♦ Sumant Kathpalia was reappointed as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the IndusInd Bank. Kathpalia’s new term will commence on March 24, 2025, and extend through March 23, 2028.
♦ He has been serving as MD and CEO since March 2020.
♦ Kathpalia is a career banker with over 36 years of experience in large multinational banks such as Citibank, Bank of America and ABN AMRO prior to joining Induslnd Bank.
Posted Date: September 30, 2024Persons in News
♦ M V Shreyams Kumar was elected president of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS), an apex body of publishers of newspapers, magazines, and periodicals on 27 September 2024. He is the Managing Director of the Mathrubhumi Printing & Publishing Company. Kumar succeeds Rakesh Sharma of Aaj Samaj newspaper.
♦ Vivek Gupta of Sanmarg was elected Deputy President, and Lokmat's Karan Rajendra Darda became Vice President. Also, Amar Ujala's Tanmay Maheshwari was elected as honorary treasurer of the society.
♦ The election was held during the 85th annual general meeting of the INS.
Posted Date: September 27, 2024♦ Liberal Democratic Party leader and former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba was elected Japan's Prime Minister. He won his party's leadership contest on 27 September 2024. Among the nine candidates vying for the position, Ishiba secured 215 votes, defeating Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi by a narrow margin of 21 votes. He will replace current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
♦ Shigeru Ishiba will assume office as the next Prime Minister once parliament convenes in October 2024.
♦ Ishiba first entered Japan’s parliament in 1986. He has served as Defence and Agriculture Minister.
Posted Date: September 27, 2024♦ Hurun India released its Under35s list 2024 on September 26. The list highlights 150 outstanding entrepreneurs under 35, recognising those with a minimum business valuation of USD 50 million for first-gen and USD 100 million for next-gen leaders across India. Isha Ambani (32), a non-executive director at Reliance Retail, and Parita Parekh (32) from Toddle have been recognized as the youngest women on the inaugural 2024 Hurun India Under35s list.
♦ The youngest entrepreneur featured on the list is Ankush Sachdeva (31), co-founder and CEO of Sharechat and an IIT Kanpur graduate.
♦ List of Hurun India Under- 35 Indian entrepreneurs:
1. Ankush Sachdeva
2. Neetish Sarda
3. Akshit Jain
4. Chaitanya Rathi
5. Jay Vijay Shirke
6. Rahul Raj
7. Rajan Bajaj
8. Raghav Gupta
9. Rishi Raj Rathore
10. Hemesh Singh
11. Saransh Garg
12. Raghav Bagai
13. Vinod Kumar Meena
14. Arjun Ahluwalia
15. Nishant Chandra
16. Manan Shah
17. Pranav Agarwal
18. Keshav Reddy
19. Rohan Nayak
20. Siddharth Vij
21. Rishabh Desai
22. Mihir Gupta
23. Alakh Pandey
24. Akshit Gupta
25. Pallon Mistry
26. Ramanshu Mahaur
27. Vaibhav Khandelwal
28. Saurav Swaroop
29. Nishanth KS
30. Parita Parekh
31. Isha Ambani
32. Aakash Ambani
33. Ajeesh Achuthan
34. Bala Sarda
35. Aman Mehta
Posted Date: September 26, 2024♦ Air Marshal SP Dharkar was appointed as the next Vice Chief of Air Staff on 25 September 2024. He will succeed Air Marshal AP Singh, who is set to become the Chief of Air Staff. Dharkar will be assuming his new role after the new Air Force chief takes over on September 30.
♦ Dharkar was commissioned into Air Force in June 1985. He has 3,6000 hours of flying experience.
Posted Date: September 25, 2024♦ K.V.S. Manian has assumed charge as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Federal Bank. He replaced Shyam Srinivasan who recently completed his term as the MD & CEO of Federal Bank after 14 years. Manian joins Federal Bank after a career spanning over two and a half decades at Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited.
