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The government has lowered interest rates on small saving schemes by 0.1 per cent with effect from April 1, 2017. Following this revision, the popular Public Provident Fund (PPF) will fetch an interest rate of 7.9 per cent, its lowest in nearly 40 years, according to National Savings Institute. The Five-Year National Savings Certificate will also fetch an interest rate of 7.9 per cent. The existing rate for PPF and Five-Year National Savings Certificate is currently 8 per cent. The Sukanya Samriddhi Account Scheme, a small deposit scheme for the girl child, will offer an interest rate of 8.4 per cent annually, from 8.5 per cent at present. "On the basis of the decision of the government, interest rates for small savings schemes are to be notified on a quarterly basis," the Finance Ministry said while notifying the rates for the fourth quarter of 2016-17 starting from April 1, 2017. Source: NDTV Profit

A crisp income tax form for salaried individuals will be introduced from April 1, doing away with some columns to simplify the filing of returns. Individuals with salary and interest income will have to fill fewer columns as some of these for claiming income deductions have been clubbed in ITR1 form called 'Sahaj'. In the form for Assessment Year 2017-18, deductions claimed under different sections of Chapter VIA have been removed and only mostly used ones have been included. "Columns that will remain include those for claiming deductions under Section 80C, mediclaim (80D). Those individuals who want to show deductions under other heads can do so by selecting an option," an official told PTI. Currently, the ITR 1/Sahaj has 18 different columns for claiming deductions under Section 80 of the Income Tax Act. Under section 80C, a deduction of Rs 1.5 lakh can be claimed from total income for investments in LIC, PPF and repayment of housing loan. Section 80D provides

Only 2 more days for Jio’s free offer to expire and the company has managed to convert only 13% of the current (free) user base. Jio network had witnessed over a 100 million new subscribers within just 170 days.Out of 120 million userbase, Jio has managed to convert 16 million customers for the Jio Prime membership offer (out of 120 million), per ET now channel. At 13.3%, is this a good conversion for Jio? Any SAAS entrepreneur would say ‘hell yeah!’, but here is an important consideration: There is no Jio for you if you aren’t upgrading. That is, this ain’t a freemium model – days of free data/voice are over. so either you are a paying customer or you just don’t exist (for Jio). Like anything Indian, expect people to pay/sign up on the last day. But given that it coincides with year end (and tax et al deadline), was 31st March deadline a bad idea for Jio? What would you expect a good conversion number for Jio to be? 60%? Aside, don’t you think that Airtel played its ‘fastest ne

Xiaomi's much-anticipated smartphone the Redmi Note 4 has been launched in India at a starting price of Rs 9,999 for 2GB RAM and 32GB ROM version. The Redmi Note 4 also comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM and costs Rs 12,999 and a 3GB RAM and 32GB ROM version at Rs 10,999. This is Xiaomi's first offering in the Indian market for the year 2017 and is a successor to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3. Here's our review of the top of the line Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 Black Edition, 4GB RAM with 64GB ROM variant. Verdict Just like Darth Maul who's a deadly and agile Sith Lord, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 is a phone that instils fear among other companies who compete in the affordable smartphone space. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 is a formidable warrior in this space and a worthy successor to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3. Xiaomi's started the year on a high note with its Redmi Note 4. This phone has all that takes to be the affordable phone king in 2017. If you are looking to buy a c

Allaying apprehension of spike in prices of goods and commodities after the roll out of the GST, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the tax rates will be kept at the current levels so as not to have any inflationary impact. Introducing four bills to give effect to the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Jaitley said the legislations will have to be passed by Parliament and one by each of the state assemblies to turn India into one market with a single tax rate. The Finance Minister said the aim of the GST Council is to decide everything relating to the tax structure with consensus and this is for the first time that such an arrangement has been made, based on the principle of shared sovereignty of both the Centre and the state governments. "These are revolutionary bills which will benefit all. ...States have pooled in their sovereignty into the GST council, and Centre has done the same," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several senior members of the Union Cabinet

Transforming culture of a company is "difficult" but the challenge is to transition "without losing values" and "ethos", Infosys chief Vishal Sikka has said. The comments come against the backdrop of a recent public spat between Infosys founders and board members over alleged governance lapses. The founders had raised concerns over Sikka's steep compensation hike and expensive severance packages of former executives Rajiv Bansal (CFO) and David Kennedy (General Counsel). "It is very, very tough. Everybody says it is tough, but when you do it in reality, when you exercise it, you realise that it is much more difficult than it seems," said Sikka when asked about transforming the culture of an organisation to become innovative. He was speaking at a discussion conducted by Wharton School. Acknowledging the role played by co-founder N R Narayana Murthy, Sikka said having a culture of learning always helps. "We ha

