Digital Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Just as online brokers have made stock investing possible with a click, several applications now allow users to invest in fixed deposits (FDs) from multiple banks online without needing savings accounts with those banks.In April, low-cost broker Zerodha joined the bandwagon by launching such digital FDs on its investment platform Coin. Other apps that facilitate digital FD investments include Stable Money, SuperMoney, Jiraaf, and GoldenPiThe main advertising pitch for digital FDs is higher interest rates than those offered by traditional banks and the convenience of a one-stop shop.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.As content clutter intensifies and organic discovery of fresh titles becomes harder, consumers are increasingly turning to AI for help.According to Gracenote, the content data business unit of Nielsen, adoption of AI-powered entertainment experiences is rising—especially among older Gen Alpha respondents (ages 13 and 14). The shift is already reshaping how this cohort discovers content.When asked to name the best source for TV and movie recommendations, 49% of Gen Alpha chose web- and app-based AI chatbots, ahead of streaming and cable service interfaces and program guides (41%) and internet search engine results (11%).The implication is clear: discovery is moving from browsing to prompting.As a result, creators and platforms are experimenting with multiple entry points.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Indian cuisine rarely takes salads seriously, or just does not call them that. What is a kachumber if not a salad? Or a kosambari/koshimbir of cucumbers, carrots or beetroot tossed with yoghurt and roasted peanuts? Isn’t the Manipuri singju a salad of vegetables and herbs mixed with ngari or fermented fish paste?Call them what you want, but salads bring something extra to the table.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.What do you do when a Bollywood power couple settles in at a table next to yours to eat tisrya (clams) and surmai fry? If you are someone who respects their privacy, you’d carry on with your meal, offer a polite smile if your eyes meet, and avoid turning the moment into a spectacle.What should have been a leisurely Sunday lunch with the family turned into an ordeal when a popular filmy couple walked into a seafood restaurant in Mumbai. Despite arriving before them and placing our orders promptly, our food, except for a couple of appetisers, never made it to the table.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Economists like to preach prudence, but they do not always practise it. Ibrahim Oweiss was a young economist in Egypt’s Ministry of Industry when he offered some frank advice to his bosses. He warned against a suffocating overconcentration of industry in Cairo and Alexandria.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.OnEMI Technology Ltd, the operator of digital lending platform Kissht, listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday at ₹190 per share, an 11.1% premium to its issue price of ₹171. The debut offers one of the clearest public-market tests yet of whether an app-first lender can be valued beyond just another unsecured credit player.That question matters because while the market has large listed financial firms such as Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, and Aye Finance, it has few listed pure-play digital lenders of Kissht’s kind.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.WASHINGTON—On a recent call with the heads of the biggest artificial-intelligence companies, Vice President JD Vance was alarmed.New AI models such as Anthropic’s Mythos, which are capable of finding software vulnerabilities on their own, threatened to disrupt small-town banks, hospitals and water plants by starting cyberattacks that local governments weren’t equipped to handle, Vance said.“We all need to work together on this,” Vance told chief executive officers including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Elon Musk of SpaceX, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet’s Google and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, according to people familiar with the matter.The April call, which followed a White House briefing that played a role in sparking Vance’s concern over the latest AI model capabilities, set in motion a chaotic administration response to Mythos that threatens to increase government oversight of AI and overhaul the administration’s tech agenda. The concern expressed by Vance, paired with other moves by the White House to get involved in the rollout of AI models, marks a shift from previous language about winning the AI race against China and removing barriers to deploying models.The White House is weighing an executive order that could create a formal oversight process for the most-advanced models.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Dabur India Ltd’s March quarter (Q4FY26) numbers are steady, but not particularly exciting for a company that trades at relatively high valuations. Consolidated revenue grew 7.3% year-on-year to ₹3,038 crore, while full-year FY26 growth stood at 5% to ₹13,193 crore.Ebitda margin was flat year-on-year at 15.2% in Q4FY26. The quarter reflects that Dabur is still trying to find a stronger growth trajectory.