Company executives share their response to the Union Budget 2026 presented by Nirmala Sitharaman. Many leaders welcomed the focus on capital expenditure (capex), structural reforms, and support for long-term growth. At the same time, select tax measures and market-related provisions drew measured concern from investors and listed companies.
Shaji Varghese, Chief Executive Officer, Muthoot FinCorp Ltd
The Union Budget presents a fiscal prudent and clear roadmap for inclusive, sustainable, and tech-led growth, especially job creation, agricultural productivity and incentives for data centers. The focus on strengthening NBFCs, deepening the corporate bond market, and improving credit flow to MSMEs will help extend timely and affordable finance to the last mile and small businesses.
Building on Lakhpati Didi programme and Self-Help Entrepreneur (SHE) Marts will help women transition to enterprise ownership. Community-owned retail outlets run by self-help group entrepreneurs will help to develop a resilient and modern retail network at a time traditional retailers are facing fierce competition from large e-commerce giants.
Raamdeo Agrawal, Chairman & Co-founder, Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd
This budget is a masterstroke for India’s digital future. The 100% tax holiday for data centers until 2047 is a ‘1,000-pound gorilla’ move. This is similar to the 90s software boom all over again. We are already adopting AI; now we are building the ‘AI Factory of the World,’ firing up massive capex in power, cables, and infrastructure.
The fine print is equally vital; widening the IT services definition finally provides transfer pricing certainty for GCCs, signalling to the world that India is open for high-end tech business.
However, we must be realistic about the impact of STT on capital markets. The STT hike and the removal of dividend set-offs seem to be bringing a headwind to markets. They make many high-frequency and arbitrage trades unviable, which will squeeze market liquidity and leverage in the short term. But with a prudent 4.3% fiscal deficit and a 12.2 lakh crore capex push, the long-term earnings story remains the real hero for India.
Ramesh Babu, MD & CEO of Karur Vysya Bank
The Union Budget 2026-27 lays out a forward-looking roadmap to strengthen inclusive economic growth. The continued focus on fiscal consolidation, including a reduction in the debt-to-GDP ratio, is expected to give banks greater flexibility to expand priority sector lending, supporting economic stability and balanced urban–rural development. Key measures for MSMEs, including the revival of legacy industrial clusters, additional capital infusion into the Self-Reliant India Fund, enhanced liquidity and transaction settlement facilities, and liquidity support through TREDS and the SME Growth Fund, are expected to boost credit absorption, encourage formalization, promote entrepreneurship, and sustain job creation.
The Budget also highlights inclusive technology adoption for farmers, women, and divyangjan, along with dedicated programmes to improve farmer incomes and promote rural entrepreneurship, strengthening the agricultural ecosystem. The introduction of Corporate Mitras, particularly in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, will help small enterprises navigate compliance and regulatory requirements more efficiently. We remain committed to facilitating credit flows and supporting enterprises across sectors, in line with our mission to drive inclusive growth and strengthen the financial ecosystem.
Gaurav Seth, CEO, 5paisa
Government’s sharp focus on manufacturing along with infra development will continue to be a fillip for the economy. Easing of norms for PROIs by allowing investments in equity instruments is also a positive.
We are evaluating the impact of STT hike on business and while the market’s initial reaction has been negative, I expect it to normalise as we digest the fineprint. We are expecting the move to reduce speculation in the space and lead to a more mature ecosystem.
Ajay Kumar Srivastava, MD & CEO, Indian Overseas Bank
The Union Budget 2026-27 is a clear roadmap for all-round growth, balancing industrial scaling with job creation, and laying a robust foundation for a Viksit Bharat. Anchored in the three ‘Kartavyas’—accelerating growth, building capacity, and ensuring inclusive participation, it reflects a vision that resonates strongly with the banking sector and institutions like Indian Overseas Bank.
With a ₹10,000 crore SME Growth Fund to create ‘Champion MSMEs’ and mandatory use of TReDS for CPSE purchases, the government is providing small businesses with the structural support to scale. This enhances our ability to extend targeted credit and support MSME growth across regions. Initiatives such as ISM 2.0, tax incentives for Data Centres and cloud services, and Bharat Vistaar, a multilingual AI platform for agriculture align perfectly with our focus on financing high-tech manufacturing, digital infrastructure, and rural productivity. Credit-linked subsidy programmes for Animal Husbandry and Fisheries, along with Mega Textile Parks, Rare Earth Corridors, and doubled NRI investment limits, provide new avenues for inclusive financing and investment facilitation.
