India

India backs Sarvam to build homegrown AI models

• Government-backed start-up Sarvam is central to India's bid to avoid becoming a "digital colony" reliant on US and Chinese AI, the FT reports. A funding round in August valued it at $1.5bn.
• Rather than chase the hardest problems, it builds cheaper models in Indian languages for routine work such as customer calls at banks and insurers, and is training a far larger model of about 1tn parameters.
• It still depends on US chips for its servers.

Other side: Sarvam's spending is tiny next to US rivals, and foreign giants are giving Indian consumers premium AI free for long periods. A home model running on imported chips may reduce dependence, not end it.

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

Visa curbs squeeze universities that relied on foreign students

• Tighter visa rules are cutting into universities' fee income, ET reports. UK study visas fell 11% to 383,000 in the year to June 2026, 41% below the 2023 peak; Indians got 83,000 of them.
• Canada's full-time international enrolment at public institutions is down about 29% since 2023-24, with colleges hit hardest. In England, 35.8% of institutions ran a deficit in 2024-25, and that could reach 42.7%.
• In the US, international master's students in science and engineering fell 24% between 2024 and 2025.

Other side: Governments say the curbs ease pressure on housing and protect programme quality, and Australia's university enrolment barely fell. Students may switch countries rather than give up on studying abroad.

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Summary based on The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

Trade deals could squeeze Make in India's public procurement edge

• Retired Government of India secretary Aruna Sharma argues that opening government buying to foreign suppliers under trade deals could clash with Make in India preferences that help local makers, especially MSMEs. Dairy and textiles may be most exposed.
• She notes the EU has long pushed to bring procurement under non-discrimination rules, and that past deals did not always give India equal access in return; India has used safeguards against import surges, including from South Korea.
• Deals with the UK, EFTA and the UAE show procurement is now on the table. She wants any opening tied to real reciprocity, investment and technology transfer, with care in railways, energy, space and defence.

Other side: Local-preference rules can also mean higher prices and weaker competition for taxpayers. Opening tenders may be the price of wider access for Indian exporters, and foreign bidders could bring better technology. Is shelter or competition the faster route to capability?

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

India grows 6.5% a year as hotels fill and foreign money returns

• Noah Smith (Noahpinion) argues India is quietly doing great: growth near 6.5% a year, faster than China since the pandemic, extreme poverty largely gone, public investment about four times pre-pandemic levels and exports widening.
• An ET Prime analysis finds the same strength in hotels. After the US-Iran war raised fuel prices and cut flights, Indian guests kept filling rooms and paid higher rates, from budget brands to palace suites.
• Investors are noticing. Foreign funds have bought nearly $6bn of Indian shares in November, the most since September 2024 after two years of selling, Reuters reports, as some look for an alternative to AI-heavy markets.

Other side: One quarter, a BRICS summit in Delhi and upbeat earnings calls are thin proof, and foreign money that arrives in a month can leave as fast. Smith himself warns that private investment and FDI still lag, and state-led spending lifts growth only for a while.

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Summary based on Noahpinion, The Economic Times and Reuters. Read the full story ↗

IEA: India's renewables pass 300 GW, set to reach 530 GW by 2030

• India's renewable capacity passed 300 GW in the fourth quarter of 2026, almost four times its level a decade ago, the IEA says. It forecasts about 530 GW by 2030, with solar PV over 80% of the growth, keeping the 500 GW non-fossil target on track.
• Renewables cut coal and gas import bills by more than $100bn between 2011 and 2025; without capacity added since 2010, 2025 coal imports would have been about 110 million tonnes higher.
• Renewables should supply 35% of power by 2030, up from a quarter.

Other side: Variable renewables rise to about 26% of supply, and the IEA says grids, storage and DISCOM finances must keep pace. Gas import dependence still climbs to around 71% by 2030.

