ET Intelligence Group: Gaja Alternative Asset Management, which manages and advises India-focused investment funds, plans to raise ₹450 crore through a fresh issue to fund its investments in existing and new funds and repay loan. Additionally, it will raise ₹100 crore through an offer for sale. The promoter stake will fall to 54% after the IPO, from 71% currently. The company has generated an average multiple on invested capital (MOIC) of 3.3 times across prior investments and funds, implying strong investment returns. However, its earnings are dependent on fund performance and its business is exposed to regulatory changes. Given these factors, the issue appears to be suitable for long-term investors with a higher risk tolerance.

Business

Incorporated in 1999, the company invests in sectors including education, energy and environment, financial services, consumer and digital technology. Its investment approach is focused on the mid-market segment, comprising deal size of ₹50-250 crore. The Limited Partners (or investors) of Gaja Capital funds are spread across 20 countries including India, the US, Europe and the Middle East. It derives income from management fee, carried interest, which refers to share of profits from successful investments, and income from sponsor commitment. Income from sponsor commitments represents gains on the company’s own capital invested in the funds. As of March 31, 2026, it has committed about ₹274 crore, or 6.4% of the total size of the Gaja Capital Funds. The carried interest accounted for nearly 48% of total income in FY26. Any weak investment performance will affect the carried interest and sponsor related income. According to Crisil, the assets under management for alternative investments in India are expected to grow at 25-27% to reach ₹41 lakh crore-44 lakh crore by March 2030.

Financials

Revenue increased to ₹158 crore in FY26 from ₹104 crore in FY24. Net profit grew to ₹82 crore in FY26 from ₹45 crore in FY24. Net margin rose to 52% from 43% during the period, reflecting operating leverage as cost-to-income ratio fell to 44.6% in FY26 from 52.3% in FY25. Across its three funds, MOIC has ranged from 1.7 times to 3.8 times. MOIC shows how much an investment has grown compared with the amount originally invested. The return on equity increased to 16.5% in FY26 from 14.5% in FY24.Read more: Anthropic pre-IPO credit facility set to climb past $10 billion

Valuation

As the first standalone private equity firm to list on the exchanges, Gaja Alternative Asset Management has no direct listed peers. The IPO is priced at a P/E multiple of 27.5 times, compared with P/E multiples of around 25-40 times for listed asset management companies (AMCs).

Mumbai Milky Mist Dairy Food was listed on the NSE at ₹165 on Tuesday, a 17.9% premium to its issue price of ₹140. The stock ended at the day’s high of ₹181.5. The company’s market capitalisation was at ₹13,972.66 crore at close.

Read more: Augmont Enterprises IPO: Rs 825 crore issue price band set at Rs 750-788

The UK Payments Market report, released once a year, shows that debit cards – included those loaded onto phones – were the predominant way to pay last year.

They accounted for 54% of all payments in made in 2025. Some 39% of payments were contactless.

Cheques had been due to be phased out by 2018, until MPs forced a change of heart by the industry years ago.

Instead, they have withered to just 0.2% of payments made in the UK – with a total of 77 million written last year.

Cash is unlikely to go the same way, according to forecasts by UK Finance.

Notes and coins were used in 3.9 billion, or 8%, of all payments last year. This is expected to halve to 4% of all payments in the UK in 2035, or two billion transactions.

However, some people still had a strong preference for using cash.

“Rather than the UK becoming a cash-free society over the next decade, the UK will transition to an economy where cash is less important than it once was but remains widely valued and still preferred by some,” the report said.

Nearly 50 million people used a cash machines last year.

Nick Quin, from Link, which oversees the UK’s ATM network, said: “Cash withdrawals are falling across every part of the country. More people find it convenient and prefer to pay using contactless cards and digital wallets on smartphones, but millions still rely on cash day in, day out.

“People on lower incomes rely more heavily or entirely on cash to budget, which is why our job is to protect access to cash for as long as people need it.”

Good morning. Financial influencers are reshaping how consumers manage their money—and how brands win their trust, Elyse Goncalves reports for The Wall Street Journal.

Less regulated and more widely accessible than the traditional financial services industry, these “finfluencers” use battle-tested growth tactics to capture attention. Stock picker Timothy James, 38, says he’s used rage-baiting lines to drive views, while U.K. creator Leo Gibson relies on radical relatability. Gibson’s financial advice video reached nearly 500,000 views by ditching institutional polish for a casual bedroom setup.

