounting for some 30 percent of the market.

Japan's Rakuten, China's Alibaba Group, and Indonesia's GoTo Group are major players in e-commerce, with revenues that rival that of Amazon and Walmart. India's pioneering of digital infrastructure known as stacks has made it a leading example of how to bring together digital payments and identification to expand access to finance. Growing youth populations in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam have rapidly adopted new technologies and become a sizable potential customer base for the digital economy.

The pandemic accelerated the region's digitalization trend. The proportion of patent applications for remote work and e-commerce technologies surged during the pandemic as did spending on e-commerce, with Asia now accounting for nearly 60 percent of the world's online retail sales. E-commerce revenues grew by 40-50 percent in Vietnam, Indonesia, and India in 2020, outpacing most of the world.

This rapid increase was spurred by the shift away from cash payments and a resulting boom in digital alternatives, particularly e-wallets and prepaid cards.

Digital divides halt progress

Despite successes, the region's digital divides constrain productivity growth. Access to cutting-edge digital technologies is highly uneven within countries, and across firms.

Small and medium-sized enterprises face significant barriers to access and use of digital technologies. Our new paper shows that nearly half of SMEs and about a third of large firms in emerging and developing Asia report difficulty in obtaining financing as a major barrier to technology adoption. Low levels of digitalization and difficulties in accessing and adopting new technologies made it hard for these firms to telework or sell online amid the pandemic.

A slow diffusion of technology between leading and lagging firms also underpins the technological divide. Constraints such as the scarcity of a digital-savvy workforce, unequal access to digital infrastructure, weaknesses in the legal environment, including lack of adequate legislation on data protection and intellectual property rights, hinder information sharing and confidence in technological adoption.

Digital gaps also prevent workers from reaping the full rewards of participating in the new economy and reaching their full potential. For example, with only a quarter of the overall population using the internet, Indonesia has one of the lowest internet penetration rates in Southeast Asia. And while access is affordable in Vietnam and Bangladesh, internet connections are often slow.

Path for policy

Further improving digital literacy and reducing the digital divide across firms, industries, and workers would help close productivity gaps.

Our new paper focuses on needed reforms to bolster broad-based innovation and digitalization to boost aggregate productivity and growth in Asia.

Reform priorities include:

Enhancing countries' digital infrastructure to improve access to information and technology.

Upgrading digital literacy and upskilling the young workforce in many countries to meet employers' demand.

Alleviating financing constraints faced by SMEs to help them adopt new technologies. Greater access to finance would help innovators introduce new products.

Facilitating adoption of new technologies by streamlining regulations in line with the evolving digital industry, enhancing the legal environment, including on data and intellectual property rights protection, and facilitating digital trade.

Asia is poised to continue leading digital innovation. Facilitating equal access to technologies across firms, industries, and workers will help the region fully benefit from the economic boost that digitization offers.

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Asia's Productivity Needs a Boost That Digitalization Can Provide

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Asia's strong economic rebound from the pandemic is losing steam as tightening financial conditions, reduced export demand, and China's sharp and uncharacteristic slowdown dim the outlook. More broadly, deep economic scars from the pandemic and thelackluster productivity growth that preceded it are weighing on the region's longer-term growth prospects.

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Siddharth Mehta Bay Capital Founder and CIO| Studylib

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Siddharth Mehta Bay Capital Founder and CIO| Studylib

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Siddharth Mehta, Founder And CIO Of Bay Capital Gives His Opinion On RBI's Statement 'Doing Whatever It Takes'

#siddharthmehtabaycapital #siddharthmehta #baycapital #siddharth #mehta #studylib #rbi

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SIDDHARTH MEHTA,
FOUNDER, AND CIO
OF BAY CAPITAL
"GIVES HIS OPINION ON RBI'S STATEMENT 'DOING WHATEVER IT TAKES"
* The announcements by the Finance Minister yesterday coupled with the
announcements from the RBI today should provide a lot of relief in the face of
the unprecedented situation that the economy and financial markets face
today.
* The specific announcements are extremely positive and address a broad range
of issues. The CRR, Repo rate, and other adjustments address the liquidity side
of the equation.
BAY CAPITAL FOUNDER &amp; CIO, SIDDHARTH
MEHTA
said that the moratorium on all term loans and relief on interest on working capital addresses the
liquidity challenges and the new TLTRO provides for a Rs 1 lakh crore facility whereby banks availing of
this have to in turn use that to invest in CP's and other instruments (and will be classified as HTM), the
liquidity for which has completely dried up.
All in all, these are extremely positive measures and
together with recent announcements add up to an
injection of approximately $50 billion of liquidity.
More than anything else, the commentary from the
Governor about 'doing what it takes' echoes the
comments from the policymakers globally. Other
regulatory adjustments and participation of select
banks in the offshore NDF market are also extremely
positive, Siddharth added further.
N
D
F
M
A
R
K
E
T
Speaking on the Government of India's measures, Sid Mehta, Bay Capital emphasized that although
the health side of the epidemic relating to the containment of the virus will be extremely important,
in these uncertain and challenging times, these measures are extremely welcome and should be
viewed extremely positively. Moreover, people should have complete confidence that policymakers
in India stand ready to act proactively, as required, to mitigate any adverse effects that may emerge
over time.
Bay Capital Partners is a leading independent Indiafocused investment manager established in 2006. Bay
Capital invests in publicly traded securities in India and
aims to deliver consistent compounding risk-adjusted
returns by investing in a concentrated portfolio of
businesses that are market leaders with moats incredibly
difficult to breach. Bay Capital believes in an 'equity yield
curve' where returns increase with time. Bay Capital
investors include large global endowments, foundations,
family offices, and pension funds.