Posted Date: September 24, 2024♦ Rhea Singha (18) was crowned Miss Universe India 2024 on 23 September 2024. She is from Gujarat. She will now represent India at the global Miss Universe 2024 pageant. The grand finale of Miss Universe India 2024 was held in Jaipur, Rajasthan.
♦ Actress and Miss Universe India 2015, Urvashi Rautela served as a judge at the event.
Posted Date: September 23, 2024♦ Senior IPS officer Alok Ranjan was appointed the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) chief. He will be in this position until 30 June 2026. He is a 1991-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre. He succeeded Vivek Gogia.
Posted Date: September 23, 2024♦ Film star Konidela Chiranjeevi was honoured with the award of the most prolific star in the Indian film industry by the Guinness World Records on 22 September 2024. Mega star Chiranjeevi has performed 24,000 dance moves in 537 songs in his 156 films in a span of 45 years.
♦ A representative of the Guinness World Records handed over the certificate to Chiranjeevi.
♦ Chiranjeevi was bestowed with Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian honour awarded in India in 2023. He was previously honoured with Padma Bhushan in 2006.
Posted Date: September 22, 2024♦ The leader of Janataka Vimukti Peramuna, Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won Sri Lanka's presidential election on 22 September 2024. He secured 42.31 percent of the vote. Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa took second place with 32.76 percent of the vote, while outgoing President Ranil Wickremesinghe in third with 17.27 percent. Dissanayake was born on 24 November 1968.
Posted Date: September 22, 2024♦ Air Marshal Amar Preet Singh was appointed the next Chief of the Air Staff on 21 September 2024. He is currently the Vice Chief of the Indian Air Force (IAF).
♦ Amar Preet Singh will take over the top post on September 30 when the incumbent Air Chief Marshal V.R. Chaudhari retires on superannuation.
♦ Sing was born on 27 October 1964. He was commissioned into the Indian Air Force's fighter pilot stream in December 1984.
♦ He has served as Air Defence Commander at the South Western Air Command and as Senior Air Staff Officer at the Eastern Air Command.
Posted Date: September 21, 2024♦ E-commerce major Amazon appointed Samir Kumar as the country manager for India on 18 September 2024. He replaced Manish Tiwary. Kumar will take India's responsibility in addition to his current charter of leading Amazon’s consumer businesses in the Middle East, South Africa, and Turkey.
♦ Kumar joined Amazon in 1999. He was a part of the original team that planned and launched Amazon.in in 2013.
♦ Riyad Mathew was unanimously elected as the Chairman of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) for 2024-25 on 18 September 2024. He is the chief associate editor and director of the Malayala Manorama Group. Mathew is also a director on the board of the Press Trust of India (PTI) since August 2009. He was the chairman of the PTI board for 2016-17.
♦ Karunesh Bajaj of ITC Limited representing advertisers/clients on the ABC Council was unanimously elected as deputy chairman of the bureau.
♦ Mohit Jain of Bennett Coleman & Co. Limited, representing publisher members on the council, was unanimously re-elected as secretary.
♦ Senior AAP leader Atishi was elected as the New Delhi Chief Minister on 17 September 2024.
♦ The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators unanimously agreed after Arvind Kejriwal proposed her name as his successor.
♦ Atishi holds at least 14 key portfolios in the outgoing Kejriwal-led government including Finance, Education, Public Works Department, Power, Revenue, Law, Planning, Services, Information and Publicity, and Vigilance.
♦ She won from Kalkaji assembly seat in 2020 assembly polls.
♦ Atishi was born on June 8, 1981.
♦ Atishi will become the third woman Chief Minister of Delhi after Sushma Swaraj (1998) and Sheila Dikshit (1998- 2013).
Posted Date: September 18, 2024♦ Senior IPS officer Amrit Mohan Prasad was appointed as the Director General of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) on 13 September 2024. He is a 1989-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of Odisha cadre. He was appointed for a tenure up to the date of his superannuation on August 31, 2025.
♦ Amrit Mohan presently working as Special Director General of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).
♦ The SSB guards the country’s frontiers with Nepal and Bhutan.
