The BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty gave up all the early gains in the second half of trading session on Tuesday and declined over 2 per cent tracking weak European markets and as sentiment turned cautious ahead of the expiry of monthly derivatives contracts later this week. Sensex closed 541.14 points down at 25,651.84 while Nifty lost 165.10 point at 7,812.

All sectoral indices on the Bombay Stock Exchange closed in red. The BSE Metal index declined the most — 4.24 per cent at 6,976.62, followed by BSE Capital Goods index (down 3.1 per cent), BSE Power index (down 3.09 per cent) and BSE Bankex (down 3.04 per cent).

The scheme, first of its kind in India, is available with life-time pre-paid brokerage plan offered by ICICI Direct, the brokerage firm said in a statement.

The move will help the ICICI Securities' retail customers to trade in a disciplined manner.

MUMBAI: India is not only the second largest gold-consuming country, it has also become one of the largest markets for diamonds. With an 8% share for polished diamonds, India is now the world's third largest diamond consumer behind US (42%) and China (16%), the latest Diamond Insight report by global major De Beers showed.

The Indian appetite for diamonds has grown at a tremendous pace: In 10 years, the Indian market nearly trebled in size to about Rs 22,000 crore by end-2014, and around 25 lakh pieces of diamond jewellery were acquired by Indian women in 2013, roughly six times the number acquired in 2002, the report pointed out.

Mumbai: The Indian rupee on Tuesday opened marginally higher against the US dollar from its previous close.

At 9.07am, the home currency was trading at 65.64, up 0.12% from its previous close of 65.74. The local unit opened at 65.67 per dollar.

New Delhi: Indian information technology companies invested more than $2 billion, paid $22.5 billion in taxes between 2011 and 2013, and supports 411,000 direct and indirect jobs in the US, the apex software industry body Nasscom said on Monday ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to that country later this month.

In a report released on the sidelines of US-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue in Washington, Nasscom said that direct and indirect jobs supported by India’s IT sector in the US grew at an annual rate of 10% from 2011 to 2014—or about six times higher than the average jobs growth rate of 1.7% during the same period.

New Delhi: State-owned NTPC Ltd plans to raise Rs.700 crore by selling tax-free bonds, giving it access to low-cost, long-term funds for its renewable energy plans.

India’s largest power generation utility had earlier raised Rs.300 crore through these bonds as part of a larger plan of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to raise Rs.5,000 crore for renewable energy.

WASHINGTON: A venture capital fund backed by Reliance Industries Limited and a US-based technology firm have signed an agreement to bring into India cutting-edge software technologies that analyse complex, dynamic systems through physics-based pattern recognition.

Reliance-backed GenNext Ventures and Ecorithm's partnership was announced on the sidelines of the inaugural India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue.

Rating agency Crisil has downgraded its outlook on Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd's (BHEL) long-term bank facilities to 'negative' from 'stable', saying that the company's project execution and profitability will remain vulnerable to structural issues plaguing the power sector.

The company's working capital cycle will remain stretched, Crisil said in a statement. It, however, its reaffirmed "AAA' rating for the long term facility and "A1+' for short term loans.

After widespread outrage over its draft encryption policy, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology on Tuesday said that social media websites and applications will be exempted from its purview.

A proposed addendum to the National Encryption Policy said that mass-use encryption products, which are currently being used in web applications, social media sites and social media applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, would be exempt from the draft National Encryption Policy.

Shares of Infosys are trading higher by almost 2% at Rs 1,123 on the BSE after the company secured a three-year contract to develop and maintain all global web-based properties of not for profit enterprise TOMS Shoes for an undisclosed sum.

The move is aimed at helping TOMS, which has a model of gifting one pair of shoes to needy children for every one purchased by customers. TOMS has gifted 45 million shoes to children since 2006, in streamlining the management of its web-based properties in order to lower support and development costs.

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