State-owned carrier Air India is to cuts its costs by 14 billion rupees ($227 million), or about 6% of its total outlays, in the next financial year after the government asked the loss-making airline to improve its finances.

Air India, which controls close to a fifth of India's domestic air travel market, has been losing money for years and has long been criticised for its high costs. In 2012, the government handed the company a $5.8 billion bailout package.

Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) Financial Services has dipped 7% to Rs 287 on BSE in otherwise firm market after the company reported disappointing set of numbers for the third quarter of current financial year.

The company has posted a 14% year on year (yoy) decline in consolidated net profit to Rs 157 crore in the quarter ended December 31, 2014 (Q3), due to higher loan provisions and write offs. The company had profit of Rs 182 crore in year ago quarter.

Days after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lowered the repo rate in a surprise move, banks have set the ball rolling for a possible reduction in their lending rates.

Repo is the rate at which the central bank lends to commercial banks.

The Nano did not take off the way Tata Motors would have liked, despite aggressive pricing and Rs 4,000 crore of investments in development, marketing and a dedicated plant at Sanand in Gujarat. But the company, India's largest automaker by revenue, is looking to recover some of the cost incurred on the Nano platform. The plan is to develop a slightly bigger hatchback at the Sanand factory, to take on the Maruti Suzuki Alto, India's top-selling car.

The drop in crude oil and natural gas prices has led Reliance Industries' (RIL) three shale gas joint ventures (JVs) in America to pare operating and capital expenditure.

Shale gas, a business RIL expected would begin contributing significantly to its revenue by 2015, has been hit with a sharp downturn in commodity prices, especially in the case of crude oil.

Rebalancing of the BSE's banking index, the S&P BSE Bankex, would now depend on the weightage of the index constituent spilling over 22 per cent.

BSE on Friday announced a change in the methodology of index calculation for the exchange's banking index. "Effective at the open of January 27, 2015, the index will follow modified market capitalization methodology, capping maximum weight of constituents to 22% at each rebalance," said the release from the exchange.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) wishes to empanel experts who can opine on valuation of shares during takeovers or other company schemes which may require an open offer to minority shareholders. This is the first time the regulator is looking to put in place an independent panel of those knowledgeable, to assist in arriving at a fair price, say market participants.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has begun its long-awaited, historic encounter with the dwarf planet Pluto.

The spacecraft is entering the first of several approach phases that culminate on July 14 with the first close-up flyby of Pluto, 7.5 billion kilometres from Earth.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is considering allowing banks to buy infrastructure bonds, in a bid to jumpstart a market that has suffered from low trading volumes after launching last year, said a source with knowledge of the central bank's plan.

This move would mark a reversal for the RBI, which last year allowed lenders to only issue debt, while limiting purchases to investors such as pension funds, provident funds, and insurers.

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) president R Chandrashekhar today said they expected no significant change in the Indian software industry’s growth projections made for the current year.

It may be recalled that the industry body of the country's IT and ITeS companies had earlier made a forecast of 13-15 per cent increase in Indian software exports during 2014-15. It said the software exports would rise to about $ 99 billion in the current year from an estimated $ 86 billion in 2013-14.

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