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₹50,000 and ₹2 lakh for courses on AI.“In 2025, the loans taken for educational courses was around ₹2 crore a month, of which 60% is for upskilling courses, largely AI-related. In 2026 January, the loan amount became ₹9 crore, and again 60% was taken for a tech-related upskilling course,” said Ankit Mehra, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of GyanDhan, an NBFC specializing in education loans.Propelld, another NBFC in the segment,has noted how upskilling courses are getting tweaked to include more AI-related teaching that is expected to prepare candidates for a higher success rate.“Most of the programmes are redesigned and remarketed as AI programming.

₹1.31 trillion worth of net inflows over the past one year. While passive investing should be approached in the same disciplined way as any other form of investing, long-term wealth creation should be built around broad market indices rather than thematic passive funds, says Hemen Bhatia, executive director and chief executive officer of Angel One Asset Management Company.In an interview with Mint, the former member of the team at Benchmark AMC that pioneered passive investing in India shares insights into the nuances of investing in passive funds.

playback singing remain skewed. Most singers are paid a one-time fee, while ownership and much of the long-term digital earnings stay with producers and music labels.Industry experts say the issue is particularly acute for newer names, even though the debate has been triggered by established voices.Depending on popularity and stature, established singers can earn upwards of ₹25 lakh per song.

Stock market recap: Benchmark domestic indices, the Sensex and the Nifty 50, ended lacklustre on Thursday, 26 February, due to profit booking in select heavyweights, including HDFC Bank and Axis Bank, amid mixed global cues.The Sensex ended 27 points, or 0.03%, lower at 82,248.61, while the Nifty 50 inched up by 14 points, or 0.06%, to settle at 25,496.55.The mid and small-cap segments ended with gains; the BSE 150 MidCap Index clocked a decent gain of 0.55%, while the BSE 250 SmallCap Index rose by 0.07%.The overall market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms increased to ₹468 trillion from ₹467 trillion n the previous session.Two stock recommendations by MarketSmith India:Buy: Fortis Healthcare Ltd(current price: ₹963.65)Buy: Mankind Pharma Ltd (current price: ₹2,280)Nifty 50 performance | 26 FebruaryIndian equities ended on a subdued note on February 26th, with Nifty 50 closing at 25,496.55, up 14.05 points or 0.06%, after oscillating between 25,400.95 and 25,572.95 during the session. The index witnessed intraday volatility but staged a late recovery, indicating buying interest near 25,400, while 25,600 continues to act as an immediate resistance.

New Delhi: India is shifting its strategy for solar component manufacturing from sales-based production-linked incentives (PLI) to an upfront capex-based subsidy for wafers, ingots and polysilicon, according to Santosh Kumar Sarangi, secretary in the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE). The ministry is developing financial-support schemes for agri-photovoltaics, floating solar and bioenergy, Sarangi said in an interview.To address 43 GW of unsigned power agreements, representing a ₹2.1 trillion investment, implementation agencies such as Solar Energy Corp of India (SECI) are negotiating project cancellations for unviable sites and securing state commitments for others.

Several Indian states plan to integrate trees into mainstream farming systems to improve soil health, capture atmospheric carbon, and diversify rural livelihoods, as crop yields drop due to climate change and land degradation.Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are in the process of launching state-specific agroforestry policies to include tree-based farming as a driver of sustainable economic growth, according to six people aware of the development.The proposed frameworks will ease timber and paper transit regulations, promote high-value tree species, facilitate access to quality planting material, and encourage private sector participation in value chains such as pulp, plywood, bioenergy, and fruit processing, the people said.Nearly 1.7 billion people globally live in regions where crop yields are declining due to human-induced land degradation, posing a direct threat to agricultural productivity and food security, according to The State of Food and Agriculture 2025. Agroforestry—cultivating trees alongside crops and livestock—is increasingly being viewed as a solution to rising input costs, erratic weather patterns, and land degradation.In India, trees outside forests (TOF) account for 8.65% of the total land area of 328.7 million hectares.

NEW DELHI: With a new duty slapped on solar module exports to the US, Africa may become an alternative destination for India-made solar power equipment, a government official said.To push solar module exports and project exports, Indian developers can also set up green energy projects through the Renewable Energy Service Company (RESCO) model, Santosh Kumar Sarangi, secretary in the ministry of new and renewable energy, said in an interview."I believe Africa would emerge as a good destination for India. Not only module exports, but also for project exports, where people are able to go and set up projects as RESCO developers," the secretary said.Under RESCO, a company installs, operates and maintains a solar energy system on a consumer’s property.

Mint in an interview. “India may not be a Top 6 market for us by revenue today, but we believe it will be a Top 6 market for us long-term.

