The COVID-19 pandemic continued to ravage lives and livelihood in 2021. The Delta wave ripped through the country, and pushed the healthcare infrastructure to the edge, the economy managed to stabilise and some sectors saw a recovery. Through one of the most tumultuous years for the global and Indian economy, a few companies stood out and made an impact.

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Here are the corporate Newsmakers of 2021.

Serum Institute of India

The world’s largest vaccine maker, created history by delivering over 125 crore doses of its COVID-19 Vaccine licensed from Astra Zeneca. As we enter 2022, the Company has just received the Emergency use authorisation to rollout a second COVID-19 vaccine, Covovax, licensed from global pharma major Novavax.

Nykaa

Online beauty platform Nykaa’s stellar debut on the D-Street in November 2021 created headlines and wealth. With about an 80 percent premium, catapulted Falguni Nayar, the founder and chief executive office of Nykaa, as ‘India’s richest self-made woman billionaire.

Nykaa’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) was subscribed by 91x times and hit Rs 1 lakh crore cap on its debut. The stock continues to gain and is trading above 90 percent from its issue price.

The company’s share of revenue from fashion has seen a whooping increase from 1.2 percent in FY19 to 27 percent in H1FY22.

Nayar started the e-commerce beauty platform when she was pushing 50, with over 20 years of experience as an investment banker. Eight years down the lane, apart from having a strong online presence, Naykaa also has 80 stores across the country under Nykaa Luxe, Kiosks and On-Trend with a valuation of $14 billion.

Also Read: Nykaa, first new-age business that's profitable

Zomato

Zomato’s listing, arguably started the IPO frenzy to all new age digital businesses in India.

Despite being a ‘loss-making’ company, the India's largest food delivery company’s IPO was subscribed by 38x times and opened with 58% above its issue price.

In its P&L sheet, Zomato had a loss of Rs 4,600 crore from 2018 to 2021 June and was valued at Rs 60,000 crore.

From Tamil Nadu’s Chennai to Srinagar, Zomato has its roots spread across over 63 cities in India

Paytm

Paytm’s date with Dalal street didn’t live up to expectations.

Despite having the largest IPO in India’s corporate history at Rs 18,300 crore, Paytm could not woo subscribers, and was subscribed by only 1.89 times in total.

Its shares opened on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) at a 9 percent discount from its issue price of Rs 2,150 and later fell by more than 27 percent on both BSE and NSE to close at around Rs 1,560 at the end of the day.

Also Read: Paytm gets scheduled bank status from RBI

In December 2021, three officials, Abhishek Arun, COO of Paytm Payments Bank, Renu Satti, COO of offline payments, and Abhishek Gupta, senior vice-president and COO resigned from the company.

On its P&L, Paytm has a loss of Rs 1,701 crore in FY2021 and Rs 2,942 crore in FY2020.

Tata Group

It was a homecoming of sorts for the National Carrier Air India, with the original founders, the Tata Group winning buying it from the Centre after placing a bid of Rs 18,000 crore.

Air India was founded in 1932 by the Tata’s. In 1953, the airline was nationalized and remained as India’s prized possession controlling the majority of domestic airspace for over four decades.

As of August 2021, the airlines had a total debt of more than Rs 61,000 crores. Tata’s will take up Rs 15,300 crores of the debt.

According to the share purchase agreement, the Tata Group will be back in Air India’s cockpit by January 2022.

Currently, the Tata Group also holds operations of Vistara and AirAsia India.

Also Read: Tata Group betting on new age businesses

Zee-Sony

In a major media deal, the Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE) and Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) have entered a definitive agreement to merge.

The merger will create India’s second-largest entertainment entity, with 75 TV channels, two film studios (Zee Studios and Sony Pictures Films India), two video streaming services (ZEE5 and Sony LIV), and a digital content studio, Studio NXT.

Sony will hold a majority stake of 50.86 percent in the merged company. Zee currently owns 96.05 crore shares, post-merger the holding will increase to 173.63 crores.

Punit Goenka, managing director & CEO of ZEE, will lead the merged entity as the MD & CEO with the majority of the board of directors nominated by the Sony Group.

UPI

The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) created a new record in 2021.

With transactions touching a record high at Rs 7.71 lakh crore in October. Daily payments through UPI averaged between Rs 25,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore in October. It was a 56 percent jump from September’s Rs 6.54 lakh crore transaction value.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data also showed that UPI transactions have left debit and credit card transactions behind.

Telecom Relief Package

Much needed breather for the telecom sector, the Union Cabinet approved a crucial package which includes a four-year moratorium on payment of statutory dues, allows 100 percent foreign direct investments through the automatic route and rationalizing spectrum charges that telecom firms have to bear.

The package came as a lifeline for the beleaguered debt saddled Vodafone Idea, which was struggling to survive.

Reliance Industries

Indian Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries (RIL) made big moves towards building green energy future 021.

The behemoth has inked at least half a dozen deals in the green space since its announcement to build four gigafactories in India.

The gigafactories will manufacture solar panels, electric batteries, green hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells.

RIL is targeting 100 GW of solar manufacturing and green hydrogen at a cost of $1 per kg by 2030. It will spend $10 billion on the new energy business over the next 3 years towards achieving these targets.

The firm has also committed to become net carbon zero by 2035.

Infosys

The tech giant landed itself in a soup due to technical glitches in the income tax portal it helped develop for the government.

Within hours of its launch in June, the portal faced issues such as inability to generate an OTP for Aadhar validation, password generation failure, problems in filing returns, and troubleshoots while linking old data for past returns. Later, the problems expanded to errors in interest calculation, incorrect capturing of details from Form 16, and more.

After several rounds of meetings and corrections, the Tax department claimed, the site was functioning smoothly, even though filers continued to take to social media to voice their concerns.

Also Read: Companies that defined 2021

The article has been written by Padmini Dhruvaraj

(Edited by : Aditi Gautam)

First Published:Dec 31, 2021 6:59 PM IST