India Financial News

Indian rupee depreciated by 7 paise to 83.84 against the US dollar in early trade on Wednesday, tracking subdued domestic equity market trend and unabated outflow of foreign capital. A weak American currency and lower crude prices, however, supported the local unit and prevented its sharp fall, forex traders said. At the interbank foreign exchange, the rupee opened weak at 83.79 and lost further to 83.84 against the greenback, declining 7 paise from its previous days' closing level of 83.77.

Domestic benchmark index NSE Nifty fell 2.6 points to 24696.25, while the BSE Sensex traded 105.22 points down at 80697.64.

The Nifty future closed positive with gains of 0.45% at 24,707 levels on Tuesday. The India VIX was down by 3.46% from 14.32 to 13.82 levels.

JP Morgan maintained an overweight rating on Cyient while BofA and UBS have a buy call on Varun Beverages and Avenue Supermarts respectively.

Nifty index has been making higher highs and higher lows from the last three trading sessions and recently it bottomed out with support of 50 DEMA. Index filled a major gap down zones and scaled higher after a consolidation breakout above 24400 zones. “Now it (Nifty) has to continue to hold above 24650 zones for an up move towards 24850 then 25000 levels while support is seen at 24600 then 24500 zones,” said Chandan Taparia, Senior VP, Equity Derivatives and Technicals, Broking & Distribution at Motilal Oswal.

core inflation, which excludes volatile food and fuel prices, as doing so would be counterproductive, according to a study. The paper by think-tank National Council of Applied Economic Research addresses the ongoing debate among policymakers over whether food prices should be stripped from inflation targeting. Economists argue that this approach is not feasible in a country like India, where food makes up nearly half of the consumer price index basket. “Neglecting food price inflation that diverges from target for an extended period can have negative consequences,” economists including NCAER’s Poonam Gupta wrote in the study.

Accel has invested $9 million in Uppercase, nearly doubling the new-age luggage maker’s valuation after the investment to $60 million. The investment is earmarked for fuelling the brand’s expansion through new retail stores domestically as well as in Europe and the Middle East by next year, cofounder and managing director Sudip Ghose told ET. ET had reported on May 31 about Accel, an early investor in Flipkart, having discussions to invest in Uppercase, underscoring investor interest in new-age consumer retail brands.

Neville Tata, 32, has taken charge as head of Star Bazaar, signalling the rise of the next generation of Tatas. Star Bazaar is the hypermarket unit of Trent Ltd, which houses the Tata Group’s retail businesses. Neville is the son of Trent Ltd chairman Noel Tata, the half-brother of Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata who is chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, the conglomerate’s holding company. Neville was on the board of Trent Hypermarket, the grocery retailing subsidiary, as a non-executive director but has stepped down from that post as he takes on a more executive role, executives close to the development said. He was associated with the hypermarket business a few years back, then went overseas to study, sources said. Trent Ltd has identified its hypermarket business as the next growth driver. P Venkatesalu is the CEO of Trent Ltd.

New Delhi: An innocuous piece of India's audit rules has come under scrutiny, after several alleged audit lapses that paved the road to spectacular business bust-ups were traced back to it. However, fixing it could be tricky, audit industry executives said. When a company raises money from the public and transfers it to a subsidiary, and further to the company's promoters, the diversion may go unnoticed in audits.

Infosys kicked off the fiscal 2024-25 performance bonus pay-outs to eligible employees at an average of 80% for the first quarter ended June, in what could potentially uplift the mood across vast sections of the technology workforce. This pay-out is a substantial jump from the previous quarter ended March 31 when India’s second largest IT services firm had paid an average 60% of the targeted bonus. “This is the best we have seen in some time,” an Infosys employee told ET on the condition of anonymity.

