Salt-to-hotel conglomerate ITC is exploring ways to develop health and wellness consumer products. The firm, currently experimenting with medicinal plants, may foray into the fast-growing natural personal care products market eventually. While it has already ventured into fortified food products under its Aashirvaad brand, the next phase may focus on covering therapeutic, preventive and post-care segments.

To begin with, it has taken up a farm-level project at Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh this year, where it is studying an array of medicinal plants like ashwagandha, sarpagandha, mint, tulsi and gudmar, among others.

State-owned Coal India will kick off the next round of coal auction aimed at the non-regulated sector, including those dealing in sponge iron, by this year- end or early 2018. The decision comes as a dozen power plants are staring at a bleak scenario for want of coal. “Of a little over 50 mt of coal earmarked for the ongoing fiscal for the non-regulated sector, including sponge iron, cement and CPPs (captive power plants), Coal India (CIL) will auction linkages of around 25 million tonnes (mt) either in December or January,” a senior government official said.

Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL) has introduced a new CNG variant of the Xcent Prime. The compact sedan will now come with a factory-fitted CNG kit. Prices of the Xcent Prime start at Rs 5.33 lakh (ex-showroom). Hyundai has also offered a three-year or 100,000 km, whichever comes first, warranty on the CNG fitment. The Xcent Prime also comes with factory fitted SLF – Speed Limiting Function at no additional cost to end user. Factory fitted CNG will also help ease of registration and financing process besides giving registration tax benefit in select areas. Additionally, the factory-fitted CNG will save the time of installation post-delivery.

Suddenly the Pink City looks totally off colour and completely offline. Deserted streets and closed shops are just eerie testimonies to the panic that struck in the Walled City after a youth died in police firing. A small matter of traffic regulation turned into a grave situation. So much so that crowd turned into violent mob and police had to resort to firing to control them. A localised problem got complicated for no reasons. Curfew was clamped in parts of Walled City. And Internet services were banned pan Jaipur, cutting off city’s online access.

Following the launch of add-ons for Outlook on iOS, Microsoft is rolling them out for Android customers with Outlook.com and Office 365 commercial email accounts. The launch will bring several add-ins from iOS to Android including Evernote, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Translator, Nimble, OnePlaceMail, Outlook Customer Manager, Smartsheet and Trello, Engadget reported on Monday. The company will also launch new add-ins for Outlook such as Wrike, JIRA, MeisterTask, Gfycat and MojiLala across web, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android platforms.

The Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is considering lifting a decade-old ban on the futures trading of two pulse varieties – tur and urad, sources told FE. With fears of inflationary pressure in pulses having been abated due to a bumper harvest in 2016-17 and the government inventory brimming with around two million tonne of pulses stocks, the regulator is weighing the possibility of lifting the ban, sources said. The review of the ban has started but a final decision on allowing such futures could be taken after factoring in production estimates as areas under pulses are down by almost 4% from a year earlier, the sources said.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is not using ‘counting machines’ for tallying the total number of demonetised notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 in any of its offices, the central bank has said in an RTI reply. Rather, it is using “sophisticated Currency Verification and Processing (CVPS) machines for checking the numerical accuracy and genuiness of the currency notes, including SBNs (Specified Bank Notes that have been scrapped)”, the RBI clarified later this evening. “These machines are way superior to the note counting machines.

The sensex on Monday opened on higher note tracking stronger Asian cues. Global Markets were stable over a fact that North Korea did not indulge in any new event that might escalate the geopolitical tensions.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 177.41 points at 31,864.93 and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 52.60 points to 9,987.40.

National carrier Air India has deferred the delivery of at least one A320 neo aircraft due to issues with CFM-manufactured engine, sources said.

The development also comes at a time when no-frills carriers -- IndiGo and GoAir -- have grounded at least 11 A320 neo aircraft due to problems in their Pratt and Whitney engines.

Unfazed by the recent upheavals at the board, Infosys will continue to hire about 6,000 engineers annually over next 1-2 years, same as last financial year, according to a top company official.

The country's second largest software services firm has also ramped up its hiring process in the US and European markets as it looks to tap opportunities and tide over visa- related issues.

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