Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman launched a strong attack on Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party, accusing them of compromising India's interests on the world stage and selling out farmers and the poor during their time in power.
The country's largest IT services company TCS on Thursday announced a tie-up with private equity major TPG for its upcoming data centre business, in which both the partners aim to invest Rs 18,000 crore. TPG will invest $1 billion or around Rs 8,870 crore in the AI data centre business christened as 'Hypervault', and hold a stake between 27.5-49 per cent in the venture.
'The country is a good test bed for enterprise adoption, but to scale rapidly, companies will need to look outside the country for customers.'
'The trade deficit in some sectors is huge and that is an area of opportunity to localise.'
Prosus, the Amsterdam-based technology investor with net assets valued at over $200 billion spanning payments to e-commerce, has identified India as one of its most critical growth markets, and is increasing its strategic investments here.
Shift from producing graduates proficient in analysis and strategy to producing graduates capable of initiating, executing, and scaling impactful actions in real-world environments, points out Ajit Balakrishnan.
Some major contracts coming up for renewal include TCS' deals with Star Alliance, a consortium of airlines based in Germany, and Nielsen; Infosys' deals with GE Appliances and Daimler; HCLTech's with UK-based life insurer Chesnara; Wipro's with German electric utility company E.ON and Petrobras of Brazil; and Tech Mahindra's with Circle Health.
The Budget emerges as a measured, credible and forward-looking policy document that reinforces India's commitment to remaining a stable, reform-oriented economy amid an increasingly fragmented global landscape, says A Balasubramanian.
As many as 86 per cent of senior business executives have deployed artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance revenue streams or create new ones, said a report by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Wednesday. As many as 69 per cent of businesses are more focused on using AI for innovation and increasing revenue than on improving productivity and optimising cost, said the 'TCS AI for Business Study'.
Across all sectors, the future of work depends on adaptability.
Venture funding in India slowed in the third quarter (Q3) of 2025 amid geopolitical uncertainty, though exit activity surged to a seven-year high, according to Venture Pulse from KPMG Private Enterprise, a quarterly report tracking investment trends globally across major regions around the world.
'When global politics has some intervention on the core software one uses, and if you are cut off from your own data in critical workflows, sovereignty is no longer optional. It becomes a necessity.'
Venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) funding for Indian startups in the artificial intelligence sector has seen a dramatic decrease with deal sizes shrinking, notwithstanding the buzz around the country's potential as a major AI hub. Data from research agency Traxcn, which tracks PE/VC investments, shows that total funding for AI startups in India, which started with a bang in 2022 at $599 million, dropped sharply in 2023 to $168.4 million - a decrease of over 71 per cent.
The European Union's (EU's) offer to slash tariffs on 97.5 per cent of Indian chemical exports to zero is set to give India's pharmaceutical and medical device firms preferential access to the European markets.
Supply chains are evolving from operational backbones to strategic growth enablers for organisations, though they remain underleveraged and struggle for recognition at the executive level, a report by PwC India said. The survey highlighted that recent developments in the trade and tariff landscape represent both a stress test and a strategic inflection point for supply chains.
Reiterating Sitharaman's statement that this is a youth power budget, Modi emphasised that the provisions made in the budget will prepare leaders, innovators and creators across different sectors.
This Budget positions India's taxation ideology as not merely a revenue source but as a strategic catalyst for growth, inclusion and long-term confidence.
The convergence of artificial intelligence, evolving labour regulations and rising employee expectations will redefine how organisations manage pay, people and performance in the coming year, a report says.
...compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
'What we are seeing today is India stepping into its digital confidence, not as a follower but a leader.'
IT company Infosys on Thursday posted 13.2 per cent increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 7,364 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2025.
'We are expecting investment, public and private, of around Rs 40 trillion by 2029.'
Budget 2026 sticks to fiscal discipline, shuns populist measures despite five key state elections coming up, but ends up rattling stock markets with a higher transaction tax on derivatives trading.
The outage raised broader concerns about the dependency on a few large tech companies controlling critical platforms.
Developers in India now have expanded access to Google's powerful AI models with the 2 million token context window in Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2, the next generation of open models.
'We will start reaching out to researchers, academics, and experts on AI from top universities and companies from across the world.'
Taming the animal called AI in its many avatars will clearly remain a work in progress.
PC maker Lenovo India will start manufacturing 50,000 GPU-based AI servers in India next year, the company said on Tuesday. Besides this, Lenovo announced setting up its fourth largest research and development centre in Bengaluru. Lenovo India managing director Shailendra Katyal said that the company will make servers locally and also export them from its manufacturing unit in Puducherry.
With a confident new generation of innovators, India now has the scale and self-belief to shape its own digital destiny marked by creation, observes Ajay Kumar chairman, UPSC.
For Dinesh Nirmal (pictured), who heads IBM Software, one of his mandates is to integrate generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into all products IBM builds and leverage it to enhance developer productivity across global labs. Nirmal believes that one of the biggest benefits of GenAI is automation, leading to optimisations and productivity gains. He shares that IBM Software has observed productivity gains of 30-40 per cent in some segments of software development.
This innovation has made mainframes the fastest-growing segment within IBM's Infrastructure business, demonstrating that even legacy technologies can continue to deliver value.
Budget 2025 lays down a transformational roadmap for India's digital and economic future, focusing on AI-driven enterprise modernisation, workforce skilling, and sustainable innovation. With bold investments in AI, digital infrastructure, and ease of doing business, the government has set the stage for businesses to scale, innovate and compete on a global level.
'What we see now is a much stronger need for data sovereignty.'
Infosys commits to hiring 20,000 graduates amid industry-wide layoffs and uncertainty.
The 15-year agreement will see Infosys develop a next-generation, data-driven workforce management platform to replace the existing electronic staff record (ESR) system, which annually manages a 55 billion payroll for 1.9 million NHS employees.
AI-driven and deepfake-enabled cyberattacks are anticipated to become increasingly prevalent in 2025 with sectors like healthcare and finance most prone targets, according to a recent report. The India Cyber Threat Report 2025 by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) and Seqrite, spotlighted the evolving tactics of cybercriminals and the rise of AI-driven attacks as a major concern. "Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be used to develop highly sophisticated phishing campaigns utilising deepfake technology and personalised attack vectors, making them harder to detect.
Reliance Jio, India's biggest telecom operator, is planning to launch an initial public offering (IPO) and listing on bourses in the first half of 2026, billionaire Mukesh Ambani said on Friday. Jio is currently a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, India's most valuable company.
'There'll be extended periods where things aren't working in your favour. But if you believe in the cause profoundly, then you simply persevere.'
'Employers increasingly want candidates who can take AI pilots from proof-of-concept to production-ready systems.' 'That requires governance, monitoring, and ROI measurement -- skills that go beyond coding and into business impact.'
India's largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Thursday reported a 1.39 per cent increase in consolidated net profit to Rs 12,075 crore in the July-September quarter of this financial year.
