Daily Market News Update - 28th-29th October 2026

Midnight News Update: 28-29 Oct 2026

It was a grand listing for Jio Platforms as it closed the listing day at a premium of 27% to the IPO price. With this rally, the market cap of Jio Platforms has already crossed the ₹13 trillion mark. Against the IPO price of ₹1,119, the stock of Jio Platforms listed on the NSE at ₹1,358 per share and closed higher at ₹1,419 per share. This makes Jio Platforms the second most valuable company in India after Reliance Industries. It has also unlocked enormous gains for Reliance Industries which holds 64.48% stake in Jio Platforms. RIL stake in JPL is now valued at ₹8.42 trillion.

Noel Tata will step down from the boards of 6 Tata companies but will retain his seat on the board of Tata Sons and on the Tata Trusts. This is an internal group policy of stepping down from operating companies on turning 70. Currently, Noel Tata is engaged in a battle of attrition with the other board members of Tata Sons over the reappointment of N Chandrasekharan as chairman and CEO for another 5 years. Ironically, all the directors of Tata Sons other than Noel Tata, had voted in favour of another 5-year term for Chandra in the meeting held on 17-September.

Industrial growth (IIP) for the month of September 2026 slowed to 6.70%, compared to 7.79% in August. In fact, the August IIP growth had been revised downward by 18 bps from 7.97%. The fall in IIP growth in September can be largely attributed to the base effect. Manufacturing IIP was robust at 7.5% in September, while electricity output grew in double digits, led by thermal power. The pressure came from mining, which contracted -6.2%, largely due to non-rare-earth minerals. For FY27, the cumulative IIP growth was at 6.8%, despite supply chain constraints.

India is likely to see spillage of its fertilizer spending target, as over 77% of its full-year spending target has been used up in the first 6 months itself. That is not surprising considering that India has had to heavily depend on imports of urea and global prices had gone up sharply post the unrest in the Middle East. The full year fertilizer subsidy bill was pegged at ₹1,71,000 crore, of which ₹1.32 trillion has already been spent in six months. At the current run rate, the total subsidy bill could get closer to ₹2.50 trillion, which will represent a near-50% spillage on fertilizer subsidies.

Hindustan Unilever Q2FY27 revenues grew by 14.5% to ₹18,226 crore as it reported 7% volume growth; the best in the last 18 quarters. Net profits were up 4% yoy at ₹2,790 crore. Both revenues and net profits were better than Bloomberg consensus estimates. The muted profit growth was more due to a high base as the year-ago period had seen a boost to profits from exceptional gains. EBITDA for the quarter was up 8% at ₹4,089 crore but EBITDA margins contracted by 140 bps to 22.4%. Among major growth segments; home care grew 22%, while beauty grew 16%.

As part of the restructuring of the company, TVS Motors will demerge its consumer finance business into Harita ARC while TVS Motor Services will be merged with the parent. This is expected to unlock shareholder value. Shareholders of TVS Motors will receive shares in the ratio of 1:1 in Harita ARC post demerger. The demerged consumer finance entity currently accounts for about 11% of the total turnover of TVS Motors. The idea is to give more strategic autonomy to these businesses, resulting in better allocation of capital based on risk and returns.

Tata Communications plans to invest close to $450 million in a 10,000 KM AI fibre network. It will be implemented in 3 phases over the next 5 years. The entire project is likely to be funded very substantially through internal cash flows. The network will potentially create capacity of 7.2 PB (petabytes). To begin with, Tata Communications will create a corridor connecting Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai; connecting their data centre and hubs. TCOM had a solid Q2FY27 with its net profits growing by 86% yoy and free cash flows touching ₹212 crore.

Jio and Airtel continued to dominate subscription numbers for September 2026, adding 27 lakh subscribers apiece for the month. Vodafone Idea added 5.50 lakh subscribers during the month. While bulk of the growth for Jio is coming from the consumer segment, Airtel is getting the bulk of its subscribers from the enterprise business where the ARPUs are relatively lower. However, Airtel still enjoys the best ARPU in the telecom sector in India. India’s overall telecom base stood at 136.8 crore as of September. Jio leads with a subscriber base of 51.1 crore users.