Sensex, Nifty Little Changed In Cautious Trade; Pharma Stocks Gain

Indian shares were marginally lower on Friday in the absence of Wall Street cues and muted cues from other Asian markets.

The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex was down 24 points at 65,993 in early trade, while the broader NSE Nifty index was down 4 points at 19,797.

Among the prominent decliners. Wipro, BPCL, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise and Tata Motors were down around 1 percent each.

Lupin climbed 2 percent on receiving the U.S. FDA approval to market Canagliflozin tablets and Bromfenac Ophthalmic Solution in the American market.

Peers Sun Pharma, Divis Laboratories and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories were up between 0.7 percent and 1.7 percent.

Prestige Estates Projects declined 1.4 percent after launching a high-rise residential project in Bangalore’s IT hub.

LTIMindtree rose about half a percent after it launched a quantum-safe virtual private network (VPN) link in London.

Paytm fell 2.6 percent after a large block deal.

Cipla rallied 1.8 percent as HSBC maintained a buy rating on the stock.

RailTel Corporation of India was moving lower despite receiving a work order from Gujarat Informatics.