PAM Financial News

fintech companies are seeking tax support from the government for last-mile agents and business correspondents, popularly known as ‘bank mitras’. In a letter sent to the finance ministry, the industry body Business Correspondents Resource Council (BCRC) has sought a uniform goods and services tax rate of 5% for BC transactions. Currently the government levies no tax on accounts in rural branches and Jan Dhan accounts, but transactions through other accounts are charged at 18%.

NCLT) has approved the merger of Kiranakart Technologies, which operates quick commerce platform Zepto, with its Singaporean affiliate entity Kiranakart Pte Ltd—a move that will help accelerate its initial public offering (IPO) plans in India this year. Zepto’s domicile flip to India will formally complete within the next 30 days, a person aware of the matter said, adding that this was one of the fastest approvals of its kind from the tribunal. “The scheme appears to be fair and reasonable and (it) is not in violation of any provisions of law and is not contrary to public policy,” the Mumbai bench of NCLT observed in its January 9 order.

Infosys is set to roll out its annual pay hikes from February, ushering in the New Year on a happy note for its employees. The country's second largest software exporter will hand out letters to employees falling at job level five (JL5) and below next month with the raise effective retrospectively from January 1. Those at JL6 and above will receive their letter in March with the hike taking effect from April, a senior company executive told employees at an Infosys Validation Services unit (IVS unit) town hall on Friday, people briefed on the subject told ET.

Flipkart is in advanced discussions to lead a $35–40 million funding in its fintech venture, Super.money, which for the first time may see external investors also joining the round but with the web-retailer retaining its majority ownership, people in the know of the matter said. Super.money, started by Flipkart senior executive Prakash Sikaria, is among the big focus areas at Flipkart for its financial services and lending business and has emerged as one of the fastest growing Unified Payments Interface (UPI) apps. It surpassed Amazon Pay last month in terms of volume with more than 100 million UPI transactions, as per National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data. Super.money is emerging as a rival to payments firms like PhonePe — previously part of the Flipkart group — and others. The Flipkart-led latest funding will set the valuation benchmark for the fintech venture that will be scaled aggressively in 2025.

Business correspondents (BCs)-who process thousands of crores of rupees daily in domestic remittances-have urged the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to relax the restrictions it had imposed on monthly and daily transfers 14 years ago, according to people aware of the development. They have written to the RBI, requesting it to double the monthly transfer limit to ₹50,000 and reduce the requirement of a two-factor authentication (2FA) to once a month from it being needed for every transaction now, the people cited earlier told ET. This comes after the BCs complained to the regulator about the misuse of its latest domestic money transfer rules that mandate KYC (know-your-customer) checks of every remitter.

India, too, has its share of quirky regulations. Until recently, kite-flying required a permit under the Indian Aircraft Act of 1934, as kites were classified as 'aircraft'. Delhi barbers are still legally obliged to maintain a register of every haircut performed. These outdated laws, often harmless on the surface, highlight a deeper problem: absence of an institutionalised system for regulatory review. Without mechanisms to periodically evaluate and repeal redundant laws, governance becomes riddled with inefficiencies, eroding public trust and creating unnecessary friction.

However, 2025 brings promising news for four zodiac signs—Aries, Libra, Virgo, and Pisces. Media report predicts life will get significantly easier for them this year. After navigating a year of challenges, these signs can expect emotional and spiritual growth, improved relationships, and a renewed sense of purpose, as mentioned in a report by Your Tango.

Steel Authority of India and John Cockerill India will jointly invest around ₹6,000 crore on setting up a downstream plant for steel, which will be used for the production of cold-rolled grain-oriented and cold-rolled non-oriented types of electrical steel, sources aware of the development said. The hot-rolled coils (HRCs), a form of finished steel to be used as raw material for this plant, will be supplied from SAIL, while the downstream unit itself is likely to be set up at one of SAIL's existing plants, they said. While a final call on where the plant will be set up is yet to be made, the project is expected to come on-board between 2027 and 2029, they said. In November last year, SAIL had signed a memorandum of understanding with John Cockerill India for green steel technologies and innovation, with a focus on carbon steel, green steel and silicon steel.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, said the foreign ministers would convene in Brussels on January 27 in an effort to decide how the 27-nation bloc would relax sanctions on Syria. After 13 years of civil war, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad was ousted in a lightning offensive by insurgent forces led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham a month ago. The group has since set up a caretaker government in Damascus. Any European decision to ease sanctions would be conditional on the new Syrian administration's approach to governing, which must include «different groups» and women and «no radicalisation», Kallas said, without elaborating. «If we see the developments going to the right direction, we are ready to do the next steps...If we see that it's not going to the right direction, then we can also move back on this.»

Adani Group will invest Rs 65,000 crore in energy and cement projects in Chhattisgarh, the conglomerate said Sunday. Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani met Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai on Sunday and announced an investment of Rs 60,000 crore to expand the group's power plants in Raipur, Korba and Raigarh in the state. The expansion will enhance Chhattisgarh's power generation capacity by 6,120 MW, a company statement said. Adani Power is India's top private thermal power producer. It is targeting to double its thermal power capacity to 30.67 GW by 2029-30 from 15 GW currently. The firm said last month it was exploring options of investing Rs 20,000 crore to set up a coal-fired ultra-supercritical thermal power plant in Bihar.

