Explained: India’s Startup Ecosystem 2025
- India
- October 24, 2025

RBI’s latest discussion paper shows that India’s digital payments challenge is no longer only about cyber-security. Instead, it is about frauds that manipulate users into authorising transfers themselves. Accordingly, this ABC Live critical analysis examines the data, the four proposed safeguards, and how RBI’s 17 consultation questions should be answered.
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India has added new repositories under Section 39 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. This ABC Live analysis explains what the move means for biodiversity records, research access, legal tracking, and benefit-sharing in India.
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The 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam has crossed a historic threshold in India’s nuclear energy programme. Still, the milestone needs careful reading. It confirms the start of controlled reactor operation. By itself, though, it does not prove long-term commercial generation, economic viability, or fleet-scale breeder deployment.
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Mission Karmayogi Bharat has built a large civil-service learning system across India. However, the public record still proves training scale more clearly than citizen-level service gains, behaviour change, or a clear fall in avoidable government-generated disputes.
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India’s defence exports reached a new high of ₹38,424 crore in FY 2025–26. The rise is real. However, the deeper story is more complex. DPSUs drove most of the jump, private-sector growth stayed modest, buyer-level details remain incomplete, and the product mix behind the surge is still not fully public.
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CBDT’s latest milestone of 219 Advance Pricing Agreements in FY 2025–26 and 1,034 APAs in total is more than a record. It shows that India is building a stronger transfer-pricing certainty system for multinational groups. Yet the three main tools in that system, Unilateral APAs (UAPAs), Bilateral APAs (BAPAs), and Safe Harbour Rules, do not offer the same kind of help. One reduces tax disputes in India. One gives better protection where two countries are involved. One makes compliance easier through fixed rules. So, the real issue is not how many agreements India has signed. The real issue is whether the system gives the right mix of certainty, speed, and protection against double taxation.
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