No-Tax-Risk Data Centres: How India’s 20-year cloud tax holiday works
Introduction India’s Union Budget for the financial year 2026-27, presented on February 1st, 2026 (“Budget”) marked a significant policy milestone for development of data centres in India, implemented to strengthen digital infrastructure and attract foreign investment in cloud and Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) competencies. The headline announcement was that a long-term tax regime shall be introduced …
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Will you still guarantee?
Cross‑border guarantees have long functioned as the quiet scaffolding behind global financing, trade flows, and group‑wide treasury structures. Yet, for years, India’s regulatory approach to guarantees has remained largely unchanged and occasionally ambiguous. That has now changed. With the Foreign Exchange Management (Guarantees) Regulations, 2026 (“Guarantee Regulations 2026”), the RBI has effectively re‑engineered …
New ECB Framework: Are we there yet?
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recently overhauled the external commercial borrowing (ECB) framework, through an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Management (Borrowing and Lending) Regulations, 2018 (ECB Amendment) notified on February 16, 2026.
NBFC Registration Exemption: Much Ado, Limited Impact
In February 2026, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a press release, along with a draft of the Reserve Bank of India (Non-Banking Financial Companies – Registration, Exemptions and Framework for Scale Based Regulation) Amendment Directions, 2026 (Amendment) proposing exemption from registration for certain categories of Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFC), details of which are …
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Overview of the Corporate Governance Regulatory Framework in India
Contributed by: Vaidehi Balvally, Nausheen Ansari, Poonam Sharma, Parag Srivastava and Karan Kalra Part 1: Corporate Governance: What’s the Hype? Corporate governance has clearly become the buzz word in India Inc., in more ways than one. But what is corporate governance and why is there so much fuss around it? The concept broadly refers to …
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Stronger Roads, Stronger Contracts: NHAI Unveils New Safeguard Circular
National Highways Authority of India (“NHAI”) vide policy circular no. 11.84/2026 dated 13th February 2026 (“Circular”) has introduced amendments to its standard bidding documents that recalibrate several financial and contractual safeguards. The changes affect the frameworks governing bid security, additional performance security (“APS”/ “Additional Performance Security”), dispute resolution (“Disputes Resolution Mechanism”), and the admissibility of …
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Additional clarifications to the FDI policy for investments from land bordering countries
Introduction On 15 March 2026, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry has issued Press Note No. 2 (2026 Series) (“Press Note 2”) as an amendment to Para 3.1.1 of the Consolidated FDI Policy Circular of 2020 dated 15.10.2020 (“FDI Policy”) in furtherance to the press release dated …
Sector – Specific Anti – Trust Challenges in India
By Aniket Ghosh Introduction Competition law in India starts with a simple idea: free, fair markets work better for everyone. They push companies to be efficient, help consumers, and keep innovation alive. That’s the whole point behind the Competition Act, 2002. It replaced the old MRTP Act, which was all about controlling monopolies, and brought …
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E-Commerce and Competition Law
By Aniket Ghosh Introduction The rapid expansion of e-commerce in India has raised significant concerns regarding market dominance, fair competition, and regulatory oversight. One of the most prominent legal confrontations in this domain arose when the Competition Commission of India (CCI) initiated an investigation against Amazon and Flipkart, two of India’s largest e-commerce platforms, for …
Major GST Win: Clinical Trial Services for Foreign Clients Are Exports & Tax Free Retrospectively
By Aditya Bhattacharya Contributed by Vipin Upadhyay In a significant victory for the Indian pharmaceutical and research services industry, the Hon’ble High Court of Karnataka has ruled that clinical trial services and allied pharmaceutical R&D services provided to recipients located outside India qualify as “export of services” under GST law. The ruling also held that …