Income tax dept seizes ₹993-crore assets in FY18

The income tax (IT) department seized assets worth Rs 992.5 crore during 2017-18, while 582 search and seizure operations were conducted during the financial year, Parliament was informed on Friday. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, minister of state for finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said the I-T department seizes unaccounted/ undisclosed/ unexplained assets during the search and seizure operations.


The value of assets seized during the previous financial year (FY17) was nearly Rs1,470 crore, Shukla said. The total number of search and seizure operations conducted by the I-T department stood at 1,152 for the period.

In a separate reply, Shukla said the direct tax-GDP ratio improved to 5.98% in 2017-18, from 5.57% in 2016-17 and 5.47% in 2015-16.

The central indirect tax-GDP ratio was at 5.43% in fiscal 2017-18, against 5.65% in 2016-17 and 5.16% in 2015-16.

“According to Budget Estimate, the indirect tax (including CGST, IGST and compensation cess) to GDP ratio for 2018-19 has been fixed at 5.96%,” Shukla said. He added that several legislative steps, including simplification of tax collection rules, have been taken to increase the tax-GDP ratio. 

This co delivers all Startup Executes 75,590 Orders In 100 Metres

Curds to condoms: This co delivers all
Startup Executes 75,590 Orders In 100 Metres


Chennai:

If you are one of those baby boomers who always considered the urban Indian millennial lazy, here’s some hard (and rib-tickling) evidence backing your belief. A year-end trends report by Dunzo posted on its blog shows how, in 2018, urban Indians employed their favourite jugaad to manage day-to-day chores by leveraging the 24*7 on-demand delivery app.


In 2018, Dunzo executed 75,590 deliveries within a 100-metre radius, including a delivery requested by a Gurgaon user to the “third floor”.

The longest distance travelled by Dunzo — to make a cake delivery — was 42km.

From 13,517 contraceptive deliveries — including 308 orders of condoms twice in the same night — to over 6,000 deliveries of curd, to 14 pizza deliveries made to gyms, no task was too bizzare for Dunzo’s users to request.

Dunzo made 33,478 late night deliveries in the year, and cigarettes and colas emerged as the top two items ordered by night-owl users of Dunzo. “Pune wrapped the year with aloo rolls, Gurgaon heated things up with tandoori chicken, while Chennai kept it basic with meals,” reads the note by Dunzo, listing some of the country’s favourite dishes this year. Biryani was Bengaluru’s favourite with 10,774 biryanis delivered in the city.

As many as 352 key bunches were forgotten by absent-minded hurried users on Mondays, and Dunzo helped single people drown their sorrows on Valentine’s Day with delivery of 89 ice cream tubs.

Not just that, thanks to Dunzo, users across the country saved 23,92,816 hours of their time this year, the report said, with shortest time on a single delivery clocking in at 7 minutes on a salad order for a Bengaluru user. Given the outpouring of love for Dunzo’s findings on Twitter, looks like the Indian user is not just lazy but also, as Dunzo puts, it “unapologetically” so.

New e-policy: ₹5,000cr stock may bleed Amazon, Flipkart

‘Alpha Sellers’ Have To Deal With Inventory Before Feb 1

The new FDI regulations will put e-tailers in a tight spot for yet another reason. Both Amazon India and the Walmart-owned Flipkart are sitting on inventories worth Rs 2,000-2,500 crore each. While initial reactions to the revised FDI policy for ecommerce were primarily about how it bleeds players in this sector, the immediate concern is dealing with the massive stockpile since the new regime takes effect on February 1.


As reported by TOI this week, among other things, the recent government note on the new policy had said that a seller having equity participation by the e-commerce marketplace entity or its group companies will not be permitted to sell its products on the platform run by such a marketplace entity. These large volumes of inventory that are secured in advance are pushed by these seller entities (like Cloudtail, RetailNet, etc) that work closely with the e-commerce platforms.

E-commerce companies stock up three months’ inventory for products in fashion, accessories and other soft-line categories from brands they have tie-ups with. E-tailers buy inventory from small to large brands and sell them online. A back-of the-envelope calculation suggests each big player has inventories of more than Rs 2,000 crore, said the CEO of a large fashion brand on condition of anonymity.

