The Union Budget 2026-27, presented on February 1, 2026, has been lauded for its focus on sustainability and decarbonisation that highlights the Budget’s impetus to carbon capture, circular economy, and resource security.
Excerpts from the Budget Reactions:
Shiv Parekh, Founder and CEO, hBits
The Union Budget 2026 sends a positive signal for India’s investment ecosystem, especially through its focus on innovative financing tools. The move to introduce dedicated REITs for monetising CPSE assets and strengthen infrastructure-linked investment vehicles can help unlock private capital and improve market liquidity. This opens up more stable, yield-focused investment opportunities for both institutional and retail investors.
At hBits, we see this as an important step toward making real estate and infrastructure investing more accessible and transparent. Clearer frameworks around REITs can also help attract long-term global capital while spreading risk more effectively. Over time, these measures can support deeper asset markets, drive sustainable growth, and contribute to job creation across the economy.
Vikash Sinha, Lead, Climate Change and Sustainability, MicroSave Consulting (MSC)
The allocation of Rs 1.4 lakh crore under the 16th Finance Commission is a commendable move that strengthens fiscal federalism. However, it must include dedicated provisions for locally led climate adaptation. Climate resilience cannot rely solely on broad infrastructure finance; adaptation requires public ownership with mechanisms that crowd in private sector innovation and investment.
Yosha Gupta, Founder & CEO, MeMeraki
The Union Budget 2026-27 brings some renewed focus to India’s cultural and creative economy, from strengthening handloom and handicrafts through the Mahatma Gandhi Gram Swaraj initiative and the National Handloom and Handicraft Programme to investments in design education, AVGC skilling, and heritage digitisation. Initiatives such as SHE-Marts also point to an intent to support women-led enterprise and inclusive growth.
Going forward, the real opportunity lies in aligning documentation, skills, market access, and enterprise support into a truly connected ecosystem, while also positioning craft more clearly as one of India’s most powerful forms of soft power and cultural export.
Akshay Lakhanpal, CEO India, Space Matrix
India’s Budget 2026 sends a strong signal to global capability centres and multinational firms that India wants to be the world’s most efficient hub for technology and services. By recognising all software development, IT-enabled services, knowledge process outsourcing and contract R&D under a single Information Technology Services category, and introducing a common safe harbour margin of 15.5% with the threshold raised from ₹300 crore to ₹2,000 crore, the government has sharply improved tax certainty and ease of doing business for GCCs and international companies looking to expand here. Safe harbour approvals moving to an automated, rule-driven system further reduce friction and subjectivity, which is exactly what long-term investors and occupiers need for confident, multi-year commitments.
This Budget strengthens India’s position as the preferred destination for global work, and that is fundamentally positive for our sector, our clients and the thousands of professionals who shape the workplaces where this growth will actually be delivered.
Nilesh Aggarwal, Founder Medtalks
The Union Budget 2026-27 signals a clear intent to strengthen India’s clinical research and life sciences ecosystem. The focus on clinical trials, regulatory capacity, and biologics reflects a shift towards making India as a globally credible research destination, not just a cost-efficient one.
As this ecosystem evolves, evidence generation cannot remain limited to trials alone. Indian medical journals, continuous medical education, and real-world data will be equally important in translating research into everyday clinical practice especially in a country as diverse as India.
There is also a need to strengthen India’s own platforms for scientific publishing, doctor education, and patient awareness so that India-specific evidence is generated, interpreted, and disseminated locally.
Arjun Anjaria, Founder & CEO, Unbox Health
The Budget reinforces the growing recognition that food safety and nutrition are central to long-term public health and economic productivity. As packaged foods and supplements become a larger part of everyday diets, consumers need clearer, more reliable information to make safe choices. Stronger labelling standards, wider access to accredited testing and consistent enforce.
Arun Ramamurthy, Co-founder, Staywell.Health
The Indian Government intends to increase investment in its biopharma sector through various initiatives such as the Biopharma, Shakti’ fund (which is Rs 10,000 crore) along with improving the affordability of medicines used in treating chronic diseases. This investment will serve to lower healthcare costs over time. Investing more in preventive care, traditional health care modalities (Ayurveda and Yoga) and increasing the total number of places of care will change the focus of healthcare from being solely reactively treated too much more integratively-treat/ integrated wellness based over a long time frame – ultimately decreasing stress on the existing healthcare delivery system/infrastructure and improving health risk outcomes throughout the overall healthcare insurance delivery system.