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Siddharth Mehta, Founder And CIO Of Bay Capital Gives His Opinion On RBI's Statement 'Doing Whatever It Takes'

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SIDDHARTH MEHTA, FOUNDER, AND CIO OF BAY CAPITAL "GIVES HIS OPINION ON RBI'S STATEMENT 'DOING WHATEVER IT TAKES" * The announcements by the Finance Minister yesterday coupled with the announcements from the RBI today should provide a lot of relief in the face of the unprecedented situation that the economy and financial markets face today.

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Union Budget 2023: Budget 2023: Six ways to accelerate India's credit growth pace - The Economic Times

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Union Budget 2023: Budget 2023: Six ways to accelerate India's credit growth pace - The Economic Times

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Aniket Dani is a Director at CRISIL Research.

With cleaner balance sheets, stronger capital ratios and largely sorted legacy bad-loan issues, India's banking system is primed to lubricate the fastest-growing large economy in the world over the medium term.

While credit growth till October this fiscal year that ends March 31 has been 8.4%, retail and corporate lending is expected to be robust in the fourth quarter, or January to March, which should lead to full-year estimated credit growth of 13-15%.(Tax breaks, jobs or plan to beat China: What will Budget 2023 offer? Click to know)
That compares with ~8% compound annual growth rate between fiscals 2017 and 2022.

In the milieu, a few facilitations in the Union Budget for next fiscal will help the sector be more supportive of macroeconomic growth:

Providing support for credit expansion: Over the past decade, the government has infused more than Rs 3.5 lakh crore into the Indian banking system - primarily public sector banks. With profitability and asset quality improving, along with adequate capitalisation for both public and private sector banks, no incremental capitalisation is expected in the Budget.

The capital to risk-weighted assets ratio (CRAR) of scheduled commercial banks stood at 16.8% as of March 31, 2022, compared with the regulatory requirement of 11.5% (including a capital conservation buffer of 2.5%). This indicates adequate coverage in terms of capital. Given the stronger balance sheets and likely better credit discipline, the Budget can focus on supporting expansion of credit in the economy.

Enlarge the ambit of the Production Linked Incentive scheme: Over the next 4-6 fiscals, the PLI scheme is likely to drive in incremental capex of ~Rs 3 lakh crore across 15 sectors, supported by ~Rs 2 lakh crore of government incentives, leading to incremental revenues worth Rs 40 lakh crore in the scheme period.

More than 90% of this capex has already been committed by companies, with visible output in sectors such as mobile phones and electronics. Given the success of the PLI scheme in sectors in which it was initially implemented, the government can focus on widening the scope of the scheme to cover more sectors.

Green financing: India aims to halve its greenhouse gas emissions and move to non-fossil-based energy sources by 2030 as a part of its commitment to be Net Zero by 2070. Consequently investments in renewable energy, electric vehicles, green hydrogen, and other related sectors are expected to surge over the coming fiscals.

Given the extensive investment requirements, close monitoring of outlays and project tracking will help the banking sector have the confidence to bridge the funding gap in the sector. Such processes can also help increase traction in the domestic green bond market.

Recovery through NARCL: The National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd (NARCL) was established in July 2021 with majority shareholding by public sector banks and the rest by private banks. The government also offered guarantees worth Rs 30,600 crore to NARCL for acquiring stressed assets. But the process for rolling out offers for stressed asset cases was delayed. The good part is the second half has been seeing some momentum. The announcement of a time-bound action plan for debt resolution via the NARCL in the Budget for next fiscal will help banks manage their balance stressed accounts well.

Leveraging technology to improve credit flow to agriculture: New technologies, especially digital advances can be leveraged and deployed to increase financial inclusion in the banking sector. Just the way the Unified Payment Interface, Open Network for Digital Commerce, and cloud-based digital platforms connect with fintech companies to offer consumers tremendous facilitations, steps can be taken to implement a common technology platform for agriculture finance.

This can include a database of farmlands, production details, and typical financing requirements based on borrower profiles, seasonality and crops, which can be de facto groundwork for the banking system and lead to smoother and better credit flow to the agriculture sector.

Extension of ECLGS: Growth in credit to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the industrial sector as of March 2022 was more than 30% on-year and was higher compared with that for large industries. This was largely supported by incentives provided under the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS), and typically lower gross non-performing assets. Until August 2022, sanctions under the ECLGS aggregated to Rs 3.67 lakh crore (of total Rs 5 lakh crore planned), with the scheme being valid till March 31, 2023.

However, not all MSME segments have rebounded to their pre-pandemic levels of revenue, and hence, extension of the timelines, simplification of the release of claims guaranteed by the government under the ECLGS, and relaxation in the ceiling rate to lend to customer segments at the bottom of the pyramid will provide support to those adversely impacted and be supportive of bank credit growth.

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Budget 2023: Six ways to accelerate India's credit growth pace

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Union Budget 2023: While credit growth till October this fiscal has been 8.4%, retail and corporate lending is expected to be robust in the fourth quarter, which should lead to full-year estimated credit growth of 13-15%. That compares with ~8% compound annual growth rate between fiscals 2017 and 2022.

