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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Nearly 70% of Indians lack meaningful health insurance. Our penetration rate— just 0.35% of GDP—is lower than that of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The conventional explanation is that Indians either do not understand insurance or cannot afford it.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India has launched the ₹12,980-crore sovereign-backed Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool (BMIP) at a time when tensions in West Asia and sanctions-related disruptions are increasing risks to global shipping and energy trade.The domestic insurance pool, with a total underwriting capacity of $1.5 billion and a sovereign guarantee of $1.4 billion, aims to ensure uninterrupted maritime insurance cover for Indian-linked vessels and cargo.Mint explains:India launched the BMIP to reduce heavy dependence on foreign insurers and reinsurers amid rising geopolitical tensions, sanctions, and war-related disruptions affecting global shipping. The immediate trigger is instability in West Asia, a region vital for India’s crude oil and energy imports.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The nerves calm, the mind clear, a deep breath later, Akshay Thatte immersed face-first in the water. He was competing in the Static Apnea category at the AIDA Malaysia Freediving Pool Games last December. By the time he surfaced, 5 minutes and 16 seconds had elapsed.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.As India currently emerges as one of the hottest countries in the world, it’s safe to assume that almost everyone is nursing the desire to dive into a pool at every chance they get. There’s no arguing that rising temperatures can disrupt your fitness routine, but access to a pool also offer a refreshing change from lifting weights in the air-conditioned yet often stifling confines of a gym.A lot of people associate a workout with being slightly out of breath—marked by a high heart rate, sweating, and muscle soreness—all of which signal a decent pump from lifting. These markers can be replicated in a pool workout, sure, but it’s also largely true that very few exercises can replace swimming.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.GANDHINAGAR: Six listed companies have applied for licences to set up corporate treasury centres in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, or GIFT City, said Kalyanaraman Rajaraman, chairperson of the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA).The applications signal rising interest in India’s offshore financial hub as large companies look to centralize global cash and risk management. While the regulator declined to identify the applicants, Rajaraman said demand is likely to rise over time.“We have issued 10 authorizations till date… we are talking to almost every MNC (multinational company).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.With global energy dependency rapidly shifting from conventional sources to nuclear power, it is natural to fear a Chernobyl or Fukushima-like incident anywhere in the world today. Human exposure to nuclear risks is also rising through genetic research in agriculture, radiation use in healthcare, and the increasing possibility of nuclear conflict.In such circumstances, a natural question arises: do our everyday insurance policies cover nuclear risks?As on date, none of the insurers in India provide coverage for nuclear exposure or related nuclear incidents.Whether personal, institutional, or commercial, almost all insurance policies exclude coverage for risks arising out of nuclear exposure or similar events.Apart from underwriting challenges due to lack of data, the core reason is structural: nuclear exposure is rarely individualistic.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Berkshire Hathaway may be de-emphasizing its smaller stock picks under CEO Greg Abel and the selloff Monday in Domino’s Pizza would support such a pullback.Berkshire owned just under 10% of Domino’s—some 3.35 million shares—at year-end. The stock fell nearly 9% Monday to $335.51 and hit a new 52-week low earlier in the session after the company reported results for the March that missed the consensus estimate on both revenue and earnings.Berkshire bought most of its stake in late 2024 at what Barron’s estimates is a price of between $400 and $450 and added to the holding in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The impossible trinity, or trilemma, holds that a country cannot simultaneously maintain a fixed exchange rate, free capital movement, and an independent monetary policy; policymakers must prioritise two at the expense of the third.A strikingly similar trilemma sits at the heart of health insurance: the insurer’s duty to settle claims sustainably, the hospital’s duty to deliver effective, patient-centred care while earning a fair return, and the customer’s demand for affordability. Like the economic trilemma, this cannot be resolved by decree.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Imagine a marketplace for domesticated animals. Over the decades, two dominant merchant groups have come to rule it. Call them X, those who grew up with these animals and understand their temperament and seasonal moods, and Y, a group of shrewd outsiders who spotted the market’s potential early, brought capital from distant lands and learnt the trade well enough to profit off it.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: The government will hold further consultations before rolling out schemes for debt resolution of all companies in a group in one go, and for dealing with cross-border insolvency cases where a company or its creditors are in different jurisdictions, two persons familiar with the development said.Introduced through legislative amendments in April, these two ambitious provisions form part of the most comprehensive overhaul of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) since its enactment in 2016. The amended legislation received presidential assent on 6 April..Most provisions in the amended Code, which seek to improve the efficiency and outcomes of debt resolution of companies and their promoters, will be notified at the earliest but the schemes for group insolvency and cross-border insolvency may be rolled out only after further consultations, said the first of the two persons quoted above, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Sam Altman, the chief executive officer (CEO) of OpenAI, said at a finance conference in October 2023 that he and his “CEO friends” were running a betting pool on when the first one-person billion-dollar company would be created thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). He didn’t divulge their identities nor their precise predictions.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A 34-year-old Pune woman, diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) as a teenager, saw her first natural menstrual cycle in February—six months after starting Mounjaro for weight management. This spotlights a broader shift, as more women with the condition turn to GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) drugs for metabolic relief and, in some cases, improved fertility.The trend is accelerating across India, doctors said, even though these drugs are not officially approved for treating PCOS and are prescribed primarily for type-2 diabetes and obesity.“I’ve had PCOS since I can remember, and with that comes infertility,” she told Mint, requesting her name be withheld to protect her privacy.

