Manufacturing Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s statistics ministry recently proposed an Index of Services Production (ISP), the need for which may seem self-evident, given how this sector’s prominence has grown. “The service sector is the dominant force in the Indian economy, contributing over 50% of the Gross Value Added [GVA],” as a discussion paper on the idea released by the ministry notes, “It has long been central to economic transformation, consistently driving growth, generating employment, and attracting investment across decades.” That’s the good part of our services story. The not-so-good part is the absence of accurate, disaggregated and timely data on the services sector along the lines of India’s monthly Index of Industrial Production (IIP).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Sona Comstar expects Chinese carmakers expanding manufacturing outside their home market to open up new business opportunities for the company, a senior executive said. The auto parts maker believes Chinese electric vehicle companies setting up plants in Europe and other regions could benefit suppliers, such as itself, which already have a presence overseas.On the other hand, an opportunity to build business in China will require companies to sacrifice their margins and profitability, a reason for its exit from a proposed joint venture with Chinese parts maker Jinnaite Machinery that had been announced in July 2025, Sona Comstar group chief executive and managing director Vivek Vikram Singh told Mint.“When Chinese OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) set up factories outside is when our opportunity truly arises in the driveline business," Singh said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: Private equity firm Everstone Capital has acquired Germany-based industrial equipment maker Qlar Group from Blackstone, the companies said in a statement on Thursday.While the companies did not disclose financial details, the transaction is estimated to be worth $150-200 million, including equity and debt, according to a person familiar with the matter.The acquisition underscores Singapore-based Everstone’s push to back global manufacturing and engineering businesses with significant operations in India and Asia. Qlar derives about 25% of its revenue from India, the person said.“Qlar is a differentiated industrial technology platform with a strong global footprint and deep engineering capabilities,” said Avnish Mehra, vice chairman, private equity at Everstone Capital, adding that the company’s operations in India and Asia position it to benefit from competitive manufacturing and proximity to high-growth markets.“We see a clear opportunity to build on these strengths, supported by our cross-border experience and network, to drive disciplined and sustainable growth,” he added.Everstone said it will partner with Qlar’s management team to strengthen market access and commercial capabilities while expanding the company’s portfolio of lower-carbon and circular material-processing solutions.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In 2019, Arvind Subramanian, India’s former chief economic advisor, argued in a Harvard working paper that Indian GDP had been overestimated by 2.5 percentage points a year from 2011-12 to 2016-17. His central exhibit was a chart of 17 economic indicators, 11 of which had turned negatively correlated with GDP after 2011. The starkest case was the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for manufacturing, at minus 0.78.Extend the data by seven years using the same method.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Investors’ pursuit of the companies supplying key materials to the artificial intelligence build-out is powering an epic rally in shares of chip makers. Other companies caught in the frenzy include a 175-year-old glass manufacturer, a heavy machinery giant and Japan’s leading maker of toilets.The AI trade has boosted stocks’ record run, with the S&P 500 climbing 1.5% to new highs on Wednesday after signs of progress on a Middle East peace deal and strong earnings from Advanced Micro Devices.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Recently, I attended a lecture on ‘Long-term missions in a short-term world’ by S. Gurumurthy. To me, the biggest example has been China.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Facebook founder Eduardo Saverin's venture capital firm B Capital is looking to increase its exposure in India by investing in deeptech, artificial intelligence and energy transition sectors, according to a top executive.“We want to try to deploy $50 million to $100 million in India on an annual basis,” Karan Mohla, general partner at Singapore-based B Capital, said in an interview with Mint. “We see India as our primary market after the US.”The 10-year-old firm invested in global enterprise tech in its initial five years and in consumer tech over the next two to three years.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: For India, the fallout from West Asia conflict, while negative for the macro-economy, would remain manageable if a final peace deal is reached by mid-May.Any extension beyond that could push up oil price expectations and have a more severe impact, not just on the macro, but also on earnings for the current fiscal, which are otherwise expected to hold up better than the economy in the context of the war, according to Sanjeev Prasad, managing director and co-head, Kotak Institutional Equities.In an interview to Mint, he also explained why foreign investors continue to pull out despite valuations correcting.Edited excerpts:It is a little bit of a challenge as of now. The hope was that the West Asia war would end by early April...then mid-April and at the end of last month we were hoping for mid-May.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The central government’s procurement from micro and small enterprises (MSEs) rose 21% to ₹1.14 trillion in FY26, according to the MSME Sambandh portal. This surge meant smaller firms bagged nearly half (48.91%) of all central government orders, a significant increase from the 43.28% ( ₹93,971 crore) recorded in FY25.This performance far exceeds the statutory requirement for the government to source at least 25% of its orders from MSEs.Industry stakeholders and experts suggested the rising volumes reflected growing MSME inclusion within the national economy.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: Xiaomi once sold one in every four smartphones in India. By 2025, it had fallen out of the country’s top five brands.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Late in 2018, when Angad Soni was preparing to launch Sepoy & Co., his botanical mixers startup, he was sure of two things: one, he had to get the formulation of his first product, tonic water, right. Two, the bottle in which it would be sold had to stand out.The target audience was consumers of premium gins who had likely sampled high-quality tonics on trips abroad, but had to settle for mass-market brands in India sold in plastic bottles, or in cans, such as Schweppes.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The end of a 15-year political regime in West Bengal has rekindled investor interest in companies headquartered in the state, triggering a sharp rally in select stocks on expectations of a policy reset.On 4 May, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) registered a watershed win in the 294-member assembly, unseating the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) and ending its 15-year rule.On the back of expectations of improved industrial policy clarity and faster clearances, shares of RP Sanjiv Goenka Group companies, Bandhan Bank, Emami Limited and others saw a sharp move in prices.However, analysts caution that the rally reflects anticipatory positioning rather than earnings visibility.