The Morning Brief

The future of India’s most ambitious overseas port project hangs in the balance. With the US reinstating its sanctions for Iran’s Chabahar Port, India faces a strategic dilemma: risk Washington’s ire or abandon years of investment, regional influence, and its only land route to Afghanistan that bypasses Pakistan. In this episode, Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to ET’s P Manoj and Arun Gupta, former Managing Director of India Ports Global to break down how Chabahar went from a symbol of India’s westward ambitions to a geopolitical tightrope with ports dismantled, directors resigning, legal opinions sought, and China waiting in the wings. What does this mean for India’s trade corridors, its ties with Iran, and its standing in West Asia?

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?, How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi–Xi in Focus and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

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Vineet Nayar, the former HCL Technologies CEO who once flipped corporate hierarchies on their head is now reimagining classrooms at scale through Sampark Foundation. In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury and ET’s tech reporter Beena Parmar talk to Nayar on the big questions: Is AI truly disrupting India’s $100-billion IT industry, or is it just cost-cutting in a new avatar? Why does India lead in public digital innovation yet falter at building breakthrough global products? And can the education system shift from producing knowledge workers to nurturing real problem solvers? Drawing on career-defining inflection points, Nayar reflects on the future of technology and education in India. From layoffs and AI hype to policy and innovation gaps, the conversation offers candid insights into how crises can be converted into opportunities and how both boardrooms and classrooms must evolve to keep pace.

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

You can follow Beena Parmar on her Linkedin, Twitter profiles and read her Newspaper Articles.

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?, How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi–Xi in Focus and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tata Capital is about to drop 2025’s biggest IPO. In this episode of The Morning Brief, we bring you exclusive comments from Rajiv Sabharwal, MD & CEO of Tata Capital on the company’s plan around its ₹15,512 crore markets debut. Host Dia Rekhi also speaks to Tarun Singh, MD of Highbrow Securities and IPO expert, to unpack the company’s landmark listing set to be among India’s largest ever.
The conversation explores the strategy behind expanding retail participation, the challenges from the merger with the vehicle financing arm, valuation pressures, and fundraising strategies.

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You can follow Dia Rekhi on social media: Linkedin & Twitter

You can follow Sangita Mehta on her social media: Twitter and Linkedin

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?, How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi–Xi in Focus and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Elizabeth Reid is one of Google’s most powerful women. She also has one of its most challenging jobs. At a time when AI is reshaping how people seek information, as standalone LLMs become their foremost information sources, friends and therapists, Reid, Head of Search, has to constantly grapple with the challenge that it’s no longer the only answer to all the world’s questions And yet, Google’s search clicks are up and more qualified, people are asking detailed questions and, as she insists, the story of the blue link is far from over. In this episode, she talks to host Anirban Chowdhury about why Google isn’t facing an innovators’ dilemma yet, although it is trying to constantly improve the search experience, how Google and its searchers now talk differently to each other, whether there is a gap in gauging their intent and setting context, if agentic AI is truly an innovation worth chasing. She also talks about why the tech behemoth’s latest innovations must come to India weeks after the US, compared to two years earlier and how, soon, some of them might come to India first.  

Tune in.

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?, How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi–Xi in Focus and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A quiet race is on to give India its own AI voice. From call-centre automation to defence and legal systems, Abhishek Upperwal of Soket Labs and journalist Swathi Radhakrishnan tell us why AI trained only on Western, English-heavy data cannot meet India’s needs. Translation isn’t enough; models must “think” in Hindi, Tamil or Marathi to capture nuance and reduce bias. The government’s IndiaAI mission, with nearly ₹10,000 crore in funding, is catalysing startups to build these Indic models. But their biggest bottleneck is data. Only a sliver of the world’s open datasets are in Indian languages, and even public archives like Doordarshan take time to unlock. Startups are scrambling crowdsourcing voices, licensing publishing-house content, generating synthetic text and negotiating with ministries to reach the 15–20 trillion high-quality tokens needed for a world-class foundation model. In this episode Host Anirban Chowdhury, ET’s Swathi Moorthy and Soket AI’s, founder, Abhishek Upperwal try to answer the following questions:

1. What makes sovereign, Indic-first AI critical for India’s economy and security?
2. How are innovators overcoming the huge shortage of quality language data?
3. Can low-cost, DeepSeek-style methods help India build frugal yet powerful models?
4. Where will the commercial payoffs voice AI, regional apps, enterprise tools arrive first? 

