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Prince Harry is not going to go easy on Donald Trump or Elon Musk, for that matter, as he has now taken a dig at both of them during a surprise speech at a tech conference. Even though he spoke on diverse subjects for the better part of his speech, Prince Harry then shifted onto politics, which was one of the most pivotal parts of his speech.

Elon Musk has predicted that in 10 to 20 years, work will become optional. He has done this umpteen times—in response to a New York Times article about Amazon, at a US-Saudi investment forum, in a conversation with Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath, at Viva Technology 2024 in Paris and the 2023 AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park.

Mint India Investment Summit held in Mumbai last week.Backed by Zerodha founders' investment vehicles Rainmatter and Gruhas, SuperYou is a modern Indian health and nutrition brand. Co-founded by actor Ranveer Singh and entrepreneur Biyani in late 2024, the brand is focused on fermented yeast-based, high-protein snacks and supplements.“The opportunity to start and find PMF (product-market-fit) with consumers is better than ever before.

Mint India Investment Summit 2026, held in Mumbai last week.Shaji Varghese, chief executive officer of Muthoot Fincorp, said that of India’s 60 million small businesses, only 20–30% have access to credit, underscoring the critical role NBFCs play in bridging the gap. “That relevance is only further pronounced now.

Mint India Investment Summit held last week.Manufacturing firms, in particular, are increasing R&D spending, but say the absence of validation, at home and abroad, is becoming a key roadblock.“R&D is growing leaps and bounds…but not in the commercial space,” said Pradeep Kumar Kheruka, executive chairman of Borosil Renewables Ltd, at the panel discussion.Kheruka cited Borosil’s attempt to manufacture solar glass without antimony, a toxic chemical, as an example of innovation facing resistance. “We made glass without antimony…We proved that antimony is leaching out from glass, it should be banned and yet the question is how come nobody else has done it?” he said.Despite scientific evidence, the absence of global precedent has slowed domestic adoption.

Mint India Investment Summit, Puri received the Lifetime Achievement Award and engaged in a candid fireside chat with editor-in-chief Ravi Krishnan. From why he moved to India in 1994 to artificial intelligence in banking and the work culture he batted for, this chat covered a wide range of subjects. Edited excerpts:I think India is still a very under-penetrated market as far as finance is concerned.

9th Mint India Investment Summit in Mumbai last week. Panellists, including senior in-house legal counsels and law firm partners, said weak enforcement sits at the heart of the problem, raising the cost of doing business and deterring investment.The inability to enforce contracts swiftly and predictably, along with delays, frequent adjournments, procedural hurdles and lack of subject-matter expertise, creates friction for companies and investors.

Mumbai: India is expected to sustain strong M&A momentum, including cross-border deals, as investors take a long-term view despite macro headwinds, top executives said at the Mint India Investment Summit.“It’s interesting how the last three quarters over 2025 have shown the ability of investors to digest any volatility, price it in if required and proceed with M&As as they see sense in it over a 5–10-year horizon,” Devarajan Nambakam, co-head of India investment banking for Goldman Sachs Group, said at the summit last week.“This is probably going to be tested more this year than last, but the ability of investors to see through these volatilities has been the biggest mindset shift.”With India being a robust growth economy, there is demand for capital to accelerate this pace and for shareholders looking to monetize their stake among others, he added.“From a supply perspective, it’s safe to say that almost no pool of capital is unavailable in India be it strategic capital, private equity, private credit or hybrid capital. Today, the quantum of the capital that is available is higher than we’ve seen.

Mint India Investment Summit, Ravishankar said India’s AI opportunity lies less in outspending global leaders and more in building useful products quickly and cost-effectively at scale, leveraging the country’s deep engineering talent.He outlined two broader areas where Indian startups can still create large businesses, even if the country is not yet at the cutting edge of global AI development.The first opportunity, he said, is that India will be a quick adopter of AI across large, everyday use cases. As AI tools improve, many familiar consumer and service categories could be reimagined from the ground up, he said.“India will be a fast follower and a quick consumer of AI in areas such as customer support, citizen services, travel and jobs, where new companies are beginning to rebuild internet products with AI at the centre,” Ravishankar said.The second opportunity lies in the layers around AI itself: infrastructure, software and tools that help other companies build and use AI products.Ravishankar said Indian teams are well-placed because of the country’s large developer base and growing technical talent pool.

Bengaluru: In the real estate boom cycle, the flight to quality and premiumization have been defining trends. In a panel discussion on ‘Premiumization in real estate: opportunities and risks,’ at the recent Mint India Investment Summit (MIIS), experts spoke about what homebuyers, investors and occupiers want when they are buying an apartment or renting an office space.“The premiumization that is being talked about is really a quality correction that is happening in real estate.

