(Photo: Harrow International School, Dubai. Courtesy Taaleem Holdings)

By Ignatius Chithelen

June 6, 2026

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For decades now, the top students from reputed non-profit and government-run schools have been admitted by the best colleges in the West. Many alumni enroll their children at the top schools they attended, expecting they will then be admitted by a top college. So, they track the number of students from their schools admitted by the top colleges. Since they donate to their college, or know major donors, they lobby college officials to admit the same or larger number of students from their schools.

Given such long-established, recruiting of students from the top non-profit and government-run schools, by the top colleges, for-profit schools find it very tough to place their graduates at these colleges. So, typically, college-educated, upper income parents in the West and in India, do not enroll their children in for-profit schools, even those with reputed brand names and modern facilities.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf countries, for-profit schools are forecast to see rising demand. Running for-profit schools in those kingdoms is a lucrative business with high profit margins. In fiscal year 2025, for instance, Taaleem had a 15% profit margin; profits were $44 million on revenues of $307 million, which were both roughly double that in fiscal year 2022. Taaleem, which is listed on the Dubai Stock Exchange, has a market value of around $810 million, according to Reuters. It has 4,100 employees.

Taaleem pays a licensing fee for its Harrow schools to a subsidiary of the charity which owns Harrow School, UK. The fee is used for a number of charitable aims, including widening access to the Harrow School, UK. There are more than a dozen licensed Harrow schools operating around the World, including ten in China and one in Bangalore, India.

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Ignatius Chithelen is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A Chartered Financial Analyst, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York. Neither he nor Banyan has any financial or other interests in any of the companies mentioned in this story.

(Photo: Harrow International School, Dubai. Courtesy Taaleem Holdings)

By Ignatius Chithelen*

June 6, 2026

In August, the Harrow International School for boys and girls, set up by Taaleem Holdings, will begin operating in Dubai. The school will combine “Harrow’s 450-year tradition of academic excellence with Taaleem’s proven dedication to delivering the highest standards of education” across the United Arab Emirates, the school’s site states. The private, for-profit school is based on the British curriculum. Located on a twelve-acre campus, facilities include digital design and 3-D printing spaces, orchestras, cricket nets and a rugby and soccer field.

The original Harrow, set up in 1572 under a British Royal Charter, is a non-profit, residential, upper school for boys. Located on a 224-acre campus near London, it has roughly 830 students. Alumni include British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, King Hussein of Jordan, scientists, inventors, writers, admirals, and businessmen.

The academic leaders of Harrow Dubai Harrow are British, who bring “a deep understanding of the British independent school system,” according to the school’s site. The total annual fees at Harrow Dubai range from AED 86,650, US $23,400, for nursery, to AED 119,440, $32,200, for the upper school. The fees at the Harrow School in Britain totals nearly $90,000.

The Dubai school is the first of the Harrow schools which Taaleem plans to launch in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, which together make up the Gulf Cooperation Council. The schools will be independently owned and operated by Dubai-based Taaleem. Harrow’s teams oversee that the “educational purpose, practice, strategy and philosophy, tailored to the needs of their students and locations,” meet Harrow’s standards.

In 2025, Dubai-based for-profit GEMS Education opened its School of Research and Innova­tion in the city. Based on the British curriculum, its programs include training in digital skills, ballet, fencing, and martial arts. The fees, which range from $25,000 to $35,000, are similar to those of Harrow Dubai.

The UAE comprises of seven kingdoms. More than three quarters of its eleven million population live in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, which each have roughly four million people. Abu Dhabi’s revenues come from exporting roughly three million barrels of crude oil per day. Dubai has two major ports, a major cargo airport and is a tourism hub.

Nearly ninety percent of UAE’s population are expatriate blue and white-collar workers, with about half from India and the rest from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Philippines. British and Americans occupy many of the senior roles in business and government-run entities.

Roughly two thirds of the students in the Gulf countries are enrolled in free, government-run, primarily Arabic language schools. The region has very few quality, non-profit international schools. So, for-profit schools are the only option for expat and Arab parents, who have the income and want their children to study at an international school.

In Abu Dhabi and Dubai there are roughly 260 international schools operated by GEMS, Taaleem, Aldar Education, Nord Anglia, and other companies. They offer the International Baccalaureate, British, American, French, Indian and Egyptian curriculum.

Parents pay high fees at some of the for-profit schools, like Harrow Dubai and GEMS Innovation, expecting their children will be admitted by a top international college. Hence, it is not surprising, that, while Harrow Dubai says it will teach students the Harrow values of “Courage, Honour, Humility and Fellowship,” its major goal is to prepare students “for entry into leading universities worldwide.”

