The Morning Brief

Foreign capital is back in India — but not the way it used to be. In June, overseas funds poured a record Rs 41,773 crore into Indian government debt, even as they pulled nearly Rs 49,340 crore out of equities. What's driving this split? A stabilising rupee, tax breaks on bond returns, and hopes that India will finally enter Bloomberg's global bond index. But risks remain — a hawkish F...

Five young mothers in Kota died within twelve days after a routine oxytocin shot. The vials meant to stop bleeding after childbirth had no drug in them at all, just water. What followed was an investigation that tore open a Punjab manufacturer's records: fabricated test data, tampered machines, missing safety checks, and a company that had been ordered to stop production three years ago and simply...

The Indian government has issued a notice to Meta over WhatsApp’s planned username feature, warning that it could fuel impersonation and online fraud. Meta maintains usernames are a privacy feature designed to let users connect without sharing phone numbers. But the dispute runs much deeper. In this episode, host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Apar Gupta, co-founder, Internet Freedom Foundation...

Europe's latest heatwave is expected to leave behind a staggering human toll. But beyond the immediate crisis, it is raising a broader question: are countries prepared for a world where extreme heat becomes routine? While much of the conversation around climate change focuses on emissions, a parallel challenge is emerging around adaptation. From city design and public health systems to early warni...

India’s startup ecosystem is sending mixed signals. Funding deals are at a decade low, yet tech IPOs are breaking records. Investors are writing bigger cheques but backing fewer companies, while deep tech, AI and space tech are quietly reshaping the next phase of innovation. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Tracxn co-founder Neha Singh about what the data really reveals: why average deal size...

One in two popcorn kernels eaten in India comes from one man's farms. He built the crop from nothing, the processing plant that rivals anything in North America, and a farmer network no competitor can crack. When COVID killed every client overnight, most founders would have cut and run. He doubled his acreage. He has 50Xed his revenue in 5 years, build a moat few can crack and plans to now indigen...

Nestled in Virudhunagar district of Tamil Nadu, Sivakasi is India’s undisputed firecracker capital. What began as a humble cottage industry thrived in the region’s hot, dry climate — conditions too harsh for agriculture but perfect for manufacturing matches and firecrackers. Over decades, this unlikely desert town grew into a Rs 6,000 crore industry, supplying the bulk of India&r...

For decades, regional aviation in India has been a story of false starts, grounded ambitions and struggling airlines. But that may finally be changing. India makes more than 4 billion intercity trips every year. Yet only 3% happen by air. That gap may be the single biggest untapped opportunity in Indian aviation — and airlines like Fly91 and aircraft maker ATR believe they are perfectly posi...

Eighty percent of Dr Ramakanta Panda's young cardiac patients — below 35, below 40 — work in IT or finance. Late nights, processed food, 2 AM pizza, secondhand smoke, and a generation that doesn't sleep before midnight. The Padma Bhushan awardee and Chairman of Asian Heart Institute, Mumbai has performed over 30,000 cardiac surgeries with a 99.8% bypass success rate and zero MRSA in hi...

Jio Platforms is set to file what could be India's largest-ever IPO. But the story goes far beyond the listing. Senior telecom consultant Kalyan Parbat joins host Anirban Chowdhury to break down what the DRHP really signals. From prepaying debt to funding a sovereign LEO satellite constellation, building a homegrown AI agent called Hey Jio, and exporting its indigenous 5G stack to global operators...

 A revolution is underway in cancer diagnosis. A gene-based test called next-generation sequencing can identify precise mutations in a patient’s DNA, which can then be treated with targeted therapies instead of painful chemotherapy. For an 80-year-old woman with stage 4 lung cancer, it meant walking again. For a 24-year-old with breast cancer, it meant a normal life. But since NGS tests...

India's media and entertainment industry is actively exploring new frontiers in AI. From JioHotstar's dedicated AI content division to Kishore Lulla's $150 million Eros Innovation play, the country's biggest streaming and production companies are building AI studios from the ground up. The economics are hard to ignore, production costs down 60-70%, delivery timelines cut by half. But beyond micro...

On June 12, the US government forced Anthropic to shut off its most powerful AI models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for every foreign national on earth, citing national security. The trigger was a claimed jailbreak. The fallout was immediate. India, which had only just gained access to Mythos through Project Glasswing, was suddenly cut off. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Dr Rumman Chowdhury, co-founder C...

