The Morning Brief

The multinational is giving way to the multi-local, as tariffs, geopolitics and supply-chain risk force companies to rebuild around regional roots rather than one global blueprint. In the latest Corner Office Conversation from The Economic Times World Leaders Forum Bain & Company Global Chairman Manny Maceda tells Anirban Chowdhury what this fragmentation means for India's shot at becoming the...

Chhattisgarh has declared an end to armed Maoism in Bastar, but the ground reality is far more complicated than a deadline. Over 1,000 surrendered cadres remain in rehabilitation centres while 1,800 others have already returned to their villages — some welcomed, others met with deep, unhealed anger. In this episode, based on Shantanu Nandan Sharma's on-ground reporting, we travel through Suk...

HDFC Bank's Shashidhar Jagdishan is stepping down, Kotak Mahindra is searching for Ashok Vaswani's successor, and ICICI's Sandeep Bakshi has taken just a two-year extension. In this episode, Anirban Chowdhury talks to ET's Banking Editor Sangita Mehta about the wave of CEO exits hitting India's biggest banks through 2028, what really went wrong at HDFC, whether Deputy MD Kaizad Bharucha can take o...

AI is reshaping how businesses work, but the biggest shift may be how humans and technology work together. At The Economic Times World Leaders Forum, Nigel Vaz, CEO, Publicis Sapient, joins Dia Rekhi to break down the “Iron Man” approach to AI, why enterprises need to reimagine how work gets done, and where agentic AI can create real business value. Listen In You can follow Dia Rekhi o...

India’s latest GDP estimate shows the economy growing at 7.8%. Rajeswari Sengupta, associate professor of economics at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research is unconvinced. She tells Anirban Chowdhury why weak job creation, subdued investment, falling import volumes and an unresponsive stock market sit uneasily beside the headline number. She also explains why a low GDP deflato...

ET opens its World Leaders Forum podcast series with Anu Aiyengar, global chair of investment banking, J.P.Morgan. In conversation with Anirban Chowdhury, she explains why uncertainty is driving—not deterring—big-ticket deals, and why companies are buying scale, stability and resilience. She examines the risks posed by rising yields, inflation and oil, the curious leeway investors are...

Climate change is making extreme weather more frequent and unpredictable. But are we making its consequences worse? Across the Himalayas and the Western Ghats, glaciers are collapsing, rainfall patterns are shifting and landslides and flash floods are becoming increasingly destructive. At the same time, roads, hotels, hydropower projects and settlements are pushing deeper into fragile landscapes....

What does one of India’s original venture capitalists see coming next? Accel’s Subrata Mitra speaks to Anirban Chowdhury about a funding market moving from exuberance to discipline—and an AI boom whose economics remain deeply uncertain. He explains why India cannot fight a trillion-dollar foundational-model battle with a fraction of that capital, and where its more credible oppor...

HDFC Bank is staring at an unusual leadership vacuum. CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan is set to leave in October, even as India’s largest private sector bank grapples with slowing profit growth, squeezed margins and the lingering impact of its mega merger with HDFC Ltd. Who could take over — internal heavyweight Kaizad Bharucha or an outsider? And can a successor even be found in time? Anirban...

Subhash Chandra’s latest insolvency battle has produced a startling equation: ₹22,006 crore in admitted claims against just ₹6.25 crore for creditors. But the headline hides a more complicated story. These claims largely arise from personal guarantees for corporate borrowings, even as major lenders question the repayment plan, creditor voting and what happened to Chandra’s once-vast pe...

ET’s Swathi Moorthy cannot code. Yet she has built four web applications using AI. That is the seductive promise of vibe coding: describe what you want and let the machine build it. The reality involves muddled prompts, unreliable advice, stubborn bugs, confusing backends, hosting headaches and subscription bills. In this episode, Moorthy joins Anirban Chowdhury to explain how a non-coder ca...

Trilegal began as an outsider in a legal industry dominated by closely held, family-run firms. More than two decades later, it has become one of India’s largest law firms—and part of the establishment it once challenged. Partners Nishant Parikh and Sridhar Gorthi talk to ET’s Vinod Mahanta and Maulik Vyas about the model behind that rise, the founder-rainmaker trap holding back m...

Love can arrive at any age. But when it arrives after 60, it often comes with decades of accumulated wealth, grown-up children and expectations about inheritance. As more Indians seek companionship, remarry or choose live-in relationships later in life, families are confronting difficult questions around homes, wills, trusts and succession. Based on Lijee Philip’s report, this episode explor...

