Good afternoon, readers, and happy FRIDAY. We are closing the week with a packed issue, starting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel.

India and Israel are upgrading their bilateral ties to a special strategic partnership, aiming for trade expansion and increased bilateral investments. Israel is opening doors for Indian workers while reinforcing its support for the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor.

Also: India’s imports of Russian oil are expected to drop by 24% in February, which will unlock new demand for MENA suppliers.

Across the pond, Strive Ventures has entered a new partnership with the Public Investment Fund (PIF) to facilitate fresh private credit deployment.

All of that and more below.

Watch this space

OIL & GAS — Saudi Aramco’s outage at its Juaymah liquefied petroleum gas export terminal is set to momentarily squeeze India’s gas supply chain, with Indian state refiners among the most exposed buyers. Roughly 60% of Juaymah’s LPG exports last year were destined for India, Reuters reports. Previous cargoes were tracked to Indian Oil Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation under term contracts.

What’s happening: The world’s seventh-largest LPG terminal is expected to remain offline for at least a month after structural damage halted loadings this week. The outage has forced the cancellation of cargoes through March, tightening supply in Asia at a time of peak seasonal demand for heating, cooking and petrochemical feedstock.

Why it matters: Up to 10 LPG cargoes bound for India in March have reportedly been scrapped, as per the newswire. The disruption is likely to redirect spot-market demand toward the US, where inventories are ample, cushioning price spikes despite firmer Asian benchmarks. Aramco said the duration of repairs remains under evaluation.

SEMICONDUCTORS — India will commence advanced semiconductor packaging with Micron Technology’s manufacturing facility kickstarting operations in Sanand, Gujarat, Hindu Businessline reports. The plant will manufacture memory chips, including solid-state drives, for global AI and high-performance computing markets.

Micron India has invested INR 225.16 bn (USD 2.7 bn) in the project, and is expected to create 5k direct jobs. The facility will import wafers from Micron’s overseas fabs and convert them into finished chips through assembly, testing, marking and packaging.

Why it matters:For New Delhi, the project marks a step towards building domestic chip capability, even as India remains dependent on global fabrication supply chains. The Micron factor provides a geographically closer assembly point for the high-performance memory required by accelerators of American chip giants NVIDIA and AMD AI — opening a near-shore supply source for their Gulf projects.

India is moving to steady trade talks with Washington after Donald Trump’s tariff policy was thrown into uncertainty by the US Supreme Court, as mounting criticism looms over the tariff agreement reached between Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reduce US tariffs on Indian goods to 18%.

Surprise visitor? Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal met US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick who is on an unplanned visit to New Delhi, as per a post on X. Lutnick termed the lunch meeting with Goyal as “highly productive.”

Hot waters: The talks arrive just days after the US Supreme Court invalidated President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariff regime, complicating the legal basis for sweeping duties. After which, Trump temporarily imposed a 10% duty on all countries, including India, with plans to raise it to 15% under existing limits. Earlier this week, Goyal indicated that formal negotiations with the US would resume once there is greater clarity on the tariff policy.

Back home: India’s opposition has fiercely criticized Modi's actions, labeling them an ordeal stemming from“desperation and surrender”. With the US court ruling, defending Modi’s pact with Trump has become even more challenging domestically.

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Data point

INR 5.45 tn (USD 60.2 bn) — That was the total value of M&A involving Indian companies in 2025, across 963 transactions, up 36% y-o-y by value, according to a Grant Thornton report.

Context: 14 transactions valued at USD 1 bn or more accounted for over half of the overall M&A value. Overseas participation in India’s financial sector included a USD 4.45 bn investment by Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group in Shriram Finance and Emirates NBD’sUSD 3 bn acquisition of RBL Bank.

Happening today

The big story abroad

The battle for Warner Bros Discovery has reached a dramatic end, with Netflix walking away from its bid for the Hollywood studio and streaming giant, paving the way for Paramount to acquire the firm. The reason? Netflix couldn’t match Paramount’s renewed hostile bid, which lured Warner Bros back to the negotiating table last week. “We've always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance's latest offer, the transaction is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid," Netflix said in a statement.

REMEMBER- Paramount’s USD 31-a-share offer is backed by Larry Ellison, co-founder and chief technology officer of Oracle and father of Paramount CEO David Ellison. It was also backed by Gulf sovereign wealth funds, including Saudi Arabia's PIF, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), and Abu Dhabi's L'imad Holding Co.

Also making headlines: Claude maker Anthropic has refused to offer up its technology to the US military after US defense secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to cut the firm from Pentagon supply chains or have its tech co-opted if it does not allow the defense department control over the technology.

Plus: More trouble in private credit land? A large credit fund managed by KKR plunged after reporting a surge in troubled loans and cut its dividend amid lower interest rates and losses. This follows a decline in private markets groups in recent weeks due to concerns around investor redemptions and rising credit losses, including at Blue Owl.

Market watch

Tata pivots to AI amid market jitters: TataConsultancy Services (TCS), the Tata Group’s flagship technology unit, is directing employees to deploy AI tools across projects, “even if it cannibalises revenue,” Chief Executive Officer K. Krithivasan said during a panel discussion.

The company aims to deliver services “faster, better, cheaper” as AI adoption accelerates across the sector. The comments come amid investor concerns that automation could disrupt the industry’s traditional labor-intensive operating model, which has triggered a stock market rout for IT firms.

Market backdrop: Some USD 68.6 bn in value was wiped from Indian IT stocks in February, with the Nifty IT index tumbling 21% for the month —its steepest monthly decline in 23 years.

Threat narrative: Concerns that generative AI could materially weaken major IT services providers are “overblown,” Cognizant’s chief AI officer Babak Hodjat told Reuters. Companies remain far from relying on a single autonomous AI system and will continue to require engineering, integration and governance support to deploy tools such as those developed by Anthropic. Cognizant, which said about 30% of its code is now AI-generated and is targeting it to reach 50%.

Why it matters:The IT services industry is the backbone of India’s exports, contributing USD 224 bn in exports in FY 2025 and accounts for 7% of the national GDP. IT firms are large-scale employment generators, and AI-linked cutbacks could have wider implications for India’s economy.

MEANWHILE- Tech giants are expanding rapidly into the Gulf market in search of fresh revenue streams. TCS established a regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia last month in line with the Kingdom’s program requiring multinational firms to establish local headquarters to qualify for certain government contracts.

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