Afghanistan received 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine from India on Sunday. It is the first batch to arrive in the country. However, the nation is still waiting for an emergency approval from the WHO before it can use them. Ghulam Dastagir Nazari, head of the immunisation program at the health ministry said the doses would be stored in Kabul until they receive the emergency authorisation.

Sun Pharmaceutical is recalling 36,275 cartons of a drug used to treat low testosterone levels in the US market for incorrect labelling. The affected lot of the intramuscular injections had Incorrect lot number on secondary packaging. They were manufactured by the drug maker in India and distributed in the US by Princeton, New Jersey-based Sun Pharmaceutical Industries.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) net purchases amounted to the tune of ₹12,266cr in the Indian market during the first 5 trading sessions of February. The positive sentiment post-Union Budget 2021 sparked this rally in investment. As per FPI statistics available with depositories, overseas investors pumped in a net ₹10,793 crore into equities and ₹1,473cr in the debt segment between Feb 1-5.

ITC Ltd on Sunday launched an internal ‘Young Digital Innovators Lab’ to crowdsource digital strategies and identify emerging technologies. The company is currently forming a digital council comprising senior managers that will work on “high impact digital interventions". The team will access ITC’s digital assets, evaluate digital initiatives and identify best-in-class digital technologies.

Godrej Properties will launch 12 housing projects during the Q4FY21 to expand the business as it targets to clock record sales bookings this fiscal year, beating Rs 5,915 crore achieved in 2019-20, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The operating performance was quite strong as sales bookings in the Q3FY21 were just under Rs 1,500 crore, up 25% YoY and 38% QoQ.

Emami Ltd is looking out for acquisitions both in India and international markets to strengthen its footprint, while also tapping at opportunities arising out the coronavirus pandemic. With up to Rs 400 crore of cash in hand and debt-free, the FMCG major's budget for acquisition is not a constraint but the company is looking more at strategic fit and potential of the target brand.

India's coal import increased by 15.1% to 23.63 MT in Dec-2020 compared to 20.52 MT in the year-ago month. Non-coking coal imports were at 15.63 MT in December this fiscal against 14.21 MT in the same month last fiscal. Coking coal imports were at 5.36 MT against 4.47 MT in December 2019-20. However, the country''s coal import dropped by 13.5% to 160.79 MT in the Apr-Dec period of FY20-21.

Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal opined that the DTH market proposition continues to be "attractive" in the medium to long run, given the current structure, the rising opportunity from cable conversion, and current niche play of streaming services. Airtel added about 485,000 customers in DTH television segment and logged a sequential revenue growth of just under 5%. It is the number 2 player in the sector.

India's peak power demand remained higher in the first week of February till Friday and surpassed the record high supply of 176.38 GW for February last year. It indicates robust growth in electricity consumption in the country. According to the power ministry data, peak power demand met was recorded at 187.71GW on February 1 and 188.15 GW on February 2.

10 top valued domestic companies together added ₹5,13,532.5 cr to their market valuation last week. HDFC Bank was the biggest gainer from the pack as its market valuation jumped ₹1,13,516.92 cr to ₹8,79,735.51 cr. The valuation of SBI zoomed ₹99,063.86 cr to reach ₹3,50,781.86 cr. Shares of SBI continued to rally on Friday, jumping over 11% as the bank's asset improved in the Dec quarter.

11 merchant bankers, including Goldman Sachs, JM Financial and Axis Capital, are in a race for managing the sale of the government's 26.12% stake in Tata Communications Ltd. The government will sell its entire stake in Tata Communications Ltd (TCL), previously known as VSNL. The stake sale will go ahead through the offer for sale and strategic sale route by March 20, 2021.

Reliance Industries acquired two-thirds of its own new gas from KG-D6 block that was auctioned under new rules with GAIL and Royal Dutch Shell getting smaller volumes. Reliance and its partner UK's BP Plc on Friday auctioned 7.5 million standard cubic metres per day of incremental gas from the R-series gas field in the KG-D6 block, benchmarking it to a gas marker for the very first time in India.

Magma Fincorp on Saturday said its board of directors has approved raising up to Rs 3,000 crore through debt in the FY21-22 through the issuance of debt securities in the nature of non-convertible debt securities. The debt securities would be in the nature of secured/unsecured, subordinated debentures, and the capital will be raised through a private placement.

If you are excited about Airtel’s 5G services demonstration using its existing 4G spectrum in Hyderabad, which is likely to be done by Jio and Vodafone Idea too, here’s a reality check. 5G speed is very different from 4G and requires large amounts of the spectrum which would not be possible by optimising the existing bands of 4G spectrum. So, 5G will come in India with similar speeds as 4G ones.

AstraZeneca stated on Saturday that its vaccine developed with the University of Oxford offers limited efficacy against mild disease caused by the B.1.351 South African variant of COVID-19. The so-called British, South African and Brazilian variants are amongst the most dangerous Covid strains, that appear to spread more swiftly than others.