Top colleges admitting students from existing Taaleem schools include Cambridge and Oxford in the UK, and the University of California, Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins in the US. “GEMS students today are graduates of leading universities around the world,” states Sunny Varkey, in a founder’s message on the company’s site. Varkey, 69-years-old, is founder of the Dubai-based Varkey Group, which reportedly also owns healthcare, hotels and other business.

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(Photo: GEMS International School, Dubai. Courtesy GEMS.)

Taaleem, which means education in Arabic, owns and operates 13 premium schools in the UAE - ten of them in Dubai - with nearly 19,000 students. It also operates 23 schools on behalf of UAE government entities, with 24,000 Emirati students. Taaleem’s Chairman is Khalid Al Tayer, an Emirati. He is the managing director of a division of the Tayer Group, which owns nearly 200 retail stores in the Middle East, including joint ventures with Gucci, Prada, Armani, and other luxury brands.

Aldar manages 31 schools, mostly in Abu Dhabi, with 33,000 students. It owns some of the schools. Founded in 2007, it is part of Aldar Properties, a major developer and manager of retail, residential and commercial real estate. Listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, Aldar Properties has a market value of roughly $16 billion, according to Reuters.

Sahar Cooper, the Chief Executive of Aldar Education, previously served as the Chief Schools Operations Officer at GEMS Education. Ravi Ramani, Aldar’s head of finance and information technology, was earlier “a key member of the leadership team” at GEMS for sixteen years.

GEMS operates 49 schools, with full or partial ownership, in the UAE, Qatar and Egypt. It also manages schools in other countries, including four in India, with one in Kochi, Kerala. GEMS serves more than 200,000 students and employs over 18,000 teachers and staff. The Chief Executive is Dino Varkey and Deputy CEO is Jay Varkey, sons of Sunny Varkey.

The GEMS schools in the UAE and Qatar have varying facilities and charge a wide range of fees. For instance, at the GEMS Dubai American Academy, which offers both the American and International Baccalaureate curriculum, fees range from $17,900 to $25,200. At the GEMS Our Own Indian School, Dubai, based on the Indian curriculum, fees range from $1,950 to $4,000.

Some expat and Arab parents in the Gulf, who have the financial resources, send their children to Harrow and other residential non-profit schools, run by philanthropic foundations and Christian churches, in the UK, Western Europe, US, and India. In these countries, there are also several free, high quality, government-run schools, especially in upper income localities.

For the past several decades, the top students from such reputed non-profit and government-run schools have been admitted by the best colleges in the West. Many alumni enroll their children at the top schools they attended, expecting they will then be admitted by a top college. So, they track the number of students from their schools admitted by the top colleges. Since they donate to their college, or know major donors, they lobby college officials to admit the same or larger number of students from their schools.

Given such long-established, recruiting of students from the top non-profit and government-run schools, by the top colleges, for-profit schools find it very tough to place their graduates at these colleges. So, typically, college-educated, upper income parents in the West and in India, do not enroll their children in for-profit schools, even those with brand names and modern facilities.

In 2025, GEMS “closed” its GEMS World Academy in Chicago, reportedly due to being unable to attract enough students. Started in 2013, its facilities included a planetarium, media center, a 25-meter swimming pool, and a 500-seat auditorium.

In 2023, GEMS World Academy, Switzerland, “was declared bankrupt”, according to executives-edge.com. The school shut down four years earlier. GEMS exited the Singapore, Malaysia and Kenya markets after a few years. “I should have done more acquisitions rather than doing greenfield ventures,” Varkey told Forbes in 2025.

Varkey is chairman of GEMS Schools Management which, for a fee, provides “seasoned leaders and data-led systems” to boost the “commercial success” of owners of new and existing schools.

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(Photo: Sunny Varkey, founder GEMS Education. Courtesy GEMS.)

Meanwhile, in the Gulf countries, for-profit schools are forecast to see rising demand. By 2029, the region may require an additional 2,800 schools, since student population is estimated to rise by one million to 15.5 million, according to Alpen Capital. The assumption is that the region’s economy continues to grow, bringing in more expat workers and their families. In three years, the Gulf’s overall population is expected to rise by about six million to 67 million.

In 2024, GEMS Education was bought by a group led by Brookfield Asset Management. This underscores Brookfield’s “commitment to investing” in the high-growth Middle East region, a news release from the company stated. It added that Brookfield “purchased GEMS Education…with its founder representing $2.0 billion in equity.” It is not known if this means the share of ownership of the Varkey Group, which founded GEMS, was worth $2 billion in the new GEMS. Based in New York, Brookfield manages more than $1 trillion in assets across infrastructure, energy, private equity, real estate and credit.