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Govt to ensure digital competition law doesn't over-regulate | Mint

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Govt to ensure digital competition law doesn't over-regulate | Mint

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The idea is to assess whether another layer of legislation would put undue burden on businesses when a host of legislative and regulatory changes are in the works under the Digital India Bill, Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, Indian Telecommunication Bill and various rules on e-commerce and online gaming, in addition to the Competition Amendment Bill that is pending before Parliament.

The move comes in the context of the suggestion to Indian policymakers last month by Alphabet Inc. and Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai that technology which touches the lives of people around the world needs responsible regulation, while also highlighting the need for certainty in the legal framework.

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"One view is that too much regulation can come in the way of development of a sector and add to litigation. The other is the need for ensuring a level playing ground. A view will be taken," said the first person quoted above. A balance has to be struck between the needs for protecting consumers and fostering innovation and growth, said the person.

According to a report published by the Reserve Bank of India last month, authored by members of its department of economic and policy research, India's core digital economy expanded from 5.4% of GVA in 2014 to 8.5% in 2019, with "digitally dependent" economy hovering at 22% in 2019. The report said India's digital economy grew 2.4 times faster than the economy during the period, with strong forward linkages to non-digital sectors.

At the time of publishing, there was no formal comment on the subject from the ministry of corporate affairs or the ministry of electronics and IT, in response to queries emailed on Tuesday.

Given that the proposed digital competition law is a new concept and that there is not enough experience in EU, which introduced the Digital Markets Act last year, the government may go for extensive consultations on this.

In an interview published in Mint on 2 January, parliamentary standing committee chairman Jayant Sinha had said that by having an 'ex-ante' or forward-looking regulatory framework in addition to existing competition law which is in the process of getting amended, India will have a world-leading competition framework. Sinha also said that only a small handful of systemically important digital intermediaries who can influence the market and act as digital market gate keepers will be covered under this legislation. The Competition Amendment Bill also seeks to bring high-value mergers and acquisitions in digital economy which escapes conventional merger regulations under Competition Commission of India's (CCI) regulatory ambit.

Elsewhere in Mint

In Opinion, Vivek Kaul unpacks the puzzle of why financial bubbles keep coming back. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha spots some complex policy challenges for next fiscal year. Beth Kowitt says American companies are now wary of joining culture wars. Long Story exposes the rift that runs down the ethanol economy.

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Govt to ensure digital competition law doesn't over-regulate

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The idea is to assess whether another layer of legislation would put undue burden on businesses when a host of legislative and regulatory changes are in the works under the Digital India Bill, Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, Indian Telecommunication Bill and various rules on e-commerce and online gaming, in addition to the Competition Amendment Bill that is pending before Parliament.

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Siddharth Mehta, Bay Capital founder views on digitalization growth | CEO Journals

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Siddharth Mehta, Bay Capital founder views on digitalization growth | CEO Journals

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As of late, Siddharth Mehta IL&FS Former Director and currently Founder and CIO of Bay Capital trusts that "Organizations should think 'digital' assuming they are to contend and develop throughout the following ten years".

#siddharthmehtabaycapital #siddharthmehta #baycapital #siddharth #mehta #digitalization

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Adoption Of Digital Rupee At The Cost Of UPI | siliconindia

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Adoption Of Digital Rupee At The Cost Of UPI | siliconindia

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According to the Reserve Bank of India, from December 1st, the digital rupee on a pilot basis in four cities was started by the governing board. However, data is indicating that India has already witnessed the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) success. The country might not be already looking forward to opting for the digital Rupee. An IMF (monitoring the international monetary system and global economic developments for identification of risks and recommending policies for growth and financial stability) states that instant payments are regulatory and payment substitution in countries that have opted for the existence of instant payments which include UPI and may limit the incentive for the users.
Digital Rupee Data Stats
Data is showing that the case of issuance of retail CBDC (a digital liability of a central bank that is widely available to the general public) can be traced as being less compelling in some advanced economies which include countries of Australia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. It can be compared to emerging markets and developing economies. The IMF paper states that the motivations for EMDEs include promoting financial inclusion, enhancement of payment system efficiency, competition, security, resilience, and cross-border payments. In the case of Indian states, the technology of UPI has already been satisfying most of the motivations that are available. UPI, which was launched in India in 2016, crossed one billion transactions in October 2019. From FY23 till now, the UPI has processed 44.32 billion transactions worth INR 75 trillion. Nearly 76 percent of Indian states now prefer the usage of UPI during online checkouts while more millennials (84 percent) are now using UPI when they are shopping online. As per a news published, the cognizance of instant payments and retail CBDC, which are operated by and settled through a central bank is quite strong. Both will be providing instantly available goods and final funds which are backed by a central bank. And the papers that are arguing that if instant payments are structured in a country such that they are feasible alternative cash at the retail level and it might all well limit the incentive for the users to the adoption of retail CBDC.
Digital Rupee Conquest
Triumphing UPI had a first-mover advantage with retail users. Including their trust, in instant payment, the method for everyday transactions are tending to form the bulk of its usage. The paper IMF is arguing with points that are similar between instant payments and CBDCs are exceedingly strong to be ignored. Stating that instant payments are providing P2P transactions at zero cost and P2B payments and only pose very low costs for business payment receivers. The adoption of CBDC might be an important compromise. Experts are arguing that there is going to be a payment method that will co-exist and cater to the demands of different users. This will be enabling the Reserve Bank of India and will be keeping a close eye on untoward transactions. Adelia Catalino, Co-Founder and Managing Director, In-Solutions Global Ltd., states that "Retail CBDC will potentially enable RBI to play a crucial part in providing access to financial services to the unbanked, reducing fraud and money laundering and offering a safe alternative for digital payments."
Market Helps In Digital Rupee
Industry players are high in playing a key role in being successful adoption of the digital Rupee and it is almost similar to what is leading to UPI success. There are a plethora of factors contributing to the growth of UPI's success which are interoperability of QR, zero charge regime, customer acquisition initiatives by PSPs, and finally the pandemic. Jaikrishnan G, Partner, and Financial Services Consulting, Grant Thornton Bharat, stated there must be a design in seamless interoperability with other payment systems. Including the digital rupee as an alternative will also be requiring the government for enabling the participation and collaboration of PSPs and banks will build new solutions and use cases around the digital rupee.
Observing the life cycle stage that is in the digital rupee as a currency and payment system that are introductory steps while UPI is in a growth phase. Retail CBDCs are likely driven by QRs as seen in several POCs in different countries which are located in China. It is likely to be riding on the UPI as rails are included to both the QRs at merchant locations and websites as well as the connection to the bank of accounts of users.
Conclusion
United Payments Interface (UPI) is hailed as one of the greatest innovations that are incoming to India. It is the ability to support both retail payments and remittances which eases the inclusion of usage and interoperability is providing a huge impetus for India's digital inclusion initiatives. Countries including Japan, South Korea, France, and most other countries are operating with India's UPI payment system. It is just a show of the growth and popularity of UPI not just in India, but, also around the world.

