Universities Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Well, the first days are the hardest daysDon’t you worry anymore‘Cause when life looks like Easy StreetThere is danger at your door —Uncle John’s Band by Grateful DeadPrime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent austerity appeal is like an official acknowledgement that trouble is brewing in India’s economy. His exhortations seemed like a signal to all stakeholders that the time has come to talk about the Iran war’s direct and indirect effects.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Specialized investment funds (SIFs), positioned between mutual funds (for retail investors) and portfolio management services (PMS) or alternative investment funds (AIFs) for high net-worth individuals, offer multiple advantages.Being within the mutual fund fold, SIFs enjoy MF-style taxation. Mutual funds are tax-free trusts; profits accrue within the fund. PMS and AIF categories I and II are pass-through for tax purposes.Sebi permits short positions in SIFs up to 25% of the portfolio.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: The TVS Venu Group has been expanding its financial services operations across multiple segments, including insurance and asset management, and their latest plan to acquire a 10% stake in Jana Small Finance Bank (SFB) marks a strategic extension into banking, giving access to the mass affluent and small-business segments.On Monday, the Chennai-based conglomerate said it will acquire a 9.9% stake in the bank through a combination of primary issuance of warrants and a secondary purchase. This includes acquisition of a 5.64% stake by TVS Venu for ₹317 crore and 4.9% by TVS Motor Company for ₹193 crore.Bengaluru-based Jana SFB has over 12 million customers, and advances and deposits of over ₹35,000 crore each as of 31 March 2026.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BENGALURU: India’s top engineering and management institutes are no longer content with merely incubating startups. Increasingly, they also want to participate in the upside created by companies emerging from their own ecosystems.Institutions including Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, IIT Madras and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru are setting up venture funds to invest in campus-linked deeptech startups, as rising investor interest in sectors such as semiconductors, defence and spacetech pushes universities to play a larger role in the businesses they help build.But why are they doing this now? How are these funds structured? And what kind of startups are they backing? Mint explains.So far, IIT Bombay and IIT Madras have launched venture funds, while IISc Bengaluru is in the process of setting up one.The funds are being structured through affiliated entities, incubators and alumni-backed networks because IITs and IISc operate as Section 8 entities, or non-profit organisations.IIT Madras, through its research park, has partnered with venture firm Unicorn India Ventures to launch the IITM Unicorn Frontier Fund, a ₹600 crore vehicle with a ₹400 crore green-shoe option.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: As the domino effect of the West Asia war builds inflationary pressures across the economy, Zydus Wellness Ltd sees a larger share of its growth coming from price increases rather than higher sales volumes in the coming quarters. The consumer wellness firm said rising packaging, freight and input costs are beginning to influence pricing decisions, reflecting the broader pressure on consumer-facing businesses.“While growth is driven by volumes, there will also be a value component, as there is some level of inflation,” chief executive officer Tarun Arora told Mint in an interaction on Tuesday.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: This month, India’s semiconductor push gathered momentum with Tata Electronics’ pact with Dutch major ASML and two new projects, a mini/micro-LED display fabrication unit in Dholera and an OSAT packaging facility in Surat.With nearly a dozen semiconductor initiatives now underway, how close is India to becoming self-reliant in chips?Tata Electronics’ pact with ASML, the world’s leading maker of chip lithography equipment, marks a key step in India’s entry into global semiconductor manufacturing by securing access to critical technology. Alongside the two projects announced in May—a micro-LED display fab in Dholera and an OSAT packaging facility in Surat with a combined investment of ₹3,936 crore—the move broadens India’s semiconductor base.The micro-LED fab positions India in advanced display manufacturing, while the OSAT unit helps plug a packaging gap, reducing dependence on Taiwan and Malaysia.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.“Compassion,” the preacher proclaimed, is “mercy in action,” adding: “I can also show you one small rhetorical tweak that guarantees even your densest congregant won’t miss the point.”As it happens, the preacher is an online comedian named Louisa Melcher, and the sermon is one of her skits. But the comedy is less funny when one realizes that artificial intelligence is already slipping into pastoral work.“AI is a remarkable tool for synthesizing 2,000 years worth of Catholic thought and tradition,” says the Rev.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.There is a palpable fear among American workers that artificial intelligence (AI) is coming for their jobs. The answer to that fear, as I’ve argued, is to make job loss less scary by building a new unemployment programme. An overhaul is long overdue, and it would help not only a vulnerable labour market but also workers whose fears are realized.But would it be enough?AI job loss is not happening in a bubble.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.As boos rang out among the audience of University of Central Florida (UCF) graduates, commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield turned to the faculty staff behind her to ask what had happened. Then it dawned on her: She had mentioned artificial intelligence (AI).The real estate executive pressed on. “Only a few years ago,” she said, “AI was not a factor in our lives.” When that statement was greeted with loud cheers, Caulfield said: “We’ve got a bipolar topic here, I see.”For any commencement speaker in 2026, no conversation about the future could be credible without mentioning AI.