Karnataka's Commerce Minister MB Patil criticised Union Minister Piyush Goyal over Smart Cities projects and said, "Unlike your Smart City projects, Rome was actually built. Your...vision for Smart Cities has been a colossal failure." This comes after Goyal said India needs to create its "own Silicon Valley". "Bengaluru is in India...[It] wasn't built in a day," Patil had said.

About 35 mutual funds collectively held a 6.12% stake in Vodafone Idea as of July 19, NDTV Profit reported. Kotak Mahindra AMC held 47.4 crore shares in Vi till August 31, while Nippon Life India and SBI Funds Management held around 38 crore shares. Vi's shares fell around 20% on Thursday after Supreme Court rejected plea to recalculate AGR dues.

BYJU'S-owned Aakash Educational Services has laid off 80 to 100 employees over the past couple of months, Entrackr reported. Employees including senior and middle-level executives were affected by the cuts. Many long-time employees were reportedly also laid off in the past few weeks. BYJU'S-parent Think and Learn acquired Aakash for about $950 million in 2021.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company is "like the opposite of Apple". He stated that Apple takes a "long time" to polish products before launching them. "If you wait until you get praised...you're missing a bunch of the time when you could've learnt...useful stuff and then incorporated that into the next version," he added.

Infosys on Thursday announced it will invest up to ₹17 crore in spacetech startup GalaxEye. The IT major will acquire a minority shareholding, not exceeding 20%, in the startup. Incubated at IIT Madras and based out of Bengaluru, GalaxEye is building multi-sensor imaging satellites. It raised $6.5 million from Mela Ventures, Speciale Invest and other investors in August.

Businessman Harsh Goenka has urged the Indian industry to "take urgent action" to "foster a healthier workplace culture" after the death of 26-year-old EY employee Anna Sebastian Perayil. "Real change, not condolences, is...needed," Goenka said. He asked companies to prioritise employee well-being, foster open communication and hold leaders accountable for toxic work environments.

The SEBI has barred Axis Capital from taking up new merchant banking assignments in the debt segment till further orders. The company allegedly provided unpermitted guarantees towards non-convertible debentures of Sojo Infotel in the guise of underwriting. "Such activity poses risk to the financial system as it can potentially disrupt the orderly functioning of the market," SEBI said.

US Presidential candidate Donald Trump commented on the interest rate cut of 50 bps by the Federal Reserve. "It shows the [US] economy is very bad to cut [interest rates] by that much, assuming [the Fed] is not just playing politics," Trump said. This was the first cut by the Fed since the early days of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has lifted a ban imposed on the gold loan business of IIFL Finance, an exchange filing stated. The restrictions, imposed in March, prohibited the company from sanctioning, disbursing or selling any of its gold loans. The central bank had imposed the ban over certain material supervisory concerns.

Everest Fleet has raised ₹251.7 crore (about $30.1 million) from existing investor and ride-hailing major Uber via a preferential issue of shares. Everest Fleet’s board approved issuance of 13,726 Series C CCPS to Uber India to raise ₹251 crore. The startup plans to utilise the fresh funds to expand its business operations and meet its working capital requirements.