Indian shares climbed on Thursday as signs of New Delhi and Washington getting closer to agreeing to a trade deal amid escalating Sino-US tensions buoyed sentiment, while Reliance Industries gained on reports of a potential investment by Amazon.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged India on Wednesday to reduce its dependence on China, a day after India's commerce minister, Piyush Goyal, said the countries were nearing a trade deal after two years of negotiations.
Reuters also reported on Tuesday that India sought concessions for generic drugs it exports to the United States in return for opening its dairy markets and slashing tariffs on farm goods as the two sides sought to shore up the trade deal.
The Nifty pharma index gained 1.4% on Thursday. Generic drugmaker Cipla was up 1.4% and Dr. Reddy's Labs advanced 1.6%.
Reliance Industries surged as much as 3.8% after television channel ET Now reported that Amazon.com Inc was in talks to buy a 9.9% stake in Reliance Retail.
India's most valuable stock, Reliance, touched a fresh record high in the session and its market cap crossed Rs 13 trillion ($173.88 billion) after the news.
The Nifty energy index gained 1.5% and was the top percentage gainer among sectors.
Among stocks, Eicher Motors topped the gainers on the Nifty, rising 4.9% and Axis Bank was the top laggard, shedding 3.8%
The gains in equities came as India reported 45,720 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 1.24 million by Thursday morning, according to government data.
