India Financial News

Mumbai: If searing heat is an annual feature of the Indian summer, air pollution is fast settling into a permanent fixture of winter. For companies that sell both air-conditioners (ACs) and air purifiers, sales and marketing now fall into two neatly-distinct seasons—summer for ACs and winter for air purifiers, a much smaller category. Given this sharp seasonality, how do marketing heads manage their business when demand peaks so unevenly through the year? Girish Hingorani, vice-president of marketing at Blue Star, tells Mint it is all about planning the year carefully and efficiently.

₹19.6 lakh in FY25 compared to ₹14.5 lakh for a private bank employee, according to data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 29 December. The gap has widened since FY24, when the per-employee profit of government-owned banks stood at ₹15.2 lakh, surpassing ₹14 lakh for their private peers.Profit per employee is a key metric that tracks staff productivity.India’s public sector banks had an image of being inefficient, with governments continually injecting fresh capital into them each year.

Caracas will determine the fate of India's multi-billion dollar investments and hefty dividends.Indian investments in Venezuela have been stuck, said an official with an official with a state-run firm with major stakes in the country. "Volatility brings in concern, but we will have to watch out for the way forward. An opening-up of the market may allow more supplies," the official said on the condition of anonymity.ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corp.

US operation in the South American nation should drive crude oil lower over time which should be positive for India, said Ashish Gupta, chief investment officer of Axis Mutual Fund. He added that he did not expect a knee-jerk reaction from markets at opening on Monday.“In the past two to three years, markets have not reacted significantly to geopolitical events whether in Europe or West Asia and I don't expect one after the Venezuela takeover either.

The key is not prediction, but preparation, Gupta told Mint in an interview. “That’s why you hold gold or silver allocations: not to time them, but because you can’t.”The biggest risk remains macro concerns, she said, adding that trade deals, both for India and globally, are critical.If they don’t materialise, the environment could turn inflationary, something already visible in early signs from the US,” she said. “If India’s trade deal isn’t concluded by March, conditions could get tougher.”Another key risk is a lack of earnings revival, Gupta pointed out.

New Delhi: The country’s second-largest battery manufacturer, Amara Raja Energy and Mobility Ltd, is betting on expansion in the US market as part of its bid to double the share of revenue from exports in the next five years.The Hyderabad-based auto ancillary firm is doubling down on building a local distribution network in the North American market to benefit from its edge in one of the advanced technologies in the lead acid battery industry to win incremental business at a time when tariffs in the US have brought uncertainty for Indian businesses, according to a top executive.“One of the most exciting opportunities, especially on the lead acid side, is building ourselves up in North America. That's where we see certain technology trends like a move towards AGM (Absorbent Glass Mat) batteries,” Harshavardhana Gourineni, executive director at Amara Raja, told Mint.“We're the only manufacturer in India that's supplying AGM batteries to the OEMs.

Mint analysis, this is the third straight quarter where brokerages have outlined sequential growth below 4%, signalling a tempered outlook. This follows efforts by companies to pursue new growth avenues.TCS and HCLTech release their December quarter earnings on 12 January, Infosys on 14 January, and Tech Mahindra on 16 January.

₹37 trillion. Also, only 66 of the 291 operational central PSUs were listed on India's stock exchanges.The listed companies had a market capitalization of ₹38.57 trillion as of 31 March 2025, according to the department of public sector enterprises.Panda said that the 22-member parliamentary panel plans to review close to two dozen public sector enterprises by the end of its current term, compared to four in the last year of the previous Lok Sabha. COPU, comprising 15 Lok Sabha members and seven Rajya Sabha members, is reconstituted every year.The current 18th Lok Sabha has a five-year tenure that began in June 2024.Panda said that the committee, in its first year—August 2024 to April 2025—under his chairmanship in the current Lok Sabha delivered 12 reports, a three-fold increase from the reports presented in the panel's last year in the previous Lok Sabha.

Industry News, Banking News and Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.

Mint.During the hour-long meeting, X executives explained how the image-editing feature functioned. They offered an example: if billionaire Elon Musk appeared in a photograph alongside other technology executives and users prompted the tool to remove “the most racist person”, Grok might remove Musk, this person said.The explanation failed to reassure regulators.

₹599 and ₹999 per person, with Perspectives taking a 20% commission.If the loneliness economy has a defining characteristic, it is that many of its founders did not arrive with market research or business plans. Most began by trying to solve a personal, unmet need.Originally from Tamil Nadu’s textile hub of Tiruppur, Krishna Rubiga moved to Chennai for work in 2024 and struggled to make friends. Singles mixers felt crowded and transactional.

