DayStarter

Market snapshot

Markets shut today: Indian equities are closed on Friday, 2 October for Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti. This edition carries the close of Thursday, 1 October 2026.

Equities: Thursday close

Indian equities fell again on Thursday. The Nifty 50 opened 76 points lower at 22,544, reached a high of 22,611 and a low of 22,217, and closed at 22,421.95, down 0.88%. The index never traded above Wednesday’s close.

The Nifty moved below 22,500 after noon, fell towards 22,300 around 12:40 PM and touched its intraday low near 22,215 around 2 PM. It then recovered more than 200 points, but still closed around 122 points below its opening level.

Broader weakness was linked to stronger FII selling, weak auto sales affecting major index stocks, a softer rupee and rising bond yields. The Sensex closed at 71,909.69, down 570.59 points or 0.79%.

The Nifty fell for an eighth consecutive week, its longest weekly losing streak since 2001. The Nifty lost 3.11% for the week and the Sensex 2.69%. This was the Nifty’s sharpest weekly decline since the week ended 13 March 2026.

The Sensex is 16.5% below its all-time high. A Mint analysis of 3,756 BSE-listed companies found that the share of stocks trading above 40 times earnings fell to 26% from 36% in September 2024, while the share trading at 10 to 25 times earnings rose to 26% from 18%.

Broad market

Every broad index in the table was lower over the last 20 sessions, led by the Nifty Midcap 150 and Nifty 50.

Sector performance

Only two of the 15 sector indices gained. IT led the market, rising 2.17%, while Auto fell 3.46% and was the weakest sector. Media, Pharma and Healthcare remained the strongest sectors relative to the Nifty 500 over both 20 and 60 sessions.

Winners and losers

Bajaj Auto fell 7.62% on 6.7 times its usual volume. Schneider Electric gained 5.98% on 5.2 times usual volume. Auto stocks occupied three of the five worst F&O positions, while Angel One recorded the largest increase in implied volatility.

Bajaj Auto’s domestic sales fell 12% year on year in September. Mahindra & Mahindra fell more than 3% even though passenger vehicle sales rose 14% year on year. Among non-F&O stocks, Transformers rose 4.0% on 37.6 times its usual volume.

Commodities and currency

At 20:02 IST, MCX zinc was down 1.4%. Gold rose 0.7% to ₹ 1,50,000 and silver rose 1.1% to ₹ 2,26,099. Natural gas was down 10.7% over five sessions.

Brent crude rose around 2.5% to above $100 per barrel after China suspended oil-product exports, adding to concerns about tight global fuel supply.

Aviation turbine fuel prices rose by ₹ 16 per litre to ₹ 137 from Thursday, after increases of ₹ 6.28 in September and ₹ 5 in August. Commercial LPG rose by ₹ 62.50 per 19-kg cylinder.

The rupee fell 0.5% to ₹ 96.315 per US dollar, its weakest level in two months. Rising global bond yields, higher oil prices and foreign portfolio outflows weighed on the currency, while dollar sales by state-run banks limited the decline. The euro was at ₹ 108.53 and the pound at ₹ 127.13.

India’s 10-year government bond yield has risen 25 basis points over the past month to 7.21%. The US 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.34%, its highest level since 2002.

Institutional flows

Foreign investors sold a net ₹ 9,570 crore of Indian shares on 1 October, while domestic institutions bought a net ₹ 10,042 crore. Foreign investors have now been net sellers for five straight sessions.

FIIs held only 8% of their index-futures positions long. Retail investors and HNIs were 84% long, close to their most bullish positioning of the past year.

Foreign portfolio investors sold a net ₹ 35,861 crore of equities in September. Of this, ₹ 19,273 crore, or 53.7% of the monthly outflow, was withdrawn in the final seven trading sessions.

Since June, Taiwan- and South Korea-dedicated funds have attracted $23.5 billion and $28.4 billion respectively, while India has seen outflows of $4.5 billion. Over the past six weeks, Taiwan recorded outflows of $796 million, South Korea $3.17 billion and India $1.48 billion.

