Vodafone Idea in talks to sell Indus Tower, optical fibre assets for Rs 20k crore

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February 17, 2019

Vodafone Idea is likely to mop up about Rs 20,000 crore from its proposed stake sale in mobile tower firm Indus Tower and monetisation of optical fibre assets, sources said.

The country’s largest telecom operator plans to use the funds for lowering its debt, which stood at Rs 123,660 crore at the end of 2018.

“Vodafone Idea has received a combined valuation of around Rs 20,000 crore for mobile towers and optical fibre assets that it is planning to sell. Discussions have started around it,” an industry source close to the development told agencies.

The company had earlier announced its plan to sell 11.15 percent stake held by the Aditya Birla Group in Indus Towers as well as 1.56 lakh kilometers of optical fibre assets.

“Indus stake is worth about Rs 50 billion (Rs 5,000 crore) today. We have 156,000 kms of fibre. We have not given any guidance on monetisable value,” a Vodafone Idea spokesperson said.

The company is also planning to raise Rs 25,000 crore through a rights issue to fund its capital expenditure and pare debt.

The promoter shareholders — Vodafone Group and Aditya Birla Group — have reiterated to the board that they intend to contribute up to Rs 11,000 crore and Rs 7,250 crore, respectively, as part of the rights issue.

They have also said that in case the rights issue is under-subscribed, each of the promoter shareholders reserves the right to subscribe to part or whole of the unsubscribed portion.

SBI launches employee engagement programme focusing on work-life balance

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February 17, 2019

The nation’s largest lender State Bank has begun a massive employee engagement programme to ensure its 2.6 lakh-strong staff does not work mechanically and is sufficiently motivated to take on newer challenges that the future will throw up, a top official has said.

The programme christened Nayi Disha or the new path, focuses on work-life balance and also involves the staffs immediate family members, also giving them the ability to inform the bank if an employee is not able to leave work on time.

We realised that over a period of time, our employees, especially the ones in branches, had started to work mechanically which could have an impact on customer service and also their morale, Prashant Kumar, deputy managing director, and chief development officer, told agencies over the weekend.

The previous chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya too had initiated a slew of pro-employee measures such as letting them choose the location before transferring a couple of both of them are with the bank, extending sick leave to attend to in-laws health needs, long leaves to help their children during the exams among others.

He said the bank has hired an external hand to design the programme, and started implementing it in December with the top management, including chairman Rajnish Kumar.

Over 350 trained staff are reaching out to every employee in the programme, which is the first major initiative reaching out to every member of the staff in over four years. They undertake five to six hour-long sessions which end with a team dinner with each one’s spouses, Kumar said.

Half the staff has already undergone the module and the programme will be finished by March 15, in time to let the employees focus on the heavy duty workdays towards the end of the fiscal year, he said.

At the end of the training module, the employee signs a pledge which draws from the banks value statement released last year, vowing to keep herself healthy, not damage the environment, speak positively of the bank and leave for home at least once a week.

Interestingly, the pledge card has a special bar code which, if scanned by the employees spouse using a mobile phone, will send out an alert to the employees superiors about the employee spending long time at work and result in corrective action, Kumar said.

The bank had already started stressing on the importance of employees health and the need to maintain work-life balance around a year ago, Kumar said, adding this programme takes it up as a strong need.

Over 27 per cent of SBI staff are women and the average age has now come down to 43, he said.

Tiffany Haddish is working on her first music album

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February 17, 2019

Actor-comedian Tiffany Haddish says she is working on her first solo music album.

In an interview with Glamour magazine, the 39-year-old star revealed that her recent Grammy nomination in the best spoken word album category inspired her to work on her album.

“I’m working on an album! Granted, most of this album has already happened in my head, but that’s how it starts. It all starts in here and then it comes out and I’ve been talking to people,” Haddish said.

“I’m going to see what happens. It might be really great, it might not but who cares, right? You’ve got to give it a shot,” she added.

The “Girls Trip” actor was up for a Grammy for narrating her memoir “The Last Black Unicorn”. At the awards, the actor lost out to former President Jimmy Carter for his audio book “Faith: A Journey For All”.

Acting is about engaging audiences, says Anil Kapoor

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February 17, 2019

For Anil Kapoor, acting is all about being able to connect with his audiences and the actor feels fortunate that in his career, which spans over 35 years, he was offered scripts that enabled him to do that.

Decoding his journey in Bollywood, which started in 1971 when he played the role of a young Shashi Kapoor in “Tu Payal Mein Geet”, Kapoor believes it is a combination of things that have worked in his favour till now — from good scripts to the respect he has earned from his peers and fans.

“Whatever planning and strategy you do, one would never know what will come your way. Because people are offering me different scripts, I am in a better position to chose and do what is right for me.

“There are lot of actors who are not offered those kind of films. I am very fortunate that all kinds of films are offered to me from mainstream to emotional to action films,” the actor told agencies.