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Aveek Pal Chaudhuri, Online Content Writer, siliconindia

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Adoption Of Digital Rupee At The Cost Of UPI

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According to the Reserve Bank of India, from December 1st, the digital rupee on a pilot basis in four cities was started by the governing board. However, data is indicating that India has already witnessed the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) success. The country might not be already looking forward to opting for the digital Rupee.

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5 Key Trends in Direct Selling Industry 2023 in India

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5 Key Trends in Direct Selling Industry 2023 in India

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The year 2022 brought back some semblance of normality to businesses, economies, and markets as they slowly transitioned into the pre-pandemic status. Despite challenges, the economic recovery was steady, backed by increased investments in key sectors and a well-thought-out strategy roadmap to leapfrog the industry. This also translated into the growth of the direct selling industry, which displayed immense resilience during the pandemic and continued to soar even in the face of adversity. According to a FICCI-KPMG report, the industry is expected to touch Rs 645 billion by 2025, backed by the fact that over 16 percent of direct sales companies registered growth in the past five years; and this number is expected to rise in the future.

Direct selling has a promising future in India as the desire for financial independence continues to grow and consumer aspirations rise. As the industry is on a positive trajectory, here are some key trends that could redefine direct selling in India and chart out a growth path for the industry in 2023:

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5 Key Trends in Direct Selling Industry 2023 in India

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The year 2022 brought back some semblance of normality to businesses, economies, and markets as they slowly transitioned into the pre-pandemic status. Despite challenges, the economic recovery was steady, backed by increased investments in key sectors and a well-thought-out strategy roadmap to leapfrog the industry.

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Fastest growing smallcap companies of 2022 to add to your 2023 watchlist | Mint

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Fastest growing smallcap companies of 2022 to add to your 2023 watchlist | Mint

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Of all the variables that went into markets, business and GDP forecasts, it was Coronavirus that caused the biggest swing, one that was never factored in.

Several countries including, China, Japan, and the US have seen a spike in Covid cases of the new variant BF.7. No one knows whether the new variant will cause a new covid wave in India or it will be less severe this time.

So how do we factor it in now, knowing that a cure has not been developed yet, and that Indian stock markets have already caught the flu?

Before we get to that, let's look at how smallcaps performed after Covid initially struck the world.

The smallcap index gained 5,400 points (61.5%) in just 5 months (from April 2020 to August 2020). Even during the second wave, the BSE Smallcap index grew over 5,800 points (28%) in five months.

This shows that smallcaps have rebounded pretty quickly after uncertain situations like the current one.

Given that too many tailwinds are at play for smallcaps... China plus one, product linked incentive (PLI) scheme, and their aggressive capex for coming years, smallcaps are likely be on a growth trajectory as we move into a new year.

Today, we take a look at 2022's fastest growing smallcap companies. These companies will be exciting to track as we move on to a new year.

#1 Vinyl Chemicals (India)

First on our list is Vinyl Chemicals, a Parekh Group company.

It is the fastest-growing smallcap company in 2022, with a sales growth of 114% over the last year. Its profit also grew by 206% during the same time.

This was driven by higher demand for chemicals and a depreciating rupee.

Vinyl Chemicals is engaged in trading chemicals with a focus on trading Vinyl Acetate Monomer (VAM). The company supplies monomers to the paint, textile, and adhesive sectors. It also trades in various other speciality chemicals in India and abroad.

In the last three years, its revenue has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.1%, driven by high price realisations. The net profit also grew at a CAGR of 67% during the same time.

As a result, its return on equity (RoE) has improved from 12.2% to 36.3% in the financial year 2022.

What's more, the company has consistently paid dividends to its shareholders since 2011.

