29/12/2015 World Business Report

Now here's Alice with World Business Report.

Ailing Japanese conglomerate Toshiba says it's going to borrow

a massive $2.5 billion to help revamp its businesses.

And, is the start up boom in India in fact just a bubble in danger

In a minute we'll hear from the founder

2015 was a boom year for start-ups as more

and more people launched their own companies, many of them harnessing

the popularity of smartphones to develop tech businesses.

But while a handful gained the status of unicorns valued at over $1

billion, suspicions have been growing that not all of them will

After the boom times came the layoffs, hundreds of them. Ugly

scenes in huge when sacked workers refused to leave officers. Any

question if India's start-ups, which sells billions of dollars in

investment in recent years, are in fact overhyped. -- which sold. For

some entrepreneurs it was a hard lesson learned. Like this 30-year

roles. His first venture was a success and lack up by investors.

But his second start up field because it wasn't able to raise

money. Despite shutting shop, he is eager to start another one soon.

Where we really went wrong, and I personally did as a founder, just

give it your level best. The chances are very high. You end up losing the

game right when there is an opportunity. But you just hang your

boots there, which I did. In some cafes like this, over a hot drink

and laptop, are many -- is where many of India's start-ups begin. And

money is coming in, about 6.5 dollars was invested in India's

start-ups in 2015 alone, three times what we saw in the previous year.

That makes some people here in the -- into millionaires overnight. But

people are now asking how sustainable this is. A large pool of

engineers and technology firms here has meant that India is now a hub

for online start-ups. But most are yet to turn profits and investments

are largely speculations. Sometimes a lot of hard lessons are learned

early on. But as money becomes smarter, potential employees become

more aware of the risks. You begin to see a healthy adjustment in the

marketplace and that's usually for the betterment of all participants,

from invested to start-ups and employees. -- investments. Some are

turning to new avenues for money, pitching directly to crowds of

investors who put in small amounts. With the recent US Fed interest rate

hike, investors are now less likely to spend on start-ups in India. And

as funds dry up, the competition of entrepreneurs chasing the money will

only increase further. Japanese giant Toshiba makes

everything from consumer electronics to nuclear

power plants, but it is reeling from It now says it intends to ask

for a new 300 billion yen, that's a stonking $2.49 billion,

credit line by the end of January to Mariko Oi is in our Asia Business

Hub in Singapore. What kind of restructuring does it

require this amount of money for? Well, the company has already

announced that it is going to cut more than 10,000 jobs, mainly from

consumer electronics. The company has already warned investors that it

is likely to have lost $4.5 billion this year, which is a record loss.

This new credit line that it is asking for today comes just after it

asks for some 400 million yen as well, about $3 billion just in

September. All this as the company tries to recover from that

accounting scandal in which the company has said it overstated its

profits by more than $1 billion over the last decade. The company shares

are up by just about 1%, but I should mention that shares have been

tumbling by some 40% since the accounting scandal. Down about 15%

last week alone. Basically the company has to ask for this credit

line because the shares are now put on the special watch category by the

Tokyo stock exchange. It only has a few ways to raise funds and

therefore the company is asking for an extra $2.5 billion, with only a

few more days to go this year. It is also selling off bits of the company

and slashing the workforce quite severely? Indeed. And the company's

chairman has been speaking to some local media and he was quoted by

saying that he is considering selling some units and that's partly

why the company's shares are covering today. There have been a

lot of questions about why the company didn't make these moves a

lot sooner and how the company... How the company could overstate its

profit for so long without anyone noticing. So it's a massive scandal

that the company is facing, which has been mentioned by a lot of

politicians as well, because it really raises questions about the

corporate governance of the Japanese businesses. Of course. Good to check

in with you. In the technology sector

the sharing economy is all Our technology correspondent

Rory Cellan-Jones caught up with the co-founder of BlaBlaCar,

a website launched in France, and asked him how his site,

which has 20 million users, works. BlaBlaCar is a very simple service,

where we allow people to share their car when they travel between

cities. Basically, if you travel from London to Manchester because

you need to go for the weekend to Manchester you can offer your empty

seats to passengers going the same way. Passengers can get the app and

they can travel together with the driver to their destination by

sharing the cost of the journey. You're in this fashionable sharing

economy area, where the big names, Buber, air B, are all from Silicon

valley. -- Uber. Can you compete? Some of the European cities are the

most active for AirBnB in the world. There is a massive demand for the

sharing economy, whether it is about sharing your car or your apartment.

So I don't think we have a shortage of consumer demand in Europe. In our

case, we are the leaders in city to city ridesharing. So I think the

sharing economy is actually a huge opportunity for Europe. We need to

rethink the way we consume. Europe is the oldest economy. We should be

at the forefront of that revolution. Uber and AirBnB are running into big

regulatory issues now. Will that be a hurdle for you? I think these

companies are having regulatory issues everywhere, not just in

Europe. The challenge of Europe is you need to tackle every country on

by one, as opposed to Europe as a whole. It makes you are a part of

the cracks, more complex, more bureaucratic. But at the end of the

day if you look at what has happened to Uber in Europe, it's a different

to Uber in other places of the world. If you look at what we do, we

have been lucky enough that we don't have any regulation problems because

everything around it is based around the paradigms that the driver is not

making a profit. It is about you sharing the right that you would do

anyway. You are sharing the cost and the journey with passengers. The

fact that you do that means we have been able to scale over Europe, the

UK, Germany, France, without any regulation problems. It has been a

huge advantage for us, to build something that is fundamentally

disruptive, you change the way people travel on a massive scale,

we're talking about 20 million Europeans, 10 million people using

the service every quarter, and yet without rocking the boat of

regulations. The supermarket Whole Foods says it

will pay in New York City $5,000 to settle allegations that it

overcharged customers for prepackaged foods.

The city had said in June that its investigation tested 80

different types of prepackaged food at Whole Foods and found mislabeled

Whole Foods also has to conduct quarterly audits to ensure products

From me and the team, but the business. Thanks for watching. --

that's the business. Smokers are being urged not to

dismiss the early signs of a debilitating disease

as simply a smoker's cough. In a new campaign,

Public Health England says too many