GEMS origins are traced to Mariamma and K.S. Varkey, parents of Sunny Varkey, who were expats in Dubai from Kerala, India. In 1959, they began coaching Arabs in English for a fee. In 1968, the couple set up Our Own English High School, Dubai, catering to the immigrant Indian community. The school is still in operation.

Sunny Varkey was born in Pathanamthitta district, Kerala, India. After finishing high school in India and the U.K., he did not attend college. He worked at Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai. In 1978, not wanting to retire as a bank manager with little wealth, he quit and started the Chicago Maintenance Company to perform various maintenance services. He used the title Chicago, he told Gulf News, because the western name “would make it easier to attract European expats” as clients.

In the early 1980’s, Varkey began managing his parents’ school after they promised not to interfere with how he ran it. He grew the business into the GEMS (Global Education Management Systems) network of schools.

In 2010, Knowledge@Wharton asked Sunny Varkey about the controversy over whether education should be for-profit or non-profit. Varkey said, “GEMS Education believes in education for profit because it enables us to reinvest in education and help establish more schools for more children.”

Forbes estimates Sunny Varkey’s net worth to be $4 billion. Varkey is one of the few Indian billionaires, around the globe, to sign the Giving Pledge, which requires making a public commitment to donate to philanthropies. The pledge was established in 2010 by Warren Buffett, who ran Berkshire Hathaway, and Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft. The London-based Varkey Foundation annually awards $1 million to a teacher.

Running for-profit schools in the Gulf countries is a lucrative business with high profit margins. In fiscal year 2025, for instance, Taaleem had a 15% profit margin; profits were $44 million on revenues of $307 million, which were both roughly double that in fiscal year 2022. Taaleem, which is listed on the Dubai Stock Exchange, has a market value of around $810 million, according to Reuters. It has 4,100 employees.

Taaleem pays a licensing fee for its Harrow schools to a subsidiary of the charity which owns Harrow School, UK. The fee is used for a number of charitable aims, including widening access to the Harrow School, UK. There are more than a dozen licensed Harrow schools operating around the World, including ten in China and one in Bangalore, India.

In about eighteen months, Taaleem plans to add 5,000 seats, boosting the 24,000 capacity of its premium schools by a fifth, including by opening its second Harrow School in Abu Dhabi. The media in the Gulf countries and education consultants label the Taaleem Harrow schools as being “super-premium.”

Apparently, Taaleem expects its Harrow brand of schools will enhance the reputation of its other premium schools, thereby attracting more students. The average annual fees at Taaleem’s non-Harrow premium schools are $16,500. So, rival schools, operating in the same markets and charging roughly similar fees, will likely face stronger competition from Taaleem.

Taaleem’s Harrow Abu Dhabi was to “open its doors to students in mid-2026,” as the first of the Harrow schools in the Gulf countries, according to a 2025 statement by the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, Taaleem’s partner on the project. It will be a residential and day school for boys and girls, based on the British curriculum. While Harrow Dubai starts operating in August 2026, Harrow Abu Dhabi does not have a website yet.

In 2025, construction of Harrow Abu Dhabi began on Saadiyat Island, according to a statement by Koda, the architectural and design firm. One of Aldar’s flagship schools, Cranleigh Abu Dhabi, operates on the same island. Based on the British curriculum, it was launched in 2014, following a “commercial agreement” with the Cranleigh School, UK. The annual fees at Cranleigh Abu Dhabi range from $19,000 to $28,500, similar to those of Harrow Dubai.

This raises a speculative question: Are there issues between Abu Dhabi’s Aldar and Dubai’s Taaleem groups, over their respective British-branded schools on Saadiyat Island, which may be delaying the launch of Harrow Abu Dhabi?

Like Harrow’s agreement with Taaleem, Cranleigh offers training and monitors the quality of the Aldar school and earns a licensing fee. A non-profit, Cranleigh also has licensing agreements with three schools in China. Founded in 1865, in Surrey, near London, the original Cranleigh is a day and residential school for boys and girls. Prominent alumni include actors, writers, rugby players and those in business. The fees for day students is $62,000 and, for residential students, $76,000.

Since February, after the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, Taaleem’s stock has fallen by a third, reflecting questions about the war’s major, long-term damage on UAE’s economy. Assuming there is little economic damage, will the rising capacity of premium schools lead to more competition between Taaleem, GEMS, Aldar, and other for-profit schools? Or, as Gulf countries rapidly expand automation and use of artificial intelligence tools, will it boost demand for highly skilled expats as well as for international schools to educate their children?

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*Ignatius Chithelen is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A Chartered Financial Analyst, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York. Neither he nor Banyan has any financial or other interests in any of the companies mentioned in this story.

