Gold on MCX settled up 0.42% at 29418 as investors awaited the first-round of voting in the presidential French election at the weekend and possible announcements about tax changes in the United States. There was potential for safe-haven buying of gold after France said security forces were fully mobilized for the weekend vote after an Islamist militant killed a policeman Thursday night. Safe-haven demand re-emerged after a French policeman was shot dead and two others were wounded in central Paris on Thursday night in an attack claimed by the Islamic State militant group. Investors were also watching events in Washington.

New Delhi [India], Apr 22 : Pioneer in innovative, smart mobile and virtual reality technologies HTC Corporation has announced the launch of their virtual reality system, HTC VIVE™ making it the first complete VR system available to customers in the India market. VIVE will be available exclusively on Amazon.in via pre-order from April 22nd, 2017.

The site vive.com/in will go live by 25 April 2017. VIVE will soon be available for an in-store experience across select locations in India.

These select locations will be equipped with an interactive VIVE demonstration station, fully open to the public for individual sessions to experience a variety of virtual reality content supported by the platform.

New Delhi [India], Apr 22 : Hotelbeds Group, a global bedbank and business-to-business provider of services to the travel industry on Friday announced plans for GTA to join its Bedbank business unit.

"This deal brings another great bedbank to the Hotelbeds Group family, following the announcement in February that Tourico Holidays will also be integrating with us. Both of these important deals clearly underline our steadfast commitment to accelerate the growth of our business both organically and via M&A activity," said Joan Vila, Executive Chairman of Hotelbeds Group.

New Delhi [India], Apr 22 : Following more than two years of verification and testing, SoftBank Corp., a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. on Friday announced its decision to deploy the Ericsson Radio Dot System across Japan to deliver premium indoor connectivity to its subscribers.

SoftBank began extensive testing of the Radio Dot System and several other indoor solutions in Japan in June 2015 to evaluate its options for meeting the huge demand for better indoor coverage in mid-sized to large buildings.

The Ericsson Radio Dot System proved its ability to enable high-performance voice and data coverage and capacity in a broad range of enterprise buildings and public venues, and will now be deployed for SoftBank later this year.

New Delhi [India], Apr 21 : Before the digital era began, home loan processing was very unpredictable. However, with digitization, a whole new world of instant credit and instant loans was formed.

Technological initiatives coupled with credit processes has transformed the entire customer experience forming a lending ecosystem. Now a day's banks and institutions rely more on credit reports generated by credit information agency - CIBIL for gauging a loan applicant. An applicant with a score of 750 or above can get a home loan smoothly.

Low interest rates on housing loan and IT benefits have induced many to own a property. Nowadays CIBIL is helping borrowers to check the best loan available based on his/her credit scores and history.

Port Blair [India], April 21 : In a first of its kind study, peptides, from the venom of cone snails, have been identified that opens up possibilities of drug research for several human ailments.

The study was conducted by a team of Indian scientists from Port Blair-based National Institute of Ocean Technology, NIOT and Indian Institute of Science, IISc, Bangalore.

They identified short peptides with six amino acids, which globally, is the first small contryphan identified so far.

New Delhi [India], Apr 21 : A report published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India ( IAMAI) and Nielsen ranked Delhi number one regarding overall Internet readiness, overtaking last year's winner Maharashtra.

The report titled 'Index of Internet Readiness of Indian States' was released by Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ( MeiTy), Government of India on Wednesday.

Delhi takes the first slot not only amongst small states and Union Territories but also when all states are taken together. The capital city-state is followed by Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

According to the report, Delhi gets this rank primarily because of its fabulous e-infrastructure and e-participation.

New Delhi [India], Apr 21 : Patanjali Ayurveda's Co-Founder and CEO Acharya Balkrishna on Thursday announced that the company is planning to expand globally in the near future, while addressing a 'Made in India - Food Buyer Seller Meet' organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority ( APEDA).

He urged players of food processing sector to come together and promote healthy food products.

"This initiative taken by FICCI is an example of industry players taking a step towards making Indian food industry an international brand accepted by all. Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd. is committed to go global and fight adulteration in Food industry," said Balkrishna.

New Delhi [India], Apr 20 : While people claim to value their memories more than any other form of data stored on their digital devices, they are happy to sell them for little money, research by Kaspersky Lab shows.

A survey has shown that for 49 percent of people, private and sensitive photos of themselves are the most precious data they have on their devices, followed by photos of their children and spouses.

The thought of losing these precious memories is considered more distressing for them than the prospect of a car accident, breaking up with a partner, or a quarrel with a friend or family member.

However, when confronted with the decision to delete this data for money, people nevertheless gave their digital data such as photos away for as little as 10.37EUR.

New Delhi [India], Apr 20 : Governor Chelyabinsk Region Russia, Boris Dubrovsky on Thursday invited the Indian industry to explore the investment opportunities in the Chelyabinsk Region of Russia, which offers tax incentives to foreign investors.

Speaking at an interactive session organized by FICCI, Boris Dubrovsky held out the assurance that the Chelyabinsk Region would cooperate with the Indian businesses and their investment will be fully protected.

He said that Indian investments in Russia were estimated at USD eight billion and Russian investments in India totaled about USD three billion.

New Delhi [India], Apr 20 : Hyper-local startup Jugnoo has announced AskLocal - a Geo-location based hyper-local content platform for users where they can access locally relevant information.

