The tea category faces multiple challenges. Mass segments face down-trading and intense regional competition that limit pricing flexibility. In this environment, success will hinge on cost agility, steady premiumisation, and wide reach across channels. Brands that balance innovation with affordability and maintain wide distribution while managing volatility will define leadership in India’s evolving tea landscape.
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- Navigating India’s Tea Market Challenges
- The Economic Times Global Manufacturing Conclave
- KPMG Global private company CEO outlook
- CII CFO Roundtable
- Historic labour reform: Four labour codes now effective
- Bengaluru Tech Summit
- Earth Summit
- Shaping India’s healthcare workforce for the digital era
- AI-Powered Transformation in the Energy
- Aligning India's energy evolution with resilience and reforms
- Karnataka Annual CFO Conclave 2025
- AI will drive steady, long-term growth for IT and consulting
- The Innovation Edge: Driving the Next Wave of Banking with Agentic AI
- Centre to intensify advance-level exploration of critical miniral blocks
- Digital mining: Transforming the mining value chain
- S Sathish
- Nikhil Patil
India has made significant progress in reshaping its manufacturing landscape over the past decade, but deeper technological and ecosystem transformation is needed to compete with global leaders. While the top quartile of Indian manufacturers shows reasonable capability, a significant portion of companies are far below the desired digital maturity. Without widespread adoption of Industry 4.0, automation and AI-enabled systems, India risks losing competitiveness to countries that scaled digitalisation much earlier.
Nikhil Patil
Partner, C&O-Commercial-CM&LS
KPMG in India
The India advantage in scale, cost, and capability for the world
India has always had the ingenuity and talent; what has changed is the alignment of global demand, domestic modernisation and a greater appetite for investment in capability. However, India cannot claim global competitiveness unless its tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers rise on quality, compliance, and technology.
Private company CEOs are proving that resilience and foresight are critical in today’s volatile landscape. Instead of reacting to disruption, they are actively redefining their business models. The findings highlight that these leaders see technology and innovation, particularly AI, as central to driving sustainable growth. Their confidence positions private enterprises at the forefront of adaptability and long-term value creation.
- Ummehaani
- Sumit Kapoor
Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) has traditionally been fragmented and siloed across departments, sometimes reduced to check-in-the-box compliance. As supply chains are more interconnected and interdependent today, by integrating ESG, regulatory, reputational, cyber and financial risk parameters into a unified framework, organisations can move from reactive to predictive risk management. However, challenges remain: data quality and availability, integration with legacy systems, regulatory compliance and explainability, and change management. Overcoming these hurdles with Artificial Intelligence makes it possible to connect the dots across all risk types, so companies can stop playing catch-up and start leading with confidence, trust, and adaptability.
Businesses today face rapid, unpredictable changes: new products, regulatory shifts, talent competition, ESG, and tech transformation. The pace of “unknown unknowns” or “Black Swan events” is accelerating at an unprecedented pace. Naturally, traditional risk models find it difficult to keep up with that pace as they assume stability and predictability in businesses and operating landscape. AI is emerging as a new risk nervous system helping with fraud detection, cyber defence, supply chain resilience and more. Future operating model of risk management must consider the four-dimensional lens of probability, severity, interconnectedness, and velocity; which helps with real-time intelligence and simulation of multiple futures.
At KPMG we continue to assist our clients stay ahead of the curve through our AI led risk management capabilities – converting noise to signals and doubts to trust.
The Government of India had introduced transformational reforms to simplify and modernise labour laws by enacting the four Labour codes almost 5 years back. An impactful step in that direction has been taken by making it effective from today – 21 November 2025. This move rationalises 29 existing laws and aligns India’s labour ecosystem with global standards.
What are few key aspects?
- Mandatory appointment letters for all workers: promoting formal employment
- Universal social security coverage: including gig & platform workers
- Minimum wages for all: statutory right for every worker
- Mandatory for employer to provide timely wages
- Women empowerment: night shift allowed with safety measures
- ESIC coverage and benefits extended to PAN-India for establishments with employment strength of 10 employees
- Single registration & license: reducing compliance burden
- Free annual health check-ups: for specified workers above 40 years
These reforms empower workers, boost employment, and simplify compliance, paving the way for a future-ready workforce and resilient industries under Aatmanirbhar Bharat.
Deepening Techno-Functional Excellence - How U.S. GCCs Are Evolving from Enablement to Innovation
Techno-functional excellence will define the next chapter of GCC evolution, shifting our role from pure enablement to true innovation. The combination of deep sector expertise with technology as the foundational engine of transformation allows GCCs to anchor their work in core business domains and deliver impact that is both broader in scale and sharper in outcomes. This is how GCCs move from supporting the enterprise to shaping its future.
