Stories
The story behind the headline, in plain English
Sourced write-ups on business, startups, the Indian economy, tech and the world. Prefer video? Qrio turns stories like these into one-minute videos.
Latest stories
Finance
Oura wants $16 billion for a ring, and one number explains why
Oura filed its S-1 publicly on September 3, heading for Nasdaq under the ticker OURA, seeking up to $3 billion at a valuation above $16 billion. That is about 45% more than the roughly $11 billion its late-2025 Series E implied. Revenue for the nine months to June 30 was $1.21 billion, up 74%, and unusually for a hardware company going public, it made money: net income of about $61 million. But the figure that justifies a software-style price tag is buried in the membership data, and it is the reason a ring is not being valued like a gadget.
9 September 2026 · 4 min read
India Macro
India's biggest stock exchange is finally going public and it has to list on its rival
On September 4, the Securities and Exchange Board of India cleared the National Stock Exchange to launch its IPO, ending a wait of nearly a decade. The issue is an offer for sale of 14.89 crore shares, about 6% of the company, worth roughly Rs 30,000 crore. That would make it the largest public issue in Indian history, ahead of Hyundai Motor India's Rs 27,870 crore in October 2024, and implies a valuation above Rs 5 lakh crore. Subscription is expected to open September 15. The shares will trade on the BSE, the rival NSE has spent thirty years leaving behind.
7 September 2026 · 4 min read
India Macro
India grew at 7.8% and its stock market shrugged
India's economy expanded 7.8% year on year in the June quarter, comfortably beating both the Reserve Bank of India's 7% projection and a market consensus of about 7.1%. That is a strong number for an economy absorbing a six-month oil shock. The stock market's response has been a shrug. On Thursday the Sensex fell 417.49 points to 76,152.86 and the Nifty 50 slipped to 23,873.45, after opening higher and briefly crossing 24,000. Foreign investors have pulled $24.6 billion out of Indian equities this year. The index and the economy are not the same animal.
4 September 2026 · 3 min read
Business
Unacademy sold for 94% less than what it was once worth. Its CEO said so himself
India's edtech firm Unacademy has officially been acquired by rival upGrad in an all-stock deal closing at just over $200 million (₹19.55 billion), roughly 94% below Unacademy's peak private valuation of $3.44 billion in 2021. Unacademy had raised nearly $880 million across 13 funding rounds from SoftBank, Tiger Global, and General Atlantic. Co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal didn't dress it up: "We raised at a peak, but sold at a fraction of that." No layoffs are planned for Unacademy's roughly 1,000 employees. The deal closes a five-year arc for one of India's most-funded startups, and it began with the opposite problem entirely.
3 September 2026 · 3 min read
Tech & AI
Apple picked an engineer to run the company right when everyone else is picking AI talkers
Tim Cook stepped down as Apple's CEO on September 1, 2026, after 15 years in the role, becoming executive chairman. John Ternus, who joined Apple in 2001 and has spent 25 years rising through hardware engineering to senior vice president, is the new CEO. Cook said Ternus "has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor." Under Cook, Apple became the world's most valuable company multiple times over and launched the Apple Watch, AirPods, and Vision Pro. Reporting on the handover frames Ternus's central mandate in two words: focus on AI.
2 September 2026 · 3 min read
India Macro
Modi, Xi, and Putin shared a stage today. What they didn't share matters more
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin are together in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for the 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit on August 31 and September 1, 2026, marking 25 years since the SCO's founding. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are also attending. Modi said he wants to "advance India's vision for the region, focusing on security, connectivity and opportunity," calling for a region "free from terrorism, separatism and extremism." A one-on-one Modi-Putin meeting is confirmed. A Modi-Xi bilateral has not been. The gap between who meets whom on the sidelines is where the real story sits.
1 September 2026 · 3 min read
Geopolitics
A melting glacier just erased Nepal's escape route from India
A glacier collapse near the Nepal-Tibet border on August 26, 2026 triggered flash floods that have killed at least 390 people, with more than 1,500 still missing across Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region. The most important part: floodwaters wiped out Gyirong Port, the border crossing that handled nearly a third of all China-Nepal trade, worth roughly $600 million a year. Chinese Premier Li Qiang personally visited the disaster site. The death toll keeps climbing, but the quieter casualty is a decade-long Nepali plan that just washed away with it.
31 August 2026 · 4 min read
Business
Sachin Bansal ran his fintech alone for eight years before taking anyone's money
Navi, the Bengaluru fintech founded by Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, raised $100 million from Prosus at a roughly $1.3 billion valuation, its first institutional funding round in eight years of operation, TechCrunch reported on August 19, 2026. Bansal had personally bankrolled Navi since founding it in 2018. The company's UPI app processed 947 million transactions worth about ₹483 billion (~$5.05 billion) in July 2026 alone, and its lending arm carries roughly ₹130 billion (~$1.4 billion) in assets. Navi is now preparing an IPO targeting about $2 billion, after abandoning an earlier attempt in 2023.
