CURRENT AFFAIRS FOR 21ST OCTOBER 2015

CORPORATE AFFAIRS, E-COMMERCE, CARS AND TECHNOLOGY

1. Swedish contract drug manufacturer Recipharm has acquired a 74% equity stake in Nitin LifeSciences, a privately held sterile injectables manufacturing firm for Rs 671 Crores.
2. Reliance Communications, Aircel and Sistema have begun initial talks for a three way merger that could see the emergence of India's third largest Teleco by subscribers.
3. Online Real Estate portal Housing.com is set to raise Rs 220 Crores in a fresh round of funding from Japan's Soft Bank.
4. Snapdeal has appointed Anup Vikal as its new CFO.
5. Flipkart has appointed Samardeep Subandh as its new Chief Marketing Officer.
6. FreshDesk has appointed Nishant Rao as its Chief Operating Officer.
7. Digital Advertising Network Fork Media has acquired WiFi Advertising network Spid Info Media for an undisclosed sum ( $3 million to $5 million).
8. Intex expects to garner upto Rs 1,200 Crores in revenue from Sale of 4G smartphones.
9. Chinese Handset Vendor Lenovo will launch three smartphones exclusively for the offline retail channel during the festive season as the company seeks to improve its presence in India's high growth market.
10. Parsvnath Developers has cleared a debt of Rs 60 Crores to Essel Finance through redemption of non-convertible debentures.
11. Infosys, India's Second Largest software services firm and Chinese ICT solution provider, Huawei have partnered to launch a smart stadium solution. 
12. Taxi aggregator Meru Cabs has forged a global alliance with Europe's Taxi Service , Taxis G7 , to launch eCab in India.
13. Bharti Airtel has raked in over Rs 11,200 Crores by selling about 8,300 towers in seven african countries.
14. Cement Maker ACC reported a drop of 40% in its consolidated net profit at Rs 115.21 Crores for the quarter ended September 30.
15. Bayer Crop Science reported a drop of 15% decline in its net profit at Rs 150 Crores.
16. Adani Transmission reported consolidated net profit of Rs 152.90 Crores.
17. Videocon D2H loss has narrowed to Rs 24.58 Crores.
18. Sanofi India has reported 16.93% rise in its standalone net profit to Rs 72.5 Crores.
19. Dewan Housing Finance Corporation reported a 18.5% rise in net profit at Rs 180.4 Crores.
20. Zee Media Corporation reported a net loss of Rs 17 Crores for the quarter ended September 30.
21. Hero Moto Corporation Net Profit up by 1.1% at Rs 772 Crores.
22. HCL Technologies will absorb 2,600 employees of Volvo Group as a part of a deal to handle the Swedish Automaker's IT infrastructure operations and buy its external IT business.
23. Tata Steel,the biggest steel maker in Britain, may cut about 1,200 jobs as a part of plans to restructure its struggling operations.
24. Tata Housing is in advanced talks with a few institutional investors to raise Rs 3,200 Crores for its upcoming premium and luxury residential projects across top 5 indian cities.
25. Investors Clinic, India's largest online real estate transactions and services platform, is in talks with large private equity funds and foreign banks to raise about Rs 975 Crores.
26. Motilal Oswal Real Estate is looking to raise up to Rs 1000 Crores through its third real estate fund.
27. Mahindra and Mahindra launched an intra-city logistics aggregator platform called SmartShift, which will act as an exchange platform for cargo owners and transporters.
28. Fragrance Maker SH Kelkar has fixed the price band of its Rs 500 Crore initial public offering at Rs 173-180 per share.
29. Japanese financial services major Nomura intends to sell its stake in its mutual fund joint venture with Life Insurance Corporation.
30. Microsoft nominated Johnson & Johnson Sandra Peterson and Former Cisco systems executive Padmasree Warrior to its board.
     

POLITICS, ECONOMY, CRIMES, SPORTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND NEWS AROUND THE WORLD

1. Several states, including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telengana and Andhra Pradesh have carried out raids on pulses traders as the Centre is pushing them to take measures to tame retail prices.
2. The Central Board of Direct Taxes has initiated a pilot project on paperless assessment using emails. E-hearing would be conducted in 100 cases as part of pilot.
3. PM Modi has declared November 26 as ' Samvidhan Divas' or 'Constitution Day' to celebrate the formal adoption of the constitution.
4. Doordarshan like last year is preparing to telecast RSS sarsangchalak's Dusshera address live on October 22.
5. Airlines flew 14.5% more passengers in September over the same month last year. The airline flew 6.67 million passengers in September 2015. IndiGo was leader by carrying 36.5% of the total passengers while Jet Airways was the second largest carrying 22% of the total passengers. Air India was third by carrying 15.9% while SpiceJet at 12.3% was fourth.
6. Facebook one of the best paymasters at engineering campuses is likely to give Indian Institute of Technologies a skip this year.
7. RBI has called for bids from the companies to build the Bharat Bill Payment System which will be a single window for all electronic payments related to utilities, schools and other essential things.
8. The Finance Ministry has said that the country would grow at 7.5% in the current fiscal.
9. India, the world's third largest producer of coal, imported 212.103 million tonnes of dry fuel worth over Rs 1 lakh crores in the last fiscal.
10. Employment in 8 sectors rose by 5.21 lakh last fiscal.
11. Bachchans to get Rs 50,000 each will be among the first beneficiaries of UP's new pension scheme for awardees of the Yash Bharti Samman.
12. Cricketer Amit Mishra assaults woman in Bengaluru hotel.
13. Railway Cash van transporting Rs 56 Lakhs was looted by a gang at gun point at Thane city near Nilje Railway Station.
14. NMAT registrations rise by 15%.
15. BEST workers union has threatened to go on three day strike from October 27 following the administration's decision to reject its demand for bonus.
16. Maharashtra State Government as sanctioned Rs 50 Lakh to repair the structure before the visit of PM Narendra Modi to inaugurate the Dr BR Ambedkar Memorial in London.
17. Enforcement Directorate attached investments worth Rs 70.17 Crores of the Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS) after allegations of money laundering.
18. A 45 year old great grand daughter of Mahatma Gandhi has been accused of defrauding two businessmen over $830,000 in South Africa.
19. TOI Jayashree Nandi won the merit award for '"Sustained Enviornmental Reporting by a Journalist" at the fourth asian Enviornmental Journalism Awards.
20. The state governments have seized at least 5,800 tonnes of pulses in several raids on hoarders.
21. Cricketer Virender Sehwag quits International Cricket.