Finance

In mid-March, COVID-19 locked down most of Europe and Asia. For Sterimed, a 900-employee maker of high-end sterile medical packaging, this development brought mixed news. The sudden 40 percent increase in demand for its products was welcome, but ramping up production within its French plants posed a real challenge. One element was particularly thorny: Procuring protective masks for workers was impossible in France. Because it refused to endanger its employees, Sterimed needed masks. Having sold its products to China for years, it quickly realized that one of its Chinese clients was indeed producing protective masks and could send several boxes…

Bengaluru-headquartered IT services company Happiest Minds has filed draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with market regulator Sebi for its initial public offering (IPO). The proposed IPO comprises a fresh issue of shares worth Rs 110 crore and an offer for sale of 35.2 million shares by the company’s promoter Ashok Soota as well as private equity investor JP Morgan CMDB II, the prospectus showed. JP Morgan will exit its over five-year investment in the IT services firm if the IPO goes through. ALSO READ: Coronavirus LIVE: India overtakes UK’s tally with 297,001 cases ICICI Securities…

June 8, 2020 5 min readOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. While having a great product or quality service is undeniably important, these aren’t necessarily the things that will win you loyal customers. More often than not, buyers are influenced by a brand’s ability to form emotional connections with them. In fact, Harvard Business School professor emeritus Gerald Zaltman says that 95 percent of our buying decisions occur in the subconscious, where they’re fueled by emotions, rather than “logical processes.” The best way to foster an emotional connection that influences buyers is through your brand story, but…

For the second consecutive month in FY21, new business premium of life insurance companies have recorded negative growth due to the coronavirus outbreak. In May, new business premium of life insurers contracted 25.39 per cent to Rs 13,739 crore from Rs 18,414 crore in the same period a year ago. In the first two months of FY21, life insurers saw their new business premium fall almost 30 per cent to Rs 20,466.76 crore compared to Rs 28,395.90 crore in FY20. New business premium is the premium acquired from policies for a particular year. …

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has given a three-month window to unlisted bond issuers to get their securities listed, which would help debt mutual funds (MFs) bring down their overall exposure to such securities. According to industry participants, the regulator has asked MFs to inform the unlisted debt issuers about this window and consider this route. The window will open from June 15 and would be extended to unlisted non-convertible debentures (NCDs) held in portfolios of various debt scheme as of March 31, 2020. The issuers using this window would not…

Learn trends, tools, ad sales, programmatic advertising, and more.Free Book Preview No BS Guide to Direct Response Social Media Marketing The ultimate guide to – producing measurable, monetizable results with social media marketing. June 9, 2020 2 min readDisclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. Any entrepreneur knows that to grow your business, you need to get the word out there. Fortunately, the internet makes building your brand…

Relationships matter, which is why the deals world revolves as much around chance conversations as it does scheduled meetings and planned strategic maneuvers. COVID-19 has changed those serendipitous encounters and the get-togethers that help dealmakers build trust. That said, the dealmaking machinery is far from idle. Despite a lack of physical meetings, deals are still going ahead. Ten-hour videoconferences aren’t unusual. Site visits are a challenge, but drone technology presents a reasonable solution. Cosmetics firm Coty, which was looking for buyers, said it was considering the use of drones for due diligence; in May 2020, it sold its Wella and…

Shares of Vodafone Idea have been seeing sharp swings as the stock’s drop to a penny stock has attracted several speculative traders as well as retail investors looking to make quick gains from short moves on the counters. “There has been lot of speculation over the stock as it is in an industry, where other players are doing well. Its presence in the futures and options (F&O) segment has allowed traders to place bets on the directional move of the stock price in short-term,” said Deepak Jasani, head-retail research at HDFC Securities. ALSO READ: Coronavirus LIVE:…