Vinyl Chemicals has also posted record numbers in the latest quarterly results. Its revenue grew 23.8% year-on-year (YoY) due to China plus one strategy playing out and a temporary shift in demand from Europe to India.

The net profit grew by 188.6% YoY on the back of higher revenues.

The market has reflected all this in its share price performance. Vinyl Chemical's share price rose more than 90% in the last one year.

Going forward, high demand from domestic and international clients and the government's support to improve the sector are expected to drive the revenue and profit of the company.

#2 Affle India

Second on our list is Affle India.

The tech company recorded a sales growth of 109.3% and a profit growth of 59.4% in the financial year 2022, driven by new consumer conversions.

Affle India is a global technology company with a consumer and enterprise platform that delivers acquisitions, engagements, and transactions for leading brands through mobile advertising.

It also enables offline businesses to go online through app development, online-to-offline (O2O) commerce, and data analytics.

Affle India strongly focuses on research and development (R&D) and has six patents related to digital advertising. It has also filed 14 patents for approval.

Its differentiated business model of cost per converted user (CPCU) has helped the company grow its revenue by 50.2% (CAGR) in the last three years. The net profit also grew by a CAGR of 48.7% during the same time.

To cater to the growing global megatrends, the company unveiled Affle 2.0 strategy in 2020 for sustainable growth.

In line with this strategy, the company has acquired several companies to build its capabilities and improve its competitive moat.

Despite these acquisitions, the company has maintained its debt to equity at 0.1x with an interest coverage ratio of 35.7x.

Its RoE and return on capital employed (RoCE) for the financial year 2022 stood at 18.3% and 20%, respectively.

Since its inception in 2019, Affle India share price has risen by over 490%.

Affle India Share Price - Performance Since Inception

Affle India share price is falling at present, in line with other technology giants.

Going forward, the fast-growing digital ad market, growing penetration of connected devices, rapid digitalization, and growth in online commerce will drive its revenue and profit growth.

#3 Apcotex Industries

Next on our list is Apcotex Industries, a leading producer of synthetic rubber.

The company's sales and net profit grew by 77% and 123.5% in the financial year 2022, driven by growth in volumes.

Apcotex Industries produces synthetic rubber and synthetic latex in India. It also has the broadest range of emulsion polymers available in the market. To add to this, it has a monopoly in manufacturing some products, such as nitrile latex.

The company's products find use in various industries, including paper, textiles, carpet, automobile, and footwear.

Apart from a strong domestic presence, the company exports its products to over 40 countries.

In the last three years, its revenue has grown at a CAGR of 24.3% on the back of volume growth, led by a change in product mix and customer mix. The net profit has also grown at a CAGR of 81.2% during the same time due to the de-bottlenecking exercise undertaken by the company.

As a result, the company's RoE and RoCE also improved from single-digit numbers in the financial year 2020 to 24.9% and 31.6%, respectively, in the financial year 2022.

Currently, the company has two manufacturing plants in India. It is planning to invest ₹2 billion (bn) towards capex to expand its capacity. This might slightly increase its debt-to-equity ratio, which is at 0.1x at present, as the company plans to fund its capex through debt.

However, the company's high-interest coverage ratio (41x) shows it generates enough cashflows making it easy for the company to pay back its loans.

For the September 2022 quarter, the revenue grew by 16.6% (YoY) and net profit grew by 38.1% (YoY). This is mainly because Apcotex Industries has clients from stable growth industries, which ensures steady growth in revenues.

In the last one year, the shares of Apcotex Industries have risen over 30%.

Apcotex Industries Share Price - 1 Year Performance

Going forward, capacity expansion, new product launches and changing customer mix are expected to drive its revenue.

#4 Goldiam International

Fourth on our list is Goldiam International, a jewellery manufacturer.

The company's sales grew by 69.4% during the financial year 2022, mainly due to high demand amid improving customer sentiments. The net profit also grew by 58%.

Goldiam International manufactures and exports gold and diamond jewellery to global retailers. Its products include engagement rings, wedding bands, bridal sets, and earrings made of natural and lab-grown diamonds.

Though it exports to several countries such as UK, Dubai, and Russia, it mainly focuses on the US market and earns close to 95% of its revenue from here.

In the last three years, its revenue grew at a CAGR of 22.6%, driven by volume growth. The net profit grew by 32.8% CAGR, mainly driven by the backward integration across the supply chain of lab-grown diamonds.

As a result, its RoCE also improved from 15.6% to 28.7% in the last three years.

Goldiam follows the omnichannel model, selling jewellery to customers through online and offline stores. It also launched a website in 2021 for its B2B (business to business) segment to cater to the needs of its clients efficiently.

In the last two years, it acquired two companies to expand its diamond business in India and abroad.

Despite these acquisitions, it retained its debt-free status and has a healthy interest coverage ratio of 181.2%.

Moreover, the company has been very generous in returning the money to shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks in the last few years.

Share price of Goldiam has zoomed over 690% since April 2020.

The company currently has a healthy order book of ₹1,500 million (m), expected to be executed in the next four to six months giving short-term revenue visibility.

Going forward, high demand for lab-grown diamond jewellery and high margins from them will drive the revenue and profit growth.

#5 Fineotex Chemical

Last on our list is another chemicals company, Fineotex Chemicals.

The company's sales grew by 68.5% in 2022, driven by high volumes. The net profit also grew by 27.6%.

