Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest carmaker, has raised the average gross salary of the 12,900 workers at its facilities in Manesar and Gurgaon by Rs 16,800 a month, spread through three years beginning April this year. This is seven per cent lower than the salary rise of Rs 18,000 given by the company for the three years ended March this year. Last week, Ford had signed a wage agreement with the workers’ union at its Chennai plant, approving a rise of Rs 15,000 a month, spread through three years. The average salary of the workers is Rs 30,000-35,000 a month.

Idea Cellular, India's third largest telecom operator by subscribers, today said it would move its 1.5 million prepaid customers who are on a per-minute plan to a per-second billing plan over the next 30 days.

“We will now be offering PSB (per second billing) plan, by default, to our entire base of nearly 157 million existing and new prepaid users,” said Sashi Shankar, chief marketing officer of Idea Cellular.

Tata Motors, India’s largest automaker, is trading at nearly half the price it was only six months ago. On a valuation basis, the stock now trades at 7.7 times its expected FY16 profit numbers, against 24.1 times for car major Maruti Suzuki and 22.6 times for Ashok Leyland, its main competitor in the commercial vehicle segment.

So does it make sense to buy Tata Motors at current levels, given the huge valuation gap with its peers? Nearly 68% of the analysts who track the company say that the stock is a buy, while 8% feel it is a hold and only 24% say it is a sell.

Calcutta, Sept. 23: Coal India may have to curtail its investment plans as the PSU needs to allot more funds for compensation to land losers, under a new government ruling. The company had planned to invest a mammoth Rs 60,000 crore to produce almost 900 million tonnes of coal by the end of the decade, a target which may be out of reach now.

The Centre's decision to offer uniform compensation to land losers under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transperancy in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 may force Coal India to change its plans.

Mumbai: Bajaj Auto Ltd is set to begin exports of the RE60, India’s first quadricycle, after it got all requisite approvals from a European certification agency. The RE60’s launch in India has been delayed due to public interest litigations filed against its launch which are still being heard in the Supreme Court.

Against that backdrop, the go-ahead to begin exports to Europe comes as a significant relief for Bajaj Auto.

Mecca, Saudi Arabia: At least 220 pilgrims were killed on Thursday in a crush at Mina, outside the Muslim holy city of Mecca, where some two million people are performing the annual hajj pilgrimage, Saudi Arabia’s civil defence authority said.

The crush, in which at least 450 others were injured, took place on Street 204 of the camp city at Mina, a few kilometres east of Mecca, where pilgrims stay for several days during the climax of the haj.

After unveiling the ‘Undo Send’ feature, technology company Google has now introduced ‘Block’ and ‘Unsubscribe’ features for its Gmail service. Like the names suggest, these will allow users to block specific email addresses and unsubscribe from unwanted subscriptions. The features will be available on the web and over the next week on Android.

The block feature will not really stop the mails from coming, future blocked mails will go to the spam folder (and users can unblock in Settings if required), Google Product Manager, Sri Harsha Somanchi said. “In addition, the unsubscribe option is now making its way to Android, so you’ll be able to opt out of eligible mailing lists directly from the Gmail app.

The BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty are likely to open flat with negative bias on Thursday tracking SGX Nifty and mixed Asian cues. However, markets are likely to remain volatile throughout the day on account of F&O expiry.

At 8.29 am (IST), SGX Nifty was down 40.50 points, or 0.52 per cent, at 7,816.50.

MUMBAI: Record investor response to NTPC's tax-free bond sales indicate that there is a growing belief that interest rates are headed southward. The state-owned corporation's issue was oversubscribed more than 10 times on its opening on Wednesday, suggesting that in turbulent times, state-backed bonds are investors' best bet.

The state-owned company received Rs 4,417 crore subscription against Rs 400 crore, the core issue size excluding an option to retain oversubscription up to Rs 300 crore, mandated earlier by the government. The company is likely to close the issue on Thursday.

Even before it takes over regulating commodity derivatives from next Monday, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has set its eyes on strengthening regulations related to risk management for agriculture commodities derivatives.

Sebi has identified areas including exchanges' playing bigger role in settlement and delivery, forward trading, spot exchange and specially delivery-based settlements.

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