The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is considering allowing banks to buy infrastructure bonds, in a bid to jumpstart a market that has suffered from low trading volumes after launching last year, said a source with knowledge of the central bank's plan.

This move would mark a reversal for the RBI, which last year allowed lenders to only issue debt, while limiting purchases to investors such as pension funds, provident funds, and insurers.

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) president R Chandrashekhar today said they expected no significant change in the Indian software industry’s growth projections made for the current year.

It may be recalled that the industry body of the country's IT and ITeS companies had earlier made a forecast of 13-15 per cent increase in Indian software exports during 2014-15. It said the software exports would rise to about $ 99 billion in the current year from an estimated $ 86 billion in 2013-14.

Wipro, India’s third largest information technology services company, surprised the Street by delivering better than expected numbers, on the back of demand from customers in health care, life sciences and retail sectors.

The Bengaluru-based company reported a net profit of Rs 2,192 crore for the financial year’s third quarter ended December 31, 2014, up nine per cent over a year and five per cent sequentially. Revenue at Rs 11,992 crore grew six per cent year-on-year and 2.7 per cent sequentially.

Axis Bank on Friday reported an 18 per cent rise in net profit in the October-December quarter, on the back of higher other income and net interest income.

The country’s third largest private sector bank posted net profit of Rs 1,900 crore for the third quarter of 2014-15, against Rs 1,604.1 crore in the corresponding quarter of the past financial year.

For long, Tata Motors was admired for its commercial vehicles. Then it started making passenger cars. The cars, like the Indica, Safari and Nano, initially created a huge buzz in the market, but after launch failed to catch the imagination of the car buyer. Today, the Indica is seen more as a taxi, while the Nano suffers from a massive image problem as being a cheap car. Tata is trying to paint a better portrait of itself as a car maker, and the release of compact sedan Zest was an attempt in that direction.

The government on Friday announced a rise of Rs 2 a litre each in the excise duties on petrol and diesel. Even so, oil marketing companies (OMCs) cut the prices of the two fuels by a little over Rs 2 a litre, effective midnight on Friday.

The rise in the excise duties, the fourth by the Centre in two months, will give the exchequer another Rs 5,000 crore in the rest of this financial year (ending March 31). Through the rises, the government will collect a total of Rs 20,000 crore. Of this, the mop-up through the previous rise, Rs 6,000-7,000 crore, will go towards infrastructure.

Weighed down by a steep decline in global crude oil prices, which hurt the profitability of its core refining business, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Friday reported a 4.5 per cent drop in its consolidated net profit for the quarter ended December 2014.

In line with market expectations, net profit for the quarter was Rs 5,256 crore, compared with Rs 5,502 crore in the year-ago period. The company’s standalone net profit stood at Rs 5,085 crore, down 7.72 per cent and the first such drop in the past nine quarters.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday allowed Mukesh Ambani's RIL six weeks' time to respond to the CAG report on gas pricing from the KG basin.

The SC also allowed petitioners, including CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta, to file response on government's new guidelines on gas pricing.

Facebook has tied up with Alibaba-owned Chinese mobile browser – UCWeb, to grow its active user base in India by allowing people to stay connected to the social network even if they don’t download its app on their smartphones. Once users turn-on the feature, they will get notifications from Facebook through UC Browser even when it is closed. This move will help the users to get the Facebook’s notifications directly in UC Browser.

As per TechCrunch report, UCBrowser currently holds 41.23 percent market share of the Indian market, so signing up with UCWeb can also help Facebook to attract more people in India.

Anupam Shrivastava has been appointed the chairman and managing director (CMD) of state-run BSNL from January 15, a company statement said here Friday.

Mr. Shrivastava has been appointed CMD of BSNL for a period of five years or till the time of superannuation at the age of 60 years, it said.

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