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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. For most Indian households, debt investing begins and ends with fixed deposits. A smaller set ventures into debt mutual funds, often without a full understanding of interest rate risks.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Dear reader, as 2025, a year of global tumult and volatility, rolls by, Mint's reporters and columnists look around the corner on what is coming in 2026—to help you know what to expect and prepare for it. Tell us what you think at [email protected]. As 2025—a year marked by global volatility and regulatory tightening—came to an end, fintech investors in India turned far more selective.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Dear reader, as 2025, a year of global tumult and volatility, rolls by, Mint's reporters and columnists look around the corner on what is coming in 2026—to help you know what to expect and prepare for it. Tell us what you think at [email protected]. The demand for instant deliveries has intensified competition in India’s fashion retail industry, pushing platforms and startups alike to bet on speed as a key differentiator, setting the stage for a more execution-intensive battle in 2026.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. BENGALURU : Bengaluru: India’s e-commerce market is witnessing an interesting strategy shift with large marketplaces actively prioritizing market share dominance over commissions from sellers. On 9 January, Myntra announced the rollout of a zero-commission model in a bid to encourage young direct-to-consumer brands and regional sellers to join the platform.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. BENGALURU : Swiggy’s private-label brand, Noice, which debuted on its quick-commerce platform Instamart, has expanded rapidly by adding contract manufacturers across various categories, including bakery, snacks, confectionery, dairy, eggs, and other perishable foods.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The key hope from the Union Budget is that the government does not pursue aggressive fiscal tightening, according to the head of equity investments at Canara Robeco Asset Management Co. With demand weak, private capex subdued, and household incomes seeing limited growth, the government spending remains crucial, said Shridatta Bhandwaldar, chief investment officer-equities at the company.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MUMBAI : India’s only listed pure-play investment bank, DAM Capital Advisors Ltd, plans to deploy its capital reserves into recurring, fee-based businesses to reduce the inherent volatility of investment banking, managing director and chief executive Dharmesh Mehta told Mint. While merchant banking remains the firm’s primary earnings driver, DAM Capital is evaluating asset-light ancillary services that require minimal capital deployment and limited balance-sheet risk to diversify its revenue base.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Meta Platforms on Friday unveiled a series of agreements that would make it an anchor customer for new and existing nuclear power in the U.S., where it needs city-size amounts of electricity for its artificial-intelligence data centers. The Facebook parent said it would back new reactor projects with the developers TerraPower and Oklo and has struck a deal with the power producer Vistra to purchase and expand the generation output of three existing nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen famously declared in 2011 that “software is eating the world." This year, Silicon Valley will be looking to feast on artificial intelligence, as the relentless hype that’s driven the creation of nearly 40,000 AI startups crashes into the cold logic of business economics. US companies spent $37 billion on generative AI software in 2025, up from $11.5 billion the year before, according to venture capital firm Menlo Ventures.

New Delhi: Indian Gas Exchange (IGX) plans to launch its initial public offering by the end of 2026, according to its top executive.The IPO would largely be an offer for sale (OFS) for 22% stake by promoter Indian Energy Exchange Ltd, managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) Rajesh Mediratta told reporters on Wednesday. “The merchant bankers are yet to be appointed for the sale process.”IEX currently holds 47% and NSE owns 26% of IGX, while other minority shareholders include GAIL India Ltd, Oil and Natural Gas Corp.

software-as-a-solution (SaaS)-like model of recurring subscriptions.“Procurement and financial approvals still lean heavily towards hardware acquisitions,” said Ankit Mehta, co-founder of ideaForge. While annual maintenance contracts are the bread and butter for hardware makers, software is the expected add-on, at least for the time being.

On New Year’s Eve, India woke up to gig workers logging off en masse, turning a day of celebration into a flashpoint over wages, incentives and the true cost of app-based work.The strike finally failed to really take off, as many riders chose to work after Swiggy and Zomato rolled out special incentives. Zomato offered peak-hour payouts of ₹120– ₹150 per order and waived penalties for refusals and cancellations, enabling riders to earn up to ₹3,000 in a day, according to a letter reviewed by Mint.

food sector, aggressive local pricing, and evolving consumer preferences appear to be weighing on footfalls across the category.While the merger does little to directly revive demand, it meaningfully improves operational efficiency. Post-transaction, Devyani will become the sole operator of KFC and Pizza Hut in India, in addition to acquiring Sapphire’s Sri Lanka operations.

