B2B commerce company Moglix on Thursday said it acquired Khatema Fibres, a manufacturer of eco-friendly paper products.

Leveraging Khatema’s manufacturing expertise, Moglix plans to integrate and diversify its offerings, reducing lead times and ensuring efficient delivery, the company said in a statement.

With expansion plans in Uttarakhand, Moglix aims to support the state’s industrial growth by creating jobs, promoting skill development, and enhancing local manufacturing capabilities, it said.

“This acquisition not only expands our manufacturing footprint but enables us to deliver even greater value as we meet the dynamic demands of the market. Our commitment to supporting India’s vision of a Viksit Bharat by 2047 remains steadfast,” Rahul Garg, Founder and CEO, Moglix.

This acquisition will help Moglix to improve local infrastructure and open new market opportunities for farmers and artisans.

Founded in 1990, sustainable paper manufacturer Khatema Fibres, with an annual capacity of 50,000 metric tonnes, offers a diverse range of eco-friendly products, including speciality high-strength kraft paper, interleaving paper, machine-glazed and machine-finished papers, various tissue options, sublimation paper, virgin test liners, and food-grade packaging solution.

The acquisition complements Moglix’s recent launch of Next Day Delivery in over 12 cities, soon expanding to 40, the company added.

A day after Zomato co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal announced an unconventional opening for a Chief of Staff (CoS), the role has already received over 10,000 applications.

The surge in applications reflects a diverse mix of financial backgrounds, which Goyal categorised them as those who have all the money, those who have some of the money, those who claim they don’t have the money, and those who genuinely don’t have the money.

In a follow-up post on X, he stated that the application inbox will close at 2 PM IST on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Goyal shared a post on X that he is looking for a Chief of Staff, but with a unique catch: the candidate would receive no salary for the first year. Instead, the selected individual would be required to pay Rs 20 lakh as a donation to the company’s Feeding India initiative.

“Second year onwards, we will start paying you the usual salary (definitely more than Rs 50 lakh, but something we will only talk about at the start of the Year 2,” he added.

Goyal outlined his expectations for the role, stating, “Someone who is hungry, with common sense, empathy, and little experience (no conditioning/baggage), down to earth, with zero entitlement, willing to do the right thing even if it displeases others, has Grade A communication skills, and most importantly, a learning mindset,” he said.

He further said the job will offer 10 times more learning than a two-year degree from a top management school as the candidate will work with top CXO and stakeholders in consumer tech.

Billionaire Gautam Adani has been charged by US prosecutors over his role in an alleged years-long scheme to pay $250 million bribe to Indian officials in exchange for favourable terms for solar power contracts.

US prosecutors charged Adani, 62, his nephew Sagar, and other defendants for paying over $250 million in bribes between 2020 and 2024 to Indian government officials to win solar energy contracts on terms that could potentially bring in more than $2 billion in profit.

This, they alleged, was concealed from the US banks and investors from whom the Adani group raised billions of dollars for the project.

US law allows pursuing foreign corruption allegations if they involve certain links to American investors or markets.

The Adani group did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

“The defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars,” Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, which brought the case, said in a statement.

Adani, Chairman of the ports-to-energy Adani Group, his nephew Sagar R Adani, who is an executive director at the conglomerate’s renewable energy arm Adani Green Energy Ltd, and its former CEO Vneet Jaain were charged with securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and wire fraud conspiracy. The Adanis were also charged in a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) civil case.

The five-count indictment also accuses Sagar and Jaain of breaking federal laws.

The US authorities also charged three former employees of a large Canadian pension fund, CDPQ, in connection with the alleged scheme, saying they obstructed an investigation into the bribes by deleting emails and agreeing to provide false information to the US government.

CDPQ, which invests in infrastructure projects, is a shareholder in Adani companies.

The indictment may throw the conglomerate again in a turmoil just as it rebounded from US short-seller Hindenburg Reserach’s damning fraud allegations.

Hindenburg allegations of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud” in January 2023 had led to the conglomerate seeing $150 billion wipeout in market value at its lowest point. The group stocks have since recovered most of the losses.

Adani Group had denied all allegations made by Hindenburg.

A school dropout, Gautam Adani founded his namesake group in 1988 as a commodities trading firm, and built a business empire that now spans airports, shipping ports, power generation, energy transmission, and mining companies.

“Specifically, on or about March 17, 2023, FBI special agents approached Sagar Adani in the United States and pursuant to a judicially authorised search warrant, took custody of electronic devices in his possession,” the court document said.

Some conspirators, according to the documents, referred privately to Gautam Adani with the code names “Numero uno” and “the big man,” while his nephew allegedly used his cellphone to track specifics about the bribes.

“On or about March 18, 2023, the defendant Gautam S Adani emailed himself photographs of each page of the search warrant executed and grand jury subpoena served on the defendant Sagar R Adani,” it said.

Others who were criminally charged include Ranjit Gupta and Rupesh Agarwal, respectively former CEO and former chief strategy and commercial officer of Azure Power Global, which authorities said agreed to pay some of the bribes.

The complaint charges them with violating the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and seeks permanent injunctions, civil penalties, and officer and director bars.

During the alleged scheme, Adani Green raised more than $175 million from US investors and Azure Power’s stock was traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC said in a statement.

Simultaneously, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York unsealed criminal charges against Adani and Sagar Adani, Cyril Cabanes, and others linked to Adani Green and Azure Power.

The federal indictment unsealed in a federal court in Brooklyn charges five others with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with the bribery scheme, involving one of the world’s largest solar energy projects.