Who is going to buy all the shares that venture capital & private equity investors eventually need to sell? For years, the Indian startup narrative was dominated by capital deployment. Investors competed to discover the next unicorn, founders competed for larger funding rounds, and valuations became the shorthand for success. But the cycle has changed. The next phase is likely to be defined not by the availability of capital, but by the availability of liquidity. This is the

For thirty years, I have understood respect as recognising the dignity of another without surrendering my own. Yet the Dharmic ideas of ādara, mariyādai and praṇipāta challenge me to look beyond equality towards humility and reverence. My struggle is not with dignity, but with learning to bow without becoming submissive, question without arrogance, and recognise what is worthy of reverence. Perhaps respect is ultimately a discipline of the self.

Every GDP number gets scrutinized — rightly so, since it's a modelled estimate, not a cash register reading. But this quarter's 7.8% growth has a hard cross-check: GST collections, which cover nearly the entire economy except farm output, grew 14-15% for three straight months. When tax data, state-level activity, and corporate earnings all move together, that's no longer one model's assumption — it's evidence. Here's how the numbers line up.

"Every startup founder has a good idea — that's never the bottleneck. The real question is whether solving the problem creates enough economic impact to sustain a business. Two founders taught me this last month: one built an 'AI CFO' while seeking advice from human finance pros themselves; another, building a platform for teachers, had the courage to say it wasn't a startup — it was a nonprofit. Here's checklist item #1 for every founder."

Udaan has raised $2–2.5B over its lifetime — more than its current private valuation of roughly $0.8–1.3B, down from a $3.2B peak. Founders hold just 12.43% of the cap table. FY25 losses (₹1,055 cr) still exceed the latest equity round, revenue fell 20%, and an offshore bond default triggered insolvency proceedings in Singapore. The IPO push looks less like a growth story and more like investors engineering a documented exit at a marked-down price.

"Sam Bankman-Fried sat on a witness stand in a Manhattan federal courtroom, faced a jury, and offered the defence of a man who backed his car into a mailbox. Asked point blank if he defrauded anyone, he said no. Asked if he took customer funds, he said no. He conceded, almost generously, that he'd made 'a number of small mistakes and a number of large mistakes.' The biggest one, he explained, was not having a proper risk management team."

The hidden cost of the American Dream: a grandmother who's never held her 20-year-old grandson, an engineer a decade in with no green card, a father racing a November due date against a layoff clock. For Indians, the wait can now stretch past a lifetime. Maybe 1 in 10 truly "make it." The rest live provisional lives. It's time parents asked harder questions before handing kids a dream built for a different decade.

"If you're the parent of a gifted child, you already know the peculiar exhaustion of it. The kid solves a differential equation before breakfast & melts down over diagonally-cut toast. Turns out we've had a case study for this exact chaos for 5,000 years — his name is Krishna. He never micromanaged the Pandavas' talents. He watched, waited, & intervened exactly twice: when survival was at stake, and when someone's dignity was violated. Everything else? Even the dice games the

"ET Panache's viral story on a teenage 'AI startup founder' with a Burj Khalifa office ignores the one detail that matters: who actually paid for it. This critique argues the coverage conflates a parent-funded venture with a self-sustaining business, rewards spectacle over scrutiny, and misleads young readers about what real entrepreneurship requires. A pointed look at why financial journalism owes readers better due diligence — not just a dazzling headline." Lazy or greedy b

India's trading boom is creating a dangerous illusion of easy wealth. Influencers and fintech platforms increasingly portray trading as a shortcut to financial success, while SEBI data shows that over 90% of retail F&O traders lose money. The real cost extends beyond individuals to families, savings and aspirations, raising an urgent question: are we encouraging young Indians to create wealth—or merely to chase it?

The arrest of the former CEOs of Reliance Commercial Finance (RCFL) and Reliance Home Finance (RHFL) marks another significant escalation in the investigation into the alleged diversion of loans that reportedly caused losses of ₹7,623 crore to public sector banks. According to investigators, the case involves systematic diversion of funds through a network of entities and transactions that are now the subject of parallel scrutiny by the CBI and Enforcement Directorate. Viewed

The Foreign Exchange Management (Non-Debt Instruments) (Third Amendment) Rules, 2026, notified on 12 June 2026, represent a significant development in India's foreign investment regulatory framework. While the Amendment seeks to liberalize certain investment channels by expanding the category of eligible foreign investors, it simultaneously reinforces the government's ability to scrutinize investments involving ownership, control, or beneficial ownership with certain countrie

Foreign influence has become one of the defining governance challenges of the digital age. Across democracies, governments are increasingly concerned about the ability of foreign actors to shape public discourse through funding of media organizations, think tanks, advocacy groups, research institutions and digital platforms. India is no exception. As cross-border capital flows become more sophisticated, concerns about opaque funding structures, hidden beneficial ownership and

The unfolding investigations surrounding the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) have thrown up an uncomfortable question for India's enforcement architecture: how is it that senior executives are being arrested, interrogated, and chargesheeted while the group's principal promoter, Anil Ambani, remains largely outside the immediate prosecutorial spotlight in several of these proceedings? This is not an argument about guilt or innocence. The law must ultimately determi

There are some speaking engagements that leave you with a sense of accomplishment. Then there are those rare occasions that leave you with a sense of hope. My recent interaction with the gifted young participants of Lodestone 2026, organized by the Pravaha Foundation at IIIT Hyderabad, belonged firmly in the latter category. I am deeply grateful to the Pravaha Foundation for inviting me to contribute to a program that seeks to shape young minds at such a formative stage of li

Independence Becomes a Legal Fiction I. Background: A Governance Question That Should Never Have Been Necessary Indian corporate governance has spent the better part of two decades trying to strengthen the institution of the independent director. Every major corporate scandal—from Satyam to governance controversies involving listed entities across sectors—has reinforced one central lesson: minority shareholders need credible voices in the boardroom that are insulated from the

David vs Goliath in Indian Fitness: How Habuild’s Quiet Discipline Challenges Curefit’s Capital-Fuelled Empire

Political Theatre involving Congress and BJP Indian politics increasingly resembles less of an ideological battlefield and more of a sophisticated negotiation table — one where conflict is real, but so are incentives, trade-offs, and strategic accommodations. The recent dynamics involving All India Trinamool Congress, Indian National Congress, Mamata Banerjee and the Bharatiya Janata Party invite one such alternative interpretation. To be clear, this is not an assertion of fa

Travel wide - travel freely - caravan travel There’s something about Indian highways that doesn’t show up in brochures. It’s in the chai stops that turn into conversations. The unplanned detours. The quiet dignity of small towns that don’t try to impress you. Over the years, Shital and I have discovered that road travel in India isn’t just transit—it’s perspective. And yet, we’ve always felt one limitation:You’re never fully free. You’re always chasing the next hotel, the nex