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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.It began with Tintin. Hergé’s comic books about a globe-trotting journalist who keeps getting into scrapes was irresistible source material at a time when cinema’s latest attraction was splashy travelogue adventures. But Tintin was a big enough deal that Francophone filmmakers were wary of not doing it justice.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for Indians to help conserve foreign exchange in various ways, such as by holding off on foreign travel and using less fuel, made waves as news partly because it has been more than a decade since India’s external sector was last under pressure. With crude trading above $100 per barrel globally, our oil imports are soaking up dollars even as exports face protectionist headwinds. Ever since war erupted in West Asia, it has been clear that its adverse effect on our balance of payments (BoP) would need to be kept under watch.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Sona Comstar expects Chinese carmakers expanding manufacturing outside their home market to open up new business opportunities for the company, a senior executive said. The auto parts maker believes Chinese electric vehicle companies setting up plants in Europe and other regions could benefit suppliers, such as itself, which already have a presence overseas.On the other hand, an opportunity to build business in China will require companies to sacrifice their margins and profitability, a reason for its exit from a proposed joint venture with Chinese parts maker Jinnaite Machinery that had been announced in July 2025, Sona Comstar group chief executive and managing director Vivek Vikram Singh told Mint.“When Chinese OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) set up factories outside is when our opportunity truly arises in the driveline business," Singh said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Luxury home decor and furnishing brands are seeing a rise in demand in India as wealthy consumers splurge on larger homes, renovations and design-led interiors.From dinnerware costing several lakh rupees to collectable decor and contemporary furniture, affluent buyers are increasingly spending on their homes with luxury malls dedicating floors to what retailers describe as the "sleeper category".In New Delhi’s The Chanakya mall, an entire floor is now dedicated to luxury home and decor brands, including Jay Strongwater, Baccarat, Diptyque and Lladró, alongside Indian labels such as Janavi Home and Ravissant.The luxury home segment in India has seen a post-pandemic acceleration, with a fresh wave of global brand entries and expansions. Reliance Brands brought Pottery Barn to India in 2022, marking one of the early large-format bets on organised luxury home retail.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The surging shares of US chipmakers such as Intel and Micron point to a deeper shift in artificial intelligence (AI). First, the narrative is moving from a speculative buzz around AI models to hard spending on the infrastructure that powers them. Second, big money is flowing into computing power and memory, the choke points of the AI economy.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.For more than a decade, Android tablets have lived in a strange limbo. They were declared dead when phones grew larger, dismissed as pandemic‑era stopgaps, and overshadowed by Apple’s iPad.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Private equity firm Recognize, which closed its second fund at $1.7 billion in June 2025, is scouting for bets in India that are niche-specific service providers for large-scale enterprises in the US, according to a top executive.“We're not only looking for these niche companies and seeking to scale them,” said Muthu Kumaran, partner and head of India operations at Recognize. “These companies can have a seat at the table with Fortune 500 companies because in cases, they have specialized offerings that are deeper than what traditional IT services providers would do.”The New York-based firm was founded by former Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp chief executive officer Francisco D'Souza alongside David Wesserman and Charles Philips.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The air in West Bengal crackles with the raw electricity of change, but also brings with it real challenges for the new party in power.As the counting of votes continued on the evening of 4 May, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) raced ahead in more than 200 seats, dwarfing the Trinamool Congress’s trailing presence of around 80, with others negligible.This is no incremental gain. It signals a wave that is poised to dismantle chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year citadel.The discontent against Banerjee’s party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), fuelled by years of alleged corruption, violence, and administrative decay, has finally overwhelmed loyalty to Didi’s welfare architecture.This verdict builds on a decade of simmering anti-incumbency.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BENGALURU: India’s café chains are moving beyond traditional coffee-led formats and experimenting with dessert-focused concepts, hybrid cafés and experience-led stores to drive higher engagement and spending.Last week, Westbridge Capital-backed Third Wave Coffee launched “Third Rush” at four of its outlets in Bengaluru, branding and positioning desserts as a standalone experience aimed at enhancing late-evening socializing.“We see desserts evolving into a strategic lever that supports higher engagement and ticket size,” Rajat Luthra, chief executive officer (CEO) of Third Wave Coffee, told Mint.Barista Coffee recently started diner-style outlets that offer a more expansive set of meal items like burgers and pastas and hybrid cafés that serve coffee and food items, while Tata Starbucks already has desserts as part of its food menu and is expanding a mix of neighbourhood stores and more immersive Reserve formats.These formats are becoming more specialized. Dessert-led menus and artisanal bakery tie-ups are helping chains move beyond beverages into full-stack consumption.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Avataar Venture Partners expects at least three liquidity events from its first fund and two from its $350 million second fund within the next 18-20 months, a top executive at the growth investing firm told Mint.“We're expecting a couple of our mature companies to list in 2027 or early 2028,” Mohan Kumar, founding managing partner at Avataar Venture Partners, said in an interview. “By 2028, we'll have three public companies.”He declined to name which of the firm's portfolio companies were considering initial public offerings (IPOs).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.South Korean tech companies Krafton Inc. and Naver Corp.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: Tea cafe chain Chaayos, backed by investors including Tiger Global and Elevation Capital, has appointed Avendus as an advisor to raise $50-70 million in a fresh funding round, two people familiar with the matter told Mint.“The company mandated Avendus a few months ago and the deal has been formally launched. While the exact structures are yet to be decided, several private equity and growth stage funds have been tapped as part of the process,” said one of the people cited above, adding that the company plans to use the funds for expansion.The round is expected to be a mix of primary and secondary.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.China is making strides in open-source artificial intelligence. Eighty percent of developers worldwide who use open-source AI tools are building with Chinese models, according to an estimate by our colleague Martin Casado, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Research from our firm and OpenRouter shows a significant increase in the use of Chinese open models last year, reaching in some weeks a high of 30% of all AI usage.

