India Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.E-commerce companies and delivery platforms are scrambling to hire workers during peak summer demand but are finding it difficult to fill roles on time, as experienced gig workers increasingly refuse to play ball, recruitment firms said.These gig workers are no longer attracted by slightly higher pay on another platform, and in some cases even dropping out late in the hiring process, as they look for formal, stable jobs with predictable incomes to cope with rising living costs. This has pushed up hiring costs by 15-20% this summer season as gig workers prefer fixed-salary jobs that pay at least ₹15,000-20,000 a month - levels that still fall short of their financial needs.“We are observing signs of a supply-side constraint.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The government is considering awarding national highway contracts only after obtaining all critical clearances, a move aimed at curbing project delays and cost escalation, according to two officials aware of the development.Under the proposal being considered, road projects will be awarded only after at least 90% of the land required is acquired, a norm already being enforced more strictly in recent years. In addition, the ministry of road transport and highways wants prior approval to remove structures such as houses and buildings that fall along the project stretch, an issue that has emerged as a key source of delays, one official said.According to the second official, even after land acquisition and statutory approvals, pending permissions to remove or modify built-up structures have stalled several projects.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.As the temperature soars past the 40 degrees Celsius mark, it’s near impossible to train or play sports outdoors. Doctors and fitness experts advise lighter workouts, a modified exercise regimen and indoor sessions during the peak summer months. Top triathlete, Pragnya Mohan, who has represented India at the Commonwealth Games, travels to Europe to train during summers as training in the Indian summer comes with the high risk of dehydration, dizziness, and fainting, she says.Outdoor exercise is dependent on weather conditions, notes Dr Ajay Aggarwal, director and head of internal medicine at Fortis Hospital, Noida.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Indian ethnic and fusion wear brand Libas is looking to become a broader lifestyle house, adding new categories and labels as it works towards a public listing by FY28."We want to be a lifestyle house of brands over the next five to ten years…So you will see some categories like handbags or maybe accessories, even home furnishing that we might explore over the next two years,” said Sidhant Keshwani, founder and CEO, without specifying the segments where the company wants to grow.The expansion plan comes as Libas scales both distribution and revenue ahead of its initial public offering (IPO) ambition. The company is targeting ₹1,000 crore in revenue by FY28, while maintaining annual growth of 30-35%.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.With the government planning to roll out E-PRAAPTI, an Aadhaar-linked portal by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), subscribers will soon be able to trace and access dormant or unclaimed provident fund accounts with minimal effort. The platform is designed to let users identify legacy accounts, link them to their Universal Account Number (UAN), update KYC details and reactivate balances through a fully digital process.The shift marks a move from an employer-dependent system to a member-led model, where individuals can manage PF accounts directly using digital authentication.Mint explores how the portal could help unlock dormant provident fund accounts and what the shift to a member-led system means for subscribers.India has a large number of inactive provident fund (PF) accounts, largely due to job changes, incomplete KYC, or accounts created before UAN became universal.Over time, EPFO has acknowledged that a significant portion of its total accounts are inactive or inoperative—many of them small-value balances that workers have lost track of.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.After years of building large subscriber bases through aggressive pricing and bundled offerings, video streaming platforms are recalibrating their strategies to align revenue growth with rising content and acquisition costs. In many cases, this means charging users more for the same content — but in subtler ways.Late last month, JioHotstar and Warner Bros.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Private equity firm Recognize, which closed its second fund at $1.7 billion in June 2025, is scouting for bets in India that are niche-specific service providers for large-scale enterprises in the US, according to a top executive.“We're not only looking for these niche companies and seeking to scale them,” said Muthu Kumaran, partner and head of India operations at Recognize. “These companies can have a seat at the table with Fortune 500 companies because in cases, they have specialized offerings that are deeper than what traditional IT services providers would do.”The New York-based firm was founded by former Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp chief executive officer Francisco D'Souza alongside David Wesserman and Charles Philips.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s automotive sector is navigating what can only be described as a “perfect storm” — geopolitical instability, rising crude prices, currency weakness and tightening emission norms.With 90% crude oil import dependence, Brent crude crossing $110 per barrel, and the rupee at a record low of ₹95.40/USD (as on 5 May), the economics of internal combustion engine (ICE) ownership are under strain.At the same time, regulatory shifts — E20 ethanol blending and BS6 Stage 2 norms — are reshaping the cost structure of conventional vehicles.In this environment, electric vehicles (EVs) are transitioning from being a green alternative to a fiscal hedge. For Indian consumers, electric mobility is increasingly looking like a viable long-term solution.India’s 90% crude import dependency makes it acutely exposed to the West Asia war.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: Large mutual funds in India are becoming more selective about investing in smaller stock market listings, making companies that seek to raise between ₹400 crore to ₹2,000 crore either wait out a volatile market or turn to private equity and venture capital firms for funds.“There is clearly more selectivity. In the ₹2,000–3,000 crore range, deals need sharper differentiation on growth, quality, and valuation to see strong traction,” said Raghav Gupta, joint chief executive officer, IIFL Capital.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.For a little over two months now, the world has speculated on the impact of the Israel-US-Iran war on the world economy. As the war’s disruption stretched on, concern began turning into panic over energy and food security. India is in a particularly vulnerable position—both directly, given its high energy dependence on West Asia, and indirectly due to the ripple effects of various impacts across the world.India’s large import dependence makes adaptive responses to economic and social impacts of the war enormously challenging, especially in the immediate time-frame of two years.