After a turbulent debut for the company behind India’s largest initial public offering, Paytm’s top executives spent 90 minutes on a call with investors and analysts on Saturday as they dissected its business model and raised questions on monetization.

Whether officials have done enough to ease doubts on revenue streams and profitability prospects remain to be seen when markets reopen. One97 Communications, the parent of the digital payments giant, ended last week 17% below its offer price of 2,150 rupees ($28.68), after falling to as low as 1,271 rupees at one point.

Realty firm Macrotech Developers, which has projects in Mumbai and Pune regions, is looking to enter the Bengaluru market to tap huge property demand in the IT city and will invest Rs 3,000 crore equity capital for growth as it aims to increase its annual sales bookings by almost three times to Rs 20,000 crore by 2025-26, a top company official said.

The Mumbai-based company, erstwhile Lodha Developers, is one of the leading real estate firms in the country and markets its properties under 'Lodha' brand.

Future Retail said on Sunday that it firmly believes that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) will not be intimidated by the arrogance of Amazon. Future hopes that instead, CCI will take action on its show cause notice against the US-based e-commerce company, in accordance with the law.

This statement comes after Amazon walked out of CCI proceedings on Nove­mber 24. “The counsels to Amazon, in utter disregard to the norms and utter disrespect to the Indian statutory regulatory authority, refused to argue the matter. They walked out of the proceedings in an attempt to browbeat the CCI,” the Indian retailer said in a stock exchange filing.

India’s largest mobile service operator, Reliance Jio, hiked its rates by 20 per cent on Sunday, joining industry rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (Vi) which went for a price revision earlier last week. Jio’s new rates will come into effect from December 1.

In a press release, the telco announced new unlimited plans. Upholding the promise of providing the best quality service at the lowest price globally, Jio customers will continue to be the biggest beneficiaries, it said.

Vice President Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said that India is the most secular country in the world, despite that, the western media belittle the Indian government on issues of secularism and free speech.

He added that they cannot digest the fact that India is on the rise. Some of them suffer from indigestion.

The southern states that have been facing excessive rains for more than 10 days have clocked in record rainfall in November with Andhra Pradesh receiving 156 per cent excess rains, Kerala showing 148 per cent departure, while Tamil Nadu witnessed a 115 per cent departure, IMD data showed on Friday.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) data has also shown that Karnataka has received as much as 292 per cent excess rainfall for the month.

The new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529, first detected from South Africa this week, was on Friday designated as a “Variant of Concern” by the World Health Organisation, which named it “Omicron”.

A “variant of concern” is the WHO's top category of worrying Covid variants.

India’s digital payments giant Paytm is set for another bout of scrutiny on Saturday when it reports earnings in the wake of its record-breaking initial public offering and tumultuous stock market debut.

Ahead of the results, Paytm’s shares dropped as much as 7.7% in early Mumbai trading on Friday. While the stock had jumped about 32% over the last three days, it is still well below the price set in the $2.5 billion IPO as investors continue to weigh its longer-term prospects.

The price of 10 gram of gold increased by Rs 310 on Saturday, with 24-carat gold trading at Rs 47,940 and 22-carat gold at Rs 46,940. Meanwhile, the rate of 1 kg of silver increased by Rs 200 with the precious metal trading at Rs 63,100 on Saturday.

In Delhi, the rate of 24-carat gold stands at Rs 51,280, while in Mumbai the yellow metal's price is at Rs 47,940, according to the Goodreturns website. The price of 10 gram of 22-carat gold in Delhi and Mumbai is at Rs 47,000 and Rs 46,940, respectively.

Excessive rains in October in north India and later in southern states led to supply chain breaks, which in turn, has led to price rises for onions and tomatoes, the government said on Friday.

The all-India average retail price of tomato has been on the rise from the end of September 2021 due to unseasonal rains in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh, which led to crop damage and delay in arrival from these states.

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