Economy Financial News

Dhirubhai Ambani built one of India’s greatest business empires but died in 2002 without a clear succession plan. What followed is now business folklore. His elder son, Mukesh Ambani, turned his part of the inheritance into a global enterprise worth over $117 billion.

The financial and economic implications of the US-Israeli war with Iran will depend on the war’s duration. The longer it goes on, the longer we can expect oil, gas, fertilizer, helium and other prices to remain elevated.

Even though the Strait of Hormuz is just about 33km wide at its narrowest point, about 20 million barrels of crude oil and refinery products would pass through it every day before the war in West Asia. This was roughly a quarter of all seaborne oil trade. Since late February, tanker traffic through the strait has fallen sharply, driving up the price of Brent crude and triggering an oil shock.

Mint India Investment Summit 2026, held in Mumbai last week.Shaji Varghese, chief executive officer of Muthoot Fincorp, said that of India’s 60 million small businesses, only 20–30% have access to credit, underscoring the critical role NBFCs play in bridging the gap. “That relevance is only further pronounced now.

Water is life. Our lives, environment and livelihoods depend on this vital resource. As we aspire to a new India, we stand at a crossroads in our water management journey.

The dollar has been winning against gold. Since the start of the Iran war on 28 February, the dollar has strengthened against most major currencies. In an earlier oped in Mint on 9 March (bit.ly/413F9Ry), I delved into the anomalous trend of the dollar strengthening by 1.5% and gold weakening by 1%.

Mint India Investment Summit, Puri received the Lifetime Achievement Award and engaged in a candid fireside chat with editor-in-chief Ravi Krishnan. From why he moved to India in 1994 to artificial intelligence in banking and the work culture he batted for, this chat covered a wide range of subjects. Edited excerpts:I think India is still a very under-penetrated market as far as finance is concerned.

Mint, he said such corrections often create compelling entry points for long-term investors.Markets tend to react sharply to geopolitical events, especially in the early stages. However, over time, volatility usually stabilizes as markets adjust. What makes the current situation more complex for India is its dependence on energy imports.

Mumbai: India is expected to sustain strong M&A momentum, including cross-border deals, as investors take a long-term view despite macro headwinds, top executives said at the Mint India Investment Summit.“It’s interesting how the last three quarters over 2025 have shown the ability of investors to digest any volatility, price it in if required and proceed with M&As as they see sense in it over a 5–10-year horizon,” Devarajan Nambakam, co-head of India investment banking for Goldman Sachs Group, said at the summit last week.“This is probably going to be tested more this year than last, but the ability of investors to see through these volatilities has been the biggest mindset shift.”With India being a robust growth economy, there is demand for capital to accelerate this pace and for shareholders looking to monetize their stake among others, he added.“From a supply perspective, it’s safe to say that almost no pool of capital is unavailable in India be it strategic capital, private equity, private credit or hybrid capital. Today, the quantum of the capital that is available is higher than we’ve seen.

In global climate politics, clarity is often elusive. Grand declarations outpace delivery and ambition is often divorced from reality. Against this backdrop, India’s newly-approved Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for 2031–2035 stand out as a picture of coherence.

Vietnam War. It was 8 June 1972. Dozens of children were running for safety after the US bombing in Vietnam’s Trang Bang region.

The dominant progressive argument in India calls for dismantling of caste through radical redistribution by means of land reforms, state intervention or revolutionary social restructuring. The argument is that ­the entrenched inequality of India’s caste system must be annihilated through political and economic levelling.However, this framework misses a counter-intuitive argument.

Sebi) found that nine out of ten individual traders in the futures and options (F&O) segment lose money.It is a structural reality of a zero-sum game. When someone wins, someone else loses by exactly that amount, minus the fees extracted by brokers and exchanges on every single transaction.All that activity—the charts, the terminals, the WhatsApp tips, the YouTube gurus – produces nothing new. It merely redistributes money from the many to the few, while extracting fees along the way.This is the dung economy of personal finance.

State of Working India (SoW) report says India’s demographic bulge will stop expanding in four years. The share of its working-age population will begin declining in 2030.

Mint India Investment Summit in Mumbai on Friday.“You will lose some… but there’s no need to say the world is coming to an end… this will come out better,” said Puri, who was conferred the lifetime achievement award at the summit.He pushed back against concerns of large-scale displacement from the adoption of AI, adding that the technology is already creating new roles across the value chain.“This is just the raw material… somebody has to convert what was a possibility into reality,” he said, adding that this will create emerging demand for prompt engineers, context engineers and specialized data scientists.Calling AI one of the biggest opportunities, Puri said its impact will be most visible in customer-facing sectors such as banking.“AI can and should be used in a full role for efficiency and for profit,” he said, adding it can used for applications in credit assessment, marketing, fraud detection and operations. At the same time, he cautioned against overestimating the pace of change.“It’s here to stay… but it’s not as if everything is going to be implemented overnight,” he said, adding there is too much negative hype on job losses.Puri maintained that India’s structural growth story remains intact, backed by strong fundamentals.

India’s government has signalled its intent to amend the Women’s Reservation Act of 2023, also known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, to fast-track its 33% quota of seats for women in Parliament and state assemblies. The sooner it’s done, the better. It would mark a major step in a long march towards the political and economic emancipation of women in the country.Women constitute almost half the population, but various estimates suggest women contribute less than 20% to GDP—based on models that crunch data on labour force participation, earning gaps, etc, and only capture what’s on the record.

India’s energy story is inseparable from its growth trajectory. As one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies, its energy demand is rising rapidly. India is now the world’s third-largest energy consumer, and peak electricity demand is projected to reach 345–365 gigawatts (GW) by 2030.

India stands at a crossroads as one of the fastest-growing large economies in the world, yet it also has among the highest levels of inequality, with little movement seen in recent years. On paper, India’s growth story remains strong even as global conditions are uncertain. According to the latest national accounts with a revised base year of 2022-23, India’s real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 7.2% in 2023-24 and 7.1% in 2024-25.

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.

IT-led growth and global outsourcing.How far have AI’s capabilities advanced to significantly affect employability across professions?A recent study by Anthropic, based on real-world usage of its Claude model, maps the share of tasks within occupations that large-language models (LLMs) can currently perform. Exposure is highest in digital and information-processing roles.

Geopolitical shocks affect commodity prices and energy costs, altering inflation trajectories and corporate margins. Most immediately, shifts in global risk perception influence capital flows across emerging markets.