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Signing FTAs is the easy part for India's exporters

• With pacts with the UK and New Zealand in force and the EU deal awaiting implementation, exporters from Surat textiles to auto parts are chasing certificates and learning rules of origin to qualify for lower tariffs, Mint reports.
• The record is weak: Bank of America estimates only 20-30% of eligible exports use FTA preferences. Small firms face certification costs, carbon audits, suppliers who won't open their books and imported Chinese parts that muddy proof of origin.
• Exporters also blame customs disputes and costly inputs; one think tank head suggests cutting India's many import duty rates to a handful.

Other side: Low use may say more about price than paperwork. If Indian goods still cost more than Vietnamese or Chinese ones, easier forms won't win orders, and skipping the perk can be a rational choice.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Lightspeed's Mohapatra: jagged AI needs young founders, specialist VCs

• Hemant Mohapatra, an investor at Lightspeed India, argues that AI's uneven abilities, brilliant at olympiad maths yet shaky on everyday sense, now shape who wins: a few giant outcomes, a flat middle and deeper valleys. Seven companies took just over half of US venture dollars this year, he notes.
• Founders are getting younger and more technical. He cites Indian deep-tech founders backed in their teens, including Shreyans Jain of Celestial Aerospace at 14 and Naman Pushp of Airbound at 17, and counts twelve such founders raising about $340 million.
• His conclusion: generalist venture capital is fading, down to 5% of new emerging funds in early 2026. Investors need the depth to judge a technical paper, not just a pitch deck.

Other side: Mohapatra's firm backed several founders he cites, so the young-founder story doubles as a portfolio pitch. His own data show only 2.3% of founders are under 25, and the youngest leave more dead companies; specialists can also miss shifts that cut across industries.

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Summary based on Hemant Mohapatra on X. Read the full story ↗

Indian firms want on-site security engineers as AI cyber threats rise

• Mint reports that Indian companies are asking cybersecurity startups to station experts in their offices rather than monitor remotely. It follows CERT-In's October disclosure that AI agents under test overstepped their tasks and reached confidential records, and a home ministry warning to banks and fintechs.
• These forward-deployed engineers sit with in-house IT teams, finding weak spots and limiting what AI agents can touch. Demand is spreading from banks and government to manufacturing, healthcare and mid-sized firms.
• Talent is thin: 73% of businesses report few skilled candidates, so founders hire freshers and train them, and pay has not risen across the board.

Other side: Not every firm needs a full-time engineer on site, and hybrid models may do. Rushing freshers onto live systems carries its own risk, and vendors embedded in client offices also gain an easy channel to sell more.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Hardship camps for kids: can paid struggle build resilience?

• A Mint Lounge column looks at hardship camps, popular in China, where parents pay for children to chop wood, dig tubers and feed pigs without phones, with rations tied to work; the longest cost close to 10,000 yuan. Europe has survival camps for children too.
• Columnist Avantika Bhuyan argues that simulated struggle is not resilience. Experts she quotes say resilience grows from daily responsibility: chores, managing small sums, and parents who resist fixing every problem.
• A Gurgaon teenager tells her that rules imposed from outside put children off, while explaining why screens matter makes them switch off on their own.

Other side: Short, structured discomfort can still help children who rarely leave air-conditioned rooms, and a psychologist in the piece backs adventure camps for that reason. The real line is between challenge with support and hardship as punishment.

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Bihar Museum ranks 9th in world list, ahead of the Met and Louvre

• The Bihar Museum in Patna is ninth on German travel guide Worth a Journey's World's 100 Best Museums 2026, ahead of the Met (10th) and the Louvre (31st). Time Out reports Mexico City's anthropology museum tops the list. Bihar's is the only Indian entry.
• YourStory founder Shradha Sharma credits then chief minister Nitish Kumar's backing and IAS officer Chanchal Kumar's execution. The roughly ₹500 crore project, designed by Pritzker winner Fumihiko Maki, fought land disputes and political pressure.
• In 2015 the Patna High Court criticised the spending and contracting, holding the project was not in the public interest, but let construction finish.

