New Delhi: Lakshmi Subbaraj, Director of Sales at JSW MG Motor India, welcomed the New GST Reform 2025, noting that the company has witnessed a significant 90 per cent surge in bookings and retail sales during this year’s Navratri compared to the same festival period in the past two years.

“Many customers were waiting in anticipation ahead of September 21. The first day of Navratri saw a 90 per cent jump in both retail and bookings compared to two years ago,” Subbaraj said without sharing the numbers.

Shailesh Chandra, President, SIAM and MD, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Ltd, said, “The start to this festive season has been extremely encouraging. The recent GST reduction and special festive offers have sparked an extraordinary wave of consumer interest and enthusiasm. In just the first two days, auto dealerships nationwide are witnessing unprecedented walk-ins, a surge in enquiries, and record deliveries across most segments.”

“This remarkable momentum echoes the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s recent call to celebrate the festive season as ‘Bachat Utsav’ by purchasing products manufactured in India and emphasising that India’s prosperity will gain its strength from the Swadeshi mantra,” Chandra added.

Chandra further added that it is heartening to see families choosing this auspicious period to bring home new vehicles.

“Given the exceptional demand, customers considering a new vehicle should book early to ensure timely delivery. We are hopeful that this celebratory momentum will continue, making this festive season one of the most memorable for the industry and consumers alike,” he added.

The festive season began on a record-breaking note for the Indian automobile sector as Tata Motors and pre-owned car company CARS24 reported exceptional sales and customer activity on the first day of Navratri. The strong numbers came on the back of the recent GST 2.0 rate cuts, which have boosted consumer sentiment and reduced automobile ownership costs.

Tata Motors announced that it recorded 10,000 deliveries on Day 1 of Navratri, marking a historic achievement for the company. Along with the deliveries, Tata Motors also received 25,000+ enquiries on the same day, underscoring the strong demand and enthusiasm from buyers.

CARS24, India’s leading autotech platform, reported a 400 per cent jump in car deliveries by 2:00 pm on Day 1 of Navratri compared to daily averages. The company also recorded over 5,000 inspections in a single day, the highest in the last four years.

Meanwhile, Mahindra & Mahindra is expected to release its sales numbers on October 1, adding to the festive season performance picture for the automobile sector.

TikTok and Facebook posts for a brand of vodka have been banned for targeting under-age teenagers, the regulator has said.

A TikTok post by social media influencer Lucinda Strafford in June showed her filling a large gold-coloured vending machine which featured the Au Vodka logo with cans of Au Vodka Juicy Peach, before she took a sip from one of the cans and said: “That is so good.”

Accompanying text read “an actual DREAM OMG [hearts emoji] [peach emoji] unlimited Juicy Peach cans [smiling face with tears emoji] & I can keep it?! @Au Vodka ad”.

A paid-for Facebook post in June showed a video of influencer Kai Cenat opening a box containing a bottle of Au Vodka and drinking, before accompanying text read: “Haven’t Tried Au Vodka Yet? Secure The Taste Of The Summer, Au Vodka Juicy Peach [peach emoji] Essences of summer in every sip. [palm tree emoji] Shop Now Pay Later Available [credit card emoji].”

Another Facebook post in April showed a woman saying “you need to try this” before she held a bottle of Au Vodka Juicy Peach to the camera.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received one complaint that the first ad was inappropriately targeted at people under 18 years of age and the second and third ads featured someone who was, or seemed to be, under 25 years of age.

Au Vodka told the ASA that Strafford was a well-known reality personality from the TV series Love Island and over the age of 25.

They provided a screenshot of her audience demographics on TikTok, which they believed demonstrated that all of her followers were aged 18 or over.

They stated the ad was designed for a general adult audience and did not contain any themes or visual elements that were likely to be of particular appeal to under 18s.

Strafford’s management agency provided the same screenshot which showed a breakdown of her followers on TikTok by age group.

Au Vodka said the second ad had location targeting applied to deliver it to audiences in the US.

While it may have been possible that a small number of individuals based in the UK would have seen the post, those situations were rare and fell outside of their intended paid-for targeting strategy.

They acknowledged that Cenat was 23 years old, but stated that this was compliant with advertising laws in the US, where they had intended the ad to be seen.

Au Vodka acknowledged that the individual featured in the third ad was 24 years old at the time the ad appeared and was therefore in breach of advertising regulations.

They stated her inclusion in the ad was an oversight, and that they had taken steps to enforce stricter checks in future.