Delhi-based Intex Technologies has launched a Rs 150-200-crore fund to invest in startups with a strategic fit, the latest mobile phone maker to do so after Micromax and Xiaomi announced plans to back early-stage startups. The first investment from the corpus has gone into Rooter, a startup creating a mobile app to enable sports fans to interact live with each other during a match. Intex Technologies, which owns the Gujarat Lions IPL team and reported revenue of Rs 6,213 crore for 2015-16, plans to invest from its balance sheet primarily in businesses with which it has synergy , such as electronics, apps, mobile phones, human resources and sports. "Investments in early-stage star tups are part of our larger plan to diversify into other businesses such as sports, healthcare and internet of things. Equity stakes in startups may range from 10-15% to 25% while ticket sizes may range from Rs10-15 crore," said Keshav Bansal, director, Intex Technologies. The move

Looks like Amazon's invite-only MARS conference in Palm Springs is now an annual tradition. Last week, Amazon threw another event, according to photographer Ric Miller, who lives next to the hotel where the event took place and took some photos for us. MARS stands for Machine learning, home Automation, Robotics and Space exploration. Miller, an IT consultant who has worked for companies like Stanford School of Medicine, got wind of the event when he saw a Blue Origin rocket sticking up over the hotel's hedge. He immediately recognized what it was and who it belonged to. But the event wasn't exactly a secret. People were  tweeting out various pictures,  mostly of the robots. According to someone who works for the upscale Parker Hotel, in Palm Springs, the conference lasted three days and Amazon booked out the whole resort. Amazon held MARS 2016 a year ago at the same locale, where 130 invitees from tech and Hollywood showed up. The event included a fireside chat with auth

Chat apps that promise to prevent your messages being accessed by strangers are under scrutiny again following last week's terror attack in London. On Sunday, the home secretary said the intelligence services must be able to access relevant information. Her comments followed the discovery that Khalid Masood appeared to have used WhatsApp minutes before carrying out his killings. There are doubts about whether that action was related to the atrocity. BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw has highlighted that the police had declared that they believed Masood had acted alone on the day, and would not have done so unless they had accessed and read messages stored on his phone. Even so, the home secretary has summoned WhatsApp's owner, Facebook, and other technology companies to a meeting on Thursday to discuss ways to ensure that security officers get the data they need in the future. Source: BBC Tech

WikiLeaks on Thursday announced that it had released more Vault 7 documentation online, including details about several CIA projects to infect Apple's Mac computer firmware and operating system. The site unloaded its first batch of stolen Vault 7 data earlier this month. The CIA's Embedded Development Branch developed malware that could persist even if the targeted computer were reformatted and its OS were reinstalled, according to data WikiLeaks exposed. The newly released files shone a spotlight on the CIA's efforts to gain "persistence" in Apple devices, including Mac computers and iPhones, via malware designed to attack their firmware. One of the documents highlighted in Thursday's data dump exposes the "Sonic Screwdriver" project, which likely was named for the handheld tool wielded by the science fiction character "Doctor Who," as the device seemingly can bypass any digital or mechanical lock. The CIA described it as a

NASA has always embraced emerging technology for visualization, even if that tech was seemingly developed for frivolous entertainment. We recently covered its holographic Mars exhibit , and the many 3D resources that NASA makes available to developers and educators. Now, the US space agency has partnered with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to create a mixed reality International Space Station simulator. To become a qualified NASA astronaut, candidates spend up to two years of training learning the ropes through intensive classes and simulations that help them prepare for working while weightless, navigating around different parts of the space shuttle and international space station, and serving as each others’ emergency medical technicians, among other things. In the past, astronaut training meant dives in a “ neutral buoyancy lab, ” a giant pool that holds 6.2 million gallons of water, and spending time at NASA’s “ space vehicle mock-up facility, ” a life-sized model of the space sh

Automation is the new norm across sectors and will affect the bottom of the pyramid so much so that four out of every 10 jobs globally would be lost due to this by 2021 , experts say. Automation is the new normal in sectors like engineering , manufacturing , automobiles , IT and banking . As automation adoption increases, all high transaction and labour intensive jobs will take a hit. According to PeopleStrong CEO and Founder Pankaj Bansal, there will be a visible change in the next 3-4 years, first major effects will be seen in the sectors like manufacturing, IT and ITeS and security services and agriculture. "We predict that by 2021, 4 out of every 10 jobs globally would be lost because of automation. And of these, one in every 4 will be from India . That sums up to 23 per cent of job loss in India," Bansal said. India produces 5.5 million jobs (across levels) every year, but this number falls short of jobs needed to employ available talent and automation is further

