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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.

Mint, the new norms prescribe test methods to measure the presence of dimethylformamide (DMF) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), respectively. Both substances are commonly used in footwear manufacturing and can pose health risks with prolonged exposure.DMF is widely used as a solvent in the production of polyurethane-based synthetic leather and components.

Mumbai/Bengaluru: Fast-food chains serving dosas and momos to pizzas across India have found out that switching away from cooking gas amid the ongoing supply squeeze is difficult. The piped gas network is confined to a few cities, and the transition to electric cooking is hampered by higher operating costs and a spike in upfront equipment prices.“Over the past three weeks, we have made conscious efforts to reduce our dependency on gas by increasing the adoption of electric equipment across locations,” said Ankur Sharma, co-founder of Rebel Foods, which operates cloud-kitchen brands such as Faasos, Behrouz Biryani and Oven Story Pizza.“In some areas, we continue to face constraints due to limited availability of equipment from vendor partners,” he said.

₹25,000. By late February, as war broke out across West Asia, it had nearly doubled to ₹45,000.

Filmmakers are planning mega-budget big-screen spectacles across languages in the coming months despite a relatively volatile box office and uncertain business environment.The producers of the two-part mythological epic Ramayana (the first instalment of which is to be released in November) and SS Rajamouli’s Varanasi (scheduled for release in April next year) are banking on the ability of these stories to reach audiences beyond Indians, and south Asians in general. Both films are among the titles estimated to cost upwards of ₹1,000 crore each to make.They are also looking to create cinematic universes with spin-offs and merchandise offers, besides expectations of a smooth recovery from satellite and digital rights, even though broadcasters and streaming platforms have slowed down acquisitions.“The scale of these projects reflects a structural shift in how Indian cinema is positioning itself globally,” said Abishek S.

Venu Srinivasan and its managing director is his son Sudarshan Venu. Gopalan is a director on its board.On Friday, the Sundaram Clayton board accepted Kishan’s resignation and appointed M.

Karnataka’s move to impose a tax on electric cars, a year after waiving levies, could slow down adoption in one of India’s key electric vehicle (EV) markets by eroding their price competitiveness with petrol and diesel vehicles, industry experts said. The shift comes even as other states continue to offer tax breaks to push EV uptake.According to a bill passed in the Karnataka assembly last week, a tax in the range of 5-10% of a vehicle’s price will be imposed on all EV cars based on their price at the time of registration in the state, which is expected to widen the price gap with less expensive internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.The move partly negates the state's own clean mobility policy released in 2025, under which road and registration taxes were waived off for all electric vehicles, except those priced above ₹25 lakh.This comes at a time when other large EV car markets such as Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Delhi are moving to waive off all such state taxes on EVs to promote their adoption.“At a time when EV adoption is crucial to cutting vehicular pollution and improving urban air quality, this decision risks undermining the state’s stated ambition of promoting zero emission mobility,” Sharif Qamar, associate director at The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), said.

Mint explains how significant AI’s impact really is on investment banking.A 2023 Deloitte report noted that global investment banks have invested billions of dollars in machine learning and natural language processing to transform trading and risk management. However, the deal-making lifecycle remains heavily dependent on human expertise.

software companies, which often billed clients by the number of hours an engineer spent on a task, are now forced to redefine what is worth a developer’s time.This shift is being felt by young Indians across the workforce, from final-year students appearing for placements to entry-level software engineers and mid-level engineers at information technology (IT) companies.Ansh Masand, a final-year MBA tech engineering student at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, is witnessing this shift firsthand.Masand, who also works at a Bangalore-based AI startup, says he began freelancing in his second year despite not having the skills to build full-fledged software applications at the time.“I didn’t really know how to make production-ready software,” he says. “But I could ask questions, use AI and deliver something that worked.”Masand says what stood out to his clients was not how the code was written, but how quickly it was delivered.“I was building things in a day and solving problems that existed in their current workflow” he says.

9th Mint India Investment Summit in Mumbai last week. Panellists, including senior in-house legal counsels and law firm partners, said weak enforcement sits at the heart of the problem, raising the cost of doing business and deterring investment.The inability to enforce contracts swiftly and predictably, along with delays, frequent adjournments, procedural hurdles and lack of subject-matter expertise, creates friction for companies and investors.