The macro view

Growth and the finance ministry review

• The finance ministry’s September economic review said India faces a “stiff challenge” in attracting capital flows during global uncertainty, and that economic growth has to be “earned every quarter”.
• The ministry’s nowcasting measure estimates real GDP growth of 7.3% in the July-September quarter. Most analysts expect growth of 6.8% to 7% for FY27 after 7.8% growth in the June quarter.
• The review identified three short-term pressures on capital flows: unsettled US trade relations after Washington passed a law allowing tariffs of up to 100% on countries buying Russian crude, the global AI investment cycle, and competition from developed economies for manufacturing investment.
• Net FDI rose 38% year on year to $13.4 billion in April-July, with gross inflows of $43.9 billion. Merchandise and services exports crossed $400 billion in the first five months of FY27 and may reach a record $1 trillion this fiscal year.

Manufacturing, prices and rates

• India’s manufacturing PMI rose to a seven-month high of 55.1 in September from 52.8 in August, helped by stronger new orders, production and hiring. The Q2 FY27 average of 53.8 was the weakest since the same quarter of 2021.
• Finished-goods inventories rose for a third month in September at the second-fastest pace in 11-and-a-half years. The business confidence sub-index rose to a four-month high.
• Wholesale price inflation rose to 10% in August. Retail inflation rose to 4.82%, with food inflation at 5.95%.
• Morgan Stanley expects the RBI to begin raising rates in October instead of December. It expects four consecutive 25-basis-point increases, taking the policy rate to 6.25% by April 2027. The Monetary Policy Committee meets from 5 to 7 October.
• The number of registered factories in operation rose 2.6% in 2024-25 and gross value added by factories rose 9.6%. Tamil Nadu was the only one of the five largest states to increase its share of factory GVA, to 10.9% from 10.3%.

Tax collections

• Gross GST collections rose 14.7% year on year to ₹ 2.04 trillion in September from ₹ 1.77 trillion. This was the third month this fiscal year in which collections exceeded ₹ 2 trillion.
• Domestic GST revenue rose 10.1% and GST on imports rose 26%. After refunds, net collections increased 18.1% year on year to more than ₹ 1.76 lakh crore.
• GST collected on imports was ₹ 65,525 crore. The 57th GST Council meeting is scheduled for 7 October in New Delhi, where a review of GST on the merchant discount rate for UPI transactions is likely to be discussed.

UPI merchant fee

• The Department of Consumer Affairs is strengthening the National Consumer Helpline to handle complaints under the new UPI MDR framework, which takes effect on 15 October.
• After the GST rate rationalisation, the helpline received 3,981 queries and grievances in around two weeks. About 69% were grievances.

Farm, food and the monsoon

• The government set a foodgrain production target of 373.93 million tonnes for 2026-27, around 0.7% below the record output estimated for 2025-26.
• The southwest monsoon ended at 87% of its long-period average, making it the 13th-weakest monsoon since 1901. Around 43% of India’s 734 districts recorded deficient rainfall.
• Agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said crops were damaged across around 611,000 hectares in seven states because of heavy rains, floods or droughts.
• Mahindra & Mahindra reported a 21% decline in September tractor sales, while Escorts Kubota reported a 16.7% decline.
• The government cut the sugar stockholding limit for dealers to 1,000 quintals and reduced the holding period to 15 days from 15 October to 30 November. Retail sugar was ₹ 55.62 per kg on 1 October, around 20% higher than a year earlier but 11.7% lower than a month earlier.
• The Centre extended the RoSCTL rebate scheme for apparel and made-up exporters by three months to 31 December. More than 15,400 exporters received rebates of 1.7% to 8.2% in FY26, when spending was ₹ 10,010 crore, compared with an FY27 allocation of ₹ 5,000 crore.