Posted Date: September 13, 2024♦ Portugal football star Cristiano Ronaldo became the first individual to reach one billion (100 crores) followers on all social media channels. Ronaldo is the most followed individual on Instagram, and recently started his YouTube channel 'UR. Cristiano.' The channel registered 50 million subscribers under one week, and also it took him only 90 minutes to break one million subscribers.
♦ Recently Ronaldo created another record, becoming the first-ever football player to score 900 career goals.
♦ Ronaldo has 638 million followers in Instagram, 170 million followers in Facebook, 113 million followers in X (formerly Twitter) and 60.6 million followers in YouTube.
♦ Veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury passed away in New Delhi on 12 September 2024. He was 72 years old. He was born in Chennai on 12 August 1952.
♦ Yechury served as a Rajya Sabha MP for 12 years, from 2005 to 2017.
♦ He assumed the role of the fifth general secretary of the CPI(M) at the 21st party congress in Visakhapatnam on 19 April 2015, succeeding Prakash Karat and was re-elected to the position in 2018 and 2022.
♦ Yechury’s political career began in 1974 with his involvement in the Students’ Federation of India (SFI). In 1984, he was elected to the Central Committee of the CPI(M) as a permanent invitee. By 1992, he had ascended to the Politburo, a role he held for over thirty years.
♦ Union Minister for Civil Aviation Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu inaugurated the 2nd Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Civil Aviation (APMC) at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi on 11 September 2024. The event drew representatives from 29 countries and key aviation figures.
♦ In this meeting Ram Mohan Naidu was unanimously elected as Chairman of the APMC. Viliame Rogoibuli Gavoka, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation of Fiji was elected as Vice Chairman of the APMC.
♦ India is currently the third largest in the domestic segment. In the last decade (2014-20), the number of aircraft in India has increased from 400 to more than 800 and airports have exponentially grown from 74 to 157.
♦ RS Sharma was appointed as the Non-Executive Chairperson of the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). He is a 1978 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Jharkhand cadre.
♦ He has previously served as the Director General and Mission Director of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), and CEO of the National Health Authority.
♦ He has also been a member of the ONDC Advisory Council and the ONDC Technology and Strategy Review Council.
♦ Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was re-elected for a second term with 95% of the vote. The country’s electoral authority, ANIE announced this on 8 September 2024.
♦ Moderate Islamist candidate Abdelaali Hassani got 3.17% of the vote, while socialist contender Youcef Aouchiche received 2.16%.
♦ Abdelmadjid Tebboune became Algerian President for the first time in 2019.
Posted Date: September 8, 2024♦ Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka clinched the maiden US Open title on 8 September 2024. The world No. 2 Sabalenka defeated world No. 6 American Jessica Pegula 7-5 7-5 in the Women’s Singles final at the Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York. With this win, Sabalenka clinched her third Grand Slam title, following her back-to-back triumphs at the Australian Open.
♦ Latvian Jelena Ostapenko and Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok won the women’s doubles crown at the U.S. Open with a 6-4 6-3 victory over Chinese-French pairing Zhang Shaui and Kristina Mladenovic.
Posted Date: September 8, 2024♦ Former Indian shooter Randhir Singh was elected unopposed as the first Indian President of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) during the 44th General Assembly in New Delhi on 8 September 2024. He is a former Asian Games gold medalist in trap shooting and has been a key figure in sports administration for decades.
♦ His roles include Secretary General of the Indian Olympic Association (1987-2012) and Vice-Chairman of the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games organizing committee.
♦ Singh served as OCA Secretary General from 1991 to 2015 and was later appointed Life Vice President. He became the OCA’s Acting President in 2021 before officially taking on the role of President in 2024.
Posted Date: September 8, 2024♦ Senior IAS officer Tuhin Kanta Pandey was appointed Finance Secretary on 7 September 2024. He is a 1987 batch IAS officer from the Odisha cadre. Pandey replaced T.V. Somanathan, who was appointed the Cabinet Secretary.
♦ Pandey is currently serving in Finance Ministry as Secretary in charge of two key domains, the Departments of Public Enterprises (DPE), and Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM).
