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PE firm TPG Asia on Thursday sold its entire stake in wire and cable manufacturer RR Kabel through block deals, according to exchange data.TPG Asia offloaded about 5% stake or just over 56 lakh shares at around Rs 1,701 apiece. This valued the deal at around Rs 958 crore.Marquee funds, including Edelweiss MF, Tata MF, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, ICICI Pru MF, Blackstone Aqua, Reliance Nippon Life, and HDFC Standard Life, among others, bought stakes in the transaction.TPG Asia had acquired around 21% stake in RR Kabel five years before the IPO, which was launched in late 2023. Since then, the PE firm gradually cut stake in the company.RR Kabel made its debut at the bourses in September last year with a decent premium of around 14% over the issue price. Since then, the stock has returned about 44% to investors.The company is a leading player in the Indian consumer electrical industry comprising wires and cables and fast-moving electrical goods (FMEG), with an operating history of over 20 years in India.The company has posted industry-leading revenue growth of 43% between FY21 and FY23, supported by market share gains in a highly competitive wires and cables space, thanks to its expanding retail presence, launching of new products, and sticky relationship with electricians that play a pivotal role in product sale.In addition, it has been able to penetrate well in the export market and the export revenue doubled in the last two fiscal years.In FY24, revenue grew by 19% over FY23, driven by expanded distribution, e-commerce growth, successful new product launches, and the brand transition from Luminous to RR Signature.Meanwhile, gross margins, too, improved in FY24 compared to FY23 due to continuous improvements in product mix and procurement efficiencies.On Thursday, shares of RR Kabel closed 0.3% lower at Rs 1,718.8 on the NSE.

Nifty ended Thursday with declines of 216.05 points 1% at 22,488.65 led by strong selling pressure in most sectors. The 50-stock index fell for the fifth straight session and is now trading below the crucial 21-day Exponential Moving Average (21EMA)."The recent decline has disrupted the positive momentum, with Nifty falling below its crucial short-term moving average, the 20 DEMA. A decisive break of the 22,400 level could trigger a further drop to the 22,000-22,150 zone. We suggest aligning trades accordingly and adopting a hedged approach," Ajit Mishra, Senior Vice President, Research at Religare Broking.What should traders do? Here’s what analysts said:Jatin Gedia, SharekhanNifty witnessed a gap down opening and continued to drift lower during the day to close around the lows for the day. It closed in the negative down ~216 points. On the daily charts we can observe that the Nifty is in the process of retracing the rise it has witnessed 22,054–23,111. The Nifty has now reached the support cluster of 22,460–22,500, where support parameters in the form of the 20-day moving average and the 50% Fibonacci retracement level are placed. We expect the Nifty to hold this crucial support zone and start the recovery process. In case of a breach the next support is placed at 22,313–22,300.Rupak De, LKP SecuritiesThe Nifty has remained volatile during the session with predominant bearishness. The sentiment for the short-term remains weak as the index slipped below the critical 21-day Exponential Moving Average (21EMA). Call writing activity was significant at 22,500. Therefore, to witness a meaningful recovery, Nifty needs to sustain above 22,500. However, failure to move above 22,500 might attract fresh selling in the market, potentially driving the index towards 22,300/22,100.Ashwin Ramani, SAMCO SecuritiesThe long short ratio (LSR) of foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) fell to 49.50% on May 29 from 53.96% on May 28 as they liquidated some existing long positions in Index futures. The Put-Call ratio (PCR) known as the sentiment indicator, has fallen to 0.52 at the close on Thursday, indicating call writers’ dominance. Five trading sessions back the PCR had made a high of 1.34.Nifty has given a consecutive lower close (close below previous day low) on the daily chart. Strong call writing which is a mark of bear activity, was observed at the 22,500 Strike in Nifty. The call writers still have sizable positions at the 22,500 Strike and the option activity at this strike will provide cues about Nifty’s future direction.(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

While a substantial share of contract workers, both male and female, quit within the first three months of employment, married women receiving provident fund were thrice as likely to remain in their jobs as those without this benefit and single women receiving ESIC (Employee State Insurance Corporation) benefits are 48% more likely to stay in their jobs compared with peers who don’t, according to a new report. Both single and married women who are paid performance incentives are more likely to retain their jobs than women who don’t. These are some of the insights of a study by Quess Corp, India’s largest private sector employer, and The Udaiti Foundation. The findings of the study, which analysed data of 1.6 million Quess employees over four years, are significant in the face of the high turnover the staffing industry struggles with and India’s low female labour participation rate.