1) India post opens exclusive counters for eBay sellers.
- India Post has opened exclusive counters at the business post centres in Gurgaon and Faridabad for eBay India sellers.
- The counter for eBay sellers at Gurgaon and Faridabad business post center will be exclusive for them to send their products through speed post, registered post or any other service they wish to opt for in both the cities.
- eBay sellers can dispatch both domestic and international parcels from eBay’s special counter at Phase-V, UdyogVihar in Gurgaon and NIT Faridabad Post Office.
- About eBay:
- eBay is an American multinational corporation and e-commerce company, providing consumer to consumer & business to consumer sales services via Internet.
- It was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and it was headquartered in San Jose, California.
- The company manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide.
2) Centre, IIB in talks for healthcare portal.
- The Centre plans to develop a comprehensive website for healthcare and is in talks with the Insurance Information Bureau (IIB), an arm of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), in this regard.
- If the plan fructifies, all public agencies involved in healthcare may be brought under the portal for the purpose of data sharing and for uniformity and standardization of the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) network.
- IIB has launched a portal, Rohini, to serve as a registry of hospitals in the insurance network. It will allow hospitals to register, make changes, and add information, among others, through permitted access, providing them with visibility and faster claim processing.
- The list now consists of about 33,000 unique hospitals, arrived at after an extensive exercise of automated as well as manual de-duplication undertaken by the IIB.
3) Ratan Tata invests in baby care platform Firstcry.
- Ratan Tata has invested in baby care eCommerce platform FirstCry, continuing the slew of investments he has made in various startups globally.
- FirstCry is omni-channel player with presence across desktop, mobile and offline routes offering baby and maternity products in India.
- It started operations in 2010 and has over 2 million customers. It has over 150 FirstCry branded franchisee offline stores across 100 cities in the country.
- A positive nod from a business leader of Tata’s stature is a great vote of confidence in the way FirstCry has created the ecosystem and validation of the business approach leading to definitive path to profitability.
- Ratan Tata has been aggressively investing in startups, ranging from e-commerce firms to cab aggregators. He has invested in firms like Snapdeal, Kaaryah, Urban Ladder, Bluestone, CarDekho, Sabse Technologies, Xiaomi, Ola and DogSpot.in.
4) TranServ launches India’s first social digital wallet Udio.
- Digital payment startup TranServ has entered the mobile wallet segment with Udio.
- It is India’s first Social Mobile Wallet, Udio wants to create a highly social, community-driven P2P digital transactions platform via its secure and seamless payment structure.
- Udio is different from other mobile wallets such as Paytm, Oxigen or Citrus in a way that while other mobile wallet players depend upon cashbacks and discounts to drive consumer adoption, TranServ’s Udio wallet brings the user experience.
- The wallet users can engage with each other through social transactions such as splitting bills, sending/requesting money, and group payments.
- Every Udio wallet comes with a VISA Pre-Paid Card linked that is powered by Ratnakar Bank allowing Udio users to leverage the wallet’s payments facility with over 1 lakh merchants across the country.
5) CCEA clears funding support for setting up 5,000 MW solar power.
- The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved setting up of over 5,000 MW of grid connected solar power projects by providing a viability gap funding of Rs. 5,050 crore.
- The VGF support envisages creation of 5,000 MW of capacity in four tranches of 1,250 MW each. While there will be some capacity reserved for projects with domestic content, projects with foreign equipment can also participate in the bidding to get VGF.
- The projects come under Batch-IV of Phase-II of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission which was launched in January 2010 with a target to set up 20,000 MW of grid connected solar power by 2022. The target has been enhanced to 100,000 MW.
- Project developers will have to take part in a reverse bidding mechanism to avail themselves of the VGF support. The Ministry will decide on a tariff from which to start the reverse bidding.
- The support will be capped at Rs. 1.25 crore for the capacity reserved for domestic content requirement projects and Rs. 1 crore for all other projects.
- The nodal agency for the scheme will be Solar Energy Corporation of India which will also set up a Rs. 500 crore payment security fund.
6) Pan masala ads featuring celebrities violate code: ASCI.
- After Delhi government the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) asking celebrities not to endorse pan masala products by saying that such ads are in violation of its code.
- The Council said that it will be investigating such ads as these are in violation of the ASCI’s Code of Self-Regulation in advertising content.
- The advertising watchdog said that Clause 2 (e) (under Chapter III) of the code, states that advertisements of products that require a health warning in their ads or cannot be used by minors, should not feature personalities from the field of sports, music and cinema.
- According to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) Rules and Regulation, the statutory warnings like ‘Chewing of Pan Masala is injurious to health’ and ‘Chewing of Supari is injurious to health’ are mandatory to be printed on the pack as well as in the advertisements.
7) Indian Oil to pump in Rs. 21,000 crore to meet BS VI standards.
- The three public sector oil refiners will have to invest Rs. 30,000 - 35,000 crore over the next four years to produce auto fuels that will comply with BS VI emission norms.
- The largest refiner, Indian Oil Corporation, already has a Rs. 21,000 crore capital expenditure plan in place to upgrade its total refining capacity of 80 million tonnes per annum (mtpa).