29 August 2026 · 3 min read
Geopolitics
Canada just matched Trump's tariffs dollar for dollar, and it's not backing down
Canada will hit the United States with retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on nearly 700 products starting September 8, 2026, doubling its existing steel and aluminum tariffs to match new US duties. The move answers President Donald Trump's 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian goods, including wine, dairy, furniture, and cement, that took effect August 22. Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will match Washington "dollar for dollar." Talks reportedly collapsed partly over US demands touching Quebec's language and culture. Two of the world's most integrated trading partners are now taxing each other like rivals.
28 August 2026 · 3 min read
India Macro
India is quietly luring $65 billion from NRIs before a deadline nobody's talking about
India's foreign exchange reserves climbed $9.9 billion to $716.9 billion in the week ended August 14, 2026, their highest level in six months, largely on the back of a special RBI deposit scheme for Non-Resident Indians. Under a swap window the central bank opened on June 8, 2026, banks can now offer NRIs up to 7.10% interest on FCNR(B) foreign currency deposits, tax-free in India, and it has worked: $65.4 billion flowed in through August 21. The window, which absorbs banks' currency-hedging costs so they can pass on higher rates, closes on August 31, 2026, giving NRIs only days left to lock in before rates likely drop back down.
27 August 2026 · 3 min read
Finance
Gold just had its best month in years, and governments are buying more than anyone else
Gold surged from roughly $4,000 an ounce in early August 2026 to $4,633.90, a monthly gain of about 15%, its best run in years, driven by cooling US inflation data, a weakening dollar, and the US national debt crossing $40 trillion. But the more telling number is who's buying: central banks purchased a net 288.9 tonnes of gold in the second quarter of 2026, up 62% from a year earlier and the strongest Q2 on record, according to the World Gold Council, and they kept buying even as prices fell for part of that quarter. UBS commodity analyst Giovanni Staunovo projects gold could reach $5,400 within 12 months.
26 August 2026 · 3 min read
Business
Walmart beat every number that matters and still had its worst day in four years
On August 20, 2026, Walmart's stock fell about 9%, its worst single-day drop in more than four years, despite beating earnings estimates with adjusted profit of $0.81 a share on revenue of $187.94 billion, up 6% year over year. The reason: US comparable sales grew just 2.6%, the weakest pace since 2020, as CEO John Furner admitted "customers tell us they're still feeling some pressure." Part of the profit beat came from a one-time $2.9 billion tariff refund. Underneath a good quarter sat a warning about the American shopper that the headline numbers almost hid.
25 August 2026 · 4 min read
Business
All 27 storiesDeals, strategy and the companies behind the headlines
- Unacademy sold for 94% less than what it was once worth. Its CEO said so himself
- Sachin Bansal ran his fintech alone for eight years before taking anyone's money
- Walmart beat every number that matters and still had its worst day in four years
- A 27-year-old high school dropout just raised $1 billion to mass-produce nuclear reactors for AI
- OpenAI burning $14 billion a year is racing to go public before 'Anthropic' goes first
Geopolitics
All 14 storiesHow power, trade and conflict shape the world
- A melting glacier just erased Nepal's escape route from India
- Canada just matched Trump's tariffs dollar for dollar, and it's not backing down
- India just realised the fastest way to need China less is to buy more from it
- America nearly launched its biggest attack since World War Two, over a deal Iran says doesn't exist
- China is secretly shipping missiles to Iran through a Hong Kong shell company, while playing peacemaker
India Macro
All 19 storiesThe Indian economy, policy and what it means for you
- India's biggest stock exchange is finally going public and it has to list on its rival
- India grew at 7.8% and its stock market shrugged
- Modi, Xi, and Putin shared a stage today. What they didn't share matters more
- India is quietly luring $65 billion from NRIs before a deadline nobody's talking about
- India promised the world $1 trillion in exports this year. It fell $150 billion short
Tech & AI
All 22 storiesTechnology, AI and the businesses building them
- Apple picked an engineer to run the company right when everyone else is picking AI talkers
- An AI solved ten decades old math problems for the price of a laptop. Mathematicians still won't call it settled
- A court fined Meta $942 million, and the fine is the least important part of the ruling
- AMD is paying Anthropic, to use it's chips and the payment is of $5B
- China built an AI model that beats America's best and Washington called it stolen
Finance
All 4 storiesMarkets, money and the numbers that matter
- Oura wants $16 billion for a ring, and one number explains why
- Gold just had its best month in years, and governments are buying more than anyone else
- America's debt just crossed $40 trillion, and almost nobody in Washington wants to talk about it
- The global economy is splitting into a two speed machine where artificial intelligence value chains decide which nations escape a recession