(Photo: Burjeel Medical City, Abu Dhabi. Courtesy Burjeetl.)

By Ignatius Chithelen

May 30, 2026

Burjeel, an Abu Dhabi based for-profit company, operates 115 healthcare facilities, across the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, part of the Gulf region. They include 20 hospitals, 39 medical centers, 30 physiotherapy and wellness centers, 15 pharmacies, and 11 other allied services, including Tajmeel cosmetology and dental centers. Burjeel’s facilities, which have 1,700 beds, employ more than 11,000, including nearly 1,800 doctors.

Burjeel is pursuing organic revenue growth, without incurring major capital expenses, by admitting more patients It seeks to do this by raising the utilization of its bed capacity, from the current 67 percent to 80 to 85 percent. Also, over the next three years, Burjeel plans to set up two new hospitals in Dubai, four out-patient surgery centers, six medical centers, and two fertility clinics in the UAE.

Earlier this month, Vayalil posted on Facebook, where he has 244,000 followers, “The encouragement and support of the UAE leadership always inspire us to think bigger, build for the future, and turn ambition into reality.”

Ignatius Chithelen is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A Chartered Financial Analyst, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York. Neither he nor Banyan has any financial or other interests in any of the companies mentioned in this story.

(Photo: Burjeel Medical City, Abu Dhabi. Courtesy Burjeel.)

By Ignatius Chithelen

May 29, 2026

Last month, Burjeel Holdings postponed a $1.5 billion offering of Islamic bonds, which it sought to raise to fund “an expansion of medical education and research,” according to Semafor. Investors are nervous about the economic impact of Iran’s attacks on the Gulf countries, in response to bombings by the United States and Israel. “If we get some local good government support, we might reconsider,” Burjeel Chief Executive Shamsheer Vayalil told the news site.

Burjeel, an Abu Dhabi based for-profit company, operates 115 healthcare facilities, across the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, part of the Gulf region. They include 20 hospitals, 39 medical centers, 30 physiotherapy and wellness centers, 15 pharmacies, and 11 other allied services, including Tajmeel cosmetology and dental centers. Burjeel’s facilities, which have 1,700 beds, employ more than 11,000, including nearly 1,800 doctors.

In 2025, Burjeel’s facilities achieved - for the Middle East - breakthrough oncology procedures such as cytoreductive surgery as well as expanded minimally invasive and robotic-assisted capabilities. These advancements reinforced the company’s “position as a trusted destination for super-specialty care in the Gulf,” Vayalil, 49-years-old, said in a statement.

In the past, citizens of the Gulf countries, depending on their wealth, traveled to the U.S., Europe or India for major medical care. “What we have to build is more trust for people to believe that…(Burjeel) can offer what is available anywhere in the world,” Vayalil told CNBC in 2022. His focus is to try to “stop or reduce people traveling” abroad, from the Gulf countries, when they need medical treatment. Today, with Burjeel’s Burjeel and Medeor hospitals, and similar high-end hospitals operated by PureHealth, NMC Healthcare and other for-profit chains, far fewer citizens of the Gulf countries travel outside the region for healthcare services.

There are millions of expatriate workers in the Gulf countries, mainly from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt. Employers are required to provide medical insurance to them. Bujeel’s LHH and Lifecare hospitals serve mid-to-low income expats. However, many of them, being low-wage, blue collar laborers, face large out-of-pocket costs and other hurdles to securing medical care. So, when they need major medical treatment, they return home.

(Photo: Shamsheer Vayalil, left, with the Health Minister of Oman. May, 2026.)

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In 2025, serving seven million patients and performing 89,000 surgeries, Burjeel’s net profits were US $136 million, on $1,485 million in revenues. The profit in 2025 was more than double the $63 million it earned, on $905 million in revenues, in 2021.

Hospitals account for nearly nine-tenths of Burjeel’s total revenues. However, most of the company’s out-patient and other medical facilities provide patients to the hospitals, acting as a vital feeder system. About a third of Burjeel’s revenues come from high-profit margin specialty care services, for which the fees range from AED 50,000 to AED 1 million, $14,000 to $270,000.

Nearly a quarter of Burjeel’s revenues come from its flagship Burjeel Medical City, with more than 350 beds, in Mohamed Bin Zayed City, Abu Dhabi. One of the largest private hospitals in the UAE, it handles sixty medical specialties, including centers for cancer, rehabilitation, pediatrics, and critical care.

Burjeel, which in 2022 listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, has a stock market value of $1.5 billion. In a statement prior to the listing, Vayalil said his vision was for the company “to be the leading healthcare services provider in the Middle East and beyond.”