Fineotex Chemicals is engaged in the business of manufacturing chemicals for textiles. Over the years, it has diversified its manufacturing capabilities to other segments, including the leather, water treatment, fertilizer, construction, and paint industry.

Currently, it is focussing on diversifying into home care, hygiene, and drilling segments as well.

In the last three years, its revenue grew at a CAGR of 23.6%, driven by volumes led by capacity expansion. The net profit also grew by a CAGR of 58.5%.

Despite capacity expansions, the company improved its RoCE from 13.3% to 28.3% in the last three years.

It also remained debt-free with a healthy interest coverage ratio of 80x in the financial year 2022. And here's more...

The company is very consistent with its dividend payments.

It also delivered a stellar performance in the September 2022 quarter, with a revenue and profit growth of 71.1% (YoY) and 87.4% (YoY), respectively.

This consistent performance has not gone unnoticed by the market. Fineotex shares have gained over 90% in the last one year.

Moreover, with the speciality chemicals industry expected to double its global market share to 6% by 2026, Fineotex Chemicals stands to benefit from it.

Going forward, its established position in the textiles segment, diversification into other segments, and capacity expansion will drive the revenue growth.

Why you should invest in the fastest growing smallcap companies

Smallcap companies could be real wealth creators and have a higher growth potential when compared to large and midcap companies.

In the last three years, BSE Smallcap index gave close to 109.8% return to investors as against 45.9% return of BSE Sensex, and 68.1% returns given by BSE Midcap index.

Though smallcaps have given magnified returns, their ride isn't a smooth one.

When markets are on an uptrend, they tend to outperform the markets. But, when the tide turns, we've seen smallcaps struggle and erode investor's wealth.

Therefore, before investing in smallcaps, it is important to understand the risks that come with it.

Do your due deliginece before investing in smallcaps and choose companies that are fundamentally strong for your portfolio.

We have curated a list of parameters on how to screen smallcap stocks. Do check them out before you choose one for your portfolio.

Happy Investing!

Disclaimer:This article is for information purposes only. It is not a stock recommendation and should not be treated as such.

This article is syndicated from Equitymaster.com

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Fastest growing smallcap companies of 2022 to add to your 2023 watchlist

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Of all the variables that went into markets, business and GDP forecasts, it was Coronavirus that caused the biggest swing, one that was never factored in. Several countries including, China, Japan, and the US have seen a spike in Covid cases of the new variant BF.7.

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Siddharth Mehta, Bay Capital Founder speaks about the digital health has made great strides in India

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Siddharth Mehta, Bay Capital Founder speaks about the digital health has made great strides in India

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#siddharthmehtabaycapital #siddharthmehta #baycapital #siddharth #mehta #yumpu #digitalization #india

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"India needs to invest more in technology modernization in research and knowledge as adoption of digital health infrastructure has become imperative after the pandemic," said Siddharth Mehta Bay Capital Founder and IL&FS Former Director. During the pandemic in India, we saw a huge increase in digital health: 2,000 rural communities using teleconsultation, with 80% new users and a 2,000% increase in e-pharmacy orders.

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Samsung invites startups to work in Govt Digital India stack, Telecom News, ET Telecom

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Samsung: The Digital India stack, maintained by the government contains repositories for applications such as UPI, Digilocker, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN), Unified Health Interface (UHI), among others.

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Digital payments in India touch Rs 38.3 lakh crore at over 23 billion transactions

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UPI person-to-merchant (P2M) and person-to-person (P2P) emerged as the most chosen payment method among consumers, accounting for 42 per cent of total transaction volume. Get more Economy & Infra News and Business News on Zee Business.

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Highlighting the Centre's development push for the North East, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a visit to Agartala, on Sunday asserted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led double-engine government's focus is on improving physical, digital, and social infrastructure in the North East.

Prime Minister on Sunday inaugurated and laid the foundation stone of various development projects worth over Rs 4,350 crore in Agartala.

Prime Minister Modi, who arrived in Agartala on Sunday, also launched the Grih Pravesh programme for beneficiaries under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Rural.

Addressing the gathering at the programme, Prime Minister Modi said, "Now the time has changed, today Tripura is being discussed for cleanliness and infrastructure development. I congratulate the people of Tripura for making Swachhta a mass movement. Due to this Tripura has emerged as the cleanest state in the category of smallest states. I congratulate Tripura on getting a new dental college today."

In the last eight years, Prime Minister said many National Highways have been constructed in the North East sector and many rural areas got road connectivity.

He said the international terminal at Maharaja Bir Bikram Singh airport in Agartala has improved connectivity. With this airport, PM said Tripura has emerged as the logistics hub of North East.

Prime Minister said, "Our double-engine government's focus is on improving physical, digital, and social infrastructure in the North East. Tripura is making rapid strides in infrastructure development. Our focus is on all-round development of Tripura."

He said projects launched today will give a fillip to the state's growth trajectory. He said the double-engine government is providing connectivity and infra projects in Tripura worth thousands of crores rupees and the state government is working at a fast pace to implement it on the ground.

"It is our endeavour to ensure better opportunities for the people of Tripura. We have accorded priority to the welfare of tribal communities. The first choice of the tribal community is BJP. In the recent Gujarat elections, BJP won 24 of the 27 seats reserved for tribal communities," Prime Minister Modi said.

He said the government is dedicated to the improvement of the lives of 'Janjatiya' communities. "The budget which used to be Rs 21,000 crore is now Rs 88,000 crore. It is the BJP government which has started the initiative of celebrating 'Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas' on November 15 every year," PM said.

