Talk about a pivot. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was one year into his tenure. Bourla, born and educated in Greece, is a 27-year veteran of the company. A trained veterinarian, he rose through the ranks of its animal health unit, and subsequently held leadership positions responsible for numerous businesses, including vaccines, oncology, and consumer products, before taking the post of chief operating officer in 2018. As he formally took the reins of the company on January 1, 2019, Bourla was focused on continuing Pfizer’s transformation into a pure-play biopharmaceutical company: placing its consumer health business…

This has been a week full of milestones for the Indian markets. On Wednesday, the benchmark Sensex closed above 50,000-mark for the first time. A day later, the country’s market capitalisation crossed the Rs 200-trillion-mark. And on Friday, the benchmark Nifty50 crossed 15,000-mark, albeit on an intra-day basis. The widely-traded index touched an intra-day high of 15,015, but failed to sustain the gains. Below is the table on Nifty’s 1,000-point journeys from 7,000 to 15,000. The latest 1,000 points has taken just 25 days same as the previous 1,000. Dear Reader,…

Getting someone to download your app is just the start. Now you need great marketing.Free Book Preview Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising Get a glimpse of how to use Facebook’s marketing resources to your business’s advantage. February 4, 2021 3 min read A user downloads your app. Success! Except… why aren’t they using it? To find out what’s wrong, we set up an unusual consulting session between an entrepreneur and a digital marketing consultant—and filmed it so you can benefit too. Lavinia Hajji is the founder of Dance Embassy. It’s a studio that teaches dance classes, and she created…

Amid backlash over the Budget proposal to tax the interest earned from provident fund contribution of over Rs 2.5 lakh a year, the government on Thursday reiterated th­at the move is aimed at preventing high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) dep­ositing large sums “in a scheming ma­nner” at the cost of salaried class taxpay­e­rs to earn assured and tax-exempt returns. While HNI contributors account for just 0.27 per cent of the employee’s provident fund (EPF) accounts, they have an average corpus of Rs 5.92 crore per subscriber, earning Rs 50.3 lakh per person per annum as tax-free, said sources…

The sum of the market value of BSE-listed companies crossed Rs 200 trillion for the first time, on Thursday. The feat comes a day after the S&P BSE Sensex closed above the coveted 50,000-mark. The Sensex, on Thursday, ended at 50,614.29, up 358.54 points. The combined market capitalisation of the National Stock Exchange of India-listed companies was a shade lower at Rs 199.1 trillion, based on Thursday’s closing. The Nifty50 index ended the session at 14,895.65, up 105.70 points. In dollar terms, the market cap figure of BSE-listed firms is…

February 3, 2021 7 min readOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. As part of the management team of several creative agencies throughout my career, I can remember having conversations about whether we could afford to take on a small, low-paying client that wanted us to help them establish and effectively amplify their brand. Unfortunately, I don’t ever remember the answer being “yes.” We always had to politely decline because we had overhead costs and margins that simply made it unprofitable. Let’s face it, big agencies need big dollars to do what they do. Their business model requires…

A few years ago, leaders at the Gates Foundation reached out to see if I could help them improve their culture. They already had a strong culture of performance: They hired world-class scientists and maintained excellence of execution. Their goal was to improve their learning culture, in which people have the humility to know what they don’t know and the curiosity to rethink the way they’ve always done things. When I first arrived, people were whispering about the annual strategy reviews. It’s the time when program teams across the foundation meet with the cochairs — Bill and Melinda Gates —…

The Sensex on Wednesday closed above the 50,000 mark for the first time as the Budget-fuelled rally continued for the third straight session. The index rose 458 points, or about 1 per cent, to finish at 50,256, gaining close to 9 per cent in the last three trading sessions. Investor wealth has jumped by Rs 12.31 trillion since the Budget day, taking the market capitalisation of all BSE-listed companies to a record Rs 198.43 trillion. In the Union Budget for 2021-22, presented on Monday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled a spending plan to revive…