In 2007, at age 30, Vayalil set up LLH Hospital in Abu Dhabi, his first hospital. The previous year, he began working as a radiologist at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, a government-run hospital in the Kingdom, after moving there from India.

His growth strategy, Vayalil told Knowledge@Wharton in 2015, was “to go where there were no (medical) facilities available.” The goal was to build hospitals where patients go for heart surgery, knee replacement and other major issues as well as set up a network of clinics in malls where patients can go for treatment of minor ailments, monitor their diabetes and participate in wellness programs.

Vayalil earned his medical degrees in India: an MD in radiology from Shri Ramachandra Medical College, Chennai, and an MBBS from Kasturba Medical College, Manipal. They are both for-profit education institutions. The current total costs, for students from India, for the three-year MD course at Ramachandra is $101,000. The total costs for the five-and-a-half year MBBS degree at Kasturba is around $400,000. Foreign students are charged far higher fees at both places.

Shamsheer Vayalil Parambath grew up in a business family in Kozikhode, Kerala, India. His father is Hashim Pokkinari and mother Mariyam Barakkool. “My father has been a never-ending source of learning for me,” he told The International Indian. “Though a very successful businessman, he is highly devout and a firm upholder of principles and values in both his personal and professional life.”

Vayalil’s net worth is estimated to be $1.5 billion, according to Forbes. He is one of the few Indian billionaires, around the globe, to sign the Giving Pledge. Billionaires, who sign the pledge, make a public commitment to donate to philanthropies. The pledge was established in 2010 by Warren Buffett, who ran Berkshire Hathaway, and Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft.

“We have always believed that doing good is good business too,” Vayalil and his wife Shabeena wrote in their letter, while signing the Giving Pledge in 2018. His medical facilities have conducted 100 free heart surgeries and more than 5,000 free breast cancer screenings. In 2022, he gave a $125,000 award to the Kerala men’s soccer team for winning the Santosh Trophy, the state competition in India. He tweeted, “What a great match! Congrats, Team Kerala.” In his youth, Vayalil, who exercises regularly, represented Kerala in the inter-state table tennis competition.

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(Photo: Shamsheer Vayalil, CEO, Burjeel Holdings.)

In 2022, Burjeel was spun-off by VPS Health as a holding company for its healthcare businesses. Vayalil, who is also founder and Chairman of VPS, made the announcement at the Burjeel House in Davos, Switzerland, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting that year. In a statement Vayalil said, “Healthcare is a key focus for governments across the Middle East and we look forward to supporting our partners in the UAE…in helping build and enhance their healthcare services and infrastructure.”

Abu Dhabi-based VPS set up 20 hospitals, over 100 medical centers, pharmaceutical manufacturing and other healthcare support services in the Middle East, Europe and India. In India, its holdings included the Rockland Hospital chain in Delhi and the VPS Lakeshore Hospital in Kochi.

Vayalil’s VPS was “backed initially by his wealthy father-in-law,” retail billionaire M.A. Yusuff Ali, according to Forbes. Vayalil’s wife Shabeena is Ali’s daughter. Ali is the founder of LuLu Group International, which owns stores, shopping malls and hotels in the Middle East, India and elsewhere. A subsidiary, Lulu Retail Holdings, operates 267 stores, comprising 123 Hypermarkets, 118 Express Stores and 26 Mini Markets across six Gulf countries. It also offers online shopping via web and mobile applications as well as along with Amazon, HungerStation, Snoonu and Talabat.

Lulu Retail, which serves nearly 700,000 shoppers daily, has more than 52,000 employees. In 2025, it had revenues of $2.1 billion. Listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, Lulu has a market value of $2.8 billion. Ali, who migrated from Kerala to Abu Dhabi in 1973, has a net worth of $5.5 billion, according to Forbes.

One of Burjeel’s competitors in the UAE and Oman is NMC Healthcare, a for-profit company based in Abu Dhabi. NMC serves more than 5.4 million patients a year, operating 70 medical facilities, including hospitals. It has a capacity of around 1,400 beds and a staff of more than 1,700 doctors, among its 12,000 employees.

NMC was founded in 1975 by Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, an immigrant from Udupi, India. In 2019, his net worth was estimated to be $3.2 billion, according to Forbes. He received several awards in the UAE and India. In 2005, he was reportedly the first to receive the Abu Dhabi Award, the highest civilian distinction of Abu Dhabi.

In 2020, the board of NMC discovered more than $4 billion in undisclosed debt. The company entered administration, or bankruptcy proceedings, and was delisted from the London Stock Exchange. Most of the funds were allegedly pocketed by principal shareholders and senior management. Shetty continues to face numerous lawsuits.

