Year Ender 2015 News

2015 was a bull run year for regulator Sebi in bringing back investor trust to markets - a trend set to continue in the New Year.

RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and his ceaseless efforts to keep inflation under check that turned out to be the biggest cheers for the Indian financial markets in 2015.

After a 'disappointing' year at WTO, India is looking to beef up its efforts in 2016 to push for early conclusion of the long-stalled Doha Round talks at the global trade body and for finding a permanent solution to food security issues. 

The long pending demand of insurance players for raising the FDI cap to 49 percent was fulfilled this year leading to greater flow of foreign funds into India's private JVs and the move is expected to further attract over Rs 6,000 crore into the sector during 2016. 

When it comes to inflation, the year 2015 has shown that the macroeconomic datapoints may not always show the real picture.

It was a towering feat for the telecom industry in 2015 to cross 100-crore subscriber mark, but the call-drop menace spoiled the party and the operators are now pulling up their socks to face greater competition with the imminent entry of Reliance Jio in 2016.

Bullish on a series of reforms unveiled in the year passing-by, the government expects FDI inflows to rise by 40-45 percent in the New Year while further steps could be on anvil to attract foreign capital. 

In a double-whammy for investors, the two major asset classes -- stocks and gold -- failed to generate positive returns in 2015.

Having shifted gears from its focus on 'enterprise services' to 'enterprising solutions' in 2015, Indian IT industry is betting big on digitisation and automation to maintain its growth momentum in the New Year.

Making it a year of startups, Indian and foreign investors have pumped in a whopping USD 8.4 billion in new ventures including e-commerce platforms in 2015 through close to 1,000 deals, even as questions have begun to be asked about their hefty valuations.      

The gold prices have dipped by about 5 percent in 2015 as investors looked for other asset classes and the government sought to monetise the holdings lying idle with the households and institutions.

India's multi-billion dollar mining industry faces a "tough" 2016 ahead amid weak global markets.

Mahindra Retail, which acquired Babyoye.com in February this year, integrated its entire e-commerce business into Babyoye.com

As the year 2015 draws to a close, mid-cap and small-cap stocks of the BSE have rallied by nearly six percent and five percent, respectively, as against a decline of over six percent in the bellwether BSE index Sensex on a full-year basis.  

Ending the IPO drought, 21 companies have entered Dalal Street in 2015 with initial public offers to garner Rs 13,600 crore -- the highest in five years – and an impressive pipeline is already in place for the new year.

The telecom service providers that participated in the marathon auctioning were: Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Reliance Communications, Reliance Jio, Tata Teleservices, Telenor and Aircel.

Globally also, it remained a year marked with record mergers.

Auto industry saw some new launches including Hyundai Creta, Maruti Suzuki Baleno and Renault Kwid.

Agreement on India's first bullet train project with Japan was the major achievement for Indian Railways.