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In the last few years, conversations on artificial intelligence (AI) have made their way from a few company boardrooms and R&D divisions to almost every company’s strategic vision and every investor’s daily life. There is hardly any seminar or conference—be it on healthcare, travel, consumer experience, legal affairs or economics—that doesn’t discuss the AI-led revolution. It is time to assess its impact on India, the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

airlines must also provide monetary compensation when the cancellation is not communicated appropriately well in advance. However, in the case of cancellations caused by a war, airlines are not liable to provide monetary compensation.The exclusion extends beyond just ticket cancellations. Claims for trip interruption, delays, missed connections and even additional accommodation costs may be denied if it is linked to a conflict.Baggage-related claims may also be denied if the delay or loss is directly attributable to airport shutdowns or conflict conditions.

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Mint.The email sent last week by David Udell, group president for Asia Pacific, said Sharma would take on broader regional responsibilities as the hotel chain sharpens its focus on growth across the region.In the communication, Udell said India represents a significant long-term growth opportunity for Hyatt.Hyatt has been expanding aggressively in Asia Pacific, particularly in markets such as India, where demand for premium travel and luxury experiences has risen sharply in recent years. It currently has 85 hotels in the country under various brands.In 2025, Mint reported that Hyatt Hotels planned to expand its footprint in India and Southwest Asia to tap growing domestic demand for experience-led travel.

Mint.India’s hotel industry is entering a an expansion cycle which is fuelled by domestic travel and the increasing shift of independent hotels to branded operators. "Domestic travel will remain the main driver of demand as India has 100 million people travelling and international inflow will only be a bonus," Baljee said.The company has 120 operational hotels, and 48 are in the pipeline.

₹480–540 crore across eight new hotel and resort projects as it expands both owned and asset-light operations.The company will add about 600 rooms to its existing portfolio of 1,000-odd keys, Samir MC, chief executive officer (CEO) of Tamara Leisure Experiences, told Mint.Alongside owned developments, Tamara plans to expand by managing and franchising hotels through an asset-light model that enables pan-India expansion with lower capital investment and risk.This comes at a time when many Indian hotel ownership companies have been moving towards an asset-light or asset-right strategy over the last decade to balance out their portfolios amid strong travel demand.Founded about 15 years ago by billionaire co-founders of Infosys, SD Shibulal and S Gopalakrishnan, Tamara operates nine self-owned and managed properties across its three brands. These include The Tamara, a luxury leisure property which it owns and operates, O by Tamara, which are upscale city hotels, as well as Lilac by Tamara, a mid-scale hotel brand.

copper demand is expected to surge globally amid electrification, renewable energy and grid expansion, even as supply remains constrained. Global benchmark copper prices are currently around $11,000-12,000 per tonne, jumping a little over 30% over the last one year.Drawing a parallel between operating a mine in Gadchiroli and in Congo is not entirely fair, said Suman Kumar, assistant vice-president for metals and mining at brokerage Philip Capital.In India, companies understand regulatory and political ecosystem, but in foreign jurisdictions, especially parts of Africa, execution risks are far higher, said the sell-side analyst.He pointed to examples of Indian companies that struggled to scale overseas mining projects, including Jindal Steel and Power Ltd in Mozambique and Vedanta Ltd's challenges at Konkola Copper Mines in Zambia.“Even companies with significantly deeper financial muscle have struggled.

Hotel chains are increasingly rolling out AI tools across various operations as rising costs and tighter margins push them to find efficiencies in existing systems. Global operators in India are scaling similar capabilities.

₹1.19 trillion)market, which is still less than 5% organised,” he said.He also added that Uber’s existing intercity cabs business is growing about 50% year-on-year and operating across around 3,000 routes.Only 19% of India’s intercity bus market was booked online in fiscal 2023, underscoring how under-penetrated the category still is despite the scale of demand, according to a 2023 study by travel advisory firm VIDEC Consultants.The same report estimated the overall intercity bus market at ₹539 billion ($6.7 billion) in fiscal 2023 and projected it to grow to ₹688 billion ($8.6 billion) by fiscal 2026.Within the online segment, the report said MakeMyTrip Group-owned redBus controlled about 75% of the OTA intercity bus market in fiscal 2023, with ixigo-owned AbhiBus trailing behind.When asked why Uber was not using its own capital to build a standalone bus-ticketing business, Singh said the category was still under-penetrated enough for multiple models to coexist.“The best part of the fact that, as you laid out, it’s still under-penetrated means there is such a long journey, and we believe different business models will coexist,” he added.Uber wants to retain and acquire users who prefer buses as an affordable intercity option to Uber's premium cab option.

western disturbances travel eastward with westerly winds. They make for the primary source of rainfall and snowfall in northwest and north India in winter months.Though the number of western disturbances in the last three months was the highest in the last five years, their intensity was lower resulting in the highest rain deficit in the months those years."A majority of the western disturbances that influenced India during the winter season, especially during December to February, were feeble, resulting in below-normal rainfall and limited snowfall activity across large parts of northwestern India," said Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director general of the India Meteorological Department (IMD).Northwest India recorded rainfall deficits of 86.8% in February and 12% in January.