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Travelers can still score deals this fall, but they may have to work harder to find them as the traditional shoulder season gets squeezed.

Fall travel interest on Vrbo is up 17% from a year ago, while average nightly rates after summer are now just 5% below peak summer prices across the platform’s top destinations, according to new data from the vacation rental platform.

“Shoulder season is this magic time between Labor Day and the holiday travel season when, traditionally, prices have dropped pretty dramatically and crowds have thinned out,” Vrbo Travel Expert Melanie Fish told FOX Business. “Well, summer travel demand is now bleeding over into fall.”

Some of the best savings remain in beach destinations, overseas markets and trips booked for later in the fall.

WEALTHY AMERICANS LOOK TO NEW ZEALAND AS DEMAND FOR ‘GOLDEN VISAS’ BOOMS

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, tops Vrbo’s list, with vacation rental rates averaging 34% less than during summer. One property cited by the company drops from as much as $1,300 per night in August to about $600 in October.

Other beach markets also offer discounts. Orange Beach, Alabama, offers average savings of 31%, followed by Panama City Beach, Florida, at 24%, Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, at 16%, and Ocean City, Maryland, at 12%, according to Vrbo.

Fish said travelers chasing lower prices should consider swapping destinations or keeping an eye out for last-minute discounts.

BUDGET AIRLINE JETSTAR TO CHARGE PASSENGERS FOR STORING BAGS IN OVERHEAD COMPARTMENTS

Travelers heading overseas may also have better luck. European vacation rental prices fall an average of about 8% from summer highs during the fall, with larger discounts in destinations including Corfu, Crete, Girona, the Azores and Siena.

Major tourism hubs such as London, Paris, Madrid and Rome tend to hold onto higher prices, leaving fewer shoulder-season bargains.

The squeeze is also showing up in several major U.S. cities. Vrbo said fall rates are rising in Nashville, Boston, Chicago and Miami as demand stays strong beyond summer.

SEE IT: TRUMP ADMIN UNVEILS SWEEPING $22.5B DULLES AIRPORT OVERHAUL

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Travelers willing to wait until after the holidays could find the biggest break.

From just after New Year’s through the period before spring break in early 2027, lodging prices are expected to run about 34% below summer peaks, with possible deals in San Diego, Los Angeles and Orlando.

NEW YORK — The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 87.36 points, or 0.16%, to 53,372.42 as of 9:44 a.m. EDT Tuesday, as rising oil prices tied to escalating tensions with Iran weighed on broader market sentiment even as a stronger-than-expected earnings report from Home Depot offered some support to blue-chip stocks.

Tuesday’s modest decline followed a sharper pullback across Wall Street on Monday, when all three major indexes closed lower amid rising crude prices and climbing long-term Treasury yields. The Dow fell 272.63 points, or 0.51%, to close at 53,459.78, while the S&P 500 slid 0.52% to 7,745.06 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.32% to 26,644.91. That pullback came as West Texas Intermediate crude climbed above $83 a barrel and Brent crude moved above $88, with crude prices gaining roughly 3% during Monday’s session alone following the expiration of a 60-day window for the U.S. and Iran to reach a deal aimed at ending their ongoing conflict.

By Tuesday, oil prices had pushed even higher, with crude trading above $90 a barrel as concerns over instability in the Middle East continued to dominate broader market sentiment. According to Yahoo Finance, Middle East conflict concerns combined with the elevated oil prices weighed on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq early Tuesday, with the Nasdaq Composite falling as much as 1.2% in premarket trading, leading declines among the major indexes, while the Dow traded closer to flat.

Home Depot emerged as one of the session’s key earnings stories. The home improvement retailer reported fiscal second-quarter sales of $47.86 billion, topping analyst expectations of roughly $47.27 billion, alongside adjusted earnings per share of $4.92, ahead of the $4.73 consensus estimate. The company reaffirmed its full-year guidance, continuing to project comparable sales of roughly flat to up 2% for fiscal 2026, along with adjusted earnings per share in a range of flat to up 4% from $14.69, compared with a consensus estimate of $14.96.