₹1 crore for high courts and ₹2 crore for the Supreme Court), pendency reduction has been marginal, reflecting a culture of litigation as bureaucratic insurance rather than legal necessity.This culture stems from several institutionalized incentives that make ‘default litigation’ the path of least resistance.Audit and vigilance frameworks indirectly treat unappealed losses as negligence; accounting codes of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) require every audit objection to be ‘settled’ or ‘explained,’ and an appeal offers safe harbour from being questioned, while a liberal appellate framework allows virtually automatic filing.Despite calls for a binding national litigation policy, successive governments have balked.Instead, we now have a ‘Directive for Efficient and Effective Management of Litigation’ (April 2025), which introduces nodal officers, legal cells and MIS dashboards, but lacks statutory teeth, performance-linked disincentives or real-time data integrity.LIMBS itself remains under-updated and fails to track reasons for appeal.Here is a five-point agenda for inclusion in a national litigation policy. First, India must move away from its open-ended appeal culture and adopt a ‘leave-to-litigate’ system that acts as a regulatory filter.

pulses was 926 kg per hectare as against a global average of 1,015 kg in FY25, the country’s cotton yield was 440 kg per hectare compared with a global average of around 820 kg during the period. India produced 25.6 million tonnes of pulses and 29.7 million bales of cotton in FY25, way below the country's domestic demand.As per the agriculture ministry's annual report for FY25, pulses were cultivated over 27.52 million acres, while cotton covered 13 million hectares across the country.“These new seed varieties will strengthen our pest and disease management systems, and expand field trials to speed up adoption at the farm level.

advertising. But its approach has had limited impact on India. Most of our focus continues to be on safer areas, such as gender, specifically women’s empowerment.

The authors are, respectively, head and senior fellow, Ashoka University Isaac Centre for Public Policy. Shubhangi Sahai contributed to the article. These are the authors’ personal views.Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint.

Mumbai: Come January, thousands of people across India will be getting into their running shoes, perfecting their pace, getting together for practice runs in the morning, perhaps exchanging notes on their performance, sharing Strava screenshots of their completed runs, all to line up in the wee hours for one of the tens of major marathons India’s major cities will host this month and the next.Distance running—from the humble 3K and 5K for beginners to the humbling half- and full-marathons—has slowly become a national obsession as getting fit becomes aspirational. Nearly all of India’s major cities are host to at least one major marathon with an impressive title sponsor, while smaller cities and towns too begin hosting local races.More than 20 years after the Mumbai Marathon was started and became India’s biggest running event, distance running has become a serious business enterprise, generating hundreds of crores in direct revenue from participation fees and sponsorships along with additional money made from participants buying goods and travelling to these races.Marathons and other distance running events are driving annual revenue of ₹250-300 crore in the sale of clothes and shoes, travel, hotels and other components of the ‘running economy’, according to a September 2025 report by consulting firm KPMG.

₹10,000 could be put in tax-saving mutual funds. The rest had to go elsewhere — PPF, insurance, NSC, whatever. The government, in its wisdom, had decided that equity mutual funds were risky and citizens needed protection from their own enthusiasm.

Mint had earlier reported that the central government was developing an incentive framework to improve financing options for electric trucks and buses, as limited access to affordable credit remains a key obstacle to India’s green mobility transition.About 4,000 e-buses are sold in India each year, according to data from the government’s Vahan registry. As per the latest publicly available annual report of the ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) for FY25, around 145,000 buses were operated by 61 state transport utilities.

The start of the year is a good time to make a resolution to get your finances in order, but start by setting the right goals.How you frame your resolutions is crucial to your likelihood of achieving them.People “with approach-oriented goals were significantly more successful in sustaining their New Year’s resolutions compared to those with avoidance-oriented goals,” according to one study by a professor of psychology at Stockholm University, Sweden, and others. So, come up with goals about what you want to achieve rather than something you wish to avoid.Think: I will build an emergency fund, rather than: I want to avoid a financial crunch.Another key is to start with a small step.“You can’t just randomly, on 1 January, change yourself,” said Krishna Rath, a Bhubaneshwar-based registered investment adviser with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

Grok operates within a global ecosystem. Compliance requires localization for Indian regulations without disrupting global operations.AI-generated content can deliver benefits, such as simulations for factories or product design, but in the wrong hands, it raises serious concerns. Addressing misuse, therefore, requires a combination of technical, organizational, and regulatory guardrails, not a single fix.More powerful AI models are likely to amplify risks.

EV users as well as technical and maintenance support for commercial fleets,” said the first official.The ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) is examining changes to its guidelines for way-side amenities (WSAs) on expressways to formally include EV-focused infrastructure, including rapid diagnostics, minor repairs, battery support, towing and real-time assistance through integrated control centres, the second official said, adding that the under-construction 1,300-km Delhi–Mumbai Expressway is likely to be the first long-distance corridor where the model could be rolled out, providing an end-to-end EV-supportive route between two major metropolitan regions.“The idea is to move beyond charging points and create a full ecosystem that supports EV users on highways, similar to how air traffic control and ground handling work together in aviation,” said the first official. “Control and command centres can coordinate roadside assistance, track vehicle issues, manage response times and offer confidence to EV users undertaking intercity travel.”Queries emailed to MoRTH, National Highways Authority of India, and EV makers Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hyundai, Kia, and JSW MG on 31 December remained unanswered.Since the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is an access-controlled expressway, a commuter expects the EV charging infrastructure along the route for convenience, said Ashish Modani, senior vice-president and group head, Icra.