- Its smaller PSU counterparts Bharat Petroleum (31 mtpa) and Hindustan Petroleum (15.5 mtpa) will require over Rs. 5,000 crore each to build additional treatment facilities that will produce cleaner fuel complying with the stricter emission norms.
- The funding will come equally from internal accruals and debt, and will require about 30 months to build and commission. All three refiners would comfortably meet the 2020 deadline for BS VI emission norms.
8) Sudan offers three oil and gas blocks to India.
- Sudan has offered ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas investment arm of ONGC, three more oil and gas blocks for exploration and production. Sudan has also sought the help of Indian firms to set up a coastal refinery.
- Sudan has offered Blocks 8, 15 and 24 for exploration and production of oil, and has asked ONGC Videsh to consider buying a stake in producing Block 17. Block 17 currently produces 7,000 barrels of oil per day.
- Sudan owes ONGC Videsh $240 million from the crude oil bought from the Greater Nile Oil Project, as well as unpaid lease for a pipeline. ONGC Videsh had bought a 25 per cent stake in the project in 2003.
- ONGC Videsh ,along with Oil India, constructed a $194 million pipeline for refined products from the Khartoum refinery to Port Sudan in 2005.
- Sudan now wants ONGC Videsh to take a stake in the producing Block 17 and raise production from the block to recoup its dues.
9) Goodbox acquires Smartpocket.
- Goodbox, a Bengaluru-based conversational m-commerce start-up, has acquired SmartPocket for an undisclosed amount.
- SmartPocket is started out as a mobile app that allows customers to digitise their loyalty cards. They were working towards making SmartPocket an online wallet to place orders with offline partners, and store all virtual cards in one place.
- The co-founders of SmartPocket, Kiran Shastri and Mayank Shah, will be joining the leadership team at Goodbox post acquisition. Goodbox app enables small businesses to become e-commerce ready.
10) Tata-JLR becomes UK’s top automaker in 2015.
- Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover has now become Britain’s largest automotive manufacturer, overtaking Japanese carmaker Nissan.
- Jaguar Land Rover produced 489,923 cars in 2015 at its three British manufacturing plants at Solihull, Birmingham and Liverpool, 9 per cent more than in the year before.
- The company is expected to reach its target of over half a million cars this year, driven by a rollout of the XE, XF and Discovery Sport (launched in 2015) and the launch of the F-PACE.
- JLR’s rise came as manufacturing at Nissan’s UK operations fell by nearly 5 per cent to 476,589 cars. Nissan and JLR each produce more than the country’s third- and fourth-largest car manufacturers put together, MINI and Toyota together produce less than 400,000 cars.
11) EPS gets $25-m P-E funding from UK-based Apis Partners.
- Electronic Payment and Services (EPS), a retail banking technology and automated teller machine (ATM) services provider, has received a $25 million funding from UK-based Apis Partners.
- The funding, fourth for the company, is in exchange for a minority stake and board representation in EPS.
- Apis Partners is a PE (Private equity) asset manager focused on financial services across Africa and Asia.
About Electronic Payment and Services:
- It is headquartered at Mumbai and it which manages end-to-end ATM operations for various commercial banks in the country.
12) Online shopping portal Roposo raises $5 million to focus on social media presence.
- Social media platform for fashionistas Roposo has closed a fresh round of VC investment of $5 million.
- The start-up has raised $21 million in three rounds of funding, including seed funding from Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, with its most recent Series B round of $15 million from Tiger Global last August.
- The start-up targets women in the age profile of 16-35 in metros, Tier 2 and 3 cities, and has built up an active user base of 2 million women including film stars, sports icons and designers like Bipasha Basu, Sania Mirza and Masaba Gupta.
About Roposo:
- Social media platform for fashionistas Roposo, founded in 2014 by three IIT Delhi alumni – Mayank Bhangadia, Avinash Saxena and Kaushal Shubhank.
- Roposo’s subscriber base is largely from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow and Indore.
- The Roposo app for Android and iOS, launched last April, attracted 1 million subscribers within four months of its launch.
13) Six foreign reinsurers apply to IRDAI to open branch offices.
- The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has received applications from six foreign reinsurance companies for opening branches in India.
- This development comes even as the insurance regulator recently said that Indian reinsurer(s) will be given first preference in reinsurance treaties compared with the branches of foreign reinsurers.
- Incidentally, foreign reinsurers had written to the Centre seeking relaxation on the proposal to give Indian reinsurers first preference in premium ceding.
- Among the foreign reinsurers that have applied to the regulator to set up base in India are Swiss Re, Scor, Munich Re and Catlin.
About IRDAI:
- It is an autonomous apex statutory body which regulates and develops the insurance industry in India.
- It was constituted by the act called Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 1999.
- It is headquartered at Hyderabad, Telangana where it shifted from Delhi in 2001.
- IRDAI chairman: T.S. Vijayan.
14) CBDT signs 7 unilateral APAs.
- The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) signed seven more unilateral Advance Pricing Agreements (APAs) with taxpayers, taking the total number of such pacts to 39.
- The seven APAs pertain to various sectors of the economy like investment advisory services, software development services and IT enabled Services. Tax authorities have signed 30 such agreements this fiscal.