Dubai-based company runs the world’s largest hotel loyalty programme for independent hotels, bringing together over 50 brands and 950 hotels across 100 countries. Hartley said that while the war may weigh on short-term bookings, India’s outbound market remains largely untapped.Travel to West Asia is still disrupted and could shift flows in the near term, he said, but the broader trajectory of demand is unlikely to change. “The question now is really if it can be resolved in April.

Engineering and construction company Kalpataru Projects International Ltd is bracing for the adverse impact of the Middle East conflict on its March quarter (Q4FY26) earnings. During a recent analyst meet, management noted that the Middle East accounts for 10-11% of its ₹63,300-crore order book. The power transmission & distribution (T&D) business is expected to see a potential revenue impact of ₹200-300 crore due to supply-related challenges.

When taxpayers complain that the income tax department is adversarial, the issue is often framed as interpersonal and behavioural. Are officers too aggressive? Are notices too intrusive? Is the department predisposed to distrust the taxpayer? These questions matter, but they misstate the problem. The real difficulty is institutional.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently issued draft amendments to its Responsible Business Conduct Regulations. These cover the advertising, marketing and sales of financial products and services by banks, non-bank financial companies and other all-India financial institutions either by their own staff or by direct sales or marketing agents. The most consequential element in RBI’s proposals is that for the first time they define ‘mis-selling’ to include any sale of a product or service that is neither suitable nor appropriate for a customer profile even with customer consent.

Essel Propack after its merger with Swiss firm Propack in 1997. Over the next two decades, Essel Propack built a strong international footprint across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.In 2019, Blackstone invested $460 million to acquire a 75% stake in the company, and renamed it EPL.

Tejas Networks Ltd designs and manufactures high-performance wireline and wireless networking products for telecommunications service providers, internet service providers, utilities, defence, and government entities in over 75 countries.The company is a part of the Tata group, with Panatone Finvest (a subsidiary of Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd) being the majority shareholder.In the last month, the stock price has rallied from ₹317.5 on 24 February 2026 to ₹422.4 on 24 March.In the editorial, we examine some factors that would determine the direction of the stock.Read on…The company has been systematically diversifying.

₹60 per cylinder hike has added to household stress and squeezed small businesses.The primary driver, experts say, is global instability.According to Adhil Shetty, CEO of BankBazaar, the increase reflects continued pressure from international markets where crude oil and natural gas prices remain elevated due to geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruptions."India imports a large share of its LPG needs, so any rise in international prices or freight costs tends to flow through to domestic cylinder rates," Shetty noted. He added that the latest global escalation has made cooking fuel more expensive, and with deliveries taking longer in some areas, households must prepare for higher and less predictable expenses.For several years, LPG prices in regulated markets remained relatively steady, with only minor fluctuations.

Mint that their luxury brands, which also include home goods brand Jay Strongwater, have seen a clear uptick in the last one month."March emerged as the strongest it has been in the last seven years, and sales rose strongly after a brief dip in February, with overall conversion ratios improving," Kataria said. If the current geopolitical tensions persist and the West Asia war continues, more NRIs (non-resident Indians) could move back to India while residents defer overseas travel, boosting domestic luxury spending.

Mint's requests for a comment till the time of publishing.Everstone owns a majority stake in Subway India, which also counts Norwest Venture Partners and Playbook Partners among its investors.Nearly a year ago, Mint reported that Everstone was exploring a partial stake sale in the fast-food chain’s local operations as part of a $100 million private fundraising round. Those plans have since evolved, with the company now preparing for a public market listing.Everstone operates the master franchise of Subway restaurants in India through Eversub India, giving it the right to open and operate Subway restaurants in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.

Mint.A second fund, still on the drawing board, is a blended finance fund of similar size, Rai said in an interview at the Mumbai headquarters of Nabfid, which was founded in 2021. The company was initially set up as a development finance institution to support long-term projects.“We are (also)likely to launch an alternative investment fund, mainly for the equity side, in the next six months,” Rai said.Nabfid’s new subsidiary will be like a holding company, under which there will be multiple alternative investment funds (AIF).

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,”