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: India has issued guidelines defining and classifying intensive care units (ICUs), a regulatory step that will affect 71,000 hospitals and over 1.38 million registered doctors in the country, as the government aims to eliminate hospital-acquired infections and address uneven critical care standards, according to an official familiar with the matter and a document reviewed by Mint.The directorate general of health services (DGHS), operating under the health and family welfare ministry, has categorized ICUs into three levels. The standards start at Level 1 units that are intended for basic stabilization with a minimum of six beds and one ventilator, to Level 3 units equipped for advanced multi-organ failure support with bedside portable CT and mobile digital radiography.The norms set round-the-clock physician coverage, nurse-to-patient ratios and require Level 2 and Level 3 doctors to hold a Doctorate of Medicine or a Doctorate of the National Board in intensive care.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Most of the recent conversations around Bima Sugam, the IRDAI-backed one-stop digital insurance marketplace, have focused on access – simpler purchases, standardised products, and possibly lower costs through zero-commission policies. If executed well, this could reduce the friction in buying and managing insurance.But for households dealing with ageing parents, this addresses only one part of the financial reality. The more relevant question is not whether insurance is easier to buy, but whether it meaningfully covers the full cost of ageing.India is already at an inflection point.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Banks are at their peak performance in India. Credit growth is faster than nominal GDP growth, world-class digital platforms have arisen and regulations have been supportive. Return on assets reached a milestone 1.4% and gross non-performing assets (NPAs) fell to a 13-year low in fiscal year 2024-25.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Unlike the traditional Bollywood template of flashy acting debuts, celebrity relatives are increasingly building loyal audiences on social media first and monetizing their personal brands before stepping into films, shows or mainstream entertainment projects.Figures such as Riddhima Kapoor, who is set to appear in a film soon, and Krishna Shroff, recently seen in multiple reality shows, have leveraged the low barriers to digital content creation to build personal brands and attract collaborations with companies before taking the mainstream entertainment route.Industry experts say the strategy is straightforward: a ready-made audience reduces marketing costs and lowers the risk attached to launching fresh faces in films and television. Instead of building visibility from scratch, producers and brands now rely on measurable engagement and documented fan bases.“These are individuals who may not have broken into mainstream acting or production, but they carry significant advantages: access, wealth, network, and a powerful surname.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.It says something about the memory business when skyrocketing profits can actually be a cause for worry.Profits have never been a sure thing in the volatile industry. Memory chip makers Micron Technology and Sandisk, as well as hard-drive makers Seagate and Western Digital, have all produced annual operating losses at least once in just the last three years.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BENGALURU/MUMBAI: Blackstone-owned Mphasis Ltd has filed a lawsuit in a US court against rival Coforge Ltd, accusing the Noida-based IT services firm of hiring its employees in violation of contractual restrictions and gaining access to confidential client information.The Bengaluru-based company, which reported $1.8 billion in revenue last year, has also named its former vice president Brijesh Khergamker as a party in the case filed in a Colorado court.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), the infrastructure fund manager that BlackRock Inc. acquired for $12.5 billion two years ago, is exploring initial public offerings (IPOs) for two of the companies in its Indian portfolio, logistics operator Pristine Logistics & Infraprojects Ltd and tower company Ascend Telecom Infrastructure Pvt.

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.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.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.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.This year’s first monetary policy meeting revealed an interesting data point on an emerging monetary product, an element that is bound to influence monetary systems and policies, including global payment systems. Its development has been characterized by caution, and while it is still some distance away from becoming widely accepted, its use-case scenarios present policy and regulatory challenges.India’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), or e-rupee, is finally emerging from the shadows. It is being tested in the domestic economy through managed programmes.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Shortly after Charles Schwab announced in April that it would soon allow investors to trade crypto directly on its platform, financial advisor Jeff Judge received a question from a 68-year-old client who had always dismissed Bitcoin: Was he “missing something?” the client asked Judge.The client ended up investing $125,000—some 5% of his $2.5 million portfolio—in a crypto exchanged-traded fund (ETF).“Institutional credibility moved the needle in a way that price performance never did,” said Judge, managing partner at Chesapeake Financial Planners in the Baltimore area. “When Fidelity, BlackRock and now Schwab put their name on it, older investors interpret that as a green light, or at least a sign they should ask the question.”Crypto has surged to a $2.6 trillion market cap, up more than 1,000% from April 2020 as retail investors and institutional ones alike have taken an interest in digital currency.Bitcoin’s price jumped from roughly $8,000 per coin in early 2020 to as high as $126,000 per coin in October of last year.