The High-Level Committee on Banking for Viksit Bharat further strengthens institutional efficiency, enabling banks to better support India’s next phase of growth. Overall, this budget is a forward-looking, data-driven plan that empowers us to drive sustainable growth and inclusive development across the country.
Venkatraman Narayanan, MD, Happiest Minds Technologies
The Union Budget 2026–27 reflects a responsible, growth-oriented approach to strengthening India’s position in the global digital and manufacturing economy, with a clear focus on long-term value creation. Anchored in the three Kartavyas of infrastructure development, capability-building, and economic security, the Budget recognises that leadership in the AI era will be shaped by sustained investments in physical, digital, and knowledge infrastructure.
The strong emphasis on capital expenditure, including allocations for IT, telecom, and high-tech manufacturing, alongside the enhanced outlay under India Semiconductor Mission 2.0, signals a decisive push toward building a resilient semiconductor and advanced manufacturing ecosystem. These measures create the foundation for AI-enabled manufacturing, embedded systems, and next-generation engineering-led innovation.
The focus on cloud and data centre infrastructure, supported by long-term tax incentives and safe harbour clarity, further strengthens India’s attractiveness as a global base for digital and AI-led services. The consolidation of IT and IT-enabled services into a unified sector complements this vision by improving ease of doing business and policy predictability. For companies like Happiest Minds, this reinforces our belief that sustainable AI success will be human-led built on responsible innovation, continuous skilling, and deep industry government collaboration.
Taranbir Singh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bharat Supply
The Union Budget 2026–27 seeks to strengthen infrastructure critical for rural and beyond-metro logistics through new Dedicated Freight Corridors, expansion of inland waterways and coastal cargo, domestic container manufacturing, and targeted investment in Tier II and Tier III by establishing a new model – City Economic Regions. For platforms like Bharat Supply, serving over 2 lakh villages, CER-led infrastructure can enable modern fulfilment centres, aggregation hubs and multimodal connectivity closer to production clusters, reducing distance, time and cost for rural supply chains, and improving access from hinterlands to national markets.
Ankush Jain, CFO at Proventus Agrocom Limited (ProV)
The Union Budget 2026-27 seeks to push high-value agriculture as a forward-looking move that could meaningfully redefine farm incomes. Promoting high-density cultivation of almonds, cashews, walnuts, and pine nuts while linking production to processing, branding, and exports shows a clear shift from volume to value. Creating sustainable crop clusters can help farmers in hilly and coastal regions diversify beyond climate-vulnerable staples. If backed by strong infrastructure, extension support, and market access, this strategy can reduce import dependence and position Indian growers more competitively in the global premium agri-produce market.
Chirag Shah, Founder & CEO of Pulse
The Budget sends a clear signal of policy continuity with a strong focus on growth anchored in technology, infrastructure and MSME development. The emphasis on capital expenditure, support for Champion MSMEs and targeted measures to deepen credit access is likely to create positive multiplier effects across the economy. The announcements around data centres and digital infrastructure further strengthen the foundation for data-led financial systems. As lenders increasingly rely on technology and real-time insights to assess risk and expand credit, the availability of reliable financial data will be critical in enabling MSMEs to scale sustainably. Overall, the Budget reinforces confidence in a more transparent, efficient and inclusive credit ecosystem, aligned with our commitment to enabling smarter MSME finance.
Madhu Rajputra Peravalli, Co-founder, Troogue
Budget 2026 introduces a few important clarifications that are relevant for companies operating at the intersection of AI, digital services, and workforce platforms. The explicit treatment of manpower services under contractor TDS removes an area of ambiguity that enterprises and talent platforms have navigated for years.
The continued emphasis on AI as core digital infrastructure, along with references to ethical AI, skills mapping, and responsible technology adoption, reflects the direction in which the ecosystem is moving.
Sachin Panicker, Chief AI Officer, Fulcrum Digital –
The Union Budget 2026-27 recognises that artificial intelligence is no longer an experimental technology but a strategic lever for governance, productivity and economic growth. It has specifically highlighted AI applications to enhance governance and introduced measures such as the AI Mission, National Quantum Mission and significant new funding through the Anusandhan National Research Foundation and the Research and Development and Innovation Fund.
