For more than a decade, a mobile phone number has done two jobs on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms. It tells people how to reach you. It also helps establish who they are talking to.
WhatsApp now wants to give users another way to connect—through a unique username instead of sharing a phone number. Now, WhatsApp rivals Telegram and Signal already offer such a feature.
But this seemingly simple feature has now run into an unexpected obstacle.
The Indian government has asked WhatsApp to pause the rollout of the feature, arguing that usernames could make it easier for fraudsters to impersonate individuals, government agencies and financial institutions. The government has also reportedly asked Telegram and Signal to explain the safeguards in place to protect users against fraud.
The appeal of usernames is easy to understand. Many people are comfortable chatting with someone they have just met but are less comfortable sharing a personal phone number. Usernames promise an extra layer of privacy by letting users choose how they are discovered on the platform, while still requiring a phone number to create a WhatsApp account.
The government’s concern isn’t hypothetical. Cybercrime has become one of India’s fastest-growing digital challenges, with online fraud accounting for nearly three-quarters of the cybercrime cases registered in 2024.
Policymakers argue that replacing visible phone numbers with usernames could make it easier for fraudsters to hide their identities, impersonate trusted organisations and approach potential victims.
WhatsApp says it has anticipated those risks. The company says users will still need a phone number to create an account and that usernames will simply become an additional way to connect. It has also outlined several safeguards, including reserving usernames for public figures and government entities, limiting how many new users an account can contact, detecting impersonation attempts and showing recipients more information about first-time contacts before they decide whether to respond.
The disagreement isn’t really about usernames. It is about digital identity.
Regulators worry that separating identity from a visible phone number could make establishing trust more difficult in a country grappling with online fraud.
For most users, usernames may simply feel like a more convenient way to connect. For regulators, they represent a new way of thinking about digital identity on a platform used by more than 850 million people in India.
That is why a seemingly small product update has become a much bigger policy debate.
Three Ways to Read a Market
From technology, let us now move our focus to markets.
The first half of 2026 produced an unusual result. Almost everyone was looking at the same market. Yet many investors came away with completely different impressions of it.
How could that be? Part of the answer lies in how we choose to read a market.
There is the story told by the benchmark index. There is the story unfolding beneath it. And then there is the story told by the movement of capital itself. Each painted a different picture over the past six months.
Start with the benchmark, the version of the market most investors encounter every day.
By that measure, the first half was underwhelming. The Sensex fell 10.3% to record its weakest first-half performance since 2020 while the Nifty 50 slipped 8.7% to post the steepest decline since 2022.
Overall, Indian equities lagged several global peers, foreign investors pulled out billions of dollars, valuations stayed elevated and the domestic technology sector suffered because of the global AI boom.
Look beneath the benchmark, however, and the story begins to change.
Mid- and small-cap indices generally outperformed their large-cap peers. The Nifty Midcap 150 rose about 2% in the first half while the Nifty Smallcap 250 climbed nearly 8%. Defence, capital goods, power and manufacturing-related businesses continued to attract investor interest, supported by expectations of sustained domestic investment and government spending. Investors whose portfolios extended beyond the largest listed companies often experienced a market that looked considerably healthier than the headline indices suggested.
The market hadn’t become stronger everywhere. It had simply become more selective.
There was a third way to read the first half—through the direction of capital itself.
Foreign institutional investors largely viewed India through a global lens. High valuations, relatively modest earnings growth and the AI-driven rally in some overseas markets made other destinations appear more attractive. Capital followed those opportunities. Foreign portfolio investors took more than $29 billion out of Indian equities.
Domestic investors were reading a different script. Steady inflows into mutual funds and systematic investment plans continued to provide support. Rather than chasing the global AI trade, many investors remained focused on businesses they believed would benefit from manufacturing, infrastructure and defence spending.
Overseas investors weren’t necessarily voting against India. They were, for a time, voting for something else.
Markets are often described as though they speak with a single voice. They rarely do.
