
Lava Storm Play and Storm Lite 5G launched: 120Hz display, 50MP camera and more under Rs 10,000
The Lava Storm Play and Storm Lite bring a decent mix of specs that are quite rare in the budget segment. Starting with displays, both phones come with a 6.75-inch HD+ screen and support up to a 120Hz refresh rate. It's good to see that not just the Storm Play, but even the Storm Lite, which is priced starting at Rs 7,999, also gets a 120Hz panel.advertisementBoth phones run on MediaTek Dimensity chipsets — the Storm Play is powered by the Dimensity 7060, while the Storm Lite comes with the Dimensity 6400. These chipsets are capable enough to handle everyday tasks and provide 5G connectivity, which is still not widespread in this price band.The phones ship with Android 15 out of the box, with a clean stock-like experience and no ads or bloatware — something that budget users will likely appreciate.In terms of memory, the Storm Play comes with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, while the Storm Lite offers 4GB RAM, paired with either 64GB or 128GB storage. There's support for virtual RAM as well.For photos and videos, both phones feature a dual-rear camera setup, comprising a 50-megapixel IMX752 primary sensor paired with a 2-megapixel secondary sensor. However, the Storm Play has an 8-megapixel front camera, while the Storm Lite has a 5-megapixel front camera.Other features include a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, an IP64 rating for dust and water resistance, a USB-Type C port, and a 5000mAh battery. The Storm Play supports 18W fast charging, while the Storm Lite offers 15W charging — again, reasonable for the price.

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Time of India
20 minutes ago
- Time of India
Fewer use cases take toll on Fastag growth
ETtech Fastag, the modern electronic payment system for vehicle owners and the entire travel ecosystem, is stagnating, with almost negligible growth in the last financial year. Even the number of transactions and banks going live on the payment method remained sluggish during the of evolution of new use cases for Fastag, beyond toll payments, is one of the key factors hindering its growth, said people in the know.'Toll payments are undertaken by consumers only that many times in a month or a year, and even for commercial vehicles, almost the entire base has been already covered, and the sector is also not growing exponentially,' said a top executive at a digital payments firm which processes Fastag payments. 'Overall, the payment method has stagnated at a certain level.'Data shared by the National Payments Corporation of India , which powers settlements on Fastag, showed 350-380 million transactions are processed on Fastag every month, which has stayed constant since January 2024. In terms of fund settlement, it has hovered between Rs 6,000 and Rs 6,500 crore in the same period. Around 38 banks are currently active on Fastag, unchanged since May payment methods are not directly comparable, for context, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the most popular digital payment method, currently has 675 banks live on the platform. In May 2023, there were 445 Fastag was initiated with the aim of digitising highway tolls, its use cases were conceived to be eventually expanded to everything concerning a vehicle such as fuel purchases, and parking payments, among others.'While a limited number of large commercial properties like shopping malls have started using Fastag as a payment method for their parking fees, fuel has shown almost no adoption,' said the founder of a fintech startup offering this high cost of installing Fastag-capable gates and tag readers has discouraged smaller commercial estates from adopting them.'A large mall might be processing around Rs 30 to 40 lakh in parking payments per month, for that, the installation and maintenance might be a bit cumbersome,' the founder said the average cost of installing a single gate could be around Rs 1.5 to 2 lakh, in addition to maintenance cost.'There is no margin to be made on fuel payments, hence that use case is also not picking up,' said the executive of a digital payments firm cited parking, one of India's most popular ways of parking vehicles, has also shown no signs of adopting Fastag as a payment method, with transactions mostly through QR codes or insiders also pointed out that the overall disillusionment among fintech startups on generating revenue from digital payments is one of the major reasons behind private firms not taking any fresh initiative on payments. They added that UPI grew in popularity due to large marketing spends into the ecosystem which incentivised customers towards adoption.'No new-age fintech is pumping funds into digital payments right now. Fastag and such payment methods needed incentives to get more customers to use them readily, in the absence of incentives new use-cases are not building up,' said the founder of a digital payments is also plagued by inefficient bank-led customer service, especially during instances of blacklisted tags or recharge issues. While PhonePe, and Amazon Pay are among Fastag distributors, they rely on banks for customer service, where the experience is often subpar.'Banks make money on the float they get through these payments, otherwise there is hardly any incentive for others to offer superior customer experience,' said the founder cited above.


