Daily Updates

Soaring crude just one of the worries; crowded Modi-win trade, wary smart money may keep D-Street bulls in check

Fresh outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East following Iran's attack on Israel, is likely to keep crude prices high in the days ahead. Some analysts have warned that crude could hit $100/barrel by May. Read more

Watch Out

Take a look at these key events

Today

India-Uzbekistan joint military exercise to begin

Supreme Court to hear Arvind Kejriwal's plea against arrest

Realme to launch Realme Buds T110 TWS earphones in India

Realme to launch India-exclusive P series

PM Modi to visit Kerala

Congress nominees in Gujarat to start filing nominations

Amit Shah likely to visit Manipur

Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann to meet Arvind Kejriwal in Tihar

IPL: RCB vs SRH

Tomorrow

Moto g64 5g to launch in India

Priyanka Gandhi to join roadshow in Tripura

Asus to launch new ZenBook Duo in India

PM Modi to hold rallies in Raiganj and Balurghat

AAP to announce candidates for Jalandhar, Ludhiana

SC to hear petition to verify votes via VVPAT slips

IPL: Kolkata Knight Riders vs Rajasthan Royals

Big Story

BJP Election Manifesto 2024 key highlights: Top poll promises made by party in 'Sankalp Patra'

With just five days remaining until the commencement of the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unveiled its election manifesto on April 14 morning. Read more

IPO Market Action

3 public issues to open for subscription with 2 listings scheduled next week

The mainboard segment of the primary market seems to be losing euphoria as there will be no new initial public offering hitting Dalal Street next week starting from April 15. Read more

MF Stress Test 2

Quant Small Cap Fund's liquidity position improves

Quant Small Cap Fund, which has assets under management (AUM) of Rs 17,349 crore, has improved the liquidity positions, the second stress test findings revealed on April 12. The scheme will now take 20 days to liquidate 50 percent of its portfolio against 22 days when the first-ever stress tests were done in March. Read more

Tech Tattle

Elon Musk's AI company's Grok chatbot gets smarter with new feature: Key details

Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, unveiled Grok-1.5V, a new version of its AI model that can now see. According to the company, Grok-1.5V isn't just an update, it's a completely new type of AI called a "multimodal" model. This means it can understand both text and images. Read more

Tailpiece

Ex-Google recruiter shares salary negotiation tip for job seekers: 'If you don't ask, the answer is always...'

A common advice that Nolan Church, former Google recruiter and current CEO of salary data company FairComp, offers job seekers is to ask questions while negotiating salary

Arvind Kejriwal Arrest, AAP superimo arrested

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was arrested on Thursday hours after a team of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) reached CM's residence.

Lok Sabha Elections 2024 Schedule LIVE: EC briefs media, to announce poll dates soon

Lok Sabha Elections 2024 Date LIVE Updates: The voting schedule for the next Lok Sabha elections of 2024 is scheduled to be announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday, March 16. At a news conference in the nation's capital, the announcement will be made at 3 p.m.

The general election is usually held in multiple phases across the 543 constituencies and the results are announced on a single day, usually in May. Last time, the Lok Sabha polls were announced on March 10 and held in seven phases beginning April 11 to May 19. Votes were counted on May 23.

“CEC Rajiv Kumar will address the Press Conference on General Elections 2024 together with EC’s Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu on 16th March, 2024 (3 PM),” the poll body informed in a tweet.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday shared a campaign video “Main Modi Ka Parivar Hun” ahead of the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections.

Appointment of new Election Commissioners

On March 14, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led three-member committee picked Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu as election commissioners. The law ministry issued a notification announcing the appointments.

Sukhbir Singh Sandhu is a retired IAS officer of 1998 batch. He served as the chief secretary of Uttarakhand. He was appointed the chief secretary when Pushkar Singh Dhami became the chief minister in 2021.

Gyanesh Kumar is a retired 1988-batch Kerala-cadre IAS officer. He served as secretary in the ministry of cooperation led by Amit Shah.

Eligible Voters

About 960 million voters will be eligible to cast their votes in the coming general election, which will be the biggest democratic exercise in the world.

Meesho announces its largest ESOP buyback worth Rs 200 Cr

Meesho has announced the initiation of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) buyback program of Rs 200 crore (approximately $25 million), making it the company’s largest ESOP buyback pool to date.

This marks the fourth buyback at the horizontal e-commerce unicorn. The company bought back shares worth $1 million in February 2020, $5 million in November 2020 and $5.5 million in October 2021.

The new buyback will benefit around 1,700 past as well as present employees across junior-level executives to senior leadership.

Meesho provides small businesses, which includes SMBs, MSMEs and individual entrepreneurs, access to millions of customers, selection from over 30 categories, pan-India logistics, payment services and customer support capabilities.

The Vidit Aatrey-led company recently announced the launch of Valmo, a full fledged logistics marketplace that allows the network of micro-entrepreneurs to become Meesho logistics partners.

In July 2023, Meesho claimed that it was the first horizontal Indian e-commerce company to turn profitable. Since announcing profitability in July 2023, the company continues to remain profitable and cash flow positive. The company also cut its losses in FY23 by 48% but its revenue spiked 77% year-on-year to Rs 5,735 crore in the last fiscal year.

Recently, community management app MyGate rolled out employee stock buyback program for more than 50 employees. As per data compiled by TheKredible, the total EOSP buyback/payout/liquidity stood at nearly $802 million in 2023. In 2021 and 2022, the buyback amount was recorded at $440 and $200 million respectively. 

Investor Makes $4,717,540 with Shiba Inu as SHIB Surges

Lookonchain suggested that the purpose behind the deposit was potentially to capitalize on profits from these addresses. This speculation stemmed from SHIB’s recent performance, especially considering the lower price at which the whale had acquired the SHIB tokens.

In particular, the market tracker observed that the same value of SHIB tokens deposited recently had been withdrawn from Binance by the Shiba Inu whale about two months ago. Reportedly, the withdrawal occurred between November 17 and December 27, 2023. 

At that time, the tokens were valued at $3.24 million. However, as stated in the recent disclosure, the deposited Shiba Inu tokens held a value of over $5.76 million at the time of the transaction. This led Lookonchain to estimate a potential profit of $2.5 million for the trader.

Meanwhile, more recent data suggests a more staggering profit profile for the whale, considering Shiba Inu’s latest uptick

Think better

The unhappiest people in this world, are those who care the most about what other people think.