India Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NEW DELHI : Audiences are lapping up weekly ticket offers priced as low as ₹99, at least for films with strong word-of-mouth, providing a stamp of approval for the idea that reasonable pricing can lure large segments back to cinemas. Multiplex chains and independent theatres that introduced weekly offers such as “Blockbuster Tuesdays" in 2025 recorded higher-than-usual footfalls, especially for mid-budget, non-star titles.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. New Delhi: India’s plan to connect its interior areas by air has run into heavy weather, with expensive infrastructure and commercial viability playing spoilsport while hundreds of crores are being spent to maintain airports where no planes are landing. The total expense of the government is nearly ₹900 crore on 15 regional airports that are currently non-operational.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MUMBAI: India’s merchant banking industry may be headed for a sharp contraction as the market regulator's new, tougher regulatory framework threatens to push out a large number of players who have stayed on the rolls but barely participated in the Indian capital markets.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. On Wednesday, the same day that the National Statistics Office published its first advance estimate of GDP for 2025-26, the government announced that India’s long-overdue census will kick off on 1 April 2026. The coincidence is apt, even if unintended.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Tensions mounted in Venezuela following recent US military strikes on Caracas and the capture of its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. According to a PTI report, a possible US-backed restructuring of Venezuela’s oil industry could deliver a meaningful financial and strategic gain for India, including recovery of nearly US$1 bn in long-pending dues and a restart of crude production from fields involving Indian companies.

The tables have turned. Those from the generation that grew up hearing “money doesn't grow on trees” are now sitting their parents down with Excel sheets, explaining how and why money actually grows in the stock market if you let it compound.While their parents prioritize safety, Millennial and Gen Z India's aim for optimization.

three photographs showing five individuals associated with the three airlines.NOC is short for no-objection certificate, the first step and a preliminary clearance before an airline obtains an air operator certificate (AOC) from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the regulator.In reality, Shankh Air had received the nod in September 2024, followed by AlHind Air sometime before March last year, according to a response by the minister of state for civil aviation, Murlidhar Mohol, in the Lok Sabha. Only FlyExpress received an NOC in December.The minister’s update came amid growing concerns of a market duopoly—IndiGo and Air India have a combined share of 90% in the Indian skies.

Mint explains why oil prices have remained range-bound and what it means for India.Oil prices are back to where they were before the US action in Venezuela. On 3 January, US forces attacked the Venezuelan capital Caracas and captured President Mudaro. When the markets opened on 5 January, the benchmark Brent Crude saw a marginal spike to $62.56 a barrel.

rupee stood at about 10 to the dollar. From then to now, the average annual depreciation works out to roughly 4.5%. At independence, when the rupee was on a par with the dollar, the long-term annual depreciation is closer to 6%.The faster pace in earlier decades is largely a matter of arithmetic.

There’s been a curious phenomenon on my social media feeds over the last few weeks: The internet has suddenly discovered Indian women, and decided that we are... ‘hot.’The so-called rise of the Indian ‘baddie’ (Gen-Z slang for a woman who is attractive and stylish) has been fuelled by widely shared clips on TikTok and Instagram of young South Asian women dancing and singing along at pop star Tyla’s recent concert in Mumbai.

At first glance, this may seem like a question for economists and statisticians, a matter of compensation data, actuarial logic and policy benchmarks. It is nothing of the sort. It is a moral question that we in India must ask ourselves.As a citizen who has lived his entire life in India’s metropolitan cities, benefited from a measure of material success and travelled globally, my conclusion is neither emotional nor ideological.

₹70 to a dollar. Today, it’s significantly higher.

The prices of various items such as footwear, clothing, consumer durables (such as air-conditioners and TV sets) and automobiles (cars, two-wheelers, etc) have fallen post-GST rationalization. Our calculations suggest that inflation in India’s GST-basket (weight of 17%) decelerated to 2.1% year-on-year in October 2025 and further to 1.8% in November from a stable 3% in the previous 14 months.

₹816 crore from ₹1,020 crore as it sharpens its focus on attracting a broader and more stable institutional investor base amid improving profitability.The downsized offer values Amagi at $869 million at the top of the price band versus its $1.4 billion valuation back in 2022, after it secured a $100 million investment from General Atlantic.The company has fixed a price band of ₹343 to ₹361 per share for its ₹1,788.6 crore IPO, which also includes an offer-for-sale (OFS) component.Amagi's public market debut makes it the first large tech IPO of 2026 in India, marking the beginning of a streak of software-as-a-service companies that are either prepping for a public market debut or are considering listing. The list includes the likes of Leadsquared, BusinessNext, Zenoti, Icertis, Mindtickle, Juspay and Whatfix.