Time of India
6 hours ago
- Time of India
‘Get up to 50k rewards for reporting power theft & discrepancies'
Bhopal: Help catch energy thieves and earn rewards! In a unique type of easy social audit of energy distribution, east discom--head quartered at Jabalpur-- has launched V Mitra—an app on which consumers can complain about energy theft and discrepancies, and get rewards ranging from Rs 10 to Rs 50,000. So far, Rs 1 lakh rewards were made. In a similar scheme of Central Discom, five people were rewarded so far in this financial year. Officials, however, say that the V Mitra app of East Discom is not only restricted to reporting power theft cases. "It is basically a sort of social audit of the distribution. Entire data is in public, and consumers can report anything that is not correct. It will help us rectify the data," managing director of Madhya Pradesh Purv Kshetra Vidyut Vitaran Company Limited, Anay Dwivedi, said. This is a versatile app and is one of its kind, say officials of east discom. "Besides reporting the theft cases, each and every connection of our discom is now geo-tagged. If any person finds that tagging is incorrect, he or she can report it. If it is incorrect, a nominal reward of Rs 10 is provided. Likewise, each and every connection is indexed, meaning details like the transformer to which the connection is connected are available in the public domain. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Flexible in AI & Data Science BITS Pilani Digital Apply Now Undo Any discrepancy in it could also be reported. Now, load enhancement-related complaints could also be made. Suppose an informer informs that the connection is of 2 kilowatts but the connected load is of 5 kilowatts of a domestic connection. Then, if it is found true, the informer gets Rs 25 per kilowatt as a reward," general manager commercial, East Discom, PK Agarwal, said. Till July 17, Discom received a total of 1,190 information entries from users across various circles under its jurisdiction. These submissions are currently under different stages of scrutiny and verification by the company's vigilance teams. In recognition of credible information that was successfully verified, MPPKVVCL processed monetary rewards for 49 consumers, amounting to a total disbursal of Rs 21,300. In addition, a provisional reward pool of Rs 75,800 was identified for further processing, which will be finalised subject to the outcome of ongoing validations by the vigilance department. Meanwhile, for central discom, which distributes electricity in Bhopal and Gwalior, the discom initiated a reward scheme for people informing about energy theft cases. Ten percent of the total recovery from power theft cases is paid to the person informing about it. Five percent of the 10 percent incentive amount given to informants for reporting illegal electricity use will be paid immediately after the final determination order is issued if the information is found to be correct. The remaining five percent is paid after full recovery, said April 1, 2025, Rs 11,500 were directly deposited into the bank accounts of five successful informants, said sources from central discom. Additionally, officials and employees involved in investigation and recovery were given a 3,000 rupee incentive added to their monthly salary, officials said. Now the amount is being transferred online directly into the bank accounts of informants, and before the online process began, seven successful informants received a total of Rs 2,18,000 in incentive payments for 63 cases where full payment was received, said official sources from central discom.
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Business Standard
6 hours ago
- Business Standard
Fintech firm PayU India to invest $120 mn by end of FY26, say senior exec
Fintech company PayU India will invest $100-$120 million in its credit business alongside putting money in its payments vertical in FY26, said its group chief financial officer Arvind Agarwal. The amount will be raised through existing resources, including internal accruals, debt, and further equity, according to the Prosus-backed company. The Dutch investor has infused $35 million (around Rs 300 crore) out of the total budgeted investment in the first quarter of FY26. The credit business is expected to get an investment of $50-$60 million. PayU is considering another $60-$70 million infusion in payments infrastructure firm Mindgate Solutions, in which it acquired a 43.5 per cent stake in March. 'There's no capital requirement for loss-funding, but we do require some capital for growth. Last year, in FY25, Prosus invested almost $200 million in PayU,' Agarwal told 'Business Standard'. Out of the $200 million it raised in FY25, PayU invested $100 million in its credit business. The remaining amount was allocated to inorganic initiatives, like the Mindgate investment, along with some organic capital infusion. '...the payments business on a standalone basis itself generates $25 million in ebitda, so it doesn't require any capital unless we want to go inorganic. We are also making investments into artificial intelligence and technology but that is self-funded from the payments (vertical's) profit,' he said. Agarwal expected the company to become ebitda positive in FY26, referring to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation. 'The payment [business] has been profitable at the ebitda level for the last three years, and credit will become profitable on an ebitda basis in the coming quarter: Q2 of FY26. In Q2, it should break even on an ebitda basis. As a result of that, PayU India as a whole will become ebitda positive in FY26.' Prosus's annual report last month said PayU's payments business recorded a revenue growth of 12 per cent to $498 million in FY25. PayU Finance, the group's credit unit, saw its revenue grow to $171 million, taking the group's consolidated revenue for the year to $669 million. The Dutch investor's report added that PayU India had reorganised its payments business to boost customer acquisition and partnerships. 'Instead of the earlier structure, which was built around enterprise or government-only channels; it was more like a product-line organisation. We thought the right structure for our company is farming and hunting,' said Agarwal. By reorganisation, Agarwal referred to a dual approach: 'farming', which focuses on existing merchants by deepening the penetration of value-added services (VaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) products; and 'hunting' for new customers. VaS includes services such as affordability, loan payments, and checkout finance. The SaaS business includes categories such as fraud risk management and authentication. 'Now, we will start consolidating Mindgate's numbers from FY26. VAS and SaaS should be one-third of payments. It's a higher-profitability business. Of the total PayU revenue, it will be almost one-fourth,' he said. PayU India in May received final approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as an online payment aggregator; that was a year after securing in-principle approval. In January 2023, the RBI had asked the company to reapply for a payment aggregator licence. One of the reasons cited was the company's complex corporate structure. 'There was an embargo for 15 months. Obviously, we need to get back our speed in bringing on more and more new customers,' he said.