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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.For a little over two months now, the world has speculated on the impact of the Israel-US-Iran war on the world economy. As the war’s disruption stretched on, concern began turning into panic over energy and food security. India is in a particularly vulnerable position—both directly, given its high energy dependence on West Asia, and indirectly due to the ripple effects of various impacts across the world.India’s large import dependence makes adaptive responses to economic and social impacts of the war enormously challenging, especially in the immediate time-frame of two years.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Affordable-housing lender Shubham Housing Finance, backed by Multiples Private Equity and Premji Invest, has initiated early discussions with investment bankers for a potential ₹2,000-crore initial public offering (IPO) that could be filed within the current financial year, according to two people aware of the development.News of the Gurugram firm’s planned IPO comes over a month after early investors in Shubham Housing Development Finance partially exited through a $96-million secondary transaction led by private equity firm Creador, with participation from existing investor LeapFrog Investments.“Shubham has initiated preliminary talks with bankers. The contours of the issue are still being worked out,” said one of the people cited above.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.How soon will the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raise rates and how high will it take them? Those have become urgent questions for bankers in Mumbai after elevated energy-import costs pushed the rupee to a record low last week. RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra has signalled a preference to stay on pause. The central bank would step in, he said in an 18 April speech at Princeton University, “through its influence on inflation expectations rather than through blunt demand compression,” a euphemism for monetary tightening.Still, Malhotra’s cheap-money era is likely drawing to a close, thanks to the pressure from the foreign-exchange market.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Once seen as competition to mutual funds, portfolio management services (PMS) providers are increasingly using them as building blocks. They are offering curated mutual fund (MF) portfolios to high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) who want the simplicity of MFs combined with professional, end-to-end portfolio management and execution.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.There is a tendency to think of mutual funds in binary terms: either actively managed or passive index funds. In reality, it’s a spectrum. Some active funds diverge sharply from their benchmark, making concentrated bets the index barely touches.

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has set an ambitious target of increasing its average revenue per user (Arpu) by almost 50% to ₹150 in the current fiscal year. This after a recent annual review flagged concerns “regarding the stagnation of core business revenue” of the state-owned telecom operator, according to the meeting document seen by Mint.The target was set at a review meeting of BSNL with communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on 23 April.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.How should you invest now that Kevin Warsh is almost certain to be the next Federal Reserve chair? The short answer: Stay the course.Warsh is headed for Senate confirmation and is likely to take over from Jerome Powell in mid-May. His first meeting leading the Federal Open Market Committee will be in June.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Dinshaw’s Dairy Pvt Ltd, founded in 1932, is trying to look and think younger. The 94-year-old Nagpur-based ice cream maker is recasting its identity to appeal to a new generation of consumers, while making investments to expand its footprint beyond Maharashtra into markets across India, Zervin Rana, director at the company, told Mint in an interview.The push comes months after a comprehensive rebranding exercise that refreshed the company’s logo and positioning.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.That Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) has a network of 300,000 ‘influencers’ at work for its marketing department, as declared in April by Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez, has quickly become a PowerPoint talisman. In a world where entire industries sometimes change direction through choreography rather than conviction, that’s an evocative figure. Indian marketing has always had a weakness for the large gesture.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Union road transport and highways ministry is recalibrating its highway-building strategy to focus on decongesting urban India, with plans to prioritize ring roads and bypass corridors around nearly 50 cities with populations exceeding one million, two people aware of the development said.The shift marks a departure from the earlier emphasis on long inter-city corridors under programmes such as Bharatmala, towards integrating highways with urban mobility needs.According to the first person quoted above, the new approach of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) will ensure that long-distance highway traffic is diverted outside dense city cores, enabling seamless freight movement while reducing congestion within cities. The broader objective is to lower logistics costs and support investment and growth.As per government estimates, the country’s logistics cost has already fallen from 13–14% of GDP a few years ago to close to 8% now, driven by GST reforms, FASTag, e-way bills, digital tracking systems, and the expansion of highways and freight corridors under PM Gati Shakti.Queries mailed to MoRTH and NHAI remained unanswered till press time.“The new highway construction strategy would keep at least around quarter of annual highway construction target of about 10,000 km for building bypasses and ring roads around cities with higher vehicle density.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Bengaluru: In a Mumbai apartment, Abhishek Sarkate spends his days staring at a glowing screen. As a video editor working remotely, his world rarely extends beyond his desk. A while back, when he tried outsourcing his food, ordering in or eating out, his gut rebelled.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd on Monday announced the $11.75 billion acquisition of Organon & Co., in a seemingly aggressive push into the US market that has long decided the global fortunes of Indian drugmakers. However, the biggest buyout by an Indian company in nearly 20 years also signals that the US generics market's decades-long allure is beginning to fade for Indian drugmakers, which are now eyeing newer markets such as China, South Korea, and Spain with branded generics.Announced early on Monday, the Organon acquisition ranks as the second-largest acquisition by an Indian company, behind Tata Steel's 2007 deal to buy British steel maker Corus Group for $12 billion.For years, Indian pharma rode a powerful wave in the US, as expiring patents of blockbuster small-molecule drugs opened a gold mine for low-cost generic drug makers in the world's largest drug market.