Prime Minister said more than 7,000 health and wellness centres have been approved in North East while more than 1,000 are coming up in Tripura alone. He said these centres will help in screening thousands of patients with diseases like diabetes and cancer among others.

Referring to his Shillong visit today, PM said, "I was in a meeting today in Meghalaya, in this meeting we discussed the roadmap for the development of North East including Tripura in the coming years. I have discussed Ashta Lakshmi ie, Ashta Aadhaar, 8 points for the development of eight states of North East.

Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister held a roadshow in Agartala. People flocked to two sides of the road to welcome the Prime Minister. They also showered flower petals on his cavalcade.

"I extend my greetings to all those too who were standing on the way from the airport to this place to shower their love on me. This is ecstatic for me as ten times the crowd that has assembled here blessed me on my way from the airport," PM added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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"Now Time Has Changed, Tripura Is Being Discussed For Development": PM Modi

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Highlighting the Centre's development push for the North East, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a visit to Agartala, on Sunday asserted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led double-engine government's focus is on improving physical, digital, and social infrastructure in the North East.

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Talking Point with Bay Capital's Founder, Siddhartha Mehta | Bqprime

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Talking Point with Bay Capital's Founder, Siddhartha Mehta | Bqprime

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Views of Mr. Siddharth Mehta who is a founder and CIO of Bay Capital Partners on the growth of digitalization.

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Talking Point with Bay Capital's Siddhartha Mehta

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Siddharth Mehta Founded, Bay Capital Partners

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MMI has dossiers on all hedge funds and long-only funds registered under SEBI Category III aimed at high net worth and insitutional investors

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Thanks to the uncertainties in the economy and market, most investors are mindful about the rich valuations. When the valuations are high, the market may move very carefully. There could be a lot of volatility. The market can also fall sharply. In such a scenario, cautious investors may consider investing in value funds. These funds investing in stocks with reasonable valuations. During volatile phases these schemes fare better than schemes that stock up on expensive stocks.

If you are new to value investing, you should acquaint yourself with this style of investing and its merits and demerits. A value investor try to choose stocks that are available at cheaper valuations. These investors employ various ratios and methodology to identify such stocks. Essentially, they look for stocks that are available at a discount to their real or intrinsic value. Simpy put, it means the market hasn't discovered the true potential of these stocks and they are available at a discount.

Value investors buy such stocks and wait for the market to discover these stocks. When the discovery happens, the stock prices will go up, and value investors make money. It may sound simple. But it is not very easy to execute. The market may take very long to discover these stocks and it may test your patience. The discovery may not happen at all. That is why value funds are recommended to only sophisticated investors.

The last few years had not been kind to the value investing fans as a few heavyweight stocks were driving the market. Value fund managers and investors were complaining that nobody was paying attention to valuations. Everyone was ready to pay a premium to own the few stocks that were driving the market, they said. The trend was reversed in 2021. The market was up, and the rally was not driven by a handful of stocks. Most stocks participated in the rally- a broad-based rally was finally there. Thanks to the rally, value funds also managed to make a comeback. However, the lean patch taught investors a few important value-investing principles.

When you are following value investing principles, there may be periods when your stocks would underperform in the market. All you need to do at that time is just to stick to your strategy and wait patiently. However, the last few years taught investors that it is not easy to follow. Many investors lost patience and they sold their investors.

That is why it is prudent to limit your investments in value funds. According to mutual fund managers, investors should invest a maximum of 20% in value funds. They also should remember that the market may not always pay a premium for value stocks. When the market has scant regard for valuations, value funds will underperform. If you can't wait patiently, you shouldn't be investing in value funds.

If value investing still appeals to you, here is our list of recommended value funds to invest in 2023. Watch out for our monthly updates to find out whether your favourite scheme is performing well.

Best value mutual funds to invest in 2023:
Our methodology:
ETMutualFunds.com has employed the following parameters for shortlisting the Equity mutual fund schemes.

1. Mean rolling returns: Rolled daily for the last three years.

2. Consistency in the last three years: Hurst Exponent, H is used for computing the consistency of a fund. The H exponent is a measure of randomness of the NAV series of a fund. Funds with high H tend to exhibit low volatility compared to funds with low H.

i) When H = 0.5, the series of returns is said to be a geometric Brownian time series. This type of time series is difficult to forecast.

ii) When H <0.5, the series is said to be mean reverting.

iii) When H>0.5, the series is said to be persistent. The larger the value of H, the stronger is the trend of the series

3. Downside risk: We have considered only the negative returns given by the mutual fund scheme for this measure.

X =Returns below zero
Y = Sum of all squares of X
Z = Y/number of days taken for computing the ratio

Downside risk = Square root of Z

4. Outperformance: It is measured by Jensen's Alpha for the last three years. Jensen's Alpha shows the risk-adjusted return generated by a mutual fund scheme relative to the expected market return predicted by the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). Higher Alpha indicates that the portfolio performance has outstripped the returns predicted by the market.

Average returns generated by the MF Scheme =

[Risk Free Rate + Beta of the MF Scheme * {(Average return of the index - Risk Free Rate}

5. Asset size: For Equity funds, the threshold asset size is Rs 50 crore

(Disclaimer: past performance is no guarantee for future performance.)

(Catch all the latest news about mutual funds, MF insights & analysis, best buys and investment trends on ETMutualFunds.com)

Download The Economic Times News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.