Sidharth Ravishankar
Partner, C&O-FS
KPMG in India
Rural Finance & Credit Acceleration
Access to timely and well-priced credit is critical to propel the rural economy. Despite lender availability, structural challenges to borrower data, simplified processes, and last-mile delivery are limiting granular credit growth. With strong policy intent, alternative data points (household score, image-based patterns, satellite information), and digital infrastructure, we are well poised to make transformative changes to boost rural credit and consequentially accelerate the rural growth engine.
Forward-looking healthcare organisations are institutionalising digital learning through in-house academies, simulation labs, and collaborations with edtech partners and GCCs. The focus is on ‘learning in flow,’ helping clinicians and administrators gain digital confidence while on the job and seamlessly integrate technology into care workflows. Many organisations are now linking digital competency with career progression, signalling that digital readiness is a core part of healthcare excellence.
I've witnessed numerous shifts in the energy industry. However, the current era, driven by artificial intelligence, is truly transformative. From optimising complex operations and enhancing resource management to accelerating scientific research and reimagining business models, AI is fundamentally reshaping how we approach energy.
The future of exploration in India will be digital data-led, smarter.
India holds over three million square kilometers of sedimentary basins still to be fully understood. Moving from underexplored acreage to integrated, data-rich subsurface intelligence will be key to unlocking this potential. Digitalisation and advanced analytics are already reshaping exploration workflows — improving accuracy, reducing cycle times, and strengthening cost efficiency. This journey will also demand deeper collaboration. Geoscientists, data specialists, engineers, global partners, startups, and academia must jointly create solutions that reflect India’s geological and energy context.
Equally, we need to empower talent and break silos. The next breakthroughs will come from younger professionals who are encouraged to experiment, challenge assumptions, and innovate with speed. Ultimately, the move from rock to cloud is not just technological — it reflects a mindset shift where exploration evolves from resource extraction to sustainable, future-ready energy development.
India’s upstream story is being rewritten with data, technology, talent, and shared ambition.
Over the past few decades, the finance function has undergone a profound transformation, evolving from a custodian of numbers to a strategic partner that drives growth, insight, and innovation. Gone are the days when finance merely reported the past; today, it is shaping the future.
AI is no longer just a tool for efficiency. It has become the engine powering this transformation. Indian enterprises are embedding AI into their core financial strategies by unifying data across ERP and CRM systems, applying advanced analytics, and fostering a culture of digital fluency. CFOs are using AI and machine learning to move from reactive reporting to predictive and prescriptive insights, from manual processes to intelligent automation, and from a focus on cost control to one on value creation.
As adoption scales responsibly, finance leaders are unlocking new sources of enterprise value while redefining the role of finance as a driver of business resilience and inclusive growth. This transformation is helping position India as a trusted global hub for AI-led financial innovation and progress.
AI transformation is probably easier because there’s now a clear understanding of where it’s headed, how to leverage and extract value from agentic AI and, eventually, autonomous agents. The roadmap is visible. What creates challenges, however, is unpredictability, deciding whether to invest in one sector over another when tariffs, supply chains, and global conditions remain uncertain.
Most banking institutions already have analytics and process automation. The next phase is decision autonomy, where systems learn, act, and adapt in real time.
Banks can consider three key models of AI adoption:
- Smart Overlays – deploying AI agents over existing systems to improve efficiency.
- Agents by Design – re-engineering processes and modernising legacy platforms.
- Autonomous Networks – enabling multiple agents to plan, reason, and act collaboratively.
Agentic AI demands observability. You must monitor how agents behave and make decisions. Decision intelligence must be built responsibly, with architecture, explainability, and ethics at its core.
The G3 stage is a prospecting phase, so there is lower confidence on the critical minerals resources estimation and associated economic feasibility. In case of major minerals like coal or iron ore, miners have had years of operational experience but it is not the case with critical minerals, and hence the confidence level around such minerals resources and the overall economic construct needs to be greater to secure interest from investors.
Moving to a G2 (general exploration) level would significantly improve bidders confidence on the resources estimates, enabling wider and quality participation in critical minerals mines auctions. However, exploration alone will not resolve structural challenges. In cases like the clay-form lithium in Jammu and Kashmir, challenges extend beyond exploration to technical and operational hurdles. Extracting and refining lithium (to battery grade) commercially requires suitable technologies and facilities within India to realise its full value.
Advancing towards sustainability: The emergence of green mining technologies and practices
The Indian mining industry has been embracing greenmining technologies and practices – from electrification and automation to regenerative and water-efficient solutions – to drive sustainablity across operations and supply chains. The star rating system instituted by the Ministry of Mines, Govt of India (MoM) through Indian Bureau (IBM) for implementation of Sustainable Development Framework (SDF) has been working as an excellent impetus in this regard.
A more concerted effort to resolve challenges around efficient resource utilisation by:
- promoting beneficiation of low-grade ore,
- adoption of renewable/hybrid energy sources,
- mine closures as per approved plan through policy guidelines, and
- adoption of global best practices
can drive this mission towards sustainability even more strongly, reinforcing the need for collaborative innovation and ESG integration in mining.
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