With this, Jugnoo is introducing a new way to connect within cities based on relevant content, reviews, and recommendations.

Just like Facebook and Twitter, which are friends-based and events-based content networks respectively, the AskLocal vertical offers a location-based content network. The feature will be Geo-location based, allowing users to view local feeds for their city.

It is part of the bouquet of hyper-local services offered by Jugnoo that includes rides, meals, fresh, and menus.

New Delhi [India], Apr 20 : #FindYourBeat, the online musical challenge, launches today on Facebook and Twitter.

#FindYourBeat is a one-minute social, musical challenge to engage and reward people through their love for music. The contest starts on 20th April and will run for a period of three days, ending on 22nd April 2017.

New Delhi [India], Apr 20 : E-commerce portal Myntra on Wednesday announced that it has acquired InLogg, a Bengaluru-based technology platform that provides end to end logistics solutions for the ecommerce sector.

As part of the acquisition, the team at InLogg has been inducted into Myntra, making it an acqui-hire that will further strengthen and expand Myntra's supply chain capabilities.

New Delhi [India], Apr 20 : Online video platform Hotstar on Wednesday crossed another milestone by becoming the first local service to register over a 100 million downloads on Google Play Store.

The 'Make in India' video platform raced ahead of other consumer internet companies in India, including e-commerce services like Amazon India and Flipkart, taxi ride services like Ola and payment apps like Paytm, among others.

Almost all of Hotstar's downloads have come from India. The service reached this milestone within just 2 years of its launch in 2015.

Across the Play Store, App Store and other Android app stores cumulatively, Hotstar has crossed more than 200 million downloads since launch.

New Delhi [India], Apr 20 : Asset Vantage Inc., a leader in cloud/mobile-based asset management, accounting and reporting system on the market on Wednesday acquired Santa Clara-based Financial Navigator Inc., a leading provider of integrated general ledger and portfolio tracking software focused on the wealth management in the United States market.

With the addition of Financial Navigator, Asset Vantage will further its expansion into the wealth management accounting software market in North America while gaining a seasoned team of developers and customer support personnel anchored in Silicon Valley. The two companies have a combined customer base exceeding 300 families globally.

Cotton on MCX settled down by -0.48% at 20720 on higher arrivals and sufficient stock levels in the country. India's 2016-17 cotton imports are set to jump more than a third from a year ago to a record 30 lakh bales on stronger rupees. On export front, country has so far contracted about 45 lakh bales in the current crop year, and total exports in the season could be around 5 million bales, down 30% from a year ago. Total cotton arrivals across the country till Apr 7 stood at 27.87 million bales recording a rise of 5% over last year's level of 26.47 million bales, according to the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) data. Cotton Advisory Board (CAB) estimated 2016-17 cotton crop at 35.1 million bales up from 33.8 million bales a year ago.

Cardamom on MCX settled up by 0.59% at 1270.6 on short covering tracking firmness in spot demand after prices dropped amid reports of higher supplies of imported variety. However prices were further unlikely to improve in the coming week due to accumulation of imported stocks. Arrivals at the auction centres continued to shrink as the season has come to an end and number auctions have been cut in the absence of sufficient quantity. India exported 3,000 ton cardamom during Apr-Dec down from 3,825 on a year ago, data from Spices Board showed. Individual auction average slipped and it was vacillating between Rs. 1,047 and Rs. 1,193 a Kg. Total arrivals during the season from August 01 up to April 8, 2017 were at 15,247 tonnes and sales stood at 14,466 tonnes.

Maize on NCDEX settled flat tracking weakness in overseas prices amid rising estimates on South America's corn output. The USDA left its forecast of U.S. 2016-17 corn exports unchanged at 2.225 billion bushels. Farmers may harvest at an estimated 14.32-million tonnes of maize in 2017‚ which represents the third-biggest maize crop on record. Favourable weather conditions have enabled producers to increase the area planted to summer crops‚ with maize output now expected to be 84% higher in 2017 than in 2016. In its second estimate for the year on Tuesday‚ the Crop Estimates Committee said it had revised the maize output estimate by 2.91% from the first estimate.

Jeera on NCDEX settled down by -1.26% at 19250 on profit booking after prices gained due to expectation of good demand for exports coupled with lower than expected supplies. The arrivals have been lower during the second half of current month compared to last month same period while the demand have increased. Sources estimate India’s jeera crop output will be around 2.5 lakh tonnes, lower than the 3.75 to 5 lakh-tonne estimates put out by experts. Even at the lower crop estimate, jeera exports are projected to range between 100,000-150,000 tonnes, for the year. Exports will happen in spite of higher prices because there is no supplier of jeera available globally. Syria has a significant share at 30,000-40,000 tonnes, while Turkey is very small at 10,000 tonnes.

Turmeric on NCDEX settled down by -0.86% at 6196 tracking lower prices in spot market due to higher supplies and steady demand. Turmeric farmers and traders have been hit hard by poor sales during peak season. Many traders and farmers expected good sales of turmeric during the peak period, which started a month ago. But, this year, for the first time in recent history, both farmers and traders are in agony due to poor production and tepid demand from North India. However, turmeric arrivals in the country is on higher side during second half of March at 79,534 tonnes compared to 63,965 tonnes during last month same period, as per the data.