Fashion and soft-line categories are among the top three businesses for Flipkart and Amazon. In the recently concluded festive season, the segment clocked a gross sale of Rs 2,500-2,800 crore, which forms a sizeable share for Flipkart, followed by Myntra and Amazon, said industry sources. The executives in these firms are exploring options to clear the inventory inside of a month.

Sources told TOI that the alpha sellers Cloudtail and RetailNet, among others, are expected to hold talks with these brands over the inventory they hold. “This is a big problem as they weren’t expecting a shock,” a person familiar with the development said.

The top executive of the fashion brand quoted earlier said deals were always inked with companies like Flipkart and Myntra for supplying stocks for up to three months. “We don’t sell to these platforms unless they promise us a three-month stock purchase. They have monthly targets and we provide a certain rate based on the promise of that high volume,” the executive said. An Amazon India spokeswoman said the company, with 4 lakh small and medium businesses, has always complied with the law of the land. “We’re evaluating the guidelines to gain clarity so that we remain true to our commitment,” she added.

He saves people from drowning, but cops have a problem

E Even though his primary job merely requires him to go fishing a few hours a day and spend the remaining time selling the catch and mending his nets, Vitawa fisherman Rajesh Kharkar (48) spends a large chunk of his time rescuing drowning people and birds from the Thane creek and fishing out floating bodies for the authorities.

Kharkar, who started this noble task with his father at just 13, has over 35 years saved over 3,000 people who had either fallen into the creek from passing overcrowded trains or who tried to commit suicide. “My home is by the creek and my window faces the Vitawa railway bridge. Every time I see somebody falling into the mucky waters, I rush out in my canoe and rescue them. I have also helped the authorities by fishing out over 5,000 bodies,” says Kharkar.

He has even rescued injured birds and snakes. He hands them over to animal activists, forest officials and veterinarians.

In the process of balancing his daily work with these strenuous and stressful situations, the humble hero has had numerous health ailments, but every time resumed work soon after. “I have had three heart attacks and have a pacemaker now. But I truly believe that as long as I keep living for others and helping them, God will protect me,” he says.

While Kharkar and 25 other brave hearts were given the title of jeevan rakshak by the municipal corporation in 2000, for their selfless and voluntary deeds they have been facing pressure from the local police to stop their work.

“Every time we pull out a dead body from the creek, the police have to investigate the matter. They want us to ignore these incidents so that the bodies flow away with the current and move out of their jurisdiction. Pressure from the police has brought my team of 25 fishermen down to five,” Kharkar said. “We told the police we will stop the work if they put a few officials on creek duty and give them a canoe to do rescue work. They have no such facility. We cannot watch somebody’s mother or father or son or daughter just float by.

They need to be treated with the same respect we accord our family members.” 

Solar man Solanki starts a mission across continents

What started as a small dream to reach out to villages with no electricity has metamorphosed into a multi-country project for an IIT-Bombay professor. Chetan Singh Solanki can very well be called a crusader of solar power. With the mission of placing a million solar ambassadors across the continents in a year, Solanki this week set out from Sabarmati Ashram on a six-month Solar Yatra to cover 30-40 countries. The idea is to create environmental awareness and help people become self-reliant in energy production.

“My yatra is based on the concept of Gram Swaraj promoted by Gandhiji. I am trying to get a million children across countries to take the pledge of non-violence to the environment,” says Solanki.

Hailing from the small district of Khargone in Madhya Pradesh, where he went to a single-classroom primary school, Solanki has come a long way. “There is still no bus connection to my village. People walk about 2km to reach the nearest bus stand. I grew up there, managed to come to IIT-Bombay and even went to Europe for higher studies,” he says.

He always wanted to give back to society and decided to get into solar energy production. “The way we are exploiting the environment right now, the severity of climate change will be felt by children who are 10 or 11 years old today. We have to reach out to these young people to create awareness,” he says.