Brent above $90 doesn’t tell the full story of India’s oil bill. Tight physical supplies have pushed some Gulf crude to a hefty premium, while the Russian discounts that helped Indian refiners after the Ukraine war have largely vanished. Disruptions in West Asia have also forced India to source more oil from farther-flung suppliers, adding freight costs. Anirban Chowdhury speaks to ICR...

India’s tax calendar looks different this year. While most salaried taxpayers wrapped up their returns by July 31, taxpayers with certain business or professional income have until August 31. But who exactly qualifies? What happens if you earn a salary alongside income from F&O trading, consulting, freelancing or content creation? Which ITR should you file, and how is F&O turnover ca...

For Indian professionals chasing a US green card, even the fast lane is getting harder. Approval rates for EB-1A — the category reserved for people with extraordinary ability — have fallen sharply, from 49% to 35% in a year. That compounds an already punishing green-card backlog for Indians on H-1B visas, many of whom face waits stretching decades. So what is driving the tougher scruti...

For 75 days, an Indian oil tanker captain and his 23-member crew were stranded in the Strait of Hormuz as war raged around them. Missiles flew overhead. Explosions shook the ship. Supplies dwindled, families waited anxiously and the crew faced pressure to carry out a risky cargo transfer. Through it all, the tanker remained loaded with 110,000 tonnes of cargo. This episode is a first-hand account...

N Chandrasekaran’s decision not to seek another term as Tata Sons chairman brings an extraordinary year of tensions inside the Tata Group to a head. Behind the succession question lies a deeper struggle over how Tata Trusts exercises control over Tata Sons, how much capital the group should commit to businesses such as Air India, digital and semiconductors, whether Tata Sons should remain pr...

Sarvam AI began with an ambitious proposition: build foundational AI models in India. It must now prove that those models can support a viable business. Co-founder Pratyush Kumar explains to Himanshi Lohchab the company’s expansion into compute, inference, customised models and enterprise applications, while Peak XV Partners MD Rajan Anandan lays out the investment case. They discuss NVIDIA&...

Indian exporters are facing a fresh shipping squeeze. Congestion at major transhipment hubs such as Singapore and Colombo is delaying cargo, disrupting schedules and pushing up costs, just as global trade routes are being reshaped by geopolitical tensions and shifting freight demand. But the disruption exposes a deeper weakness in India’s export infrastructure. Despite its vast coastline &md...

LinkedIn CEO Dan Shapero says the platform’s data points to a more complicated story. In this Corner Office Conversation, Shapero joins Anirban Chowdhury and Dia Rekhi to discuss why hiring has slowed, how AI is rewriting skills, and why India is seeing a surge in AI roles, R&D hiring and new founders. He also explains LinkedIn’s fast-growing AI Hiring Assistant, the possibility of...

India’s humble autorickshaw is getting its biggest reinvention in decades. Electric three-wheelers are surging because the economics work: lower running costs, less maintenance and better predictability for drivers and fleets. But the real disruption goes deeper. As Bajaj Auto defends its turf and Mahindra, TVS and others push harder, competition is shifting from price and mileage to range,...

In this candid interview, ET's tech editor Surabhi Agarwal and Subhayan Chakraborty sit down with India's IT Secretary to discuss ISM 2.0, the government's $13 billion second phase of the India Semiconductor Mission. He breaks down lessons from ISM 1.0's 12 approved projects, the new market-linked funding model for chip design startups, and why silicon fabs now get differentiated incentives over o...

Prashant Kishor has spent years shaping election victories for others. Now, he has delivered one of his own. In this episode of The Morning Brief, Nidhi Sharma speaks with Economic Times’ Kumar Anshuman to unpack Jan Suraaj Party’s stunning victory in Bankipur, a BJP bastion for more than three decades. How did Kishor engineer a massive electoral swing just months after his party faile...

In the second part of the series, Ratna Bhushan, ET's FMCG Editor, brings in two industry voices to dissect the impact of FSSAI and Maharashtra FDA's crackdowns. Anjan Chatterjee, founder of Speciality Restaurants, argues surprise audits are overdue but says license suspension should be a last resort, not a first response. Ashwin Bhadri, founder of Equinox Labs, backs the enforcement push while ca...