UPS Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Geography may place India and New Zealand at distant points on the world map, but that distance has never defined their relationship. They have common democratic values, strong people-to-people ties and a deep cultural affinity, which includes their shared love for cricket. Much like their encounters on the pitch, India-New Zealand trade has traditionally resembled a Test match: steady and patient but often lacking in tempo, and has only picked up pace in recent years.

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Wu Jingliang, a human resources manager in Beijing, got a raise at the beginning of the year, and the first financial move her family made was to increase their monthly savings rate.“I don’t dare spend, because I have a child. The child will need schooling later, and then there’s marriage or buying a home—we definitely need to save up a sum of money for him,” she told Barron’s in a phone interview.Conversations with other Chinese consumers revealed similar caution, all relating to feelings of financial insecurity.Beijing keeps rolling out consumption stimulus, and Chinese consumers keep responding with less enthusiasm than policymakers hoped.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL) consolidated Ebitda inched up just 0.7% year-on-year to ₹44,141 crore in the March quarter (Q4FY26). Ordinarily, that wouldn’t cheer investors—but given the impact of the West Asia war on the O2C (oil-to-chemicals) segment, it is a reasonably good outcome.The O2C business, which contributed one-third of RIL’s total Ebitda in the quarter, faced crude availability constraints and a surge in costs such as freight and insurance.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.WASHINGTON—King Charles III arrives in Washington on Monday to publicly celebrate 250 years since a nascent U.S. republic ousted his forebears, and privately ensure that a fraying trans-Atlantic relationship can cope with another two-plus years of President Trump.The four day visit—billed as King Charles’s most high-wire diplomatic act since coming to the throne—will include a speech to Congress, the first time a British monarch has spoken there since 1991, a private audience with Trump and state dinner in Washington, as well as trips to New York and Virginia.The attempted attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner cast a shadow over the visit.

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.Big American companies are piling up profits despite war and consumer anxiety, bolstered by healthy sales growth.With just over one-fourth of S&P 500 companies reporting results for the first quarter, Wall Street’s expectations for earnings suggest big U.S. companies are far healthier than wider economic concerns might indicate.“Earnings growth has been exceptional,” said Parag Thatte, an equity strategist for Deutsche Bank. “We’re seeing the broadening of earnings growth beyond just tech and financial” firms.War in the Middle East had led economists to rein in growth projections for the year.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Gender parity in India Inc.’s boardrooms remains distant, and the gap is widest among younger women entering the director pipeline, official data show.A Mint analysis of ministry of corporate affairs data up to January 2026 shows women accounted for 32.5% of more than a million director identification numbers (DINs) issued over the past two years. But in the 18-30 age group, their share dropped to 26%, or roughly one in four of the 339,000 DINs issued, compared with 73.92% for men.DIN—an eight-digit identifier required to serve on company boards—helps track an individual’s involvement across multiple companies, though it does not guarantee a board seat.Representation improved with age.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Over the past three decades, Google has used its engineering hubs in cities like Bengaluru to develop technologies specifically for the Indian market—such as Google Pay and Google Maps features—which it then exported globally, the company’s global chief scientist Jeff Dean told Mint in an exclusive interview.Today, Google India remains vital to the $4.1-trillion tech giant and its frontier research unit Google DeepMind, Dean said, adding that the region continues to drive the development of AI applications that are marketed worldwide.He cited three key examples, including a global flood prediction model developed in collaboration with India's central government. By gathering data from flood-prone Indian states, Google trained AI models that are now used to predict and mitigate flood risks in other nations.A second major contribution from Google’s Bengaluru hub is the "long context window" for its AI app Gemini.