Tune in.

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

You can follow Swathi Moorthy on her social media: Twitter and LinkedIn and also read Newspaper Article

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?, How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi–Xi in Focus and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when gold, long seen as a timeless store of value, begins to redefine its place in global finance? In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury is joined by ET’s banking editor Sangita Mehta and Ritesh Jain, founder of Pinetree Macro and a leading voice in global wealth and finance, to explore the forces behind gold’s resurgence from central banks shifting reserves away from the dollar to the rise of dual trade settlement systems splitting along geopolitical lines.
With prices recently hitting a record high of $3,791 an ounce more than double since the Russia-Ukraine war and India now the sixth-largest holder of gold after China, the conversation probes what this surge really signals.

As economic paradigms shift, the discussion raises a pressing question: is gold moving from commodity to cornerstone in the architecture of global trade and policy?

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You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

You can follow Sangita Mehta on her social media: Twitter and Linkedin

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Tariffs trump trade, Health Hazards in your Grocery Bag, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Explaining India’s Record FDI Freefall and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Trump’s sudden $100,000 H-1B visa fee has shaken the U.S. tech landscape and left Indian IT giants scrambling. With renewals, contracts, and billions of dollars in deals on the line, what does this mean for companies, employees, and the future of global talent flows? Host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with ET’s tech reporter Beena Parmar, immigration law expert and founder of LawQuest Poorvi Chothani, and political scientist Ranabir Samaddar to place this move in the larger anti-immigration story developing in the west.

How are new rules and hidden costs from visa integrity fees to tougher naturalization checks reshaping the lives of students, professionals, and families? And at a deeper level, is today’s anti-immigration wave about economics, or about identity, race, and who gets to belong?

Tune in.

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?, How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi–Xi in Focus and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

 Credits: New York Post, make.europe.great.again.ty,  louisova

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The US Federal Reserve has delivered its first rate cut since December 2024, trimming the benchmark rate by 25 basis points and hinting at two more cuts this year. Markets had expected the move, but Jerome Powell’s cautious tone on sticky inflation, slowing growth and rising job market risks left investors with more questions than answers. In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury is joined by ET’s Markets Editor Nishanth Vasudevan to decode the implications. What does Powell’s “risk management” cut really signal? How did global markets from US treasuries and the dollar to emerging markets react? And most importantly, what does this mean for India: can foreign flows revive? Will Sensex and Nifty hit record highs? Or should investors look to gold and bonds for safer returns?

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?, How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi–Xi in Focus and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

Credit: USA TODAY

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Reliance is making its boldest leap yet into artificial intelligence. Backed by gigawatt-scale data centres, alliances with global giants like Nvidia, Google and Meta, and the unmatched power of data from 450 million Jio users, Mukesh Ambani wants to position India as an AI builder, not just a consumer. 

In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury is joined by Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint Research, and ET’s AI expert Himanshi Lohchab to decode what “Reliance Intelligence” really means. Can Ambani turn this vision into reality and build AI “for everyone, everywhere”? We dive into Reliance’s grand plans for cloud infrastructure, affordable AI services for small businesses, vernacular voice assistants, enterprise solutions, and even smart-city applications. Can India produce enough AI talent to power this ambition? Will execution challenges and global competition from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud derail the vision? Or could this finally give India its own AI infrastructure and a credible homegrown alternative to U.S. tech giants?

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?, How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi–Xi in Focus and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

Credits: moneycontrol, CNBC-TV 18

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

India’s semiconductor dream is taking shape in Assam, where Tata Electronics is building a ₹27,000 crore chip assembly and testing facility. But this high-tech mission has run into a very unusual roadblock: wild elephants and snakes. In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with ET’s Dia Rekhi joined by noted veterinarian popularly known as the 'Elephant Man of Asia' Dr. K.K. Sarma, to unpack the clash between cutting-edge technology and nature. From elephant herds that can cause damaging ground vibrations, to snakes that spooked construction workers, the story reveals how Tata is building elephant-proof walls and even employing snake rescuers to keep the project on track. The conversation also zooms out to a larger question: how do industries balance mega-investments in technology with the ecological realities of the land they’re built on? With anecdotes of animals disrupting industries worldwide from moths in computers to monkeys causing blackouts, this episode examines why India’s semiconductor mission must be not only technologically advanced but also ecologically future-proof.

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Tariffs trump trade, Health Hazards in your Grocery Bag, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Explaining India’s Record FDI Freefall and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.