The Morning Brief

Donald Trump’s sudden $100,000 H-1B visa fee has shaken the U.S. tech landscape and left Indian IT giants scrambling. With renewals, contracts, and billions of dollars in deals on the line, what does this mean for companies, employees, and the future of global talent flows? Host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with ET’s tech reporter Beena Parmar, immigration law expert and founder of LawQues...

The US Federal Reserve has delivered its first rate cut since December 2024, trimming the benchmark rate by 25 basis points and hinting at two more cuts this year. Markets had expected the move, but Jerome Powell’s cautious tone on sticky inflation, slowing growth and rising job market risks left investors with more questions than answers. In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban C...

Reliance is making its boldest leap yet into artificial intelligence. Backed by gigawatt-scale data centres, alliances with global giants like Nvidia, Google and Meta, and the unmatched power of data from 450 million Jio users, Mukesh Ambani wants to position India as an AI builder, not just a consumer.  In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury is joined by Neil Shah, co-f...

India’s semiconductor dream is taking shape in Assam, where Tata Electronics is building a ₹27,000 crore chip assembly and testing facility. But this high-tech mission has run into a very unusual roadblock: wild elephants and snakes. In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with ET’s Dia Rekhi joined by noted veterinarian popularly known as the 'Elephant Man...

In this episode of Corner Office Conversation, we sit down with Sindhu Gangadharan, Managing Director of SAP Labs India and Chairperson of NASSCOM. From being the first woman to lead SAP Labs India to driving its AI-first transformation, Sindhu shares her journey, the bold decisions that shaped her career, and why India has become SAP’s biggest R&D hub outside Europe. Joined by Anirban C...

Nepal’s GenZ has torched, overthrown and reformed its government.  On September 9, tens of thousands of young Nepalis poured into the streets. What began as a protest against a social media ban spiraled into the country’s biggest uprising in decades. Parliament was stormed, buildings burned, and Prime Minister K.P. Oli was forced to resign. On Friday, the youth’s candidate o...

India’s insurance sector is at a turning point with the government scrapping the 18% GST on health and life insurance premiums from September 22. Policies from term plans to ULIPs and health covers just got cheaper, but questions remain : Will insurers absorb the loss of input tax credit or pass on the full benefit to policyholders?  In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Shilpy Sin...

Three years after the Ukraine war began, India has become one of Russia’s largest oil customers. From negligible imports before 2022, Russian crude now accounts for nearly a third of India’s oil basket delivering big savings for refiners and keeping fuel prices steady at home. But these benefits come with rising diplomatic costs, including pressure from Washington, the threat of higher...

India’s biggest GST shake-up since 2017 is here. The new structure with just two slabs 5% and 18% plus a steep 40% for sin and luxury goods, promises cheaper essentials and faster refunds. But will consumers and businesses really feel the difference? On this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury is joined by Bipin Sapra, Partner - Leader, Indirect Tax & Economic Policy at...

At the ET World Leaders Forum 2025, Archana Rai, Economic Times’, Editor, South speaks with Rajat Taneja, President Technology at Visa, about how India is shaping the future of payments. The discussion spans India’s trillion-dollar digital opportunity, the growing role of AI in fraud prevention, and Visa’s cutting-edge innovations from tokenized credentials and biometrics to agen...

What happens when two of the world’s most populous nations attempt to reset ties amidst a multipolar order? In this episode of The Morning Brief , host Anirban Chowdhury is joined by ET’s Executive Editor, Politics, Pranab Dhal Samanta to unpack the significance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with President Xi Jinping. Against a backdrop of cordial but cautious exchang...

800 episodes strong! The Morning Brief isn’t just a podcast—it’s your morning essential for sharp insights, credible voices, and conversations that matter.  Here's what some of its best guests had to say on the milestone Ravi Kumar S (CEO of Cognizant) Rajesh Jejurikar (Executive Director & CEO (Auto & Farm Sector) at Mahindra Group) Ashok Kantha (Indian diplomat &am...

In this episode of Corner Office Conversations, host Ratna Bhushan sits down with Vipul Parekh, co-founder of BigBasket, to discuss how India’s leading online grocer is gearing up for the festive season amid the quick commerce boom. From IPO buzz and profitability challenges to category expansion beyond groceries, Parekh shares insights on competition with Swiggy, Zepto, JioMart, and Amazon,...