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.The steep hike in securities transaction tax (STT) effective 1 April is beginning to eat into index futures and options volumes, analysts said. In 16 trading sessions on NSE through 24 April, the average daily turnover (ADT) of Nifty and Bank Nifty futures plunged 33% from a similar period in March to ₹24,860 crore, a development analysts attribute primarily to the tax increase.The Union budget for 2026-27 raised STT on equity futures by 150% to 0.05% on notional turnover, and on equity options by 50% to 0.15% on premium turnover.The other factor seen to have a smaller impact is the uncertainty whipped up by the West Asia war.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Shriram Finance’s March quarter (Q4FY26) results are steady, but it is treading with caution amid macro-economic concerns, such as elevated crude prices and expectations of a dull monsoon this year, which could hurt rural demand.Shriram reported in-line net interest income (NII), but operating expenses came in lower than expected, leading pre-provisioning operating profit (PPoP) to beat consensus by 5%, said a report by Nuvama Research.NII increased by 21% year-on-year to ₹6,751 crore. Assets under management (AUM) rose by 15% year-on-year to ₹3 trillion, aided by an uptick in commercial vehicles (CVs), passenger vehicles (PVs), farm equipment and gold.Shriram still has a heavy dependence on CVs, which contributed 46.9% of its total AUM versus 45% last year, and grew by 19.5%.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (HD KSOE) is likely to begin groundwork next month on India’s first greenfield shipyard by a global shipbuilder, entailing an investment of ₹40,000 crore, according to two people aware of the development.The company, part of South Korea’s HD Hyundai Group, is expected to sign a definitive investment agreement with the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government after the ongoing state elections to set up a mega manufacturing facility at the Thoothukudi shipbuilding cluster, the people cited earlier said on condition of anonymity. The investment pact follows a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on 7 December 2025 by HD Hyundai with the Tamil Nadu government for the shipyard.HD KSOE is likely to invest about ₹40,000 crore in the project in phases, which is expected to have an annual production capacity of 3.5 million gross tonnage (GT).

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.A little more than three years after the launch of ChatGPT, the chief executives of India's top information technology (IT) services companies are beginning to acknowledge concerns that artificial intelligence (AI) is eroding revenue.Over the last two weeks, bosses of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, HCL Technologies Ltd, Wipro Ltd, and Tech Mahindra Ltd have all pointed to AI squeezing revenues, and addressed concerns around higher productivity benefits. More AI tools mean lower human involvement, leading to lower billing rates and, ultimately, lower business.

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.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Real estate bankruptcies may be resolved project by project, and healthy projects of stressed builders spared the bankruptcy court, if a top committee's suggestions bear fruit. The two suggestions are among the committee's 155 recommendations aimed to make real estate rescues more efficient, consistent, predictable and effective, two people aware of the matter said.The committee, set up by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI), recommended that the ministry of corporate affairs, department of financial services and real estate regulatory bodies jointly lay down the framework for project-wise real estate debt resolution.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Early-stage fintech investors in India are shifting away from consumer-facing models that are heavily regulated and pivoting to software and infrastructure businesses that promise steady growth with minimal policy risk.Funds are increasingly backing software, infrastructure and B2B fintech models with AI that are less exposed to regulatory shocks, experts said.The shift follows a reset between 2021 and 2025, when tighter rules on digital lending, first-loss default guarantees and data governance curbed growth and raised compliance costs, pushing investors to favour B2B models over balance-sheet lenders.Data from Tracxn over the last 24 months showed that investors are becoming more selective within fintech, with capital moving toward software and infrastructure layers rather than large consumer-facing models.Funding picked up in areas such as payments infrastructure, which more than doubled, wealth-tech management platforms, which rose sharply by up to four times, and software tools for fund managers, where investments increased nearly eight-fold.In contrast, investor interest cooled in consumer payments, which fell about 60%, online lending, down roughly 16%, and online trading platforms, where funding more than halved over the same period.“Consumer fintech is crowded and heavily regulated and as a fund we don’t see too many white spaces,” said Sahil Anand, founder and managing partner at Cedar Hill Capital, a new fintech fund.While private equity and venture capital investors are not abandoning lending or regulated fintech in the growth to late stages, those bets have become selective, favouring scaled, profitable firms.Investors have become selective towards firms that have adapted

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The government has set up an inter-ministerial advisory body, the AI Governance and Economic Group (Aigeg), to act as a central node for shaping and coordinating policy on artificial intelligence. But what rules are startups currently operating under, and will this new body change anything for innovation in the space? Mint breaks it down.For startups operating in AI in India today, the legal landscape is a combination of multiple laws.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Hooghly/Durgapur/Murshidabad/Medinipur/Kolkata: On a sultry April afternoon in Singur, Hooghly, a group of men sit shirtless on the cool floor under a tin shed, taking turns drinking cold water from a jug to beat the heat as they chat about the upcoming elections.“We’ve seen the Trinamool Congress government for 15 years now and there really isn’t much work that has been done. Development and infrastructure are lacking, and unemployment is a big concern,” says Pranab Parui, a vegetable seller.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India is moving fast on clean energy. Solar capacity is rising, electric vehicle (EV) sales are climbing and green hydrogen is now part of official strategy. But beneath this momentum sits a less visible constraint in the form of the materials required to build this future.