Research Financial News

As this is my first column of the new year, I thought I would do something challenging—write what is good about the modern world. Here are a few things:Billionaires versus death: Billionaires do not have the heart to leave the party of life. That is where they become extremely useful to us.

Russian crude suppliers are now offering Indian refiners a higher discount of up to $8 a barrel, doubling since October after sanctions were announced on Rosneft and Lukoil, according to three people aware of the development. That could increase oil shipments from the non-sanctioned oil suppliers from the Eurasian nation, experts said.The discounts on Urals crude hovered around $2-4 a barrel after the 23 October US decision to impose sanctions on the two largest Russian crude suppliers, according to data from Finnish think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

thematic funds can provide targeted exposure to long-term structural trends that may not be adequately captured by diversified equity portfolios. In the right market environment, a well-timed sectoral allocation can enhance portfolio returns.However, experts caution that such gains come with elevated risks.

• Don’t go cold turkey. If you’re averaging multiple hours on social media, it’s not realistic to go to zero. Start with a goal of limiting or restricting your use by a certain amount.• Use your phone to set screen-time limits or cut-off times. Your phone can help you reach your goals.

Mint.Agricultural experts said that the move could help ramp up foodgrain production, including pulses and other crops, by improving seed quality and farm-level productivity.“Increasing productivity is critical if India has to meet future food demand without relying heavily on imports. Better seeds backed by strong research can help raise yields of pulses and other crops, stabilize supplies, and protect farmers from climate and market shocks,” said Bimal Kothari, chairman of the India Pulses and Grains Association (IPGA).All the cotton varieties are still Bt-II hybrids, showing policy continuity without any new biotech traits, the order notified on Thursday said.

release of a highly competitive chatbot caused a sensation in early 2025. Dubbed the “DeepSeek moment,” it immediately prompted analogies to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957. But do such spectacles really mean that China is closing the gap with the West?In considering that question, it is important to bear in mind that no industrial revolution has ever emerged outside advanced democratic capitalism.

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. is exploring gig-like hiring arrangements for hard-to-retain specialists in certain roles, signalling a shift as India’s $283 billion offshoring sector grapples with a talent crunch amid uncertainty caused by artificial intelligence.India’s largest information technology (IT) services company will consider allowing data architects and data scientists to log in for a few hours with the option to work elsewhere, according to a senior executive at the company, who didn’t want to be identified as the information is not yet public.“For instance, data architects do not need to work for 8 hours; their work often gets done in four hours, and then why should they not be allowed to work somewhere else? We will look at these sorts of gig options for skilled employees, and that will be the future of the workplace,” the executive said.The contours of this plan are still being finalised, and the company will have to factor in data privacy and client confidentiality concerns, the executive said.India’s software services providers mostly hire full-time employees.

₹7,900 crore and growing at about 6.5% annually. Meanwhile, the opalware market—featuring lightweight, heat-resistant tempered glass with a porcelain-like finish—is estimated at roughly ₹2,000 crore, expanding at around 10%.By comparison, the cookware market, including steel, non-stick, and cast iron products, is pegged at over ₹8,100 crore and growing at nearly 8.5%, underscoring the continued dominance of non-glass categories.For the 64-year-old Borosil, which operates across all three categories, this push has resulted in revenues of ₹573.05 crore during the first half of 2025-26, representing a 14.7% year-on-year increase.During the period, Borosil’s consumer glassware segment, which includes storage containers, serving ware, tumblers and lunchboxes, grew 27.4% on-year, making it the fastest-growing category in its portfolio.

The challenge of regulation: Economic theory on market behaviour under a duopoly is subsumed in the larger literature focused on economic dynamics under an oligopoly (few sellers).There has been extensive oligopoly research; the problem is not paucity of theory or models, but the lack of a model that predicts firm behaviour in particular contexts with accuracy and reliability.This is required, as it could form the basis for policy decisions on whether, how and under what circumstances the government ought to intervene with regulatory measures.Empirical research shows that firm performance varies along a continuum bound by perfect competition and perfect monopoly, but not in predictable ways. Thus, the difficulty in formulating useful public policy interventions is that duopoly behaviour is highly circumstantial.

