Adani Defence & Aerospace has entered into definitive agreements for acquiring 50 per cent equity stake in agricultural drone startup General Aeronautics for an undisclosed amount. Bengaluru-based General Aeronautics specialises in developing robotic drones to offer tech-enabled crop protection services, crop health monitoring, precision farming and yield monitoring services using artificial intelligence and data analytics.
Air quality in Delhi and its suburbs dropped to the severe category again on Wednesday morning, with smoke from post-harvest paddy straw burning in neighbouring states accounting for one-third of the air pollution in the national capital.
U K Sinha's six-year tenure as chairman of Securities and Exchange Board of India ends later this week. Sinha held his last press conference in Mumbai on Monday, where he spoke on wide-ranging issues and his biggest regret.
The remarks by the top court came at the fag end of the day-long hearing after WhatsApp, while opposing the maintainability of the plea challenging its 2016 privacy policy, explained the nitty-gritty involved in it.
The need of the hour, as the Supreme Court readies to rule on the constitutionality of Aadhaar, is for the UIDAI to fix the bugs, says Geetanjali Krishna, in the second and final part of her series.
India has got the second set of Swiss bank account details of its nationals and entities under the automatic exchange of information pact with Switzerland, marking a key milestone in the government's fight against black money allegedly stashed abroad.
Reserve Bank of India on Thursday said a centralised portal would be ready in three to four months wherein depositors and beneficiaries can access details of unclaimed deposits across various banks. As of February this year, about Rs 35,000 crore of unclaimed deposits were transferred to RBI by public sector banks in respect of deposits which were not operated for 10 years or more. "In order to improve and widen the access of depositors/beneficiaries to such data, RBI has decided to develop a web portal to enable search across multiple banks for possible unclaimed deposits based on user inputs," RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said while announcing the first bi-monthly monetary policy for the current financial year.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted the Securities and Exchange Board of India time till August 14 to complete its probe into the allegations of stock price manipulation by the Adani group. A bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud directed the SEBI to file an updated status report of the investigation.
TRAI on Wednesday asked service providers to ensure international mobile roaming (IMR) service is kept 'inactive' by default for all subscribers, and is activated only on explicit request by consumer, as the regulator revamped the framework to protect users from unintentional usage and consequent 'bill shocks'.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to meet heads of public sector banks (PSBs) next week to review performance of the lenders and progress made by them to support the economy battered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Banks would be urged to sanction loans for productive sectors to accelerate revival of the economy, sources said. According to sources, the two-day meeting would commence on November 17 and undertake a comprehensive review of various segments, progress in government schemes including Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.
Admittedly, EVMs too have a UID number and any convergence of data can make the secret ballot system a party of history, warns Dr Gopal Krishna in the 5th part of his series against Aadhaar.
India is among 75 countries with which Switzerland's Federal Tax Administration has exchanged information on financial accounts within the framework of global standards on Automatic Exchange of Information.
The number one way the Modi administration can demonstrate its commitment to the success of the Atal Innovation Mission, Accelerating Growth for New India's Innovations, Make in India, Digital India, and Startup India is to strengthen its IP framework in ways that promote the legal and regulatory certainty necessary for greater R&D investment, high-value jobs, and greater innovative and creative outputs, the report said.
No process can offer a panacea for ethnic conflict, but there are times at which a legal process could work to defuse violence, asserts Supreme Court lawyer Devvrat.
Siva Prasad Nanduri, chief business officer, TeamLease Digital, outlines the skills that will help you get a job in 2023.
In the show-cause notice, Trai said it is of the view that the claim of VIL for providing priority 4G network with faster data speeds is not in compliance with the extant regulatory framework.
Marking a key milestone in the Indian government's fight against black money allegedly stashed abroad, India will get this month the complete information on flats, apartments and condominiums owned by Indians in Switzerland as also on earnings made from such properties to help it look into tax liabilities associated with those assets.
The judgment was reserved after a marathon hearing which went on for 38 days spanning four months.
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor M Rajeshwar Rao on Wednesday said while the central bank will foster growth in the microfinance (MFI) sector, the lenders in the space should not throw caution to the wind to achieve higher asset growth and returns. MFIs should not try to mimic the strategies of mainstream finance, as those serving the microfinance borrowers have a greater need to balance the social objectives with their lending operations, he said.
