By: Shubham Ghosh
HERE are news in brief related to Indian economy and business for Wednesday, August 9, 2023:
A new initiative in partnership with the University of Birmingham, UK, to promote sustainable cooling innovation and accelerate the deployment of energy-efficient refrigeration for food and vaccine supply chains across India was launched in the southern state of Telangana on Wednesday. The Telangana Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain is a joint project between the Telangana State Trade Promotion Corporation, government of Telangana, Centre for Sustainable Cooling at Birmingham University, United Nations Environment Programme and the GMR Group. The UK university will serve as the knowledge partner and help develop the centre into a state-of-the-art research and innovation hub to deploy needs-driven and equitable system-level cooling and cold-chain solutions in Telangana and also across India.
The Indian arm of New York-based workspace-sharing company WeWork on Wednesday said its business in the country faced no impact after its parent entity flagged bankruptcy risks. “Any development that is emerging globally has no impact on the business here,” WeWork India was quoted as saying by CNBC TV-18. It added that the fundamentals of its India business remained strong. WeWork India is backed by the Embassy Group, which holds a majority stake of around 71 per cent in the company. In a clarification to CNBC TV-18, the company said that it emerged profitable last year despite the Covid-19 pandemic-related challenges. “We ended FY23 with a revenue of Rs 1,400 crore (£132.7 million) and Rs 250 crore (£237 million) in earnings,” it said.
In an attempt to make the north-eastern state of Assam self-reliant in the production of edible oils, the state’s government has set a target to bring 3.75 lakh (375,000) hectares of land under oil palm plantations. Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma led the state in joining the movement in producing edible palm oil when he along with Yoga Guru Ramdev planted saplings of oil palm at Saikhowaghat in Tinsukia Tuesday. “It may be noted that with this plantation, a target has been set to bring 3.75 lakh hectares under the cultivation of oil palm,” a press release from chief minister’s office said. Speaking on the occasion, CM Sarma said that the main objective of this movement is to revolutionise agro-economy through oil palm plantations.
A bank fraud convict having an Interpol Red Notice against him was brought back from the US in an operation coordinated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) through Interpol channels and arrested by the central agency upon his arrival in Kochi, ending his two-year run, officials said Wednesday. T Ravindranath Gupta landed at the Kochi airport in the southern state of Kerala on Tuesday (8) night from the US via the UAE and a CBI team took him into custody upon his arrival on the basis of information shared through Interpol channels. Gupta was convicted by a special court in the southern city of Bengaluru for defrauding scheduled banks to the tune of Rs 1.36 crore (£128,959) by submitting forged inland letters of credit in collusion with bank officials and private persons during March-July in 1993, they said.
India’s National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) will announce its decision regarding the Zee-Sony merger case on Thursday (10), Moneycontrol reported. The tribunal had earlier reserved its verdict on the merger between Zee Entertainment Enterprises and Culver Max Entertainment (formerly called Sony Pictures Networks India) on July 10. The Mumbai bench of NCLT, featuring H V Subba Rao and Madhu Sinha, had reserved the judgment after lending ears to objections from creditors such as Axis Finance, JC Flower Asset Reconstruction Co, IDBI Bank, Imax Corp, and IDBI Trusteeship who raised concerns about the scheme. In 2021, Zee Entertainment and Sony Pictures reached an agreement to combine their businesses.
(With agencies inputs)