In a development that is alarming policy makers and public health experts, India's oral nicotine pouch manufacturers are seeking permission to sell products of 6mg strength that are 50% more potent than the current maximum, offering them as therapeutic medical products under the nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) regime, according to two officials and documents reviewed by Mint.With the government running awareness campaigns against tobacco use in the country, this has sparked concerns of nicotine initiation and long-term addiction.The latest development pertains to Vcherish Pvt. Ltd, Harsh Nutricare Pvt.

faced unexpected challenges earlier this year while preparing to roll out a new model, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg went on a recruiting blitz to build an AI dream team, offering top executives and researchers multimillion-dollar paydays.The company acquired a 49% stake in startup Scale AI that valued Scale at $29 billion, and Scale founder Alexandr Wang joined the social media giant as its chief AI officer.The Manus acquisition appears to be Meta’s first major purchase of an AI startup operating an frontier AI model. Manus’s capabilities are regularly tested by top benchmarks and compared against those of AI models including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and DeepSeek’s R1.Earlier this year, Manus raised $75 million in a fundraising round led by venture firm Benchmark.

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]. Mumbai: After plummeting over 6% in 2025 and breaching the psychologically-important 90-per-dollar mark, the Indian rupee is heading into 2026 carrying the weight of weak capital flows, global trade uncertainty and shifting central bank strategy.Yet, beneath the headline depreciation, economists and market participants said the outlook for the currency next year is far from one-way depreciation and hinges crucially on how the external sector evolves, especially India's trade deal with the US.At the heart of the debate is whether this year's weakness marks the start of a more prolonged downcycle or a painful, but necessary adjustment.“Typically, the rupee needs to depreciate to the extent of the interest rate differential between the US and India, but the reality is that the external front has been hit hard by US tariffs," Neeraj Gambhir, executive firector at Axis Bank said.

₹7 crore and ₹10 crore, comparable with the price of a high-end apartment in South Delhi or South Mumbai. People are moving to these places for a relaxed pace of life. This is the reason for the 65% year-on-year rise in real estate prices in this sleepy, peaceful coastal province.Goa isn’t alone.

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] a year of testing the waters, India’s top law firms are heading into 2026 facing a decisive question: can artificial intelligence (AI) move from a promising pilot to everyday legal infrastructure? What began as cautious experimentation in 2025 is now shifting toward deeper, workflow-level integration, even as firms remain measured about governance, client confidentiality and the impact on pricing.

Apple Inc. has notched another feat in India – fuelled by easy credit, cashbacks and aspirational Indians, the iPhone 16 is now the country’s highest-selling smartphone, eclipsing the most popular budget model from China’s Vivo.The iPhone 16 series, launched about 15 months ago, sold 6.5 million units in the first 11 months of 2025, according to data from Gurugram-based Counterpoint Research.

₹96,557 crore) in dividends and share buybacks and about $1.5 billion (around ₹14,000 crore) on acquisitions, Mint research showed. Earlier in FY22, the same companies spent about ₹27,000 crore on buyouts and gave ₹81,669 crore to shareholders.

₹10,300 crore ($1.15 billion) for supplying subsidized chips to startups or research centres for developing AI platforms that exclude the Western biases of existing models.This puny outlay, compared with other sovereign budgets (such as France’s $117 billion), is predicated on the hope of private capital pitching in.That might be slightly problematic, given India Inc’s reluctance to invest; a survey by EY India and Confederation of Indian Industry shows that over 95% of enterprises have earmarked less than 20% of their infotech budgets for AI.But the government’s year-end guidelines reveal an indulgent attitude towards the private sector in the name of innovation that may tempt many Indian companies to use artificial intelligence for shirking their after-sales service responsibilities. Many banks and consumer-facing companies have already replaced a human voice with under-developed, inefficient and untrained AI bots.

steel prices in Q3FY26 to date are down 2-5% quarter-on-quarter, according to Antique Stock Broking.The impact is most visible in profitability. After Ebitda per tonne fell to ₹10,027 in Q2FY26, down 12.7% year-on-year and 36% sequentially, Nuvama Research expects a further decline in the December quarter (Q3FY26), to about ₹8,200. Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.That implies a sequential drop of nearly ₹1,800 per tonne, driven by higher coking coal and iron ore costs.

rabi crops. "The cold wave conditions in north and other parts of the country are currently conducive to rabi crops and we don't see any major impact," said Ratan Tiwari, director, Indian Council of Agricultural Resrach-Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research (IIWBR), Karnal.India’s rabi crop sowing in 2025–26 has recorded a notable increase in coverage compared to the previous year, with total area sown rising by more than 8 lakh hectares, according to data released by the Union ministry of agriculture & farmers’ welfare on Monday.

hard-to-obtain contracts for electrical power—all of which can be repurposed to train and power AI models.It’s not a seamless process. Miners often have to build new, specialized facilities, because running AI requires more-advanced cooling and network systems, as well as replacing bitcoin-mining computers with AI-focused graphics processing units.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Kajaria Ceramics’ recent disclosure of fraud is a sentiment dampener as it raises corporate governance issues. During the rollout of a new vendor onboarding system, Kajaria found an embezzlement of around ₹20 crore.