India has a huge untapped population which doesn't have facilities for financial aid and insurance, and it is perhaps plausible to look at the option of having niche players catering to smaller sectors akin to non-banks and microfinance institutions in lending, said Rakesh Joshi, member (Finance & Investment), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai). Speaking at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit, Joshi said, "Today, most of our insurance companies operate at a national level. There is arguably a case for having differentiated operations, which cater to niche sectors the same way we have non-banking financial companies (NBFC) and microfinance institutions in lending." "The capital requirement for niche players may not be as large as those having national ambitions. "Enabling these niche players, which require lower capital, will enhance the penetration in areas which hitherto had not seen traction from large players," he said.
'It's still very early. I have just been handed over the matter and therefore I haven't formed any views on it as yet,' Justice B N Srikrishna tells Pavan Lall.
The National Digital Health Mission seeks to provide a unique health ID to each citizen who wishes to have one and also on-board the healthcare service provides - hospitals, pharmacies and diagnostic labs, among others. It will have an online database of doctors and personal health records.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently said no entity in the card transaction or payment chain, apart from the card issuers and card networks, will be allowed to store sensitive user data from January 1, 2022. Instead, in transactions card data will be converted to tokens.
Humans will work far more collaboratively with artificial intelligence for rapid and complex decision-making.
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Thursday called for seamless coordination among various agencies involved in protecting India's maritime interests in the face of emerging security challenges and increasing rivalries and competitions in the Indian Ocean.
Several companies and technology heavyweights including Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce are working to create a digital vaccination passport or health passport app in the hope that governments and airlines will require travellers to upload details of their Covid-19 tests and immunisation. The vaccine passport will effectively create digital credentials that could be the key to attending crowded events or even visiting countries.
The world has changed and the CBI should also, the Supreme Court observed on Monday while hearing a plea seeking guidelines for probe agencies on seizure, examination and preservation of personal digital and electronic devices and their contents.
Speaking at the International Judicial Conference 2020 'Judiciary and the Changing World', Kovind said the apex court has led 'progressive social transformation' and referred to the two decades old Vishaka guidelines for preventing sexual harassment of women at workplace and the recent direction that women officers in the Army be granted permanent commission and command postings.
Investors are yet to warm up to the concept of sustainable investing with sustainable or ESG (environmental, social, and governance) funds in India witnessing outflows of Rs 315 crore in 2021-22. This comes following a staggering inflow of Rs 4,884 crore in FY 2020-21. Prior to that, sustainable funds saw an infusion of over Rs 2,000 crore, according to data compiled by Morningstar India.
The increasing involvement of Big Tech in the financial system could give rise to concentration risk and there are potential spillovers, which call for closer attention, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Tuesday. "...enormous amounts of consumer data is being generated and leveraged upon by a few entities (the so-called Big Tech) by virtue of their huge customer base. "Such developments raise concerns on concentration risk and potential spillovers as their level of engagement with the financial system strengthens in the years to come," Das said at the Global Fintech Fest 2022.
In January, Visa's chief executive officer, Al Kelly, said during an earnings call that "there's been a burst of the balloon in valuations in the fintech world". Noting that the trend of lower valuations "is a helpful characteristic of the current environment", he added: "We will look for capabilities and management teams that will bring more value to Visa than we can bring ourselves." Data from KPMG's Pulse of Fintech H2'22 shows that global fintech investment - via mergers and acquisitions (M&As), private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms - at $164.1 billion in 2022, was down 31 per cent over the year before. Indian fintechs held up better during this timeframe, attracting $6 billion, or a fall of 24 per cent.
Despite strong AUM growth, MFs lag behind other popular investment avenues. MFs received only 6 per cent of total household savings in 2021-2022.
'Nearly 13,000 individuals have been charged for sedition since 2010.' 'If the Supreme Court stay ever gets vacated, arrests will follow immediately.'
If we are to realise the full potential of biologics' ability to improve people's health, it is essential to encourage public policy and support R&D.
In a projection of India's growing maritime prowess, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday addressed the top naval commanders onboard the country's first indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant in the Arabian Sea and witnessed a mega wargame, amid China's increasing military posturing in the Indian Ocean region.
If Cyrus's protestations of having no knowledge of his imminent dismissal are to be taken at face value, he was extraordinarily naive and insulated from the ground reality. There were enough straws in the wind to suggest that his relations with Ratan were fast deteriorating to a point of no return.
'There are many things we need to work on.' 'At the heart of it is, one, the extent of inequality, which is not good for democracy and nation; two, a structural decline on how a country ought to function, how people should be held accountable, whose role is what.'
'Facilitating conversion of well-run NBFCs into banks is urgently needed.'
The court has correctly refrained from defining privacy or delineating definitively its contours