The Budget reflects a clear focus on strengthening India's long-term prospects by leaning on nation-building sectors such as infrastructure, manufacturing, and technology while maintaining fiscal responsibility.
The government's Budget announcements providing tax holiday for data centres, setting up of city economic regions (CERs) and funding to improve infrastructure in Tier-II and -III cities may give an indirect boost to India's realty sector, said industry executives.
'The real story of 2025 is that India officially stopped being a 'market of the future' and started acting as the world's primary economic engine.'
India's $280-billion IT industry heads into 2026, balancing visa-related headwinds and global trade uncertainty against its biggest-ever push into artificial intelligence and the rapid expansion of global capability centres (GCCs). Heightened scrutiny of the US H-1B visa programme - including a proposed $100,000 fee for new visas and concerns over a potential 25 per cent outsourcing tax - has complicated cross-border delivery for Indian firms, even as companies accelerate efforts to reduce reliance on onsite staffing.
This was perhaps a missed opportunity for India to spotlight a core domestic challenge: The scale of workforce preparation required for a young, populous, rapidly growing country seeking to reach net zero, points out Radha Roy Biswas.
Global consultancy firm PwC India on Wednesday said it will invest up to Rs 1,600 crore and create additional 10,000 jobs in the next five years. Announcing its new business strategy 'The New Equation', PwC India said the firm will also increase its campus hiring by over five times in the same time period. The New Equation is based on analysis of trends and thousands of conversations with clients and stakeholders, it said in a release.
The Big Four accounting firms have increased the hiring of people from technology backgrounds in India amid an increased focus of clients on digital transformation, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. EY India said that it has expanded its overall tech talent pool by 3x in the last three years across service lines including consulting, tax, assurance, and strategy & transactions. "Today over 50 per cent of our workforce is from STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and technology background," it said, adding that it continues to hire significantly in the areas of AI, cloud computing, data analytics and cybersecurity to help its clients in transformation.
the largest transactions of the year include the merger of Quality Care India and Aster DM Healthcare valued at $5.08 billion, followed by Bharti Enterprises' acquisition of a 24.5 per cent stake in the BT Group at $4.08 billion, and a family settlement transaction in the Godrej family at $3.5 billion.
Infosys Head India Business Unit C N Raghupathi said for the manufacturing sector, the key areas to focus on include new product innovation.
'In India, the GenAI startup ecosystem is unfolding with remarkable speed, signalling a new era of technological advancement and investment opportunities.'
Cognizant Technology Solutions has restructured its global growth markets (GGM) by appointing two internal leaders who will now share the responsibility. The move follows the exit of former GGM leader Rob Walker last month and is among the slew of leadership changes the company has seen in the recent past. GGM refers to the company's emerging markets outside of North America.
Less than 50 per cent respondents admit that their company has sufficient security controls, says PricewaterhouseCoopers.
From cloud computing to people analytics, most lucrative future jobs will be dominated by people with digital skills and expertise, explains Sarita Digumarti, chief learning officer, UNext Learning.
The investments exceeded the $2 billion mark for the first time in 6 years.
Operating systems are increasingly subject to cyberattacks, as many are built around legacy technologies with weaker protocols
The increase in infrastructure spends in the country is likely to be driven by sectors like housing, telecom, healthcare, education and transportation.
India needs to follow countries such as Singapore who have and are further bolstering their cyber security apparatus.
While the most obvious beneficiary of this roll-out will be manufacturers of FASTags, or the Radio Frequency Identification chips, a PwC report says implementation of a pan-India electronic toll collection system on national highways may help save approximately Rs 87,000 crore annually.
The commonalities of interests are immense for growth in trade between India and the US.
To begin with, there would be the immediate integration of various technology stacks. This would create more business for global consulting and IT services entities such as KPMG, PwC, EY, Accenture and IBM, among others. Indian service providers - Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Wipro, for instance - would also cash in.
A quarterly study of PE investment activity based on data provided by Venture Intelligence, such funds in the third quarter of this year totalled $3.01 billion through 103 deals, according to the PwC MoneyTree India report.
It's the same sourcing norms that have been a hurdle for multinationals such as Apple Inc in setting up retail operations in India.
Analysts tracking Apple said the India results were glimpses of what the company could achieve in emerging markets with a right pricing strategy for its products and local manufacturing.
Dealmakers and advisors feel investors are shifting their focus to Asia Pacific, especially India, owing to geopolitical instability driven by events such as Brexit and protectionist trade wars.
While participation of start-ups in the space sector has largely been minimal so far, their involvement will be key towards building India's very own aerospace companies such as Maxar, Elon Musk's SpaceX and Rocket Labs, according to experts.
'Health will continue to be at the centre of the government's attention as it underpins economic recovery and our collective well being.'
"Yeh sab doglapan hai." With these words, Ashneer Grover not only called out an entrepreneur being hypocritical, but also shot to fame as a reality television star. It happened in the first few days of January, when the funded part of the start-up world needed some warm-up to get back to work, and inevitably Grover's antics on the show became a talking point. The Twitterati also debated whether it was unbecoming of a founder to diss a peer's business model with such abrasion. And hundreds of memes, with the dialogue set in various circumstances, flooded social media.
Record equity divestment by the Reliance Group in its telecom and retail businesses garnering around $23 billion revved up the deal street in 2020, which otherwise would have gone down as one of the dullest on record, and dealmakers are seeing sunnier days in 2021 given the large scope for consolidation in a slew of sectors ravaged by the pandemic. With Jio Platforms alone garnering over $16 billion (Rs 1,18,318 crore) by selling 25.24 per cent stake and Reliance Retail notching up $6.4 billion (Rs 47,265 crore) by divesting around 9 per cent shareholding, the deal street signed off with $85 billion in the deal kitty across 1,270 transactions. This is higher by about 10 per cent over 2019. What is significant is that over a third of the total deal value came from Reliance transactions, say investment bankers.
The unidentified hackers had executed money transfers on two separate occasions - August 11 and August 13 - which raises the question of why pro-active measures were not taken on the first night itself
Today, India is one of the fastest-growing eCommerce markets in Asia/Pacific along with China.
The latest deal would give Facebook deeper access to India, the second largest internet market after China.
Indian CEOS are very innovative, says a PwC report.
Indians at large harbour a notion that their country is cherrypicking out of the American basket of goodies, but the policymakers in Delhi and the political leadership are well aware that it can only be a pipe dream since a military alliance with a superpower is a profound irrevocable commitment, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
As per the findings, CEOs are less optimistic about prospects this year.
Thirty-eight per cent of CEOs say the US is among their top three overseas growth markets, compared with 34 per cent for China, 19 per cent for Germany, 11 per cent for the UK and 10 per cent for Brazil.
Things appear to be going from bad to worse for Vijay Mallya, once known as 'King of Good Times', with the board of a company he nurtured into India's largest liquor maker asking him to quit.
The problem, say experts, is not so much the use of plastic as the lack of effort to recycle and reuse it.
Ola, Uber cabs face hurdles to operate legally in the capital.
1mg has made buying medicines easy and it aims to do more in online health care.
A friendly working environment, special healthcare facilities, flexible work hours, work from home options, support and camaraderie among the team members keep employees highly motivated in these 10 companies.
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