03/06/2016 Asia Business Report

Lots more business news live with Sharanjit.

No deal. OPEC fails to reach a deal on production. Will it affect oil

prices? And why do so few women in India

were? We look at what needs to be done to bring change to a country,

where less than one quarter of women are employed. -- India work?

Welcome to this Friday edition of Asia Business Report.

The OPEC group of oil producing nations has again failed to reach

agreement on the production cap at their meeting in the Austrian

capital, Vienna. OPEC once exercised considerable market power to

influence prices by adjusting the supplier, but it has struggled to

impose production ceilings in recent years. The Secretary General

defended OPEC's record. The answer the question of whether OPEC is

dead, I have heard these comments may be five or six times in my

career. Every time I hear... When we left Jakarta on time, I heard OPEC

was dead, but OPEC rose again very strong and powerful. OPEC is alive

and will be a very important signifier of the economy and the

world. That was the OPEC Secretary General. Initially the news sent oil

prices lower, but they finished higher because of a fall in US crude

inventories. That is have a look at where they are trading now. Light

crude is up slightly at $49. Brent crude is over the 50 again. Of

course we know that these numbers are about 80% higher than they were

in January, when we saw oil prices lurking at $27 a barrel. Of course

some of you recall that two years ago oil prices were at $115 a

barrel. So where will these prices go next? What impact could OPEC

have? That's a question I posed. I was surprised to see the

contributory to that the new Saudi minister struck at the meeting. The

first thing to highlight is that they con Seve that shale oil still

has base to grow. -- they conceive. They believe shale can grow by 200

or 300 barrels a day growing forward. He is clearly saying a

price of $50 a barrel I'd also be good for investment. -- might also.

In Vienna they say OPEC has a very important role and in the future it

could still intervene to steer the market. So in the future this could

lead to investment and the stability that is needed to develop a capacity

that the market will need to meet the band. Surely on production

suggests oil prices should go down? -- meet demand. Can you make sense

of prices? Where will we go next? There is now a drive behind OPEC to

bring unity to the table. We have statements from different ministers,

that it was a meeting without tensions. This means that all the

animosity that you have seen between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been left

behind and we may see that going forward they are ready to come again

to the table and, especially in OPEC where political considerations have

been avoided, we can see that now again there might pick operation in

the future. Especially he said in the interview that the price of the

lower range we saw, lower than $30 a barrel earlier this year, is to load

the guarantee that investment. So the Saudis are coming back to their

traditional policy of investing in capacity and making sure that they

can be... That they can have the buffer to deal with any emergencies

in the market. In Asia the battle for food delivery is hotting up. In

Berlin, one company has expanded to 500 cities and the big challenge is

telling the business market to distant destinations. We started

with a standardised model across the world and are now much more focused

on localisation and adapting the model to the local culture is, which

differ across the world. -- cultures. For example, in Moscow

delivery by motorbike is not possible. The quickest delivery is

by metro. With the car you are always stuck in traffic. In

Singapore we have ebikes. So it is a very different set up. And also the

marketing side. We have different channels for the marketing that is

working. Given how localised each market is, do you feel you are at a

disadvantage to local players? No. We have a central team, so we can

leverage the cost of prosperity markets. We have a central or

marketing team where we can leverage the cost across the markets. So we

have a big cost advantage that side. Foodpanda is active in 30 countries

around the world. What you do intend to expand. What are your next plans?

Indeed. In Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Pakistan, the Middle East and

South East Asia. We have expanded for the last four years across all

of those markets and for now the focus is clearly on consolidation

within those countries and expansion within the countries to more cities

and more neighbourhoods, for example Hong Kong. We have been working

mainly on Hong Kong island and are now at landing. To cover a greater

area, as well as reach new audiences. Tell me about the

competition. There is a lot of it. You are competing globally against

global competitive is, that also have deep pockets. There are also

many local homegrown ones. What is your strategy to stay ahead?

Competition is strong, which helps us, because we are at the beginning

of a big trend of off-line to online shifting. Currently our biggest

competition is the phone. People call a restaurant to order food. For

us, online competition helps to grow the awareness and the market and

helps to expand the online market further.

The co-founder of Foodpanda. Now to India, where less than a quarter of

women work. According to the government rate is even lower in

urban areas, at just 60%. To try to change that authorities are

considering measures such as maternity leave and child-care

facilities. But the young female professionals in more by say a lot

more needs to be done. Mostly it is because of the mindset

of the society. Mental harassment, lack of safety measures. Girls and

women aren't taken seriously when they work. They have to prove

themselves over and over again. For a girl it is like, OK, you have

graduated. You have secured a job. The next thing you should do is get

married. But for a guy in that case he is getting enough time to

actually pursue his dreams and aspirations. A person actually came

up to me and told me that, you know what, it is OK if you don't get it.

You don't have to be intelligent, as long as you are pretty. The

recruiter told me, you are unfit for this job. I was taken aback. I was

like, why am I unfit for this job? He said because it was a sales

manager profile. You won't be able to go in the sun and handle the

pressure. As soon as I got the job within two months everyone was like,

why are you not getting married? Way parents have to face that question.

Why isn't she being married off? Is the problem? People from remote

areas of India, they are concerned if I am going to work. What happens

to my marriage plans? What happens to my real-life? There are people in

society where I to keep instigating my in-laws. She is working on

holidays! At this moment they have no issues, but even ten years down

the line if they listen to the same stuff again and again I am not sure

what will happen. Safety is the most important thing for women to come

out and work, because where they work safety should be ensured for

them in every sense. Yet mental, physical, be it sexual harassment.

They should be safe from all this. I would want a workplace that would

have affiliation with some child-care centres. But I do not see

that in most workplaces. There are very few that have affiliation with

such daycare centres. Lots of voices of women. You can

hear more on Talking Business this week. We hear from some top

corporate leaders in India, regarding what can be done to

improve conditions for women at work.

To look at the markets. Asian shares are rebounding. We see some gains in

the Nikkei, up about 1%. That is really

are rebounding. We see some gains in the Nikkei, up about 1%. That is

really turning around some of the losses from yesterday. They saw

their really turning around some of the

losses from yesterday. They saw their biggest daily percentage drop

in a month on Thursday. That's it for this edition of Asia

Business