Mumbai: Indian stocks advanced, with the benchmark gauge rebounding from its biggest loss in a month, as lenders and metal producers climbed.

ICICI Bank Ltd, the country’s biggest private lender, climbed to a two-week high. The stock was the best performer on the S&P BSE Bankex, which jumped 1.4%. Tata Steel Ltd rallied to a four-month high, while Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC), the largest state-owned explorer, increased to its highest price in nearly three weeks.

Japan’s Toshiba Corp said on Monday it will cut nearly 7,000 consumer electronics jobs after a $1.3 billion accounting scandal, in an overhaul that will streamline the sprawling conglomerate into a company focused on chips and nuclear energy.

Toshiba also said it would sell its television manufacturing plant in Indonesia, and that eventual job cuts spanning the entire PC-to-nuclear company could be over 10,000 including previously announced cuts and those seeking voluntary early retirement.

To speed up customer acquisition, state-owned telecom firm BSNL has slashed mobile rates by up to 80% for the first two months under a scheme for new customers.

"BSNL has revamped its infrastructure now. We have decided to cut mobile call rates by up to 80% for new customers so that they get experience of our revamped services," BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Shrivastava told PTI.

Daimler India Commercial Vehicles Pvt. Ltd. (DICV), a 100 per cent Indian subsidiary Daimler AG, today announced the start of sales of the Mercedes-Benz coach - the Super High Deck SHD 2436. First set of buses was handed over to a customer in Chennai.

The luxury coach is manufactured out of its plant in Oragadam. The seating capacity of upto 61 pushback seats and 14 cubic meters, the bus was built with an aluminique body, this coach is the lightest in its class offering ultra -fuel efficiency, company said in a release.

Automaker Mahindra and Mahindra will commercially launch the electric variants of its passenger car Verito and mini truck Maxximo by February and is in talks with cab aggregators such as Ola to boost sales of the green cars in the country.

Mahindra will use the enhanced version of the power train used in its electric car e2o for both the vehicles. The lithium-ion powered four-door sedan would be priced higher than the diesel variants of Verito.

NEW DELHI: The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has drawn a list of 11 road projects where it suspects private developers of diverting substantial portion of funds they have withdrawn for carrying out work.

In three such projects even a single kilometer of road has not been completed whereas the fund withdrawn by private developers is in the range of Rs 365 crore and Rs 1,014 crore. In one project, work on ground is 53% while the developer has taken out the entire fund.

Mumbai, Dec. 20: HDFC Bank, the country's second-largest private lender, is feeling the impact of its thrust on digital banking that began more than two years ago.

Close to 63 per cent of the transactions done by its customers were through the Internet and mobile in 2014-15, up from 58 per cent in the preceding year and 44 per cent in 2012-13. Besides, its mobile phone apps such as PayZapp and Chillr have already seen a million downloads each.

Taking note of the small number of demat accounts that have been converted to basic services demat account (BSDA) in the past three years, despite a large number of accounts being eligible for conversion, the capital market regulator recently issued a circular to depository participants (DPs) asking them to submit a status report (see it here: http://bit.ly/1PcUrZQ).

A BSDA is a demat account for small retail investors (market value of demat holdings do not exceed Rs.2 lakh on any day). It has low or no cost.

Mumbai: For the first time since crude oil prices began to fall in July 2014, the Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) is facing the prospects of suffering losses.

With crude oil prices hovering below the $40 per barrel mark, it has come close to India’s biggest oil explorer’s average cost of production, implying that any further decline will push most of ONGC’s fields into operational losses.

NEW DELHI: After being on a downward spiral for many years, HCL Infosystems, one of the pioneers of the Indian tech industry, is in reboot mode. HCL group veteran Premkumar Seshadri, who took over as managing director of HCL Infosystems in January, said that as a revival strategy, the company focussed on creating a robust business pipeline, automating operations and appointing leaders for key business functions.

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