Equally important is the decision to substantially enhance the safe harbour threshold for IT services from ₹300 crore to ₹2,000 crore, which will significantly reduce compliance friction and improve operating certainty for a much broader set of technology firms. This move aims to strengthen India’s technology ecosystem by expanding research capacity, supporting translational innovation and building future capabilities in sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, education and public services. For this framework to create measurable impact we need coordinated implementation with industry and academia, greater focus on data and compute infrastructure, and skilling pathways that align with the evolving demand for specialised AI talent.
Narendra Sen, Founder and CEO, RackBank Data Centers
We welcome the Union Budget 2026–27 as a strong and investor-positive signal at a time when global capital is actively comparing India with other data centre markets. India already contributes nearly 20 percent of the global data economy, while the global data centre market stands at approximately 120 GW. Even capturing one percent of this opportunity highlights the scale of the current capacity gap and the headroom for growth.
With deployed capacity still at an early stage, India has the potential to reach nearly 10 GW over the next five years, translating into investments of close to USD 70–100 billion across data centre infrastructure. Long-term tax certainty through the proposed tax holiday significantly improves return visibility for global investors, including infrastructure funds and real estate-focused capital, and makes Indian data centre platforms more attractive as a long-term asset class.
India’s advantage is not limited to policy support. Build costs in India are among the lowest globally at approximately USD 5 million per megawatt, compared to USD 10–12 million in several international markets, materially improving project economics. Combined with domestic manufacturing capability, reduced import dependence, and a strong clean energy ecosystem across solar and wind, the operating environment is structurally competitive.
Equally important is India’s geographic positioning. From locations across eastern and western India, data centres can serve South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa within low latency thresholds, enabling access to nearly half of the world’s population. This combination of market scale, cost efficiency, energy availability and policy clarity positions India as a credible regional and global hub for digital infrastructure.
For companies like RackBank, this Budget strengthens confidence to expand capacity, attract global capital and support the delivery of scalable, secure and sovereign digital infrastructure for both Indian and international customers.
Arif Aga, Director at SgurrEnergy
The strong emphasis on capacity building through the National Centres of Excellence for Skilling—including collaborations in sectors like renewable energy—is vital for equipping the nation with the specialized workforce needed to deploy large-scale solar, wind, green hydrogen, and other clean energy projects, while optimizing renewable energy generation and integration.
This commitment will play a key role in achieving India’s target of 500 GW capacity by 2030, all while ensuring cost efficiency and supporting the broader transition to a sustainable, low-carbon energy future.
Harishanker Kannan, CEO & Co-founder of Scalefusion
With a strong focus on IT services, expansion of data centre infrastructure, cloud adoption, and enabling cross-border digital operations, India’s Union Budget clearly reinforces the country’s ambition to emerge as a leading global digital and technology powerhouse. The policies encouraging cloud innovation, strategic data infrastructure and seamless global connectivity will lay foundation for faster adoption of secure and scalable digital solutions by enterprises around the world. For organisations managing distributed teams and devices, this evolving landscape creates an ideal environment to implement resilient, compliant, and future-ready IT systems at scale, an opportunity we at Scalefusion are proud to help enable.
Pratap Mane, President & Country Head – India, Colt DCS
The Union Budget 2026-27 marks a pivotal moment in accelerating India’s digital infrastructure ambitions. The extension of the tax holiday to 2047 for foreign cloud providers leveraging Indian data centre capacity is a bold, investor-attractive policy that stands out globally for its long-term horizon. This provides the fiscal predictability essential for committing to large-scale, capital-intensive developments, directly supporting our ongoing expansion and efforts to deliver more than 250 MW of AI-ready Data Centre for our Hyperscale Clients in India.
The 15% safe harbour for related-party data centre services further streamlines operations for international players building in India, reducing complexity and enhancing cost efficiency in a high-growth environment.
Pinkesh Kotecha, Chairman and Managing Director, Ishan Technologies
The Union Budget 2026–27 marks a decisive shift in positioning digital infrastructure as a strategic national asset. Long-term tax holiday for global cloud players using Indian data centres and safe harbour provisions provide much-needed certainty and the recognition of cloud and DCs alongside core infrastructure send position India as a credible hub for digital infrastructure serving global markets.
