Testing Financial News

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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.The US Federal Reserve kept its main policy rate unchanged on Wednesday as Jerome Powell presided over the rate-setting committee’s meeting for the last time. The Fed is concerned about inflation, which has exceeded its 2% target and could rise further as the supply shock caused by the war in West Asia sends prices of goods and services soaring in the US and elsewhere.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Reliance Industries Ltd’s recent sale of a second-level step-down subsidiary to a little-known company may test the limits of regulation on related-party transactions even while technically keeping to the rules, said legal and governance experts.On 13 April, Reliance Retail Ltd sold its subsidiary, Reliance Projects & Property Management Services Ltd (RPPMSL), to Jaipur Enclave Pvt. Ltd for ₹ ₹274 crore, according to a stock exchange filing.The sale consideration is small compared to the scale of the sold unit.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Anthropic’s Mythos, a frontier artificial intelligence (AI) model, can outperform humans in detecting vulnerabilities across systems, including banks, telcos and utilities. While it can detect flaws faster and better than humans, global agencies warn it could be used as a potential cyberweapon too. Mint decodes.Claude Mythos or Mythos is US-based Anthropic's advanced AI model designed to handle complex cybersecurity tasks such as identifying bugs, analyzing systems and even generating exploits.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The promoters of Faridabad-based Norisys Technology Pvt Ltd, a premium electrical switches and accessories maker, have engaged Alvarez & Marsal to explore a potential stake sale, according to two people familiar with the matter.“The company is seeking an overall valuation of ₹5,000–6,000 crore. The exact deal structures are yet to be decided as it is still early days but it is likely to be a majority stake sale,” one of the people said.“It is an extremely profitable company even at a small scale and has grown well in the last few years, so several large private equity players will be tapped to test demand for the asset,” according to the second person.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The jagged path of India’s stock market attests to how shaky the mood of investors is. Although the Sensex is up 6.6% in April (while the Nifty-50 index rose 7%) after its 12% tumble in war-stricken March (the Nifty-50 slid more than 11%), last week ended on a glum note.A tentative truce in West Asia may have mostly silenced the blasts of war, but the lifting smoke revealed a double choke of Hormuz, with even Iran’s oil trapped, like the exports of other Gulf countries. As this US-Iran deadlock is proving harder to break than a level-headed analysis of it would suggest, the war’s impact on India’s economy might still be gaining in intensity.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: India is working on an overhaul of its firefighting vehicles—from identifying challenges in dense urban landscapes to building domestic testing capacity—as the government seeks to address critical gaps in fire safety infrastructure, according to two people aware of the development. The effort comes amid acute shortages of fire stations, equipment and personnel, raising concerns over response readiness as urban fire risks rise.As part of the plan to ensure adequate fire safety preparedness, the heavy industries ministry has started consultations to identify challenges faced by firefighting vehicle makers—lack of indigenous testing, import dependence for high-tech components, varied regulatory requirements across states, etc.—the people cited above said on the condition of anonymity.To be sure, after the 15th Finance Commission had noted deficiencies in fire safety resources and recommended a ₹5,000-crore scheme to upgrade infrastructure and availability of trained manpower, the Centre launched a scheme for expansion and modernization of fire services with the recommended corpus in July 2023.India currently lacks any formal testing of firefighting vehicles and is considering setting up new facilities and upgrading existing testing agencies such as the Automotive Research Association of India (Arai) for the same, said the first person cited above.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Oracle’s $300 billion megadeal with OpenAI is testing the limits of Wall Street’s appetite for debt tied to America’s data-center boom.Banks including JPMorgan Chase struggled for months to spread the risk of billions of dollars in loans they made to build data centers leased to Oracle in Texas and Wisconsin, people familiar with the matter said. Many financial institutions that would ordinarily buy those loans face restrictions on how much exposure they can have to a single counterparty, and the sheer size of these debt packages pushed them to the limit with Oracle.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk—a recent Economist article describes them as the small, powerful group of five men who will determine the path along which artificial intelligence (AI) evolves. Their fellow AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who invented the neural network system that enables AI models to learn like humans, quit Google in 2023 to alert the world that while further development of AI could lead us to a utopian future, it could equally lead us to a dystopian one.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.On Thursday, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal—two states with sharply different political rhythms—head to the polls. Tamil Nadu will vote in a single phase across all 234 seats, while West Bengal begins its first phase in 152 of 294 constituencies.Both contests will test the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) momentum: it has little presence in Tamil Nadu but poses a serious challenge to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal.Mint explores:West Bengal has a history of extended single-party/alliance rule. The state was governed by the Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), for 34 years before Mamata Banerjee’s rise ended that run in 2011.