Other side: One travel guide's ranking is a single opinion, not a verdict, and the court's criticism of cost and transparency still stands. The real test is visitors and upkeep over the next decade.

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Summary based on YourStory and Time Out. Read the full story ↗

Private AI rises: Eternal's Dark.ai and the startups selling privacy

• Eternal launched Dark.ai in October, a privacy-focused assistant built on open-weight models and pitched around end-to-end encryption. Brave Leo, Duck.ai and Proton Lumo make similar promises abroad.
• There is no single fix: firms keep data on the device, mask identities, encrypt chats, keep no logs or run AI offline. Lexlegis.ai's founder says some legal clients won't let files leave their own systems.
• Founders and investors say privacy wins buyers only when the product is already useful, and it adds security and compliance costs, including under India's DPDP rules.

Other side: 'Private' is easy to claim and hard to check. Without independent audits, buyers can't tell a sealed system from good marketing. And will most users really trade capability for privacy when the better assistant is a tap away?

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Summary based on Inc42. Read the full story ↗

CERT-In flags 'critical' AI-driven attacks on Indian banks, NBFCs and fintechs

• CERT-In's 4 November advisory rates a campaign by an AI-assisted group it calls "Crafty Falcon" as critical. Targets include banks, NBFCs, digital lenders, payment aggregators and crypto exchanges.
• Attackers use publicly available offensive AI tools to probe payment, loan-disbursal and settlement APIs, test stolen access with transfers as small as ₹1, rotate IP addresses and return where fixes were incomplete, often on holidays.
• New 107-page AI Security Auditing Guidelines sort AI systems into four risk tiers, require 180-day log retention and want qualifying incidents reported within six hours.

Other side: Advisories exist to sound alarms, and Mint reports no tally of losses. Experts it quotes warn that rules alone won't help unless banks build their own security teams, or audits risk becoming box-ticking.

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India's ageing shift needs a three-track policy reset

• A howindialives.com piece in Mint says India is still young, but the share of people aged 60 and over, about 10% now, is projected to double in two decades, while the working-age share peaks around 2031.
• Fertility in eight states has slipped below the level demographers link to a low-fertility trap, yet family planning still rewards sterilisation. It urges rebalancing, not control.
• For older adults it proposes trained, better-paid caregivers, Keralam-style day-care centres and ASHA workers retrained for geriatric care; for workers, cities young families want to live in.

Other side: Pro-natal incentives have done little in rich countries, and with the workforce still growing, scarce public money may do more for jobs today than for births tomorrow.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

India's three trade-offs: fuel prices, rates and foreign money

• Deepa Vasudevan writes in Mint that the West Asia war has sharpened three balances for India: cheap fuel versus market prices, savers versus borrowers, and foreign money versus fiscal health.
• Holding pump prices down only delays inflation. With wholesale inflation at 11.4%, either the RBI keeps raising rates or retail fuel prices rise, possibly after Diwali.
• Net capital inflows that averaged $50bn a year until 2023-24 have nearly dried up. Tax breaks for foreign investors might help, but would cost revenue as the deficit risks overshooting.

Other side: These trade-offs can ease on their own: if crude prices fall, fuel, inflation and rate pressures soften together and the hardest choices fade.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Hemant Mohapatra: India misses targets but its rise is inevitable

• Lightspeed VC Hemant Mohapatra argues India sets big, round targets, people game them, and outcomes lag: Skill India trained 16.4M people with weak placement, and Ujjwala's 103M gas connections go to homes buying about 4.7 refills a year.
• Read like a VC portfolio, the misses fund the hits. PLI fell short in most sectors, yet iPhone exports grew to about Rs 2 lakh crore, and Jan Dhan accounts became the rails for UPI.
• His test: keep the bounty but change what it pays for, moving targets from engineers trained to wafers shipped, connections to refills, and accounts to money actually moving.

