Biz Updates: India’s digital capital boosts entrepreneurship and income, Reliance spends $13 billion on acquisitions
New Delhi| India’s growing digital capital is an important driver enhancing entrepreneurship, business income and social mobility. This is particularly benefiting small-scale vendors and economically backward districts. The World Bank has said this in one of its reports. The recently published report details how digital technologies-such as the Internet, mobile phones and social media-are changing the socio-economic landscape in the country.
“Digital capital has increased entrepreneurship and business income in India and helped small-scale vendors and economically backward districts”, the World Bank said Digital technologies give students from disadvantaged backgrounds access to learning materials, boosting talent development and social mobility, the report said.
Records of online activity and payments help establish financial credibility, as data on payments, receipts, taxes and loan repayments can now be used to assess creditworthiness on the part of lenders, according to the report. The report credits Nandan Nilekani, one of India’s leading tech entrepreneurs, with introducing the Aadhaar system in 2009.
Reliance Industries spends $13 billion on acquisitions in five years: report
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd has spent close to $13 billion on acquisitions made in renewable energy, telecom, retail and media businesses over the past five years. Morgan Stanley has made this claim in one of its reports. According to the report, Reliance Industries’ acquisition plans aim to expand the scope of oil and petrochemical business to a renewable energy and consumer-centric segment. Just last week, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) bought Karkinos Healthcare for Rs 375 crore which is a big name for its diagnostic and digital health care infrastructure.
“Over the past five years, RIL has made announcements of $13 billion in acquisitions”, the U.S. financial services company said in its report. Of these, 14 percent have been in renewable energy, 48 percent in technology, media and telecommunications (TMT), nine percent in retail and even more in acquisitions healthcare Of this, six billion dollars were put into the acquisition of companies and assets in the media and education business and $2.6 billion in the telecommunications and Internet segment.
According to Morgan Stanley, RIL spent $1.7 billion on acquisitions in renewable energy and $1.14 billion in retail. RIL’s largest acquisition in the last five years has been the purchase of local cable TV and internet service providers Hathaway Cable and Datacom Ltd for $981 million.
