New Delhi: Indian information technology companies invested more than $2 billion, paid $22.5 billion in taxes between 2011 and 2013, and supports 411,000 direct and indirect jobs in the US, the apex software industry body Nasscom said on Monday ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to that country later this month.

In a report released on the sidelines of US-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue in Washington, Nasscom said that direct and indirect jobs supported by India’s IT sector in the US grew at an annual rate of 10% from 2011 to 2014—or about six times higher than the average jobs growth rate of 1.7% during the same period.

New Delhi: State-owned NTPC Ltd plans to raise Rs.700 crore by selling tax-free bonds, giving it access to low-cost, long-term funds for its renewable energy plans.

India’s largest power generation utility had earlier raised Rs.300 crore through these bonds as part of a larger plan of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to raise Rs.5,000 crore for renewable energy.

WASHINGTON: A venture capital fund backed by Reliance Industries Limited and a US-based technology firm have signed an agreement to bring into India cutting-edge software technologies that analyse complex, dynamic systems through physics-based pattern recognition.

Reliance-backed GenNext Ventures and Ecorithm's partnership was announced on the sidelines of the inaugural India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue.

Rating agency Crisil has downgraded its outlook on Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd's (BHEL) long-term bank facilities to 'negative' from 'stable', saying that the company's project execution and profitability will remain vulnerable to structural issues plaguing the power sector.

The company's working capital cycle will remain stretched, Crisil said in a statement. It, however, its reaffirmed "AAA' rating for the long term facility and "A1+' for short term loans.

After widespread outrage over its draft encryption policy, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology on Tuesday said that social media websites and applications will be exempted from its purview.

A proposed addendum to the National Encryption Policy said that mass-use encryption products, which are currently being used in web applications, social media sites and social media applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, would be exempt from the draft National Encryption Policy.

Shares of Infosys are trading higher by almost 2% at Rs 1,123 on the BSE after the company secured a three-year contract to develop and maintain all global web-based properties of not for profit enterprise TOMS Shoes for an undisclosed sum.

The move is aimed at helping TOMS, which has a model of gifting one pair of shoes to needy children for every one purchased by customers. TOMS has gifted 45 million shoes to children since 2006, in streamlining the management of its web-based properties in order to lower support and development costs.

US tech firm Microsoft has become the largest exporting company in Ireland, taking over from Google, a report has said.

The report, published by the Irish Exporters Association (IEA), in association with financial group Investec, showed that Microsoft, with over 1,200 employees in Ireland, had a big increase in export turnover of 21%, up from 15 billion euros to 18.2 billion euros year on year, Xinhua news agency reported.

Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel has moved all its pre-paid subscribers across the country to pay-per-second, ensuring customers pay only for the time they use the network.

The move comes amid regulator TRAI examining whether there are any tariff plans by the service providers wherein call drops actually incentivise or benefit the companies.

Air India on September 20 announced it has set up a dedicated monitoring team under an executive director which would conduct surprise checks to ensure safe travel and better service delivery to its passengers.

"Senior executives will undertake surprise checks to monitor and supervise the safety and cleanliness inside and outside the aircraft. They will ensure increased servicing of equipment onboard the aircraft," the national carrier said in a release.

State-owned oil producers ONGC and Oil India as well as private sector Cairn India have asked the government to cut cess on crude oil they have to pay in view of slump in prices.

The producers want the government to levy ad-valorem rate of cess which will result in higher payouts when prices are high and lower payout when rates fall. Currently, ONGC and OIL pay a cess of Rs 4,500 per ton on crude oil they produce from fields given to them on nomination basis.

Inviting Real Estate Agents, Job Placements Agents, Educational Institutes, Software Service Providers, Real Estate Builders, Marriage Bureaus, Travel Agents, Restaurant Owners, Health & Fitness Centers and other Local Businesses to Post a FREE Classified Advertisement on Cootera.com Classifieds Website.