Deepak Verma, Head of Business, Pacecourt
The Khelo India Mission, now extended for a further 10 years, is a much-needed initiative that understands sports as a long-term national infrastructure and not merely an activity that takes place through events. As India readies itself for a long-term sports infrastructure build-out in schools, developments, and public spaces, and as it prepares for the Commonwealth Games in the next decade, the need to shift the focus from short-term build-out to the long-term design of these infrastructure assets is essential.
Sameer Mathur, Md and Founder of Roinet Solution
The Budget maintains continuity in strengthening India’s digital public infrastructure, with recognition of platforms such as UPI that have significantly expanded access to financial services and supported the growth of the fintech ecosystem. At the same time, there is scope for greater clarity on the roadmap for fintech’s next phase of evolution, particularly across lending, wealth creation and insurance, which are critical to advancing financial inclusion.
Mr S Sankarasubramanian, Chairman, The Fertiliser Association of India and MD and CEO, Coromandel International Ltd
This Budget brings together productivity, resilience, and affordability in a way that reflects the evolving needs of Indian agriculture. The focus on district-level outcomes, better seeds, diversified cropping, and multilingual digital advisory platforms has the potential to meaningfully improve on-farm decision-making and input efficiency, provided execution remains closely aligned with ground realities.
The fertiliser allocations underline a steady commitment to domestic capability. Support of Rs 91,000 crore for indigenous urea and Rs 34,000 crore for domestically produced P&K fertilisers, alongside imported fertiliser support of Rs 32,000 crore for urea and Rs 20,000 crore for P&K, reinforces supply security while maintaining farmer access to affordable nutrients. Overall, the approach strengthens alignment between agricultural priorities and industrial sustainability, supporting farmers today while building a more resilient and efficient fertiliser ecosystem for the future.
Sheetal Sharad, Chief Ratings Officer, ICRA ESG Ratings Limited
The Budget builds on India’s sustainability agenda. Expanding transportation corridors with a focus on sustainable logistics strengthens supply chain sufficiency and supports climate mitigation. The Rs 20,000 crore allocation for CCUS encourages low carbon technology adoption in hard to abate sectors. Customs duty exemptions in clean energy areas including battery storage components, solar inputs and nuclear projects, would help speed up the transition. The planned restructuring of key power sector lending institutions may influence how climate finance flows to the energy transition, making it important to watch.
Ankur Indrakush, MD and Co-Founder, Plutas.ai
The Union Budget 2026-27 provides a strong, innovation-led roadmap for India’s next phase of growth. The emphasis on public capex, MSME enablement, digital infrastructure, and emerging technologies such as AI and climate solutions creates a supportive environment for startups and new-age enterprises to scale responsibly. Measures aimed at strengthening manufacturing, infrastructure risk mitigation, and financial sector depth will help crowd in private capital and foster collaboration between incumbents and innovators.
Anuj Sethi, Senior Director, Crisil Ratings
India’s pharmaceutical sector has long been a leader in low-cost, small-molecule generics. The Biopharma Shakti initiative, with a Rs 10,000 crore outlay over 5 years and the setting up of 1,000 accredited trial sites will support development of India as a global bio-pharma hub and will enable domestic companies expand into more complex products such as biosimilars. This support is crucial as biosimilars require significant investments in clinical studies and capital. The initiative will help reduce gestation periods and regulatory hurdles for US FDA and EMA approvals, positioning India to capitalise on the $100-110 billion opportunity arising from the patent expiries for blockbuster biologics over the next decade.
CA, CMA, Anita Gandhi, Institution Head, Arihant Capital Markets Ltd
The Union Budget 2026-27 is positive from a longer-term economic growth perspective, especially with its continued focus on fiscal discipline and structural reforms. However, there has been a fair amount of disappointment when compared to market expectations. The increase in STT rates on futures and options has particularly impacted short-term traders, who were hoping for some relief or stability on the taxation front. This has led to near-term nervousness and profit booking in the markets, which is reflected in the current negative sentiment.
Apurva Agarwal, Founder, Universal Legal, Mumbai
The Union Budget 2026 reflects a complex but deliberate shift in India’s legal, tax, and regulatory landscape. While markets reacted sharply in the short term, particularly to the increase in the Securities Transaction Tax on derivatives, the larger intent of the budget appears to be structural reform rather than headline-driven relief. From a legal standpoint, the announcement of a new Income Tax Act effective April 2026, coupled with the rationalisation of prosecution provisions and simplified compliance processes, signals a move towards greater predictability and reduced litigation for taxpayers and businesses alike.
