Veterans in the travel industry, a well-known corporate lawyer, and a marquee US-based hedge fund have backed the upcoming low-cost airline Akasa Air. Founded by former Jet Airways chief executive officer (CEO) Vinay Dube, the venture counts ace stock trader and investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala as its biggest financial backer with an investment of around Rs 300 crore. A person with knowledge of the development said most of the people were well known to Jhunjhunwala and Dube, who approached them during the conception stage.
'Our focus is not going to be metro to metro routes.' 'We will begin by focusing on metro to non-metro (routes).' 'Metro to tier-2 cities or tier-3 cities is where there is a lot of space for affordable, efficient carriers.'
While the infection has been mild in most reported cases, those below two years of age are showing signs of acute infection.
In a bad start to the new year, hotels are counting their losses again. Weddings and corporate events for this month have either been called off or postponed. The blow has throttled the nascent recovery which had kicked in around August. It is primarily hurting the banquet-driven hotel chains, some of which are seeing cancellations running into lakhs for a single day.
Jet Airways is seeing a churn in its senior management ahead of its planned take-off this year. Sudhir Gaur, accountable manager and acting chief executive officer, is the latest to quit the company. Finance head M Shivakumar and head of management information system (MIS) Farazad Patrawalla moved out a few weeks earlier. Gaur had been part of the initial team selected by the Kalrock-Jalan consortium, which secured approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) last June to revive the airline.
Adar Poonawalla says it took a five-minute chat with his father Cyrus before making the decision to manufacture Covishield. The bet paid off, and handsomely. Serum Institute now has the capacity to make 4 billion doses of Covishield annually.
India's largest carrier IndiGo will cut 20 per cent of its flights due to lower demand as a rapidly spreading coronavirus upends the recovery of air travel. The airline was operating around 1,200 flights as on Saturday. Other airlines are being forced to cancel flights as states tighten restrictions to combat the spread of the virus, and people are dropping last-minute travel plans. Airlines carried 2,518 passengers on 260,251 flights on Saturday, compared to 2,794 passengers on 358,856 flights the day before.
The company had in December said that the CDSCO had approved a 12-month shelf life for Covaxin, which was nine months earlier, Sohini Das reports.
A court in Canada has ordered the seizure of amounts collected by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on behalf of Air India and the Airports Authority of India (AAI). Separate orders were passed on November 24 and December 21 on pleas by shareholders of Devas Multimedia Private Limited who have filed multiple petitions to enforce arbitration awards against the Indian government. According to a Devas spokesperson, more than $30 million has been seized to date under the IATA action.
A back of the envelope calculation shows that India has roughly over 680 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines consisting primarily of Covishield doses.
Serum Institute has the capacity to make 250 million doses of Covishield monthly.
On the itinerary: Luxury camping, tribal homestays, heritage cities.
Bharat Biotech is targeting to manufacture one billion doses of its intra-nasal vaccine in 2022 which is under clinical trials now.
Commercial 5G services will be rolled out in 13 cities in India, including the metropolises, in 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in a statement on Monday. These cities are Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Jamnagar. "These metros and big cities would be the first places for the launch of 5G services in the country next year," the DoT said.
'Antibodies remain in the blood for at least seven to nine months.'
'Someone may have diabetes, but at what level the disease qualifies as a comorbid condition is something a doctor will decide upon and certify accordingly.'
If the vaccine is recommended for use as a booster against Omicron, it may significantly boost the demand for Covishield in India.
'We are not organising any large celebrations on New Year's Eve to avoid last-minute changes in guidelines.'
The issue of fog and low visibility primarily impacts airports in northern India and Bengaluru.
As the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 takes centrestage, vaccine makers in India are of the view that scaling up the existing vaccines to make them more effective is possible.