“The availability of a skilled workforce is a challenge in hiring (women). Policymakers must focus on preventing girl children from dropping out at the high school level to fix the skill gap,” said Guruprasad Srinivasan, CEO, Quess Corp, adding that ensuring some part of companies’ CSR funds go towards educating and upskilling girls at the basic level could help address this. Srinivasan expects the implementation of the new labour code to help improve the participation of women in the workforce, with micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) also having to increase benefits to employees under it. Hiring female employees, he said, was a bigger challenge than retention. Almost one out of every two associates who quit do so in the first three months of employment, underlining the importance of support in that period to stem attrition. The turnover rate among female contract workers is slightly higher than that of their male counterparts, with the exception of IT and services industries, the study, titled “From Rhetoric to Action- Creating Gender Inclusive Workplaces” found, which may be indicative of better retention programmes or work environment in the latter. For both genders, jobs with salary above Rs 15,000 were associated with better retention rates and associates who continued beyond the first 3-4 months tended to remain employed for close to a year or more. Among female workers, marital status, it was found, did not influence retention. Just under a fifth of Quess’s more than 500,000 contract workers are women and a third are less than 25 years, while 65% are single. Across genders, associates who were 40 years and above were more likely to stay on their jobs compared to younger workers. When they do leave, the top reason was “better career opportunities,” cited by close to half (43%) of all associates. However, this plays out in different ways among men and women and according to sector. A higher share of women than men cited “family issue” and “medical issue” as reasons for departure, the latter accounting for 17% of resignation reasons among women, with pregnancy-related complications being the top concern. Additionally, female employees appear to be more concerned about the distance of their work location compared to their male counterparts. Within sectors, in telecom, female employees expressed “relatively higher concerns about manager behaviour compared to their male counterparts,” while in electronics manufacturing services, work location was a common concern among female employees with most of manufacturing jobs located outside cities, said the study.Women also prefer jobs where the fixed component is more than the variable, said Srinivasan. “Women have shown higher workforce participation in sectors like IT and BFSI, where the fixed pay is higher. However, in sectors where variable pay is a bigger component, it is difficult for the women to justify migrating to a new city for lower returns,” he added.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has called on its enforcement units to alert all state police departments across India to clamp down on the rampant theft of critical network gear that has already triggered around Rs 800 crore of losses for telcos, disrupted 4G/5G expansions and impacted quality of mobile coverage.In a directive, dated May 27, the department has asked its field enforcement units in all licence service areas (LSAs) to also conduct quarterly reviews of the telecom gear theft situation with national law enforcement agencies. It also wants the matter to be taken up at upcoming state broadband committee meetings.The DoT directive comes after Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (Vi) recently sought the government’s intervention, saying they were facing huge losses and heavy additional replenishment costs amid rising incidence of network gear theft across India. They had pointed out that expensive active telecoms infrastructure gear such as remote radio units (RRUs) and base-band units (BBUs) were being regularly stolen since October 2023.“The LSAs are requested to conduct regular meetings with telecom service providers (TSPs) on the equipment theft and sensitise state police regarding the issue,” the DoT said in an internal letter to its field enforcement units, a copy of which was seen by ET.In its letter, DoT added that telcos had pointed out that such telecom equipment theft incidents were higher in some geographies, including Delhi-NCR, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.“The TSPs are estimated to have already incurred around Rs 800 crore of losses as well as additional expenses towards replenishing the stolen equipment. But customers are the ones suffering the most as such incidents invariably lead to a decline in the quality of mobile broadband services,” said a senior executive of one of India’s biggest telcos.He added that network expansions were also impacted, and that due to technical and legal challenges, telcos were unable to recover the stolen gear in most cases, which is why, strict government action is needed. Back in March 2024, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), which represents Jio, Airtel and Vi, had alerted telecoms secretary Neeraj Mittal that multiple foreign websites were allegedly selling a host of active telecoms infrastructure gear online suspected to have been stolen from India’s telco networks.The COAI, in fact, had then named some of these foreign websites in its letter to Mittal and had called on the government to block them immediately. Some international websites named in COAI’s letter, dated March 14, included eBay, Alibaba, Telefly, Seeker816 and Dorfatrade that were allegedly involved in selling stolen telecom network gear. ET has seen a copy of COAI’s letter.The telco lobby body had also called for strict action from the authorities, pointing out that theft of active network gear would be covered within the offence of causing damage to telecom infrastructure under the Telecommunications Act, 2023. “The government has already recognised the seriousness of such an offence and classified the same as a cognizable and non-bailable offence under the Act.”