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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Early-stage fintech investors in India are shifting away from consumer-facing models that are heavily regulated and pivoting to software and infrastructure businesses that promise steady growth with minimal policy risk.Funds are increasingly backing software, infrastructure and B2B fintech models with AI that are less exposed to regulatory shocks, experts said.The shift follows a reset between 2021 and 2025, when tighter rules on digital lending, first-loss default guarantees and data governance curbed growth and raised compliance costs, pushing investors to favour B2B models over balance-sheet lenders.Data from Tracxn over the last 24 months showed that investors are becoming more selective within fintech, with capital moving toward software and infrastructure layers rather than large consumer-facing models.Funding picked up in areas such as payments infrastructure, which more than doubled, wealth-tech management platforms, which rose sharply by up to four times, and software tools for fund managers, where investments increased nearly eight-fold.In contrast, investor interest cooled in consumer payments, which fell about 60%, online lending, down roughly 16%, and online trading platforms, where funding more than halved over the same period.“Consumer fintech is crowded and heavily regulated and as a fund we don’t see too many white spaces,” said Sahil Anand, founder and managing partner at Cedar Hill Capital, a new fintech fund.While private equity and venture capital investors are not abandoning lending or regulated fintech in the growth to late stages, those bets have become selective, favouring scaled, profitable firms.Investors have become selective towards firms that have adapted

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The government has set up an inter-ministerial advisory body, the AI Governance and Economic Group (Aigeg), to act as a central node for shaping and coordinating policy on artificial intelligence. But what rules are startups currently operating under, and will this new body change anything for innovation in the space? Mint breaks it down.For startups operating in AI in India today, the legal landscape is a combination of multiple laws.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The microdrama sector is poised for a major disruption following the launch of Tadka by JioHotstar and Fatafat by Amazon MX Player. According to industry experts, these media giants are operating with budgets 10 to 15 times larger than those of early-stage companies.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Open an online fashion app today, and you’ll find a ₹490,000 Gucci dress or a waitlisted ₹415,000 Prada leather shirt sitting alongside discounted streetwear and mass-market labels.This paradox isn’t accidental. India’s online fashion and beauty market is projected to reach $210 billion by 2028.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s presidency of Brics arrives at a consequential moment for the global order. Traditional multilateral institutions are struggling to respond to geopolitical conflict, economic fragmentation and technological disruption.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A few days ago, an American software engineer named Sterling Crispin built a bot and set it loose on Polymarket.If you haven’t heard of it, Polymarket is where people bet real money on whether future events will happen. Will a country invade another? Will there be a major technology breakthrough this year? Thousands bet on such questions daily, each convinced their news reading gives them an edge.Crispin’s bot does something almost laughably simple: it bets “No” on every single prediction. Automatically.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Avataar Venture Partners expects at least three liquidity events from its first fund and two from its $350 million second fund within the next 18-20 months, a top executive at the growth investing firm told Mint.“We're expecting a couple of our mature companies to list in 2027 or early 2028,” Mohan Kumar, founding managing partner at Avataar Venture Partners, said in an interview. “By 2028, we'll have three public companies.”He declined to name which of the firm's portfolio companies were considering initial public offerings (IPOs).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.When mutual funds start accumulating a stock, especially in the small-cap space, it's not by accident.Fund managers spend weeks, sometimes months, doing the kind of due diligence most retail investors simply don't have the time or resources for.So when fresh shareholding data shows a fund quietly building a position in a small-cap name, it's worth paying attention.Here we look at four such small-cap companies.These stocks are filtered using Equitymaster’s stock screener: Smallcap Stocks Recently Bought by Mutual Funds in India.In the most recent March 2026 quarter, mutual funds increased their stake by 7.5%, taking the overall shareholding to 17.24%.This buying comes on top of three consecutive quarters of buying, where mutual funds had increased their holding from 8.44%.Aavas Financiers operates in the affordable financing segment. It offers housing loans and MSME loans backed by property and loans against property (LAP) to segments in the middle and lower income salaried and self-employed borrowers in India's rural and semi-urban regions.Unlike its peers, Aavas uses an in-house sourcing model (98.9% direct) rather than relying on agents.