Mishik Sharma

On 15 June, leading AI startup Sarvam announced that it has raised $234 million in the first tranche of its Series B fundraise,  led by HCLTech with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and Peak XV Partners. Sarvam is targeting a $300 million Series B round in total, and says that the proceeds will used to support R&D, expand compute capacity, and build full‑stack sovereign AI solutions. This funding round has reignited excitement, in news and social media alike, around India's artificial intelligence ambitions. As one of the country's most prominent AI startups, Sarvam is increasingly being viewed as a symbol of India's quest for sovereign AI capabilities. Similar enthusiasm accompanies every major AI funding announcement: India needs its own foundation models, its own AI champions, and its own technological alternatives to global platforms. This enthusiasm is understandable. Artificial intelligence is emerging as a foundational technology wit...

India's electronics economy is witnessing a striking contradiction. The country is producing and exporting record volumes of consumer electronics, particularly smartphones, increasingly rivaling China. More recently, several Indian electronics companies have announced plans to diversify into commercial, industrial, and defence electronics, further increasing future demand for critical materials. Anticipating this demand, the government is deploying significant diplomatic capital to secure supplies of lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, and other critical minerals through mining partnerships in Africa, South America, and Australia. Yet, at the same time, India generates an estimated 4.1 million metric tonnes of e-waste every year—the third-largest volume in the world—while formal, certified recycling channels recover less than five percent of it. This presents a fundamental paradox: India is searching overseas for resources that are already embedded in millions of discarded electr...

Every summer, tens of thousands of students across India travel to Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Gurugram, Ahmedabad, Delhi, and other economic hubs for summer internships.  Many of these young people are experiencing professional life away from home for the first time. They have successfully secured an opportunity. Yet a different challenge begins the moment the offer letter arrives. Where will they stay? How will they commute? Can they afford the city on a student stipend? Who will help them navigate a new workplace, a new city, and a new professional environment? India has spent years discussing employability, skilling, internships, and apprenticeships. Governments have launched programs, employers have expanded opportunities, and educational institutions increasingly encourage experiential learning. Yet far less attention has been paid to a fundamental question: How do young people physically access these opportunities once they are created? As India seeks to bui...

Introduction India may be witnessing the emergence of a new layer of economic infrastructure—one built not from factories, highways, ports, data centres, or universities, but from expertise itself. An Economic Times report published on 21 June points out this transformation. The report, citing data from staffing agency Flexing It, says that registrations of independent consultants on the platform have reportedly grown by nearly 290 percent since 2022. Monthly additions have increased from around 1,500 in FY24 to 3,000 in FY25 and more than 5,000 in FY26. The platform's network now exceeds 120,000 independent consultants, while demand for their services grew by approximately 60 percent year-on-year in FY26. At first glance, these numbers may appear to describe the expansion of consulting, freelancing, or portfolio careers. Yet they point toward something potentially more significant. Across India, experienced professionals are increasingly choosing to operate as independent expertis...

The extension of the US-Iran peace meeting in Switzerland — from a planned one-day ceremony to multi-day talks at the Bürgenstock resort — serves as a vivid reminder of diplomacy’s inherent fragility and complexity. The two brokers, Qatar and Pakistan, today jointly announced that "senior-level" discussions have concluded and that "technical-level" discussions will continue into the next few days to negotiate the details of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding. The brokers emphasized that the talks happened in a “positive and constructive atmosphere” and “encouraging progress” has been achieved.  The US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, remotely signed and electronically exchanged on 17 June, is not just an agreement to pause hostilities. Considered broadly, it is an attempt to address two interconnected but fundamentally different conflicts that have shaped the region for decades. The first is the US-Iran confrontation, centred on nuclear concerns, sanctions, ec...