According to Investing.com, Home Depot shares rose as much as 2.1% in pre-market trading following the report, with demand from repair-focused customers proving more resilient than some investors had feared. However, by the time regular trading got underway, the stock’s gains had moderated considerably, with CNBC reporting the shares up only around 1% after the company left its full-year guidance unchanged despite the top-line beat. Oppenheimer analyst Brian Nagel offered commentary on the results in a CNBC interview, breaking down the retailer’s performance as investors weighed the company’s outlook against continuing softness in the broader housing market. Home Depot separately reaffirmed its guidance while citing what the company described as “frozen housing market conditions,” according to CNBC’s coverage of the report.

Notably, Home Depot’s earnings call was led by interim management, with Senior Executive Vice President Ann-Marie Campbell and Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail steering the company after Chief Executive Ted Decker began a temporary medical leave on Aug. 12.

Home Depot’s results carried added significance given the broader context of this week’s retail earnings slate. Walmart, Target, Lowe’s and TJX are all scheduled to report results over the coming days, with Lowe’s set to report Wednesday and Walmart due Thursday. Those reports are being closely watched following Friday’s weaker-than-expected U.S. retail sales data, which showed sales unexpectedly fell 0.6% in July, the largest monthly decline in more than a year, raising questions about whether elevated interest rates, inflation and broader household financial pressure are beginning to weigh more heavily on consumer spending.

TheStreet Pro contributor James “Rev Shark” DePorre highlighted the outsized importance the market is placing on this week’s retail results given that backdrop. “The retailers are the real news,” DePorre said. “Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), and Home Depot (HD) all report earnings, and after Friday’s weaker-than-expected retail sales those reports will carry more weight than they normally would.” DePorre also flagged Wednesday’s scheduled release of Federal Open Market Committee meeting minutes as a significant event to watch this week, given recent signs of division among Fed officials. “Given that three members dissented in favor of a hike at the last meeting and Kevin Warsh declined to signal anything about the path ahead, the minutes may be more informative than usual,” he said.

Beyond the retail and Home Depot storylines, Tuesday’s session also featured notable pressure across the memory chip sector. Micron Technology and SK Hynix each fell more than 4% in premarket trading, while shares of Sandisk also declined more than 4%, according to CNBC, as memory chipmakers broadly retreated as a group after a period of significant gains tied to artificial intelligence-driven demand.

Elsewhere in Tuesday’s earnings and market news, optical product manufacturer Fabrinet fell more than 9% despite fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that exceeded expectations, with the company citing anticipated seasonal expense pressure expected to weigh on margins during its fiscal first quarter of 2027. Buy-now-pay-later company Klarna’s stock plunged following a trimmed financial outlook, according to Yahoo Finance’s market coverage, while packaging company Amcor was downgraded to neutral from overweight by JPMorgan on Monday.

Individual premarket movers Tuesday included notable volatility beyond the major blue-chip names. Electric vehicle company Xos surged 114.6% on heavy trading volume, while medical technology company Profusa climbed 97.2%, according to market tracking. Super League Enterprise also jumped 64.5% amid unusually high trading activity, illustrating pockets of significant speculative interest even amid the broader market’s more cautious overall tone Tuesday morning.

With Wednesday’s Federal Reserve minutes and Lowe’s earnings report on deck, followed by Walmart’s results Thursday, investors are likely to continue closely monitoring how this week’s combination of retail earnings, Fed commentary and ongoing Middle East-driven oil price volatility shapes broader market direction through the remainder of the week, as Wall Street works to reconcile continued strength in areas like artificial intelligence-linked technology stocks against renewed uncertainty stemming from both geopolitical developments and signs of a softening U.S. consumer.

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Google Home and Nest devices experienced a widespread, server-side outage Monday into Tuesday, leaving users across multiple continents unable to control smart speakers, displays and connected home devices, according to outage-tracking services and reports from affected users worldwide.

Downdetector posted on its official account on the social platform X that “user reports indicate problems with Google Nest since 9:20 AM EDT,” tagging the post with the hashtag #GoogleNestDown and directing users to its outage-tracking page for further updates. The post had drawn nearly 1,900 views shortly after being published.