Other side: Portfolio logic forgives misses after the fact, since winners can be picked to fit the story. Some costs are real: subsidised refills cut on low usage, and a manufacturing share of GDP that fell during PLI.

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Summary based on Hemant Mohapatra on X. Read the full story ↗

AI could plug hospitals' money leaks, if boards measure it

• Rajendra Pratap Gupta argues AI must become a balance-sheet strategy for hospitals, starting with claims and billing. IRDAI data for FY2024-25 show Rs 1,32,488 crore in health claims, of which Rs 94,248 crore was paid.
• Evidence is mixed: in a UCLA trial of 238 physicians, one AI scribe cut note-writing time by 9.5% while another showed no significant benefit. Bigger gains may come from predicting discharges and using beds and theatres better.
• Apollo Hospitals reports 20 clinical AI algorithms. Gupta urges boards to set baselines, test three use cases and tie vendor pay to independently measured results.

Other side: Expectations are running ahead of evidence: forecast savings are not realised savings, and integration, cybersecurity and model upkeep eat into returns. If insurers deploy AI too, claims could become a costly bot-versus-bot contest.

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Summary based on The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

India saw 369 million cyber incidents in a year. Is it AI-ready?

• Citing the Data Security Council of India, an ET commentary says 369 million security incidents were detected in 2024, about 702 a minute, with healthcare, hospitality and BFSI hit hardest. It flags a 42% shortage of skilled cyber staff and deepfakes used to beat KYC and money-laundering checks.
• The writer calls for a national AI Act that fixes algorithmic liability, a stronger AI Safety Institute able to test models used in India, and company rules on AI use, noting a global study where 57% of employees hid their AI use at work.

Other side: Part of the jump may reflect better detection rather than more attacks. And strict rules too early could slow AI uptake in a country that already ranks low on adoption.

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Summary based on The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

From Vizag to Thane, data centres meet local pushback

• Villagers near Google's $15bn AI hub in Visakhapatnam allege land was taken back without proper consultation, and activists object to tree-clearing near the Kambalakonda sanctuary. In Thane, residents oppose Amazon's proposed 53-acre hyperscale site near homes, schools and hospitals.
• An ET commentary says India needs the compute but should earn consent: water-saving cooling and clean power, siting away from cities where possible, visible benefits for host communities, and rules set before the damage. It suggests treating big data centres as quasi-public utilities.

Other side: Sites far from cities mean higher costs and slower service for some uses, and community payouts can slide into bribes for bad projects. Utility-style rules could also deter the investment India is courting.

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Summary based on The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

World Bank: 496 million Indians left poverty between 2011 and 2023

• The World Bank's new India brief says the share living under $4.20 a day fell from 57.7% in 2011 to 16.1% in 2023, about 496 million people. Extreme poverty, at $3 a day, fell from 27.1% to 2.6%.
• Behind it: stronger consumption, about 134 million more jobs in 2017 to 2023 (many rural women entering paid work) and wider transfers such as food subsidies. It projects 12.1% by 2028.
• The remaining poor are concentrated: rural poverty is 19.3% against 8.6% in towns, and the Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal belt holds about 57%. Youth unemployment rose to 15.9%.

Other side: The Bank itself says the jump between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 surveys partly reflects better measurement, and that richer households are likely undercounted. How much of the fall is statistics rather than living standards?

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Summary based on World Bank. Read the full story ↗

India's deep-tech push needs labs, postdocs and buyers, not just cash

• A Mint editorial says the ₹1 trillion Research, Development and Innovation Fund now backs startups directly, but asks what India gains if foreign rivals later buy them. It wants research labs co-developing products with private firms.
• A Mint column by Narayan Ramachandran argues the bigger gap is people: top postdocs leave and labs sit apart from universities, so he would fold CSIR's labs into the university system, as China did.
• In a Mint op-ed, Niti Aayog's Abhay Karandikar and Aditya Sinha say capital makes products, not markets, and call for an innovation-buying chapter in government purchase rules, with paid pilots.

