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   Shriram Housing Finance  has drawn up an aggressive growth trajectory for the next two years with a plan to close the loan book at around Rs 5,600 crore this fiscal, and end FY24 at the Rs 10,000-crore mark, a top company official has said. The city-based affordable housing focused lender, which is one of the three credit business verticals of the Chennai-based Shriram Group, closed FY21 with a loan book of Rs 3,923 crore, which despite the pandemic washout has already crossed Rs 4,000 crore as of end-June. This means the company plans to add more than 1.5 times of its present book over the next 30 months, managing director and chief executive Ravi Subramanian told PTI in an interview. According to the plan, the loan book should be touching Rs 5,000 crore by December and close the year at around Rs 5,600 crore, and reach Rs 8,000 crore in FY23 and top Rs 10,000 crore by FY24, said Subramanian who is also a fiction-writer. The overall plan is to be amongst the top three...

  Indians are more vulnerable to technology support-related scams compared to the global average, and lost over Rs 15,000 on average in such scams, a  Microsoft  research has found. According to the 2021 Global  Tech Support  Scam Research report, which looks at  tech support  scams and their impact on consumers, consumers in India experienced a relatively high scam encounter rate of 69 per cent during the past 12 months, close to the 70 per cent rate experienced in 2018. In contrast, there was an overall five-point drop in scam encounters globally with a rate of 59 per cent over the same period. The survey was conducted in Spring 2021 and asked consumers to share their experiences with  tech support  scams for the year prior (January 2020 to present). Almost half the consumers surveyed in India (48 per cent) were tricked into continuing with the scam – an eight-point increase from 2018, and three times higher than the global average of 16 pe...

   OnePlus  on Thursday launched the Nord 2  5G  in India. The smartphone comes in blue haze, gray sierra, and green woods colours. Powered by MediaTek Dimensity 1200-AI system-on-chip, the Nord 2  5G  comes with up to 12GB RAM and 256GB on-board storage. It will be available to existing Red Cable Club members on July 26 and July 27 via the ‘Red Cable First Sale’ on the  OnePlus  online store,  OnePlus  Store app and OnePlus Experience Stores. Alongside the Nord 2 5G, OnePlus unveiled the Buds Pro wireless earbuds. The earbuds will launch in India in August. OnePlus Nord 2 5G: Price, sale details, and sale offers The OnePlus Nord 2  5G  comes in 6GB, 8GB, and 12GB RAM variants. While the former two get 128GB on-board storage, the latter comes with 256GB on-board storage. The 6GB RAM variant comes in blue haze colour only, whereas the 8GB and 12GB RAM variants also get the grey sierra colour option. OnePlus also launched an...

   Instagram  said Wednesday it is testing a new feature called ‘Collab’, which will let people collaborate on Feed Posts and Reels. The feature is being rolled out in India and the United Kingdom. With ‘Collab’, one user can now invite another as a collaborator on the post or reel. If the invitee accepts, both accounts will appear in the post or reel header, and the content will be shared with the followers of both users. Reels is Instagram's short-video format, and has been very popular with creators on the platform. "Collaborating is a huge part of how people connect on  Instagram.  With ‘Collab’, you can invite a collaborator to your Feed Post and Reels, so they can share the content with their followers. If they accept, then they’ll be shown as an author, the content will be shared with their Profile Grid and their followers in Feed, and you will both see your shared feedback," said  Instagram  in a statement. The Facebook-owned platform is only t...

   India has been sending a large contingent for the last three editions of the Summer  Olympics.  The Tokyo  Olympics  2021 will see a 228-member strong contingent from India participate in 18 sporting events. India's Olympic contingent for Tokyo 2020 includes 127 participants from 18 sports, including two alternate players and one reserve goalie in men's and women's hockey squads, respectively. Four Indian sailors -- Nethra Kumanan and Vishnu Saravanan (laser class), KC Ganapathy and Varun Thakkar (49er class) -- were the first to reach Tokyo from their training bases in Europe. Check Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony, India full schedule and live telecast details here India in previous Olympics In the 2016 Rio Olympics, 117 Indian  athletes  participated (63 men and 54 women) across 15 sports. The Indian roster featured three Olympic medalists from London, including badminton star Saina Nehwal, freestyle wrestler and four-time Olympian Yogeshwar Dutt...

   The prevalence of the highly-transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19 among specimens sequenced over the past four weeks exceeded 75 per cent in many countries worldwide, including India, China, Russia, Israel and the UK, the  WHO  has said. In the COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update published July 20, the World Health Organisation said that despite efforts to extend vaccination coverage, many countries across all six  WHO  regions continue to experience surges in  coronavirus  cases. Over the past week, the highest numbers of new cases were reported from Indonesia (350,273 new cases; a 44 per cent increase), the UK (296,447 new cases; 41 per cent increase), Brazil (287,610 new cases; 14 per cent decrease), India (268,843 new cases; 8 per cent decrease) and the US (216,433 new cases; 68 per cent increase). The update noted that as of July 20, a total of over 2.4 million SARS-CoV-2 sequences have been submitted to GISAID, the global science in...

   NASA  is making final preparations for its Perseverance Mars rover to collect its first-ever sample of Martian rock, which future planned missions will transport to Earth. The six-wheeled geologist is searching for a scientifically interesting target in a part of Jezero Crater called the "Cratered Floor Fractured Rough." This important mission milestone is expected to begin within the next two weeks. Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, and  NASA  kicked off the rover mission's science phase on June 1, exploring a 1.5-square-mile (4-square-kilometer) patch of crater floor that may contain Jezero's deepest and most ancient layers of exposed bedrock. "When Neil Armstrong took the first sample from the Sea of Tranquility 52 years ago, he began a process that would rewrite what humanity knew about the Moon," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at  NASA  Headquarters. "I have every expectation that Perseverance's...