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Gold may be a “barbarous relic,” as John Maynard Keynes once observed, but it remains the relic of choice among central banks. Emerging-market central banks have been loading up on gold reserves ever since the 2008 global financial crisis, more than doubling their holdings. Does the anomalous behaviour of gold prices since the outbreak of the war with Iran call this strategy into question, or is something else going on?Gold’s allure derives from its reputation as a safe haven and inflation hedge.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.When Meta Platforms said in April that it would lay off 10% of its staff, Allen Sun quickly booked a trip to Menlo Park, Calif.It was a prime opportunity. Sun, a Beijing-based headhunter for some of the biggest Chinese tech companies, works to lure China-born talent back home, targeting people at U.S.-based companies such as Meta, Google, Anthropic and Amazon.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI/BENGALURU: Indian jewellery retailers and industry bodies are recalibrating their strategies as gold becomes more expensive following the government’s latest import duty hike. Companies are focusing on gold exchange schemes and lower-karat products to prevent a drop in sales volume.On Tuesday, India raised the effective import tax on gold and silver to 15%, reversing the duty cuts announced two years ago.The move comes as the government attempts to rein in surging precious metal imports and protect India’s foreign exchange reserves amid elevated crude oil prices and geopolitical tensions in West Asia.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Ten years ago, only two or three students from a class of 30 would pass the class 10 board exam at this government school. Today, only two or three from a class of 60 do not.The class has grown because the school changed. As the class 10 board results were transformed, parents began moving their children here from other schools—mostly private ones.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.What do the Indonesian stockmarket, South Korean government bonds and Robinhood, an online broker, have in common? Not much, you might think. But over the past year investors in all three have quivered before the same phenomenon: the awesome power of financial indices.The largest of these now exert a tidal pull on markets. As of 2025, around $36trn-worth of capital was in passive investment funds.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Just as online brokers have made stock investing possible with a click, several applications now allow users to invest in fixed deposits (FDs) from multiple banks online without needing savings accounts with those banks.In April, low-cost broker Zerodha joined the bandwagon by launching such digital FDs on its investment platform Coin. Other apps that facilitate digital FD investments include Stable Money, SuperMoney, Jiraaf, and GoldenPiThe main advertising pitch for digital FDs is higher interest rates than those offered by traditional banks and the convenience of a one-stop shop.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Even though Indian gold retailers sold less jewellery in the March quarter as soaring prices forced shoppers to cut back on purchases, higher rates helped prop up their revenues.Jewellery buyers typically stick to fixed budgets, buying smaller quantities when prices are high, executives said. “When prices are low, the volume will be higher.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The University of California, Berkeley had almost 6,500 students on its wait list last year. It ended up admitting none of them.The only thing harder than getting into college, it seems, is getting off the wait list. At some schools, the wait list is far more selective than the college’s overall acceptance rate.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Iran’s rulers have a problem as they attempt to negotiate an end to the war: Their new supreme leader is noticeably MIA and silent on the talks.U.S. and Iranian officials say Mojtaba Khamenei was severely injured in a February airstrike, which killed his wife, son and father, former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.About a decade ago, when I told one of my aunts about my first job at a news agency, she said, “You will become jhola-chappal wali now”. Jhola meant cloth bag, and chappal, Kolhapuris, the clichéd Indian journalist’s uniform. I did become that person, quite proudly.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Rishu Goswami farms six acres of land in Bilawar, a village in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir. Agriculture is his only income. For years, he has watched it rain at the wrong time.“It no longer rains as it used to,” he said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.This year’s Met Gala, the fancy-dress competition for the ultra-wealthy, was a memorable one. Not just because one of the world’s richest tech bros, Jeff Bezos, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, served as honorary chairs—a first—but also because the evening of 4 May saw the largest Indian contingent yet ascend the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, with each attendee reportedly paying $100,000 to attend fashion’s most exclusive fund-raiser.Ananya Birla, Isha Ambani, Karan Johar, Manish Malhotra, Sudha Reddy, Natasha Poonawalla, Sawai Padmanabh Singh and Gauravi Kumari were in attendance, presenting their interpretation of the 2026 Met Gala dress code, “Fashion is Art”, which challenged guests to treat the body as a canvas, express their relationship with fashion “as an embodied art form and celebrate the countless depictions of the dressed body throughout art history”.Did the Indian contingent get the memo right? That depends on whether you believe fashion as art is best expressed through spectacle, symbolism or genuine risk-taking.