pension funds, and large asset managers, allocation decisions are not driven solely by nominal yield spreads.The calculus is more rigorous: risk-adjusted returns in dollar terms. A US Treasury at 4.28% offers a risk-free, USD-denominated return.

InCred Alternatives has closed its maiden special opportunities credit fund with a corpus of ₹1,500 crore, joining a wave of investment firms entering India’s growing private credit market.“India’s private credit market is at an early but decisive stage of institutionalization and is very different from the private credit market in the West,” Saurabh Jhalaria, chief investment officer–private credit at InCred Alternatives, said in a company statement on Tuesday.“The supply gap is large and the risk-reward potential is compelling,” he added.The special opportunities credit fund has raised capital from domestic family offices, ultra-high-net-worth individuals and international investors. About 75% of the fund has already been deployed across sectors such as auto, power, oil & gas, and hospitality.

A portfolio is built around a family’s risk profile, return expectations, time horizon, liquidity needs, taxation and diversification. In that sense, it is purpose-built, designed for specific outcomes rather than market conditions.Such a portfolio carries a strategic intent.

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).

Mint.Through 2025, the technology investor deployed $675 million in companies such as Urban Company, PayU, Rapido, Ixigo, Wiom, Deccan AI, CodeKarma and Arivihan.While these companies have reached some size and scale, they are still risky bets. “They're not mature businesses in that while their core offerings might be mature, they continue to add new verticals, so they're not mature in that sense,” said Sharma.The firm’s conviction in long-term bets comes as India’s tech ecosystem enters a more mature phase, marked by a wave of listings.

Investors' rush to back electric commercial vehicle players has led to commitments worth $530 million in the last six months, backing new-age players at a time when the government's policy focus is shifting towards electrifying trucks and buses.Hero-backed Euler Motors became the latest to join the wave on Tuesday as it secured funding of $47 million from Lightrock, Hero MotoCorp and Blume Ventures, with additional debt funding of $27 million from BlackSoil, Trifecta, InnoVen and Alteria Capital.The latest funding round for the New Delhi-based electric light commercial vehicle maker brought the cumulative total of funding from investors for electric CV makers to $530 million since October, led by PMI Mobility, which secured a $310 million investment commitment from KKR.“The light commercial vehicle as a segment has continued to grow, because it makes fundamental sense,” Saurav Kumar, founder and chief executive at Euler Motors, told Mint. The superior long-term operational savings of electric commercial vehicles have made the sector's funding growth outpace all other transport categories, he added.Other fundraisers during this period include electric fleet operator Greencell Mobility’s $89 million, and electric bus and truck maker Eka Mobility’s $57 million fundraise.

clean energy ministry in December urging banks and other lenders to be cautious on financing new solar photovoltaic module manufacturing capacity. Adding to the sector’s woes is a preliminary 126% tariff recently imposed by the US, which threatens to choke off its primary export market and worsen an already growing domestic capacity glut.“We are now quite cautious on lending to this industry.

Mint.The country currently has about 300 seismometers at earthquake monitoring stations for detection, early warning capability and scientific understanding of seismic activity.Scientists and disaster management experts say this brief gap between the arrival of different seismic waves can be used to safeguard critical infrastructure such as metro rail systems, transmission lines, power plants and industrial facilities. While earthquakes cannot be predicted in advance, many countries operate Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems that provide a few seconds to about one minute of lead time before strong shake reaches a location.The development is significant given that 59% of India is vulnerable to earthquakes due to its unique geological and tectonic setting, particularly its location at the collision boundary of the Indian and Eurasian plates.Mint had earlier reported that India was developing a system to predict destructive S-waves during earthquakes.According to the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a New Delhi-based multilateral organization, India suffers losses of around $31.6 billion across nine infrastructure sectors—buildings, health, education, oil and gas, ports and airports, power, roads and railways, telecommunications, and water and wastewater—due to earthquakes, cyclones, floods, landslides and tsunamis every year.