India Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.As the fourth quarter numbers of FY26 begin to trickle in, early trends point to headline profit resilience, largely driven by financials, particularly banks. Across non-financial industries such as consumer and IT, revenue growth has held up, but profits are already under pressure, signalling a broader margin squeeze ahead.With uncertainty around the West Asia conflict persisting, Dalal Street remains cautious, as investors brace for the full impact of rising input costs to flow through to profitability from the June quarter.A Mint analysis of 220 early results shows total income rose 3.4% year-on-year, a sharp slowdown from 12% in the December quarter for the same set of companies.However, even as core operations (net sales) rose nearly 9% y-o-y to a seven-quarter high, overall topline was weighed down by a 65% fall in non-core (‘other’) income, driven by treasury losses as bond yields hardened amid the West Asia conflict in March.Meanwhile, aggregate net profit for the 220 companies rose 10% y-o-y, but the gains were largely driven by banks, masking pressure on non-financial companies amid a sharp rise in costs.Further, a 50% spike in crude oil prices in March drove raw material and service costs higher, leading to a 13% year-on-year and 20% sequential surge in overall expenses, limiting the benefit from the absence of the previous quarter’s one-off labour code adjustments.Mitesh Dalal, head of broking at Sanctum Wealth, noted that most firms were still consuming lower-cost inventory through much of the quarter, with the crude spike largely concentrated in March.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Indian equity benchmarks rebounded on Wednesday, 29 April, with the Nifty 50 rising 181.95 points, or 0.76%, to close at 24,177.65, reclaiming the 24,000 mark. The Sensex advanced about 0.73% to end near 77,446.Sentiment was supported by optimism around fourth-quarter earnings, led by Maruti Suzuki and an improvement in global risk appetite, even as tensions in West Asia persisted.Gains were led by FMCG and auto stocks, with the Nifty FMCG index up 1.75% and the Nifty Auto index rising 1.15%.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Indian equity benchmarks rebounded on Wednesday, 29 April, with the Nifty 50 rising 181.95 points, or 0.76%, to close at 24,177.65, reclaiming the 24,000 mark. The Sensex advanced about 0.73% to end near 77,446.Sentiment was supported by optimism around fourth-quarter earnings, led by Maruti Suzuki and an improvement in global risk appetite, even as tensions in West Asia persisted.Gains were led by FMCG and auto stocks, with the Nifty FMCG index up 1.75% and the Nifty Auto index rising 1.15%.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.IIM Ahmedabad's venture platform IIMA Ventures has averaged six to eight exits from its startup portfolio every yearsince the financial year 2012-13 (FY13)—a pace of returns that outstrips even some of India's leading venture capital funds.IIMA Ventures exited Pune-based Unbox Robotics earlier this year when the warehouse automation startup raised $28 million in its Series B round led by ICICI Venture. It was among the first institutional backers of the company, writing an $80,000 ( ₹75 lakh) cheque when it raised a $500,000 seed round back in 2020.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The insurance sector requires deregulation in some areas and stronger regulation in others. However, deregulation does not mean laissez-faire,” said Ajay Seth, chairman of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai).In an interaction with Mint, he outlined the regulator’s approach to balancing sector liberalization with consumer protection, amid proposed reforms such as the Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha Act.He discussed foreign participation, regulatory safeguards, challenges in health insurance, global risks, and new initiatives such as the Public Insurance Registry and the Bima Sugam platform.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India is planning to build a six-month strategic reserve of critical minerals to shield its green energy and manufacturing sectors from supply shocks and price swings, two people aware of the matter said. The Union ministries of mines and heavy industries are working on a plan to stockpile imported and locally sourced critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earth elements, a segment dominated by China.The strategic reserve will act as a long-term safeguard for sectors such as electric mobility, energy storage and electronics manufacturing, which are increasingly dependent on imports, the people cited above said on the condition of anonymity.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: India's summer (zaid) crops, including maize, moong, and groundnut, have remained resilient despite scorching heat across several parts of the country. However, an extended heatwave could hurt both yields and crop quality, a senior agricultural scientist warned on Wednesday.Field reports suggest that these short-duration crops, grown between rabi and kharif seasons, are largely holding up, supported by timely irrigation, M.L.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Anthropic’s Mythos, a frontier artificial intelligence (AI) model, can outperform humans in detecting vulnerabilities across systems, including banks, telcos and utilities. While it can detect flaws faster and better than humans, global agencies warn it could be used as a potential cyberweapon too. Mint decodes.Claude Mythos or Mythos is US-based Anthropic's advanced AI model designed to handle complex cybersecurity tasks such as identifying bugs, analyzing systems and even generating exploits.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In 1604, James I of England anonymously published a small book titled A Counterblaste to Tobacco. He called smoking “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.” Within a year, he had raised the import duty on tobacco by 4,000%. The duty did not work.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s outsourcing industry, its largest white-collar employer, is a juggernaut that has all but stopped moving. The dollar revenue at the top five software-services exporters has grown slower than 3% for 10 straight quarters—a shadow of the double-digit expansion in the previous two decades. As these companies squeeze hiring to survive the existential challenge posed by artificial intelligence (AI), the aftershocks are starting to upend everything from real-estate demand to mortgage-underwriting norms.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Smartphone care and warranty provider Servify is looking to close a string of acquisitions to expand its service categories before it files papers for a public listing.Like several initial public offering (IPO)-bound companies, Servify has taken a step back to wait for markets to stabilise amid the ongoing war in West Asia before filing its draft papers. It joins the list of companies such as PhonePe, Curefoods, and Turtlemint that have put their public market plans on hold.