Instant Finance Updates

Good news on the monsoon front! From a 40% deficit in June, the overall shortfall in rainfall now is just 15.5%. Some States, marked in red, still have a major deficit though. (FE)

Zepto's upcoming Initial Public Offering has been slashed to less than half its original plan. 9 months ago, the estimated valuation was $7 billion (₹60,000 crore). Now it's down to $3 billion (₹29,000 crore). (FE)

There's been a 4x increase, in 5 years, in the number of individuals who have an income of ₹100+ crore. In FY25, 576 individuals reported a gross total income of ₹100 crore or more, compared to 142, in FY21. (FE)

The numbers are moving from huge to obscenely large to ridiculous, now! Nvidia is in talks with OpenAI to build one of the world's largest computing centres. The Ohio data centre is likely to cost... $250 billion! (WSJ) Another publication put this figure at $500 billion!

A breakdown of executive perks of 1,500 US public companies shows a variety of benefits, personal security taking the largest share. A total of $600 million was spent by these companies. (WSJ) Does your company offer you any of these? Flipping the question: do you offer any of these to your employees?

August Set to Witness a Strong IPO Wave India's primary market is expected to witness a busy August, with more than two dozen companies preparing to launch their Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). Collectively, these companies are expected to raise around ₹35,000 crore, reflecting renewed momentum in the capital markets after a relatively subdued first half of the year.

If you have a healthy balance in your Employees Provident Fund account, you may be tempted to use that, instead of getting a home loan. Don't - say experts - it may end up costing you 5 times more! And your retirement corpus will have a severe setback! (FE)

British Coffee chain brand, Costa Coffee has shrunk its store count to 198 in FY26, down from 220 a year ago. This is the first decline in store count in five years. (BS)

UPI is here to stay, but Cash-on-Delivery (CoD) is not going away anytime soon. CoD payments account for 60% of e-commerce orders, while in Tier-2 cities it goes up to 75%. (FE) Is it because buyers don't trust sellers, or don't trust e-commerce platforms?

Stock market lovers, there's an IPO boom coming up, with 9 issues opening this week. More than a dozen firms will raise ₹25,000 crore in August. (FE)

The expiry of a three decades old World Trade Organisation agreement that allowed a duty-free electronic transmission of digital services is likely to upset global trade in such services. Countries could potentially impose duties as they please. Fortunately, India exports more digital services, than it imports. (BS)

Trump abruptly paused strikes on Iran. Iran reciprocated by halting its strikes. Let's hope diplomacy wins this time! (DH)

Back from the brink of extinction, the GI-tagged Rasabale Banana is making a slow and sure comeback. It's grown in the Nanjangud belt of Mysuru district of Karnataka. (TOI)

If you're walking, standing, sitting, or even sleeping on the pavement, and you get hit by a vehicle, it's the fault of the vehicle driver, says the Delhi High Court. (TOI)

The cybercrimes continue... in different forms. A 28-year old woman fell to a fake loan scam that cost her ₹48.5 lakhs. (TOI)

Remember that $81 billion deal where Paramount Skydance beat Netflix to get Warner Bros. Discovery? Well, it's stalled till the middle of next year! (WSJ)

The crisis in West Asia is far from over. Both sides have been regularly striking a number of targets across the region. (WSJ)

Measles cases in the US in the first seven months of 2026, have reached a decade high! MMR vaccination rates among kindergarten kids have been falling in some US States like Utah and South Carolina, contributing to a majority of these cases. (WSJ)

Meet George Yancopoulous, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of the 4 decade old, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. He has 1,000 patents to his name and has decided to give away the latest invention for free... a gene therapy that restores hearing to children born of a rare genetic disease.(WSJ)

The EU has fined Alphabet's Google $1 billion for breaching its digital competition rule. It said Google unfairly favoured its own services on its search engine and also restricted app developers from steering users to go outside Google Play Store. (WSJ)