Google partners with Airtel to offer G Suite to small, medium businesses

• Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says the combination of G Suite with Airtel will help accelerate digital innovations for Indian businesses
• The move follows a series of enterprise partnerships announced by rivals Reliance Jio and Microsoft

Flourish Ventures may fund Indian firms in embedded finance, neo-banks this year

• In March last year, Omidyar Network had spun off its financial inclusion initiative to launch Flourish Ventures From 2019,
• Flourish started having a capital pool of around $300 mn to invest in global frontier financial services companies, over a five-year period

Altico NPAs swell nearly 40% of total credit in Dec, lenders trying to cut debt

• Altico’s soured debt was provisionally estimated at close to 40% of total credit end-Dec, up from 23.8% in Sept
• Creditors have asked each other to bid for an asset swap that would make real estate firms, until now funded by Altico, liable to directly repay the debt

'Multidisciplinary research critical to boost India’s innovation potential'

The Infosys co-founder talks about the role of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research, public private partnerships, and academia in driving innovation in India

Ujjivan Small Finance Bank eyes small businesses amid retreat by NBFCs

• Ujjivan has identified seven such segments for lending where demand is high
• Ujjivan is also conducting a pilot on two-wheeler and three-wheeler financing

Govt to take management control of Unitech, Supreme Court agrees

• The govt had earlier said that it is willing to take over the management control of Unitech Ltd and complete its stalled projects for providing relief to around 12,000 hassled homebuyers

Paytm expects 25 million merchant bases by next year: Official

• Paytm expects its merchant's base which is pegged at 15 million as of now to reach 25 million by the next fiscal
• Paytm will be on-boarding 1.5 million merchants from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the next six months

Chandra, a LinkedIn influencer, on career that made him go to work every day

• Chandrasekaran said that one needs to have an aspiration and purpose in life
• Chandrasekaran said AI can create big impact both in terms of productivity and job creation

Telecom dept seeks ₹48,000 crore dues from Oil India

• Oil India Ltd (OIL) is the second oil and gas firm after GAIL India to have been slapped a demand notice
• From gas utility GAIL, the DoT has sought ₹1.72 lakh crore

ASCI releases guidelines for usage of awards, rankings in ads

• ASCI said brands and services need to ensure that accrediting bodies involved in disseminating or presenting awards or rankings are authentic and credible
• The validity of the award/ranking used to substantiate a claim should be of a period preceding the advertisement by not more than 12 months

Federal Bank Q3 net profit rises 32% to ₹441 crore

• Gross non-performing assets (NPAs), as a percentage of total advances, were at 2.99% in the December quarter compared with 3.07% in the September quarter and 3.14% in the year-ago December quarter

Domestic air passenger traffic grows by just 3.74% in 2019: DGCA

• Domestic scheduled airlines carried 144.17 million passengers during 2019
• IndiGo continued its market dominance, carrying nearly one in every two passengers

Cipla gets US FDA clearance for Patalganga manufacturing plant

• The Patalganga plant manufactures both active pharmaceutical ingredients, which are key raw materials for medicines, as well as formulations, and these are largely exported to markets like the US

IKEA isn’t waiting to open its big stores in India anymore

• Customers in Pune will be able to shop for over 7,000 IKEA products online
• IKEA's online shop has over 7000 products of which over 800 products are below Rs200

Kotak Mahindra Bank Q3 profit up 23.6%, asset quality weakens

• Asset quality weakened during third quarter, with gross NPAs increasing 31.1% y-o-y to Rs5,413.20 crore
• Kotak Mahindra Bank’s net interest income up 17.2% year-on-year at Rs3,429.53 crore during Oct-Dec

When Jeff Bezos, the world's richest, drove a three-wheeler

• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tweeted a video announcing the rollout of a fleet of electric-powered delivery rickshaws
• Last week, Bezos was in India for a three-day visit

TCS falls over 2% on flat Q3 growth, weighs on BSE IT Index

• The BSE IT index also tumbled 1% to 15,951.45 points, dragged down by index heavyweight TCS, India's biggest IT services provider
• Overall subdued sentiment weighed on other IT firms as well, with shares of Infosys Ltd slipping 0.4% to ₹764.80

Apple gains footing in court feud with former iPhone chip architect

• Gerard Williams III helped lead development of the chips used to power iPhones during his decade as a platform architect with the company
• The judge also dismissed a claim by Williams that Apple invaded his privacy

Samsung mobile display can get manufactured in India

• The company is also considering setting up of industrial zones equipped with taxation and customs clearance, along with infrastructure
• In 2018, Samsung had opened a manufacturing unit in Noida to increase its capacity from 68 million units to 120 million units a year

Elon Musk says SpaceX launch with NASA astronauts likely soon

• The hardware necessary for the first launch with astronauts will probably be in place by the end of February, Musk said
• Sunday’s test shows SpaceX can safely abort a mission if something goes wrong after takeoff.