Energy, autos and regulation

• Petroleum secretary Neeraj Mittal said no oil marketing company is permitted to restrict fuel sales. Jio-bp had reinstated a limit of 50 litres of diesel per transaction and Nayara Energy had capped sales at 70 to 200 litres.
• Indian refiners are hiring tankers to sail through the Strait of Hormuz to pick up crude from inside the Persian Gulf.
• Under the CAFE-III rules, effective 1 April, carmakers get three years to self-certify 12 fuel-saving technologies. The rules set a 16% fuel-efficiency improvement target over five years, from a fleet average of 3.9960 litres per 100 km in FY28 to 3.3273 litres in FY32.
• The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India is set to allow a committee of creditors to recommend keeping solvent real-estate projects outside insolvency proceedings, subject to a 66% vote and NCLT approval. Real estate accounts for 22% of insolvency cases under resolution.
• SEBI gave NSE a no-objection certificate to launch futures linked to a corporate bond index, subject to RBI approval.
• Power prices on the real-time exchange platform were at or below 10 paise per unit for 26 and 18 trading blocks on 26 and 27 September respectively.
• Commerce minister Piyush Goyal met US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer during the G20 Trade Ministers’ meeting to discuss an early conclusion of the India-US bilateral trade agreement.

Mint, 2 October 2026; Zerodha AfterMarket Report

Corporate action and earnings

Domestic headlines

Banking leadership

• HDFC Bank appointed Anup Bagchi as MD and CEO after RBI approval. He takes charge on 27 October, succeeding Sashidhar Jagdishan, whose term ends on 26 October.
• The RBI approved a three-year term for Bagchi, 56, who returns to banking after three years in insurance. He led ICICI Securities from May 2011 to October 2016.
• Kotak Mahindra Bank: The RBI approved Anup Kumar Saha as MD and CEO for three years from 1 January 2027, succeeding Ashok Vaswani. The stock rose more than 4% to ₹ 435.60 before closing at ₹ 418.35.

Industry and deals

• JSW Group emerged as the lowest bidder for around 1,200 electric buses in a 4,054-bus PM-eBus Sewa tender, its first government e-bus order. PMI won 1,248 buses, Sai Green Project 1,236 and Eka Mobility 270.
• Hyundai recorded its highest-ever monthly sales of 77,916 units in September, up 10.8% year on year. Domestic sales rose 10.9% to 57,166 units and exports rose 10.4% to 20,750 units.
• Hyundai Motor India is giving employees an interim salary increase of 1% to 2% on top of the annual hike. Its permanent employee turnover rate rose to 7.94% in FY26 from 5% in FY25.
• NTPC’s Q2 power generation rose 13% year on year to 117.9 billion units. Coal dispatch rose 28.45% to 11.9 million tonnes and power trading volumes rose 22% to 15.06 billion units.
• Infosys extended its strategic partnership with ABN AMRO, focusing on enterprise-wide AI adoption, simpler platforms and a scalable IT foundation.
• HEG Advanced Materials subsidiary Replus Engitech won ₹ 127.35 crore of lithium-ion battery bank orders from Indus Towers.
• Vedanta: The Orissa High Court dismissed Vedanta’s plea to enforce a 2004 agreement with Odisha Mining Corp for 150 million tonnes of bauxite at prices linked to production costs and royalty. The company said it is evaluating legal options.
• PepsiCo and Monster Beverage sued FSSAI over its ban on the “energy drink” label. PepsiCo India said it had 492 million bottles and 26 million cans carrying the label in circulation on 31 July.
• Dilip Buildcon aims to increase annual coal production to 57 million tonnes by FY29 from 28.72 million tonnes in FY26 and wants around 75% of profit and cash flow to come from mining and infrastructure assets by FY29.
• Axis Bank plans to double its exposure to data centres over three years. The sector currently represents a little more than 2% of its corporate loan book.
• Adani Green Energy expanded operational battery storage capacity to 6.63 GWh, nearly 70% of its FY27 target and more than half of India’s operational battery energy storage capacity of around 12.6 GWh.
• Air India: Tewolde Gebremariam formally took charge as CEO and MD. Air India and Air India Express lost ₹ 22,238 crore in FY26.
• ITC paid ₹ 645 crore to raise its stake in Sproutlife Foods, owner of Yoga Bar, from 47.5% to 100%.
• NoBroker expects its first profit in around 10 months. It has deployed 65 AI agents, and around 30% of call volume is now handled without human intervention.
• Meta is charging Indian businesses ₹ 0.115 per WhatsApp service message after their monthly free quota of 1,000 messages is exhausted.
• Housing sales across nine major cities fell 6% year on year to 103,000 units in July-September.

