The federal agency said it conducted raids against a director of Zanmai Lab Pvt Ltd, which owns WazirX, on August 3 in Hyderabad and alleged he was "non-cooperative". The agency's probe against the crypto exchange is linked to its ongoing investigation against a number of Chinese loan apps (mobile applications) working in India.
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal on Wednesday declined to grant interim relief to Google seeking a stay on competition watchdog CCI's penalty of Rs 936.44 crore on the tech giant for abusing its dominant position with respect to Play Store policies. The appellate tribunal has directed Google to deposit 10 per cent of the fine before its registry in the next four weeks. A two-member bench comprising Justice Rakesh Kumar and Alok Srivastava issued notices to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and other respondents and posted the matter for hearing on April 17, 2023.
Private equity investments into domestic companies fell sharply year-on-year by 42 per cent to $23.3 billion in 2022, which is the lowest since 2019, when it was $15.8 billion, according to an industry report. The numbers reflect the overall funding winter that the startup space in particular, and the overall foreign investments in general have been witnessing since the Ukraine war began last February. Private equity investment inflows into the country fell by a sharp 42 per cent in 2022 from last year to $23.3 billion -- the lowest annual inflows since 2019 when it was a low $15.8 billion, but still relatively elevated compared to historical levels, said Elaine Tan, a senior analyst at Refinitiv, the LSEG business arm that provides financial markets data and insights.
Facebook's parent company Meta announced on Tuesday it will fire another 10,000 people, implementing a second round of jobs cuts after it slashed 11,000 positions in November last year, to improve its financial performance in a "difficult environment". Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a post that overall "we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven't yet hired." The company has said that in its "Year of Efficiency", the company aims to make itself "a better technology company and to improve our financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long-term vision."
The money sent home by Indians from West Asian countries took a beating in 2020-21 due to the pandemic. On the other hand, overseas Indians in advanced nations - the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore - emerged as important sources of remittance, according to a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) survey. Indians working in informal sectors in West Asia seem to have been impacted the most due to the lockdowns and subdued crude oil prices as well as slower pace of migration in recent years.
The government on Thursday ordered blocking of eight YouTube channels, including one operating from Pakistan, for allegedly spreading disinformation related to India's national security, foreign relations and public order.
A 26-year-old man was arrested in Patna on Friday for allegedly propagating "anti-India" views through a WhatsApp group that he operated, the police said.
Amid fast-depleting forex reserves, the Finance Ministry on Wednesday signalled that it was not in favour of selling the dollar to defend any particular level of the rupee. "Let it (rupee) reach whatever levels it has to reach. We can't fritter away reserves on defending some artificial, imaginary rate of exchange," a senior finance ministry official told Business Standard. Forex reserves declined to a near two-year low of $545.65 billion as on September 16, down $85.88 billion from the level that existed on February 25, a day after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Telecom gearmaker Nokia will boost its manufacturing capacity in India by 1.5x over the next few years to support the 5G services roll-out, said Tarun Chhabra, the company's country head of mobile networks business. Nokia is supplying network equipment to Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio for their 5G networks from its plant in Chennai. Vodafone Idea is yet to finalise its contract as it awaits fresh funding.
The amount of money Indians invested in foreign securities, property, and deposits in 2022 was likely the highest on record. At $2.1 billion, it was the largest spend for any 12-month period according to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) data going back over a decade. The amount spent for each individual segment was also the highest.
With three key subscription drivers -- F1, IPL and HBO -- gone, can Disney+Hotstar depend only on its chart-topping originals like Criminal Justice and Rudra: Edge of Darkness to hit both scale and profitability?
Indian telcos have been able to garner over 20 million 5G customers in less than four months after the official launch of the service last October, according to industry estimates. With telecom operators like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel aggressively rolling out their 5G services in over 190 cities across the country to date, India is now only behind China and the US in terms of the number of cities in a country where 5G services have been extended. Top executives in telcos say that the number of 5G subscribers in India is a conservative estimate and that it will rise as the roll-out gains momentum.
