The reduction in goods & services tax (GST) on individual life and health insurance premiums has been called a "landmark step" for making insurance affordable and inclusive. In a panel discussion at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit 2025, Anup Bagchi, managing director (MD) & chief executive officer (CEO) of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance; Mahesh Balasubramanian, MD & CEO of Kotak Life Insurance; Tarun Chugh, MD & CEO of Bajaj Life Insurance; and Ratnakar Patnaik, MD of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), listed what else the industry needs to reach more people.
A phone number and e-mail are often enough for a fraudster to trick a lender into pulling your report and disbursing a loan.
'First-time or conservative investors should avoid narrow sectoral funds.'
Ahead of the Union Budget 2026-27, Indian business houses have urged the government to make demergers tax-neutral, particularly in cases involving transfer of investments in associate companies with 25 per cent or more shareholding, under the new Income Tax Act. This may possibly help some companies planning to go public, according to a source.
Affordable homes, priced under Rs 40 lakh per unit, may not be attractive anymore, not just for developers but also for investors, with the segment seeing a 26 per cent price rise over three years since 2022 versus 40 per cent returns from luxury homes priced Rs 1.5 crore and above.
'The natural barrier that is Aravalli, you are demolishing it, then who will stop the desert?' 'In future, I predict that people will roam around with oxygen cylinders in Delhi because they won't be able to breathe.'
Creditors took a haircut of around 67 per cent on their admitted claims on the realisation made till September 2025 under the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), the latest data released by the insolvency regulator showed.
For homebuyers, the OC is not just an administrative formality but the very basis of lawful possession. Without it, the property is deemed unauthorised, exposing buyers to risks such as eviction, denial of utilities, or even demolition.
'The impact will be minimal and it will only increase compliance cost on consent, data flows, localisation timelines, internal audits, data mapping, and new tooling.'
'We've not seen a crypto exchange come back after about 45 per cent of the value on the platform was impacted.'
'Don't look at Russia only as a place to earn quickly and then leave.' 'Try to build experience in serious companies, skills and certifications that will serve you anywhere in the world.'
rediffGURU Kanchan Rai, founder of the Let Us Talk Foundation, explains how to deal with a partner who is emotionally insensitive.
'Non-compatible with Western Civilization' is about as vague and jingoistic as it gets and Trump saying this gives full license to his acolytes to go full throttle on making life as difficult and scary as possible for as many non-white people as possible,' notes Sree Sreenivasan.
A 28-year-old revenue officer (lekhpal) in Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, died by suicide a day before his wedding, allegedly due to excessive work pressure related to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. The incident has triggered protests and accusations of harassment by revenue staff.
'When an establishment operates despite demolition or closure orders, without proper fire exits, evacuation plans or safety audits, and yet is allowed to host large crowds, the state cannot hide behind the language of accident.' 'The authorities were aware of the risks and of the violations, but chose not to act decisively because doing so would have inconvenienced those with influence and financial stakes.' 'In such a scenario, the moral and legal responsibility for the resulting deaths moves from negligence towards culpability; calling it 'murder' is a way of underlining that these lives were sacrificed at the altar of greed and complicity, not fate.'
So far this year, the rupee has fallen by 4.2 per cent, the worst among its Asian peers.
Retail inflation slipped to a multi-year low of 0.25 per cent in October, driven by the impact of the GST rate cut and subdued prices of vegetables and fruits, government data showed on Wednesday.
India's decision to import LPG from the US helps it to diversify sources as it reduces almost full reliance on West Asian countries for supply of the country's primary cooking fuel.
Mint Road's proposals on banks' M&A funding are cautious even as entrants root for more elbow room, and weigh business models.
Younger customers should opt for increasing cover as their financial commitments are likely to rise in the future.
'These children possess catastrophically low birth weights -- often 1.4 kgs or less. Such extremely low birth weight results in profoundly compromised neo-natal immunity.' 'The escalation to 97 deaths in three months precipitated contemporary attention precisely because this magnitude concentrates the humanitarian emergency, rendering it impossible for the administrative machinery to ignore.'
Equity market investors would track global trends, foreign fund movement and quarterly earnings in a holiday-shortened week ahead, analysts said. Stock exchanges BSE and NSE will conduct a special Muhurat trading session on Tuesday, October 21.
Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd expects contribution of SUVs to its overall sales to go beyond 70 per cent with it making foray into the fast growing mid-sized segment with a premium positioning of its Sierra model, according to its Managing Director & CEO, Shailesh Chandra.
From January to June 2025, Kaspersky enterprise solutions blocked more than 200,000 spyware attacks on Indian organisations.
Ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) monetary policy review in the first week of December, major public sector non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) - the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi), Power Finance Corporation (PFC), and Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC) - plan to raise up to Rs 24,000 crore together through bond issuancesk.
India needs to increase the investment rate to 34-35 per cent from 31-32 per cent currently to achieve a growth rate of 7 per cent and above, said S Mahendra Dev, chairman, economic advisory council (EAC) to the Prime Minister, on Wednesday.
Kamini Kaushal was one of Indian cinema's long-lasting actresses, who went from playing Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand's heroine to Manoj Kumar and Rajesh Khanna's mother.
'Companies will need to revisit compensation structures, contracts, staffing models, and human resources system.'
In October, small car wholesales of the auto industry -- excluding Tata Motors -- went up by 8.4 per cent Y-o-Y to 116,601 units, the data showed. However, the utility vehicle (UV) segment which includes sports utility vehicles (SUVs) as well as multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs), saw a bigger growth in October.
On the table are additional batches of S-400 surface-to-air missile systems from Russia, which India used with immense success during Operation Sindoor. India could buy at least two squadrons of Su-57 fighter jets plus joint production of S-500 air defence systems.
'Bihar youth need employment. Create jobs for us. Nothing matters more.'
The Supreme Court expressed serious concern over custodial deaths, calling it a 'blot' on the system. The court is pushing for compliance with orders to install CCTV cameras in police stations and central investigation agencies to curb human rights abuses.
Companies, particularly those that are notified as Significant Data Fiduciaries, will have to make extensive investments in data mapping, process modification, consent management tools, tools to enable Data Principal Rights, and establish a well-structured Data Privacy Officer organisation.
'We are expecting investment, public and private, of around Rs 40 trillion by 2029.'
'Instead of one or two families controlling 10% to 15% of GDP, it has to be broad based. Then, the resilience of the economy also will be higher.' 'Then, if something happens to one business, it will not hurt the economy badly.'
'We are in touch with industry to further compress the timelines.'
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has launched an integrated audit across 32 states and Union Territories to assess the ease of doing business for the micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) sector.
Hardworking people who toil from dawn to dusk and beyond speak about their everyday lives and what they want from the sarkar as Bihar prepares to vote.
'When you think of cross-border payments, the first things that come to mind are risk, compliance, taxation, speed, and cost.'
Sarvam's LLM will have more than 17 trillion tokens with 17 to 20 per cent coming from Indian data