Three Indian mariners are dead, killed by US Navy strikes on a commercial tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Abhijit Singh, a retired naval officer and former head of the maritime policy initiative at ORF, to break down what we know and what remains contested about the MT Settebello incident. Was it a legitimate blockade enforcement or an unprovoked attack on a stationary...

From the hills of Nagaland, once rattled by insurgency, comes an unlikely revolution — specialty coffee. In this episode of ET Deep Dive, we trace how a state better known for decades of conflict is quietly reinventing itself, one arabica bean at a time. From smallholder farmers in the mist-covered hills of Wokha to young entrepreneurs who studied abroad and came home to build brands, Nagala...

Every month, millions of Indians put money into mutual funds through SIPs without really knowing how long to stay invested or what happens when markets crash. ET Wealth's annual SIP study with Crisil Intelligence finally puts hard numbers to these questions. Host and editor ET Wealth Kayezad E Adajania talks to Piyush Gupta, Director at Crisil Intelligence about what 15 years of data across 120 sc...

The rupee has been on a sharp slide, moving from 90 to nearly 97 in just a few months. On Friday, the RBI stepped in with two major measures a concessional FCNR deposit window for NRIs and a subsidised swap facility for ECB borrowings by PSUs effectively absorbing the hedging costs to pull in foreign capital. But how much of a difference will it make, and for how long? Host Rozebud Gonsalves speak...

SEBI has accused Rajesh Exports and its promoter Rajesh Mehta of one of India's most brazen alleged financial frauds — inflating revenues by fifteen lakh crore, claiming ownership of African gold mines that don't exist, and siphoning funds through a web of overseas entities while auditors looked the other way. On this episode of The Morning Brief, Anirban Chowdhury, N Sundaresha Subramanian,...

She walked into the courtroom with no playbook and built an empire anyway. Host Maulik Vyas talks to one of India's most formidable legal minds Co-Founder & Managing Partner of AZB & Partners, Zia Mody, who reflects on four decades at the forefront of corporate law, from the chaos of early liberalization to billion-dollar cross-border deals. She opens up about the cautious mood on deal str...

India's locker economy is booming — and buckling. Bank vaults remain the default choice for storing gold, heirlooms and family documents, but chronic shortages, inheritance disputes and a trust deficit are cracking the system open. Private vault operators are muscling in with biometric access and extended hours. Home-safe manufacturers are selling the idea of keeping wealth closer. And regul...

As Anthropic files confidentially for an IPO with a reported valuation nearing $1 trillion, markets are watching closely. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Daniel Newman, CEO at data intellegince, research and advisory firm The Futurum Group to break down what investors should really scrutinise from enterprise attrition data to compute cost commitments. They unpack the revenue optics inflated by clo...

Wockhardt's FDA approval of Zaynich marks a historic first, the only drug entirely discovered and developed by an Indian company to clear US-FDA scrutiny. ET’s pharma editor Vikas Dandekar and Rica Bhattacharyya talk to Habil Khorakiwala, Chairperson of Wockhardt who unpacks the 25-year innovation journey behind this milestone. From a deliberate pivot to antibiotics when big pharma was exiti...

The rupee has briefly touched an all-time low of 96.96 in May. Is the psychological 100-to-the-dollar mark now inevitable? In this episode of The Morning Brief, Rozebud Gonsalves speaks to economists from leading financial institutions–Gaura Sengupta, chief economist at IDFC First Bank, Kanika Pasricha, chief economic advisor, Union Bank of India, Madhavi Arora, chief economist, Emkay Global...

What does it take to back India's highest-grossing films three years in a row? Host Anirban Chowdhury and ET’s film journalist and critic Rajesh N Naidu talk to Jyoti Deshpande, President - Jio Studios, Media & Content Business -Reliance Industries Ltd, who pulls back the curtain on how she green-lights films, why she rejects 98 out of every 100 ideas, and what Indian cinema needs to do...

Operation Octopus is Hyderabad Police’s ambitious multi-phase crackdown on the infrastructure behind cyber fraud — not just the small fish, but the entire ecosystem. From mule accounts and rogue bank employees to ghost SIMs and crypto networks, each phase peels back a new layer of a sprawling criminal enterprise spanning multiple states and international actors. Commissioner VC Sajjana...