The country’s largest bank State Bank of India (SBI) announced a steep interest rate cut in several years on Sunday, by reducing its marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) by 90 basis points (bps) across all maturities.

With this cut, SBI has passed on benefit of 200 bps since January 2015 to customers, which is more than 175 bps reduction in the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) policy rate cut in the same period.

Patanjali Ayurveda, steered by Baba Ramdev has turned out to be the most disruptive force in India’s fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) market which is expected to reach the USD billion mark by 2020, according to an ASSOCHAM– TechSci Research paper.

Patanjali which has expanded its product portfolio across wide range of personal care and food and beverages witnessed a whopping annual growth of 146 per cent in fiscal 2016 grossing in turnover of USD 769 million whereas its peers including ITC, Dabur, Hindustan Unilever, Colgate – Palmolive and Procter and Gamble, among others, struggled to get a growth much less than a double digit.

State-run Bank of Baroda today said it has launched an agricultural investment credit for the farmers of Rajasthan.

The first loan has been disbursed in Sri Ganganagar, the bank said in a statement here today.

Mumbai: State-owned lender IDBI Bank Ltd said that it has reduced marginal cost based lending rate (MCLR) by 30-60 basis points (bps) across various loan tenors, with effect from 1 January.

MCLR is the benchmark lending rate at which banks price all their loans. The six month MCLR has been cut to 8.95% as compared with 9.25% earlier, while three year MCLR has been reduced to 9.3%, as against 9.7% previously, the bank said in a statement on Friday.

MUMBAI: Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai Motor India plan to increase car prices by Rs 2,500 to Rs 1 lakh in January, as they seek to offset a dent on margin from higher raw material cost, steep discounts in the past few months and a weakened rupee that made imported parts more expensive.

Several other automakers have already announced price hikes and the rest are expected to do so soon, following in the footsteps of the market's top two.

Mumbai: Stocks signed off 2016 on a cheerful note, with the Sensex surging over 260 points on Friday to close at over a fresh two-week high of 26,626 on the final trading session of the year, amid positive Asian cues. The beginning of January 2017 series of futures and options made investors upbeat.

With the deadline for depositing banned notes ending today and ahead of the approaching Union budget, investors accelerated buying activity with hopes that the government might come up with a series of steps to boost the economy.

Microsoft is working on a new version of its Surface Pro tablet which is set to arrive in the first quarter of 2017.

The new Surface Pro 5 2-in-1 will sport an ultra-HD display and magnetic charging stylus, with Pegatron Technology that will manufacture the device, DigiTimes reported on Friday citing a Chinese-language Economic Daily News report.

On the last day of the deadline to deposit demonetised notes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared the launch of a biometric payment system using the Aadhaar platform within the next two weeks and called upon citizens to adopt digital currency in a big way from the New Year, reports fe Bureau in New Delhi. With the call that “Your thumb is your bank now”, the PM said payments through the mobile app called BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) can be effected after the bank account is linked with the Aadhaar gateway. He was speaking at a DigiDhan Mela, organised to celebrate the success of the country’s push for digital currency.

The civil aviation ministry is satisfied with the performance of Air India with respect to its 2012 turnaround plan for which the government pumped in R30,000 crore into the loss-making airline, and expects it to post an operating profit this financial year also, secretary RN Choubey told FE.

He said since the carrier’s plan is on track, the ministry expects it to post a net profit in FY19 ahead of the target of 2020-21 stipulated in the turnaround plan. Choubey’s assertion that the state-owned carrier will post an operating profit in FY17 is significant since the airline posted an operating loss during the first two quarters of the current fiscal.

Stock market got off to a positive start in the final trading session of 2016, with the benchmark Sensex surging 211 points to 26,577 on widespread gains amid further strength in the rupee.

In addition, the beginning of January series in the futures and options (F&O) space accelerated buying by participants, which supported the upside.

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