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Adani group is looking to invest about Rs 2 lakh crore by 2030 to build 40 gigawatts of renewable energy generation capacity, as it targets net zero emissions across businesses by 2050, top officials said on Tuesday. The apple-to-airport conglomerate currently has over 10 GW of capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources like sunlight and wind energy and is looking to add 6-7 GW every year to reach 50 GW by 2030. "Considering the ballpark number of Rs 5 crore per megawatt, the investment could be in the range of Rs 2 lakh crore by 2030," Adani Green Energy Ltd Executive Director Sagar Adani told reporters here. Its CEO Amit Singh said the company would also build a 5 GW pump storage capacity to peak power demand during the night when sunlight is not available, and wind intensity is not strong enough to turn wind turbines to produce electricity. The carbon credits renewable capacity generates, together with a few other measures, will help turn the group net zero by 2050.111239657AGEL added 2.8 GW capacity in the 2023-2024 (April 2023 to March 2024) fiscal, which was 15 per cent of India's total renewable energy capacity addition, Singh said. "This year, our target is 6 GW," he said. Going forward, that kind of capacity addition or higher is likely every year, Adani said, adding that 80 per cent of the 50 GW capacity will be solar and the rest wind. The conglomerate is building factories to make wafers used in solar panels to generate electricity and wind turbines. Singh said the group is now looking at making 3 MW wind turbines for areas with lower wind speeds. It currently makes wind turbines of 5.2 MW capacity that are suited for high-potential areas like Khavada in Gujarat. India is the world's third-largest economy in terms of energy needs, and its energy demand is projected to surge 25-35 per cent by 2030. Its peak energy demand is estimated to be 366.4 GW by 2031-32. AGEL brought on a stream of 2,848 MW (2.8 GW) renewables capacity, the largest greenfield expansion in India's renewable energy sector. This included 2,418 MW solar and 430 MW wind projects.111119307Of the capacity commissioned in FY24 includes 2,000 MW of solar capacity from Adani Green Energy's World's largest renewable energy project of 30,000 MW, being built at Khavda, Gujarat. The project is spread across 538 square kilometres, almost five times the city of Paris. Once built, it will be the largest power plant in the world, regardless of the energy source. AGEL is also targeting the addition of at least 5,000 MW pumped storage project (PSP) capacity by 2030 in the first phase, Singh said. It has begun the construction of the first 500 MW PSP in Andhra Pradesh. The company has a robust development pipeline of hydro-pumped storage projects across Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. With this, AGEL has revised its renewable energy target to 50,000 MW from 45,000 MW by 2030. AGEL's current operational portfolio is 10,934 MW, which consists of 7,393 MW solar, 1,401 MW wind and 2,140 MW wind-solar hybrid capacity. It is the first company in India to surpass the 10,000 MW renewable energy capacity.111130859Over the past five years, its operational capacity addition has outpaced the industry, achieving a CAGR of 41 per cent compared to India's 13 per cent. AGEL's total locked-in portfolio stands at 21,953 MW (10,934 MW is operational, and 11,019 MW is under execution). About 93 per cent of AGEL's portfolio comprising 20,368 MW is now backed by 25-year fixed tariff PPAs with sovereign/sovereign equivalent counterparties, which gives it revenue predictability, and 7 per cent is merchant portfolio, offering higher realisations.

