Despite an 11% plunge in South Korea’s KOSPI, India’s Nifty 50 barely slipped 0.04% to 23,985. The Nifty IT index jumped 3.3%, led by Coforge’s 10% gain after reporting 33% YoY revenue growth driven by AI‑focused services. The divergence underscores India’s resilience and the rally in its tech sector.
Hindustan Unilever raised product prices by 5% in Q1, citing inflation from the West Asia conflict and commodity spikes. Despite a 10% revenue surge, its strongest in 13 quarters, profit fell 2% as higher costs squeezed margins, and the company signaled further price increases. This underscores persistent inflation pressure on India’s consumer market.
In the April‑June quarter, Coca‑Cola’s value share in India’s non‑alcoholic ready‑to‑drink market slipped, offsetting gains in Japan and China. The drop stems from investment timing, affordability drives and stiff competition from Reliance’s low‑priced Campa Cola, signaling a market‑share risk in a price‑sensitive landscape.
Finance Minister Pankaj Chaudhary told Parliament that 576 individuals filed tax returns showing ₹100 crore+ gross income in FY26, up from 142 in 2021‑22, a four‑fold rise in billionaire numbers over five years. The spike underscores growing wealth concentration, prompting calls for data on wealth distribution and tighter policy.
Central GST officers flagged over 30,000 input‑tax‑credit fraud cases in FY26, costing roughly ₹74,782 crore. Maharashtra (9,629 cases, ₹18,320 cr) and Gujarat (12,511 cases, ₹12,633 cr) accounted for the bulk, prompting 358 arrests. Fake GST registrations using forged PAN/Aadhaar fueled the scheme.
India’s Index of Industrial Production rose 7.3% year‑on‑year in June, the strongest growth in six months. The surge was led by a 7.8% jump in manufacturing, with sharp gains in electrical equipment, motor vehicles and food products, bolstering optimism for Q2 GDP and broader economic recovery.
Nearly 1,850 Indian infrastructure projects over Rs 150 crore each have collectively blown past budgets by Rs 4.92 lakh crore, per MoSPI data. The transport and logistics segment accounts for the bulk of the overspend, signalling mounting fiscal pressure on large‑scale development schemes.
Private banks collected nearly ₹4,950 cr from missed minimum balances in FY26, while public banks gathered just over ₹2,100 cr. HDFC and Axis together supplied 58% of the private‑sector haul, showing how balance‑requirement fees boost private bank coffers.
The Delhi High Court ordered Paytm Payments Bank wound up after the RBI cancelled its licence for regulatory breaches, naming former SBI exec Girikumar M. Nair as liquidator. The closure ends One 97’s flagship payments‑bank, forcing millions of users to shift wallets and UPI balances elsewhere and underscoring tighter fintech oversight.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology says the current El Niño, now at a Nino3.4 index of +1.94 °C, is on track to become a “strong to very strong” event, the most intense recorded since 1950. If it persists, it could spark a positive Indian Ocean Dipole later this year and sway weather patterns through autumn 2027.
You’re caught up.
That was all 10 stories in the 29 July issue.