Mint, 2 October 2026; Zerodha Top Stories in India

Mark to market

• ICICI Lombard: Digital servicing rose to 71% in Q1FY27 from 20% in FY23, with a target of 90% by FY29. The combined ratio worsened to 107.2% from 102.9% and net profit fell 46% to ₹ 403 crore. The stock trades at 23 times FY28 earnings.
• Capital expenditure: New project announcements rose 33% year on year to ₹ 30 trillion in H1 FY27. September-quarter proposals fell nearly 6%. Data centres and nuclear power accounted for 25% of September proposals and almost 75% of June-quarter announcements.
• Private consumption rose 7.1% in the June quarter, compared with 6.8% a year earlier.

Primary market and fundraising

• Alliance Insurance Brokers has started a process to sell around a 30% stake and raise ₹ 800 crore to ₹ 900 crore through a mix of primary and secondary shares. Access Asset Managers plans to exit.
• Airtel Money is seeking to raise £529 million for shareholders at a fixed price of £1.96 a share, valuing the company at £5.3 billion. It could be London’s largest IPO in five years. Trading is expected to begin on 9 October.

Mint, 2 October 2026

Upcoming events

Global pulse

Global indices

Only two of the eight overseas markets in the report rose in their latest session. Japan’s Nikkei 225 led with a gain of 3.1%.

In Mint’s global snapshot, only Indonesia’s Jakarta Composite, down 3.72%, fell more than the Nifty. France’s CAC 40 fell 2.18% and South Korea’s KRX 100 fell 2.04%.

Global macro

• Global bonds continued to sell off. The US 10-year Treasury yield reached 5.34%, France’s 10-year yield approached 5% and Britain’s 30-year yield moved above 6%.
• The dollar index rose above 101.8, its highest level since April 2025. It extended gains for a fourth session after rising 2% in September.
• The US economy grew at a 2.2% annualised rate in April-June, driven by consumer spending and business investment, down from 2.5% in the first quarter.
• Spot Brent crude has risen nearly 66% in 2026, while the US 10-year Treasury yield has risen around 28%.
• Bain & Co. estimates that AI markets need to generate $6 trillion in annual global revenue by 2031 to justify current AI infrastructure investment.

Geopolitics and energy

• Around 20 empty Iranian oil tankers are stranded off Sri Lanka’s southwest coast. Dozens of Iranian or Iran-linked tankers have been stuck near Sri Lanka and Malaysia since July, when the US reimposed its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
• Russia imported a record 172,000 tonnes of petroleum products in August, mostly from India. Nayara’s Vadinar refinery supplied around 70%.
• The total cost of US wars in Iraq and Syria is estimated at $2.89 trillion by 2050, including future veteran care, as the US completes its withdrawal from Iraq.

Global business and technology

• Accenture shares rose 22% after the company signalled faster revenue growth. FY26 revenue rose 4% to $74.2 billion and earnings rose 8%.
• Accenture reported $84.5 billion in new orders and net profit of $8.5 billion. It expects 3% to 6% local-currency revenue growth this year. Infosys and Wipro gained 9% and 8% respectively on the New York Stock Exchange.
• BYD’s global vehicle sales rose 17% year on year to 463,561 units in September, the fifth consecutive monthly increase. Overseas shipments rose 154% to nearly 180,000 units.
• Google began rolling out Gemini 4 Argon to a small group of cybersecurity partners, while some internal users remained sceptical about its coding performance.
• AI chief executives signed a statement of principles at the White House on keeping AI models safe.
• Apple’s foldable iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 in the US, with preorders from 16 October. Huawei said sales of its Pura X Max rose around 77% in the four days after Apple’s announcement compared with the previous week.

