Krishna Kaushik

Yeah, the problem is that while, of course, India's economy last year was in a soft spot, it was trying to recover.

This year, at the starting of this year, Indian economy was looking like, you know, it's going to boom this year.

And then the war hit.

And India, which relies on 90% of its energy needs on imports, nearly half of the crude oil comes from the Middle East.

And that's been completely disrupted.

So what has happened is this has put pressure on the rupee, which was already a pretty badly performing currency in this region.

And there's a very limited dollar supply.

And as India has to go and scour for oil, which is costlier compared to what it was buying before the war started.

So it is spending a lot more dollars on buying the same amount of fuel.

So the rupee has drastically been falling to new lows, even though the central bank has intervened to try and plug that.

But the pressures are mounting.

The problem is India's ballooning trade deficit.

And a primary reason for that last year was India's trade dispute with the US.

US President Donald Trump raised the tariffs on Indian goods to 50% last August because he blamed India of funding Russia's war in Ukraine because India was buying so much of Russian oil.

Along with that, the net foreign direct investment in India has been nearly zero.

And that's because while the inflows have not really stopped, the outflows have grown because the companies, international investors, have been repatriating their profits.

And many Indian companies are also investing in companies outside the country.

Another reason why foreign investors are not particularly keen on the Indian stock market right now, because India has no AI play at the moment.

And that's where a lot of the international investment is going in.

India is completely lacking in that.