🚨 BREAKING. Indian tax officials are investigating Pernod Ricard and Diageo for allegedly misclassifying bulk Scotch imports to pay lower tariffs under the India-UK trade pact. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Government of India visited both companies’ offices last week, reviewed documents. Inspectors argue the pact’s duty cut from 150% to 75% does not apply to the bulk Scotch concentrates the companies import and blend into brands such as Royal Stag, Blenders Pride and McDowell’s. The companies say they have imported them in line with Indian law for years. tinyurl.com/m8t9ahmk

India has banned the sale of internet-connected CCTV cameras that lack testing clearance. But hundreds of unlicensed CCTVs, including Hikvision and Dahua models, are listed on Amazon and Flipkart in India, Reuters found. Following questions from us, the e-commerce firms have launched a review. Over 700 internet cameras lacked BIS certification, mandatory since April. Unapproved online sales are a "serious concern," former cybersecurity chief Gulshan Rai said. Dahua's Imou even has a dedicated page on Amazon. Since Tuesday, at least a dozen listings have been removed from the e-commerce platforms, including at least two models from Hikvision's EZVIZ brand, which Amazon now shows as "currently unavailable". Other listings included Maizic Smarthomes, which describes itself as India's best-selling AI security brand. None of its 138 "wifi camera" offerings on Amazon, including some slotted inside bulbs, had an Indian approval, the standards bureau's website showed. reuters.com/world/amazon-wal… With @MunsifV, edits @kate_mayberry

"What did you do in the last four years?... Why do you want to waste so much time?" India Supreme Court pulls up food regulator over timeline for warning labels. Judges ask why fresh consultation is needed before red warning labels appear on food packets. Separately, food companies have asked the court to reconsider the colour -- Indians associate red with the non-veg dot. tinyurl.com/525zn3jz

India wants junk food out of children's hands. It's moving to ban sales to kids within 50 metres of each school. Rules could hit Mondelez & Nestle, who count children as key consumers, and will reach grocery stores, ice cream carts and samosa shops tinyurl.com/4vf8zz67 🧵

🚨 BREAKING: India is investigating LG and Samsung for allegedly paying lower tariffs on imported display parts of high-end OLED TVs... 📺 Officials allege the companies wrongly claimed a concessional 5% tariff on imported OLED glass screens called open cells -- a rate they say has for years been reserved for older LCD and LED technologies that dominate mass-market sales. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence believes the duty should have been 15%. 📺 Both companies are privately contesting that position, arguing OLED is nothing but an advanced form of LED and the same tariffs should apply. DRI officers visited Samsung's India headquarters in Gurugram to question officials in recent weeks. LG was sent written questions and has responded, along with a voluntary monetary deposit to cover any extra duty authorities may request. 📺Samsung said it is "reviewing the matter and cooperating fully with the relevant authorities." 📺Meanwhile, industry groups Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association (CEAMA) and MAIT wrote nearly identical confidential letters in August pushing India's IT ministry to extend the 5% rate to OLED parts, calling the current rules an "anomalous situation" that leaves advanced OLED manufacturers "denied the same benefit." tinyurl.com/p4xxwm62 With @Nikunj_Ohri

"Maggi, Maggi, Maggi..." Remember the TV ad from the 1980s? Aimed at newly working mothers and their children as a fast evening snack, with kids slurping bowls "after school, after play" and saying "Mummy, I'm hungry." Here's how and why India became dependent on cheap packaged food. With household income well below the global average, Indians are keen consumers of cheap food products like Nestlé's Maggi and Coca-Cola's Thums Up — giving big food manufacturers a huge market with little pressure to apply the standards they adopt in many other countries. Around 6 billion meals eaten in Indian households and on street corners every year are Maggi two-minute masala noodles. Every variant of Maggi here is made with palm oil. Many British versions use pricier sunflower oil. KitKat in India has less cocoa than in Australia. Why? "Many recipes in India were designed decades ago for a very cost-conscious consumer, and those recipes have simply been carried forward," a former Mondelez India executive told us. It goes back further than Maggi. Unilever brought dalda in 1937 — cheap hydrogenated oil that replaced ghee in poorer kitchens. Nestlé was selling condensed milk here from 1912. Now the regulator wants to get strict. Read the deep dive here, with @Richa_Writes, @LJucca reuters.com/legal/litigation…