Bank lenders, led by Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, which suffered big losses on their loans to NMC now own NMC. In 2024, Gulf News reported that NMC “could soon” be bought, likely by PureHealth. Based in Abu Dhabi, PureHealth operates more than 110 hospitals and 316 clinics and has a market value of $6.7 billion. It’s co-founder and CEO is Shaista Asif, who is from Pakistan.

In January this year, NMC Chief Executive David Hadley told the media, that, while talks were held with a buyer, whom he did not identify, there was no agreement. “The company will still be sold,” he stated, maybe to a private equity or sovereign wealth fund. According to The Khaleej Times, he added, “If we could consolidate with another (healthcare) group, that would be a fantastic opportunity.”

Can Vayalil seize the opportunity, given his goal for Burjeel to be the leading healthcare provider in the Middle East? He has not expressed any interest in buying NMC, at least publicly.

Even if Vayalil is interested, it may not be easy for Burjeel to raise $4 billion in debt reportedly needed to repay NMC’s bank lenders. As of March 31, 2026, Burjeel’s net debt of $760 million was higher than group equity of $600 million. Also, from its peak in 2023, Burjeel’s stock has fallen by nearly three quarters.

Burjeel is pursuing organic revenue growth, without incurring major capital expenses, by admitting more patients It seeks to do this by raising the utilization of its bed capacity, from the current 67 percent to 80 to 85 percent. Also, over the next three years, Burjeel plans to set up two new hospitals in Dubai, four out-patient surgery centers, six medical centers, and two fertility clinics in the UAE.

Earlier this month, Vayalil posted on Facebook, where he has 244,000 followers, “The encouragement and support of the UAE leadership always inspire us to think bigger, build for the future, and turn ambition into reality.”

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Ignatius Chithelen is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A Chartered Financial Analyst, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York. Neither he nor Banyan has any financial or other interests in any of the companies mentioned in this story.

(Photo: A data center in India. Courtesy Wikipedia.)

February 16, 2026

The AI Impact Summit, India, 2026, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi today. One of the goals of the week long program, organized by the Government of India, is “to amplify the voice of the Global South, ensuring that technological advancements and opportunities are shared broadly, not concentrated in a few regions.”

The Chief Executives of more than 40 major US and Western technology and services companies, including Sundar Pichai of Google, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Dario Amodei of Anthropic, will be speaking at the summit. Over the past several weeks, apparently as part of the build up, to the summit, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other giant American companies announced more than $68 billion in spending on data centers, cloud computing and other AI-related infrastructure in India, over the next five years.

The investments are primarily expected to enhance WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and other consumer services in India, offered by the American companies, as well as boost usage of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude large language models (LLMs). The investments will also expand the capabilities of the global companies in India, which hosts a major part of their worldwide operations, as well as help secure contracts from businesses and government agencies in the country.

Microsoft, for instance, has more than 22,000 employees in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and other Indian cities. In December 2025, the technology giant said it will invest $17.5 billion in India, by 2029, to advance “cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, skilling and ongoing operations.”

The AI investments in India, by the global companies, may appear to be large. “Big Tech’s $70 Billion AI Move: Silicon Valley Bets On India, Snubs Trump’s ‘America First’ Diktat,” was the headline of a story in The Times of India. “Data Center Surge Reaches India as American Tech Giants Invest Billions,” was the headline of a New York Times story.

But the total investments in India will be tiny: only one percent of the $7 trillion that the companies plan to spend on AI globally by 2030. These global providers of online consumer services and LLMs acknowledge that India is their second largest market, in terms of users. Yet, apparently, the companies are not offering, and, nor is the Government of India requiring them to transfer technology, build local supply chains and achieve employment and talent training goals. Also, are some AI investment announcements being made more to appease Indian officials and gain greater access to the country’s market?

The AI investments are forecast to create four million jobs in India by 2030, according to a government report. However, there are no official estimates on how many jobs will be displaced by AI-based tools and services. They are already causing major job losses in a country facing massive, rising unemployment. In July, for instance, Tata Consultancy Services, an information technology firm and India’s largest private sector employer, reportedly started cutting 12,000 jobs. There are roughly six million employed by IT firms in India, including a quarter of them in customer service and call center work. Almost all the call center jobs and many of the IT jobs in India are at risk of being displaced by AI.

However, there is no major funding, either by the government or by the companies, for programs to re-skill the displaced employees. In fact, the Indian government has committed just $1.2 billion toward AI development. This spending is very small compared to the billions of dollars in subsidies, including for power and land purchases as well as tax, fee reductions and other incentives, offered to the AI projects by the central and state governments in India.

