India Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. It is shaping up to be another difficult year for India’s tourism industry. Foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) have struggled in the first nine months of the year and may once again fall short of pre-pandemic levels.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Selling pressure on the rally continues to keep a check on market conditions, as the lack of clarity continues to push the market lower with every rally. With trends continuing to fluctuate, we now need to determine that the market demands a hybrid approach.

RailTel Corp., a state-owned telecom infrastructure and connectivity provider, is in talks with Elon Musk’s Starlink to offer retail broadband services to its users in remote areas using satellite internet, according to two officials aware of the matter.“The discussions have picked up pace with Starlink, but commercials are yet to be finalized. Starlink team has also met RailTel’s officials in New Delhi,” the first of the two government officials said, requesting anonymity as talks are private.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Indian equity benchmarks extended their decline for a second straight session on Tuesday, driven by persistent selling pressure from foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and weak global market cues.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MUMBAI: Listed bonds in India are poised to claw back market share from unlisted issuances as participation from domestic mutual funds and global investors pushes companies towards more transparent mechanisms of fund raising. Market participants expect more bonds to be listed on Indian exchanges in 2026 and beyond.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Company Outsider is a weekly newsletter by Sundeep Khanna. Subscribe to Mint's newsletters to get them directly in your email inbox. For two decades, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was synonymous with building.

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), India's largest software services company, has won a mega deal valued at more than $1 billion revenues over 10 years from Telefónica UK, the British arm of Spanish telecom giant Telefónica, ending a nearly two-year drought in bagging such large deals.Telefónica UK runs the O2 brand of mobile phone services in the UK.Mumbai-based TCS will offer application and infrastructure work as part of this contract, much of which is new work for the company, said two executives privy to the development requesting that they remain unidentified in this story. A formal announcement is expected in the coming weeks.This is the fourth $1-billion deal, all in the UK, under managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) K.

India has approached the World Trade Organization (WTO) for consultations with the European Union (EU) as the bloc’s proposed tariffs and quotas on ferro-alloy imports deepen worries about global trade uncertainty when the two parties are negotiating a free-trade pact.India has a substantial trade interest in the products concerned and has invoked provisions of the Agreement on Safeguards to seek consultations with the EU, according to the WTO document reviewed by Mint.The EU issued a notification last month, proposing a safeguard duty after claiming serious injury or threat to its domestic ferro-alloy industry due to rising imports.The EU imported iron and steel products worth about $4.25 billion from India in 2024, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database. Ferro-alloys such as silico-manganese, ferro-manganese and ferro-silicon, which are essential inputs for steelmaking in Europe, accounted for about $381 million.While total Indian exports to the EU in the category may be small, the EU’s move increases uncertainty even as the two sides are engaged in talks for a free-trade pact.

As Big Tech companies look to expand beyond English-speaking users, developing artificial intelligence (AI) expertise across a wider range of languages is emerging as the next major hurdle.Google’s latest effort has seen the company embed 29 Indic languages and dialects into Gemini, its foundational AI model, as it looks to scale AI adoption across India’s hinterlands, three years after it began work in the area. A foundational model is one that can accept user queries and respond in human-understandable languages.According to Manish Gupta, senior director at the company’s research arm, Google DeepMind, and its spearhead in AI language research efforts in India, proficiency in Indic languages is critical for last-mile applications such as agriculture and healthcare, where AI must interpret region-specific context to function properly,“For instance, Google’s Gemini powers an agricultural analysis model that is currently being deployed at the last mile, where it is imperative for our AI models to have contextual understanding of local tongues in order to perform with high efficiency,” he added.Google’s agriculture app processes information in local languages to offer soil analysis, crop prediction and more to farmers at subsidized costs through government and private sector companies.To be sure, by “embedding 29 languages”, Google means it is training, fine-tuning and benchmarking Gemini’s performance across these languages.

₹5,000 crore into three loss-making and financially weak public sector general insurers—United India Insurance Co. (UIIC), National Insurance Co.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Despite the government’s stated policy goal of increasing the share of natural gas in India’s energy basket, consumption of the environmentally friendly fuel fell 8.6% annually in the April-October period of FY26, according to data from the petroleum planning and analysis cell (PPAC). In absolute terms, consumption declined to 40,068 million metric standard cubic metres (mmscm) during the first seven months of FY26, compared to 43,583 mmscm over the same period in FY25.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. India Inc. is expected to roll out an average increment of 8.5-9.5% in the upcoming appraisal cycle, as companies calculate the impact of the new labour code and almost-stagnant inflation.

education. Operational powers will be split across three independent councils, each dealing separately with regulation, accreditation, and academic standards.

The bill was tabled by Shivraj Singh Chouhan, minister for rural development and agriculture & farmers’ welfare.Mint reported on 15 December that the proposed legislation seeks to provide a statutory guarantee of 125 days of wage employment, up from the current 100 days, in every financial year to each rural household whose adult members are willing to undertake unskilled manual work.The scheme will operate as a centrally-sponsored scheme, with the Union government bearing 90% of the financial burden for north-eastern and Himalayan states and Union territories, and 60% for other states. Respective states will need to stump up the rest.The expenditure under the scheme will depend on the number of persons reporting for work, the applicable wage rate, and the material and administrative components of the work.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Music label and entertainment company Saregama India Ltd will invest in filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali-promoted Bhansali Productions Pvt. Ltd as part of a strategic partnership to enhance their output of content, the two companies said in a statement.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Chennai: It isn’t every day that you come across companies declaring with some ferocity that they are second best. That kind of intensity is usually reserved in the battle for the top spot.

Last week, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) released a working paper on ‘Generative AI and Copyright,’ recommending a ‘hybrid model’ that it claims will balance the need to promote AI development with creator rights. It suggests that AI companies in India should pay a mandatory blanket licence fee (a percentage of their global revenue) for using copyrighted materials to train their models. It recommends the establishment of a body called the Copyright Royalties Collective for AI Training (CRCAT) that will collect licence fees from AI developers for distribution to registered creators through existing Collective Management Organisations (CMOs).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NEW DELHI : India’s leading auto component manufacturers will look to hitch a ride with Chinese carmakers amid Western auto giants’ faltering electric-vehicle (EV) bets. The Ford Motor Co.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MUMBAI : Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, India's Union minister for tourism and culture, on 15 December informed the Lok Sabha, through written replies, of the government's initiatives to promote homestays, especially in tribal areas. Mint explains what these policies are and why the government is keen on homestays.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When the company that runs ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund lists on the stock market later this month, it will become the fourth financial services business from the ICICI Group to go public. In doing so, ICICI Group will break away from two of its peers, SBI Group and HDFC Group, each of which has three listed businesses.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Amber Enterprises India Ltd is entering a transition year, one that will test investor patience. Its core room air-conditioner (RAC) business is expected to grow 10–15% in FY26— ahead of industry—management said at a recent analyst meet.