Sector-specific measures across manufacturing, healthcare, electronics, and infrastructure indicate a strong policy push towards long-term capacity building, even as concerns remain around adequacy of capital expenditure and regional equity.
Mr. Sudhanshu Vats, MD, Pidilite Industries Limited
The Union Budget 2026-27 reinforces strong confidence in India’s growth trajectory, anchored in manufacturing, infrastructure and consumption. The continued focus on domestic manufacturing across chemicals, electronics and capital goods strengthens supply-chain resilience and supports India’s ambition to be a globally competitive production hub. With public capex at Rs 12.2 lakh crore, demand across housing, construction and infrastructure-linked industries will remain robust, directly benefiting the building materials and adhesives ecosystem.
Masood Mallick, Chairman, CII National Committee on Waste to Worth Technologies and Managing Director & Group CEO, Re Sustainability Limited
The Union Budget 2026-27 marks a decisive shift in how India approaches resource security and decarbonisation… treating them as strategic economic priorities rather than regulatory afterthoughts.
The Rs 20,000 crore commitment to Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) over five years is a particularly important signal. It directly addresses the competitiveness challenge Indian industry faces under mechanisms such as the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and provides a credible pathway for hard-to-abate sectors like steel and cement to remain globally competitive while decarbonising.
Equally significant is the focus on building domestic capability across the critical minerals value chain… from exploration to processing. Duty exemptions on capital goods for critical mineral processing, along with support for rare-earth corridors in mineral-rich states, will strengthen urban mining and large-scale resource recovery.
For industries engaged in recovering value from end-of-life materials, this recognition of secondary resources as strategic assets is both timely and overdue.
The extension of duty exemptions for lithium-ion cell manufacturing in battery energy storage systems, and the rationalisation of excise duty on biogas-blended CNG, reflect a sophisticated understanding of how clean energy transition and circularity reinforce each other. These measures will unlock investment in recovery infrastructure and accelerate the shift from linear to circular industrial models.
Laxit Awla, CEO & Executive Director, SAEL Industries Ltd
We commend Budget 2026’s strong push to scale manufacturing and strengthen energy security which is key to a competitive, future-ready India. Measures such as customs duty exemptions for lithium-ion battery energy storage system capital goods, relief on sodium antimonate for solar glass, and targeted support for carbon capture reflect a holistic approach to the energy value chain and industrial decarbonisation.
Mr. Dushyant Chachra, CFO, SAEL Industries Ltd.
The Union Budget 2026 strengthens India’s manufacturing with incentives, tax certainty and trade facilitation for better business and investment. While it backs strategic sectors, cluster manufacturing via chemical parks and rare-earth corridors, and SEZ models to boost competitiveness and capacity; the customs reliefs reduce costs for key projects, give SEZ flexibility against demand shifts, and cut logistics burdens.
Aparna Kirubakaran, Director, Crisil Ratings
By enabling securitisation of Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) receivables, the measure directly supports micro, Small and Medium Enterprises’ (MSME) working-capital needs through wider access to funding, potentially lower financing costs and better liquidity.
With more than Rs 2.3 lakh crore of invoices already financed on TReDS in fiscal 2025, this measure can create a sizeable and standardised pool of short-tenor receivables for capital-market investors.
Ajit Velonie, Senior Director, Crisil Ratings
The proposed Infrastructure Risk Guarantee Fund can strengthen lender and investor confidence by helping them manage construction-phase risks, which often constrain infrastructure financing. Prudently calibrated partial credit guarantees, which are envisaged under the fund, can help lower expected loss in under-construction projects, which will, in turn, improve project bankability, crowd in capital and enable funding access at more competitive costs.
Aayush Madhusudan Agrawal, Founder & Director, Inspira Realty
We welcome the Union Budget 2026-27 as a balanced and reform-driven Budget that reinforces the Viksit Bharat vision through inclusive urbanisation and sustainable development. The government has significantly increased capital expenditure on infrastructure to Rs 12.2 lakh crore, with a meaningful portion directed towards urban and regional development. The expansion of City Economic Regions in tier-two and tier-three cities, supported by investments in urban infrastructure, logistics corridors and regional connectivity, will improve access to employment centres and enhance liveability in emerging towns, expanding the homebuyer base beyond metros.