Debit cards have conclusively displaced credit cards as the primary mode of payment in the country following demonetization . Until October last year, despite outnumbering credit cards by a factor of more than 25, debit cards accounted for only 42% of the total card spend. This has jumped to 60% after demonetization, which was announced on November 8, 2016. The change is largely driven by small public sector lenders like Oriental Bank of Commerce and Punjab & Sind Bank, where usage of cards has gone up nearly five times. Debit card transactions tripled-from October 2016 levels-in December. Transactions in January slipped to double those in October last year. However, according to payments companies, they are seeing stickiness in use of debit cards for utility and petrol bill payments and travel bookings. Last October, public sector banks saw transactions worth Rs 10,893 crore from the 61.7 crore debit cards they had issued till then. As against this, private and foreign banks ha

The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the Finance Bill, ratifying the tax proposals announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech. This was a day after Jaitley inserted 40 amendments in the last-minute before voting in the lower house of the Parliament. The bill makes Aadhaar cards mandatory for the filing of income tax returns. “We are moving towards a time when there will be no shadow economy but some are still seeing virtues of cash transactions,” the finance minister said in the Lok Sabha, adding that no arbitrary power would be given to the Tax Department and that there were no plans to tax farmers’ income. “Tax buoyancy has improved in the last two years,” Jaitley added. Here are the 10 changes to the income tax structure that would come into effect from April 1: 1. Tax rates have been reduced from 10 per cent to 5 per cent for incomes that fall in the Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 5 lakh bracket, resulting in tax saving of up to Rs 12,500 per year and Rs 14,806 for people

State run-BSNL has extended the validity of its broadband plan BB249 till June 30, 2017, according to a report by Kerala Telecom Info. The telco had recently started offering 1GB of data for every prepaid consumer who was not using BSNL GSM mobile data services. The validity has been extended for all the circles except Jammu Kashmir & Andaman Nicobar areas. This offer by BSNL can only be availed by new users of BSNL Broadband connection and is also available with the BSNL Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) service. For customers opting for the BB249 scheme, BSNL will waive off the installation charges. Although the plan offers the same benefits including 2 Mbps speeds up to 1GB and 1 Mbps speeds after crossing the FUP of 1GB. Also, the data speeds will remain 1 Mbps till the end of the month irrespective of the data consumption. The plan can also be converted to BSNL BBG Combo ULD 499 plan that offers 2 Mbps speeds up to 2GB, and 1 Mbps speeds beyond the FUP. In a statement earlier, BSNL

All existing subscribers of mobile services will have to go for Aadhaar-based re-verification soon, with the government instructing telecom operators to initiate the process. Cellular operators' body COAI said its members may meet this week to discuss the modalities of rolling out the verification process for the existing one billion-plus mobile phone users. "...all licensees shall re-verify all existing mobile subscribers (prepaid and postpaid) through Aadhaar-based eKYC process...," a notification issued by the telecom department said. It further added that all licensees will have to inform existing subscribers - through advertisements in print and electronic media as well as SMS - about the order of the Supreme Court for re-verification activity. They have also been asked to upload the details of the exercise on their website. The Supreme Court, in an order in February this year, had observed that, "an effective process has been evolved to ensure the identit

It's not easy to train a neural network. Even if they're not difficult to implement, it can take hours to get them ready no matter how much computing power you can use. OpenAI researchers may have a better solution: forgetting many of the usual rules. They've developed an evolution strategy (no, it doesn't relate much to biological evolution) that promises more powerful AI systems. Rather than use standard reinforcement training, they create a "black box" where they forget that the environment and neural networks are even involved. It's all about optimizing a given function in isolation and sharing it as necessary. The system starts with many random parameters, makes guesses, and then tweaks follow-up guesses to favor the more successful candidates, gradually whittling things down to the ideal answer. You may start with a million numbers, but you'll end up with just one in the end. It sounds a bit mysterious, but the benefits are easy to understand.

