Top headlines: Serum halts vaccine trial; steel companies reorient strategy

From Silver Lake buying stake in Reliance Retail to Serum Institute halting trial of Oxford vaccine, here are the top headline of the day

We are nowhere close to saturation in edtech space: Byju's founder & CEO

Even during the pandemic, the Bengaluru-based Byju's has received investments from celebrated investors like Mary Meeker and Yuri Milner, and now from US private equity firm Silver Lake, taking its valuation close to $11 billion. Founder and CEO BYJU Raveendran tells Bibhu Ranjan Mishra in an interview what all this means for the company. Read More
 

Covid-19: Serum Institute to halt trial of Oxford vaccine after DCGI notice

In a major turn of events, the Indian drug regulator on Wednesday issued a show cause notice to Serum Institute of India (SII), which had earlier said it would proceed with clinical trials of AZD1222, the vaccine candidate developed by the University of Oxford, despite a halt on the same by AstraZeneca in the UK. Read More

Gig firm contributions towards staff social security to be mandatory soon

Gig companies will be asked to make a contribution towards social security funds set up for platform workers, according to the social security code approved by the Union Cabinet on Tuesday. The code will also have enabling provisions to allow self-employed workers to make voluntary contribution towards the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) schemes, said a senior government official. Read More

Silver Lake's Rs 7,500 cr investment in Reliance Retail sets stage for more

Reliance Industries (RIL) on Wednesday said US private equity (PE) firm Silver Lake would invest Rs 7,500 crore in its subsidiary Reliance Retail Ventures (RRVL) for a 1.75 per cent stake, valuing the company at Rs 4.2 trillion. This came a day after Silver Lake had led a Rs 3,750-crore investment round in edtech firm Bjyu’s. Earlier this year, Silver Lake invested Rs 10,202 crore in Jio Platforms, RIL’s digital services platform. Read More

Steel companies reorient strategy to capture rising rural demand

The better performance of the rural economy has prompted domestic primary steel producers to reorient their marketing strategies ahead of the festive season. While some companies have chalked out a relatively long-term plan to increase market penetration, others are seeing rural demand bounce back to pre-Covid levels. Read More

Vistara: Here's why slow and steady may not always win the race

In early March 2020, Vistara inducted its first B787-9 — the Dreamliner — to launch its international operations, almost five years after it took to the skies, a much-anticipated moment for the Tata-Singapore Airlines joint venture in India. But as luck would have it, the aircraft arrived to stand on the ground for several months as the Covid-19 pandemic grounded airlines worldwide. Read More

How DailyHunt is building a suite of 'Made in India' apps for Bharat

Former Facebook India head Umang Bedi has a vision for Bharat. He, along with Viru Gupta, the co-founder of start-up DailyHunt, are building a family of apps, with an aim of making it the country's largest platform, bigger than Google and Facebook, for local language users. Read More

GST row: Compensate states that picked a borrowing option, says Sushil Modi

Amid discord over goods and services tax (GST) compensation, Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Modi said disbursal should begin for states that have opted for either of the two borrowing options proposed by the Centre. He also proposed that consultation with dissenting states could be carried out separately. Read More

EPFO to pay 8.5% interest for FY20 in two instalments, cites Covid impact

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) on Wednesday said it would credit 8.5 per cent interest to formal sector workers in a staggered manner, citing the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on its income. The decision was taken at a meeting of the EPFO’s central board of trustees (CBT), chaired by Labour and Employment Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar. Read More