The Week In Charts: Amazon's India Investment, Indigo Disruptions, Fed Rate Cut

(MENAFN- Live Mint)

This week Amazon pledged to pour billions into India, while fight disruptions at IndiGo led to regulatory interventions and a potential revenue hit. Meanwhile the US Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points, the fall in prices of home-cooked vegetarian meals slowed down, and Delhi experienced slight relief from pollution.

Here's a compilation of this week's news in numbers.

Amazon's $35-billion India bet

Amazon Inc. will invest an additional $35 billion in India over the next five years to expand its businesses, ranging from retail to cloud and streaming. The company has already poured $40 billion into India since 2010.

The investment is likely to help Amazon compete better with Flipkart and JioMart in online retail, PhonePe and Paytm in online payments, Microsoft and Google in cloud services, and Netflix and other video streaming platforms.

Also Read | With a $35 billion push, Amazon puts e-commerce rivals on not

Amazon is among several foreign companies that have pledged investments in India, mainly in artificial intelligence (AI) and data centres. Microsoft recently announced its largest-ever Asian investment in India, committing $17.5 billion over four years, while Google announced a $15 billion investment over five years.

IndiGo fiasco

India witnessed an unprecedented national crisis after widespread flight cancellations and delays by leading airline IndiGo. Regulators swung into action and directed the carrier to cut its operations by 10% to restore stability across networks.

Before the mass disruptions, IndiGo was scheduled to operate around 15,000 flights a week in the current winter schedule, accounting for 56.7% of the total. A 10% cut would roughly mean 200-300 fewer flights by IndiGo each day.

IndiGo will also have to hire more pilots to comply with the flight duty time limitations (FTDL) rules once the extension expires in February. IndiGo may see a 10% decline in revenue and 17-30% fall in profitability in FY26 because of this, Mint reported, citing analysts.

Also Read | DGCA clampdown, flight cuts may deepen IndiGo's financial

Fed's third rate cut of 2025

The US Federal Reserve cut the benchmark rate by another 25 basis points, its third cut this year, taking it to 3.5% to 3.75%. The central bank made these cuts despite inflation still running above its 2% target, signalling concern about the weak labour market and growth prospects.

The Fed's first rate cut in 2025 came only in September-well after India, the UK and the EU-and marked a policy shift, with the central bank acknowledging the rise in unemployment and inflation not flaring up due to US tariffs, as was previously feared. After a cumulative 75 bps cut, the Fed signalled only one additional cut each in 2026 and 2027.

Delhi's pollution respite

Delhi's air quality index has improved over the in the past few days amid policy interventions, favourable winds, and reduced stubble-burning. The AQI has been in the range of 259- 330 over the past seven days, remaining largely in the 'very poor' category , data from the Central Board of Pollution Control showed.

The improvement comes after the AQI hit a recent peak of 428 ("severe" category) on 11 November, which prompted the government to implement the graded response action plan III.

While the recent improvement in air quality has brought relief, it is still worse than last year when it was largely in the 'moderate' zone. An AQI of 0-50 is considered good, 51-100 satisfactory, 101-200 moderate, 200-300 poor, 300-400 very poor, and 400-500 severe.

Food deflation slows

The cost of food items has been declining for some time now. This pulled the prices of home-cooked vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals down by 13% and 12.5% to ₹28.4 and ₹53.8, respectively, in November from the same month last year, data from Crisil intelligence's monthly Roti Rice Rate report showed.

Also Read | GST cuts to boost urban demand, especially for packaged food: Marico

However, the decline was smaller than October's 16.5% fall for the vegetarian meal, mainly due to rising prices of potato and tomato. On a month-on-month basis, the price of a vegetarian meal actually rose 2%. Overall, inflation is expected to rise marginally to 0.8% in November from 0.25% in October, mainly due to lower deflation in food prices, a Mint poll showed.

Numbers in the news

$700 million: What Tata Consultancy Services is paying to acquire technology consulting firm Coastal Cloud. This will be TCS's largest buyout since it went public in 2004.

Over $30 billion: The amount Elon Musk's SpaceX is looking to raise through an initial public offering, likely in mid-to-late 2026, Bloomberg reported. This would make it the biggest listing of all time.

85,000: The number of visas across categories that the US has revoked since January. The world's largest economy has significantly tightened immigration policies under Donald Trump.

$1 trillion: The trade surplus China reported until November this year, despite a sharp fall in exports in shipments to the US. The country has been exporting more to other markets in Africa and Asean.

$5.5 billion: The value of the deal in which which Biocon Ltd will integrate Biocon Biologics Ltd as a wholly owned subsidiary by acquiring the remaining stake from Serum Institute Life Sciences, Tata Capital Growth Fund II and Activ Pine LLP.

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