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Two of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, a chemical manufacturer, and an auto giant have established internal artificial intelligence (AI) teams and opened centres to increase automation across their businesses, as the technology’s rapid pace continues to upend business operations worldwide.Over the last 18 months, Swiss life sciences major Novartis International AG and Texas-based chemical manufacturer Celanese Corporation started AI councils to identify segments that can be automated. Indiana-based Eli Lilly and Co.

Indian equities endured a punishing, volatile start to the week. While the Sensex initially plummeted more than 2,400 points and Nifty 50 broke below the 23,800 support level on Monday, a late tug-of-war saw the Nifty fight back to reclaim the psychologically important 24,000 mark.This bruising session comes as the geopolitical landscape undergoes a dramatic shift.

beer (5% alcohol content), making it more affordable relative to spirits/IMFL with alcohol content over 40%, said a Nomura Research report on 8 March. The higher tax burden on spirits can pressure volumes in the price-sensitive popular and below segments and improve the affordability for the prestige & above (P&A) segment, given same alcohol content.P&A contributed 89.4% of United Spirits’s 9MFY26 net sales value.

NEW DELHI: India builds some of the world’s fastest expanding highway networks but depends on imports for a large share of the bitumen used to bind asphalt.The country needs about 9 million tonnes of bitumen each year for road construction. In FY25, domestic production was 5.3 million tonnes, with the rest imported—largely from West Asia, a region currently facing conflict.Against this backdrop, bio-bitumen, an alternative derived from biomass, could replace up to a third of petroleum-based bitumen, potentially reducing India’s import dependence.

Mint.Saraswat also said that specific features and the incentive structure under the second phase of the India Semiconductor Mission announced in Union budget 2026 are being worked out.Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the second phase of the mission in her budget speech in February to scale up the country’s capabilities in equipment, materials, design, intellectual property rights and to fortify the supply chain. In the budget for 2026-27, the Centre announced a second tranche of incentives under the mission, five years after rolling out the first ₹76,000-crore programme.India will also strive to explore and produce select critical minerals found domestically despite their low resource intensity making them costlier to extract, to guard against the risk of supply denial by other countries in future, Saraswat said.India’s push to build domestic capabilities in semiconductors and critical minerals, which are vital for IT, clean energy and defence sectors, comes at a time technology is increasingly shaping industrial and military power in a de-globalising world with weakening adherence to the rule of law.

Mint.The proposal follows recommendations by the Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) at a meeting held in February. The board also called for a strict ban on sales to minors and closer monitoring of online platforms to prevent easy access.In India, NRT products including nicotine gums and lozenges are regulated as drugs under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act as they are used to reduce tobacco dependence.

Lala Shri Ram: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, by Sonu Bhasin notes, it took a contractor’s unsolicited letters of praise before he was grudgingly admitted, without a role or a rupee in pay.In the startup lexicon of 2026, that man, Shri Ram, would be written off as a failure who had taken refuge in a salaried job. The judgment would have been one of the great misreadings of the century.

The fear that artificial intelligence will lead to mass layoffs is spreading. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of the financial technology firm Block, laid off nearly half of its workforce last week. Citing AI’s labour-saving capabilities, he predicted other companies would soon follow suit: “Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes.”As an economist, I disagree with Dorsey’s prediction.

Gold has nearly doubled and silver has tripled over the past two years. Both metals surged in popularity last year as investors globally placed greater trust in liquid physical assets over the US dollar-denominated financial system.In January, Indians invested more in gold exchange traded funds (ETFs) than in equity mutual funds for the first time, with net inflows surging to a record ₹24,040 crore even as equity fund investments slipped to ₹24,029 crore.

NEW DELHI: India’s gadget buyers are shunning inexpensive smartwatches, a category that saw a massive surge in demand until two years ago. A lack of customer enthusiasm for barebone alternatives to the benchmark Apple Watch as well as existing buyers finding them unworthy of a second-time purchase, have caused smartwatch sales in the country to drop to its lowest in sales volumes and revenue in four calendar years.Data sourced by Mint from market researcher International Data Corporation (IDC) India showed that 28.9 million smartwatches were sold in 2025, generating net revenue of $780 million.

₹3,296 crore. Tuesday was a market holiday.On Wednesday, provisional BSE data showed that FIIs were net sellers of Indian equities worth Rs8,753 crore, while DIIs stepped in as net buyers, purchasing shares worth Rs12,068 crore.

On National Science Day each year on 28 February, we rightly celebrate discovery and innovation. India’s scientific community has earned that recognition. However, the role of science in national life has changed in ways that are not immediately obvious.

