NEW DELHI : Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa can now take voice commands from you to settle your bills using Amazon Pay. This new Alexa feature supports payment of bills across categories such as electricity, water, post-paid mobile, cooking gas, broadband and DTH.

Users of Amazon Echo, Fire TV Stick and other devices with Alexa built-in can just say commands such as “Alexa, pay my mobile bill" or “Alexa, pay my electricity bill" to get started.

State-run insurer Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has registered a 41.74% growth in first-year premium collection for the April-September period of the current financial year, outperforming the combined growth rate of all private sector life insurance players put together.

Equity benchmark BSE Sensex advanced over 150 points on Wednesday driven by gains in energy and banking stocks amid sustained fund inflow and positive cues from global equities.

The 30-share index was trading 158.41 points, or 0.41%, higher at 38,664.50 at 0930 hours. Similarly, the broader NSE Nifty rose 50.75 points, or 0.44%, to 11,479.05.

The rupee continued its fall on Tuesday with the currency declining by 32 paise to close at 71.54 against the greenback led by persistent dollar-buying throughout the day. This is the lowest level seen by the currency in a month. During the day, the rupee fell to as low as 71.566 against the dollar.

On Monday, the rupee had declined by 21 paise primarily led by a fall in the Chinese yuan after reports indicated China wants more time to finalise the details of the first phase of the trade deal with the US.

Shares of India’s major IT giant Wipro gained on Wednesday morning after the firm reported robust Q2 results. Wipro share price jumped more than 3.29% to hit the day’s high at Rs 251.80 on BSE. Wipro on Tuesday reported a 35% on-year jump in net profit to Rs 2,552 crore in the second quarter of the ongoing fiscal as compared to Rs 1,889 crore in the corresponding period previous fiscal. The software exporter recorded better-than-expected results amid global spending squeeze among its clients.

Flipkart on Tuesday announced its foray into original video content with the launch of Flipkart Video Originals, taking the competition in the video-streaming space a notch higher. Integrated within the Flipkart video platform, which was launched in August this year, Flipkart Video Originals will be curated exclusively for the Flipkart platform, the firm said.

SBI Life Insurance Company reported a net profit of `129.84 crore for the three month ended September, a fall of 48.17% compared to `250.53 crore in September quarter last year. Even for the first six months of the current financial year, SBI Life Insurance reported a net profit of `501.75 crore, down 17% compared to `604.84 crore in the first six months of FY19.

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL) said on Tuesday that it invested over Rs 154 crore towards its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives during the financial year 2018-19.

The efforts were focused on community development, road safety, and skill development. These are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) corresponding to good health and well-being,

India wants to comply with global sanctions, including US sanctions on Venezuela and Russia, but also needs to maintain its own strength and strategic interests, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in an interview on Tuesday.

The United States in January imposed the toughest sanctions yet on Venezuela's oil industry.

Global energy major ExxonMobil and state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) have tied up for oil exploration in India. The two companies will jointly bid for the upcoming Open Acreage Licensing Policy rounds.

The two oil majors signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Tuesday. This will enable them to to “undertake joint technical studies and cooperate in frontier areas like deepwater and other Petroleum Exploration Licence (PEL) blocks of ONGC in the East and West coast and open acreages for joint bidding”.

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