Ramani Dathi, CFO, Teamlease Services, says on the non-IT side, a very positive outlook as far as hiring is concerned across all segments like BFSI, FMCG, FMCD, pharma, tourism, hospitality and manufacturing. The monsoon is expected to be positive for this year. We believe that the upcoming festive season can also be very good for retail, FMCG, FMCD and other related industries. Overall, how is the hiring outlook right now versus six months ago or at the start of the year? Are things materially different when it comes to IT, banking, tourism etc?Ramani Dathi: Let me start with IT because as far as IT is concerned, we are not seeing any kind of pickup in the hiring momentum at this stage. We expected that maybe in the middle of this year there could be some green shoots, but to be very honest as of now we are not seeing any kind of major uptick as far as demand is concerned.There are a few set of clients, especially the GCCs, to some extent they are able to maintain the current run rate of revenues and headcounts for us, but to show a massive growth or a double-digit growth we have to have the IT services hiring to be back on track and as I said at this stage we are not seeing any kind of pickup on IT front. However, on non-IT side, we are seeing very positive outlook as far as hiring is concerned across all segments, be it BFSI, FMCG, FMCD, pharma, tourism, hospitality, manufacturing, across all sectors we are seeing very good outlook and in fact with the monsoon being expected positive for this year we believe that the upcoming festive season can also be very good for retail, FMCG, FMCD and other related industries. But what is it that you are looking at when it comes to some of the other segments, in terms of manufacturing for example, what has been the kind of traction that we have witnessed on ground or which are some of the other segments that are seeing robust growth?Ramani Dathi: Within manufacturing right now, we are seeing a good amount of demand from smartphone manufacturers, chip manufacturers, EVs and other new-age companies because these are the sectors where new job creation is getting generated. So, it is not just the transition of converting informal jobs to formal jobs, these are all the industries that are generating new set of jobs and this we believe will continue to give us maximum hiring for the next two to three years as well. However, there are certain challenges in terms of mobilisation of the right skill set people and upskilling them, facilitating them. All of those challenges were there, but even with all of those we are seeing very good numbers kind of lining up for manufacturing and also in the allied industries. And also, in non-manufacturing segments like auto or what we say other allied segments, we are seeing at entry level jobs, we are seeing good amount of demand and this is spread across the country. Unlike earlier we used to have specific concentration in few regions that we are seeing getting more and more widespread now. You briefly mentioned GCCs. What kind of growth rate are you seeing? Is it a sudden mushrooming of GCCs in certain areas? How is that entire space picking up?Ramani Dathi: Especially post-Covid, we have seen the growth of GCCs both in terms of the sheer number of new GCCs set up in India as well as the headcount with the existing GCCs. So, both are growing at a very good encouraging rate and this in fact has helped us to maintain the run rate in our specialised staffing business. Whatever headcount and revenue run rate that we lost on the IT services front, so that got fully offset by the GCCs and they will continue to drive almost 70% of the hirings that we are planning for the next one year. We believe 70% of them will be backfilled with GCC open positions and again within GCCs right now we are seeing the maximum demand coming from the BFSI segment and this will continue for the next one year as well. With respect to the overall stake of AI versus the jobs, of course, we have seen that now at least play out for the last 12 months. According to you, why has IT hiring slowed down?Ramani Dathi: Yes, it may not be exactly AI. It is mainly because of the global IT slowdown, especially driven by US and European economies. In AI, maybe it is too early to assess whether it is the only reason or the main reason for the current decline in IT hiring. To some extent, it can affect and more than the number of jobs, it has already started eating into the salaries, be it in terms of hikes and the overall salary range, it may get slightly impacted. But at this stage, we believe it is too early to nail it down to AI, ML, those kinds of new-age technologies. It is still going to be predominantly because of the global slowdown in IT spend.

The shares of Akme Fintrade will list on the exchanges on Wednesday. Ahead of the listing, the company's shares were trading with a GMP of Rs 18 in the unlisted market.Considering the upper price band of Rs 120, the stock is expected to list at a premium of 15% over the issue price.However, it is important to note that grey market premiums are just an indicator as to how the company's shares are stacked up in the unlisted market and are subject to change rapidly.The IPO, which was entirely a fresh equity sale of 1.1 crore shares, was booked 53 times at close.The funds are being raised primarily to augment its capital base. As per RBI norms, the minimum capital adequacy for an NBFC should be 15%.Also Read: 3 SME IPOs open for subscription today. Check details before subscribingIn the coming years, the company plans to grow its loan advances which would require tier-1 capital to comply with the applicable capital adequacy regulations. Through the IPO, it would have adequate capital without any further need of fresh capital in the short to medium term.Akme Fintrade is a non-banking finance company (NBFC) engaged in rural and semi-urban centric lending solutions to look after the needs and aspirations of rural and semi-urban populace. Its portfolio includes vehicle finance and business finance products for small business owners.The company has a long history of serving rural and semi-urban markets with high growth potential and have maintained a track record of financial performance and operational efficiency through consistently high rates of customer acquisition and retention and low cost expansion into underpenetrated areas.In FY23, its revenue from operations grew to Rs 69.51 crore from Rs 67.44 crore in the preceding financial year. Meanwhile, profit after tax jumped multifold to Rs 15.80 crore from just Rs 4.12 crore a year earlier.Gretex Corporate Services is acting as the booking running lead manager for the public offer.