According to Android Authority, the disruption first became apparent much earlier, with Downdetector showing a massive spike in outage reports around 6 a.m. local time in the United Kingdom, corresponding to roughly 1 a.m. Eastern time and 10 p.m. Pacific time in the United States on Sunday night. Reports of the outage continued building throughout the overnight hours and into Monday and Tuesday, with more than 300 users reporting server problems on Downdetector when the issue was first identified, according to Sportskeeda’s coverage of the disruption. Users shared reports of the outage from locations across the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.

The scope of reported symptoms has been broad, spanning multiple Google smart home products. Users have reported that the Google Home app has been unable to control connected devices or receive normal responses in some cases. Nest speakers, including the Google Nest Mini, have failed to respond to voice commands, while Nest Hub displays have become stuck on loading screens or otherwise failed to process user requests. Google Assistant itself has also been affected, with voice commands requesting information or attempting to control smart home devices returning errors rather than completing the requested action. Additionally, some users have reported that scheduled routines and manually triggered automations tied to their smart home setups have failed to execute properly during the outage.

Android Authority reported that standard troubleshooting steps commonly used to resolve smart home device issues, including rebooting affected devices or performing a full factory reset, have not resolved the problem for users experiencing the outage, indicating the disruption stems from Google’s server-side infrastructure rather than any fault with individual devices themselves. As a result, affected users have had little recourse beyond waiting for Google to implement a fix on its end.

The Sunday Guardian reported that users in the United Kingdom have been among those affected by the ongoing disruption, describing a range of complaints including unresponsive speakers, failed voice commands, and Nest Hub devices stuck on blank or loading screens. Users have also reported continued difficulty controlling connected devices and running previously configured automated routines as the outage has persisted.

According to reporting on the incident, the disruption appears to be affecting Google’s cloud-side services that support Nest and Google Home products, rather than the individual hardware devices themselves, though Google had not officially confirmed the precise technical cause of the outage as of the most recent available reporting. Some users have reported that their devices intermittently began working again during the outage window, suggesting the disruption may not be uniformly affecting all users or regions at all times, and that the situation has continued to evolve as Google works toward a resolution.

The outage arrives roughly two and a half weeks after Google rolled out a broader Google Home software update at the start of August that introduced new features for the company’s smart home ecosystem. That earlier update was not without its own complications; iOS users experienced a separate, unrelated bug at the time in which some smart lights were automatically and unexpectedly turned on, an issue Google addressed relatively quickly following user reports.

Nest, which Google acquired in 2014, has experienced periodic connectivity and service disruptions throughout its history as a cloud-connected smart home platform. According to outage-tracking service StatusGator, which has monitored Nest’s service status since September 2016, the platform has experienced more than 168 documented outages over roughly the past decade, reflecting the broader technical challenges inherent to maintaining reliable, always-connected smart home infrastructure at global scale. Historical outages affecting Nest devices have periodically drawn attention to broader concerns among users regarding the reliability of internet-dependent smart home products, particularly for use cases such as home security monitoring or, in some past instances, using connected cameras as baby monitors, where a service disruption can leave users temporarily unable to access functions they may consider essential.

Google has faced broader service disruptions affecting products well beyond its Nest and Home lineup in the past, including outages that have simultaneously affected services such as Google Search, Google Meet, Gmail and Google Cloud infrastructure more broadly. In at least one previous large-scale incident, a Google Cloud spokesperson confirmed to media outlets that the company was “currently investigating a service disruption to some Google Cloud services,” directing affected users and businesses to the company’s public status dashboard for ongoing updates, a communication pattern Google has generally followed during significant platform-wide technical incidents.

As of this report, Google had not issued a detailed public statement specifically addressing the scope, cause or expected resolution timeline for the current Nest and Google Home outage, though the company’s status dashboard for Google Workspace and related cloud services typically serves as the primary official channel through which the company communicates updates during confirmed service disruptions.

Given the global scope of the reported outage, spanning users across North America, Europe and Australia, and the consistency of symptoms described across multiple independent reports, the disruption appears to reflect a genuine, widespread technical failure within Google’s smart home infrastructure rather than a series of isolated, unrelated regional issues. Users experiencing continued problems with their Google Nest or Google Home devices were generally advised to continue monitoring official Google channels and outage-tracking services such as Downdetector for updates, since the underlying server-side nature of the disruption means individual troubleshooting steps are unlikely to resolve the issue until Google implements a fix on its end.