India News

SBI to start 250 digital branches in FY16

State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, will open 250 digital branches.

“Digital provides us such a good medium. On one side we have the business correspondent model, then the digital medium for new-age customers who are coming in and then, in between, we have the branch model. We have started the digital branch model and the learnings from them, and ill be rolling out another 250 digital branches this year that will be on the self-service mode,” said Arundhati Bhattacharya, the bank's chief, at an internal conclave here.

ICICI Bank might explore tie-ups with new banks

ICICI Bank, the country’s largest private sector lender, has said it will be keenly watching the progress made in the payments banks space before deciding on a tie-up.

“We'll watch the progress in both and will continue to move forward, we have tie up with Fino and Vodafone,” said Chanda Kochhar, managing director and chief executive officer of ICICI Bank.

Infosys launches three new service offerings under 'Aikido' branding

Infosys, India’s second largest information technology (IT) services company, on Thursday launched three new services which, it said, would work as a catalyst in positioning it as a next-generation services company. The three initiatives together would be known as ‘Aikido’, name of a popular Japanese martial art.

‘Ki’, the first of the three services, stands for knowledge-based IT, which captures the knowledge within an organisation, its people, structure and systems over a long period of time.

Maruti cars turn dearer by Rs 3,000-9,000

Maruti Suzuki, the country's largest automobile maker, has raised prices by Rs 3,000 to Rs 9,000 across products, barring the recently launched S-Cross.

The increase became effective August 11. The increase comes after a gap of nearly two years. When the company hiked prices in January this year, it was on account of an increase in excise duty.

ITC gains 4% on brokerage upgrade

Shares of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) major ITC have moved higher by 4% to Rs 330 on the BSE on reports that Morgan Stanley has upgraded the stock to ‘overweight’ from ‘underweight’.

The brokerage firm has raised the target price of ITC to Rs 400 from Rs 390, citing benign valuations and earnings expectations, the Reuters report suggests.

Street divided over Arun Sathe's appointment to Sebi

The appointment of senior lawyer Arun Sathe, who is also a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician and brother of the Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan, as a part time member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has evoked strong views among various stakeholders in the market.

While some like former Sebi chairman Damodaran feel appointing a political person in itself does not amount to "overt or covert" politicisation of Sebi, others are critical about the BJP government's urge to have its "ideologists" in every institution in the country.