Under UK advertising rules, ads for alcoholic drinks or ads that featured or referred to alcoholic drinks must not be directed at people under 18 years of age, and no media should be used to advertise alcoholic drinks if more than 25% of the audience is under 18 years of age.

Further, people shown drinking or playing a significant role in ads for alcoholic drinks must not be, or seem to be, under 25 years of age.

The ASA said it therefore expected to see evidence that Au Vodka had taken appropriate steps to limit the likelihood of children or young people seeing their ads.

Noting that the minimum age required to create a TikTok account was 13, the ASA said that the screenshot of Strafford’s followers did not include data for any followers aged between 13 and 17.

The ASA said: “Because the proportion of under-18s who followed Ms Strafford’s account was not included, we could not take the data about her followers into account and therefore could not be certain of the proportion of her followers who were under 18.”

It added: “We considered overall that the (Love Island) TV series was popular with young people, including under 18s, and that a number of individuals who were under the age of 18 with TikTok accounts were therefore likely to interact with content related to Love Island on the platform.

“Even if those individuals did not follow Ms Strafford, we considered it was likely that the algorithm would determine her posts to be of interest to them, meaning they would appear in their ‘For You’ page.”

The ASA ruled: “In the absence of specific targeting tools and relevant demographic data being provided, and in view of the way in which users engaged with TikTok, we concluded that insufficient care had been taken to ensure that ad (a) was not directed at people under the age of 18. It therefore breached the code.”

In relation to the second and third ads, the ASA found that Cenat’s age of 23 and the woman’s age of 24 meant those ads had also broken the rules.

The ASA said: “The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told Au Vodka Ltd to ensure that their future ads were appropriately targeted and were not directed at people under 18 years of age.

“We also told them to ensure their ads did not feature individuals who were, or appeared to be, under 25 years of age.”

Energy suppliers will be made to offer at least one tariff with lower standing charges as soon as January under plans confirmed by the industry regulator, but it ditched proposals to remove the fixed costs entirely for some deals.

Ofgem said it wants to give consumers more choice on how they pay standing charges, with the plans set to allow households to pay the costs as part of their unit rate by lowering the daily fixed amount.

If given the go-ahead, the new tariffs could be available by the end of January.

Standing charges are applied daily, regardless of how much energy the customer uses, and are used to cover the cost of supplying energy to homes and businesses.

They also cover the costs of building new network infrastructure and keeping the power on when energy suppliers go bust.

Campaigners say they are unfair because everybody pays the same rate, meaning they make up a far higher proportion of bills for people using less energy.

Ofgem stressed these charges cannot be removed entirely and that they can only be moved from one part of the bill to another, which means they are unlikely to mean lower energy costs.

It said it dropped earlier plans for tariffs with zero standing charges and much higher unit rates, as this could have unfairly impacted consumers with high energy needs, such as those who rely on power for medical reasons.

It is also looking to introduce a minimum usage on to the new tariffs so that those with second homes or properties left vacant for long periods do not disproportionately benefit.

Ofgem is now launching one final consultation on the plans, with aims to make a decision by the end of the year, paving the way for the new tariffs to be available to everyone across Britain by the end of January.

Tim Jarvis, director general of markets at Ofgem, said: “We’ve listened to thousands of consumers that wanted to see changes to the standing charge and taken action.

“We have carefully considered how we can offer more choice on how they pay these fixed costs, however we have taken care to ensure we don’t make some customers worse off.

“After examining all the options available to us, we believe that the right way forward is to require all major suppliers to offer at least one tariff with a lower standing charge.

“This will deliver the choice we know customers want, without having a detrimental impact on customers that have high energy needs.”

But he added: “We cannot remove these charges, we can only move costs around.

“These changes would give households the choice they have asked for, but it’s important that everyone carefully considers what’s right for them as these tariffs are unlikely to reduce bills on their own.”

It comes ahead of a 2% rise in energy costs when the next price cap change takes effect on October 1, which will see the bill for a typical household rise from £1,720 to £1,755 a year.

Martin McCluskey, minister for energy consumers, said: “Consumers should have freedom and choice when choosing an energy tariff that works for them.

“This proposal will make more tariffs available on the market, giving people more options to pay lower standing charges if that suits their needs.”

Ofgem said the new lower standing charge tariff mandate would be likely to only be a short-term measure while it moots permanent changes to allocate costs within the system, as the UK shifts towards renewable energy.

Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said it was a “small step forward” and called on the industry to make sure that households “properly understand the deals they are signing up for”.

“This development doesn’t negate the need for long-term reform to make the system fairer,” he added.