India’s commerce minister welcomed on Tuesday a Supreme Court decision that Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart should face investigations into alleged anti-competitive behaviour, saying their trading practices would be looked into.

Piyush Goyal’s comments are the latest sign of New Delhi’s discontent with the two US e-commerce giants, which have for years faced allegations of bypassing Indian laws to run their businesses and hurting smaller retailers.

On Monday, the Supreme Court pulled up Amazon and Flipkart for trying to stall investigations ordered in 2020 by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), saying big organisations like theirs should volunteer to assist in any inquiry. read more

Goyal welcomed the court’s decision while speaking in the Indian parliament, where he invoked the “Quit India” campaign – a movement launched in 1942 by India’s iconic freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi demanding an end to British rule.

The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) has announced that it is joining American business magnate Bill Gates for investing in Ambri, a Massachusetts-based energy storage company. Apart from the two billionaires, other investors such as New York-based hedge fund manager Paulson too have invested in Ambri.

Ambri has received a total funding of $144 million (Rs 1,100 crore), of which RIL contributed 35%, that is, $50 million (Rs 375 crore). India’s most valued company has routed the Ambri investment through its 100% arm Reliance New Energy Solar. Ambri is RIL’s first investment in low-carbon technology after Ambani laid out a road map for a clean-energy play at the company’s annual general meeting in June. The plan includes building a factory in Jamnagar, Gujarat, for the storage of intermittent energy.

Tech Mahindra is looking to ramp up hiring in its delivery centres across eastern Europe and Latin America over the next few years to diversify its talent base and provide a buffer against the war for talent currently going on in India.

“India will only provide 60% of the talent base. We expect to do 10% of the hiring in eastern Europe, 15% in Latin America, and 15% in other Asian countries. We want to widen the talent pool, improve agility to deliver some solutions, and be closer to clients,” CP Gurnani, chief executive and managing director, said.

Tech Mahindra has over 126,000 employees. Most IT services companies now have about 80% or more of their employees in India.

The Government of Assam (GoA) for its World Bank backed project, Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project (APART) has given the Crop Cutting Experiments (CCE) mandate to Noida based Agri-tech company, Leads Connect. The agritech will conduct the CCE in 23 districts of the Assam state, on pilot basis.

APART was launched in the year 2018 by the Government of Assam through Government of India and received huge funds from World Bank to uplift the agricultural sector of the state and encourage farmers to use technology to increase the production. 

On being appointed, Navneet Ravikar, Chairman & Managing Director, Leads Connect Services Private Limited informed that “getting a mandate to conduct CCE for different zones of Assam is a huge achievement for us an organization, and we are very excited and prepared to deliver the project successfully”.

US firm Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has sought Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) for its single-dose Covid-19 vaccine in India. Once approved, it will be the fourth vaccine to get EUA after Serum Institute's Covishield, Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and Dr Reddy's Sputnik V.

Earlier this week, the company had said it was finalising its plans, soon after withdrawing its application for conducting local studies.

Without elaborating on vaccine manufacturing plans, J&J said its collaboration with Hyderabad-based Biological E will be an important part of its global supply chain network. The company had tied up with Biological E last year.