CII has backed further simplification of the regulatory framework, expansion of the ambit of the national single-window system (NSWS) portal and revamp of the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) system to minimise tax disputes, among steps to make it easier for doing business in India. «Simplifying regulatory frameworks, reducing compliance burdens and enhancing transparency should continue to remain our focus agenda for the next several years,» Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said in a press release on Saturday. The CII has pitched for centralised regulatory approval through NSWS, wherein all central, state- and local-level approvals are provided, bringing transparency and faster regulatory clearance for businesses. The industry body has suggested phase-wise onboarding of central ministries and states on the portal, incentivising the states to shift to the portal once the central ministries have been integrated into the portal.

Union home minister Amit Shah has set a deadline of March 2026 to wipe out Maoism from the country. Last year, 287 Naxalites were killed, 1,000 arrested and 837 Maoists surrendered in Chhattisgarh. Giving details about the operation, officials said, «The gunfight broke out in the morning at a forest in the Indravati National Park area when a joint team of security personnel was out on an anti-Naxalite operation,» said Inspector General of Police, Bastar Range, Sundarraj P.

Saturday Night Live, is set to premiere on Netflix US on January 25, 2025. This release is part of a pre-existing Pay-1 agreement between Netflix and Sony Pictures.

Aditi Tatkare said women listed under Namo Shetkari and direct benefits schemes will not be eligible for Ladki Bahin Yojana — the scheme which promised ₹2,100 as pension to all women above 18 years and helped the Mahayuti alliance to come back to power. Early estimates show that this will help the Maharashtra government prune the 2.63-crore beneficiary list by 20 lakh. On January 1, Himachal CM Sukhvinder Sukhu voluntarily surrendered the free electricity subsidy of 125 units in his name and urged all self-reliant individuals to follow suit. The appeal aims to benefit the state electricity board by ₹200 crore. The Congress government, which assumed power in December 2022, has been facing severe financial crunch and struggling to implement its election promises. In the process, it has started pruning the beneficiary list and tweaking freebies introduced by the previous BJP government. In October, in an exclusive interview to ET, Andhra CM N Chandrababu Naidu admitted he was struggling to implement super six promises made in the run-up to the assembly polls because of financial constraints.

Neville Noronha, the chief executive of Avenue Supermarts that operates DMart retail stores, said the foundational ethos and principles that have guided the company should remain unchanged, irrespective of leadership transitions. «We operate on straightforward, fundamental business principles, and these must stay intact. While strategies and operational details might evolve, the culture of the company should never be compromised,» he said in a chat with ET, a day after announcing his plan not to extend his contract as CEO. Noronha has spent more than two decades in the supermarket chain. On Saturday, Avenue Supermarts announced that Anshul Asawa will replace Noronha in February 2026, after the latter chose not to continue.

AIIMS to arrange hip replacement surgery for jailed British national Christian Michel James, the alleged middleman arrested in 2018 in a money laundering case connected to the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland chopper case. Special Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal passed the order on an application filed by James who has claimed that his total hip replacement surgery could not be avoided, considering that he was suffering from «excruciating pain» in day-to-day activities. James, who was extradited in 2018, claimed that the doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) had advised the surgery. «The Director, AIIMS is requested to arrange for the total hip surgery, as advised by the doctors of AIIMS as per the medical prescription dated December 30, 2024, and to fix the surgery i.e. total hip replacement, as stated in the report, preferably, in the first/second week of February, 2025 as per the convenience of the operating surgeon,» the judge said in an order passed on January 9.

Punjab Kings (PBKS) on Sunday announced India batter Shreyas Iyer as their captain for the 2025 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). The franchise secured Iyer’s services at the IPL 2025 mega auction for a record-breaking Rs 26.75 crore. Punjab fended off stiff competition from Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Delhi Capitals (DC) in an intense bidding war to sign the star batter. While Iyer became the most expensive player in IPL auction history for a brief moment, he was later surpassed by Rishabh Pant, who fetched an even higher bid.

loan disbursal with several of them completely stopping acquisition of new-to-credit customers amid rising asset quality stress. The sector's asset quality may have also worsened as collection efficiency has faltered for several lenders. Heads of the microfinance lenders however expressed hope that the sector would bounce back but it may take a couple of quarters from now. It is now in the process of healing with guardrails being in place to protect it from further degeneration, they said. The sector contributes 2.03% to the country's GDP and supports 13 million jobs.

Kannauj railway station following a 16-hour overnight operation, officials said on Sunday. An FIR has been registered against the contractor and an engineer for various offences including negligence and endangering lives, they said. The rescue teams, including personnel from the national and state disaster response forces and the railways, worked through the cold winter night to clear the debris and pull out the trapped workers. No fatalities have been reported, the officials said. Twenty-six workers have been admitted to various hospitals in Kannauj, while two with serious injuries were shifted to the Lala Lajpat Rai (LLR) Hospital in Kanpur, they said.

eco-sensitive zone of the Hoollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary in Assam's Jorhat district. The Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), chaired by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, approved the proposal by Vedanta Group's Cairn Oil & Gas during its meeting on December 21, according to the minutes of the meeting. Assam's principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife) and chief wildlife warden had recommended clearance for the project in August last year, citing «national interest». The Forest Advisory Committee of the Union Environment Ministry had also granted in-principle approval during its meeting on August 27 last year.