The country's largest carmaker Maruti will resume operations at its Manesar plant from May 12.

The company said it was able to restart operations at the plant in less than 24 hours after receiving permission from local authorities as it had started intensive preparation even before the lockdown in India came into effect in March, DICV said in a statement.

​The app that complements the Aarogya Setu App has been made mandatory for all employees across the value chain, requiring them to update their health status, including close family members, on the app everyday. It has been developed to ensure safety and monitor employees' health on a real time basis.

Car and bike-makers are gearing up to sell more in Bharat to counterbalance shortfall in demand in the cities.

Component makers are also working overtime to restart factories, but delays in getting approvals are causing hindrance in some states, especially in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu that have the biggest automotive manufacturing hubs, industry insiders said. This, they said, could weigh on the plans of the automakers.

“We have got clearance to open the office from the local authorities and are following the guidelines given by the government,” said a spokesperson for Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the country’s biggest car maker. The company’s Delhi corporate office is at Nelson Mandela Marg.

“I have been trying for the last two years to pursue the scrappage policy. I have asked the Secretary (ministry of road transport and highways) to expedite the scrappage policy. Because this will help reduce production cost,” Gadkari said in an interaction with SIAM Institute on Thursday.

German car maker BMW commenced operations at the Chennai plant in accordance with the government-initiated guidelines. The company also stated that the BMW, MINI and BMW Motorrad dealerships across the country would restart the operations in adherence to local government directives.

About 20% of the auto retail network, or 3,500 outlets, opened for business this week, with one-third staff to comply with social-distancing norms. As of Wednesday evening, some 50,000-60,000 employees were back at work, industry insiders said.

Maruti Suzuki restarted operations at 680 dealerships till Wednesday, covering almost 35% of the addressable market. The nation’s largest carmaker is seeking permission from local authorities to reopen all but 500 of its remaining over 2,400 outlets. The 500 showrooms are in Covid-19 containment zones.

The company in its statement said that in 4 steps, a customer can avail of online exchange, finance and insurance, personalize & own their chosen Mahindra vehicle.

The tyre maker has commenced production in a graded manner at its manufacturing facilities in Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Kankroli (Rajasthan) and Laksar (through Cavendish industries Ltd - subsidiary company, in Uttarakhand). The company has also resumed operations at its global research and development hub located in Mysore, Karnataka, JK Tyre said.

The decision to extend warranty on tyres has been taken to express solidarity with customers amidst the continued lockdown, Ceat Tyres said in a statement. The extention is valid on tyres whose warranty is due to expire between March 1 and May 31, it added.

Areas designated as Green and orange zones, where the spread of Covid-19 infections is under control, account for more than 80% of India’s 733 districts, Uber said.

The auto major has commenced production at its Sriperumbudur factory in Tamil Nadu adhering to 100 per cent compliance of safety and social distancing norms, Hyundai Motor India said in a statement.

The Directorate of Human Space Programme of the city- headquartered ISRO has sought proposals for 18 tentative technology development areas. Four Indian Air Force fighter pilots are currently under training in Moscow and are likely to be potential candidates for the first manned mission to space.​​

Kamal Jain, a professor at the institute's civil engineering department, claims that the software will not only reduce testing costs but will also reduce the risk of exposure to healthcare professionals. ​So far, there is no verification of his claim by a medical institution.

China on Friday named its first Mars exploration mission to be launched later this year as Tianwen-1 as it celebrated 'Space Day' to mark the 50th anniversary of the launch of the country's first satellite Dong Fang Hong-1 in 1970.

The timing of the peak will depend on how India is able to control physical distancing and on the level of infection spreads after restrictions are relaxed, they said.

IIT Kanpur is developing a vaccine against Covid-19, while researchers at Madras and Kanpur have built desi drones for surveillance and IIT Ropar has produced robots to deliver food and medicines to patients in hospitals and quarantine zones. These innovations are in various stages of development.

The device, called VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally), passed a critical test this week at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, an epicentre of COVID-19 in the US, NASA said.