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) plans to scale up its corporate finance team in India and expand into new sectors, as the New York-based consulting firm positions itself to capture a rise in dealmaking and sustained capital inflows into the country, senior executives said.The expansion comes amid a shift in global investor strategy towards long-term capital deployment in India, driven by strong underlying fundamentals, high-growth prospects and elevated public market valuations that are pushing deal activity, including cross-border transactions.“We are building a highly sector-specialized corporate finance team, that integrates seamlessly with the firm’s other offerings,” said Mohit Khullar, managing director and head of corporate finance at Alvarez & Marsal India.The firm’s corporate finance practice currently spans consumer, industrials, healthcare and pharma, with the recent addition of Nitin Lath as managing director for the sector.“We will specialize within pharma, with a strong focus on Indian branded formulations, niche generics and speciality pharma, as well as CDMOs (contract development and manufacturing organization) and APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients),” Lath said. “The pharma industry is undergoing a period of transformation, with several players re evaluating their business models and actively pursuing large M&A opportunities, including cross border transactions across the US and Europe.”Khullar said the firm will also expand into additional sectors such as financial services and technology in the coming months.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.JSW MG Motor India Pvt. Ltd, the joint venture between China’s SAIC Motor Corp.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BENGALURU: India’s café chains are moving beyond traditional coffee-led formats and experimenting with dessert-focused concepts, hybrid cafés and experience-led stores to drive higher engagement and spending.Last week, Westbridge Capital-backed Third Wave Coffee launched “Third Rush” at four of its outlets in Bengaluru, branding and positioning desserts as a standalone experience aimed at enhancing late-evening socializing.“We see desserts evolving into a strategic lever that supports higher engagement and ticket size,” Rajat Luthra, chief executive officer (CEO) of Third Wave Coffee, told Mint.Barista Coffee recently started diner-style outlets that offer a more expansive set of meal items like burgers and pastas and hybrid cafés that serve coffee and food items, while Tata Starbucks already has desserts as part of its food menu and is expanding a mix of neighbourhood stores and more immersive Reserve formats.These formats are becoming more specialized. Dessert-led menus and artisanal bakery tie-ups are helping chains move beyond beverages into full-stack consumption.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Acko General Insurance Ltd has appointed investment banks for an initial public offering in India that could value the startup at up to $2 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter.The Bengaluru-based company has selected ICICI Securities Ltd, Kotak Mahindra Capital Co, and the India unit of Morgan Stanley to manage the share sale, one of the persons said, asking not to be identified because the information is not yet public.Mint had reported on 14 December 2025 that the General Atlantic- and Multiples-backed insurtech firm was preparing for an offer that could raise $300–400 million.The offering is expected to include a mix of a fresh issue of shares and an offer for sale by existing investors, the second person confirmed.Mint has reached out to Acko, ICICI Securities, Kotak Mahindra Capital Co, and Morgan Stanley India for comment.Acko intends to file its draft prospectus through the confidential pre-filing route before the end of this calendar year, the third person said.Under regulations introduced by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the confidential filing mechanism allows companies to undergo regulatory review without immediately disclosing detailed financials and business strategies. It also gives issuers the flexibility to withdraw the offering without public disclosure if market conditions deteriorate.The IPO push comes as Acko reports improving financial metrics.For the fiscal year ended March 2025, the company posted revenue of ₹2,837 crore, up 35% year-on-year.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Reliance Retail is scaling up its e-commerce platform JioMart’s quick-commerce business with a strategy that breaks from the industry’s fixation on 10-minute delivery.It is leveraging its extensive network of physical stores to enable two-hour deliveries, while broadening its focus to higher-value categories such as electronics and fashion.The playbook so far appears to be gaining traction. JioMart’s hyperlocal business scaled to roughly two million average daily orders in the March quarter, up 29% sequentially and over 300% year-on-year, Reliance Industries Ltd’s Q4FY26 investor presentation showed.Nearly 5.8 million new customers shopped on the platform during the fourth quarter, while the registered customer base expanded by 98% on-year.In fact, Reliance Retail logged total transactions (including JioMart, Reliance Digital, Metro, and Smart Bazaar) worth ₹193 crore in the last quarter of 2025-26, with JioMart’s high-frequency nature boosting the figure, Dinesh Taluja, group chief financial officer of Reliance Retail, told analysts on Friday.“We have the widest reach and network that any hyperlocal player has in the country today,” he added.The numbers come amid an aggressive expansion push by quick-commerce players such as Eternal Ltd-owned Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, and Tata group-owned BigBasket, which are investing heavily in dark stores and logistics even as profitability remains uncertain.Market leader Blinkit logged roughly 8.1 million daily orders as of the December quarter, while Swiggy Instamart’s daily order volume stood at 3.5 million in the same period.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In the attention economy, where user time is the scarcest commodity, platforms such as content sites, OTT services and social networks are competing for every second of engagement. Several studies peg Gen Z attention spans at just around eight seconds, less than that of a goldfish.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The biggest motorcycle makers are doubling down on the affluent rider instead of the traditional interest in the budget-conscious commuter. Hero MotoCorp Ltd, Bajaj Auto Ltd, and TVS Motor Co.