For instance, Google will reportedly receive subsidies and other incentives from the Andhra Pradesh government totaling more than $2.4 billion, or 15% of its total investment. By 2030, Google plans to spend $15 billion on an AI hub in Visakhapatnam, including a data center “to help meet demand for digital services across India and around the world.” The hub in Andhra will deliver “industry-leading AI infrastructure at scale…enabling businesses to innovate faster,” Thomas Kurian, Chief Executive of Google Cloud said in a statement.

In sharp contrast, in China, as Apple’s experience illustrates, American and other global companies have to team up and transfer technology to local partners, help fund and build domestic supply chains, and provide the latest, advanced training to local talent in technology, manufacturing, operations and all other skills necessary to run the business.

While there are thousands of Indians with math, statistics, physics, engineering, and other skills, necessary for advanced AI-related training, the country has few, if any, advanced AI institutes. So, at the very least, the Government of India should assess a fee, for training local talent, on the global technology companies expanding their AI-based operations in the country.

Even a ten percent fee on their spending will raise roughly $1.4 billion a year. This will fund the annual operations of at least fourteen new institutes offering advanced AI and related skills to 14,000 undergraduate students in India.

Such a fee, if implemented, can finance the creation of an advanced pool of AI and related talent, catalyze the formation of startups, enable domestic companies to expand into AI-related businesses, attract jobs from foreign companies seeking AI talent, and modernize defense capabilities.

AI centers need massive quantities of both power to operate and water for cooling, which are in very short supply in India. In 2030, will the global technology companies, which by then only partially meet their planned AI investments in India, say it was due to the shortage of power and water?

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(Photo: Gaurika Bishnoi and Aaron Rai at their wedding, 2025. Courtesy Bishnoi Instagram.)

March 23, 20264

By Ignatius Chithelen

Rai’s PGA Championship win has boosted his popularity in the UK and the larger Indian market. So, he is likely being offered lucrative sponsorship deals by global sports and consumer brand companies.

Also, if he chooses, Rai does not have to work hard on improving his golf game. With the PGA Championship win, he can play in the tournament for life. For the next five years, he also automatically qualifies for the other majors, Masters, US Open and The British Open; as well as for the PGA Tour.

Will the fame and wealth distract Rai or will he win more tournaments, including majors?

In 2020, Rai earned $1.4 million in prize money for winning the Scottish Open. He treated himself to a Mitsubishi Evo car, which then cost roughly $70,000, even though he could easily afford a more expensive, luxurious Rolls Royce or Mercedes Benz. Laughing, he explained his choice to a reporter of The Times, London: The Evos, made on a budget, had no flashy interiors, “they were just pure and focused. Those are the values I believe in.”

Gaurika, a Hindu, and Rai married in 2025. In 2018, Gaurika chatted with Rai’s mother during his round at the Hero Indian Open, part of the DP World Tour. It was held at her home club, the DLF Golf Club, near Delhi. Rai’s mother asked her to wait and meet her son, she told Golfweek.

After Rai’s PGA Championship win, a follower commented on an Instagram post by Gaurika, “the more he listens to you the better he plays.”

Ignatius Chithelen is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A Chartered Financial Analyst, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York.

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By Ignatius Chithelen

May 23, 2026

There were four players of Indian heritage, among the 156 competing for the Professional Golfers Association Championship held last week, at the Aronimink Golf Club, in suburban Philadelphia: Akshay Bhatia and Sahith Theegala, from the United States, Sudarshan Yellamaraju, Canada, and Aaron Rai, England.

Bhatia and Yellamaraju were cut after the first two rounds. Theegala finished tied for 60^th place and Rai won the championship. He is the first Englishman to win the title since 1919, the first British Asian to win a major, and only the second golfer of Indian heritage to win one of golf’s four major annual tournaments. Vijay Singh, from Fiji, won three majors: two PGA Championships, in 1998 and 2004, and the Masters in 2000.

“I would not be here without her,” Rai said about his wife Gaurika Bishnoi Rai, at the press conference after his win. She is “a real support system for my game.” Gaurika, 27-years-old, is a professional golfer from India on the Ladies European Tour,

In his twelve previous major tournament starts, Rai had never finished among the top ten players. His highest finish was being tied for 19^th at the 2025 PGA Championship and the 2024 US Open.

Last Saturday evening, after the third round of the 2026 PGA Championship, Rai was tied for 8^th place. Chatting in the car, he told Bishnoi that, while he had a good chance of winning, he was fearful of success, according to a New York Times report. He was scared that the fame, attention and demands on time, which comes with winning a major, would make him lose himself. Bishnoi told Rai that she would not let that happen, since “We’re going to lead our lives the same way.” She added, “stay true to yourself,” and he will achieve his potential. After chatting for about thirty minutes, they drove to their hotel.

