Indian shares pared morning gains to end marginally higher mainly supported by banks and Reliance Industries, which gained after taking a majority stake in licensed e-pharma portal Netmeds. However, gains were capped by FMCG, IT and pharma sectors which turned negative in the last hour of trade.

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The Sensex ended 86 points higher at 38,615 while the Nifty rose 23 points to settle at 11,408.

Reliance Industries rose nearly 1 percent after it bought a majority stake in Netmeds for $83 million, days after Amazon.com Inc launched an online drug sales service in India.

Meanwhile, the Asian shares rose to a seven-month peak after the S&P 500 index closed at an all-time high overnight and the Nasdaq scaled records after some major U.S. retailers reported strong sales growth.

Sectoral indices were mixed for the day. The media index rose the most, up 5.75 percent led by Zee. It was followed by Nifty PSU Bank, up 2.5 percent. Nifty Realty and Nifty Bank also rose 1.2 percent and 0.5 percent for the day. However, Nifty FMCG lost 0.35 percent and the IT and pharma indices also declined 0.2 percent each.

Zee, GAIL, Tech Mahindra, Bharti Airtel and Maruti were the top gainers while Bajaj Auto, Nestle, ONGC Coal India, and Kotak Bank were the top losers on the Nifty50 index.

Zee shares jumped 14 percent as brokerages remained bullish even after the company reported a weak set of numbers for the June quarter. The company's quarterly net profit came in at Rs 29 crore in June 2020, down over 94 percent from Rs 529 crore in June 2019.

First Published:Aug 19, 2020 3:35 PM IST