Espresso: Equity indices record new life-highs

Equity indices record new life-highs

The 30-stock S&P BSE Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), and the 50-stock Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) touched their life-highs of 54,440.8 and 16,290.2 points respectively, until 11 AM on August 4.

At the latest annual (52-week) high, the Sensex has recovered over 17,944.82 points, from the 52-week low of 36,495.98 points on September 24 last year. This marks an absolute recovery of 49.17 percent in a matter of 214 trading days.

From 25,638.9 points—the historic low-point that the Sensex had touched on March 24 last year, it has added 28,801.9 points on August 4 to clock a recovery of 112.34 percent in a matter of 340 trading days.

Like the broader benchmark, the S&P BSE MidCap and S&P BSE SmallCap also registered their respective all-time highs of 23,478.8 and 27,323.18 points. From the respective lows of 13,889.98 points and 13,390.82 points on August 5 last year, the MidCap and SmallCap indices have recovered 9,588.82 points, (+69.03 percent) and 13,932.36 points (+104.04 percent) on August 4.

Salesforce to acquire Servicetrace

Salesforce has agreed to acquire Servicetrace, a robotic process automation (RPA) provider by October 2021. When the acquisition is complete, the RPA provider will become a part of the Salesforce-owned company MuleSoft.

This move would allow Salesforce to launch a platform that combines API management and RPA services, enhancing Salesforce Customer 360, a tool that allows enterprises to connect with all Salesforce applications through a unified customer ID.

As businesses look to digitise their processes, the adoption of RPA software has exploded because it helps free up employee-time from manual work through automation. In a report published September 2020, technology research advisory Gartner predicted that 90 percent of large organisations globally will have adopted RPA in some form by 2022.

Tata Consumer Product's first quarter

Tata Consumer Products reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 200.24 crore in the first quarter of financial year 2022. This was up 169.32 percent compared to the previous quarter ending March 2021. However, it was 42 percent lower than the net profit in the same quarter last year.

Its total income fell sequentially (by 1.4 percent) in the quarter ending June 2021 to Rs 3,036.47 crore. It was up 10.6 percent compared to the income a year ago.

The segment revenue from beverage sales in India rose 28 percent to Rs 1267.1 crore compared to the same quarter last year. It went up 5.57 percent compared to the previous quarter. Ecommerce recorded significant year-on-year growth of 153 percent, and contributed 7.3 percent of domestic sales, the company reported.

“With the second wave of COVID receding in India, we are seeing a V shaped recovery since the latter part of June,” said Sunil D’Souza, Managing Director & CEO of Tata Consumer Products.

UPI sets new records in July 2021 

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), touched newer highs in July, with 15.7 percent monthly rise in volumes that crossed 3.24 billion.

Compared to the previous life-high of Rs 5.47 lakh-crore in June, the month gone by saw UPI transaction value breaching Rs 6.06 lakh-crore mark—a monthly increase of 10.8 percent.

Compared to July last year, the transaction volumes have jumped 116.9 percent, or 1.75 billion, compared to over 1.49 billion. Similarly, the value of transactions grew 108.7 percent, or over Rs 3.15 lakh-crore, against Rs 2.91 lakh-crore in July 2020.

Since July 2017, the number of monthly transactions has jumped over 279 times in absolute terms from 11.63 million. The value of transactions has increased nearly 178 times from Rs 3,411 crore in the same period.

SBI launches SIM Binding feature

State Bank of India has launched an enhanced security feature, SIM Binding, for its YONO and YONO Lite platforms. This will only allow those devices access to YONO platforms that have the SIM of mobile numbers registered with the bank to protect their customers from digital fraud.

The feature will be available on new versions of the applications. The YONO banking platform allows lifestyle services flight booking, online shopping, and bill payments. 

It has over 37 million registered users and gets 9 million log-ins a day. The lender had witnessed an addition of 2 million accounts through YONO in the quarter ending March 2021. The bank also disbursed personal loans of more than Rs 5,300 crore through the YONO mobile app in the same quarter.

Finacle wins deal in the Philippines

Infosys Finacle has been selected by UnionBank of Philippines to help the bank migrate from on-premise deployment to the Finacle Digital Banking Solution Suite on Cloud.

This would entail the migration of 8 million customer accounts to FInacle's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform. “We are investing in this new platform to gain exponential benefits in reducing costs, increasing efficiency and ultimately, delivering a world class digital customer experience,” said Henry Rhoel R Aguda, Chief Technology, Operations and Transformation Officer, UnionBank of the Philippines.