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India is planning a sweeping overhaul of its drug regulatory system by unifying central and state licensing, approvals, and compliance into a single digital platform, according to two government officials and documents reviewed by Mint.At the centre of the plan is a proposed interoperable Digital Drugs Regulatory System (DDRS) being developed by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO). The regulator is preparing to invite proposals from IT services firms to build and run the platform, the documents show.The DDRS is designed to streamline complex processes—from registration and clinical trial approvals to import-export licensing and supply chain traceability—by bringing central and state regulators, laboratories, and allied agencies onto a unified, real-time digital architecture.States have been asked to review the proposed framework and provide feedback, the first person cited above said, requesting anonymity.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: National Stock Exchange (NSE) plans to roll out a market-making scheme for its recently launched Brent crude futures, as it seeks to build liquidity in a segment dominated by Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd (MCX).“There is a plan to offer a liquidity enhancement scheme (LeS) for Dated Brent Crude Oil (Platts) futures in the next two-three weeks,” said a person aware of the development. “The exchange is in talks to appoint select broking firms for the LeS.”The move reflects NSE’s broader strategy in commodity derivatives segment: introduce differentiated products and use market-making incentives to build volumes from scratch.Sriram Krishnan, chief business development officer of NSE, declined to comment specifically on the LeS.But, underscoring NSE's strategy to gain traction in the commodity derivatives segment, dominated currently by the Multi Commodity Exchange with over 99% share, Krishnan said, "We are trying to introduce unique and differentiated products from what is available in the market."NSE launched Brent futures on 13 April.“An LeS in dated Brent futures is a good move as this is one of the major traded commodities not just globally, but also in India,” said Naveen Mathur, director, commodities and currencies, at Anand Rathi.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: Telecom operator Reliance Jio Infocomm is expected to post steady subscriber additions for the March quarter (Q4FY26), but the absence of tariff hikes and a shorter quarter are likely to cap growth, a trend analysts expect across the sector.Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of Jio Platforms, will report its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on 24 April alongside parent Reliance Industries Ltd.“Reliance Jio is expected to add 5 million subscribers q-o-q (quarter-on-quarter) to 520 million, with Arpu (average revenue per user) likely to grow by 1% q-o-q to ₹216/month, led by 5G FWA (fixed wireless access) addition,” brokerage house Centrum said in a note dated 5 April.Arpu, a key industry metric that tracks average revenue earned per user, is seen inching up modestly as operators lean on premiumization rather than price hikes.On a standalone basis, Centrum estimates Jio will report ₹33,529 crore revenue from operations, up 2.4% sequentially and 11.7% year-on-year. Net profit is projected to rise 2.8% quarter-on-quarter and 11% annually to ₹7,371 crore.Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom operator by market share, accounts for the bulk of Jio Platforms’ business.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s video streaming platforms may still be grappling with monetization challenges, but 2025 has turned into a breakout year for revenues.Video streaming revenues surged 55% in 2025 compared to 2024, nearly tripling from 2023 levels, according to a recent Ficci EY report.The growth reflects a decisive shift in strategy—regional language programming, flexible pricing and hybrid revenue models are helping platforms move beyond the limitations of a subscription-only play in a price-sensitive market like India.Digital advertising grew 26% to reach ₹94,700 crore in 2025, as several advertiser categories shifted ad spends from traditional to digital media, led by FMCG, travel and pharma.Sports and entertainment OTT platforms saw ad revenues rise 34%, backed by higher connected TV rates and volumes, as connected TV grew from 30 million to 40 million weekly active connections, the report said.Video subscription revenues jumped 61% to ₹14,800 crore, with 143 million households paying for 216 million video OTT subscriptions.Streaming service executives and content creators attribute much of this growth to regional language content that has deepened penetration across markets.