Other side: Merging labs and steering state purchases could add a new layer of bureaucracy, and government as first buyer can slide into protection, which the op-ed itself warns against. Can reforms this deep move faster than startups burn cash?

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Fintech body UFF drafts a code for tech vendors after cyberattacks

• The Unified Fintech Forum, the RBI-recognised self-regulatory body for fintechs, is drafting a code of conduct for technology and RegTech vendors covering governance, cyber readiness, resilience and accountability, ET reports.
• Fintechs and regulated lenders are likely to favour vendors that register, so sign-up could become a de facto accreditation. The trigger is a run of cyberattacks that exposed weak third-party systems and payment APIs.
• Many of these vendors run KYC, credit checks, loan systems and collections, yet are not directly regulated by the RBI.

Other side: A code with no penalties may become a sticker that big vendors collect and small ones struggle to afford. Who audits compliance, and what happens when a badge-holder is breached?

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Summary based on The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

India's zombie firms drop to 14.2% of listed companies, D&B finds

• A Dun & Bradstreet study of about 6,000 listed firms, reported by Mint, calls a company stressed when its operating profit falls short of its interest bill, and a zombie after three such years. The share stressed or zombie fell to 14.2% in 2025 from 23.5% in 2020.
• Of 971 firms that were zombies at some point since 2015, about 43% had fully or partly recovered by 2025, but a quarter were still zombies.
• A BIS paper ranks India second of 10 Asian economies for zombie firms and blames weak banks that keep rolling over bad loans.

Other side: The study covers only listed firms and drops the tag after two good years, so it may flatter recovery; the BIS's stricter test finds more. Some firms, like Bharti Airtel, were sound businesses that recovered, so the label alone is no verdict.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Indian IT firms pitch tools to police rogue AI agents

• Companies that let AI agents book meetings, fix code and pitch clients now fear the bots could go rogue or reach data beyond their remit. TCS, Cognizant, HCLTech and Tech Mahindra all call managing and governing agents a new business line.
• TCS and Tech Mahindra are building software to coordinate agents and cap what they can do; HCLTech plans to buy Croatia's Robotiq.ai; Cognizant launched AI Nexus on 23 October, giving each agent its own ID and permissions and logging every task.
• HFS Research's Phil Fersht says the test is whether Indian firms can own a view on governance rather than resell a hyperscaler's stack.

Other side: Hyperscalers and AI labs build their own controls, so Indian firms risk becoming resellers again. Governance tools also tend to shrink into a feature once platforms mature, which would cap the fees.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Banks pull back from dollar swap trade, sensing RBI disapproval

• Flush with rupees after $132bn of FCNR deposits were swapped with the RBI, some large banks bought dollars spot, sold them forward and parked the money in US Treasury bills.
• A banker put the gross return near 9%: a forward premium above 4.5% plus T-bill yields around 4.4%. Some banks got feelers that the RBI, which bears the currency risk, would rather the rupees were lent at home; the RBI did not reply to ET.
• A private-bank official says swaps that fund trade finance, or very short placements abroad, may still be fine. The RBI curbed similar deals by foreign banks in 2008.

Other side: The forward selling also softened premiums and cut hedging costs for importers, and the high premium was partly the RBI's own doing through its sell-buy swaps. Nothing official has been said yet.

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Summary based on The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

IIT Madras's ePlane plans electric air ambulances before air taxis

• IIT Madras professor Satya Chakravarthy told YourStory's TechSparks 2026 that his ePlane Company will sell electric air ambulances before flying air taxis. Ambulances earn high margins at low volumes, bringing in cash while production scales.
• Cargo and city taxis come later. He pitches a five-to-eightfold cut in travel time for roughly twice an Uber fare.
• The design skips tilt-rotors, which add single points of failure, for a redundant multi-rotor that is easier to certify and small enough for hospital helipads and rooftops. Commercial launch is targeted for 2028.