Zerodha AfterMarket Report; Mint

Management chatter

Zerodha AfterMarket Report; Mint

Feature: UPI meets the merchant fee

For almost six years, UPI payments from bank accounts carried no merchant fee. From 15 October, selected person-to-merchant UPI payments above ₹ 2,000 will carry a 0.4% merchant discount rate. The government says around 96% of merchant transactions will remain free. The first month of data, surveys of users and merchants, and industry estimates provide an early view of how the new system may work.

On 15 September, the finance ministry announced a 0.4% merchant discount rate, or MDR, on person-to-merchant UPI payments above ₹ 2,000 from 15 October. The framework followed discussions by the UPI Steering Committee, and NPCI issued a circular on the same day. UPI payments from bank accounts had carried no MDR since 1 January 2020.

MDR is paid by the merchant, through its bank, for accepting a digital payment. The fee is shared among the banks and apps that process the payment. The government has said: “MDR is a charge within the merchant payment ecosystem. It is not a charge on customers making UPI payments.” Merchants are not allowed to pass the fee on to customers.

The rate card

Public utility payments and education fees are in a separate designated industry programme. Among credit cards, only RuPay credit cards can be used on UPI.

An amount equal to 5% of total MDR collections will go towards UPI adoption among small merchants. GST at 18% is charged on MDR, and merchants can claim it as input tax credit. The 0.4% is reported to be split 40% to the customer’s bank, 30% to the merchant’s acquiring bank, 20% to the UPI app and 10% to the payer’s payment service provider bank. Government sources have said that “not a single rupee collected will go to the Consolidated Fund of India.”

Six years at zero

While moving the bill through Parliament, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the enabling provision “does not impose any tax or transaction charge on UPI users”.

Who has been paying

Industry estimates put the annual cost of operating UPI, including servers, bandwidth, fraud prevention and bank technical support, at around ₹ 20,000 crore. Government incentives for RuPay debit and low-value BHIM-UPI payments have varied by year. NPCI has described these incentives as “short-term bridge funding rather than a permanent measure”.

How big is the chargeable slice

UPI processed 24,161.69 crore transactions worth ₹ 314 lakh crore in FY26, up 30% by volume. Merchant payments made up 63% of transaction volume, while person-to-person transfers accounted for 71% of value. Around 86% of merchant payments were below ₹ 500.

NPCI estimates that around 96% of UPI transactions by volume and 75% by value fall outside the new charge. Around 75% of merchants have never received a payment above ₹ 2,000. Around 80% of collections are expected to come from businesses processing more than ₹ 1,000 crore a year.

The first month of data

UPI processed 24.07 billion transactions worth ₹ 29.37 trillion in September. Volume fell 1.8% from August and value fell 1.5%, but volume was 22.6% higher and value 18% higher than in September 2025. The average daily count of 802 million transactions was the highest on record.

September has 30 days compared with 31 in August. In 10 of the past 24 months, month-on-month transaction volume has recorded similar declines of 1.0% to 2.3%.

The daily average was 828.1 million transactions from 1 to 15 September and 777.6 million after the 15 September announcement. The daily low was 748.85 million transactions on 24 September. UPI usage is normally higher at the start and end of a month, when salaries are credited and rent, recurring payments and utility bills are paid.

The average daily transaction value after 15 September was ₹ 89,067 crore, around 2% higher than ₹ 87,378 crore during the same part of August.

What users and merchants say

Surveys show that many users are sensitive to the possibility of UPI charges. In March 2024, 73% of more than 34,000 LocalCircles respondents across 364 districts said they would stop using UPI if a transaction fee were introduced.