Online commerce is undergoing a structural shift—from discovery-led consumption to decision-led execution. The rise of Agentic AI, capable of searching, evaluating and transacting autonomously, is reshaping how demand is created and fulfilled. This transition does not eliminate consumers, but reduces their role in the decision loop.

The swimwear market is being transformed as fitness and geopolitical shifts in travel have diverted millions of vacationers to pools and beaches in India. The sector, which nearly doubled to ₹8.5 billion over the last five years, is shedding its seasonal reputation as more people use it as a year-round low-impact cardio exercise.This surge is bringing a wave of direct-to-consumer (D2C) firms, challenging Speedo's decade-long dominance.

The Finance Commission is a key pillar of India’s federal fiscal architecture. A constitutional body appointed every five years, it is expected to arbitrate impartially between the central and state governments and among the latter themselves in allocating tax revenues collected by the Central government on behalf of all administrations. Though FCs are not widely known, their awards have far reaching implications for fiscal federalism and macroeconomic fiscal outcomes.

Investors' rush to back electric commercial vehicle players has led to commitments worth $530 million in the last six months, backing new-age players at a time when the government's policy focus is shifting towards electrifying trucks and buses.Hero-backed Euler Motors became the latest to join the wave on Tuesday as it secured funding of $47 million from Lightrock, Hero MotoCorp and Blume Ventures, with additional debt funding of $27 million from BlackSoil, Trifecta, InnoVen and Alteria Capital.The latest funding round for the New Delhi-based electric light commercial vehicle maker brought the cumulative total of funding from investors for electric CV makers to $530 million since October, led by PMI Mobility, which secured a $310 million investment commitment from KKR.“The light commercial vehicle as a segment has continued to grow, because it makes fundamental sense,” Saurav Kumar, founder and chief executive at Euler Motors, told Mint. The superior long-term operational savings of electric commercial vehicles have made the sector's funding growth outpace all other transport categories, he added.Other fundraisers during this period include electric fleet operator Greencell Mobility’s $89 million, and electric bus and truck maker Eka Mobility’s $57 million fundraise.

₹4,000-crore initial public offering (IPO) that was originally scheduled for March, amid market volatility, according to two people familiar with the matter.Bagmane had received regulatory approval for the draft offer document it filed last December. The company had begun roadshows for investors and analysts earlier this month in the run-up to the IPO.“The company was scheduled to file the updated offer document (UoD) in early March, and once the approval came in, planned to launch the public offering in March itself.

Small-cap funds, the most sought-after mutual fund category that has attracted majority of investor money in the last three years, have a problem — spotting specialized talent to run investments.As a result, several of them have managers running both large-cap and small-cap funds or have co-management teams in place or, in some instances, have even the chief investment officers (CIOs) listed as the primary fund manager of small-cap funds.Investors have put over ₹1.35 trillion into small-cap funds in three years through February, yet the number of fund managers equipped to run these schemes, which demands a distinct skill set, remains limited.Assets managed by small cap mutual funds more than doubled to ₹3.64 trillion in February from ₹1.32 trillion in February 2023. Number of folios, as mutual fund accounts are termed, in the segment also more than doubled to 28 million in the same period, according to industry lobby Association of Mutual Funds of India or Amfi.Mint analyzed all the small cap schemes and found that there are 31 asset management companies (AMCs) that offer both small-cap and large-cap schemes.Of these, 12 mutual funds have the same manager overseeing both large-cap and small-cap funds.Further, among a total of 34 small-cap schemes, 11 named the CIO or head of equities as the primary fund manager.Unlike in large-cap stocks where research coverage is vast, spotting good small stocks requires digging and peeling layers.

investors in a FoF that then allocates capital across underlying AIFs, managers can effectively broaden participation while staying within the letter of the rules.“We have seen a gradual increase in FoFs in the industry as it helps an AIF accommodate investors who could not participate in a fund the first time around,” said Pratik Jain, managing partner–investments at Wealth Co. Asset Management Pvt.

₹23,000 crore, based on unlisted share prices. A large syndicate of bankers will also help widen investor outreach and support book-building for the offer.At current unlisted valuations and the indicative offer size, NSE’s IPO could become India’s largest ever.

Three of theworld’s largest IT services companies, Capgemini SE, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., and EPAM Systems Inc., have found a seemingly contrarian hack to both grow and maintain operating margins: increase India headcount.Analysts see this as the beginning of a new trend as artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies increasingly become part of IT services workflows and give rise to demand for tech workers to monitor their deployment. India's talent pool seems to offer a competitive staffing solution for this need.This comes at a time when some among their biggest Indian peers are trimming workforce.In calendar year 2025, Capgemini, Cognizant and EPAM ended with 230,000, 256,900, and 12,200 employees in India, making between a fifth and three-fourths of their total employees, respectively.The three companies increased their India headcount compared with the year-ago period, both in absolute terms, and also as a percentage of total headcount.