Subhakar Pappula, Founder & CEO, Flamingo Aerospace
The Union Budget 2026-27 is a timely and decisive intervention for India’s civil aviation ecosystem. The exemption of basic customs duty on aviation components, parts, and raw materials directly addresses long-standing cost and supply-chain constraints that have limited scale, localisation, and global competitiveness.
The proposed duty exemptions for components used in civilian training and other aircraft, as well as for raw materials supporting MRO requirements in the defence sector, will significantly strengthen domestic manufacturing and maintenance capabilities.
Ms. Shaifalika Panda, Founder & CEO, Bansidhar & Ila Panda Foundation (BIPF)
Women’s entrepreneurship is no longer about participation alone; it is about ownership, scale, and leadership. The Union Budget 2026-27 takes a decisive step in this direction by explicitly enabling women to move from credit-linked livelihoods to becoming owners of enterprises. The proposal to establish Self-Help Entrepreneur (SHE) Marts as community-owned retail platforms marks a structural shift in how women-led businesses are integrated into markets, value chains and formal retail ecosystems.
The Budget’s emphasis on women-led enterprises reinforces the idea that inclusive growth is most powerful when women are positioned at the centre of India’s economic transformation.
Kosturi Ghosh, Partner- Corporate Practice, Trilegal
The Economic Survey of India underscores the need for the pharmaceutical sector to move beyond a volume-led generics model and advance up the value chain, particularly through complex products that can sustain growth in regulated markets. Against this backdrop, the Rs 1,000 crore outlay in Budget 2026 is a positive step towards strengthening India’s ambition to emerge as a global pharmaceutical manufacturing hub.
Sanjay Doshi, Partner and Head, Transaction Services and Financial Services Advisory, KPMG in India
Given the current strength of bank’s balance sheet historically driven by resolution of large NPA situations and retail loan growth, banks will now focus significantly on loan growth towards infra and capex, MSME and manufacturing especially in the 7 strategic and frontier sectors. Also the setting-up of high-level committee on Banking for Viksit Bharat is significant as banking is key to ensure success of the budget focus areas by ensuring credit in the right direction.
Somdeb Sengupta, Partner, Risk Consulting – Financial Risk Management, KPMG in India
This budget is aimed towards consolidation and strengthening of financial services sector rather than any headline announcements. With the changing dynamics in banking… it is a welcome move to set up the high level banking committee that could redefine credit flows, digital intermediation and system wide resilience over the next decade. The push towards MSME financing continues as we had seen in previous budgets as well.
Sunil Badala, National Head of Tax, KPMG in India
The Union Budget 2026 delivers a strong, forward looking push for the BFSI sector, indicating the government’s commitment to financial stability, deeper capital markets, and simplified tax administration.
The proposal to set up a High Level Committee on Banking for Viksit Bharat marks a major structural reform, aimed at strengthening governance, enhancing financial resilience, and better aligning credit delivery and inclusion with India’s next phase of economic growth. The NBFC roadmap further builds on this momentum, outlining clear targets for credit expansion and technology adoption, supported by the proposed restructuring of key public sector NBFCs to improve scale and efficiency.
Overall, Budget 2026 strengthens governance, deepens markets, and reduces compliance burden-positioning India’s BFSI sector for a more competitive, globally aligned future.
We hope the perspectives would be helpful and can be considered for features or stories you may be planning in your post budget pieces.
Rajendra Chodankar, Chairman & CEO – RRP Group of Companies
The Union Budget 2026-27 demonstrates a sustained commitment to strengthening national security and industrial self-reliance. The allocation of Rs 2,19,306.47 crore for Capital Outlay on Defence Services provides the necessary financial foundation for the systematic modernization of our Armed Forces. By maintaining a framework where a significant majority of capital procurement is reserved for the domestic industry, the government is fostering a predictable environment for long-term industrial growth.
Anu Chaudhary, Partner, Global Head – Sustainability & Climate Consulting, Uniqus
The government’s Rs 20,000 crore allocation for Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) announced in Budget 2026 marks a decisive shift from climate intent to implementation. The scheme aims to scale up CCUS technologies across hard-to-abate sectors including power, steel, cement, refineries, and chemicals… industries that are critical to India’s industrial growth but difficult to decarbonise.
