COST Financial News

JioStar and Pocket FM have recently expanded their AI capabilities, focusing on streamlining story development, production workflows, and localisation, while improving content discovery and retention.Pocket FM said the focus is on building a differentiated, technology-led entertainment ecosystem rooted in strong storytelling and deep consumer insight."Over the past couple of years, we have strengthened our AI-powered recommendation systems to improve content discovery and retention, while also deploying our in-house AI Creator Suite to streamline story development, production workflows, and localisation,” said Prateek Dixit, co-founder - product, tech and AI, Pocket FM.The company has recently strengthened its AI leadership with the appointment of Vasu Sharma as head of AI, whose mandate includes advancing narrative intelligence, long-context reasoning, and scalable localisation capabilities, while ensuring that AI systems remain creator-first and ethically governed, Dixit said.“These investments enable us to accelerate content production, enhance personalisation, optimise cost structures, and scale global IP more efficiently, all while preserving the primacy of human creativity,” Dixit added.For long, Indian media companies focused on content while global players focused on product, data, and technology infrastructure alongside content, said Vijay Subramaniam, founder and group CEO of Collective Artists Network.“Our latest product is a cinema-native production technology platform, that brings together generative systems, LoRA (low rank adaptation)-driven character architecture, controlled shot pipelines, 3D/VFX integration, lip-sync, upscaling, quality control, and delivery into a single production environment,”

In every crisis lies an opportunity, it is said. At the very least, today’s hydrocarbon crisis should re-open India’s forlorn debate on pushing oil and gas into a closer market embrace as a sector. Ever since we ran into supply snarls that began with yet another war in West Asia, shock-absorbers have been in focus, along with our import dependence.To be sure, this is no ordinary shock.

₹18,000 crore in planned fund-raising at risk. Thirteen mainboard companies are nearing their 12-month deadlines by June to launch their issues or lose regulatory approval.The impending expiry of these clearances, given by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) between April and June 2025, underscores how volatile market conditions are prompting firms to defer listings, raising the prospect of higher costs, delayed timelines and a near-term squeeze on fresh market liquidity.Per PRIME Database, these include the Munjal family's ₹3,600-crore Hero Fincorp Ltd offer, Morgan Stanley-backed Continuum Green Energy Ltd's ₹3,650 crore plan, and Norwest Venture Partners-backed Veritas Finance Ltd's proposed IPO worth ₹2,800 crore.Following Sebi approval, companies typically file a red herring prospectus with the Registrar of Companies within four to six weeks.Sebi regulations mandate that companies must launch their IPOs within 12 months of receiving the final observation letter.

West Asia conflict, even as it looks to turn the disruption into an opportunity to gain market share.“In order to fully neutralize the impact of raw material price increase, we have to increase the prices of our products,” said Abhijit Roy, managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO), in an interview with Mint. “The price increases have happened in the mass premium and luxury segment… the economy segment has been left untouched so far.”The hikes follow a sharp rise in crude oil prices, a key driver of paint raw material costs.

“Ordinary folks with no financial education can be wealthy if they have a handful of behavioral skills that have nothing to do with formal measures of intelligence,” wrote Morgan Housel in his book The Psychology of Money. He says a “genius who loses control of their emotions can be a financial disaster.”In other words, behavioural biases commonly affect how people make decisions, and they can have a significant impact on investment outcomes.“After having followed the markets for a considerable number of years, the one thing I can say with some certainty is that markets are driven not just by data and fundamentals—they are driven by human behavior,” says Krishan Rao, MD & co-head - Equity Broking Group, JM Financial Services.

The West Asia crisis is taking a toll on Indian manufacturing and services sectors. Private sector companies are grappling with demand slowdown and input cost inflation.The seasonally adjusted HSBC Flash India Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) Composite Output Index fell to a nearly three-and-a-half year low of 56.5 in March from a final reading of 58.9 in February.The Flash PMI is an early, advanced estimate of economic activity in the manufacturing and services sectors.

They need to maintain detailed records of accounts that must be kept for long periods. If your income exceeds ₹50 lakh (raised to ₹1 crore since last year), the tax returns require you to disclose the cost of certain types of assets held by you.Such assets include shares and securities, loans and advances given, bank balances, immovable property, vehicles, jewellery, etc.

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is one of the products facing a global supply crunch today, thanks to the Iran war. The result is more than a cooking gas shortage in India. In order to prioritize the availability of cooking gas for homes, the government reduced supplies to commercial establishments.

fertilizer. For plants, nitrogen is a vital nutrient for growth—without it they cannot convert sunlight into energy. If all crops knew how to synthesize nitrogen from the air (which is available freely), there would be no need for urea.

There is a paradox at the heart of the US economy. As the federal government imposes sweeping tariffs, signals hostility to multilateral trade and unnerves long-term investors with erratic policymaking, one state has emerged as the most reliable US address for global capital: California, the world’s fourth-largest economy and America’s second-largest exporting state with $188 billion in annual goods exports.

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) balance sheet shows that the amount of government paper (including treasury bills) held as on 28 February was ₹21.34 trillion. It was ₹15.58 trillion in March 2025. With RBI’s recently announced open market operations (OMOs), which will probably continue this month, the amount will only increase.

