Episode Details

Welcome to Top of the Morning by Mint, your weekday newscast that brings you five major stories from the world of business. It's Friday, December 20, 2024. This is Nelson John, let's get started.

Jan Aushadhi Kendras, part of a government-backed initiative to provide affordable medicines, have been on an upswing, hitting sales of ₹1,000 crore this year. These centres have become so incredibly popular that some private firms are now getting in on the action. Take, for instance, a pharmacy in Mumbai that's named after Jan Aushadhi but isn't actually part of the official scheme. It cleverly uses the Jan Aushadhi brand to draw in customers looking for low-cost meds, even though it is a for-profit entity and sells branded generics, too. This situation highlights a broader trend in the market, writes Jessica Jani. While the official Jan Aushadhi Kendras are booming with their highly affordable generics, there's a growing space for hybrid centres like this Mumbai pharmacy. They offer both cheap generics and higher-margin branded drugs, ensuring no customer leaves empty-handed.

Micromax has teamed up with Taiwan's Phison to carve out a niche in the high-end storage market with a new joint venture, MiPhi. The venture, with 55:45 split favouring Micromax, has already started manufacturing solid-state drives (SSDs) at Micromax's facility in Greater Noida. Speaking with Mint’s Gulveen Aulakh, Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma said he was bullish about leveraging Phison's technology to cut GPU costs dramatically, aiming to slash the price to just one-tenth of current rates. This bold move is expected to shake up the AI sector not just in India but other strategic markets as well. MiPhi plans to capitalise on Micromax’s strong Indian client base and Phison’s cutting-edge NAND storage solutions to target a diverse range of industries. While the specifics of the facility’s production capacity remain under wraps, the focus will clearly be on sectors such as automotive, IoT, and mobile devices, among others.

Your next packet of biscuits may feel a bit lighter because of the sneaky tactic known as shrinkflation. This trend, along with outright price hikes, is on the rise as companies such as Britannia, Parle, ITC, and Godrej struggle with rising costs of ingredients such as wheat and oil. This is pushing up prices of everything from biscuits to soaps by as much as 7%, industry insiders told Suneera Tandon. Rajneet Singh Kohli of Britannia said while the company plans to increase prices by 3-5% over the next few quarters, it will try to absorb some of the increased costs. This may mean smaller product sizes rather than higher prices. Meanwhile, Parle has already started adjusting prices and pack sizes, and expects to roll out 5-7% price increases soon. India saw a similar phase of shrinkflation in 2022, which ended in mid-2023 as ingredient costs normalised. However, with the current economic pressures and persistently high inflation, FMCG companies are bracing for a challenging period ahead.

India saw a dramatic surge in its trade deficit in November. It hit a record $37.84 billion because of a four-fold increase in gold imports to nearly $15 billion owing to higher demand during the festive and wedding seasons. This surge in imports, alongside a 4.9% drop in exports, widened the deficit significantly. The substantial rise in gold purchases and a decrease in petroleum export earnings fueled the gap, explains Dhirendra Kumar. Merchandise exports dipped to $32.11 billion from $33.90 billion last year, while imports rose to $69.95 billion from $54.48 billion. This stark imbalance raises concerns about the slowing of India's manufacturing sector, which seems increasingly reliant on imported components and raw materials. The decline in exports suggests that domestic manufacturing struggles to compete globally thanks to high logistics and production costs, indicating a pressing need to bolster India's manufacturin