CBI books ONGC officials in ₹80 crore scam case

NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has booked 13 senior serving and retired officials of the Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) for alleged irregularities in giving a contract to a private company for supplying gas dehydration units for its Rajahmundry plant in Andhra Pradesh, causing a loss to the tune of ₹80 crore, the agency said in New Delhi on Thursday. Those named in the FIR in connection with the alleged scam in 2014 include former executive director D.G. Sanyal, then director (onshore) Ashok Verma and EX-DGM (production) Arup Ratan Das. BENGALURU: Flipkart Internet Pvt. Ltd, the marketplace arm of Flipkart India that books commissions on each sale, reported narrower losses, but the overall sales of the e-tailing major grew at a slower-than-expected pace, show regulatory documents.

For the year ended March 2017, Flipkart Internet reported losses of ₹1,639 crore, compared with ₹2,306 crore in the year-ago period. However, revenue grew sluggishly at 15% to ₹2,253.5 crore, show documents filed with the Registrar of Companies and data from Tofler. In FY16, Flipkart Internet had posted sales of ₹1,952 crore.

Flipkart said the narrower losses was due to a fall in logistics and storage costs.

“The decrease in the net loss by 28.96% is due to reduction in logistics and storage service charges, collection charges and other expenses,” Flipkart said in the filings.

Earlier in May, Us-headquartered retail giant Walmart had bought a 77% stake in Flipkart for $16 billion, valuing India’s most valuable internet start-up at $21 billion.

had reported that Flipkart is likely to burn $2 billion in cash over the next 18 months — an affirmation t hat sales growth, rather than cutting losses, remains the top priority for the online retailer after its takeover by Walmart.

had also reported that Flipkart, which owns fashion retailers Myntra and Jabong, and mobile payment app Phonepe, currently has a burn rate of $70-80 million per month.

In an interview with Mint last September, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy had indicated that all-out sales growth, and not profitability, was its biggest priority. “We will go into a very clear consumer marketbuilding mode and expand the market. We want to bring as many people as possible into the e-commerce fold, as many categories and we will i nvest towards that. We are very comfortable on the burn that we have today.”