Mint.The lender, which had 454,608 prepaid cards as of November, plans to add 100,000 prepaid cards—both domestic and foreign—every year, said the document inviting external agencies to submit their bids.The state-run lender also had an active card rate of 25%, or 112,801 cards, higher than the banking industry average of 18%, as of November, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). An active card is defined as one that has been used for at least one financial transaction in the past year.The bank also has 1.1 million, including 994,062 active, wallets.“The purpose of the RFP (request for proposal) is to seek a detailed technical and commercial proposal for (an) end-to-end prepaid card management module…” the bank said in the document.The project includes issuing rupee prepaid cards, foreign currency prepaid cards (single or multi-currency with a minimum of 12 currency wallets), and national common mobility cards.

Mint review of usage practices and public policies across X, Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT found that safeguards on such content are not uniform across companies.As MeitY’s notice put X under scrutiny, policy and AI experts pointed to a key policy gap that appears to have placed Grok in the government’s firing line even as other platforms have so far avoided similar action.On 2 January, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) issued a notice to X seeking details on how the platform acts against objectionable content and how it plans to address sexual content. The move followed concerns over how Grok, which is embedded within X (formerly Twitter), can be used to modify photographs into content that could be deemed sexual, obscene, or violative of a user’s privacy.Mint has seen a copy of the notice which had set time until Monday for X's reply.X has sought more time to respond to Meity's notice, meanwhile.

₹50,000 business, shoot a YouTube video—to capture low-intent, high-frequency users early in the funnel.Priced as low as ₹1 and consumed in minutes a day, this content is designed less to teach deeply and more to build daily engagement, turning everyday questions into habit—and habit into revenue.The shift marks a clear break from outcome-led edtech, which relies on full-time teachers and structured curricula. Micro-learning platforms instead monetise curiosity, leaning on subject-matter experts and creator-led content at a time when the sector is under pressure to show early revenue traction.Platforms like Seekho cracked this early and now clock close to $4-4.5 million monthly revenue, according to media reports.

Dear reader, as 2025, a year of global tumult and volatility, rolls by, Mint's reporters and columnists look around the corner on what is coming in 2026—to help you know what to expect and prepare for it. Tell us what you think at [email protected] July 2025, Mumbai-headquartered Glenmark grabbed the spotlight when it signed what was one of the biggest out-licensing deals for an Indian drugmaker with Chicago-based Abbvie Inc.

Electric two-wheeler maker Simple Energy plans to raise $30-40 million in fresh capital, largely from international backers and existing investors, in what could be its first round with institutional participation, chief executive Suhas Rajkumar told Mint. So far, the company has raised capital mainly from family offices and high net-worth individuals rather than venture capital funds.The fresh funds will be used to increase production capacity and support a second manufacturing plant as the Bengaluru-based company rolls out its Gen 2 Simple One range of scooters and the long-range Simple Ultra scooter, which according to the company has clocked 400 km in the Indian Driving Cycle (IDC), a standardized lab test by the Automotive Research Association of India.“We plan to close a fresh round of $30-40 million this year, which will have a mix of equity and debt, and have been talking to institutional investors, mostly international ones,” Rajkumar said.Simple Energy has also held discussions with domestic private equity and venture capital investors, but has so far struggled to convert that interest into large cheques, Rajkumar said.

As gig workers’ unions organized a strike on New Year’s Eve demanding better working conditions, several people took to X and other social media platforms to debate the value of gig work in India’s economy.Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal and InfoEdge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani (also a Zomato investor) argued that gig work was valuable, pointing out that the strike had clearly failed. Others including Aam Aadmi Party leader Raghav Chadha met gig workers on strike in Delhi, supporting their demands for better working conditions.Zomato's food delivery partners workforce grew 18% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) from FY22 to FY25.

OTT content piracy results in losses of ₹8,000– ₹11,000 crore annually, indicating that 10–25% of the potential revenue generated by original content creators and funders never reaches the platforms.In the past, OTT originals such as Scam 1992- The Harshad Mehta Story, The Legend of Hanuman and Ek Badnaam Aashram, among others, have fallen prey to piracy.“Piracy is honestly the single biggest plague hurting the entire content ecosystem—from production houses to OTT platforms to theatrical businesses,” said Ujjwal Mahajan, co-founder of Chaupal, a platform specializing in Punjabi, Haryanvi and Bhojpuri content.When a piece of content leaks, the entire commercial cycle collapses—subscriptions drop, advertising value decreases, and the ripple effect extends across the supply chain, Mahajan added. “It is responsible for multi-billion-dollar losses globally, and in India, it also means hundreds of millions of dollars of lost tax revenue for the government.

There is no contradiction between paying gig workers a living wage and the claim that gig work provides job opportunities to many who would otherwise struggle to earn anything. Delivery workers for food delivery and quick-commerce platforms like Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto and Blinkit went on strike recently, demanding better wages and work conditions.This has triggered a bizarre debate online, as if asking for better wages amounts to socialism and charges of gig worker exploitation go against entrepreneurship. The obvious gainers from low-paid gig work are consumers who get doorstep deliveries both extra-cheap and ultra-fast.