The unfolding crisis in Venezuela draws into sharp relief a less-recognized feature of the modern global economy: the movement of expectations often matters more than that of physical goods. Venezuela has long been a distant yet symbolically important pillar of India’s energy security framework.

Titan Co. Ltd’s shares are up around 6% in the past two trading sessions, hitting an all-time high of ₹4,312.10 apiece on Wednesday, mostly led by the solid growth in its jewellery business, as per its December quarter (Q3FY26) update.It also held a conference call to lay out the initial roadmap for lab-grown diamond (LGD) studded jewellery under the brand name of ‘beYon’.

₹6,000 crore through certificates of deposit (CDs) at a rate of 6%, a rare move by India’s largest lender, amid tight liquidity and mounting pressure on banks to mobilize deposits, five fixed-income traders told Mint.SBI’s presence in the CD market has raised eyebrows, traders said, as it signals growing difficulty among banks in raising deposits to fund rising credit demand.The funds were raised through CDs maturing in March 2026. Union Bank of India also raised ₹200 crore via May maturity paper at 6.45%, while Small Industries Development Bank of India raised ₹4,500 crore through one-year paper at 6.95%.Certificates of deposit are low-risk fixed-income instruments where investors deposit money for a specified period at a fixed interest rate—typically higher than savings accounts—in exchange for not withdrawing funds until maturity.SBI’s three-year CD issuance at 6% is around 90 basis points higher than the interest rate it offers on bulk deposits of 46–179 days, which stand at 5.1% for the public and 5.6% for senior citizens.“State Bank of India tapping the CD market, that’s rare, isn’t it? I think they came, so it kind of underscores the point that supply is quite robust in the shorter end and credit off-take is well but deposits are a challenge,” said Killol Pandya, fixed income head at JM Financial Asset Management.While the amount is not large relative to SBI’s balance sheet, the act of raising short-term funds itself is unusual, Pandya added.Emails sent to SBI and Union Bank of India did not receive responses until press time.SBI last raised funds through CDs in November 2024, when it borrowed ₹1,650 crore.

₹9,588 crore in Q2FY26 (July-September), driven by volume growth across key segments. Non-CV businesses are also expanding: aftermarket services grew 11%, power solutions 14%, and defence 25%. These non-truck segments now contribute roughly 50% of consolidated revenue, boosting margins and insulating the company from cyclical CV volatility.Ebitda jumped 14.3% to ₹1,162 crore during the September-ended quarter, with margins expanding 50 bps to 12.1%, aided by cost optimization and higher non-truck growth.

The recent decision of Indian Railways (IR) to raise fares on all classes of travel, other than suburban rail, season passes and short-distance second-class ordinary, reflects a dilemma that has long dogged IR and underpinned its fare decisions: Should IR be run as a commercial enterprise, albeit state-owned, or as a departmental undertaking with social objectives placed above profit?Historically, all governments, both before and after India’s 1991 embrace of market principles, have veered towards the latter view. Sadly, political calls have shaped almost everything about IR, including track expansion, stops along routes and, of course, train fares. Fare revisions have always had a populist angle.

The Nifty 500 Total Return Index rose 7.2% in 2025. On paper, that appears to be another year of steady wealth creation for Indian equities.Fund managers will benchmark against it. Retail investors will compare their portfolios to it and wonder where they went wrong.

the DPIIT’s plan, announced on 8 December, for standard AI royalties won’t work because it is difficult to separate commercial AI use from the very early stages, where it might have been a non-profit or research project.Industry body Nasscom, which represented technology companies within DPIIT’s working panel on the AI copyright royalty proposal, published a ‘dissent note’ against the framework on 17 December.“Individual creators, especially small and specialized ones, would no longer decide whether their work is used for training, and would lose the possibility of earning a right to negotiate the terms of any deal,” the note said. “In practice, what creators receive would depend on how the central body and collective management organizations are governed, how registration with them would work, and whether their distribution rules would recognize niche, regional and emerging work,” it added.The government, however, believes that while challenges raised by the technology industry will be taken into account, regulating the usage of copyrighted data in AI models is necessary.“Concerns of plagiarism have existed for a long time, and copyright is recognized as a form of intellectual property in order to encourage creativity.