On Monday, WhatsApp told the Supreme Court it would comply with directions requiring it to give users greater control over the data they share with other Meta entities such as Facebook and Instagram, ending a years-long battle with the Competition Commission of India over its controversial privacy policy update in 2021.The update, which required WhatsApp users to consent to having their data shared with Meta for advertising and non-advertising purposes, quickly drew the attention of the competition watchdog, leading to a landmark case that raised questions about dominance, consent and user choice in India’s wider digital economy.Here’s why Meta backed down this week, and what it means for Big Tech accountability in India.In 2021, Meta released a controversial update to its privacy policy for WhatsApp, requiring users to accept new terms – including expanded data collection and mandatory data sharing with Meta companies – if they wished to continue using the platform.This triggered a backlash worldwide, but especially in India, WhatsApp’s largest market. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) soon ordered a probe, saying the policy update may constitute an abuse of WhatsApp’s dominant position in instant messaging.WhatsApp challenged the probe, arguing that privacy matters were already being deliberated by constitutional courts and remained beyond the jurisdiction of competition law.

traders could back a bank guarantee with a small cash or cash-equivalent margin along with personal or corporate guarantees.Under the amended framework, both domestic and foreign proprietary traders must provide a 50% cash margin to secure a bank guarantee (BG). For the remaining collateral, RBI directions require customers to furnish eligible securities such as government bonds, sovereign gold bonds, and listed shares, among others.

Grade-A office spaces are seeing faster absorption buoyed by favourable demand-supply dynamics, thus pushing vacancies lower. All-India (aggregate of top-seven cities) vacancy levels in the December quarter (Q3FY26) declined further to 12.3% from 12.7% in Q2 and 13.9% in Q3FY25, showed Propstack data compiled by Kotak Institutional Equities.Global capability centres (GCCs) and flexible-space operators continue to dominate demand.

Last week’s AI Impact Summit ended the way these gatherings routinely do. This time with a ‘New Delhi Declaration,’ a non-binding hymn to cooperation and the hope that “AI could be made to serve humanity.” It’s the sort of empty language that dozens of countries and international organizations can sign up to without changing a thing.The most revealing statement came from the industry. Hours before the declaration, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered a bit of moral arithmetic in an interview with the Indian Express.

The news that US authorities had slapped countervailing duties on solar imports from India, citing unfair government subsidies, left investors jittery. For Waaree Energies Ltd, given 30-35% revenue-share from exports and US manufacturing, fears around export viability and margin erosion took centre stage.

The recent Artificial Intelligence (AI) Summit in New Delhi has brought home the remarkable pace at which AI is changing the way we live and work. The jury is still out on whether an AI-led society would be utopian or dystopian. Meanwhile, we need to reset our thinking on many issues.

rooms, is projected to reach 350,400 rooms by 2030. The composition of that pipeline, though, is telling.Midscale hotels account for 37% of the existing branded hotel room supply but 39% of the upcoming pipeline, suggesting that a large proportion of future supply is tilting further toward the segment.The economy segment, by contrast, is shrinking from 6% of current inventory to just 3% of pipeline share.

retirement savings with immediate healthcare liquidity.The NPS Swasthya Equity Plus scheme follows a high-growth investment mandate to counter medical inflation.Subscribers can withdraw up to 25% of their own contributions for medical expenses, including OPD, diagnostics and pharmacy purchases. However, the first withdrawal is permitted only after the account accumulates at least ₹50,000.

Before the enactment of India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), there was very little talk of turnaround professionals. Yet, they were deployed in many companies, not as external consultants, but as individual key managerial personnel (KMP).

Big Tech’s acceleration of Agentic AI hangs like a sword of Damocles over traditional IT services. Consequently, global tech and Indian IT stocks lurch between optimism and unease as investors weigh the impact of these artificial intelligence (AI) tools on a services model built largely on billing human effort. The debate has moved beyond incremental automation to deeper concern over AI agents that can generate code, test applications and manage infrastructure.

Lynch is also the author of the classic investing book One Up on Wall Street. A value investor at heart, he is credited with developing the GARP (Growth at a Reasonable Price) strategy and popularising the term “multibagger.”Here are his six rules for spotting multi-bagger stocks, and how they can be applied in India.Lynch was famous as a growth investor, but he never overpaid for growth. A PE of 40 was often too high for him.

After reaching a framework for a trade deal with India that raised the hope of bilateral ties settling down, Washington has thrown a fresh curve ball. On Tuesday, the US commerce department announced varying import duties on solar panels from three Asian countries, including a whopping 126% on those from India. The other two, Indonesia and Laos, also face similarly high tariffs.

India’s traditional brokers are banking on a business they dominate to claw back the ground they ceded to digital rivals over the past decade: lending clients money for leveraged trading.Called the margin trading facility (MTF) in market parlance, it allows investors to buy shares by paying only a part of the total value upfront, with the broker funding the rest at an interest cost.MTF book surged 42.9% in the year through January 2026 to ₹1.20 lakh crore even as the markets turned volatile, according to a February Care Edge report. The top two in the category are bank-backed brokers: ICICI Securities Ltd and Kotak Securities Ltd.