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VIP and Safari each command roughly a third each of India’s organized market with the US brand Samsonite making for the rest, data from VIP Industries’ filings and analysts tracking the stock shows. But in the first nine months of 2025-25, ending December, Safari has overtaken VIP in revenue ( ₹1,574 crore compared to ₹ 1,422 crore).

The West Asia escalation has brought back into focus a structural vulnerability that has long remained underappreciated in policy discourse. Energy flows translate into payment flows, and both are now increasingly mediated by financial architectures that reflect geopolitical reality as much as economic logic. These are not passive conduits, as they can shape outcomes—by enabling, delaying or, in extreme cases, constraining the movement of money across borders.At the heart of this evolving dynamic lies mBridge, an initiative incubated under the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) for interoperability among multiple central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

India’s record-breaking initial public offering (IPO) run is beginning to show signs of fatigue. Even as companies raised an all-time high ₹1.78 trillion in 2025-26—surpassing the previous peak of ₹1.62 trillion—investor enthusiasm, particularly among retail participants, has started to wane.The shift comes against a volatile backdrop.

Domestic steel prices have climbed sharply following the imposition of safeguard duty on imports in December. The war has further disrupted key trade routes, lifting freight costs and, along with rupee depreciation, increasing the pressure on imports.The spot price of hot rolled coil (HRC) has risen about 22% over its Q3FY26 average to ₹57,700 per tonne, but still remains below the landed cost of imports from China, giving domestic producers an advantage, according to a Nomura Global Market Research report.For Q4FY26, the average HRC price stood at ₹53,866 per tonne — a 14% sequential increase.

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (for 2026–2030), approved in March, retains the direction of its earlier Plans, serving as a setter of priorities and an instrument for policy coordination across China’s vast administrative system. The central question is whether this Plan will deliver what China’s economy needs: a decisive shift in favour of consumption-led growth.China’s growth model: The country’s growth has long relied on investment, industrial production and exports.

Like the ministerial gatherings in 1999, 2003 and 2017, the 14th Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO), held at Yaoundé, Cameroon, ended without an agreement on anything. US trade representative Jamieson Greer used the occasion to reiterate his long-held view that the WTO is not of much use. This trade body operates by consensus and India has had its fair share of blame for such huddles yielding little, having held firm on its right to subsidize agriculture, a point that rich countries found hard to stomach.

The market struggled to maintain its intraday highs on Wednesday as selling pressure intensified at those elevated levels. However, a positive takeaway was that every dip was met with a recovery, allowing the index to hold onto some of its gains.

Stock market recap: The Indian equity markets commenced the new financial year on a remarkably bullish note, with Nifty 50 surging 1.56% to close at 22,679.40. This rally, which saw the index reclaim 22,650, was primarily fueled by optimistic global cues following hints of de-escalation in the West Asia war.Investor sentiment was further bolstered by a sharp decline in crude oil prices and a cooling of U.S.

₹50 in India and $1 in the US, with an exchange rate of ₹100 per dollar. The real exchange rate is then 0.5, meaning an Indian X is half as expensive as an American X when expressed in a common currency.Now, imagine that domestic prices rise by 10%, so X now costs ₹55 in India, and the exchange rate moves to ₹110 per dollar. The nominal exchange rate has depreciated, but the real exchange rate remains 0.5.

India’s central bank further tightened its forex curbs on Wednesday by targeting the rebooking of cancelled forex derivative contracts and tightening norms around related-party transactions.If a company or trader cancels a dollar hedge, they can no longer re-enter the same trade to benefit from price movements, limiting their ability to take directional bets under the guise of hedging.Separately, banks have been barred from undertaking foreign exchange derivative contracts with related parties, as defined under the Indian Accounting Standard (Ind AS) 2.Wednesday’s moves come after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) first capped banks’ net open positions (NOP) in the domestic market at $100 million at the end of each business day on 27 March.Then, on Wednesday, Mint reported that RBI had asked banks for data on positions taken by their corporate clients, with the exercise aimed at assessing on-ground positioning rather than signalling immediate regulatory actions.The new regulations have come into effect immediately.Together, these measures aim to curb one-sided positioning in the rupee, which has been hitting successive record lows.

Mint in an emailed statement.Other companies including Turtlemint, Indo-Mim, Inframarket, Symbiotech Pharmalabs, Duroflex, and KKR-backed Leap India are also taking a more calibrated approach for a public listing in the current climate, multiple people familiar with the matter said. All these companies have secured approval from market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to go public, according to data from Prime Database.Some of these companies have temporarily paused or deferred their IPO preparations due to concerns over valuations amid a turbulent stock market, two people said on the condition of anonymity.

₹229 trillion, the highest since November 2024. Every fear event produces the same pattern: retail traders flood into options, most often choosing straddles and strangles.A straddle involves buying a call and a put at the same strike price, profiting if the market moves sharply in either direction. A strangle is cheaper, placing the call above and the put below the current price, but it requires an even larger move to profit.Both appear logical in uncertain times: direction-neutral and clean.

