Good evening, and welcome to Business Hook’s daily news podcast, where we bring you a roundup of the day’s top business stories. I’m Avni Raja, and today is the 24th of October, 2024.
Let’s start with Asian equity markets. It was yet another weak session for Asian equities, with most benchmark indices across the continent closing in the red. China’s Shanghai Composite snapped its winning streak, ending the day down seven-tenths of a percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell almost one and a half percent. South Korea’s Kospi slipped nearly one percent after the country’s third-quarter GDP growth came in at 0.1 percent, missing estimates of 0.5 percent. Japan’s Nikkei was the only outlier, showing a marginal uptick.Back home, the Sensex and the Nifty extended their losing streak.
The Nifty was down two-tenths of a percent at 24,399, while the Sensex ended almost unchanged. Of the fifty constituents of the Nifty, 26 gained and 24 declined. Among the losers, FMCG major Hindustan Unilever saw the sharpest cut, down almost six percent. HUL’s second-quarter performance disappointed the market with a four percent drop in net profit. The second biggest loser on the Nifty was private insurer SBI Life, which was also down five percent due to its muted Q2 performance.
The big story from the artificial intelligence space: AI chip maker Nvidia has partnered with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to build AI infrastructure in India. The announcement was made during Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s conversation with Mukesh Ambani at the Nvidia AI Summit 2024 in Mumbai. In addition to the tie-up with Reliance Industries, Nvidia is also collaborating with other Indian companies such as Infosys, Tech Mahindra, and Flipkart.
Shifting focus to the economy: Global brokerage firm Nomura expects India's growth momentum to moderate in the third quarter, with a continued soft outlook into the fourth quarter of the current fiscal year. Speaking to NDTV Profit, Nomura’s Sonal Verma noted that while the slowdown in growth is largely driven by weaker investment activity, consumption and industrial output indicators are also showing signs of moderation. This projection comes a day after the IMF’s decision to retain its growth forecast for India for both the current and next fiscal years.
And here’s a piece of news for those of you who live in Mumbai and Hyderabad and commute to work daily: after launching its shuttle service in Delhi and Kolkata, ride-hailing app Uber is set to pilot the service in Mumbai and Hyderabad soon. According to Prabhjeet Singh, President of Uber India and South Asia, the company is also in discussions with multiple stakeholders to introduce the service in Bengaluru.
With that, it’s a wrap on this edition of the Business Hook News Wrap podcast. We will be back tomorrow with the next edition of our podcast. Have a great weekend and check out our YouTube channel Business Hook for the top business developments of the day.