“We're in the middle of some initiatives which will likely help us become a larger entity than we are currently,” company founder and chief executive Sreevathsa Prabhakar told Mint.The Mumbai-based company is pursuing acquisitions across its core smartphone care business and a luxury goods vertical launched at the end of FY25.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India currently levies a 5% basic customs duty on raw cotton imports. The government had temporarily waived this duty between 19 August and 30 September 2025, and later extended this exemption to 31 December 2025.Addressing the media on the supply-chain scenario amid the war in West Asia, Bipin Menon, trade advisor in the textiles ministry, said on Tuesday that discussions were ongoing with the ministry of agriculture and the department of revenue on reducing or eliminating customs duty on cotton.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Maruti Suzuki India’s stock rose 5% to ₹13,512 on Wednesday as investors prioritised the company's strong operating performance in the March quarter (Q4FY26) over a 7% year-on-year drop in net profit to ₹3,591 crore.It should be noted that Maruti’s Q4FY26 profitability per vehicle held up well despite the pressure from higher raw material costs, particularly steel. Ebitda per vehicle fell just 1.4% sequentially to ₹91,050 as the average selling price (ASP) rose 4% quarter-on-quarter to ₹7.76 lakh per unit.On the other hand, Q4FY26 domestic sales volumes announced at the start of April were disappointing.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Over the past few weeks, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) stocks have drawn renewed investor attention. Traditionally, the sector, alongside IT, has been seen as a defensive play during market volatility.The Nifty FMCG index has rallied sharply since early April 2026.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India is currently the world’s fastest-growing major economy, a headline that invites optimism as we sprint past the $4 trillion milestone. But for most of the 1.4 billion-plus people who live in the country, headline GDP has become a mere dashboard metric—high on transactional velocity but low on household dignity. We are witnessing a historic rupture: the link between economic growth and job creation, once the singular pulse of development, has been functionally severed.A forensic audit of India’s structural shift from 1991 to 2026 reveals a catastrophic decline in the job efficiency of our growth.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The year 2025 proved highly significant for those tracking interest rates, as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) embarked on its most aggressive easing cycle since 2019. Over the course of four policy meetings, the central bank reduced the repo rate by a total of 1.25 percentage points, bringing it down to 5.25%.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Concerned about the rising number of complaints over unfair sales practices in India’s insurance sector, the regulator is planning a major clean-up of how life, health and motor vehicle policies are sold by bringing out a discussion paper on proposed distribution reforms.The next phase of insurance reforms will focus less on headline liberalization and more on fixing structural inefficiencies in pricing, distribution and customer outcomes, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India chairman Ajay Seth said in an interview. IRDAI is also working with the Reserve Bank of India to tighten oversight of banks selling insurance products while pushing for a lower-cost and more transparent model, he said.“We are coordinating with the RBI to curb mis-selling through the bancassurance channel.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Union road transport and highways ministry is recalibrating its highway-building strategy to focus on decongesting urban India, with plans to prioritize ring roads and bypass corridors around nearly 50 cities with populations exceeding one million, two people aware of the development said.The shift marks a departure from the earlier emphasis on long inter-city corridors under programmes such as Bharatmala, towards integrating highways with urban mobility needs.According to the first person quoted above, the new approach of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) will ensure that long-distance highway traffic is diverted outside dense city cores, enabling seamless freight movement while reducing congestion within cities. The broader objective is to lower logistics costs and support investment and growth.As per government estimates, the country’s logistics cost has already fallen from 13–14% of GDP a few years ago to close to 8% now, driven by GST reforms, FASTag, e-way bills, digital tracking systems, and the expansion of highways and freight corridors under PM Gati Shakti.Queries mailed to MoRTH and NHAI remained unanswered till press time.“The new highway construction strategy would keep at least around quarter of annual highway construction target of about 10,000 km for building bypasses and ring roads around cities with higher vehicle density.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Investors will be keenly watching how the US-Iran war-induced volatility in raw materials in March impacted Hindustan Unilever Ltd's (HUL) margins when the packaged consumer goods giant announces its fourth-quarter results on Thursday.HUL is expected to post a profit after tax of ₹2,612 crore and revenue of ₹16,270 crore in the three months ended 31 March, according to Bloomberg's 21-analyst estimate. In the third quarter, it reported a net profit before exceptional items of ₹2,562 crore and revenue of ₹16,235 crore.The company, often considered a proxy for consumption in India, has had a tough March quarter, with several key inputs used across its product portfolio directly exposed to disruptions triggered by the US-Iran war.For example, the price of palm oil, a key ingredient for HUL, which makes soaps under brands such as Lux, Lifebuoy, Dove, Pears, Rexona and Hamam, has been rising as the war has pushed major producers such as Malaysia and Indonesia to increase their biodiesel capacity.Similarly, prices of liquid paraffin, used in creams, have edged up slightly.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The International Monetary Fund in its recent spring meeting abandoned its single global growth forecast. It now presents three scenarios: 3.1% growth with 4.4% inflation, 2.5% growth with 5.4% inflation, or 2% growth with inflation above 6%, depending on how long the Strait of Hormuz stays shut. The International Energy Agency has called the 2026 disruption the worst energy shock the world has ever seen.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.China emerged largely unscathed at a time when the West Asia war battered nearly every major emerging market economy through higher energy prices and their ripple effects. The dragon retained its top rank on Mint’s Emerging Markets Tracker (EMT) for March 2026.India, by contrast, slipped three places to sixth as the conflict intensified rupee depreciation, foreign outflows and export weakness.The divergence underscores a widening gap in external-sector stability.