An index captures the performance of a particular group of companies. It says little about where fresh capital is flowing, which sectors are seeing stronger earnings, or where investors believe the next opportunities lie. Those stories often unfold beneath the benchmark. The three readings have already begun to shift.
As oil prices retreated and some of the enthusiasm surrounding AI-linked markets eased, Indian equities started outperforming several Asian peers at the beginning of July. Some global investors have also begun taking another look at India as lower crude prices and a steadier rupee improve the country’s macroeconomic outlook. That does not establish a new trend. It simply illustrates how quickly markets can change as expectations shift.
Perhaps that is the more enduring lesson from the first half of the year. Benchmark indices remain indispensable. But they are summaries, not stories. The benchmarks told one story. The broader market told several.
The Second Pitch
Public markets have long memories. Companies, on the other hand, often hope they don’t.
That is what makes hospitality company Oyo’s return to the IPO market interesting. It is not simply asking investors to fund the next phase of its journey. It is asking them to look at the company with fresh eyes.
The first time Oyo sought to list, in 2021, it represented the optimism of India’s startup boom. It was a time when rapid expansion mattered more than profits and scale mattered more than efficiency. The company attracted global investors but also raised difficult questions about losses, governance and the sustainability of its business model. The IPO was eventually shelved as market conditions deteriorated and investors remained unconvinced by its business model and valuation.
Today’s pitch is different. Instead of asking investors to believe in what it could become, Oyo is trying to persuade them that it has already become something else.
Its parent, Oravel Stays, has reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 748 crore for FY26. The IPO proposed to raise Rs 6,650 crore through a fresh issue, mostly to repay debt. But it contains no offer for sale by existing shareholders such as Japanese investor SoftBank. Oyo also appears to have moderated its valuation expectations, from about Rs 90,000 crore in 2021 to around half that level now, if media reports are to be believed. But even with a valuation of, say, Rs 45,000-50,000 crore, Oyo will be the second-largest listed hotels company in India after Taj operator Indian Hotels.
At least on the surface, Oyo is presenting itself as one focused less on funding rapid expansion and more on strengthening its balance sheet. That is the essence of its second pitch.
But public markets rarely judge reinvention on the strength of a narrative alone. They look for proof.
That is why the headline profit, while important, is only the beginning of the conversation. Analysts have pointed out that part of OYO’s reported earnings includes accounting gains and exceptional items.
Over the past few years, Oyo has restructured parts of its business, tightened costs and expanded its international operations. Those changes help explain why the company believes it is ready to return to the market.
But public-market investors will examine the quality of earnings, cash generation, governance standards and whether recent improvements can be sustained over time. They will also ask whether these improvements are durable enough.
Every IPO asks investors to imagine the future. Oyo’s IPO is asking them to reconsider the past.
Whether that second pitch succeeds will depend less on the promise of what the company could become than on the credibility of what it says it has already become.
Guarding the Machine
Let’s now move on to some international news with global consequences.
The US government has lifted export restrictions on two of Anthropic’s most advanced artificial intelligence models—Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5—less than three weeks after directing the company to suspend access to them worldwide over national security concerns.
At first glance, the episode looks like a dispute between a technology company and its regulator. It may, however, point to something broader.
For much of the AI boom, governments have focused on the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence. The US has progressively tightened export controls on advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment, reflecting a straightforward assumption: if access to the computing power needed to build frontier AI could be limited, so too could the technology itself.
The Anthropic episode suggests policymakers may increasingly be thinking about a different part of the AI ecosystem as well—the models themselves.
According to Anthropic, US authorities were concerned that Fable 5’s safeguards could potentially be bypassed through a technique known as “jailbreaking”. Mythos 5, designed for cybersecurity professionals, was capable of identifying vulnerabilities in computer systems. Anthropic argued that the reported vulnerability was narrow and did not justify withdrawing a commercial model that had already been deployed globally.
