The Indian telecom watchdog on Friday announced stricter rules over call drops and said telecom operators who don't meet the norms can be fined at least Rs 5 lakh.

"Graded financial disincentives in case service providers fail to meet the DCR (drop all rates) benchmarks have been introduced, in which amount payable may depend upon the extent of deviation from the benchmarks," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said.

Chennai: Talk of Tata Motors Ltd and what comes to mind is its only cash cow, Jaguar Land Rover Ltd (JLR), the UK subsidiary that rolls out luxury cars for global markets.

Unfortunately and perhaps coincidentally, since JLR’s acquisition, the standalone entity that was the clear supremo in the commercial vehicle (CV) market in India has run into rough weather. The behemoth’s market share has been steadily going downhill across segments from fiscal year 2010 (FY10) to FY17. If in medium and heavy CVs, it fell from 63.3% to 49.2%, in light CVs where it had a clear head start against competitors, the share contracted from 58.5% to 38.1%. Even in passenger vehicles, its share has slipped from 14.6% to 5.7%.

Mumbai: The rupee on Friday was trading little changed against the US dollar tracking the losses in the local equity and Asian currencies markets.

At 2pm, the rupee was trading at 64.15 a dollar, down 0.01% from its Wednesday’s close of 64.14. The rupee opened at 64.17 a dollar. On Thursday, currency markets were closed on account of Parsi New Year.

The Indian economy had stagnated in the last five decades of colonial rule. It is thus no surprise that Vallabhbhai Patel said in a speech a few days before independence that the economic regeneration of India was the main task of the new nationalist government. Most Indian nationalists other than M. K. Gandhi had believed that the best antidote to mass poverty would be rapid industrialization led by the state—Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, B. R. Ambedkar and V. D. Savarkar, for example.

A large near-Earth asteroid will pass safely by our planet on September 1, at a distance of seven million kilometres, or about 18 Earth-Moon distances, according to NASA.

Asteroid Florence is among the largest near-Earth asteroids that are several miles is size. Measurements from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and NEOWISE mission indicate it is about 4.4 kilometres in size.

STOCKHOLM: Swedish auto giant Volvo is betting on economic reforms of the Narendra Modi government, including the recently introduced goods and services tax, for growth in India, adding that there is scope to improve the flexibility of hiring and firing labourers in the country.

“The Narendra Modi government is driving the development agenda. The number of reforms, including GST, will work as an engine in developing a modern India,” Martin Lundstedt, President of the Volvo Group, told ET.

The BSE benchmark Sensex fell nearly 208 points and Infosys tanked over 7 % in early trade after Vishal Sikka resigned as MD and CEO with immediate effect.

Besides, weak global cues on a deadly attack in Spain and rising concerns over the fate of US President Donald Trump's economic agenda also influenced investors sentiment.

Apple Inc plans to spend about $1 billion on original programming in the next 12 months, intensifying efforts to compete with Amazon.com and Netflix in video streaming, according to people familiar with the plan.

A new Los Angeles-based team, led by former Sony Corp television executives Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, who were hired in June, will produce and buy television shows and films for Apple Music and other future video streaming products, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. The Wall Street Journal reported the new budget earlier Wednesday. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

With competition getting hotter in the affordable housing finance sector, private lender Axis Bank will waive 12 equated monthly installments (EMIs) on regular repayments of loans of up to Rs 30 lakh under the new scheme Shubh Aarambh Home Loans.

The lender has introduced Shubh Aarambh Home Loans, in which 12 EMIs are waived — four EMIs each after the fourth, eighth and 12th year — from the date of the first disbursement. The waiver will be in the form of reduction in tenure.

Vishal Sikka on Friday resigned as the chief executive (CEO) and managing director (MD) of Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest software services company. While the board of Infosys accepted the resignation of Sikka with immediate effect and appointed U B Pravin Rao as the interim CEO & MD, Sikka has been appointed the executive vice-chairman of the company.

In a BSE filing, Infosys said Sikka reiterated his belief in the great potential of Infosys, but cited among his reasons to leave a continuous stream of "distractions and disruptions over the recent months and quarters, increasingly personal and negative as of late, as preventing management's ability to accelerate the Company's transformation”.

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