India’s civil aviation ministry has withdrawn caps placed on domestic airfares as more expensive fuel amid the West Asia war and a weakening rupee send costs for airlines soaring. While airlines will now be able to raise airfares, the ministry has cautioned that instances of excessive surge “will be viewed seriously” and that the caps may be reintroduced or other steps taken to safeguard the public interest. These caps had been placed in December after flight cancellations by IndiGo sent airfares soaring.

Deepak Nitrite Ltd’s investors would have hoped for some succour from the news that the Indian government is considering levying an anti-dumping duty on imports of Diamino Stilbene Disulphonic Acid (Dasda) from China. Deepak’s stand has been vindicated as the Directorate General of ​Trade Remedies (DGTR) has found merit in its complaint.

New Delhi: India’s top two-wheeler makers are bracing for pressure on margins and demand, as a surge in commodity costs linked to the ongoing West Asia war coincides with the impending withdrawal of electric vehicle (EV) subsidies. The twin blow has led to concerns that the companies, including TVS Motor, Bajaj Auto and Hero MotoCorp, may be forced to raise prices, absorb cost pressures, or risk slowing adoption of EVs.Analysts and industry executives note that the removal of subsidies under the government's PM E-Drive scheme from April can lead to price hikes of up to ₹5,000 for electric two wheelers.

L&T, said in a press briefing on Saturday, the company’s first major status update since the US-Israel-Iran war broke out on 28 February.Most of the work suspension has been voluntary, he said, to ensure the safety of the company’s staff. At two sites, customers recommended temporarily halting work, he added.The company has not yet evacuated any staff from the region, but it is also not sending new people there from India at the moment, he said.

₹60,000 crore in revenue, or closer to ₹80,000 crore when the broader Indian ceramic industry is counted. India is the world’s second-largest tile manufacturer, behind China, and Morbi is the engine of that position.The industry’s growth has tracked India’s real estate expansion with unusual fidelity.

₹1 trillion, highlighting a surge in leveraged stock buying even as risks loom large for retail investors.Data from the National Stock Exchange shows total outstanding funded stock positions across brokers have surpassed ₹1 trillion, reflecting how aggressively investors have embraced leveraged stock buying in recent years.The pitch is tempting: put in a fraction of the money, borrow the rest from your broker, and take a larger position in a stock you are bullish on. But the mechanics of margin trading facilities (MTF) carry risks that are easy to underestimate.MTF lets investors buy stocks by paying only part of the total transaction value upfront.

Climate Change and You is a fortnightly newsletter written by Bibek Bhattacharya and Sayantan Bera. Subscribe to the newsletter to get it directly in your inbox.Dear reader,Recently, while working on a story on farmer-owned companies, I came across an ancient variety of rice. The heirloom rice variety, known as Kala Namak, comes from eastern Uttar Pradesh.

New Delhi: As the West Asia conflict drives crude prices above $100 a barrel, India has begun a calibrated pass-through of the shock—raising prices of select fuels while holding the line on retail petrol and diesel.State-run oil marketing companies (OMCs) have raised industrial diesel prices by around ₹22 per litre and premium petrol by about ₹2 per litre, according to industry sources. However, the prices of regular transport fuels and premium diesel have been kept unchanged.In Delhi, the price of premium petrol has been increased from ₹99.89 per litre to ₹101.89, and the price of industrial diesel, which is procured in bulk, has been increased to ₹109.59 per litre.Earlier this month, prices of domestic cooking gas were raised by about ₹60 and commercial LPG by about ₹115.Addressing the media on the developments in West Asia, Sujata Sharma, joint secretary in the ministry of petroleum and natural gas (MoPNG), said there has been no increase in prices of regular petrol and the hike is limited to premium variants, which account for just 3-4% of total demand.

department of telecommunications (DoT) to a parliamentary panel, come as both operators grapple with capital constraints and uneven network strength across regions, prompting a rethink on overlapping network infrastructure.“Discussions have started between the two of them. The Department will report progress regarding this by next year,” telecom secretary Amit Agrawal told the parliamentary committee as cited in its report dated 16 March available on the Lok Sabha website.The parliamentary committee on communications and information technology, chaired by member of parliament Nishikant Dubey, has asked DoT to facilitate a structured and time-bound decision on comprehensive infrastructure sharing between the two.“The committee are of the view that, where there is direct or indirect government participation in the utilization of towers, duplication of creation of infrastructure and unwanted capital expenditure can be avoided,” it said in the report tabled in Lok Sabha on 16 March.The panel added that in regions where one operator has a stronger presence than the other, collaborative use of towers, fibre, spectrum and other network assets could expand service reach, optimise resource use, reduce expenditure, increase connectivity and accelerate 5G rollout.It has also asked the telecom department to prepare and submit, within six months, a detailed analysis on the sharing of towers, fibre, spectrum, and other network infrastructure, outlining progress, modalities and estimated financial savings to ensure optimal use of public resources and efficient nationwide 5G deployment.Communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, however, told Mint that any such arrangement would be a commercial decision.

A straw poll might show there exists a field of technology in which we Indians actually find it hard to be optimistic: self-driving vehicles. Satellite-guided traffic is a tech vision that’s unlikely to survive contact with our urban streets, unless AI can evolve to outsmart, say, a ‘squid’ motorist (in biker parlance) and learn the art of a real-world dodge.But optimism or any lack thereof has no bearing on the need for tech solutions to upgrade how vehicles move. For one thing, the status quo is costly.