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Stock market recap: Benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty 50 ended higher on Tuesday amid US-Iran peace talks and broad-based sectoral strength.The Sensex rose by 753 points, or 0.96%, to end at 79,273.33, while the Nifty 50 ended with a healthy gain of 212 points, or 0.87%, at 24,576.60.Amid the geopolitical developments, we are seeing some steady buying opportunities as the result season unfolds. A very strong upmove with a buy on dips can be considered in the days ahead.ADANIPORTS (Cmp ₹1594.10) Indian equities rallied for the third consecutive session on 21 April 2026, supported by optimism over US–Iran peace talks and broad-based sectoral strength. The Sensex climbed 753 points to 79,273, while the Nifty advanced 211 points to 24,576.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In equity markets, an acid test of new investors is how they respond when a crisis hits and the market crumbles. Do they rush for the door? Or, do they affirm their intention to be there for the long term? A mild form of that acid test roiled Indian markets, along with global ones, in March. The benchmark equity index, BSE Sensex, tumbled 11% that month alone.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.KKR & Co-backed Kota-based test preparation company Resonance Eduventures Ltd. is nearing an asset reconstruction company (ARC)-led debt resolution that may see lenders taking about 80% haircut on principal claims, according to two people aware of the matter.“Only one ARC has bid for the debt and the deal is nearing completion where it will acquire a majority of the debt. Though the final negotiations on the terms of the deal will decide closure timelines,” said the first person cited above.The proposed transaction comes amid stress in India’s once-booming offline coaching sector.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Pocket FM, an audio storytelling platform, said its users in India and the US are getting increasingly comfortable with microtransactions— paying per episode or series—giving it a monetization engine that differs from the classic subscription business.The company’s recent growth reflects how microtransactions and the deeper use of AI across content creation, editing and creator tools have started to scale up together, chief operating officer Lalit Gangwar said.“Pocket FM is best understood as a microtransaction-led audio storytelling business rather than a pure subscription model,” Gangwar said. “Listeners typically start free, get hooked on serialized stories or series, and then keep returning to unlock the next episode or story arc.”The company doubled its annualized revenue run-rate (ARR) to over $400 million ( ₹3,725 crore) in the past year, after taking six years to reach its first $200 million.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator by market share, has raised the price of one of its long-validity prepaid plans, a move analysts said may be aimed at testing the waters for broader tariff hikes.On Sunday, Airtel raised the tariff of its ₹859 mobile plan — valid for 84 days with 1.5 GB of data per day — to ₹899, according to its website. It also discontinued its ₹799 plan with 77-day validity.The tariff hike is particularly significant because headline prices across all plans have remained unchanged for the past two years.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.For centuries, Santhal and Gond tribes in central and eastern India have called the mahua tree the ‘tree of life’ as an ode to its versatility: from a nutrient-dense edible flower to local arrack to cooking oils made from seeds, it’s sturdy wood is used in carpentry and nearly every part of the tree is used in traditional medicine.Add the latest end-use of madhuca longifolia, the scientific name for the mahua tree: turn its bitter-sweet flowers into fine chocolates and granola for the discerning and well-paying urban consumer.Meet Rishabh Lohia, a young social entrepreneur from Ranchi in Jharkhand, giving mahua the contemporary makeover. A former student of economics who found inspiration in Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s writings, Lohia left his family’s real estate business in 2024 to launch Wild Harvest, a packaged food brand specializing in mahua products.For Lohia and his partner Ashali Bhandari, building Wild Harvest is akin to creating a new category in the ever-expanding fast-moving consumer goods basket.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: Even as original video and audio content struggle for attention in a crowded digital ecosystem, a new threat is compounding the problem: a surge of low-cost, artificial intelligence (AI)-generated material that is reshaping discovery, monetization and trust across platforms.Often dubbed “AI slop”, this content is mass-produced, repetitive and generic, flooding feeds and pushing higher-quality work out of view. For creators, the immediate hit is visibility: strong content gets buried under volume, making consistent engagement and monetization harder to sustain in a market where revenue is already concentrated among a small fraction of players.One common manifestation of AI-generated content is the proliferation of cover versions of popular songs, often created and distributed at scale using AI tools.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Trends test our patience while the lower levels are being held . The road ahead looks challenging, but we will slowly and steadily conquer it.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Will we reach a maturity level in our workplaces where a company can ask for a mental health check the same way it asks for a physical test after rolling out a job offer but before signing the final appointment letter? When attention deficit disorder (ADD), cortisol spikes and high cholesterol are openly discussed in water-cooler conversation, why is mental health not a factor that needs to be gauged before an employment contract is signed?According to a senior partner at one of New Delhi’s most prominent law firms, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act of 2016 states that one is prohibited from discriminating against a candidate based on the Act’s stipulated list of disabilities, unless proportionate to a legitimate objective.A note released by the Press Information Bureau in December 2025 said that the same law defines a ‘person with disability’ as “someone who has a long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairment which, in interaction with barriers, hinders their full and effective participation in society equally with others.” While employers cannot be biased during the hiring process, they can take a final call depending on the role’s needs. If the mental health conditions of candidates may obstruct their work efficacy, should employers not be informed of such diagnoses? Maybe not under present workplace dynamics.