Millions of small business owners in India still do not know that they can get up to ₹5 lakh without pledging any collateral — and that the government has been running this facility for years. The problem is not that schemes do not exist — it is that most people never understand how to use … Read more
A 33.4% jump in net profit would be noteworthy for any listed company, but for a toll operator embedded in Dubai‘s daily commute, it says something specific about the city’s growth trajectory. Salik Company PJSC just gave shareholders more than profits — it handed them the entire second-half bottom line plus an exceptional bonus. The … Read more
If you have a savings account or a fixed deposit in a cooperative bank, there is a good chance you have wondered at some point whether your money is truly safe. The collapse of Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank in 2019 shook public confidence, and it forced regulators to rethink how urban cooperative banks … Read more
In the winter of 2019, Kamla Devi of Joshimath block in Chamoli district earned ₹1,200 for an entire season’s collection of wild jatamansi roots — a Himalayan herb that high-end wellness brands in Mumbai were retailing for ₹3,500 per kilogram. By 2026, she earns closer to ₹48,000 a season. The difference? A cooperative that decided … Read more
When roughly 40 research institutions share a trade fair floor with 20 start-ups and a growing cluster of AI-enabled production tools, something more than an exhibition is taking place. At Techtextil and Texprocess in Frankfurt am Main, the line between textile R&D and commercial manufacturing is being actively shortened. I’ve followed these twin fairs across … Read more
On a Monday morning in the Ramanagara Cocoon Market, the largest raw silk cocoon trading hub in Asia, a farmer named Manjunath from Channapatna taluk watches as his weekly harvest of bivoltine cocoons fetches ₹485 per kilogram — nearly ₹70 more than what he earned this time last year. He credits his local sericulture cooperative … Read more
In Niigata Prefecture, a rice farmer named Takeshi deposits his entire harvest income into a local cooperative bank branch, takes out a seasonal crop loan from the same counter, and buys his fertiliser from the cooperative store next door. He has never walked into a commercial bank in his life. Neither did his father. This … Read more
Twelve and a half million users didn’t find Aani — Aani found them, embedded quietly into the banking infrastructure most of them already use. That number, confirmed by Al Etihad Payments, now represents one of the fastest-growing instant payment networks in the Gulf. The UAE’s national instant payments platform has crossed a threshold that shifts … Read more
The women of Chamoli district had been picking wild brahmi from the hillsides for generations, selling it to middlemen for ₹12 per kilogram. When those same leaves arrived in wellness stores across Berlin and Amsterdam, they were priced at €45 for a small glass jar. That gap — staggering, almost grotesque in its proportions — … Read more
Posting a 12 per cent revenue lift in your first quarter as CEO is a reasonable way to silence early sceptics. For Henrique Braun, who stepped into the top role at The Coca-Cola Company after James Quincey’s departure, the numbers give him a platform — but they also set a high bar for everything that … Read more
