Equity benchmark indices rose marginally during early hours on Wednesday with pharma stocks gaining ground.
At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was up by 250 points or 0.5 percent at 50,048 while the Nifty 50 ticked higher by 83 points or 0.57 percent to 14,731.
Most sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were in the positive terrain with Nifty pharma gaining by 2.4 percent, IT by 1.3 percent, and auto by 0.7 percent.
Among stocks, Dr. Reddy’s gained by 3.7 percent to Rs 4,650 per share while Cipla moved up by 3.4 percent to Rs 849.40.
IndusInd Bank edged higher by 7.4 percent to Rs 1,047.95 per share. The other major gainers were Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Motors, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro.
However, those which lost were Maruti Suzuki, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, JSW Steel and Tata Steel.
Meanwhile, Asian shares rose as governments around the world looked poised to boost spending to help economies recover from the coronavirus and vaccine roll-out programmes accelerated.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan rose by 0.51 percent but shares in China fell by 0.06 percent.
Japan’s Nikkei added 0.66 percent while shares in Seoul rose by 0.44 percent.
