News
Reliance, Amazon and Tata among the top newsmakers of 2019
Based on year-round news analysed by Tech PR platform Wizikey
Airline Industry was the spotlight of 2019
One common theme noticed was their Key Business initiatives
New Delhi. 11 December 2019: 2019 was a year of disproportionate news in the world of business and can be described as a roller coaster for the business world. Wizikey, Asia’s first PR and communication platform has collated interesting trends across industries using its AI and ML-based Technology and created a report on the top newsmakers of 2019 in the Business world. The report has been created after a thorough study of all the news published in the sector from 1st of January till date.
The top 5 newsmakers in the Business category for the year 2019 are:
- Reliance Industries Limited
- Jet Airways
- Amazon India
- Tata Sons
- Indigo Airlines
One common theme that defined why these companies were at the top of the pile in terms of making news was about their Key Business initiatives that were either perceived as a huge success or disasters.
The year was not particularly good for automobile companies and airlines. On one hand, we saw one of the biggest airline players of India, Jet Airways folding up its business amid growing tension of debts and non-payment of salaries. On the other hand, the Indian automobile giant Maruti Suzuki also found itself in the news for all the wrong reasons, primary of them being- one of the worst slowdowns for the company in the recent past. Two of the largest conglomerates of the Indian Business sector, Reliance Industries, and Tata Sons were again making the most amount of news in India with the International brand of Amazon also making its presence felt in the news section.
Reliance on the back of its AGM report, released in August 2019, was the biggest Newsmaker in the Business Category. The Conglomerate led by the now 9th richest man in the World, Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani created nearly one-third of the total news created by these top 5 companies. While others might have had their ups and downs, Reliance was on the up nearly throughout the year. The buzzwords attached to the newsmaker are AGM Report, Jio Platforms, Aramco Partnership, AGR Revenue sharing and Market performance.
For JetAirways, this is possibly the last year when the company created News, owing to its closure and subsequent liquidation, it was not a happy farewell for any of its stakeholders. Under an extreme amount of duress from the last many quarters, the curtain finally closed on one of India’s biggest aviation companies in April 2019, when Jet Airways finally suspended its operation. However, the writing was on the wall since long as its shares took a nosedive at the beginning of the year and the founder, Naresh Goyal writing a letter to his employees to brace themselves as the worst was yet to come. The buzzwords attached to the newsmaker are Flight Cancellation, Aircraft Grounding, Insolvency Proceedings, Debt Resolution and Management Takeover.
Amazon stands heads and shoulders above its peers in terms of the visibility they created and the news they generated over the last year. Amazon has been in the spotlight for various reasons ranging from RIL’s entry into e-commerce to the changes in Indian e-commerce policies and even its almost unbelievable sales. Towards the end of the year, Amazon’s tussle with the Competition Commission of India over certain unfair practices saw some of their hard work undone. The giant created news attached to buzzwords like E-commerce policy, Prime day, Kirana stores, Food delivery and Digital payments.
Indigo was one of the biggest newsmakers this year with the ongoing feud between their promoters regarding the control structure of the company with the promoter’s going to court against each other. Indigo’s AGM also created news when both the promoters questioned by the board and directed them to solve their issues via mediation. Indigo also created news after the collapse of Jet as it was the most prominent beneficiary regarding customer adoption, its sales also increased drastically afterwards. The year for Indigo ended with interest coming from Qatar Airways regarding investment but Indigo is yet to confirm it. As per the Wizikey’s data-driven report, the buzzwords attached to the newsmaker are Promoter Dispute, Flight Cancellations, Aviation Sector, Disinvestment and FDI in Aviation.
Tata Sons and their portfolio companies were regularly in the news for varied reasons throughout the year. Rumours around Jaguar being sold to BMW saw Tata mentioned in the news early in the year. Tata’s interest in Jet also gained traction with the media with people expecting a buyout. Tata Son’s received the most coverage by far when their Global Corporate Affairs Head, S. Jaishankar was appointed as the Foreign Minister of India followed by Air Asia’s expansion plans. The buzzwords attached to the newsmaker are S. Jaishankar, Jaguar Land Rover, GMR Infra and Air Asia.
Commenting on the release of top business newsmakers report, Anshul Sushil CEO and Founder of Wizikey said, “With our Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technology, we are able to process millions of news in few minutes. Each year brings more complexity to the data and it’s interesting to see how big giants innovate PR practices accordingly. With Wizikey’s data-driven approach, we aim to make PR simple, transparent, measurable and effective for all the businesses.”