Nifty Seen Opening Above 17,650; Bharti Airtel, Infosys In Focus

The Indian equity benchmarks are set to stage a gap up opening as indicated by the Nifty futures traded on the Singapore Exchange. Singapore Nifty futures also known as the SGX Nifty futures rose 0.6 per cent or 103 points to 17,656 amid positive global cues. Asian shares moved higher on Thursday, supported by some positive news from struggling developer China Evergrande Group, while the dollar held near a one-month top after the U.S. Federal Reserve took a hawkish tilt overnight. Evergrande's shares surged 23 per cent on Thursday after a unit said on Wednesday, when the Hong Kong market was closed for a holiday, that it had "resolved" a coupon payment on an onshore bond.

The Hong Kong benchmark rose 1.6 per cent, boosting MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan, which gained 0.64 per cent

Overnight, a gauge of global stock markets ended solidly higher and the U.S. dollar strengthened on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve cleared the way for the central bank to reduce its monthly bond purchases soon.

Wall Street's main indexes ended up about 1 per cent, although asset price moves were volatile in the wake of the Fed's latest policy statement, in which the central bank also signaled interest rate increases may follow more quickly than expected.

Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 338.48 points, or 1 per cent, to 34,258.32, the S&P 500 gained 41.45 points, or 0.95 per cent, to 4,395.64 and the Nasdaq Composite added 150.45 points, or 1.02 per cent, to 14,896.85.

Back home, foreign institutional investors sold shares worth Rs 1,943 crore on Wednesday while domestic institutional investors bought shares worth Rs 1,850 crore.

Bharti Airtel will be in focus after the company set record date as September 28 for fund raising via rights issue. The issue will begin on October 5 and end on October 21.

Infosys will be on investors' radar after the country's second largest IT company announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop quantum computing capabilities.