The actor says he judges his work on the parameter of whether it has been successful in entertaining the audiences.

“I do films with the sole purpose of entertaining people. I am an entertainer, I like to make people laugh, cry, angry and connect with them. For me, doing drama, horror or patriotic film, making people cry is also entertainment.

“I like to engage audience. I don’t want to bore the audience. If it connects with people, I feel happy and if it doesn’t, I get sad too,” Kapoor says.

Kapoor insists that he still feels fresh like a newcomer when he goes to a film’s set.

“Every decade you have to change your decisions. Now every year you have to do it. I try to keep changing with time. Decisions like what kind of films you should do, the filmmakers you want to work with. For me, it is a learning experience.

“I experiment and do out-of-the-box films. I try to do mix bag of things. I have to like story and the people working on it,” he adds.

His most recent release, “Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga”, about same-sex relationship, has been getting rave reviews from both the critics and the audiences.

Kapoor is now promoting his upcoming film “Total Dhamaal”.

His slate for the year is full as the actor will soon start shooting for Anees Bazmee’s “Pagalpanti” in London. He also has Karan Johar’s “Takht” and a biopic on Olympian Abhinav Bindra with his son Harsvardhan Kapoor.

“I have never taken my work lightly. I am happily busy. Other than acting in films, I do take out time for my family, friends and workouts. But acting will always be my first passion. I feel honesty and sincerity does finds it’s place somewhere.”

Having tried his hands at almost all genres in his career, the 62-year-old actor says he knows the trick of preparing for a role.

“For certain films you have to be spontaneous and instinctive and for some you have to do quite a bit of prep work. I am playing a Gujarati in ‘Total Dhamaal’ so I had a dialect coach, he helped me. For every film it is different.”

He is happy to be paired opposite his in “Total Dhamaal”.

“Total Dhamaal”, the third instalment in the hit comedy franchise “Dhamaal”, reunites the actor with his 90s co-star Madhuri Dixit Nene and he is happy to be once again paired opposite her. The film releases on February 22.

“Not everybody can do comedy. You need certain kind of understanding, sensibility to do these kind of films. It requires lot of effort, it doesn’t happen overnight.

“People think we go on the sets and comedy films just happen like that. Comedy is always difficult to create,” Kapoor says.

Fire raging in your bosoms is in my heart too: PM

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February 17, 2019

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday asserted that he shared the grief and outrage with the people of the nation in the wake of the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir which claimed the lives of 40 CRPF personnel.

The Prime Minister, who was in this north Bihar town to launch a slew of projects, began his speech with a few lines in the local dialect Angika and paid tributes to two jawans from the state who died in the Pulwama attack.

“I salute and pay my tributes to Sanjay Kumar Sinha and Ratan Kumar Thakur. To the people who have gathered here, I would like to say the fire that is raging in your bosoms, is in my heart too,” Modi said, evoking a thunderous response from the crowds.

‘Mere Pyare Prime Minister’ isn’t a political film: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra

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February 17, 2019

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra is aware his upcoming “Mere Pyare Prime Minster” can get politicised owing to its title but the filmmaker insists that the film is a “true blue socially relevant” project with no political angle.

The film chronicles the story of a young slum kid who travels to the capital with his friends to meet the Prime Minister, after his mother is raped.

“It sounds like a political film because of the term ‘Prime Minster’ but it is a true blue socially relevant film. There’s no politics there whatsoever. It picks up the idea of rape and how we deal with it, the aftermath and the victim,” Mehra told agencies.

The director, who has helmed films like “Rang De Basanti” and “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”, says owing to the title the film “could get” politicised but is assured things will change once people watch it.

“It’s more of a social message film than a political film. Looking at the response after the trailer, it feels the audience has evolved beyond our imagination,” he added.

The film talks about the need of public sanitation through the eyes of an 8-year-old child, who vows to make things better after a tragic incident.

Mehra said that the issue at hand is very sensitive and he has tried to look at it from the victim’s point of view.

“Mere Pyare Prime Minister” stars Anjali Patil, Om Kanujiya and Atul Kulkarni, among others.

The director shot the film on real locations with no sets and was constantly aware he was “invading their lives” and had to be more respectful.

“We cast from the slums. Everything was on real location and we built no sets, even for the home. So how do you shoot a whole film without completely disturbing them? But they were extremely cooperative.

They were going about their work while I was shooting. There were announcements made that ‘do whatever you want to do, but don’t look into the camera!’ Their contribution to the film is amazing,” Mehra added.

The film is scheduled to release on March 15.

Daniel Radcliffe recalls his first meeting with girlfriend Erin Darke

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February 17, 2019

Actor Daniel Radcliffe has revealed that he first met his girlfriend, Erin Darke, on the sets of his 2013 film “Kill Your Darlings”.