What stands out is the strong alignment between policy intent and execution, from sovereign cloud enablement and AI-ready data centre capacity to accelerated city-level digital infrastructure across Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets. This clearly favours players with pan-India footprints and the ability to deliver connectivity, data centres, cloud, and managed services as an integrated stack. As enterprises, governments, and high-tech industries increasingly run mission-critical, data-intensive workloads, continued support for compliant, India-hosted cloud and resilient networks will be essential. The Budget lays a solid foundation for infrastructure-led digital growth and positions integrated infrastructure providers to emerge as default digital partners in India’s next phase of industrial, cloud, and AI-driven expansion
Anand Sahay, Global CEO, Xebia
The Budget reinforces technology as a core driver of India’s future growth and capacity building, aligned with the Government’s kartavya of fulfilling aspirations through productivity and inclusion. The emphasis on emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, underscores their role in driving innovation, competitiveness, and broad-based economic participation.
Continued support for national initiatives such as the AI Mission, National Quantum Mission, Anusandhan National Research Fund, and the Research, Development and Innovation Fund strengthens India’s research and innovation ecosystem. The proposed AI-led capacity building initiatives, targeting up to 25 crore individuals, reflect a clear intent to democratise access to future-ready skills at scale. The renewed focus on the services sector further positions technology-led services as a key pathway for employment generation, upskilling, and aspiration-led growth for a youthful workforce.
Overall, the Budget signals a sustained commitment to building a technology-driven, inclusive economy where AI and emerging technologies enable both innovation and opportunity.
At Xebia, we are embedding AI across our engineering, delivery, and decision-making while enabling clients to operationalise AI at scale. We welcome this direction as a strong step toward reinforcing India’s role as a global leader in advanced technology and digital engineering.
Amit Sharma, Founder & Whole Time Director, Matrix Geo Solutions
The Union Budget 2026–27 sends a clear signal that India’s next phase of infrastructure growth will be driven as much by data and precision as by physical assets. With record capital expenditure of ₹12.2 lakh crore and a strong focus on transport, urban development, water systems, and digital ecosystems, infrastructure planning and execution are set to become more technology-led and outcome-focused. Large corridor projects, smart cities, flood mitigation, and logistics networks increasingly depend on accurate terrain models, authoritative base maps, and real-time geospatial intelligence to reduce risk and accelerate delivery.
Continued policy support for drones, space technologies, and artificial intelligence reinforces the shift from static 2D drawings to integrated 3D and 4D planning environments. For project owners, PSUs, and EPC players, survey-grade, decision-ready geospatial data will now be as critical as construction itself.
At Matrix Geo Solutions, we see this Budget as an execution accelerator, where precision, integration of engineering with GIS, and digital continuity from planning to operations will define timely, resilient, and cost-effective infrastructure delivery.
Subhasis Majumdar, Managing Director, Vertiv India
The Union Budget 2026-27 positions India as a serious global player in digital infrastructure and cloud services. The long-term tax holiday for foreign cloud companies until 2047 is a game-changing move. This move will dramatically improve investment and make India significantly more competitive. As a global leader in critical infrastructure that powers data centres, AI factories, hyperscale campuses, and cloud environments, we see this as a direct accelerator for the high-density, high-efficiency facilities that will define tomorrow’s digital economy. Our advanced power systems, liquid cooling technologies, and integrated rack solutions are purpose-built to support exactly this scale of sustainable, AI-ready build-out.
Equally important is the much-needed relief given to the broader IT services industry. These measures will bring huge relief in compliance burden and allow companies to focus on business growth and innovation. Together, this will attract large global cloud investment, drive massive new data centre capacity, create a huge multiplier effect for power, cooling, critical infrastructure and digital ecosystem players. We firmly believe that this budget will accelerate India’s emergence as a global digital infrastructure powerhouse.
Shaaz Mehmood, Founder, Medijourn Solutions Private Limited
I commend Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the Union Budget 2026–27 for recognising the strategic importance of medical tourism in India’s healthcare growth story. The announcement of five regional medical tourism hubs is a strong and timely step that will enhance India’s position as a global medical value travel destination. By integrating modern healthcare with AYUSH systems, diagnostics and rehabilitation, the budget lays the foundation for a more coordinated and patient-centric ecosystem. The emphasis on private sector participation and strengthening healthcare capacity will improve service delivery and scalability. While further policy support over time can accelerate global patient inflows, the budget clearly demonstrates a forward-looking approach to building a competitive and resilient medical tourism ecosystem that contributes to economic growth.
India’s MVT sector has grown steadily over the years, and cities like Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Bengaluru are already well-positioned to scale as global healthcare destinations. With the right execution and private-sector partnership, this initiative can significantly strengthen India’s leadership in global medical tourism.
Also Read: Key Highlights from Union Budget 2026: Manufacturing and Technology Matters