- The agreements signed have also include one of the few agreements to be reached in the manufacturing sector.
About APA scheme:
- The APA scheme, which was introduced in 2012, tries to provide certainty to taxpayers in transfer pricing by specifying the method of pricing and setting the prices of international transactions in advance.
- The scheme provides certainty in transfer pricing up to a period of nine years and helps reduce tax disputes.
15) Yadgir industrial hub attracts Rs. 13,500 crore investments.
- The Yadgir industrial hub in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region has attracted investments to the tune of Rs. 13,500 crore.
- The government has acquired 3,232 acres of land for the development of an integrated Industrial park at Yadgir. Out of it, 1,000 acres will be used for setting up a textile park and 500 acres for pharma industries.
- The industrial hub is expected to generate 12,145 jobs. The government is also planning to set up a hi-tech textile training centre in the district.
- The proposed training centre will be set up on five acres of land in Bandalli village in Karnataka with an investment of about Rs. 10 crore.
16) CCEA clears hybrid annuity model for highway projects.
- The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has given its in principle approval for the Hybrid Annuity Model for implementing the National Highway Projects.
- The main objective of this model is to revive highway projects in the country by making it as one more mode of delivery of highway projects.
Important features of Hybrid Annuity Model Investment:
- Government will invest 40 per cent of the construction cost for building highways and the balance 60 per cent will come from the private developer.
- Government’s investment will be based on the targeted completion of the road project in 5 equal installments.
- The private developer will be able to recover his investment from the government by receiving annuity payments over a period of 15 years.
- There is a separate provision for operation and management payments by the government to the concessionaire.
Benefits of the Hybrid Annuity Model:
- As there is distribution of risk between the government and private players in this model, it will speed up the construction of highways in the country.
- It will play revival in highway development sector as it brings long-term infrastructure funds like pension funds into the sector.
- It will facilitate uplifting the socio-economic condition due to increased connectivity across the length and breadth of the country due to enhanced economic activity.
17) Japanese automaker Toyota tops in global vehicle sales in 2015.
- Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. has topped in global vehicle sales in 2015 by selling 10.151 million vehicles, beating Volkswagen and General Motors.
- With this, the company has retained its status as the world’s top-selling automaker for the fourth straight year.
- While, German automaker Volkswagen AG is ranks second in global vehicle sales list and has sold 9.93 million vehicles in year 2015.
- Detroit-based General Motors (GM) ranks third in the list and has sold at 9.8 million vehicles.
About Toyota:
- Toyota is a Japanese automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan.
- It was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda.
18) Ratan Tata invests in speciality tea start-up.
- Tata Group’s former Chairman Ratan Tata has made his 30th investment. Tata has invested in Teabox, online start-up selling premium teas.
- Teabox, which was founded in 2012, has so far raised $7 million, $6 million of which were raised from investors that included Texas billionaire Robert M Bass and Accel Partners in the last round in 2015.
- Tata, during his tenure as Chairman of Tata Group, was a brain behind the acquisition of UK’s iconic brand Tetley by Tata Tea.
- Under his chairmanship, Tata Tea saw several other acquisitions and transformed into what is called Tata Global Beverages.
- Teabox works with 150 plantations in Darjeeling, Assam and Nepal. Teas go to the firm’s cold storage within 48 hours of production where they are vacuum packed and shipped to customers around the world in about a week.
19) Bengaluru-based bibliophile social platform Woodpie.com gets global recognition.
- Woodpie.com, a Bengaluru-based start-up for book lovers, is one of seven global start-ups to be selected to participate in Ingram Content Group’s 1440 Accelerator for Publishing Innovation, supported by The Nashville Entrepreneur Centre (EC), Tennessee, US.
- The start-up will receive $30,000 in seed funding in exchange for 7 per cent equity in the company and will go through a 14-week business building programme from January 31 to May 9.
- A social platform for book lovers, Woodpie.com allows readers to discover books, find unbiased book reviews and recommendations, influence other readers around them to choose their next read and also connect with other readers to exchange books to read.
- Since its launch in December 2014, Woodpie has grown to 10,000 users in 35 countries and 310 cities in India, and 80 per cent of its users are Indians.
- Woodpie is the only Indian start-up to be selected for the 1440 Accelerator programme. While three of the seven start-ups are from Chicago, Memphis and Anaheim in the US, the other three are from Zimbabwe, Brazil and Poland.
20) Marriott invests over Rs. 300 crore in integrated property.
- Global hospitality major Marriott International has made its first investment in India in an integrated property that houses two of its popular brands for the corporate business traveller Courtyard by Marriott and Fairfield by Marriott.
- Located in Bengaluru’s IT hub, Outer Ring Road (ORR), the property was built and developed at an investment upwards of Rs. 300 crore.
- Marriott has made the investment through a joint venture company with SAMHI Hotels Pvt Ltd, a hotel asset company that specialises in the development, acquisition and ownership of branded hotels in India.
- Marriott holds 33 per cent equity stake and SAMHI holds 67 per cent equity stake in the JV company called SAMHI JV Business Hotels Pvt Ltd.