Sunil Bajaj - Group Director - CAD, ABG | Former Director - Essar Group

For most investors, 3:30 p.m. used to mean one simple thing: the Indian stock market was closed. That routine has now changed. Since August 3, India has been using a new Closing Auction Session (CAS) to determine the official closing prices of stocks in the futures and options segment. Instead of calculating the close using the volume-weighted average price during the final 30 minutes of regular trading, buyers and sellers now come together in a dedicated auction at the end of the day. On paper, this might look like a technical change that matters primarily to traders, brokers and fund managers. I think it deserves a wider audience. Closing prices influence index values, mutual fund and ETF portfolios, derivatives settlement, institutional valuations and the prices millions of investors see at the end of every trading day. When you change how that price is determined, you are changing an important piece of India’s market infrastructure. And the first few we...

The rupee is now hovering uncomfortably close to ₹96 against the US dollar. On August 21, it was trading around ₹95.69, after touching ₹95.75 earlier this week. The Reserve Bank of India has been actively intervening in the foreign-exchange market, while higher crude oil prices and continued demand for dollars from Indian importers are keeping pressure on the currency. (Reuters) For most people, ₹96 is a headline. For a CEO, it is a planning assumption. A weaker rupee changes the cost of imported raw materials, machinery and technology. It affects dollar-denominated debt, overseas travel and expansion budgets. It can help exporters, but even there the benefit depends on how much of their input cost is imported. And when Brent is simultaneously trading close to $94 a barrel, the pressure becomes more complicated. India is paying more dollars for an important import at precisely the time those dollars are becoming more expensive in rupee terms. (Reuters) So I don...

For years, the standard assumption about China was fairly straightforward: when the Chinese economy slowed, Beijing would find a way to get growth moving again. That assumption is being tested. China’s latest numbers show an economy that is still producing, but struggling to get its own consumers and businesses to spend. In July, industrial output grew 4.5% year-on-year, down from 5.3% in June. Retail sales grew just 0.6%, while fixed-asset investment fell 6.7% in the first seven months of 2026. Beijing is responding. This week, Chinese officials said fiscal policy would put greater emphasis on households and domestic consumption, while additional fiscal-financial measures are being prepared for the second half of the year. At first glance, this looks like a Chinese economic story. For Indian manufacturers, it is much closer to home. Because what happens when the world’s manufacturing powerhouse continues to produce faster than its domestic market can consume has consequences for prici...

For years, India’s semiconductor ambition was spoken about largely in the future tense. We wanted fabs. We wanted global chipmakers to invest here. We wanted to reduce our dependence on imported semiconductors and establish India as a serious alternative in a highly concentrated global supply chain. That conversation is beginning to change. At SEMICON India 2026, the government revealed that Semicon 2.0 has already attracted investment proposals worth between $11 billion and $12 billion. What makes the number particularly interesting is where that money wants to go. The proposals are not limited to chip fabrication. They span semiconductor equipment, materials, specialty gases, chemicals, and substrates- the less visible parts of the industry without which a fab cannot function. That, to me, is the real story. India is beginning to move from attracting individual semiconductor projects to building the industrial ecosystem around them. Know More About India Just Attracted Up to $12 Bill...

For a long time, the map of corporate India was fairly predictable. If you were looking for technology, you went to Bengaluru. Finance meant Mumbai. Delhi NCR became a major corporate and services hub. Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune developed their own powerful industry clusters. Those cities are not going anywhere. In fact, many continue to grow rapidly. But something interesting is happening beyond them. Surat, Jaipur, Kochi, Coimbatore, Indore, Ahmedabad, Mysuru and several other cities are attracting more businesses, infrastructure and consumers. In eastern and northeastern India too, states are making a much more deliberate push to attract industry and investment. I believe this geographical broadening could become an important part of India’s next growth cycle. Not because the metros have stopped working, but because India has become too large for its economic opportunity to remain concentrated in a handful of cities. Know More About The Next Indian Growth Story May Come From Cities...

For most of my career, geopolitical risk was something businesses watched from a distance. It mattered, certainly, but unless you operated directly in a conflict zone or a politically unstable market, it rarely entered everyday operating decisions. That is becoming harder to say today. A conflict in the Middle East can change India’s energy bill. A disruption in the Strait of Hormuz can increase freight costs and delay shipments. A decision in Washington can alter tariffs on Indian exports. Export restrictions in China can affect the availability of minerals required for electronics, EVs and defence. A war thousands of kilometres away can suddenly change currencies, commodity prices and the economics of a supply contract. Geopolitics has moved much closer to the balance sheet. The question for India Inc is whether we are treating that as a temporary period of uncertainty or recognising it as a structural change in the cost of doing business. Know More About The World Is Becoming More E...