The lockdown has stalled the rollout of the latest handsets. On the brighter side, popular brands will witness pent-up demand once the lockdown is lifted. Here are some of the smartphones slated to hit the market soon.

The department of telecommunications (DoT) is understood to have turned down the offer of Vodafone Idea to furnish a corporate guarantee instead of a bank guarantee to cover its deferred spectrum installment for the current fiscal.

Amazon on Monday said the company is seeing demand for various kinds of smart devices and other products like electrical appliances, clothes and work from home enablers in the orange and green zones.

A proxy advisory firm has raised objections to the corporate governance structure at Zee Learn, part of the Essel group, expressing concerns over the company’s capital allocation decision, related-party transactions and acquisition of MT Educare.

Consumer goods major Marico posted a 3% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in net profit to Rs 204 crore for the quarter ended March 31, while the revenue from operations, at Rs 1,496 crore, declined 7% y-o-y.

The Tamil Nadu government has announced relaxations allowing industries, particularly export units, to resume operations with standard operating procedure as suggested by the Union government.

With an eye at coronavirus as an opportunity, to put its idle plants to work, state-run Bhel has offered its manufacturing facilities to be used by global manufacturing firms looking to shift base.

According to an official source, CCI had purchased more than 13 lakh bales in 2008 as that year too, cotton prices had nosedived due to the global recession.

With theatres being shut since for over a month now, many small and mid-rung production houses are understood to be in talks with video over-the-top (OTT) platforms for direct-to-digital launch of their unreleased movies.

Over 200 companies in Pune’s industrial belt of Chakan, Talegaon, Kurkumb, Baramati and Ranjangaon have resumed operations after restrictions were eased on Monday, even as the lockdown continues.

Despite the Gujarat government’s order to pay salaries to workers during lockdown period, lakhs of diamond artisans in Surat have not been paid their wages by their employers, said Diamond Workers Union – Gujarat.

India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) on Monday placed Shriram Transport Finance Company’s long-term issuer rating of ‘IND AA+’ on Rating Watch Negative (RWN).

The surge came at a time when the Nifty and Sensex gained 14.4% and 14.6%, respectively. Market experts say this could have been driven by intra-day trading.

Consumer demand for non-essential products with e-commerce firms has increased manifold after the government last Friday lifted the ban on sale of such products by e-tailers.

Hobbled by a shortage of workers, companies are finding it hard to resume operations at an optimal scale and with migrants moving back home, it could be a while before factories hum with activity.

Indian cotton prices have come down by 12-15% due to the ongoing lockdown and fears that the country’s cotton consumption will reduce, resulting in more carry-forward stocks by September 2020, officials of the Cotton Association of India (CAI) said on Tuesday.

With BSNL facing hurdles in its 4G tender for deployment of 50,000 new sites, the state-run firm has decided to upgrade existing 2G/3G sites, so that 4G services can be offered to customers in the coming four-six months.

It said Axis Bank identified that more than 10% of its customers (25% of its loan book by value) as on April 25 availed the payment moratorium.

Significantly, this was the latest twist in the long battle over the will of Late Priyamvada Devi Birla being fought between the Birla family and the Lodhas.

The Covid-19 pandemic is expected to exert downward pressure on the credit quality of sugar mills by eroding operating profitability and shoring up debt in fiscal 2021.

The edible oils import declined by 34% to 7,90,377 tonne during April, mainly due to logistics related issues during the lockdown, industry body Solvent Extractors Association of India (SEA) said on Wednesday.

The Rs 75,000-crore paper industry, which has resumed production after relaxations were issued effective from April 15, may have a negative growth in the first quarter of this fiscal as demand lost in this lockdown cannot be compensated entirely.

Adani Enterprises (AEL), the parent company for the group’s airports and renewable energy businesses, is covered for 12 months of payments amid the lockdown-related economic disruptions, the management said.

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Wednesday said it was working to equip its systems to handle crises such as that caused by the crash in crude prices.

The rating downgrade action took into account the increased stress in the wholesale portfolio, which could lead to a deterioration in the asset quality, and the consequent impact on the financial performance.

This effectively eliminates the role of middlemen and allows farmers to sell their produce directly to consumers and traders outside the mandi yard.

Nifty50 has seen a correction of 6.2% since the start of May after witnessing a strong pullback rally throughout March.

Suvarna Jagtap, chairperson, Lasalgaon Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC), told FE that three cases of coronavirus were reported at Lasalgaon at a distance of 3 km from the main market yard.

With increased focus on other products like home loans, fixed income products, corporate bonds and deposits, insurance, AIF, PMS, SGBs and NPS, non-MF distribution revenue rose 13% y-o-y to Rs 54 crore.

The bright spot in the Indian real estate market viz leasing is likely to see an abrupt end to its rental uptick cycle.

And in this age of AL, ML and blockchain that are network-based technologies, networking has gained a lot of importance, says Siddarth Bharwani, VP, Brand & Marketing, Jetking Infotrain.

Team-building and customer-connect are more effective than tall agendas

The telcos have also said the government should direct video streaming platforms  to offer only standard definition (SD) and not high definition (HD) content for the time being so as not to choke the bandwidth.  

As IBM Watson has been able to achieve some scale, the company believes that by putting the NLP technology in commercial use it will be able to expand its capabilities much further.

Grofers said the company’s warehouses are operational with 60% staff and to meet the surge in demand, the firm is hiring an additional 2,000 temporary warehouse and delivery staff across the country.

The ongoing lockdown is seen to take a toll on the finances of the state-run discoms which are finding it difficult to continue meter reading exercises and collect payments from consumers. To make matters worse for discoms, their revenues are seen to decrease on account of lower usage by high paying consumers such as the railways, industrial and commercial users.

Additionally, the quantum of advance payment that discoms need to furnish as security has been reduced to half till June 30.

Passenger traffic for carriers is expected to register de-growth of 20-25% in FY21, CARE Ratings has said.

A study by two India-origin researchers at the University of Cambridge, is based on the SIR approach, but takes into account age and social contact structure to assess the impact of the lockdown and social distancing measures adopted before it.

Going forward, price trends would be a function of demand. Both domestic and exports demand will be key determining factors affecting price trends.

The Facebook-owned company explained that its previous exercise of limiting a forwarded message to five chats led to a 25% reduction in message forwards globally at the time.

The PXC 550-II Wireless features a triple microphone array that makes it easy to stay connected while on the move.

This is the most crucial time to leverage the power of exponential technologies, especially cloud. Any organisation that is still in two-minds about moving to the cloud; needs to embark on a cloud adoption process immediately.

E-sports is gaining ground, now is the time to bring tech innovations.

OTT platforms do have a buffer in their libraries but delayed production schedules will hit revenues.

The auction had received a positive response from investors with NHPC receiving bids of 3,540 MW for the tender. This is a shift from the recent trend of tenders being under-subscribed.

Sectors such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, grocery and warehouses would call for additional talent with new skill-sets.

Edge computing is the way forward, but are we ready to surrender control to corporations.

Capturing a still image or recording a special moment is among the best ways to preserve a memory. However, to truly enjoy the experience, the quality of the digital image is paramount, and so, it is important to get yourself a device with an amazing camera.

Private e-mandis, farm-to-fork startups and location tracking & geo-fencing tech platforms are helping farmers sell their produce amidst the lockdown.