Domestic equities tumbled under relentless selling pressure on Monday as the US-Israel and Iran conflict stoked fears of elevated crude oil prices and clouded India Inc’s earnings outlook for the coming quarters.India’s benchmark Nifty 50 fell 1.2% to 24,865.7, tracking weakness across Asian markets, though it fared marginally better than most emerging peers. Thailand led the declines, plunging nearly 4%, followed by Indonesia and Hong Kong, where benchmark indices slipped 2-3%.

India is fast becoming one of the world’s biggest AI user bases. The question now is how it can turn that scale into superpower status rather than just training Silicon Valley for free.That will be a tall order for a country largely caught flat-footed by the boom. But let’s start with the basics: The three main building blocks of AI are talent, compute (including high-end chips and infrastructure) and data.

A rift between the AI firm Anthropic and the US federal government has broken into the open at a fraught geopolitical moment. Negotiations between the AI firm and the Pentagon over deployment of frontier models by the US military stalled after Anthropic refused to permit the use of its models for two specific use cases: domestic surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons. Open AI has struck a deal with the Pentagon in the meantime, even as the use of AI in the battlefield accelerates with deployments by Israel and the US in the ongoing war in West Asia.

Technological innovation in all quarters is critical for accelerated economic growth. However, India’s research and development (R&D) debate often focuses on public spending: how much the government allocates, which missions are launched and what headline targets are announced. The data, however, suggests that India’s innovation shortfall is fundamentally an industry story.

India’s economy is now officially smaller than previously thought. New GDP estimates released on Friday based on an updated methodology and base year have reduced the country’s nominal output by over ₹11 trillion ($133 billion), validating earlier concerns about the size of the economyThe downward revision may complicate the government’s fiscal arithmetic for FY26 and FY27, and may also delay India’s chances of becoming a $4-trillion economy, and the fourth largest economy leaving Japan behind.Over the past decade, questions were raised by researchers, economists and policymakers, including former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian, over the methodology used in the 2011-12 series and the size of India’s GDP.GDP data released on Friday by the statistics ministry based on the updated 2022-23 base year, showed India’s nominal GDP in 2025-26 at ₹345.47 trillion ($3.93 trillion), 3.26% smaller than the ₹357.14 trillion figure given in January based on the 2011-12 series.This downward trend (2.9-3.8%) is visible across all four years for which data based on the 2022-23 series has been released.“This has happened because 2011-12 data was likely overestimating figures as organized sector data was largely used to extrapolate figures for other sectors,” an official involved in the GDP calculation process explained, requesting anonymity.The revised GDP takes into account several steps to capture the economy better such as the integration of goods and services tax (GST), expanding the use of double deflation and using improved deflation techniques in case of single deflation, and using survey results to capture the informal economy instead of relying on proxies.P.C.

I recently asked Claude to help me think through the structure of my next book. I already knew where the weak point was—I just wanted to see what Claude would come up with. I was amazed by its response: Claude didn’t just correctly identify the problem.

Several Indian states plan to integrate trees into mainstream farming systems to improve soil health, capture atmospheric carbon, and diversify rural livelihoods, as crop yields drop due to climate change and land degradation.Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are in the process of launching state-specific agroforestry policies to include tree-based farming as a driver of sustainable economic growth, according to six people aware of the development.The proposed frameworks will ease timber and paper transit regulations, promote high-value tree species, facilitate access to quality planting material, and encourage private sector participation in value chains such as pulp, plywood, bioenergy, and fruit processing, the people said.Nearly 1.7 billion people globally live in regions where crop yields are declining due to human-induced land degradation, posing a direct threat to agricultural productivity and food security, according to The State of Food and Agriculture 2025. Agroforestry—cultivating trees alongside crops and livestock—is increasingly being viewed as a solution to rising input costs, erratic weather patterns, and land degradation.In India, trees outside forests (TOF) account for 8.65% of the total land area of 328.7 million hectares.

In Dave Eggers’ 2021 novel The Every, a giant search engine company acquires an e-commerce behemoth. Delaney Wells, the lead character, plans a vigilante action against the company by getting a job with it. Her college thesis, written with a view to charm her way into the company, argued that it was immaterial that it was a monopoly if consumers were fine with it.

₹1.53 trillion annually.The push was outlined during a meeting chaired by the secretary of the ministry of food processing industries (MoFPI), according to a government statement on Tuesday, and reflects a broader attempt to modernize the farm economy by shifting value creation away from raw produce toward processed and packaged foods. Policymakers say the approach could stabilize farmer incomes, reduce wastage and strengthen exports through investments in infrastructure, technology adoption, and value addition.As India seeks to modernize its agriculture, expanding processing capacity has emerged as a key policy focus.