Foreign lawyers, law firms and companies cannot practice the legal profession in India, the Supreme Court on Tuesday held in a verdict that could have far-reaching consequences.

The court, which also heard over 30 law firms hailing from the United Kingdom, the USA, France and Australia, also modifed a Madras High Court order permitting foreign lawyers and law firms to come to India on a "fly in and fly out" basis for rendering legal services here on offshore laws and diverse international legal issues.

State-owned telecommunications services providers Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited apart from state carrier Air India registered a net loss of more than Rs 116.86 billion in 2016-17, effectively becoming the top 3 loss-making ventures of the government.

The Public Enterprises Survey 2016-17, tabled in parliament on Tuesday by the Department of Public Enterprises, showed that the number of loss-making central enterprises have continued to rise for the third straight year, growing to 82 in the last financial year.

India’s third largest private sector bank Axis Bank on Tuesday said it would soon be able to process payments over the popular chatting application ‘WhatsApp’.

The bank also termed the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) as a “huge opportunity”.

Indian Oil, ONGC and Coal India have emerged as the most profitable PSUs for 2016-17, whereas BSNL, Air India and MTNL incurred the highest losses, according to a government survey tabled in Parliament today.

The Public Enterprises Survey 2016-17, which mapped the performance of central public sector units, showed that the top ten loss-making state-owned firms accounted for a whopping 83.82 per cent of the total losses made by 82 loss-making CPSEs during the year.

Regional content, be it films or documentaries, comedy or music, has been firing up the Internet in India for a few years now. With cheap data and easy access to content, small local libraries such as Hoichoi (for Bengali content) and national home grown platforms such as Alt Balaji, Voot from Viacom 18, Hotstar from Star India and, besides of course the dedicated channels for several Indian languages on YouTube, have flourished. Now Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar are raising their stakes in the game, commissioning original shows and going all out to acquire regional films for their libraries.

With the financial viability of mass rapid transport system coming into question and leading to the postponement of several metro railway projects in the country, companies such as Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (DMRCL) and Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) are coming up with innovative approaches to either open alternative revenue streams or reduce their costs. In turn, it will lead to reducing their dependency on government funds.

Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is planning to allow start-ups to list on the small and medium enterprises (SME) platform of the stock exchanges. Sources say start-ups will be given special relaxations on the SME platform in terms of net worth requirements and profitability. The move comes after Indian stock exchanges in coordination with Sebi held several discussions with both the industry participants and to come up with a new framework for start-up listing.

In a bid to ensure products built by Indian start-ups can stand up to global standards, IT industry body Nasscom has opened a first-of-its-kind design studio for start-ups to get hand holding from industry mentors to build better products.

The Design4India programme, which has been built in partnership with social network giant Facebook and co-working space provider WeWork, will focus on helping start-ups design better products unlike other labs and accelerators which largely focus only on fine tuning the business models.

BENGALURU: Microsoft is revamping its startup accelerator programme, which began in 2012 with one each in Bengaluru and Israel, and changing its leadership teams.

The accelerator’s global director Ravi Narayan, general manager Tzahi Weisfeld, and director of operations Amir Pinchas are said to be moving to different roles within the organization.

NEW DELHI: Benchmark equity indices opened with losses on Tuesday morning before flattening, a day after Sensex recorded its biggest intra-day gain in two years.

30-share BSE Sensex opened with a loss of 99.72 points on 33,818.22. The broader Nifty too lost more than 30 points at opening. However, in the initial fifteen minutes of trading, both the indices pared some of their losses.

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