BREAKING: India's Serious Fraud Investigation Office has recommended a detailed investigation into Xiaomi's business model, saying its compliance with the 2020 foreign investment restrictions should also be looked at. Revelation comes ahead of BRICS Summit. This could become the latest headache for Xiaomi in the country. "The most important part of the proposed investigation should be examination of the beneficial ownership," it says. Calls for collaboration with other agencies. SFIO also wants scrutiny of whether Xiaomi had "de facto control" over Indian sellers while launching products exclusively online. tinyurl.com/4hscmmva

INDIA WARNINGS LABELS & BIG FOOD -- A box of Kellogg's Chocos in India is 27% added sugar by weight. Under India's proposed pack warning labels, it would potentially carry no warning at all. That is what has health activists upset. Food companies are upset for the opposite reason. "Everything will be red," one Indian chief executive told us. Why? The design at the heart of it is the reason -- A red hexagon appears only when a product is high in two of three nutrients — sugar, salt, fat. High in just one? Nothing. Chocos keeps its fat and salt within the limits, so the sugar alone doesn't count. Chile does it differently. Each nutrient gets its own black octagon. "It will be meaningless. No other country uses the double nutrient approach," Barry Popkin of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health told us. Industry's objection runs the other way. Seven executives told us the thresholds are among the world's strictest, and that judging a product per 100 grams is absurd. "Nobody consumes 100 grams of a pickle or ketchup," one said. Nor is this only about the multinationals. @FirozNaqvi of India's Federation of Sweets and Namkeen Manufacturers says its 5,000 members are deeply concerned, because sugar, salt and fat are intrinsic to mithai and namkeen. "A substantial majority of packaged traditional sweets and namkeen could attract warnings...It could negatively affect consumer perception and demand." reuters.com/legal/litigation…

A warehouse was raided in Mumbai by food safety officers. They were shocked. Inside, machines that helped fake expiry dates and nutritional info on PepsiCo, Nestle, Coca-Cola & Unilever packs They were for exports. Reuters had exclusive access. Read. tinyurl.com/27emmjes

How Big Food fought India's warning labels -- while selling the world two recipes. For a decade, India tried to put red warnings on packs high in sugar, salt and fat. Big food giants pushed back and won. With @Richa_Writes, edits @katerinareports tinyurl.com/3camvu23

India food safety regulator inspected a Pernod Ricard factory, collected liquor samples, sources said, as part of an investigation into the $40 billion sector in which Diageo has faced scrutiny. Blenders Pride/Royal Stag samples collected reuters.com/legal/litigation…

This is a story about E20 contamination warning by Indian automakers, which was withdrawn last week hours after Modi's government said the petrol is safe. Auto body SIAM said some numbers "need authentication." Behind the scenes, executives had been worried. Nobody questioned the data. Reuters has seen emails between Maruti, Tata and Mahindra from just days earlier. In them, executives call contamination a concern and push to warn the government urgently. What their own testing found: 250+ fuel samples tested across 21 states; High chloride in 18 states; A Mahindra engineer wrote organic chloride can spoil an engine "within 200 km." Read the details. tinyurl.com/43jextym With @aditishahsays Edits @SonaliPaul2

A $15 billion Google investment with Adani Group as partner. India's biggest-ever bet by the U.S. tech giant. But for environmentalists, it's a threat to wildlife and water supply.... My colleague @MunsifV visited the site this week and found a hillside stripped to bare red earth, earthmovers still at work -- and a growing movement of environmentalists who say the state fast-tracked clearances without weighing what the project will cost the region's water and wildlife. Their fears: a drinking-water reservoir nearby, and a wildlife sanctuary -- home to leopards and pangolins -- less than a kilometre from where the servers will rise. Activists and children have marched with banners reading "We cannot drink DATA." One court has agreed to hear a challenge; three more are pending before India's environment tribunal. The state denies the allegations and says it will defend them in court, insisting no rural or residential water will be diverted. Google says it will use advanced air cooling to protect local water. It's an early test of what the AI build-out demands from the places that host it. Read the @Reuters story for all the details and pictures from the area. reuters.com/world/asia-pacif… Edits @Saad_Scrawls

