Reliance Industries (RIL) annual general meeting (AGM) had several stunning announcements. RIL looks to list Jio Platforms (JPL) by June 2026. It targets doubling of FY22 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) (Rs 1.25 trillion; $14.6 billion) by FY27 implying 14.7 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the FY22 levels.
Nasscom on Monday said the US clarification that the H-1B visa fee hike will not affect current visa holders and will apply as a one-time fee only to fresh petitions has helped address the immediate ambiguity surrounding eligibility and timelines.
IPOs have been the flavour of the season for some time. But the coming together of three mega IPOs, from diverse businesses and historic relevance, could tell a story that's still in the making, points out Nivedita Mookerji.
'The Indian developer community is one of the most vibrant communities.' 'Indian builders are incredibly passionate, curious, and excited to embrace new technologies.'
The Trump administration has announced a massive increase in H-1B visa fees, imposing a $100,000 annual charge that will fundamentally alter how American companies hire skilled foreign workers, particularly impacting Indian IT professionals who comprise the largest group of beneficiaries.
The IPO wave of 2025 is here, and it's bigger than ever. From fintech unicorns to financial powerhouses and infrastructure giants, some of India's biggest names are all set to make their stock market debut. PhonePe, Zepto, Tata Capital, NSE, NSDL, and JSW Cement are just a few of the highly awaited listings that have investors and analysts buzzing with excitement.
India will have 1 billion smartphone users by 2026 with rural areas driving the sale of internet-enabled phones, a Deloitte study said on Tuesday. India had 1.2 billion mobile subscribers in 2021, of which about 750 million are smartphone users. It is poised to be the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the next five years. "The smartphone market is expected to reach 1 billion smartphone users by 2026," according to Deloitte's 2022 Global TMT (Technology, Media and Entertainment, Telecom) predictions.
While India has become the largest data generating nation, and hosts more than 152 data centres, it is fed by only 18 undersea cables.
'The next decade will be even more transformative,' says Prime Minister Modi. 'We are moving from digital governance to global digital leadership.'
'There will be not less than 31 lakh people working in the census process.'
At 250 million unique visitors a month, MX Player has for long been in the same bracket as YouTube (454 million) and Meta (324 million) in reach.
The feud reached its peak when Musk made explosive allegations about Trump's connection to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, marking a dramatic escalation in their increasingly personal conflict.
Call centres, once the engine room of India's BPO exports, are evolving too. Depending on the complexity, 30 to 50 per cent of voice and chat volumes are now handled by conversational AI.
'The defence forces have come up with certain problems they face in the drone space.' 'Recently we had a meeting at which they presented the problems to many of our start-ups and faculty.' 'Some of the start-ups have started working on the problems.'
'If you align your ambition with India's rise, the peak of your careers will unfold alongside the peak of India's power.'
'Today, we have 2 million active drivers earning through our platform every month.'
But the kind of usage and the demographic driving that change will be entirely different from the first online users.
Facebook blamed the data leaks on a technical glitch in its massive archive of contact information.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI) clocked over 6 billion transactions in July: the highest ever by India's flagship digital payments platform since its inception in 2016. UPI reported 6.28 billion transactions amounting to Rs 10.62 trillion, according to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the platform. Month-on-month, the volume of transactions was up 7.16 per cent and value increased 4.76 per cent.
'It may take some time for them to get down to the details, such as the location and capacity.'
Railways ramps up project to instal AI-based cameras that can recognise faces.
Nearly a dozen firms have shown interest in building the foundation model and LLMs, while others have proposed sector-specific SLMs.
Two years after his dismissive stance on India's AI potential raised eyebrows here, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday gave a ringing endorsement to Artificial Intelligence momentum in the country -- and billed India as an important market not just for the new-age technology itself but for the ChatGPT creator as well. In New Delhi on Wednesday, Altman -- while sharing dais with Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw -- said India is the second biggest market for the company and that Open AI had tripled its users here in the last year.
Google had started the Station as a five-year partnership with the Indian Railways and RailTel in 2015 to provide fast, free WiFi in over 400 stations by mid-2020.
Messaging service WhatsApp has updated its global privacy policy, under which it will now share phone numbers of users with its parent company, Facebook.
'The country is a good test bed for enterprise adoption, but to scale rapidly, companies will need to look outside the country for customers.'
Facebook has over 125 million users in India -- its second largest userbase after the US.
'The scrapping of import duty would help Indian companies compete in international markets, thus paving the way for India becoming a space manufacturing hub for the world.'
Reliance Jio, the telecom business of the Mukesh Ambani-promoted conglomerate, is expected to go for an initial public offering (IPO) of over $6.25 billion either in the second or the third quarter of the calendar year 2025, sources said. Reliance Retail is likely to be listed around the same time with a short gap, it is learnt. The timing of the two IPOs, however, will depend on the company's assessment of the market conditions among other factors.
The fast-growing Indian online gaming sector is facing a significant threat from money laundering, necessitating urgent steps to ensure its sustained success and protect the country's robust digital economy, a report said on Thursday. The essential measures outlined in a report by the Digital India Foundation include forming a dedicated task force for illegal operators, creating a whitelist of legal operators, combating misleading advertisements, and incorporating principles of financial integrity and international cooperation.
The Hyderabad Garage will collaborate with teams in Silicon Valley, Redmond, Vancouver, Washington, New England, Israel and Beijing.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), climate tech and fintech sectors will be the hot areas for venture capitalists and founders in the next year, according to the prediction by Prashanth Prakash, founding partner of the global venture capital firm Accel Partners in India and the chairperson of Karnataka Startup Vision Group. Prakash said that about $25 billion has been invested into building Gen AI globally. But a lot of that capital has not yet come to India, opening up huge opportunities for startups in the country.
Assume Voot, JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar are merged into one entertainment app, and you have a streaming service with more than 233 million unique visitors. That is a reach just under half of India's largest streaming app: YouTube. 'This level of consolidation does not exist even in the US.'
Most of the markets it is now looking at in hopes of gaining the next billion internet users have demographics similar to that of India.
Social media giant Facebook has crossed 100 million active users in India, its largest base outside the US.
Upstox, an investment platform, has generated a 10-fold return to Tata group's former chairman Ratan Tata on a buyback of 5 per cent of his stake in the company, according to a company press release. The returns were on the partial sale of Tata's 1.3 per cent stake in the company.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Thursday unveiled the next phase of growth at Reliance Industries Ltd, with retail and telecom worth over $100 billion each, doubling revenues and pre-tax profit in 3-4 years, new energy business becoming profitable by 2031, and core oil and chemical business continuing to be the robust growth engine. The sprawling conglomerate with interests in refining, oil and gas, petrochemicals, telecom, retail, and media is on track to more than double in size before the end of the decade, Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance, told company shareholders.
Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old Indian-origin former employee of OpenAI, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26. The medical examiner's office ruled the death a suicide, and police say there is no evidence of foul play. Balaji was known for publicly accusing OpenAI of violating US copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative AI program that has become a global sensation. His death comes amid a wave of lawsuits against OpenAI from creators who claim their copyrighted material was used without permission to train ChatGPT.
Facebook has proposed "updates" to its privacy policies that explain how the social networking giant would use personal data of about 1.2 billion users to deliver advertising and other personalised services.
'Our business continues to roll out its strategy, the role of this GDTC continues to grow.'