When I walked into a Sahakari Bhandar outlet in Dadar, Mumbai, last year, the prices on staples like tur dal and sunflower oil were noticeably lower than what I had paid the previous afternoon at a nearby Reliance Smart store. That was not a coincidence. It was the result of a model that has been … Read more
In March 2022, Ramesh Jadhav — a smallholder cotton farmer in Khandala village, Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra — owed ₹1.4 lakh to a private moneylender at 36% annual interest. By January 2026, he was debt-free, had ₹80,000 in savings, and had just taken a ₹2 lakh crop loan at 4% interest from a cooperative he once … Read more
A 24-year-old sugarcane farmer’s son in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, recently convinced 47 fellow young growers to pool their harvest data on a shared WhatsApp dashboard before selling to a single buyer — and collectively negotiated a price 18% higher than the local mandi rate. He had never heard the word “cooperative” used to describe what he … Read more
In Nagaur district, a mustard farmer named Hanuman Ram sold his entire winter harvest at the local mandi in early 2026 for roughly ₹4,600 per quintal — about ₹250 below the MSP. He had never heard of RAJFED, the state cooperative body that was, at that very moment, running a price support procurement centre less … Read more
A $62 million settlement is easier to absorb when insurance picks up the entire bill — but the disclosure failures that triggered this class action have already done their work, reshaping how institutional investors read guidance from A2 Milk and its listed FMCG peers. The A2 Milk Company has reached an in-principle agreement to settle … Read more
Over 800,000 cooperative societies operate across India right now, touching the lives of nearly 290 million members — and yet most people I talk to have only a vague idea of how these organizations actually work. I spent years studying India’s cooperative movement, and I can tell you it remains one of the most powerful … Read more
When Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, carrying $619 billion in liabilities, it became the largest corporate collapse in American history and an instant symbol of how catastrophically fragile investor-driven institutions can become. What barely made financial headlines that same week was that Rabobank — a Dutch cooperative bank founded by farmers in … Read more
When an Abu Dhabi-backed entity pays more than £1 billion for the company behind The Ivy and Annabel’s, it tells you something about how Gulf capital now views premium Western hospitality brands — not as vanity plays, but as scalable global platforms. DIAFA, an affiliate of International Holding Company (IHC), has acquired a controlling stake … Read more
A single-day jump of 8% in crude oil is the kind of move that rewrites quarterly forecasts across the Gulf overnight. That is exactly what energy markets delivered on Sunday, driven by a geopolitical escalation that places Iran — and by extension the entire MENA energy corridor — at the centre of global supply anxiety. … Read more
When 190 countries vote on where to convene the world’s most consequential financial gathering, the result says more about a nation’s economic credibility than any credit rating ever could. Abu Dhabi just won that vote for 2029, and the implications for the UAE’s position in global finance deserve a closer look. The UAE has secured … Read more
