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AIFs. Unlike mutual funds that pool in investors' money to invest primarily in listed equities and bonds, AIFs are also pooled investments but can invest beyond securities and bonds to invest in less traditional assets such as private equity, venture capital, real estate and hedge funds.“My allocation to AIFs was driven by one simple realization that traditional instruments capture broad market beta, but they rarely provide access to early-stage alpha.

₹1,000 crore over the last two years in acquiring stakes in startups such as BlackBuck, OfBusiness, Purplle, Shiprocket and BlueStone.The size of the first fund was about ₹300 crore, followed by a ₹400-crore second fund. The third fund is likely to have a corpus of ₹500 crore and will go live shortly, Oister’s co-founder and co-chief executive officer Sandeep Sinha told Mint in an interview.

OpenAI, the creator of foundational artificial intelligence behind ChatGPT, announced on Friday that it has signed a deal with the Pentagon. It allows the US department of war (DoW), formerly the department of defense, to use the Sam Altman-led company's models in classified environments.That has raised eyebrows and questions over the use of the OpenAI technology stack in India, among the largest markets for AI and the fastest adopter of the technology worldwide.

India is preparing for one of the biggest overhauls of its highway tolling architecture since the rollout of FASTag. Instead of the previously considered Global Navigation Satellite System-based tolling model, the ministry of road transport and highways and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) now plan to implement the Multi-Lane Free-Flow electronic toll collection system across the country’s 146,560-km national highway network.

Information technology services has been among the most talked-about sectors in the Indian market over the past few days, driven by sharp swings in sentiment and price action.On Tuesday the Nifty IT Index slipped nearly 4% to its lowest in about 10 months, highlighting the extent of the pressure on technology stocks. However, the trend seemed to reverse on 25 February, when Indian IT stocks staged a strong rebound.

Mint.Developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), the SaaS-based digital platform—eSushrut@Clinic—is a "Lite" alternative to the often bulky and expensive hospital information management systems (HIMS) currently in the market, and is aimed at bridging digital divide in Indian healthcare, the two officials cited earlier said on the condition of anonymity.With comparisons being drawn to BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) UPI (Unified Payments Interface), one of the most useful features is the built-in “Smart Assistant”. Its Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) helps doctors manage chronic conditions by offering clear, evidence-based treatment guidance.“The platform allows doctors to digitize records and streamline consultations, improving care continuity without replacing human expertise,” said the first of the two officials cited earlier.The new e-platform serves as a government-backed, reliable entry point for small-scale doctors to join the national digital health ecosystem, much like what the BHIM app did for digital payments.

Bharti Enterprises founder and chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal has said that members of the next generation of the Bharti family will become more visible ‘at the shareholders’ table’ in the coming years, signalling a gradual succession plan within the group.Mittal said the younger family members would be mentored by him, executive vice-chairman Gopal Vittal, and the senior leadership team as they gradually assume larger roles. The comments offer the clearest indication yet of how succession planning is evolving at the Bharti Group, signalling continuity while retaining professional management oversight at one of India’s largest telecom and diversified business conglomerates.Speaking about succession planning as he approaches 70, Mittal said in a recent investor call with analysts that he still has ‘some years left’ to contribute to Bharti Airtel and Bharti Enterprises.“The next generation of my family—a larger family—is all building muscle in different forms and shapes.

₹500 crore for carriers.In a tweet on Saturday, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said Indian airlines cancelled around 410 flights on 28 February and 440 on 1 March due to security concerns in parts of the Middle East airspace, impacting Gulf and long-haul routes beyond the region, including services to London Heathrow and Canada.West Asia accounts for 15-20% of IndiGo’s daily revenue, according to at least one sell-side analyst. “Flight cancellations due to the West Asia crisis will have an impact on airline revenues.

Mint examines how events in Iran will unfold and their implications for India and the rest of the world.Late on Saturday, the US and Israeli forces launched ‘Operation Epic Fury’—a massive military operation that not only killed Iran's supreme leader Khamenei but also 40 senior officials, disrupting the Islamic Republic’s command and control. The strikes happened across 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces. Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones into Israel and other Arab states in the region.