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Best value mutual funds to invest in 2023

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Thanks to the uncertainties in the economy and market, most investors are mindful about the rich valuations. When the valuations are high, the market may move very carefully. There could be a lot of volatility. The market can also fall sharply. In such a scenario, cautious investors may consider investing in value funds.

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The Smart Cities Mission has been picked as the platinum icon in the Digital India Awards 2022 under the Data Sharing and Use for Socio Economic Development category for its 'DataSmart Cities: Empowering Cities through Data' initiative, according to an official statement on Tuesday.

In the statement, the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry said the DataSmart Cities initiative is a key step in creating a robust data ecosystem that enables evidence-based decision-making in cities.

The award was announced on Monday, the ministry said.

It said that the awards instituted in 2009 are one-of-a-kind in India for honouring the efforts of different government entities in the digital realm.

These are conducted by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) under the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY). The seventh edition of Digital India Awards is being held in 2022.

'DataSmart Cities' initiative aims to harnesses the power of data for better governance in India's 100 Smart Cities, the ministry said.

"To leverage and utilise valuable data being generated in cities via network of intelligent devices and systems, the Smart Cities Mission launched the DataSmart Cities (DSC) initiative across 100 Smart Cities. The DSC uses a three-pronged approach people, process, platforms to imbibe a culture of data awareness and data usage in city functioning," it added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Smart Cities Mission bags Digital India Award for DataSmart Cities

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The Smart Cities Mission has been picked as the platinum icon in the Digital India Awards 2022 under the Data Sharing and Use for Socio Economic Development category for its 'DataSmart Cities: Empowering Cities through Data' initiative, according to an official statement on Tuesday.

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On BSE, Salasar Techno stock closed at 56.40 apiece up by 8.36% on Tuesday. The stock had zoomed by at least 11.43% by touching a new 52-week high of ₹58 apiece earlier in the day.

At the current closing price, Salasar Techno's market cap is over ₹1,780 crore.

In its regulatory filing, Salasar said this order is for the "development of distribution infrastructure for loss reduction in district Bulandshahar, Hapur, Baghpat, and Meerut of Uttar Pradesh and revamped reforms based and Result Linked Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) for electricity distribution, GPS survey, design, supply, installation, GIS asset mapping, testing, and commissioning of works related to loss reduction on turnkey bases under RDSS."

As per the filing, the first LOI is worth ₹403.85 crore for the electricity distribution circle (EDC) in district Hapur and Bulandshahar under RDSS, while the second order is also EDC but for District Meerut and Baghput and amounted to ₹344.61 crore.

Salasar management team stated that "this order showcases our strength in executing large orders, developing products with cutting edge research & development and most importantly the approach of STEL towards achieving its ultimate mission of delivering innovative cost-efficient and modern engineering solutions backed by agile service implementation teams."

The team added that Salasar Techno continues to remain focused on developing and implementing solutions to become one of the most preferred infrastructure enablers.

The above two orders are expected to be executed in the next 24 months i.e. in part of FY23, FY24, and FY25.

Riding on the back of a bull on Tuesday, Salasar Techno has become a multibagger stock.

Salasar Techno stock has been on a gaining spree since December 16th. The stock was in red at ₹49.05 apiece on December 15 but picked up momentum thereafter. Since then, it has surged by 14.98% on Dalal Street with most gains seen on December 20th.

So far in the current month, Salasar stock has advanced by 59.55% on BSE. In six months' time, Salasar emerged as a multibagger with stock skyrocketing by a whopping 135.6% on the exchange.

Let's suppose, investors who invested ₹1 lakh in Salasar six months ago on June 20, their corpus has reached over ₹2.35 lakh to date.

Incorporated in 2001, Salasar Techno has been providing customised steel fabrication and infrastructure solutions in the country. (Axis Direct calculator)

Incorporated in 2001, Salasar Techno has been providing customised steel fabrication and infrastructure solutions in the country. Also, the company is among the leading manufacturers of telecom towers in India with a supply of over 50,000 towers since its inception. Salasar Techno has three state-of-art manufacturing facilities located in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh.

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salasar techno shares doubles investors wealth in 6 months

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Smallcap stock emerges multibagger in 6 mths, more than doubles investors wealth

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On BSE, Salasar Techno stock closed at 56.40 apiece up by 8.36% on Tuesday. The stock had zoomed by at least 11.43% by touching a new 52-week high of ₹58 apiece earlier in the day. At the current closing price, Salasar Techno's market cap is over ₹1,780 crore.

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Development Via Digital platform | Siddharth Mehta Bay Capital

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Development Via Digital platform | Siddharth Mehta Bay Capital

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Siddharth Mehta and Bay Capital Portfolio | CB Insights

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Siddharth Mehta and Bay Capital Portfolio | CB Insights

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Bay Capital Portfolio Investments, Bay Capital Funds, Bay Capital Exits

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Bay Capital is an independent investment management firm founded in 2006 by an experienced team of professionals focusing on themes that are direct beneficiaries of the India growth story. Use the CB Insights Platform to explore Bay Capital’s full profile.

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99 Corporates | Siddharth Mehta Bay Capital

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99 Corporates | Siddharth Mehta Bay Capital

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Siddharth Mehta is the founder and CIO of Bay Capital Partners Ltd, an India focused investment firm.

#siddharthmehtabaycapital #siddharthmehta #baycapital #siddharth #mehta