Digital connectivity in India is set to get a major boost, with three large undersea cable projects — 2Africa Pearls, IndiaAsia-Express (IAX) and India-Europe-Express (IEX) — slated to go onstream between October and next March, expanding existing capacity by more than four times, said people familiar with the matter. 2Africa, among the longest subsea cable systems in the world, spanning over 45,000 km, has investments from Bharti Airtel and Meta, among others. It will have a capacity of 180 terabits per second (tbps), connecting 33 countries, including Sunil Mittal-led Airtel’s landing station in Mumbai. IAX and IEX involve contributions from Reliance Jio, among others. Boost for Data Centre Operators:

merchants due to a spike in cases of tax evasion, people aware of the development told ET. The Directorate General of Goods and Service Tax Intelligence (DGGI) is working closely with startups, payment aggregators and payment gateways to monitor if merchants are selling the right products with the right GST invoices, they said. “Tax evasion is very common among small merchants, where they would enlist as a seller of one product which attracts GST at a lower slab, but engage in selling other products which attract higher GST… The tax authorities intend to catch such merchants,” said Wriju Ray, cofounder of Idfy, a Mumbai-based identity verification startup that helps payment aggregators deal with identity frauds.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Mpox a public health emergency of international concern as it found a new strain of the virus in parts of Africa. More than 15,600 cases and 537 deaths have been reported this year. Is this of concern to India? Mpox is a zoonotic illness, formerly known as monkeypox.

foreign banks that operate in the country have approached the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) seeking prospective application of the guidelines on mandatory local storage of payments data from January 2025 with regard to information that’s already kept overseas. They have also sought a reprieve from any regulatory action until then. These guidelines, issued in 2018, mandate that all payment system data related to customers in the country must be stored solely in India. “Some foreign lenders have pressed for a prospective compliance date starting January 2025 to ensure all lenders can meet the regulations,” a senior foreign bank executive said, confirming a meeting with RBI officials on the data localisation issue.

₹4 crore is required. This amount doubles for medium-sized hubs and is about ten times more for large export hubs.

Portfolio management services (PMS) are navigating new challenges after the Union Budget for 2024-25 increased tax on long-term capital gains (LTCG) and short-term capital gains (STCG).

okada, and boda boda. They are transforming mobility in Africa. Behind the rise is a story of supply and demand.

AUM of $150 billion) and Singapore-based Mars Growth Capital Partners (AUM $1.5 billion), according to two people familiar with the plans. Others that have set up local operations since this January include South Korea’s sovereign fund KIC, Japan’s Advantage Partners, and Singapore-based Growtheum Capital Partners.

Volt VC, a micro venture capital (VC) firm, announced the launch of its inaugural fund on Wednesday. The Volt VC Fund-1 aims to raise a corpus of Rs 45 crore to invest in around 20-25 consumer-centric startups at the pre-seed stage across various sectors, with a particular focus on direct-to-consumer (D2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) models. “In India, lately we have seen a good number of pre-seed and seed funds coming in, but several of them have ticket sizes of between Rs 4 crore and Rs 10 crore. However, many of these startups don’t have the appetite to take in that much money. So, there was a need for someone to enter with a smaller ticket for a smaller stake,” Param Patel, the general partner of the fund told ET.

Macs between April and June on enterprise deals, Mint reported on 3 August. Overall PC sales in India rose 7% year-on-year to 3.39 million units during the period.

₹5 lakh cash or cash equivalent for either buying or selling options," said Rajesh Baheti, director, Crosseas Capital, one of India's largest arbitrage and jobbing firms. “Another suggestion is to have multiple index products expire on the same day in place of having just a single expiry per week per exchange." Baheti said these were part of his comments to Sebi's 30 July consultation paper titled “Measures to strengthen index derivatives framework for increased investor protection and market stability". Three of the most important recommendations of Sebi’s Secondary Market Advisory Committee (SMAC) are to increase the initial margin to trade, have only a single product expiry per week per exchange, down from the current five indices which expire each day of week, and increase in contract size from ₹5-10 lakh currently to ₹25-30 lakh.