Yahoo Japan has invested 490 million yen ($4.4 million) into SB Drive, an autonomous vehicle joint venture established in Japan last year by telecom giant SoftBank and research company Advanced Smart Mobility. SoftBank also extended its investment by another 190 million yen ($1.7 million), taking its total stake to 510 million yen ($4.6 million) following its share purchase last April, according to a statement issued earlier today. The ultimate aim of SB Drive is to “commercialize smart mobility services that utilize self-driving technologies,” with a specific focus on community services such as designated bus routes between towns and cities. In its short lifespan so far, SB Drive has been carrying out trials of a fixed-route bus service, as well as a truck convoy for freight transportation. In late 2018, SB Drive says it plans to kick off its first fully autonomous driving trials on public roads. Advanced Smart Mobility is a research offshoot from the University of Tokyo’s ITS Cen

A ban on laptops and tablets in cabin baggage on flights from Turkey and some countries in the Middle East and North Africa to the US and UK has come into effect. Officials say devices "larger than a smartphone" must travel in the hold because of an increased risk that they could contain explosives. At least one airline is allowing devices to be used up until boarding. The US ban covers eight countries, while the UK restrictions apply to six. Nine airlines from eight countries - Turkey, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait - are affected by the US ban. They operate about 50 flights a day to the US. UAE airline Emirates is offering complimentary packing and shipping services at gates to enable passengers to use their electronic devices after check-in and until boarding. That also means passengers flying on two-leg trips from other countries to the US through Dubai can use their laptops on the first leg of their flights. The UK ba

Well, we all know about reliance jio. Reliance jio is the only telecom operator in India that is giving away six months of free services which include unlimited voice calls, 4G data, and the internet to its users. Well, now after giving sleepless nights to all major telecom operators in India, jio is now preparing to make its debut in the broadband market. Well, we previously know about Jio GigaFiber services. Reliance jio is testing Jio GigaFiber broadband services in Mumbai. The company will be providing a special “Welcome Offer” to all the subscribers. Well, under welcome offer Reliance jio will be giving three months of free broadband services at the speed of 100Mbps. Subscribers will get the speed of up to 100 Mbps under Jio GigaFiber subscription. The report also claimed that Jio GigaFiber broadband service would be available in three variant – Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The subscription to Jio GigaFiber starts from Rs 500. At Rs 500 users will get the download speed

Did you know that you can run Android apps in Google Chrome? Back in 2015, Google launched a tool called ARC Welder, which is designed to let developers test their applications in the Chrome browser so they can be ported to Chrome OS. ARC Welder’s primary goal is to make it easy for developers to create more apps for Chrome OS, but the tool can be used by anyone to simply run Android apps in their browser. It’s pretty easy to run Android apps using the ARC Welder, and below we’ll show you how. It’s worth mentioning, however, that some Android apps don’t run particularly well in Chrome, so you’ll need to do a bit of experimentation to discover which apps work best. Install ARC Welder The easiest part of the whole process is installing ARC Welder. Simply head to the Chrome Web Store page for ARC Welder and click install. After the short installation process is complete, you’ll be able to run ARC Welder from the Chrome apps page. If you have a device that can run Chrome an

Robotics and artificial intelligence could affect almost a third of UK jobs by the 2030s, according to a study. However, the report from accountancy firm PwC also predicted that the nature of some occupations would change rather than disappear. It added that automation could create more wealth and additional jobs elsewhere in the economy. Jobs in manufacturing and retail were among the most at risk from the new technologies, the report said. The study estimated that 30% of existing jobs in the UK were potentially at a high risk of automation, compared with 38% in the US, 35% in Germany and 21% in Japan. John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC, told the BBC that "more manual, routine jobs" which "can effectively be programmed" were the most at risk. "Jobs where you've got more of a human touch, like health and education," would be safer, he said. Under threat The use of robots in the workplace is rising with workers in some sectors

After years of stubborn caution, Facebook is finally embracing the animated GIF. Next week Facebook will begin testing a GIF button that lets users post GIFs from services like Giphy and Tenor as comments, a source told TechCrunch. We inquired with Facebook, which confirmed the GIF test is coming with this statement: “Everyone loves a good GIF and we know that people want to be able to use them in comments. So we’re about to start testing the ability to add GIFs to comments and we’ll share more when we can, but for now we repeat that this is just a test.” At first this GIF comment button will only be available to a small percentage of Facebook users, but it could roll out to everyone if it proves popular. It will work similarly to the GIF button in Facebook Messenger, allowing users to both browse trending GIFs and search for specific reactions in-line. Users still won’t have the ability to select and share GIFs as News Feed posts, but comment GIFs could lay the groundwork for

