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The Dollar Business Bureau In a move to attract major foreign investment, the Government on Monday approved an investment of around $500 million proposed by e-commerce giant Amazon for opening retail food stores in India. This is the first proposal for foreign direct investment (FDI) in food retail that got the government’s approval. This is also the first FDI case that gets an in-principle approval after the recent shut down of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB). This proposal was pending with the FIPB. Therefore, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has given its nod to the proposal. According to the proposal, the American ecommerce major will open a fully-owned arm in India for carrying out the business of storing food products and sell them online. Presently, the Government allows 100% ...

The Dollar Business Bureau  Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, has been selected for the US-India Business Council’s (USIBC) ‘Transformative Chief Minister Award’ for his role in strengthening the partnership between India and the US at the state level. The award would be presented to the Chief Minister on May 8, 2017 during the Annual West Coast Summit of USIBC in the Menlo Park, California, according to a statement. The summit will see an assembly of 150 industry leaders from across sectors including information technology (IT), manufacturing, healthcare, food processing, clean energy, banking, digital payments and officials from the Government of India for exploring the effects of manufacturing in India, the country’s move towards digitisation and cashless society and the future of ...

The Dollar Business Bureau  Assocham, the industry association has found misinterpretations for e-commerce and commodity derivative exchanges under the current GST law. The association through its spokespersons said, "e-commerce definition, as given in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) dispensation, has been left so wide that it could go well beyond Amazon or Flipkart marketplace platforms and may even cover the commodity exchanges."  It suggested that the scope of electronic-commerce is not limited to providers such as Amazon and Flipkart alone, but also to businesses whereby a supply of goods or services is rendered through a digital or an electronic medium. There is a possibility of commodity exchanges being treated as e-commerce transaction although derivative-trading does not involve any delivery of actual ...

The Dollar Business Bureau After Flipkart roped in $1.4 billion funding from a consortium of private investors recently (eBay, Microsoft, and Tencent), Ola is the second struggling home-grown new-generation startup to avail a fresh capital of $250 million - $300 million from Japanese telecom major Softbank this year. As revealed by the filings in Registrar of companies, SIMI Pacific Pte, Softbank's subsidiary, has bought 12,97,945 shares at a premium of Rs 12,895 in ANI Technologies, the parent company of Ola. Struggling to overcome severe competition from American cab service provider Uber, market leader Ola's story is not very different from the face-off between Flipkart and Amazon. But the similarities between the two cases extend beyond the market dynamics, to include the involvement of the same global mega-investor Softbank. The Japanese backer of Ola, after ...

Sneha Gilada The Ministry of Food Processing Industry has announced that Amazon plans to invest about $500 million in India's food e-retail market. Other e-commerce firms in the industry like Grofers and Big Basket have also come forward with proposals for investments. The government has received investment proposals from a group of companies totalling $695 million in value.  In 2016, the government had pushed through a bill that opened up 100% FDI in the retail of food products manufactured or sourced from India. A similar proposition for non-food products is still in the working.  Minister of Food Processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal broke the news and hailed the series of investment proposals as a boost to the food processing Industry of India. From 2011-12 to 2015-16 (until December), the total FDI inflows in ...

The Dollar Business Bureau Vodafone India announced its partnership with Amazon Prime Video India, even as its merger with Idea Cellular was approved earlier. Under this new alliance, Vodafone customers who subscribe to Amazon Prime annual service of Rs.499 via Vodafone's app or website (only on Android phones currently), will receive a Rs.250 cashback in the form of Amazon Pay Balance, a wallet like service provided by the American e-tailer. Vodafone is the first telecom provider to have a partnership with Amazon Prime in India. The Vodafone subscribers will also be able to take the benefit of a SuperNet 4G network from March 22, 2017, a press release said. “This partnership with Amazon Prime Video strengthens our content proposition and reiterates our commitment to offering the best to our customers along ...

The Dollar Business Bureau Amazon Development Centre on Wednesday announced plans to unveil its two new customer service centres in Coimbatore and Noida later this year. The company’s Coimbatore facility will start in April, while the Noida one will be inaugurated in June. "The new customer service facilities in Coimbatore and Noida will augment our capabilities to serve our customers better and enable Amazon to deliver consistently high levels of customer experience," said Raj Raghavan, Director, Human Resources APAC. The new customer service facilities will handle Amazon’s pre- and post-order services through several mediums such as chat, e-mail and phone. "The facilities will help create employment for hundreds of customer service personnel in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh," Amazon said in a statement. With these two ...

Ranjeet Mahtani & Sweta Rajan The Central Government is in the process of vetting the drafts of the Model GST laws. The game plan is for the revision of the drafts to conclude during the next meeting of the Goods and Services Tax Council on February 18, 2017, to ensure that they can be tabled before the Parliament in the second leg of the Budget Session commencing on March 9, 2017.  GST Rates The classification of goods across the 5-tier rate slabs (0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%) is expected to be decided in May-June, 2017. Meanwhile, the Revenue Secretary has indicated that the applicable tax slab can be estimated based on a simplistic formula – the rate slab closest to the existing ...