Whatever else it may be about, the debate over immigration is first and foremost about perceptions. The question is not just how many foreigners are in your country, but how many you notice.In the US, immigration tends to be popular in urban areas with a lot of immigrants. Partly that’s because the economic benefits of immigrants are easy to see when you deal with them a lot, but some of it is also perception. If you are used to seeing many immigrants around, you may not notice or care if the percentage of immigrants in your community rises from 24% to 26%. But if it rises from 0% to 2%, you can bet it will be noticed and debated in your community.Recent evidence indicates that the US has been overestimating the number of foreign-born individuals in the country; there may be as many as 2 million fewer than the official tally of about 46 million. This doesn’t make critics of immigration feel any better, and the development essentially has been ignored. That’s because the debate over immigration policy is more about the feeling than the actual number.I write this from Sweden, which historically has not had many non-Western immigrants, unlike the UK or France. But the foreign-born population in Sweden has been rising and is now almost one-quarter of this country of 10.5 million, with about half of that from outside Europe. Walking around Stockholm, I have noticed a lot of non-European faces.It is conventional wisdom in the US, especially among commentators on the right side of the political spectrum, that Swedish immigration policy has been a disaster. Sweden also has a populist right party in its governing coalition, the Sweden Democrats, largely because the mainstream parties have been slow to address migration issues. The Swedish murder rate has risen sharply in recent years, and there have been bombings and shootouts in Stockholm, many connected with immigrant groups.At the same time, it is inarguable that Sweden could use more people, including young people — the country’s total fertility rate is less than 1.6, well below replacement level. Furthermore, Swedes often do not want to do the jobs associated with immigrants, such as driving Ubers or taking care of children or the elderly. And it’s worth noting that the Swedish murder rate is still only about one-sixth of that of the US. From my perspective, the country is a very safe place.When I am in a foreign city and in search of interesting food, I have a trick: In which neighborhood, I ask the locals, am I most likely to get murdered? In Stockholm, Rinkeby was the answer, even though many of the people I asked had never been. So I went to Rinkeby, which is mostly non-White and most notably Somalian. There were Yemeni, Ethiopian, Persian and other restaurants. (I had a good chicken mandi at one called Maida.) I felt safe the entire time, and saw plenty of solo women, including some blonde Swedes, walking leisurely along the main street, as well as many women with head coverings. I saw a Western Union office and a driving school, signs that people have some funds to send away or invest in a car.It is well known that the area has some serious problems, including violence. But from my American and northern-Virginian perspective, Rinkeby felt lively and successful, and more likely to get better than worse.Wise immigration policy consists of a balancing of perspectives. On one hand, Sweden cannot keep increasing its rate of immigrant absorption, or parties such as the Sweden Democrats will gain too much ground. Future prospective immigrants would lose out too, not to mention the political costs imposed on native-born Swedes. In Sweden, it simply isn’t going to work to ignore Swedes’ perceptions.On the other hand, immigration to Sweden is going better than its critics say. Sweden remains a prosperous and dynamic country, with one of the best startup scenes in Europe. Those too are secondary consequences of the extreme openness of Swedish society, even if the costs of high immigration sometimes wear Swedes down.The trick is to keep all these perspectives in mind at the same time. And to always be willing to try new restaurants.