After trading flat in the noon session, Indian share markets witnessed some buying activity in the final hour of trading and finished in green. At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood higher by 83 points, while the NSE Nifty finished up by 42 points. The S&P BSE Mid Cap & the S&P BSE Small Cap indices both finished up by 0.5%. The Metal sector gained the most, followed by PSU and energy stocks.
Asian markets finished mixed as of the most recent closing prices. The Shanghai Composite gained 0.43% and the Hang Seng rose 0.06%. The Nikkei 225 lost 1.29%. European markets are lower today with shares in London off the most. The CAC 40 is down 0.28% while London’s FTSE 100 is off 0.51% and Germany’s DAX is lower by 0.38%.
The rupee was trading at 68.13 against the US$ in the afternoon session. Oil prices were trading at US$ 52.42 at the time of writing.
Infosys share price finished the trading day on an optimistic note (up 0.3%) after it was reported that the company has invested a little over US$ 62 million from its US$ 500 million innovation fund in start-ups. The Innovation fund was set up in 2013 with a corpus of US$100 million earmarked for startups and other innovative businesses outside the company.
The company has invested in a dozen start-ups, including Stellaris Venture Partners, Unsilo, Trifacta, Cloudyn, and TidalScale using the fund. These investments could play an important role in helping the company reach its aspirational goal of US$ 20 billion revenues by 2020.
In April 2015, Infosys had set aside half of the US$ 500 million innovation fund to focus exclusively on new Indian startups and had also launched a startup accelerator. Last month it invested an undisclosed amount from the fund in Mumbai-based IdeaForge, known for manufacturing the Netra unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in its US$ 10 million Series A investment round.