The restrictions were lifted after Anthropic agreed to strengthen safeguards around the models, work with the US government on future frontier model releases and report malicious activity.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the company had addressed the security risks that prompted the restrictions, while reserving the government’s right to reconsider the decision if necessary.
The significance lies in what it may signal about the direction of policy.
Earlier this year, the US introduced its Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion. Alongside controls on advanced chips and computing infrastructure, the framework contemplates restrictions on certain advanced AI model weights – the parameters that capture what a trained model has learned.
That marks an important shift. For years, policy largely centred on protecting the tools needed to develop frontier AI. Increasingly, governments also appear to be examining whether the capabilities embedded within frontier models themselves deserve closer scrutiny.
Markets often pay most attention to the companies building a technology. Governments tend to become more involved once they begin asking what that technology could mean for economic competitiveness and national security.
That does not mean access to frontier AI will become tightly controlled, nor does one regulatory episode establish a lasting precedent. Policymakers are still working out where commercial technology ends and national security begins.
The Anthropic case is best understood as one data point within that broader debate. Yet it raises a pertinent question: when does a technology stop being just another commercial product and become a strategic asset?
For long-term investors, that question may become increasingly relevant. The next phase of artificial intelligence is likely to be shaped not only by advances in the technology itself, but also by how governments define, regulate and protect technologies they consider strategically important.
Market wrap
India’s stock markets recorded their fourth weekly gain in a row, helped by falling oil prices and a steadier rupee. Easing concerns of a rate hike by the US Federal Reserve also helped sentiment.
Both the BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty rose about 0.9% this week. This extends their four-week gains to 4.7% and 3.9%, respectively. In the broader market, the small-caps jumped 2.1% and mid-caps added 0.6%.
As many as 11 of the 16 major sectors logged weekly gains. These include pharma and healthcare sectors.
Among Nifty 50 stocks, Zomato parent Eternal was the top performer with a gain of over 10%. The Bajaj twins–Bajaj Finserv and Bajaj Finance–along with Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports, and carmaker Maruti Suzuki were among the other biggest gainers. Nestle India, Trent, Titan and Apollo Hospitals also ended in green.
Larsen & Toubro fell the most, ending 4.5% down this week. Eicher Motors slid 3.4% after brokerages said the Royal Enfield maker was the most exposed two-wheeler maker to Delhi’s new EV policy. Bajaj Auto, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles also lost ground. Heavyweight Reliance Industries slipped 1%.
Other Headlines
- India, Japan ink pacts on AI, metals and energy after talks between PM Modi, Sanae Takaichi
- Kotak Mahindra to acquire Deutsche Bank’s India retail business for Rs 282 crore
- Persistent Systems to buy Germany’s Nagarro for about $1.14 billion
- Danish brewer Carlsberg’s India unit confidentially files for IPO
- Digital lender Fibe files for IPO, to raise Rs 750 crore via fresh issue
- Adani Ports to sell 49% stake in Kerala’s Vizhinjam port to Swiss firm MSC for $1.4 billion
- Adani Enterprises, UAE’s IHC plan $11.5 billion aluminium project in Odisha
- HDFC Bank names Axis Bank’s Puneet Sharma as new CFO, starting December 1
- HDFC Bank names former finance secretary and Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar as part-time chairman
- Microsoft teams up with Singapore’s Lightstorm to build India-Southeast Asia undersea cable
- RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra says case for lower inflation target in long run
- Hero MotoCorp to invest Rs 3,200 crore in Andhra Pradesh, to expand Tirupati factory
- JPMorgan appoints Rahul Badhwar as senior country head for India
- Govt cuts price of LPG cylinder for industrial, commercial users
- IndiGo launches cheaper tickets for passengers with cabin baggage only
- India’s Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index falls to 54.2 in June from 55 in May
That’s all for this week. Until next week, happy investing!
Interested in how we think about the markets?
Read more: Zen And The Art Of Investing
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