The “Harry Potter” star recently appeared on People magazine’s ‘Couch Surfing’ series, where he talked about shooting an intimate scene with Darke for the film.

“It’ll be a hell of a story to tell our kids one day because of what our characters do with each other,” Radcliffe said.

The actor said he now views the scene between their characters as a “sweet record” of his first meeting with Darke.

“Our characters are meeting and flirting with each other, so there is this kind of sweet record of us just meeting for the first time and flirting,” he said.

During the show, the 29-year-old actor also said that he never gets tired of speaking about his “Harry Potter” experience with the eager fans of the franchise.

“When I was young, I met an old punk who had been in a band that I really liked. So I went up to him and asked him about it, and he literally said, ‘I don’t talk about it’. And that was kind of sad. I thought it would be sad to look back on this huge period of your life and not embrace it,” Radcliffe said.

“As much as I’m happy to be doing other films now, I’m always genuinely very honoured when someone comes up and says, ‘You were a huge part of my childhood’,” he added.

The actor will be next in TBS comedy “Miracle Workers”.

‘Gully Boy’: Will Smith praises Ranveer for his performance

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February 17, 2019

Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt starrer ‘Gully Boy’ has successfully made its way into the audiences’ hearts. Many celebrities have taken to social media to praise the film; the latest celebrity to congratulate Ranveer for his spectacular performance is Will Smith.

The Hollywood actor took to his Instagram to share a video where he can be seen reacting to the film.

“Yo Ranveer! Congrats man. I am loving what you doing. Gully Boy. I have seen old school hip hop, seen hip hop all over the world. I am loving it. Go get it,” Will says in the video which also features few glimpses of the song ‘Apna Time Aayega’.

Sharing the ‘suicide squad’ actor’s reaction on his Instagram story Ranveer wrote, “Shoutout from the original rapper slash actor – Big Willy! Respect.”

“Salaam tumko bade bhai! Boht hard,” added Ranveer.

Opening to a positive response from the audience, ‘Gully Boy’ minted Rs 18.70 crore on its opening day.

According to trade analyst Taran Adarsh, ‘Gully Boy’ is expected to only go up from here with positive reviews flowing in.

The film became the biggest opener of 2019 beating ‘Uri’, ‘Manikarnika’ and ‘Thackeray’.

According to Box Office India, the film was bigger than Ranveer’s last two releases-‘Padmaavat’ and ‘Simmba’.

With ‘Gully Boy’ box office collection, Ranveer has given his second highest opening ever while this is the highest first day earning of a film starring Alia.

The film received the Valentine’s Day advantage especially in metro cities. While it was not a holiday yesterday, the film did exceptionally well in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore.

‘Gully Boy’ is inspired by the lives of Mumbai street rappers Vivian Fernandes aka Divine and Naved Shaikh aka Naezy. The film is directed by Zoya Akhtar and released on Valentine’s Day, February 14.

Pulwama attack should not be forgotten, forgiven: Vicky Kaushal

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February 17, 2019

Vicky Kaushal, who played the role of an Army officer in “Uri: The Surgical Strike”, on Saturday said the terror attack on a CRPF convoy in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district should not be forgotten and forgiven.

Vicky, who was talking at Cine and TV Artistes’ Association (CINTAA) and 48 Hour Project’s first edition of ‘Act Fest 2019’, said, it is necessary to give an answer to the Pulwama attack, in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed.

When asked if he thinks a surgical strike should be carried out, he said, “I feel I am a less knowledgeable person… It is easy to say do this, do that and this should happen or that should happen, there are repercussions also that happen.”

“I think our government will be thinking of the best move, they would be discussing these things and we should leave it to them. This should not be forgotten and should not be forgiven,” he added.

The actor said he is thankful to everyone for their love and support for his film but at the moment he is saddened by the Pulwama terror attack.

“The kind of situation (we are facing), it seems like a personal loss because of the journey we have had. It does feel sad when we read about it. It is a very sad sight for all of us,” Vicky said.

He also lauded megastar Amitabh Bachchan’s decision to donate Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the martyrs.

PM inaugurates, lays foundation stone of projects worth Rs 33K cr in Bihar

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February 17, 2019

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday inaugurated and laid foundation stone of projects worth over Rs 33,000 crore in Bihar, including the Patna Metro Rail Project.

He inaugurated the Patna City Gas Distribution project. The prime minister laid the foundation stone of the Barauni Refinery Expansion Project and the ATF Hydrotreating Unit (INDJET) at Barauni Refinery.

He also laid the foundation stone of the Patna Metro Rail Project through a remote at a function in Baruani.

The first phase of River Front Development at Patna was inaugurated and the foundation stone for the Karmalichak Sewerage Network, spanning 96.54 km was also laid by Modi.

The prime minister inaugurated the electrification of railway lines on many sectors and flagged off the Ranchi-Patna AC Weekly Express.

He also laid the foundation stone of medical colleges at Chhapra and Purnia.