The Twitter handle @kooeminence was suspended on Friday, a development that came in the wake of billionaire Elon Musk-owned Twitter suspending the accounts of several prominent global journalists, including those from the New York Times, CNN and Washington Post.
The government is likely to hold 5G spectrum auction in early June, telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday. The minister said that the Department of Telecom is working as per expected timeline and the process is on to resolve industry concerns around spectrum pricing. Asked about the schedule of the spectrum auction, Vaishaw said that it is expected to be in early June.
The Reserve Bank of India has on Wednesday lifted the ban on new customer acquisition by American Express which was imposed with effect from May 2021 due to non-compliance with local data storage norms. "In view of the satisfactory compliance demonstrated by American Express Banking Corp. with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circular dated April 6, 2018, on Storage of Payment System Data, the restrictions imposed, vide order dated April 23, 2021, on onboarding of new domestic customers have been lifted with immediate effect," RBI said. Similar bans were imposed on Diners Club International and Mastercard previously.
Flow of money into non-resident Indian (NRI) deposits moderated sharply to $3.23 billion in April 2021-March 2022 from $7.36 billion in the same period of the previous year. Outstanding deposits have also gone down to $139.02 billion at the end of March 2022. This compares to $141.89 billion a year ago, according to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data.
In the steepest weekly fall ever, India's forex reserves slid by $11.17 billion to $606.47 billion as the currency came under pressure due to geopolitical developments, according to the Reserve Bank data released on Friday. For the previous reporting week ended March 25, the overall reserves had slid by $2.03 billion to $617.65 billion. The steep fall in the reserves was because of a decline in the core currency assets, which fell by $10.73 billion to $539.73 billion.
Comedian Kathy Griffin's became the first casualty of the move as her account got suspended.
The country's foreign exchange reserves declined by $678 million to $634.29 billion in the week ended January 21, according to RBI data. In the previous week ended January 14, the reserves had increased by $2.23 billion to $634.96 billion. It touched a lifetime high of $642.45 billion in the week ended September 3, 2021.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and its partners, such as Russia, collectively termed Opec+, have decided to cut crude oil production by 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) from October onwards, at a meeting on Monday. In a step that may increase prices in India, the group has decided to reduce output quotas for October, after a fall in global oil demand outlook. The cut in output is equal to 0.1 per cent of global supply.
The ED probe into alleged money laundering by crypto exchange WazirX and the subsequent squabbling among its promoters has revealed the 'darker side' of cryptocurrencies, a top government source said on Thursday. The source added that people should exercise caution in absence of a regulation to govern cryptocurrencies and so-called exchanges trading in them. "Caution is the word that should be in the minds of the people dealing with crypto. "In the episode of WazirX, people got to know many darker sides, caution is necessary in crypto transaction," the source said.
India's forex reserves decreased by $587 million to $635.08 billion for the week ended December 24, the RBI said on Friday. In the previous week ended December 17, the overall reserves had decreased by $160 million to $635.67 billion. The kitty had touched a lifetime high of $642.45 billion in the week ended September 3, 2021.
The country's foreign exchange reserves declined by $160 million to stand at $635.667 billion in the week to December 17, RBI data showed on Friday. In the previous week ended December 10, the reserves had decreased by $77 million to $635.828 billion. It touched a lifetime high of $642.453 billion in the week ended September 3, 2021.
Over 23.87 lakh Indian accounts were banned by WhatsApp in July.
Disney+ Hotstar reported its biggest decline in paid subscribers to date - a fall of 3.8 million subscribers, or 6 per cent of its total - in the October-December period. The drop in numbers came after two warnings by the company that Hotstar's paid subscriber base would shrink as it didn't have streaming rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the 2023-27 media cycle. The IPL would start on April 1 this year and continue till May 28.
The Centre has issued directions for blocking multiple YouTube videos and Twitter posts sharing links to the BBC documentary 'India: The Modi Question', sources said.