IIT-Guwahati has shown the way cornering the biggest pool of projects, followed by IIT-Madras and IIT-Hyderabad. Nearly 50% of the key research in India’s premier technical schools are happening in six of the old IITs. Majority of the researches are happening in the field of personal protective care equipment (45 projects), followed by sanitisation (33) and treatment.

Recent reports have suggested that the combination of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, and the antibiotic azithromycin may help patients with COVID-19, said scientists from the New York University School of Medicine in the US.

While over 20 technical and scientific institutions are working on developing a vaccine for coronavirus, IITs have already set up "COVID-19 specific research centres", encouraging developments in the innovation ecosystem.

Two students of the Jadavpur University have developed an intelligent device which will analyse if a coughing person is a COVID-19 carrier.

The tale of ITER’s missing shims shows how even the best-laid contingency plans have had to be rewritten.

Texas A&M is the first US institution in the clinical trial to have federal clearance for testing on humans. Researchers hope to demonstrate that Bacillus Calmette-Guerin or BCG mitigates the effects of the novel coronavirus, allowing fewer people to be hospitalised or to die from COVID-19.

The study, published in the journal Pathogens, found that all four drugs were effective in inhibiting, or blocking, the coronavirus' RNA proteins from making genomic copies of the novel coronavirus.

The scientists, including those from the University of Sheffield in the UK, said overuse of antibiotics, high animal numbers, and low genetic diversity caused by intensive farming techniques increase the likelihood of these pathogens becoming a major public health risk.

CSIR's Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad and Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh are currently sequencing the genomes of the novel coronavirus, he said. Other CSIR institutes are also expected to join the process.

Mortality and morbidity apply to enterprises, too; MSMEs more pronounced than most. Baseline GDP growth was already in slowdown mode and a capital crunch was compounded by lockdown’s labour constraint.

The rationale behind the lockdown was not that it would prevent infections but that it would allow us to build the health infrastructure to be able to cope with larger numbers infected, opined Montek Singh Ahluwalia

Nitin Gadkari, the minister for MSME and road transport and highways, also called upon the retailers to start exploring option of home delivery.

Seven companies including Aditya Birla Financial Services, Mahindra Financial Services, Bajaj Finance, Tata Capital and L&T Finance collectively raised ₹3,544 crore out of the targeted ₹10,400 crore on Monday and Tuesday.

In the past two weeks, at least five companies have either issued, or announced plans to issue, non-convertible debentures worth a total of Rs 5,500 crore, as per information available from filings with stock exchanges.

The tenure of the instrument is two years and 364 days from the deemed date of allotment.

These will be issued in three tranches of Rs 500 crore, Rs 300 crore and Rs 200 crores with redemptions due on September 30, 2022, November 28, 2022 and December 29, 2022 respectively, it added.

Perpetual bonds are a standard instrument in the kitty of capital markets today.

In Europe, investment grade-rated companies raised $83.2 billion in April, according to Refinitiv data.

The decision did not apply to the ECB's PEPP coronavirus pandemic-fighting programme.

The company said that it will seek shareholders' nod for raising up to Rs 2,500 crore through QIP.

The board has considered and approved the proposal to raise debt of up to Rs 2,000 crore, a company statement said.

The coupon on the bonds, to be maturing in December 2021, has been fixed at 7.06 per cent per annum.

On April 28, Tata Motors had said it would be issuing non-convertible debentures worth Rs 1,000 crore.

The central bank has been aggressively raising liquidity levels in the system.

A hike in taxes on fuels, which will add to government’s revenue, helped lift sentiment.

The gross borrowing programme for the year has been increased to Rs 12 lakh crore.

The issue price for Series I (April 20 to 24, 2020) was Rs 4,639 per gram of gold.

FTMF stunned all by deciding to shutter operations of six schemes with assets under management of more than Rs 25,000 crore late Thursday evening, citing redemption pressures and market volatilities in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the first instance when a fund house is shutting its schemes because of coronavirus related pandemic.