His first two projects in 2007 and 2010, to distribute solar lamps, were complete failures. “One lamp was given to each of 500 villages. But once the lamps started having glitches, no one knew how to fix them. In our next project, we decided to have a solid contract with manufacturers for maintenance. It failed again. There was no accountability whatsoever,” Solanki says. It was then that he decided to reach out to local communities as “assembling a solar lamp is not rocket science”. “With a little help from the government, society and my students at IIT, we managed to make a million lamps,” he says with glee.

Given his scientific worldview, not surprisingly, and much against his family’s wishes, Solanki got married in a mass marriage function. This, despite his Rajput lineage. Can celebs learn a thing or two from this humble brainman?

One man’s commuting woes, app-iness for millions

Twelve years ago, IT engineer Sachin Teke (33) was in a perpetual state of frustration as a commuter travelling from his Nerul residence to his Seepz, Andheri, workplace. He would take a train to Kurla without knowing when the next local would arrive and whether it would reach him on time. After reaching Kurla, he would have to endlessly wait for a bus. And once he would reach his Andheri stop, he would have to haggle with an auto driver for the last mile ride to reach office.

Spending hours on three modes of transport every day, with its attendant uncertainties, was a painful experience. Equipped with the ability to develop cellphone apps, he decided to create an app primarily focussed on Mumbai’s public transport. Teke’s aim was to link the app to databases on the schedules of local trains, buses, and Metro and monorail.

“I wanted every Mumbaikar to have a virtual companion as a guide on the next train or disruption or delays. I wanted people to be able to decide on the best mode of transport at any given hour,” says Teke, who graduated from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute, Matunga, and whose work experience includes a stint with Nokia. “I created the app m-Indicator after my own frustrating experience in 2006. By 2010, I had quit my job to run the app full-time.”

Starting with a few hundred downloads in its first year, the free app gained popularity over the years and now boasts over a crore subscribers. “Finance was the biggest hurdle in the initial two years, but the fact that my app was helping commuters in distress kept me motivated. I continued developing the app, going to the extent of appointing people to give minute-by minute updates and real-time feedback on train movement,” he says. “My app now earns revenue through advertisements.”

The app contains details about 232 trains making 3,000 daily trips through 108 stations on the city’s suburban train network, and has 84,000 timetable entries, with Teke claiming he is among the first to update databases every time CR or WR revises their time-table.

A key feature is a live chat, on which Mumbai’s 80 lakh commuters share real-time information about the rescheduling or cancellation of train services. “It could be a disruption, accident or any other incident. This information is vital to other passengers travelling on the same route. So I created a channel of communication between commuters real time, and this has worked wonders,” he says.

Commuters say they check the app before commencing a journey so that they don’t have to face any inconvenience later. “I have received positive feedback and thank you notes from nearly 3.8 lakh people,” Teke says. “This has kept me going.”

‘E-tail policy sends wrong signal’

The recent changes in FDI policy for the e-commerce sector send a wrong message to investors and lack transparency, the head of an influential US lobby has war ned. “Current policy revisions short-changes the customer. The message we are sending is that the customer is not the king. Also, the process lacked transparency, and predictability. It sends a wrong message to the investor community,” Mukesh Aghi, president and CEO of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, told TOI.


In a sudden move, the government modified existing foreign investment rules in the e-commerce sector by barring players such as Amazon and Flipkart from selling products from companies in which they have a stake. The tightened guidelines, which are expected to have a major impact on top ecommerce firms in the country, also barred them from selling exclusive products on their platforms.

“Multinational companies will be hesitant to go to their board to seek approval for further investment. When you change the rules of the game while the first investment is still being implemented, on what basis a CEO can justify further investment if you do not have a predictable regulatory environment?” Aghi said. “This will have a wide and long-term impact. We are currently on a campaign to convince US companies which are manufacturing in China to move their base to India. How do we assure them that regulatory policy will be consistent and predictable? These sudden changes do have an impact on investor confidence in India,” he added.

The rule changes have shocked top global retailers, but domestic firms have welcomed them, saying it ushers in a level-playing field.

Aghi called for a dialogue with various stakeholders to ensure that sudden changes in policy do not catch investors off guard. “We should take emotions out of the whole process and have a dialogue which looks into the interest of the customer, local kirana stores and local regulatory environment,” Aghi said.