Over the last five weeks, The Morning Brief explored the investment stories shaping southern India through exclusive conversations with senior ministers from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. From manufacturing and infrastructure to IT, green energy, and start-ups each state is vying to stand out in India’s growth race. In this wrap-up episode of our special serie...

Artificial Intelligence is no longer just a buzzword in film editing rooms — it is beginning to script, generate, and even direct visual storytelling. In the second part of our special series on AI filmmaking, hosts Anirban Chowdhury and Rajesh Naidu speak to acclaimed director Shakun Batra — the creative force behind Kapoor & Sons and Gehraiyaan, now experimenting with AI-powered...

India’s Online Gaming law, 2025 has jolted the country’s fast-growing gaming industry. The law bans real-money games while promoting e-sports and casual play, a shift that could transform a sector valued at over ₹30,000 crore. Host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with Vidushpat Singhania, managing partner at Krida legal and Rohit Agarwal, Founder - AlphaZegus Marketing to unpack the battles n...

In this episode of South Capital, the focus is on Tamil Nadu, India's manufacturing powerhouse and one of its most industrialized states. Known as the “Detroit of Asia” for its auto sector and the “Manchester of the South” for its textiles, Tamil Nadu plays a pivotal role in India’s GDP, exports, patents, and electronics manufacturing, including iPhone assembly. Host...

For months, India has felt the squeeze of China’s export chokehold on rare earth magnets vital for EVs, fertilizers key to food security, and raw materials that keep pharma running. Automakers faced stalled assembly lines, farmers braced for higher costs, and drugmakers feared supply disruptions. Now, with Prime Minister Modi set to visit China for the SCO summit, a narrow trade package is o...

Another week, another rulebook for India’s digital economy this time, a competition code. The Digital Competition Bill (DCB) would flip enforcement from ex-post litigation to ex-ante guardrails for “systemically significant” platforms, banning self-preferencing, data misuse against business users, coercive tying, and stealth blocks on interoperability under the CCI, not a new sup...

Naveen Tewari thrives on pivots and preempting market demand before it becomes obvious to everyone else. In this deep-dive with the founder and CEO of InMobi and Glance, host Anirban Chowdhury traces India’s earliest unicorn from its 2007 pivot from mKhoj (SMS search) to mobile advertising, SoftBank’s $200 million backing, and a “born-global” scale-up: InMobi today derives...

Telangana, India’s youngest state, is charting an ambitious path to become a trillion-dollar economy by leveraging its strengths in technology, AI, and skilled talent. In a candid conversation host Dia Rekhi talks with Industries and IT Minister Sridhar Babu to analyse how Hyderabad, already a global hub for tech giants, pharma leaders, and GCCs is driving growth into tier-2 and tier-3 citie...

AI in films is no longer a fringe experiment. It moved from a backstage assistant to calling the shots. In three years, Gen AI models have evolved from conjuring massive battle scenes in Lord of the Rings to making full fledged feature films through prompts. Questions of course remain on credibility and credits, but film makers like Darren Aronofsky are helming AI film projects too. In this heady...

In this episode, we dive into why foreign investors have been quietly pulling billions out of India’s stock markets even as they talk up the country’s growth potential. We break down the main drivers: stock prices are high compared to history and other Asian markets, corporate earnings growth has slowed, the rupee has weakened, and economic activity has lost some steam. And then came t...

Karnataka drives 65% of India’s aerospace and defence output, over half of its machine tools, and 60% of its biotech exports but much of that growth is concentrated in and around Bengaluru. This week, we unpack the state’s broader industrial ambitions and historic legacy from the Wadiyar dynasty’s investments in education to Asia’s first hydroelectric power in Mysore and th...

Virtual Reality in India has long been seen as a futuristic gaming gimmick flashy, expensive, and niche. But that’s changing. Host Anirban Chowdhury and ETs Rajesh Naidu talk to national award winning film maker Ram Madhvani (Neerja, Aarya) who is reimagining VR as a cultural and spiritual experience. His latest project? A five-minute immersive film on the Bhagavad Gita not for streaming, bu...