In August 2026, a LocalCircles survey of 45,000 respondents in 322 districts found that 53% would move away from UPI for transactions above ₹ 3,000 if merchants were charged MDR. Around 27% said they would switch to credit cards, 14% to debit cards and 12% to bank transfers or cash. Around 18% said they would continue using UPI.

Among merchants, 41% of 32,796 respondents in an August LocalCircles survey said they were unwilling to pay any MDR on UPI payments above ₹ 2,000. Another 33% were willing to pay 0.25% or less, while 9% did not accept UPI at all.

A separate issue in Karnataka involved tax rather than MDR. In July 2025, after nearly 6,000 GST notices were issued using UPI data, some shops displayed “No UPI, only cash” signs and removed QR stickers.

A public-interest petition by advocate Anjan Datta argued that the fees “could squeeze merchants’ working capital, encourage traders to refuse UPI payments or split transactions to avoid charges, and eventually be reflected in consumer prices.” On 28 September, a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant declined to stay the framework and gave the Centre, RBI and NPCI four weeks to respond.

Who pays and who earns

The RBI’s debit-card MDR direction, effective from January 2018, also required banks to ensure that merchants “do not pass on MDR charges to customers”. The Centre is considering a monitoring mechanism to enforce the same principle for UPI.

Dilip Asbe said that for the remaining 10% of merchant transactions, “the banks, NPCI, the acquirers, and the payment aggregators will have to work towards ensuring that the charges are not passed back.”

MobiKwik co-founder and CEO Upasana Taku said: “Just from this UPI MDR we expect to get at least ₹ 150 crore of additional revenue in financial year 28.” Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said: “Until now, UPI was, in a way, running on a grant basis. Now UPI has become self-reliant.”

Pushback and what to watch

Opposition parties, including the Congress, alleged that MDR had been introduced under US pressure. The Department of Financial Services responded: “The allegation that MDR has been introduced under any external influence is patently false and misleading.”

On 30 September, around 20 trade leaders led by CAIT secretary general Praveen Khandelwal met finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. They asked the government to defer MDR through the festive season, raise the small-merchant threshold from ₹ 1 lakh to ₹ 5 lakh, exclude merchant-to-merchant transactions and create a special committee.

The All India Consumer Products Federation and the All India Mobile Retailers Association then withdrew the “No UPI Day” protest planned for 2 October.

The fee takes effect on 15 October. The GST Council meets on 7 October, and it is not yet clear whether GST on MDR will be on the agenda. The Centre, RBI and NPCI have four weeks from 28 September to respond in the Supreme Court. NPCI’s October data will be the first full dataset to include days on which the fee applies.

PIB and Ministry of Finance releases; Department of Financial Services FAQs; PMIndia; RBI directions and discussion paper; Business Standard; Business Today; Medianama; BIS Bulletin No. 52

At a glance

• Nifty fell 0.88% to 22,421.95 and completed an eighth straight losing week, its longest since 2001; the Sensex fell 0.79% to 71,909.69.
• Only two of the 15 sector indices gained: IT rose 2.17% and Private Bank was flat, while Auto fell 3.46%.
• Bajaj Auto led the major F&O losers, Brent moved back above $100, the rupee weakened to ₹ 96.315 per dollar, and global bond yields remained elevated.
• FIIs sold ₹ 9,570 crore on 1 October and stayed heavily short in index futures, while DIIs bought ₹ 10,042 crore.
• The finance ministry expects Q2 GDP growth of 7.3%, manufacturing PMI improved, but WPI reached 10% and markets expect RBI tightening.
• Gross GST collections rose 14.7% to ₹ 2.04 trillion, and the monsoon ended 13% below normal.
• HDFC Bank and Kotak announced incoming CEOs, and Hyundai posted record monthly sales of 77,916 units.
• From 15 October, selected UPI merchant payments above ₹ 2,000 will face MDR, but the government says around 96% of merchant transactions will remain free.

Closing

Indian markets are closed today, Friday 2 October, for Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti. Trading resumes on Monday, 5 October, with the RBI Monetary Policy Committee meeting from 5 to 7 October and Nifty options expiry on 6 October.