Finnish telecom gear maker Nokia and Tech Mahindra have joined hands to deploy 5G-based solutions for business organisations, according to a joint statement by the two companies. Under the collaboration, Tech Mahindra will leverage Nokia's private wireless DAC (digital automation cloud) solution for customers across industries and facilitate in automating 5G private wireless network management on a cloud computing system and enabling them deploy internet of things like technology.
'I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software and servers teams,' he tweeted Tuesday.
India has built up buffers against cyclical difficulties and has ample foreign exchange reserves to withstand pressure on credit worthiness, S&P Global Ratings said on Thursday. Speaking at the India Credit Spotlight 2022 webinar, S&P Sovereign & International Public Finance Ratings director Andrew Wood said the country has a strong external balance sheet and limited external debt, making debt servicing not so expensive. "The country has built up buffers against cyclical difficulties like those, which we are experiencing right now," Wood said.
After failing to get a court order to block an antitrust ruling, Google on Wednesday said it will allow users in India to choose default search engine on Android-based smartphones. As part of the key changes the tech giant will make to its platforms and business in India in the aftermath of the landmark CCI ruling, OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) will be able to license individual Google apps for pre-installation on their devices. Google is also updating the Android compatibility requirements to introduce changes for partners to build non-compatible or forked variants, the company said in its blog.
Deepening the funding crisis that startups have been witnessing for some time, the October inflows plunged 75 per cent on-year to $3.3 billion across 75 deals, including six large deals worth $2.2 billion, according to an industry report. Exits touched half of the inflows at $1.6 billion across 15 deals in the reporting months, a significant improvement over the previous month which saw just $653 million worth of exits across 24 deals, but 69 per cent lower on-year basis, according to the numbers collated by EY for the Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, the umbrella body the PEs and VCs. However, the report said, on a month-on-month basis, the inflows continued to grow, clipping at 60 per cent over the September numbers.
Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday said 67 per cent of the decline in the foreign exchange reserves since April was due to valuation changes arising from strengthening US dollar and higher American bond yields. The forex reserves, which stood at $606.475 billion as on April 2, have declined to $537.5 billion as on September 23. It was also the eighth straight week when the reserves declined.
The Karnataka high court has advised the government to come up with some regulatory measures to check the growth of pseudo-therapists and 'Instagram influencers'.
It's the sovereign right of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to decide on the oil production capacities, Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri said Friday. Refraining from commenting on the controversial decision of OPEC on cutting oil production by two million barrels a day, which has taken the world by surprise, Puri said it is likely to be scrutinized very carefully. During an interaction with a group of Indian reporters, he said that India as one of the major consumers of oil and gas also has a major say in the global oil market.
A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Justice KM Joseph asked the mobile messaging app to give advertisement in five newspapers to publicise its undertaking given to the government.
The JCP was constituted in the Lok Sabha in December 2019 and was expected to submit its report in the Budget Session.
The competent authority under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) has approved an order of seizure of over Rs 5,551 crore worth of deposits of Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Xiaomi -- the highest amount frozen till date in India -- the ED said Friday. The agency charged the popular Chinese phone maker with remitting foreign currency equivalent to Rs 5,551.27 crore to three entities -- one Xiaomi Group company and two US-based unrelated entities -- in the guise of royalty. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had first issued the order of seizure of these bank deposits on April 29 under the FEMA and later sent it for approval of the competent authority, as required under the law that regulates foreign exchange violations in the country.
Outward remittances under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) liberalised remittance scheme (LRS) made a strong comeback in the first quarter of FY23 as Indians increased spending on international travel, maintenance of close relatives, and gifts. The latest data for Q1FY23 released by the RBI shows that remittance by Indians under the scheme jumped 64.75 per cent to over $6.04 billion from $3.67 billion in Q1FY22. The amount remitted in Q1FY23 is even higher than that in Q4FY22, where outward remittance under LRS was to the tune of $5.8 billion. In April, about $2.02 billion was remitted, followed by $2.03 billion in May, and $1.98 billion in June, data released by RBI in the August bulletin shows.
Musk has not yet offered details about how his content moderation council will work.
Meta-owned Facebook 'actioned' about 21.6 million content pieces across 13 violation categories in India during March, according to a monthly report by the social media giant.