Fertilizers are vital to India’s economy as they underpin the agricultural sector, which financially supports nearly half the population. Companies from the sector ensure food security by providing essential nutrients for crop yields.Fertilizer stocks are currently in the spotlight because the escalating West Asia conflict has triggered a massive supply shock, driving global prices to three-year highs and forcing a strategic shift in India's domestic production.Here are three beaten-down stocks from the fertilizer space that investors can watch.

Wow! Momo Foods Pvt. Ltd, the Tiger Global-backed quick-service restaurant chain, is turning packaged foods into a major revenue driver.

With the rupee under pressure from capital outflows and higher crude prices, India’s central bank is expanding its scrutiny beyond banks to corporate treasury positions in the foreign exchange market to assess large arbitrage trades, two bankers familiar with the matter said.According to these bankers, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) data call is aimed at assessing the extent of arbitrage exposure with corporate clients, rather than signalling immediate regulatory action.The exercise follows the central bank’s move on 27 March to cap banks’ net open positions in the domestic market at $100 million at the end of each day, which forced several lenders to unwind trades.“Corporates might have to unwind as well if things come to a head,” one of the two bankers cited earlier said, requesting anonymity. Corporate treasuries manage firms’ foreign exchange exposures through hedging to ensure that earnings and cash flows are not hit by currency swings.An email sent to the RBI on the matter remained unanswered till press time.A Jefferies report on 29 March said that the forex derivative market is dominated by larger banks with gross onshore positions of $30-40 billion that largely offset each other.

Stock market recap: The Indian equity markets witnessed a sharp sell-off on Monday, 30 March 2026, as the West Asia war and surging crude oil prices triggered a widespread risk-off sentiment.Nifty 50 plummeted 2.14% to settle at 22,331.40, while S&P BSE Sensex crashed 1,636 points (2.22%) to end at 71,947.55. The session was marked by deep institutional selling, particularly from FPIs, as Brent crude climbed above $115 per barrel, threatening India's macroeconomic stability.Sectorally, Nifty Realty and PSU Banks bore the brunt of the carnage, with heavyweights like Bajaj Finance, Axis Bank, and SBI leading the losers' list.

Even though the Strait of Hormuz is just about 33km wide at its narrowest point, about 20 million barrels of crude oil and refinery products would pass through it every day before the war in West Asia. This was roughly a quarter of all seaborne oil trade. Since late February, tanker traffic through the strait has fallen sharply, driving up the price of Brent crude and triggering an oil shock.

A viral video clip of McDonald’s CEO Christopher Kempczinski eating the fast-food chain’s Big Arch burger has been memed and roasted across the internet. It surely cost him a little bit of his dignity. But that’s a small price to pay for the equivalent of millions of dollars in free publicity.

Godrej Enterprises is planning price hikes of 6% to 10% across categories from April, as rising input costs, freight rates, and supply disruptions continue to put pressure on margins, Kamal Nandi, business head (appliances) at Godrej Enterprises Group, told Mint.“Largely, the prices are going up due to the shortage in key raw materials like plastic, which are dependent on crude oil, rupee weakening and shortages in liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and piped natural gas (PNG).”Intex Technologies expects to raise AC prices by around 4-5% and washing machines by about 5-6%, even as it tries to absorb a significant portion of the cost escalation internally to limit the impact on consumers, Keshav Bansal, director at the appliance maker, said.Hisense India is closely monitoring the evolving situation and may consider price hikes of 7-10% in the second week of April, depending on how demand trends and competitive responses unfold, according to chief executive Pankaj Rana.The war-led disruption comes at the start of the crucial summer season, when demand for cooling appliances peaks, forcing companies to balance margin protection with sustaining sales.“We are seeing simultaneous cost increases across plastics, metals and packaging, which is very unusual and is putting pressure across all product categories at once,” Bansal said.While prices typically rise ahead of the season, the increase is far more pronounced this year, creating a dual challenge of rising costs and uncertain consumer demand.Madhur Singhal, managing partner (consumer and internet) at consultancy Praxis Global Alliance, said companies are likely to take upfront price increases rather than staggered hikes through the season.

RBI measure will bring some temporary relief to the rupee, but appreciation will be limited because fundamentals remain unfavourable, treasury officials said.“Currency appreciation may be limited to the extent of unwinding of these current leveraged positions. But once that is settled, I think the currency will again follow the fundamentals, and as long as this crisis continues, rupee will depreciate,” Reddy of Karur Vysya Bank said.Following the central bank move, the rupee gained 1.3% to touch a one-week high of 93.59 per dollar on Monday, before shedding gains to hit a new low of 95.1250. Likely RBI intervention lifted it to 94.83 at close, little changed from ⁠its previous close.

India’s retail brokers are bracing for a sharp erosion in active clients and revenue as the escalating West Asia war threatens to further dampen market sentiment and trading activity.The active retail client base of brokerages has already shrunk over the past year due to muted, rangebound markets and the impact of regulatory curbs on derivatives trading. The outflow of active clients is set to intensify from March as the US-Iran war increases the risk of more retail investors stepping away from the stock market.“Broker revenues are down 20-30% across the industry year on year.