Rum flavour in rum, whisky flavour in whisky? Diageo, Inbrew face heat. India's food safety regulator (@fssaiindia) has banned the sale of several popular whisky and rum brands — including Diageo's Antiquity Blue and Royal Challenge, Inbrew's Bagpiper and three variants of Old Monk for using artificial flavouring instead of proper ageing to fake their taste and aroma. READ: tinyurl.com/yxwmbk5y Edits @Jamie_Freed

🚨 India has gone after Red Bull, Monster Energy, Pepsi and Reliance over two words -- "energy drink" -- and won.... Details breaking on @Reuters India has quietly ordered the companies to stop calling their high-caffeine beverages "energy drinks" -- and after a closed-door standoff, the industry has agreed to fall in line within 90 days. Context is key here -- Energy drinks is a striking category built entirely on instant-energy marketing -- think Red Bull's "Gives You Wiiings" or Sting's ads showing lightning coursing through the body. And it lands in one of the country's fastest-growing drinks markets, expanding quicker than the United States or China. Publicly, the food regulator (@fssaiindia) said in early July there were no Indian standards for such products, and that claims like "vitalizes body and mind" were misleading. It gave no further details. In private, the message was far tougher: drop "energy drink" -- or any similar descriptor -- entirely. At a closed-door meeting, FSSAI chief rejected the companies' business arguments outright, telling them they were free to challenge the decision in court. The industry pushed back hard beforehand. In a confidential July 6 letter, the Indian Beverage Association (@India_IBA) warned that public disclosure of notices could damage reputations, disrupt operations and confuse consumers, and urged a "risk-based enforcement approach." Read all the details here. tinyurl.com/27kzw9ab Edits @Saad_Scrawls

🚨 🚭 BREAKING: New on India vs Adani & nicotine pouches. Government strongly contests Adani's challenge to a stop-sale order for nicotine pouches at its Mumbai international airport, arguing stocking the unlicensed product was a "substantive violation" of drug law and posed a "serious public health risk" to passengers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has also asserted in court that the airport, one of the country's busiest, is on Indian soil, dismissing Adani's argument that Indian law does not apply to nicotine pouches imported and stored in customs warehouses and sold only to departing international passengers. Duty-free shops at the airport, run by Adani's Mumbai Travel Retail, were found in March to be selling pouches -- brands ZYN and FOX -- without the required registration or import licence. Adani has challenged that finding in court, arguing its departure-side shops sit beyond India's customs frontier and outside domestic regulatory reach. The government's new filing rejects that head-on. Nicotine pouches "enter Indian airspace and Indian territory at the moment of arrival" at the airport, it argues, and storing them in a customs-bonded warehouse "does not mean they are not physically present in India." Adani has called the "breach of law" framing "premature and legally unsustainable," saying its unit has "challenged the regulatory interpretation through judicial review." The case is before a court this week, and lawyers say the outcome could shape how nicotine pouches are regulated at duty-free shops across India's airports. Read story here. tinyurl.com/yj9xss46 Edits @kate_mayberry

🚨 ✈️ Nicotine pouches at billionaire Gautam Adani's Mumbai airport -- sold without a licence in breach of the law. That's what an Indian government investigation found.... The brands: ZYN (Philip Morris) and White Fox. Drug inspectors walked into the departure-zone duty-free shops in March, found pouches on sale, and ordered a stop. Adani Group's move? Court -- arguing India's drug law doesn't even reach its duty-free shops because they sit "beyond the customs frontiers of India." Lawyer Murali Neelakantan questions the logic. "If a murder occurs in the store, will Indian police have no powers to arrest? They will have ... Can they sell guns or ammunition? No." Since August, Adani's firm imported Philip Morris' Zyn nicotine pouches in various flavours worth more than $29,000, and the White Fox brand from Swedish Smokeless Solutions worth $7,700, customs records showed. The companies did not respond to Reuters queries. A government win could block one of the world's fastest-growing nicotine products at Indian airports -- and set a precedent for what duty-free shops can sell. Tobacco kills 1.35 million Indians a year, and a June government study flagged nicotine pouches as "a new and largely unregulated public health concern," spreading fast among 18-40 year-olds. Story has all details. reuters.com/legal/litigation…