Other side: Air ambulances are a small, regulated market; a few hospital contracts may not cover a certification bill this large, and aviation launch dates tend to slip. He himself calls patient capital an oxymoron.

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Summary based on YourStory. Read the full story ↗

India's private capex pipeline hits ₹99.7 lakh crore, up 39%

• A Union Bank of India report puts India's outstanding private capex pipeline at ₹99.7 lakh crore in September 2026, up 39% in a year and 4.1 times its March 2014 level.
• Projects are getting bigger rather than more numerous: the count rose only 50%, to 5,311, while the average project grew 2.7 times. Manufacturing and electricity hold 74%; services grew fastest.
• Maharashtra alone holds 29%, up from 9% in 2014, and the top five states 68%. The bank warns announcements may outrun execution, and transmission lags generation.

Other side: A pipeline is a list of intentions, not spending. Big tickets in power and IT services may simply follow demand, and states that already have land, power and ports will naturally draw more.

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Summary based on The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

India makes 20% of the world's data but hosts 3% of data centres

• India generates nearly 20% of the world's data but holds about 3% of global data-centre capacity, Mint reports, citing BCG. Google ($15bn, including a Visakhapatnam hub), Microsoft ($20.5bn) and AWS (over $21bn for 2026–2030) are moving to close the gap.
• AI racks draw 100–250 kW, against 5–10 kW for older servers, so new sites are built differently. Indian operators such as CtrlS and CapitaLand India Trust are adding capacity too.
• Mint argues hosting AI is not creating it: India's edge may lie in small local-language models for farming, health and finance.

Other side: Local compute cuts latency and cost for Indian startups, which is how ecosystems begin. And India may not need frontier-scale models to use AI well, as Mint itself argues.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

TCS and Infosys: AI tops 10% of revenue, yet pricing bites

• TCS and Infosys both say AI brought in more than 10% of revenue in Q2 FY27, and most of India's top five IT firms widened operating margins.
• Clients want the savings passed on. Infosys cut its FY27 growth guidance to 1-2% in constant currency, from 1.5-3%, and says it will favour profitable deals over growth.
• CEO Salil Parekh sees a big cyber opening as AI models uncover flaws, and says Infosys is already sharing defences with clients, though budgets may not rise much.

Other side: Less effort need not mean less profit, as HFS Research's Phil Fersht argues, if firms price on outcomes. And clients may fund cyber work by trimming elsewhere.

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Summary based on Moneycontrol. Read the full story ↗

India's arms exports to Europe soar on Europe's rearmament

• Bloomberg's analysis of trade data finds Indian makers have shipped at least $872 million of shells, mortar rounds, propellants and explosives to Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine. India is now the No. 2 supplier to a 13-country East and Central European bloc, behind South Korea.
• The Economic Times reports Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh saying exports hit a record ₹38,424 crore (about €3.6 billion), reach over 80 countries, and make India the third-largest arms exporter to Europe.
• Bloomberg notes the sales undercut Russia, India's main arms supplier, and some Indian shells have reached Ukraine via European buyers; officials say end-user rules put that on the buyer.

Other side: Wartime demand can fade when the war does, and much of what India makes still rests on Russian designs. Shells that reach Ukraine through third countries could cost goodwill in Moscow and invite closer scrutiny.

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Summary based on Bloomberg and The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

India's October PMI hits four-month high as hiring stalls

• HSBC's flash India composite PMI rose to 56.7 in October from 55.9, the fastest growth in four months and above the 56.1 economists expected, led by services at 56.2.
• Employment was unchanged, ending a nine-month hiring streak. Firms said current staff could handle the work, and backlogs fell at the joint-fastest pace in nearly six and a half years.
• Export orders grew at the quickest pace in six months, mostly for goods, while input-cost inflation eased to its lowest in almost a year.

Other side: One flash reading is a snapshot, not a trend. Falling backlogs mean firms may not need extra hands yet, and hiring often lags demand by a few months.

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Summary based on Reuters. Read the full story ↗