Mint India Investment Summit in Mumbai on Friday.“You will lose some… but there’s no need to say the world is coming to an end… this will come out better,” said Puri, who was conferred the lifetime achievement award at the summit.He pushed back against concerns of large-scale displacement from the adoption of AI, adding that the technology is already creating new roles across the value chain.“This is just the raw material… somebody has to convert what was a possibility into reality,” he said, adding that this will create emerging demand for prompt engineers, context engineers and specialized data scientists.Calling AI one of the biggest opportunities, Puri said its impact will be most visible in customer-facing sectors such as banking.“AI can and should be used in a full role for efficiency and for profit,” he said, adding it can used for applications in credit assessment, marketing, fraud detection and operations. At the same time, he cautioned against overestimating the pace of change.“It’s here to stay… but it’s not as if everything is going to be implemented overnight,” he said, adding there is too much negative hype on job losses.Puri maintained that India’s structural growth story remains intact, backed by strong fundamentals.

Mint India Investment Summit 2026 on Friday.“I have been telling Sebi for the last 10 years (to) have an effective regulatory impact assessment mechanism (to) see whether the regulations that are in your books are relevant for today's times,” said the former Indian Administrative Services officer, who was the guest of honour at Mint’s flagship summit.Many of Sebi’s rules have passed their “sell-by date”, he said, responding to a question on what rule change he would ask the current Sebi leadership to make.The septuagenarian deflected no questions and eloquently shared his opinion on subjects ranging from environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues to the sudden resignation of Atanu Chakraborty as the chairperson of India’s largest private-sector bank, HDFC Ltd.While calling the HDFC episode sad, he clarified that he did not know more about it than what has been publicly disclosed by the bank. However, he said no differences in a boardroom were insurmountable.He attested to witnessing many boardroom conflicts himself through his extensive experience as an independent director at top Indian companies.

Mint India Investment Summit & Awards in Mumbai on Friday.As credit expands, maintaining asset quality, strong capital buffers, rigorous underwriting, and robust governance will remain non-negotiable, he added.“Growth and financial stability must be pursued together, because they are mutually reinforcing. We operate in an environment of global uncertainty, with geopolitical tensions, shifting trade patterns, and evolving monetary policy dynamics across major economies,” he added.To be sure, Indian banks were burdened with a mountain of bad debt a decade ago, prompting the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to take several measures to revive the sector.

semiconductor maker also established a global coalition of companies, Nemotron. It includes the likes of Perplexity and Cursor to build large language models (LLMs) that will act as a reference point for enterprises globally.

KPIT Technologies. The three companies ended last year with $1.26 billion, $870 million, and $691 million, up 8.16%, 0.81%, and 17.72%, respectively.

The recent Artificial Intelligence (AI) Summit in New Delhi has brought home the remarkable pace at which AI is changing the way we live and work. The jury is still out on whether an AI-led society would be utopian or dystopian. Meanwhile, we need to reset our thinking on many issues.

In Dave Eggers’ 2021 novel The Every, a giant search engine company acquires an e-commerce behemoth. Delaney Wells, the lead character, plans a vigilante action against the company by getting a job with it. Her college thesis, written with a view to charm her way into the company, argued that it was immaterial that it was a monopoly if consumers were fine with it.

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is looking to replicate its mobile data tariff strategy in smart eyewear — betting on aggressive pricing and scale to bring artificial intelligence (AI)-powered glasses to a wider audience, analysts and industry executives in the know said.JioFrames AI smart glasses, unveiled last year at RIL's annual general meeting, are expected to hit the market in the next 2-3 months, an industry executive said, adding that prices are likely to be significantly lower than the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that are available in the market. Analysts expect Jio Platforms to price its smart glasses below ₹10,000, roughly a third of the starting price of the Gen 1 variant offered by market leader Ray-Ban Meta, which sells at around ₹30,000.Smart glasses combine traditional eyewear with built-in speakers, microphones and AI features, allowing users to listen to music, take calls, capture photos and access digital assistance without pulling out a phone.The market for smart glasses has started heating up, with companies such as Lenskart and AI platform Sarvam also looking to launch these products.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. At the India AI Summit, a less discussed but foundational piece of the AI stack broke into the headlines. Mumbai-based AI infrastructure startup Neysa announced a $1.2 billion capital raise led by alternative asset manager Blackstone, among the largest funding rounds in the country’s AI infrastructure sector.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NEW DELHI : India has put forward a framework for how the country's artificial intelligence startups and the world’s frontier labs should build and deploy inclusive AI.

Every week, artificial intelligence (AI) claims become more stratospheric. Earlier this month, Elon Musk told a podcast of his plans to put satellites housing giant data centres in space that would be run on solar power. “In 36 months, probably closer to 30 months, the most compelling place to put AI will be in space,” he said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. India’s big-ticket push for global prominence in artificial intelligence begins on 16 February. The AI Impact Summit has driven hotel prices higher across New Delhi, and attendance rates for global heads of state match those seen when India hosted the G20 summit in 2023.