The trends on Gift Nifty also indicate a flat start for the Indian benchmark index. The Gift Nifty was trading around 23,924 level, a premium of nearly 5 points from the Nifty futures’ previous close.

The Nifty 50 and Sensex ended up slightly on Thursday after paring most of their gains seen during the open as trading remained lacklustre in a holiday-truncated week. Market movements were seen as "dull" and "lacklustre" by analysts,

January typically tends to be a slower month according to the past decade’s seasonality, with Nifty often closing in the red 70 per cent of the time.