“The market is largely anticipatory positioning, not earnings-led yet,” said Ajay Bagga, a market expert. “Any regime shift that improves industrial policy clarity and capex visibility can expand earnings multiples but sustainability depends entirely on execution, not sentiment,” Bagga added.Shares of Kolkata-based Bandhan Bank touched an all-time high of ₹212.5 on Monday, emerging as the top gainer in the Nifty Private Bank pack that day.As of FY26, West Bengal accounted for 24% of Bandhan Bank’s total loans and advances—the highest among all states.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Bank loans under the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) fell by half to ₹6,148 crore in 2025-26 from ₹12,315 crore a year earlier, marking the third consecutive decline, according to data from the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) ministry and its PMEGP portal.The lower disbursements coincide with FY26 recording the lowest number of loan applications in a decade, signalling weakening momentum in credit support for small enterprises and job creation under the scheme.The trend raises questions about the creditworthiness of MSMEs and banks’ risk perception of small business loans amid external uncertainties, even as the Centre has increased the budgetary allocation for subsidized loans to start small non-farm business ventures to ₹4,500 crore (BE) for FY27 from ₹2,548 crore (RE) in FY26.The fall in bank loan sanctions is likely due to FY26 being the last year of the fifteenth finance commission cycle that began in FY21, with banks facing uncertainty about whether the scheme will continue, said an official directly aware of the development.The sixteenth finance commission, in its report submitted to the central government in November 2025, noted certain inconsistencies in the reporting of the PMEGP as a subsidy scheme.“Now that the budget for the PMEGP has been allocated for FY27, we expect bank loan sanctions as well as job creation under the scheme to rebound,” the official said on condition of anonymity.A senior bank official said the fall also needs to be seen in the context of tighter credit filters and a shift towards improving asset quality.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.On 29 April, the Centre issued guidelines requiring electric truck makers to localize components such as battery management systems and vehicle control units to qualify for incentives under the PM E-Drive scheme. E-truck makers must use domestically produced components from September 2026.The government had eased rules during the 2025 rare-earth magnet shortage by extending deadlines for importing related subassemblies without forfeiting incentives.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: Milky Mist has raised about ₹482 crore in a pre-IPO round led by Singapore-based Temasek’s subsidiary Jongsong Investments Pte. Ltd, the dairy product maker said in a statement on Monday.The fundraise comprises a primary capital infusion of about ₹357 crore and a secondary share sale of about ₹125 crore ahead of the company’s proposed initial public offering (IPO) later this year.As part of the primary issuance, Milky Mist allotted 5,43,789 equity shares at ₹139.76 per share, aggregating about ₹7.6 crore.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.There is a discomforting paradox at the heart of India’s current macroeconomic situation. By almost every conventional measure of sovereign economic health—growth, inflation, fiscal trajectory, external vulnerability and investor confidence in the real economy—India’s fundamentals are among the strongest of any large emerging market. Yet the rupee has depreciated by over 13% against the dollar in the past two years and by more than 15% since January 2023.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: Situated 33 kilometers from the busy streets of Pune is Chakan, home to automobile manufacturers and their suppliers. One company in this area is electric bus maker Eka Mobility.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Eli Lilly Chief Executive Dave Ricks was on stage with Nvidia founder Jensen Huang earlier this year in San Francisco touting the company’s tech prowess when Huang teased him about the painstaking process of developing new drugs.“I’m really hoping that your industry moves from drug discovery which is kind of like wandering around the forest looking for truffles,” Huang said, in front of a crowd of biotech and pharma investors.Indeed, Ricks and the rest of the pharmaceutical industry are looking to expand beyond collecting soil samples and bark pieces to find new drugs and are instead turning their hopes—and investment dollars—to AI. Lilly first announced a partnership with chip-maker Nvidia in October to build what it called the industry’s most powerful supercomputer, and expanded that in January with a $1 billion, five-year collaboration mixing their scientists and engineers in a new Bay Area lab aimed at discovering new medicines with AI tools.They aren’t alone.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The India Meteorological Department's (IMD) seasonal outlook for summer 2026 warns of above-normal heatwave days, with rising nighttime temperatures compounding daytime heat stress across east, central, northwest India, and the southeast peninsula.Latest data showed that 19 of the world's 20 hottest cities were located in India.With multiple cities across Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Maharashtra logging temperatures around 44°C, well above seasonal norms, large parts of India are in the grip of an intense and widespread heatwave.Crucially, rising nighttime temperatures are a growing concern. Warmer nights reduce recovery from heat stress, driving up energy demand significantly.As summers grow longer and hotter, the demand for cooling is no longer seasonal.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.It has been almost two decades since the late Shinzo Abe [former prime minister of Japan] stood in India’s parliament and told the assembled legislators that “it is incumbent upon us two democracies, Japan and India, to carry out the pursuit of freedom and prosperity in the region.” Abe defined their task as protecting freedom of navigation in what he was perhaps the first to call the Indo-Pacific. That task has gotten only more urgent as America withdraws—or, more recently, imposes blockades on crucial straits—and China pushes harder against the first island chain.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India is planning to build a six-month strategic reserve of critical minerals to shield its green energy and manufacturing sectors from supply shocks and price swings, two people aware of the matter said. The Union ministries of mines and heavy industries are working on a plan to stockpile imported and locally sourced critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earth elements, a segment dominated by China.The strategic reserve will act as a long-term safeguard for sectors such as electric mobility, energy storage and electronics manufacturing, which are increasingly dependent on imports, the people cited above said on the condition of anonymity.