On 24 February 2022, Russian forces crossed into Ukraine with the objective of demilitarizing the country and deterring Kyiv from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Russian strategic planners expected a Ukrainian collapse within a fortnight. Four years on, Moscow has yet to achieve its core wartime objectives of gaining complete control over the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

France is great. I visit a few times a year, and the food is fantastic, the museums are amazing and day care is free (or heavily subsidized) for toddlers aged 3 months or more. New York City, where I live, is also great, with pretty good food and architecture.

India’s once busy SME-to-mainboard migration route has slowed sharply. Tougher rules, volatile markets and heightened governance scrutiny have cooled the graduation cycle that had gathered pace during the 2020–22 bull run.A higher eligibility bar introduced in 2025 by the National Stock Exchange raised the threshold for graduation, reshaping the scale at which companies can aspire to move up.The revised migration framework required small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to report revenue from operations exceeding ₹100 crore in the preceding financial year and maintain an average market capitalisation above ₹100 crore.

There’s a full fledged war going on between once-close neighbours Pakistan and Afghanistan. The two have been trading deadly shelling and mortar fire across their border, with Pakistan Defence Minister Khwaja Asif saying on Friday that his country’s patience had “run out” and declaring “open war” on its neighbour.

The AI scare has come knocking on the doors of Indian IT sooner than expected. Spooked by rapid advances in agentic AI, the Nifty IT has erased 20% of investor wealth this month, even as the broader market has remained flat.But as doomsday theories proliferate, the other side of the story is being ignored – that AI’s impact will be multi-layered and will depend on how India Inc adapts. Let’s discuss.

NEW DELHI: The timelines for peak fossil fuel consumption—including oil and coal in both India and globally—may be delayed further amid geopolitical tensions that are pivoting the focus towards energy security and countries deviating from their climate commitments, Shell plc's chief economist Mallika Ishwaran said.While decarbonization in road transport is under way, there is little progress in aviation, marine and steel, which would delay the energy transition journey and eventually, peak oil timelines, Ishwaran said in an interview."We are seeing oil persisting. Electrification of road transport happens anyway, and that displaces anywhere between 40% to 60% of oil demand in road transport, so that's the significant displacement.

mismanaging these trade-offs. Officials seem to deem almost any expense to be an acceptable price for security. Money is being spread wastefully thin, not focused where China’s grip is tightest, in refineries and smelters.

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.

traders could back a bank guarantee with a small cash or cash-equivalent margin along with personal or corporate guarantees.Under the amended framework, both domestic and foreign proprietary traders must provide a 50% cash margin to secure a bank guarantee (BG). For the remaining collateral, RBI directions require customers to furnish eligible securities such as government bonds, sovereign gold bonds, and listed shares, among others.

Before the enactment of India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), there was very little talk of turnaround professionals. Yet, they were deployed in many companies, not as external consultants, but as individual key managerial personnel (KMP).

India’s traditional brokers are banking on a business they dominate to claw back the ground they ceded to digital rivals over the past decade: lending clients money for leveraged trading.Called the margin trading facility (MTF) in market parlance, it allows investors to buy shares by paying only a part of the total value upfront, with the broker funding the rest at an interest cost.MTF book surged 42.9% in the year through January 2026 to ₹1.20 lakh crore even as the markets turned volatile, according to a February Care Edge report. The top two in the category are bank-backed brokers: ICICI Securities Ltd and Kotak Securities Ltd.

Commuters looking to zoom past toll plazas on India's 1,46,560 km highway network will have to wait longer. Security concerns about surveillance cameras imported from countries like China have delayed the rollout of the barrier-free tolling system.The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) seeks to install the multi-lane free-flow (MLFF) system at around 1,150 toll plazas nationwide to allow vehicles to pass through at speeds of 100 km/h or more.