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has cancelled the licence of Paytm Payments Bank, culminating a series of supervisory actions that began with a halt on new customer onboarding in March 2022 and subsequent stringent business restrictions.While the action may appear rooted in regulatory non-compliance, it has reignited a broader debate over the viability of payments banks. Conceived to serve the unbanked, their relevance is now being questioned amid near-universal account ownership driven by Jan Dhan Yojana and intensifying competition from fintech platforms, most notably UPI.With a key player exiting, concerns are mounting over the sustainability of India’s differentiated banking model.Payments banks were set up to advance financial inclusion by offering small savings accounts and digital payment services to migrant workers, small businesses and low-income households in the unorganized sector.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.As the economic consequences of US President Donald Trump’s war against Iran become evident, policymakers around the world are running out of patience. The recent Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington made this abundantly clear, with UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves lamenting the “folly” of a war that is “not ours.”But much of the cost will be borne by the US itself. The immediate effects are visible: a sharp rise in gas prices, inflation climbing to a two-year high and growing concerns that, as consumers cut back on spending to offset higher costs, unemployment will rise.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, the top power transmission utility, sits at the heart of India’s electricity network, moving bulk power across states and linking generation with distribution.Its business runs on long-term, 35-year transmission contracts under a regulated tariff framework set by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp has become the third largest Indian heritage IT services firm — after Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and HCL Technologies Ltd — to dial back shareholder payouts as it redirects capital towards acquisitions and AI capability building.Nasdaq-listed Cognizant, which follows a January–December financial calendar as against Indian IT’s April–March year, returned $1.99 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases last year.This year, the company is set to return less.“This year again, $2.5 billion (in free cash flow), we have committed $1.6 billion to be returned to the shareholder, $1 billion by share buyback and $600 million odd in dividends, of which we have now used about $600 million from the remaining $1 billion for Astreya,” said Jatin Dalal, chief financial officer of Cognizant, during the company’s post-earnings analyst call on 29 April.Cognizant ended last year with $21.1 billion in revenue, up 7% year-on-year.“Our long-term capital allocation framework is to deploy ~50% of our annual free cash flow towards M&A aligned with our strategic priorities and ~50% towards dividends and share repurchases, targeting a consistent dividend payout ratio and repurchases to offset dilution.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), should India create its own large language models (LLMs) that can work on a trillion-plus parameters? Scale-wise, this would put them in contention with LLMs created by US players OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta and their Chinese rivals Alibaba, DeepSeek and Moonshot, with ByteDance, Tencent and Zhipu AI not far behind. Or should India focus on creating AI tools and agents based on available models? Eminent leaders of India’s success in IT services have argued in favour of the latter option. Scarce resources need not go into building frontier models from scratch, they say, as we could gain more by using what already exists to go further.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Stock market recap: Indian equity benchmarks ended the session higher on Monday 4 May, with the Nifty 50 rising 121.75 points (0.51%) to close at 24,119.30. The Sensex gained 355.90 points (0.46%) to finish at 77,269.40.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.SpiceJet Ltd’s operational fleet has shrunk from 33 aircraft at the end of December to about 21 in early May, bringing the airline close to the minimum threshold required to operate international flights under Indian aviation rules. Fleet count fell due to returns to lessors and grounding for maintenance.The slide in SpiceJet's fleet comes as the airline has also lost ground in the domestic market, slipping to fourth place with a 3.9% share in March.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.East India has shown a dramatic shift to the right, with West Bengal voting decisively for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the country’s latest round of assembly elections.The Trinamool Congress, which was ousted from power in polls held under the shadow of a controversy over an electoral-roll revision, had for 15 years looked like a stable inheritor of the Marxist regime that ruled the state for the previous 34 years. Unable to differentiate itself from the leftist formation it had replaced, it could not withstand a robust BJP campaign. That Assam would go the BJP way was expected all along.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Interest rate margins may remain under pressure in the first half of the current financial year, as lenders continue raising funds at high costs to match soaring loan growth. In the March quarter, margins for most banks, especially the mid-sized lenders, were flat to slightly lower.Margins compress when banks cut loan rates in line with benchmarks, but continue paying deposit interest at assured rates until they mature.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.With critical triggers like state election results and Q4 earnings converging, investors are navigating a landscape defined by high uncertainty. Strategic clarity remains elusive, making it difficult for traders to act decisively.Buy above ₹415, stop ₹395, target ₹460 (multiday)Buy above ₹930, stop ₹890, target ₹1025 (multiday)Buy above ₹1025, stop ₹960, target ₹1125 (multiday)Indian equity markets staged a strong rebound on 4 May, with both benchmark indices closing higher after Thursday’s sharp sell-off.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: The shrill emergency alerts that lit up millions of phones across India on Saturday brings the spotlight on an ongoing legal battle on the award of this critical public safety network project.Germany-headquartered Utimaco Technologies has alleged irregularities in government’s selection of the implementation agency for the cell broadcast system to roll out a nationwide disaster alert mechanism, according to people in the know and a copy of the company's petition seen by Mint.A case on the matter has been pending before the Delhi high court since 2024, with the next hearing slated for 11 May 2026.Utimaco, which owns Israel-based emergency alert solution provider Celltick, said India's decision to assign the project to the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) lacked fairness and transparency. Citing the absence of an open tender, the petition said the move violated the principle of natural justice and fair competition.C-DOT is a research and development wing of the department of telecommunications (DoT).