₹815 crore on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overseas visits since he took office in 2014, covering 78 countries across 99 trips, according to data shared in Parliament last month.The disclosures offer a detailed snapshot of how frequently he travels, which countries dominate his itinerary and what that outreach has cost the exchequer. Overseas travel has been a central plank of Modi’s diplomatic strategy, with the prime minister frequently engaging global leaders in person.A Mint analysis of the data shows that, adjusted for inflation, the total outlay amounts to just over ₹1,000 crore in current prices. In all, Modi has spent 352 days abroad across his three terms.

Wipro Ltd faces an annual dent up to $100 million as American cosmetics brand, Estée Lauder, has shifted the Bengaluru tech services company's share of work in a half-billion dollar, five-year deal to Accenture Plc.This latest development raises questions on chief executive officer (CEO) Srini Pallia's turnaround plan and growth at Wipro, as outsourcers pivot towards generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI, solutions, analysts said.According to four people in the know, Accenture will now handle key IT functions of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc including finance, database management, and back-end management for the New York-based cosmetics company.Early in February, Estée Lauder had announced the Accenture contract but there was no information on that business moving away from Wipro.“In the second quarter, we've established our new Enterprise Business Services, selecting Accenture to transform how we deliver shared services globally as we accelerate the deployment of AI throughout the organization,” said Stéphane de la Faverie, chief executive of Estée Lauder, during the company’s post earnings conference call on 5 February.Emails sent to Wipro and Estée Lauder on Monday went unanswered.Mint learns that much of the work awarded to Accenture was part of a February 2021 deal won by Wipro. The Bengaluru company had reportedly bagged the $500 million contract with Estée Lauder, which was supposed to run for five years.

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.

aviation and maritime corridors that connect India with key West Asian markets, complicating travel planning for patients and increasing freight expenses for exporters.While companies have yet to report a sustained demand shock, hospitals and drugmakers say the disruption to mobility and logistics systems underpinning cross-border healthcare and medicine trade raises the risk of softer medical travel volumes and higher export costs if tensions persist.The aviation disruption is particularly significant for India’s medical tourism sector, which recorded approximately 644,387 foreign tourist arrivals in 2024. It is particularly exposed to West Asia, a region that accounts for nearly 18% of inbound patients, or about 115,000 travellers, seeking treatment ranging from complex surgeries to advanced clinical care.As regional airspace comes under heightened security scrutiny, industry leaders say travel uncertainty is beginning to influence patient decision-making.

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It’s raining devaluations for credit card users. Major issuers such as HDFC Bank, American Express, SBI Card and ICICI Bank have reworked their credit card reward structures over the past two months, cutting back benefits on some of their most sought-after premium cards.Last week, HDFC Bank said that starting in the next financial year, Infinia cardholders must spend at least ₹18 lakh annually or maintain a total relationship value—the cumulative worth of all accounts, investments and loans with the bank—of ₹50 lakh to retain the card.This change came on the heels of American Express devaluing milestone-based rewards on one of its popular cards, Amex Platinum Travel.

₹5.2 crore purchase of a three-bedroom pool holiday villa after a short meeting with the founders of luxury real estate company Isprava.“The idea was clear from the beginning,” said Narayan, 54, who returned to India in 2019 after spending around two decades abroad. “I wanted to stay there when I had time, but the rest of the year I wanted it let out.”Narayan took possession in March 2023 and listed shortly thereafter on Lohono Stays, Isprava’s hospitality arm.

A surge in domestic and international travel by Indians has turned India’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) luggage sector into a magnet for venture capital investment over the past few years, even as legacy players struggle under their own weight.According to data from the tourism ministry’s India Tourism Data Compendium 2025, Indians recorded 2,948.19 million tourist visits in 2024, a 17.5% increase over the previous year, while overseas trips rose 10.8% to 30.89 million.A host of startups are looking to cash in on this boom. Uppercase, a digital-first luggage and travel gear maker based in Bengaluru, is in talks to raise about $20 million in a Series C round as it sharpens its plans for overseas expansion and accelerates its offline retail rollout, Sudip Ghose, the company's founder, said in an interview with Mint.

rooms, is projected to reach 350,400 rooms by 2030. The composition of that pipeline, though, is telling.Midscale hotels account for 37% of the existing branded hotel room supply but 39% of the upcoming pipeline, suggesting that a large proportion of future supply is tilting further toward the segment.The economy segment, by contrast, is shrinking from 6% of current inventory to just 3% of pipeline share.

New Delhi: With just a month left in the financial year, India has operationalized only four airports under its regional air connectivity scheme UDAN—the lowest number added in a single fiscal year since the programme began nine years ago.However, the civil aviation ministry denied that there was any loss in momentum in adding UDAN airports.UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) was central to the government’s push to expand aviation beyond the large cities and make air travel accessible and affordable for everyone in the country. However, data submitted by the ministry of civil aviation in Parliament show that airport additions under UDAN have declined steadily after peaking early.Airports operationalized this year were those at Amravati in Maharashtra, Purnea in Bihar and Datia and Satna in Madhya Pradesh.