Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal’s Airtel, Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta, ITC, Mahindra and Mahindra, and a lesser-known entity called Future Gaming and Hotel Services are on the list of purchasers of electoral bonds, according to the Election Commission (EC) data made public on Thursday evening.

Future Gaming was probed by the Enforcement Directorate recently. It bought electoral bonds worth over Rs 1,368 crore under two different sets of companies.

On a day the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) named its candidates for 8 of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal denied speculations of reaching any alliance with the BJP but did not entirely rule out the possibility of a tie-up in future.

The Akalis were partners of the BJP earlier in the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre and the two even contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in the state together but failed to come up with the goods.

The longer the war in Gaza goes on and Yemen's Houthi rebels keep attacking ships in the Red Sea the greater the risk that Yemen could be propelled back into war, the UN special envoy for the poorest Arab nation warned on Thursday.

Hans Grundberg told the UN Security Council it has been impossible to shield his promising efforts to restore peace to Yemen because the reality is, what happens regionally impacts Yemen and what happens in Yemen can impact the region.

Sulking Trinamool Congress MP Arjun Singh, who was denied a ticket to seek a fresh term in the Lok Sabha from the Barrackpore constituency of West Bengal, returned to the BJP, dealing a blow to the ruling party in the state ahead of the upcoming electoral battle.

The BJP, which named 20 Lok Sabha candidates from West Bengal earlier, hasn't yet announced its pick for Barrackpore.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Thursday allowed One97 Communications (OCL), which operates brand Paytm, to function as a third party application provider (TPAP) on Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Four banks — State Bank of India (SBI), Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, and YES Bank — will act as payment service providers (PSPs) to Paytm.

KITES Senior Care, a leading provider of “out-of-hospital” geriatric care services, has completed its Series A funding round, securing an investment of Rs 45 crore from Ranjan Pai’s Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) Family Office Fund. The total plan outlay for this expansion and growth is Rs 65 crore. Out of this, Rs 45 crore is being invested by Ranjan Pai, with the remaining funds sourced from various other contributors.

"We have closely observed KITES delivering the promised plan and building solid foundations of a scalable growth model.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will implement a cloud transformation project for Nuuday, a Danish digital connectivity and communications provider, as part of a multi-million-dollar deal, said the Indian information technology (IT) services company on Thursday.

Nuuday's IT infrastructure will be shifted to TCS’s Enterprise Cloud Platform, “paving the way for future transformations”. TCS said in a statement it will host and manage all IT domain services of Nuuday during the transformation.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has granted an appeal by Reliance Capital (RCap)'s administrator for a correction within 90 days of implementing the resolution plan. This adjustment aims to expedite the resolution process initiated in November 2021. The Hinduja Group, the chosen applicant for the indebted firm, is now required to execute the resolution plan by May 27.

In its ruling on February 27, the tribunal stated that the 90-day period would start once the group secured all necessary regulatory approvals.

Gopal Snacks made a disappointing stock market debut, with its shares listed at Rs 350, down 13 per cent when compared with its issue price of Rs 401 on the BSE on Thursday. The stock of the packaged foods company listed at Rs 351 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

Post listing, the stock hit a high of Rs 378 and a low of Rs 342 on the BSE. At 10:01 am; the stock was trading at Rs 375.50, up 7 per cent as against the stock's opening price, but down 6 per cent from its issue price. A combined 1.5 million equity shares had changed hands. so far, on the NSE and BSE.

Amidst concerns of expensive valuations of small- and mid-caps, Uday Kotak, founder and director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, said that equity markets are not in bubble territory and can support sustained capital formation if the right checks are in place.

Speaking at a conference organised by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM), Kotak said that speculation is a core part of the market and we need to balance the same.

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