𝗕𝗜𝗚: 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝗣𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝟭𝟴 𝗣𝗿𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗱 -- 𝗧𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲'𝘀 𝘂𝗽𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗺𝗮𝗽 𝗵𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 - 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁.... We've been reporting for days now on the Tata Electronics leak of more than 200,000 files on the dark web by World Leaks. It has files with purported component design papers of older Apple iPhones and some parts of Tesla - both Tata clients. They also included documents of TSMC and ⁠Qualcomm, both of which make parts used in iPhones. Now, Reuters reports sensitive lists of components and suppliers, and photographs of Apple's unreleased iPhone 18 Pro, are sitting on the dark web. At least six files that map hundreds of iPhone 18 Pro parts to the exact companies that make them -- the chips on the main board, the battery, the cameras. Apple does not disclose this supplier-to-part mapping in its public database. It guards it precisely because it reveals the two things every manufacturer wants hidden: where it has leverage, and where it is vulnerable. Apple is quite concerned about this, a source told us. With @MunsifV, @StephenNellis, @kenli729 The leak comes at a difficult time for Apple. It just raised iPad and MacBook prices on soaring memory costs, with iPhone increases expected to follow. Read details in the story, here reut.rs/442K5aI

📱 Apple says India's antitrust investigators "copy-pasted" rivals' claims -- word for word in some cases -- in concluding the U.S. tech giant broke competition laws. Details of Apple's sharpest escalation yet in a case that's been running for years.... Read for details.. 📱In confidential June 25 submissions to the Competition Commission Of India, Apple drew up tables showing its opponents' paragraphs were lifted verbatim into the regulator's reports. 📱The list of rivals whose claims were allegedly copied: Match Group (Tinder's owner), PhonePe, and Paytm. Apple is asking for the entire investigation to be quashed. 📱Apple also said the CCI investigation reports "blindly replicated" a graphic on worldwide consumer spending on mobile apps and games from an EU ruling against Apple in 2024, even though India faced different market conditions. A Reuters review of footnotes of the EU order and Indian investigation report showed both referenced data from Statista 📱The company also says investigators never gave it "a single opportunity to record its statements and provide oral evidence." Google, by contrast, got multiple hearings in its own CCI case. 📱Apple talks about its track record, too. If CCI does consider penalties, Apple said it must consider its "unblemished record" and the fact that it has exported iPhones worth $51 billion from India over the past five years. reuters.com/business/media-t… Edits @kate_mayberry

📲 THE TATA ELECTRONICS DATA BREACH -- Apple supplier Tata Electronics has tightened security across its operations, restricting remote access to sensitive internal tools to select employees, after a breach spilled client data onto the dark web. Leaked papers of TSMC, Qualcomm, Tesla and Apple are part of the breach... @MunsifV and I report new details after our earlier story on the cyber incident this week. New findings are: → Tata has restricted remote access to sensitive internal tools -- like purchase-order systems -- to a select few employees, across all its facilities, not just a handful of factories. → It has hired a global consultant to run a forensic audit, and reported the incident to the Indian government and its clients. The source didn't name the agency hired. → Apple's security team is working closely with Tata on near- and long-term measures, one source said. → The leak is wider than first known. Beyond Apple and Tesla, it contains purported documents from chip giants TSMC and Qualcomm — at least 16 TSMC files and folders, and at least 23 from Qualcomm. Both make parts used in iPhones. → A 2022 document stamped "TSMC Secret," with purported product reliability test details of a TSMC component, included photographs. A 2021 Qualcomm document details the mechanical workings of a power-management chip, watermarked "Confidential – May Contain Trade Secrets." The stakes are high for Apple and Tata both -- India is on track to make 26% of the world's iPhones in 2026, up from 6% four years ago. READ HERE tinyurl.com/pkacyp5u With @TonyMunroe1