India Narrative

Online investment and wealth management platform Paytm Money today announced the appointment of Varun Sridhar as its new Chief Executive Officer. Sridhar has led the digital transformation journey of some of the top retail banks in India and abroad. Most recently, he served as CEO of FinShell India where he launched realme PaySa a fintech platform on mobile. Prior to this role, he was with BNP Paribas for close to eight years where amongst other assignments he supported the acquisition of Sharekhan. Sridhar will report to Amit Nayyar, President at Paytm. “Paytm Money is on a mission to empower millions of Indians with wealth management products. We are very excited to welcome Varun, whose experience in retail banking, broking, and wealth segment would help us accelerate our goals,” Nayyar said in a statement. A subsidiary of One97 Communications Ltd which operates Paytm, Paytm Money is headquartered in Bengaluru and has a team of over 300 employees. The company said it

Days after internal communication from the Chennai-based Integral Coach Factory (ICF) that it would complete the manufacturing of 44 Vande Bharat trains by 2027, Chairman Railway Board V.K. Yadav, said the new train sets would be manufactured at all three units — ICF, MCF and RCF — and in the next two-three years would start rolling out. His remarks came hours after IANS reported that an internal assessment by the ICF said manufacturing of the Vande Bharat rakes, comprising 16 coaches each, could be completed in six and half years or not before December 2027. The ICF Chief Planning Engineer in his July 14 letter to the Director Mechanical Engineering (Production Unit) said the prototype of the train sets would take at least 28 months to manufacture from the date of finalization of the tender for the propulsion system. The ICF official also said it would take six more months to test the prototype. Only after then, commercial production could be started. However, the ICF would

Bolstering bilateral ties with Mauritius, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Mauritius counterpart Pravind Jugnauth will jointly inaugurate the new Supreme Court building of the island nation tomorrow, which was constructed with Indian grant assistance. The event will be held via video conferencing in the presence of senior members of the judiciary from Mauritius and dignitaries from both sides. The new SC building is the first India assisted infrastructure project within the capital city of Port Louis. “The new Supreme Court building project is one of the five projects being implemented under the Special Economic Package of $353 million extended by the Government of India to Mauritius in 2016. The project has been completed within schedule and below the expected costs,” said an Indian government statement. The new building will bring all divisions and offices of the Supreme Court of Mauritius into a single building, thereby improving its efficiency. Spread over an area of

A British-Australian woman serving a 10-year sentence in Iran for espionage has been transferred to a notorious prison in the desert, according to Iranian human rights activists. Cambridge-educated Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a lecturer at Melbourne University , was detained at Tehran airport in September 2018 as she tried to leave following a conference, the BBC reported. She has been in solitary confinement and on several hunger strikes, and was said to have been beaten for trying to comfort new prisoners by passing notes and writing to them on prison walls. Now she has reportedly been moved to the notorious Qarchak prison. The jail is sometimes used as punishment for Iranian political prisoners, according to the BBC report. Conditions have been described by former inmates as abysmal. In letters smuggled out of Tehran’s Evin prison in January, the lecturer said she had “never been a spy” and feared for her mental health. Moore-Gilbert said she had rejected an offer from Iran

Singapore News hopes the United States can stabilise its relations with China, since Asia depends on the stable US-China ties to have a “secure” and “predictable” environment, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said. Loong made the remarks in an online interview hosted by Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, reported by local English-language newspaper the Straits Times today. China News The Singaporean Prime Minister also voiced hope that the coming US President, be it Republican or Democratic, can develop a bipartisan consensus on US-Asia relations so that the US foreign policy will be consistent and last beyond one administration, Xinhua news agency reported. “If you can establish a stable, predictable policy with bipartisan consensus, I think it would be a great help to all your friends and partners who want to be able to depend on you and to rely on you, without the risk that one day the big power may suddenly decide its interests lie elsewhere,” he s

At least 88 per cent of the Indian workers prefer to have the flexibility of working from home, (WFH), while 69 per cent believe their productivity has increased while working remotely, a new survey revealed today. The survey conducted by expense, travel, and invoice management solutions provider SAP Concur, also shows that merely 11 per cent of Indian organizations have embraced end-to-end digital finance and administrative processes. Across India, 36 per cent of mid-large sized companies are still using manual processes for submitting business expenses, the study said. According to the survey, manual processes in expense management, and the resulting inefficiencies may be causing India estimated productivity losses of $2.25 billion per year. “Bringing in digital transformation for expense claims or invoice processing can have a huge multiplier effect on business and cost control and at the same time provide the operational agility needed for business continuity,” Mankira

The Chinese health authority said on Wednesday that it received reports of 101 new confirmed Covid-19 cases in the Chinese mainland on Tuesday, including 98 locally-transmitted cases and three imported ones. China News Eighty-nine of the 98 locally-transmitted cases were reported in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, eight in Liaoning Province, and one in Beijing Municipality, the National Health Commission said in its daily report, Xinhua reported. No deaths related to the disease or new suspected Covid-19 cases were reported on Tuesday.

As we face this global pandemic , it is important that we stay indoors, maintain physical distancing, and focus on building a strong immune system which is a crucial shield against infections. So while we are confined to the house, it is important we maintain a regular routine which includes daily exercise, eating a balanced diet, staying hydrated, maintaining good gut health, getting adequate sleep, and managing stress levels. Our immune system works as the frontline defense mechanism against disease-causing microorganisms and protects us from all viruses and microbes that our body is exposed to. A healthy lifestyle along with a well-balanced diet containing all the essential macro and micronutrients is vital for optimal functioning and maintenance of the immune system. Protein is a versatile macronutrient that sustains life and has a particularly important role to play in boosting immune function. Though we all know about the importance of protein, Indians are deficient in o

If the Yamuna and its banks look cleaner and the stream full of water, here, the credit goes to the Yamuna Mission , launched in 2015 by a local businessman Pradeep Bansal. For more than a month, several excavators, tractors, and workers scooped riverbed and de-silted a long patch along the main ghats (flight of steps leading down to the river) opposite the Dwarkadheesh temple . Even during the lockdown, work continued. In Mathura, the river looks cleaner, and the ghats full of water after many years. Due to the Gokul Barrage, there is enough water in the river all the way to Vrindavan. One reason behind the Yamuna looking less polluted this year is the lockdown that shut many units. The effluents flow was minimum as industrial pollutants didn’t enter the river in the upstream cities, like Delhi, Faridabad and Palwal. After the first phase of ‘unlock’, the volume of pollutants has increased, causing foam formation at Gokulsthan in the past four months. “But start of the rainy

Air commodore Hilal Ahmad Rather has become a buzz name in Kashmir News overnight. Hilal saw off the first batch of Rafale jets which took off from France to India today. Among other things, he has also been associated with the weaponization of the Rafale aircraft for acclimatization to Indian requirements. Hilal is presently India’s Air Attache in France. The career details of this officer of the Indian Air Force (IAF) read like the decoration scroll of the best flying officer anywhere in the world. Born in the south Kashmir’s Anantnag district to middle-class parents, Hilal’s father, late Mohammad Abdullah Rather retired as a deputy superintendent of police (Dy SP) in J&K police department. He has three sisters and is the only son of his parents. Hilal studied in Sainik School in Nagrota town of Jammu district. He was commissioned in IAF as a fighter pilot on December 17, 1988. He became flight lieutenant in 1993, wing commander in 2004, group captain in 2016, and