Posted Date: September 7, 2024TIME Magazine has unveiled its prestigious ‘TIME100 Most Influential People in AI 2024’ list. The list highlights the most impactful figures in artificial intelligence (AI). It features 15 Indian or Indian-origin people. Among them are Actor Anil Kapoor, Union Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani.
The othher Indian or Indian-origin people in this lisr are..
♦ Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet
♦ Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
♦ Rohit Prasad, the SVP and head scientist of Artificial General Intelligence at Amazon
♦ Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of the AI “answer engine” Perplexity
♦ Amandeep Singh Gill, United Nations Secretary General’s Envoy on Technology
♦ Divya Siddharth, co-founder of the nonprofit Collective Intelligence Project
♦ Anant Vijay Singh, product lead at Proton
♦ Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures
♦ Dwarkesh Patel, host of Dwarkesh Podcast
♦ Arati Prabhakar, Director, US Office of Science and Technology Policy
♦ Shiv Rao, Co-founder and CEO of Abridge
♦ India’s Hokato Hotozhe Sema won the bronze medal in the men’s shot put F57 class at the Paris Paralympics on 6 September 2024. He secured the medal with a personal best of 14.65m on his fourth attempt.
♦ Islamic Republic of Iran’s Yasin Khosravi clinched the gold-medal, measuring 15.96m. Brazil’s Thiago Paulino dos Santos won the silver medal for a 15.06m effort. India’s Soman Rana came fifth with a best of 14.07m.
♦ The F57 classification is a part of sports classes for field athletes able to perform seated throws. Their movement is affected in either one or two legs.
♦ Hokato Hotozhe Sema, who serves in the Indian Army, lost his left leg in a landmine blast during a military operation in 2002.
Posted Date: September 6, 2024♦ Praveen Kumar won a gold medal in the men’s high jump T64 event at the Paris Paralympics on 6 September 2024. He topped in final with an area record of 2.08m. USA’s Derek Loccident claimed the silver with a jump of 2.06m while Uzbekistan’s Temurbek Giyazov, who notched a personal best 2.03m, finished third.
♦ He is the third high jumper after Sharad Kumar and Mariyappan Thangavelu to secure a medal in Paris. Sharad and Thangavelu won silver and bronze in the men’s high jump T63 event on 3 September 2024.
Posted Date: September 6, 2024♦ Anish Dayal Singh was given the additional charge of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) chief by The Union Government on 5 September 2024. Currently he is the CRPF Director General (DG).
♦ Anish is an IPS officer of the 1988 batch from Manipur cadre. He is scheduled to retire from service on 31 December 2024.
♦ NCB chief S N Pradhan retired last week, the government gave an additional charge to Anish in his place.
Posted Date: September 5, 2024♦ French President Emmanuel Macron has named Michel Barnier as Prime Minister of the country on 5 September 2024. Barnier is a former chief Brexit negotiator of the European Union.
♦ Barnier (73) is the oldest prime minister in France’s modern political history. He replaced Gabriel Attal.
♦ In a political career over more than 50 years, Barnier has served as French foreign, European affairs, environment and agriculture minister and twice as a European commissioner.
Posted Date: September 5, 2024♦ Bharath Sesha was appointed as Managing Director (MD) for Philips India on 2 September 2024. In this role, he will spearhead Philips’ growth strategy in India, with a strong focus on enhancing customer satisfaction and driving operational excellence. He succeeded Daniel Mazon, who has moved to a global role at the Philips headquarters in the Netherlands.
♦ Before joining Philips, Bharath Sesha was the MD at Heubach Colorants India.
♦ Air Marshal Tejinder Singh took over as Deputy Chief of the Air Staff of the Indian Air Force in New Delhi on 1 September 2024. He is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy and was commissioned in the fighter stream of the IAF on 13 June 1987. He is a Category 'A' Qualified Flying Instructor with over 4500 hours of flying, an alumnus of Defence Service Staff College and National Defence College.
♦ He was also awarded the Vayu Sena Medal in 2007 and Ati Vishisht Seva Medal in 2022.
