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When Raunak Bhinge first approached institutional investors seeking funding for Infinite Uptime, the pitch was straightforward: much of India’s factory equipment was still analogue, and digitising it could help manufacturers improve output. Over time, the venture pivoted from being seen as a software startup to proving it was an artificial intelligence (AI)-backed business built on proprietary industrial data and models refined over years of deployments.“Investor due diligence has become deeper over the years as we raised funding,” said Bhinge, whose venture has raised over $60 million since inception.

rare earth magnets critical for automobile, defence, electronics and wind energy sectors, among others.The scheme received the Union Cabinet's assent on 26 November last year, following which interested parties have begun consultations with the government. The scheme’s target is to create a magnet making capacity of 6,000 tonnes per annum in India."The government's benchmark is that ₹1,000 crore investment will be needed for 1,200 tonnes of magnet making capacity.

For at least a decade, developing countries across Asia and Africa have worried about growing dependent on the People’s Republic of China. They’re concerned about debt traps, coercive policies and hidden costs that might push their economies toward crisis.Crisis has come, and that logic has been turned on its head. After six weeks of the US and Israel’s war on Iran and its ensuing counter-attacks, it is the countries that bet on Chinese supply chains that are faring better than the ones that had trusted Pax Americana.

The ongoing war in West Asia has cast a pall of uncertainty over the global economy. The disruptions in energy supplies have begun to ripple through supply chains across the world. In its latest monthly review of the Indian economy, the finance ministry has noted: “Recent shocks are being transmitted through higher input costs, supply constraints and pressures across sectors, with early indications of some moderation in economic activity.”For economic policymakers, managing a disruption in supply is far more complicated than responding to a sudden shift in demand.

IT sector, according to the data.There has also been a visible surge in companies explicitly branding themselves as AI-focused. At the beginning of FY26, 84 companies in every 10,000 new registrations mentioned ‘AI’ in their names.

There is usually a lull before a storm. Financial markets often mimic such natural phenomena, displaying blink-and-miss signs of disturbance before a full-blown crisis. In many advanced economies, nascent signals of trouble have arisen that could—if left unaddressed—hit global finance and send several players to the sick bay.

Effects of the global disruptions resulting from America and Israel’s war on Iran have started to show on India’s economy. On Monday, the final HSBC India services purchasing managers’ index (PMI), compiled by S&P Global, showed a fall to 57.5 in March from 58.1 in February, marking the slowest rate of expansion in 14 months. This follows a bigger fall in the manufacturing PMI to 53.9 in March from 56.9, the lowest level in nearly four years.Relatively speaking, the services sector has done better.

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The world has been through this before. Oil prices spike, supply chains shudder and emerging economies absorb the pain while advanced nations reach for their strategic reserves. But the conflict now roiling West Asia carries a twist that policymakers must not overlook: this is not a health shock, as covid was.

After years of marginal tweaks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) undertook one of the most consequential reforms in its External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) framework in February this year. Over the decades, commercial loans raised by Indian resident entities have been regulated under tightly-controlled regimes, with caps on the quantum of annual borrowing, ceilings on interest spreads, prescriptive maturity conditions and rigid end-use norms.

Amid daily price swings in crude oil, based on what the US or Iran says on a given day, global growth prospects for 2026 appear grim. Even if the war ends within days, rebuilding energy infrastructure in West Asia, battered by bombings and drone attacks, will take months if not years.

With no end in sight to the West Asia war, concerns are rising over inflation, interest rates and GDP growth in India. As part of the Money Guru series, Bank of Baroda chief economist Madan Sabnavis breaks down the potential impact on the economy, household finances and job markets, and assesses whether recession risks are real or overstated.At a theoretical level, inflation could rise, but much depends on how long the war lasts, how high crude oil prices go and how much of this increase is passed on to consumers. So far, the government reduced excise duty on petrol and diesel, absorbing much of the crude price increase.

. 28, lasts for only a few more weeks, falling gas prices will likely deliver an economic tailwind later this year. If the stress continues for months, however, economists will start to worry about a slowdown, or even a recession.President Trump in a prime-time speech Wednesday said he would achieve America’s military objectives “very shortly” and vowed to hit Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.” Equities markets closed little changed Thursday, while U.S. oil futures soared.The U.S.

Mint.A multipolar world could open up new leadership pathways that may not align perfectly with the largest economies, said Sternfels, pointing to emerging growth areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and data centres.India’s talent, combined with grit and entrepreneurship, gives it a winning edge, said Sternfels, who is serving his second three-year term as head of the consulting firm that has a significant influence across boardrooms and national leaderships.“In a shifting world order, this is India’s leadership moment on multiple dimensions, as it becomes a strategic imperative for organizations globally to re-orient towards India,” he said.Sternfels rejected the idea that global trade is diminishing. Instead, it is growing in different ways, he said.Global trade flow moves like water; if it is blocked somewhere, it finds a different way, said Sternfels, adding that a few free trade agreements were negotiated among countries in the last 12 months, but they do not involve the US.

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (for 2026–2030), approved in March, retains the direction of its earlier Plans, serving as a setter of priorities and an instrument for policy coordination across China’s vast administrative system. The central question is whether this Plan will deliver what China’s economy needs: a decisive shift in favour of consumption-led growth.China’s growth model: The country’s growth has long relied on investment, industrial production and exports.

GDP growth in the December quarter and strong manufacturing activity. This placed India among the better-performing economies on domestic indicators and pushed it closer to the top of the table.Currency and equity markets showed some recovery in February compared with the previous few months, but remained among the weaker performers compared to peers.

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war in West Asia rocked global sentiment.Fresh project announcements slipped 13% to ₹44 trillion in the financial year 2025-26 (FY26), according to data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). It almost erased 16% growth seen in the previous fiscal.The slowdown was primarily driven by a 58% collapse in the government-led capex announcements, which had jumped 54% in the previous year.

Mint. “There's been strong extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations in place for over a decade and that has now evolved into mandatory recycled content regulations as well.”The firm announced a first close of $220 million for its second fund, which has a targeted corpus of $300 million.