New Delhi: After rationalization of rates in the first phase, the new phase of goods and services tax (GST) is focussing on anti-tax evasion.

From taxmen cracking down on tax evaders last week to rolling out the e-way bill from 1 April, the government has signalled that it will no longer go easy on evaders after nine months of introduction of this tax.

Content is king, until you ask customers to pay for it. India’s largest telecom companies are discovering this the hard way. They have been announcing a plethora of deals with content providers. Bharti Airtel Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd have announced tie-ups with Hotstar, Amazon Prime, Discovery Communications, etc., while Reliance Industries Ltd and its subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd have gone a step further and even acquired stakes in some content providers.

Indian stock markets closed higher on Tuesday following the gains in the late afternoon trade with Sensex rising over 100 points and Nifty nearing the 10,250-level at the close before the commencement of RBI’s first bi-monthly policy meeting in FY19 starting tomorrow. All the sectoral indices of National Stock Exchange ended in green barring the Nifty IT index with PSU banking index surging the most.

Nearly 2,200 entities failed to pay penalties imposed on them by markets regulator Sebi for various violations till last December. The defaulters include individuals as well as companies which failed to pay penalties levied on them by Sebi for various offences related to the securities market. Some of these cases are nearly two decades old.

Disinvestment-bound Air India has delayed the payment of salaries for the month of March and is yet to intimate the employees about reasons for the delay, sources said. The debt-laden carrier has over 21,000 employees, including more than 11,000 on permanent rolls. Generally, salaries are paid by the 30th or 31st of every month and in case of bank holidays around these dates, then payments are made in advance.

Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar on Tuesday announced the launch of a new summer collection under the True Blue Brand, in partnership with Arvind Fashion Brands. In an interview to CNBC TV18, Sachin Tendulkar said that he wishes to reach out to all his fans through the brand. “Our target is to meet the requirement of all the people who have supported me for a number of years.

Microsoft has added a new track to its Professional Programme courses to help people working in the IT industry build skills in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The track is open to the public and is comprised of online courses. The applicants would use technologies like python, math, ethics, data analysis, Azure machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing and speech recognition to gain skills.

Telecom infrastructure firm American Tower Corporation (ATC) today announced that it has completed mobile tower purchase deal worth Rs 3,800 crore with Vodafone India through its Indian arm. ATC Telecom Infrastructure, a majority owned Indian subsidiary of ATC, has completed the transaction. This is a previously announced acquisition of Vodafone India’s telecom site business, which consists of approximately 10,200 communications sites, for a total cash consideration of about Rs 38 billion, ATC said in a statement.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) regulation that telcos can no longer make an offer to select clients — segmented offers, in jargon — but have to extend them to all subscribers could potentially cost the industry Rs 10,000-12,000 crore in a year.

Right now, when a subscriber threatens to move to another telco — port, in jargon — the original telco offers to match, even better the offer being made.

The contribution of order inflows from private sector and overseas orders has almost halved for Larsen and Toubro (L&T) over the last few years. However, a sharp uptick in fresh order inflows led by government spending in India, is aiding the heavy engineering major tide over sluggishness.

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