Business News at 05:30 pm on 23rd November 2023

Let’s begin. Honasa Consumer, the parent company of the popular beauty and personal care brand Mamaearth, witnessed a remarkable 20 percent surge in its shares, reaching Rs 422.5 per share today. This surge follows the company’s impressive Q2 financial results, which revealed a doubling of net profit to Rs 30 crore. Jefferies, a leading financial services firm, responded positively to Honasa Consumer’s Q2 performance and reiterated a ‘buy’ rating on the stock. The brokerage firm has set a target of Rs 530 per share, indicating a substantial 25 percent upside from the current levels. In addition to the ‘buy’ rating, Jefferies has also upgraded its earnings per share estimates on Honasa Consumer stock by 5-6 percent. In some more market updates, the Indian Railways is poised to add 200 to 250 new trains annually, in addition to the 400 to 450 Vande Bharat trains slated for inclusion in the coming years. Railway stocks have surged by as much as 32% in the past month, accompanied by a more than tenfold rise in average trading volumes. In response to the escalating passenger numbers attributed to population growth, the Indian Railways has unveiled a robust plan to introduce an additional 3,000 trains over the next four to five years. This strategic move, articulated by Ashwini Vaishnaw, aims to augment the current annual passenger capacity from 800 crore to 1,000 crore. Crucially, Vaishnaw emphasized the overarching goal of enhancing train speeds and expanding the rail network. Ashwini Vaishnaw also chaired a session to address concerns around deepfake technology. He said that the government needs to take very urgent steps to strengthen trust in the society to protect the democracy. According to Vaishnaw, the Indian government has held talks with social media companies, artificial intelligence-based platforms and professors, and NASSCOM. Reportedly, Vaishnaw mentioned that in the upcoming 10 days, the government will draw up actionable items for deepfakes based on four pillars, which are detection of deepfakes and ,misinformation, how to prevent spreading of misinformation, strengthening reporting mechanisms for applications, and raising awareness. Meanwhile, India’s Murugappa Group added $3 billion in market value Wednesday after one of the conglomerate’s unit announced a foray into semiconductors. The shares of the group’s electric motor maker CG Power and Industrial Solutions Ltd. surged by the 20% limit to a record, prompting similar-sized rallies in two other group stocks. The proposal comes against the backdrop of India’s ambition to create a robust tech manufacturing sector that has already drawn investments from Apple Inc. suppliers. The foray would also provide investors an opportunity to bet on a sector that’s added trillions of dollars in stock values globally this year, but has been largely absent from the nation’s equity market. Moving on. Kolkata metro railway network has developed a token with ‘Chandrayaan-3’ logo on it. This aims to commemorate the country’s first successful soft landing on the lunar surface in a unique way. The token was introduced on October 10, just before the Durga Puja. It is available across all three corridors of the city’s rapid transit system i.e. Blue Line, Green Line and Purple Line. The passengers can purchase these tokens from the booking counters of the three routes. The Kolkata Metro has targeted to sell one lakh such tokens to mark the success of ‘Chandrayaan-3’. It is also expected that this new token will draw positive responses from the commuters. The Metro Railway witnessed a quantum jump in sales of smart tokens last month. Over to auto industry. According to a recent media report, Tata Motors will introduce a new digital instrument console to the Punch. The homegrown carmaker will offe a 4-inch digital screen as standard fitment across the entire Punch range up until the top-spec Creative trim, which benefits from a fancier semi-digital setup that gets an additional analogue dial for tachometer. Spy images show that the 4-inch screen displays the speedometer, fuel gauge, and more, except the tachometer. The larger and more advanced coloured TFT instrumentation in the top-spec Creative trim shows various readouts like power and torque metres, trip computer reading, TPMS reading, music info or radio station, coolant temperature, and more. Lastly, the share market. Indian benchmark indices ended on a flat note in the volatile session on November 23. At close, the Sensex was down 5.43 points or 0.01 per cent at 66,017.81, and the Nifty was down 9.80 points or 0.05 per cent at 19,802. About 1748 shares advanced, 1407 shares declined, and 120 shares unchanged. Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto, BPCL, Eicher Motors and IndusInd Bank were among the top gainers on the Nifty, while losers were Cipla, UltraTech Cement, LTIMindtree, SBI Life Insurance and Larsen & Toubro. A mixed trend was seen on the sectoral front, with healthcare index down 1 percent and Information Technology index down 0.5 per cent.