Zee Keralam launch date fixed for Nov 26

Zee Keralam, the Malayalam channel from India’s second biggest TV broadcasting company, will launch in exactly ten days on Nov 26, the company has revealed. Zee will compete with Malayalam offerings from Star India, Sun Network and local channels like Flowers and Amrita. The group, which entered the adjoining Telugu and Tamil markets over the […]

Havells India to launch temperature-sensitive ‘smart fans’ with IoT

Havells India, one of the fastest growing appliances and electrical gear makers in the country, said it will launch a wifi-enabled, temperature-sensitive smart fan next year. Named ‘Enticer Smart’ after its Enticer series, the fan would have smart capabilities, such as automatically adjusting its rotating speed based on the temperature of the room. The fan […]

Reliance Industries to enlist local stores to fight Flipkart, Amazon

Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries group, today said that his company is working on creating a pan-India e-commerce platform that will help small, offline shops compete with players like Amazon and Flipkart. The platform will work by making the inventory of small shops available for purchase online using a sophisticated web and app interface […]

Zee5 added to NetRange Smart TV app store

Zee5, the content app from the Zee Group, has joined the NetRange, an app store found on televisions manufactured by global TV makers such as Philips, Grundig, HiSense, Thomson, Skyworth, Sharp and TCL. With this, the Zee5 app will become instantly available on lakhs of smart TVs across the world. “The ZEE5 app will be […]

Dish TV boxes to get support for Internet apps by December

Dish TV, India’s largest direct-to-home satellite television service, said it will send out software upgrades to over 4 mln (40 lakh) of its users that will enable them to install apps to watch Internet content on their TV by December. “There are almost 4 million boxes that we have which we can convert into connected […]

Hero unveils first touring motorcycle XPulse 200T

Hero MotoCorp Ltd., the world’s largest manufacturer of two-wheelers, said it will launch its XPulse series of 200cc premium motorcycles early next year. The company announced the second in the XPulse series, the XPulse 200T. While the original XPulse is an off-roader, the ‘T’ variant is built for longer rides and, according to the company, offers […]

Sterlite Tech gets Rs 1,500 cr Bharatnet contract for 8 Maharashtra districts

Two weeks after announcing a Rs 3,500 cr order to build the Indian Navy’s communication network, Sterlite Technologies said it won a Rs 1,512 cr order to connect 4,045 panchayats in Maharashtra under the BharatNet project. The announcement comes close on the heels of GTPL Hathway and Polycab Wires announcing a Rs 1,246 cr order to connect 3,767 […]

Sun Direct unveils India’s cheapest HD packs at Rs 2.50 per channel

Sun Direct, the satellite TV service from Sun TV group, has started offering the cheapest high-definition channel packages in India. The DTH service, which used to offer HD channels only as part of ‘base packs’ that came with a large number of standard-definition channels, has now started offering smaller packs comprising only HD channels. The […]

TVS Motor posts 26% jump in October auto sales as Scooters overtake Motorcycles

TVS Motor Co, one of the world’s largest two-wheeler makers, reported a 26% jump in October sales, thanks in part to a festival season that came early this year. Sales, including exports and three-wheelers, jumped to 398,427 in October from 317,411 last year. This is a better performance compared to September, when overall sales had […]

Jio GigaFiber to be launched in 1,500 cities – Mukesh Ambani

India’s biggest billionaire and chairman of telecom operator Reliance Jio said today his company is rolling out fiber connectivity in 1,500 cities in India — an apparent uptick from the 1,100 cities announced four months ago. Pointing out that India is ranked at 134th in the global ranking for fixed broadband penetration, Ambani said Jio is determined to […]

Airtel ends ‘lifetime free incoming’; to charge Rs 35/month

Bharti Airtel said it has stopped the policy of allowing users to continue on its network even if they spend nothing on outgoing calls and use their numbers only for receiving incoming calls. The company said it has done this by removing many of its existing prepaid vouchers and plans, and replacing them with ‘minimum […]

Bharti Airtel says open to partnering with cable operators for broadband

Bharti Airtel today said that it was ‘open to’ partnering with cable operators to get access to last mile connections to customers for its broadband service. “We would be open to looking at partnerships to expand our access to the last mile,” said CEO Gopal Vittal. The comment came in the context of Reliance Jio […]

Reliance Jio thunders through estimates, doubles data traffic in 1 yr

Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom operator, has seen its data traffic double to 2.6 billion GBs per month this September from 1.3 billion GBs a year ago, according to the company’s quarterly update. Surprisingly, the 100% growth in data consumption has outpaced the 83% jump in subscribers. Analysts and observers had expected the company’s data consumption […]

Mukesh Ambani extends his hand to Local Cable Operators as he snaps up Den, Hathway

Reliance Industries made a strong pitch to the thousands of local cable operators associated with cable feed providers Den Networks and Hathway Cable and Datacom as it announced its purchase of the two companies. Reliance will spend Rs 2,290 cr for a 66% stake in Den Networks, and Rs 2,940 cr for a 51.3% stake […]

RIL to announce Hathway, Den acquisitions tomorrow – CNBC

CNBC TV18, controlled by Reliance Industries, reported that the diversified company is likely to announce its acquisition of two of India’s top cable companies, Den Networks and Hathway Cable and Datacom, tomorrow. The TV channel, controlled by Reliance via a trust, said the acquisition is likely to be announced along with RIL’s second-quarter results on […]