Google took a handful of us by surprise when it announced the next biggest update of Android. Aptly named Android O, this particular update comes with a handful of new features as you would expect. With some of them being extensions of what we have seen on OEM skinned Android smartphones in the past. More details will be provided during the I/O event in a couple of months from now. As it stands, we barely have an idea of what’s different. Google has also made the update available to download. However, it is recommended to stay away from this unless you have a spare device as an early build is bound to be filled with bugs and other issues. So what are some of the Android O features that we’re most looking forward to? All new adaptive icons: This is something that we’ve seen on Samsung smartphones before, but it’s good to see that it’s making an entry to stock Android as well. Developers have the ability to set adaptive icons which can change depending on the device. The icons w

People in Delhi and some other cities will now have a wider choice of taxis with the launch of a new app that also provides roadside pickup, and commission-free registration and enrollment to cab drivers. The app was launched on Thursday across seven cities, including Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Bengaluru. The app 'Baxi', which has been joined by some of the taxi drivers who had stuck work last month over financial issues related to major taxi aggregators, offers fixed pricing -- which means no surge pricing. "The base fare for cabs would be Rs 50, beyond which Rs 9 per km and Rs 1 per minute of waiting charge shall be charged. It would not have any surge charges," Vinayak Sawant, the city head of Baxi in Mumbai, told IANS. Sawant said that Baxi had received about 800 applications from cabbies across Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida till a day before the app was launched. "We have launched Baxi app for cabs across NCR a

The micro-blogging service, which has struggled to grow its user base in recent years, is carrying out surveys to “assess interest” in the idea. Paying members would get access to an enhanced version of Tweetdeck, Twitter’s souped-up interface that offers more functionality than Twitter.com. The company has not made any indication it is considering charging regular users of the service. But a premium membership scheme could offer Twitter a new revenue stream at a time when users are increasingly turning to other networks such as Snapchat. Twitter’s active user base has plateaued - and advertising revenues, currently the firms only meaningful income stream, are in decline. Twitter’s struggles come despite the online advertising market growing considerably in the past year. 'More valuable' Twitter has surveyed a small selection of its users about the idea. In a statement, the company said: "We regularly conduct user research to gather feedback

A bulk of India’s 1.1 billion telecom subscribers will soon have to go through a fresh verification exercise based on their Aadhaar identification, following an order of the Supreme Court last month. The industry estimates the process could cost at least Rs 1,000 crore at a time when companies are burdened with debt and fighting a tariff war. “All licensees shall intimate their existing subscribers through advertisement in print/electronic media as well as SMS about the orders of the Supreme Court for re-verification activity and shall upload the complete details of this activity on their website,” said a notice issued by department of telecommunications on Thursday. The notice comes within a month of the top court order making it mandatory for telecom subscribers to be re-verified via Aadhaar cards in a push to root out those who have used fraudulent means to get connections. SC passed the order on February 6, providing a deadline of exactly one year — February 6, 2

President Donald Trump's talk of visa reform is a major thorn in the side of India's software services firms, but one of the industry's biggest players says it isn't worried. "We're pretty strong in the U.S. — we have a large presence of U.S. nationals working for us, and we continue to invest," Girish Ramachandran, Asia-Pacific president of Tata Consultancy Services, told CNBC on the sidelines of the Boao Forum in Hainan. "We feel confident … but overall, we're pretty optimistic about business across these markets." For years, IT firms in the world's largest democracy, including Tata competitors Infosys and Wipro, have relied on the AmericanH-1B visa program to send employees to the U.S., which is the industry's most important overseas market. TCS, for instance, gets roughly half of its revenue from the U.S. The program was launched decades ago to allow companies to temporarily bring over skilled foreign employees if they co

Xiaomi has seen a lot of success with its flash sale model so much so that the sales tend to end in mere seconds. This leaves a lot of Mi fans out there having to wait for the next sale. The company is slowly stepping out of its flash sale system by introducing online pre-orders on  Mi.com . Pre-orders for the  Redmi Note 4  will open Friday at 12pm from March 31 on the company's own website. Those who pre-order the Redmi Note 4 will have to make the payment online after which the smartphone will be shipped within five days, the company claims. There is no option for cash on delivery. You can also cancel your purchase before the smartphone is shipped and there is a limit to only one smartphone per pre-order. This comes days after the company announced that the  hot-selling Redmi Note 4  is available offline as well. The offline and pre-order systems will likely see a huge demand for the Redmi Note 4 and the onus will now fall on the company to keep up with the demand. The sma