The cost of building AI just went up 15%, and India's retail bond investors are about to get a lot fewer 'guaranteed returns' ads. Both moves reshape who gets to play.
Sebi's draft ad code would choke off the influencer-led marketing that helped online bond platforms pull in retail money. Promos touting 'fixed returns' or 'passive income' would have to carry explicit risk disclaimers, and unscrupulous claims like 'high yield' would be barred. Comments are open until September 11 before anything becomes final.
India's automakers sold a record 1.27 million passenger vehicles in Q1FY27, yet every major OEM's operating margin fell anyway. The GST 2.0 cut lured first-time buyers but a distant conflict spiked commodity costs, letting Maruti's revenue climb ~36% while net profit dropped ~11%. Record demand, shrinking profits: margin, not sales, is the story.
Nvidia is passing surging memory costs straight to its biggest customers, warning them that AI servers shipping next year carry a price hike above 15 percent, hitting systems built around its flagship Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips. The move complicates already-delayed data-center buildouts and exposes a power shift toward memory giants Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, whose DRAM prices are galloping ahead of supply. It could also crack an opening for rivals under-cutting loyalty.
Mother Dairy used four years of R&D to build India's first naturally degradable milk pouch, rolling out from Delhi-NCR on June 5 with its cow milk variant. The packaging transforms into a microbe-edible wax that breaks down in soil within a few years instead of centuries, while staying recyclable. That matters because India discards an estimated 100-120 million pouches a day, most as fugitive plastic that never reaches recycling. The switch carries no price increase for consumers.
India is set to approve a $1.2 billion incentive scheme to build high-value construction equipment at home, from tunnel boring machines to elevators and firefighting gear. The seven-year plan targets $1.8 billion in fresh investment and local value-addition mandates, a direct answer to Chinese export leverage. Beijing throttled tunnelling-machinery shipments after the 2020 border clash, and imports collapsed from $18 million to $500,000. The domestic equipment market is worth $10.5 billion and expanding on metro and highway spend.
Rural Postal Life Insurance no longer demands rural residency. India Post now accepts any operative savings account at a scheduled bank (or the Post Office) as proof of eligibility, effective immediately. That is a lifeline for migrants who move to cities: they keep their RPLI cover and pay premiums from their regular bank account, no physical certificate needed where digital proof exists.
Housing sales across India's eight biggest markets fell 6.1% year-on-year to 91,729 units in the latest quarter, and 4.4% from the prior quarter's 95,973. Buyers went cautious even as average prices held above Rs 10,000 per sq ft. Developers kept launching, adding 89,161 units, so supply still ran ahead of demand by 2,568.
India's eight core industries grew 5.4% in July, easing from June's revised 6%. Iron ore surged 29.5% for a third straight month of double-digit growth, cement hit 13.1% and power 9%. Coal also strengthened. Yet weakness persists in oil, gas and fertilisers, all of which shrank again. Even so, the April, July run now stands at 4.3%, nearly triple the same stretch a year ago.
Credit transactions on UPI now clear Rs 10,000 crore every month, but almost all flows through RuPay credit cards, not the much-heralded credit-on-UPI (CLOU) facility, which contributes just Rs 100-200 crore. NPCI chief Dilip Asbe says only six banks and six apps are live on CLOU, and its interchange fee is still undefined. That missing pricing, expected this year, is what decides whether the low-ticket retail lending play scales.
Tehran is no longer targeting citizens, it is striking oil infrastructure across US Gulf allies, from Bahrain and Kuwait to Saudi Arabia via Houthi drones and ballistic missiles. The goal is to make the conflict dear for the whole world, forcing global pressure on Washington and Israel. Crude becomes the real battlefield, and Saudi's new defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan shows regional lines redrawing fast.
You’re caught up.
That was all 10 stories in the 23 August issue.