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: India’s trustee services industry has long operated in the background. At Axis Trustee Services Ltd, an arm of private sector lender Axis Bank, the new chief executive is pushing to change that.After over two decades at Axis Bank, Rahul Choudhary moved to Axis Trustee Services as the chief executive in February 2025, bringing with him experience across wholesale banking, including credit, trade finance, and treasury.With this experience in mind, Choudhary now wants Axis Trustee to play a more active role in pre-empting defaults, instead of playing a passive role.Regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), a trustee acts as an intermediary between the issuer of securities and investors.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The government’s push on entrepreneurship through the Atal Innovation Mission promised to transform Indian colleges into innovation hubs. A decade on, that ambition remains largely unrealized.Since2016, the Centre has established Atal Incubation Centres (AICs) in 60 institutions across the country under the initiative, spearheaded by think tank Niti Aayog.Of these, 38 have incubated 3,067 startups.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In an effort to make health insurance pricing more transparent and claims processing more predictable, the Centre plans to build a public ‘Health Claims Index’ using data flowing through the National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX), according to two officials aware of the development and documents reviewed by Mint.Such an index would help consumers make more informed choices by offering visibility into how insurers handle claims. For insurers, it would create a common data framework to improve underwriting, reduce inefficiencies, and enable more consistent, risk-based pricing.The index will use aggregated data flowing through the NHCX—a digital platform for processing health insurance claims—to publish industry-wide benchmarks on claims processing timelines, approval rates and cost patterns across insurers.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: The electronics technology ministry is moving to tighten its grip on how social media giants disclose artificial intelligence-generated content, proposing a ‘continuous’ watermarking mandate to prevent platforms from avoiding transparency rules.The ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) issued a draft amendment on Tuesday that would require labels on AI-modified media to be clearly visible throughout the duration of a video or image. The proposal follows government frustration with current practices, where firms have allegedly used fleeting or obscured markers that satisfy the letter of the law while failing to inform the public.Tuesday’s amendment, a copy of which Mint has reviewed, targeted Rule 3(3)(a)(ii) of India’s Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, updating the previous proposal to social media companies for “prominent visibility” of AI labels.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.South Korean tech companies Krafton Inc. and Naver Corp.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Ace Turtle, the company behind denim brands Lee, Wrangler and G-Star Raw, is stepping away from India’s crowded value denim segment, sharpening its focus on premium brands as it looks to rebuild margins and define a clearer market position.Its chief executive, Nitin Chhabra, told Mint that the shift has meant it now has a tighter strategy centred on fashion, sourcing and distribution.“We are on track to achieve Ebitda positivity in the September quarter. For the full fiscal year, we are targeting a strong growth trajectory, with revenues expected to rise by approximately 25% compared to the previous year,” he said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: Life is coming full circle for Suzlon Energy Ltd as the company looks to resume selling wind turbines in Europe, a market where it stopped sales nearly two decades ago as it worked its way out of a debt crisis.The Pune-based company on Tuesday launched two new turbine designs for the European market with capacities of 5 MW and 6.3 MW, based on its new Blue Sky product platform. These add to its portfolio of 2.1 MW and 3 MW machines.The new platform will debut in Europe and the company will take a call later this year on the specifications in which it can be brought to India, Girish Tanti, the executive vice-chairman of Suzlon, told Mint over a call from Madrid.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: South Korean tech companies Krafton Inc. and Naver Corp.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Pocket FM, an audio storytelling platform, said its users in India and the US are getting increasingly comfortable with microtransactions— paying per episode or series—giving it a monetization engine that differs from the classic subscription business.The company’s recent growth reflects how microtransactions and the deeper use of AI across content creation, editing and creator tools have started to scale up together, chief operating officer Lalit Gangwar said.“Pocket FM is best understood as a microtransaction-led audio storytelling business rather than a pure subscription model,” Gangwar said. “Listeners typically start free, get hooked on serialized stories or series, and then keep returning to unlock the next episode or story arc.”The company doubled its annualized revenue run-rate (ARR) to over $400 million ( ₹3,725 crore) in the past year, after taking six years to reach its first $200 million.