Good morning. It has been a week of big, deliberate policy moves out of Delhi, the kind that take years to show up in your phone bill or your job prospects rather than making a splash overnight. Markets held their ground on Wednesday even as tensions abroad kept traders cautious through the session.
In today's newsletter: the Cabinet's Rs 2.19 lakh crore bet on chips and phones.
Closing levels · 2026-07-15
Sensex 77,185.43 UP 130.49 |
Nifty 50 24,074.85 UP 26.45 |
USD/INR 96.32 RUPEE DOWN 16p |
Brent Crude $85.13 UP 0.47% |
Benchmarks gave up most of an early rally, with the Sensex surging more than 590 points before profit-booking in financials pared the gains, while the rupee slipped as crude firmed on lingering West Asia jitters.
Cabinet clears Rs 2.19 lakh crore push for chips and phone manufacturing
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved seven decisions worth Rs 2,19,353 crore, headlined by Semicon 2.0, the government's next phase of its semiconductor push, and a fresh Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme.
Semicon 2.0 carries an outlay of Rs 1,27,500 crore and widens the first phase's narrow focus on fabs to chip design, machinery and materials, assembly and testing facilities, and talent creation. The Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme, running from FY27 to FY31 with an allocation of Rs 62,500 crore, offers incentives of 2.25 to 5 percent on eligible sales of phones made in India.
Industry body ICEA estimates the two schemes together could generate up to 5 lakh direct and 15 lakh indirect jobs over the coming years, a figure the government will be judged against closely given how slowly the first Semicon India programme moved from announcement to actual chips.
This is India's second big swing at building a real chipmaking base, after the first Semicon India programme struggled to move fabs from announcement to construction at the pace ministers promised. Widening the net to design, machinery and packaging is a bet that a broader ecosystem succeeds where a narrower one stalled.
The same Cabinet meeting quietly cleared a National Investment Policy for Urea, aimed at cutting India's reliance on imported fertiliser through new gas-based manufacturing units. It got a fraction of the attention the chip announcement did, but it matters just as much to farm input costs in a country that still runs largely on subsidised urea.
Breaking.exe
India's newest unicorn. Indian AI coding startup Emergent raised $130 million in a Series C round that values it at $1.5 billion, a five-fold jump in just six months and a sign of how much money is chasing India's AI coding tools. |
Nuclear plant data leak. A ransomware group calling itself World Leaks has posted thousands of files relating to the Kudankulam nuclear plant on the dark web after breaching a contractor's servers, prompting the Nuclear Power Corporation and India's CERT-In to open an investigation. |
Hero doubles down on Ather. Hero MotoCorp will invest up to Rs 1,000 crore more in Ather Energy through a preferential issue, taking its stake in the EV scooter maker to nearly 31 percent as Ather funds a new factory and pays down debt. |
Pangaea Revisited
China's growth wobble. China missed its own growth target for the first time since Covid, even as exports jumped 27 percent from a year earlier on booming AI hardware demand and a rush to beat expected US tariffs, while property and industrial investment kept sliding. |
Hasina's return plan. Sheikh Hasina, who has been sheltering in India since the protests that ousted her government in August 2024, has told Reuters she plans to return to Bangladesh in December to face trial, even though the country's war crimes tribunal sentenced her to death in absentia last November. |
Ukraine's bloody week. Russian strikes killed 12 people and injured 90 across Ukraine overnight, with Odesa hit by missiles for a fifth straight day and Sumy's civilian areas struck by guided bombs. |
Also, Also, Also
Congo's Ebola crisis. Ebola is spreading faster in eastern Congo than health workers can track it, with confirmed deaths now past 700, a reminder of how quickly an outbreak can outrun containment efforts anywhere. |
Spain reaches the final. Spain beat France 2-0 in the World Cup semifinal, with Mikel Oyarzabal and Pedro Porro on the scoresheet, to reach their first final since 2010. |
Insurers post strong Q1. HDFC Life posted an 11.9 percent rise in net profit to Rs 611 crore for the June quarter, as premium income grew 14.4 percent, part of a broader double-digit earnings season for India's life insurers. |