Day: January 5, 2021

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6 min read

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History has proven that pandemics and outbreaks have pushed forward the evolution of ecommerce. 

In 2003, Alibaba had to quarantine almost all its staff due to the positive SARS diagnosis of one staff member. This period became the incubation period where Jack Ma perfected the Taobao website and launched his first C2C eCom platform. The SARS coronavirus pandemic was a buffer for Taobao and Alibaba as a whole, as they registered immense profits. 

During pandemics, online transactions become habitual for a large chunk of the world’s population. The Covid-19 pandemic isn’t much different from SARS, they both originated from China and they have both caused a shift in the e-commerce space. 

Related: 6 Steps to Building a Successful Online Drop Shipping Business

However, 2020 is about much more than Covid-19. The massive shifts in customer

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The country’s Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irdai) has maintained the obligatory cession of each general insurance policy that is to be reinsured with an Indian firm at 5 per cent for FY21.


“The percentage cession of the sum insured on each general insurance policy to be reinsured with the Indian reinsurer(s) shall be 5 per cent in respect of insurance attaching during the financial year starting April 1, 2021, till March 31, 2022, except the terrorism premium and premium ceded to Nuclear Pool, wherein it would be made ‘NIL’,” Irdai said.



The entire obligatory cession has to be reinsured with India’s largest reinsurer, General Insurance Corporation of India (GIC Re).


Obligatory cession refers to the part of the business that general insurance companies have to mandatorily cede to the national reinsurer, GIC Re. Insurers have to cede 5

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The power ministry has proposed pushing back the deadlines for adoption of new emission norms by coal-fired power plants, saying “an unworkable time schedule” would burden utilities and lead to an increase in power tariffs.


India initially had set a 2017 deadline for thermal power plants to comply with emissions standards for installing Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) units that cut emissions of toxic sulphur dioxide. That was later changed to varying deadlines for different regions, ending in 2022.



Under the latest proposal, no new dates have been set.


However, a final decision will have to be approved by the Supreme Court, which is hearing the issue.


“The target should be to maintain uniform ambient air quality across the country and not uniform emission norms for thermal power plants,” Nishat Kumar, an official at the Ministry of Power

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Gold started the new year on a high in the international market by notching an eight-week peak on Monday, as the dollar slipped broadly to mid-2018 lows with investors selling it for just about everything else in the Asia session, wagering the world’s pandemic recovery would drive other currencies higher. The rupee closed at a four-month high of 73.02 after appreciating 9 paise.


Oil, too, touched multi-month highs on expectations Opec (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) and allied producers may cap output at current levels in February and on hopes that vaccines may curb the spread of the coronavirus and drive an economic rebound. But its price eased a bit in later trade.



Spot gold rose 2.14 per cent to trade at $1,919.11 an ounce by 5.58 pm IST, having hit its highest since November 9 at $1,925.05.

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