Since qualifying for the PGA Tour in 2021, Rai had one prior win, at the 2024 Wyndham Championship. He had six wins on the international circuit, including the 2018 Hong Kong Open and the 2020 Scottish Open.

In ten starts on the PGA Tour this season, Rai finished four times in the top 25. The week prior to the PGA Championship he finished 5^th at the Myrtle Beach Classic.

Heading into Sunday’s final round, Rai was among 22 players within four shots of the lead, which was a PGA Championship record. The others included Scottie Scheffler, from the US, ranked number one in the world, and Rory McIlroy, from Northern Ireland, ranked number two.

Rai, who uses a driver from 2019, is not a long hitter – his average drive of 287 yards places him 151st on the PGA Tour. But he ranks fourth in driving accuracy. In putting, he ranks 154th.

During his final round at the PGA Championship, Rai’s accurate drives, combined with good putting, helped him win. He hit seven of the last eight fairways and made seven straight single putts. On the par-5 ninth hole, he made a 40-foot eagle putt. He then birdied the 11^th hole to take the lead, which he held till the end. On the 17^th hole, he sank a 70-foot birdie putt. “Was just trying to focus on speed and get it close” to the hole, Rai said at the post-event press conference. “Just kind of conspired all together for that ball to go in the hole…a real bonus.”

Shooting five under par on his final round, Rai finished at nine under par for the tournament, three strokes ahead of Spain’s Jon Rahm and American Alex Smalley. Scheffler finished tied for 14^th place and McIlroy tied for 7^th. Rai won $3.7 million in prize money, taking his total winnings on the professional golf tour to $12.3 million.

Rai, 31-years-old, is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 168 pounds, 76 kilograms. He has lived in Jacksonville, Florida, since he started playing on the PGA Tour. Like Akshay Bhatia, he did not attend college. At age seventeen, Rai started competing on the lowest rung of the professional golf circuit in the United Kingdom.

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Rai’s father Amrik Singh, an amateur tennis player, quit his job as a community worker so he could take him to golf practice and tournaments. From the age of ten, Rai’s parents paid the fees for him to be coached by Piers Ward and Andrew Proudman. Golf professionals in Wolverhampton, England, they now run Me and My Golf, an online academy. They continue to advise Rai, who views them as part of his family.

Since Rai was four, his father took him to hit balls at the 3 Hammers Golf Complex and also to two pitch-and-putt courses, run by the local council. The public courses “played a vital role” in Rai’s golf journey, notes the New York Times.

Speaking of the fees, the equipment and other golf expenses incurred by his parents, Rai told Golf Monthly, “It wasn’t money that we really had, to be honest.” His father sought media coverage for his son’s early golf wins, hoping to attract sponsors.

At age eight, after Rai qualified for the world junior championships, Shabir Randeree started funding Rai’s golf expenses and also paid the fees for him to attend a private secondary school in Wolverhampton. A Muslim of Pakistani heritage, he was the owner of the first golf course Rai joined. He is chairman of DCD, a London-based investment firm. Randeree, who continues to be Rai’s sponsor, has “almost been like a second father to me,” Rai said at the post-chmpionship press conference.

Rai was born and raised in Wolverhampton, a working-class city about 17 miles north of Birmingham. About a quarter of the 300,000 population are Asians, mainly Sikhs, and Blacks. Both sets of Rai’s grandparents were from India. His father Amrik Singh, a Sikh, grew up in England while his mother Dalvir Shukla is an immigrant from Kenya of Indian heritage. Rai has three older siblings, two sisters and a brother.

Asked about his parents at the PGA Championship press conference, Rai said that he “will get way too emotional…I can’t put into words how much they’ve done in terms of the support, in terms of the care, in terms of love.”

Rai imbibed the values of hard work and dedication from his parents and siblings. His mother, who is a mental health nurse, worked long hours, including taking up two jobs for a while, to provide financial support for the family. One of Rai’s sisters started working when she was 14. His father instilled in Rai the importance of building good habits on and off the golf course.

Three or four times a week, Rai watched tapes of Tiger Woods playing in amateur and professional tournaments. He also watched soccer games on TV, is a supporter of Manchester United and a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo, who played for the team.

Up until he was about eight, Rai wanted to be a Formula One race car driver. His interest in golf was due to an accident. His mother bought him a set of plastic golf clubs, mistaking them for hockey clubs.

Rai’s parents, unlike most Indian parents, encouraged him to pursue golf. For other Indian parents, Rai told BBC in 2018, “It was more about getting an education and a proper job, and sport or tennis at that time was never really seen as a proper job.”

Growing up in England, he played golf with two gloves to keep his hands warm and maintain his grip in the often cold, rainy conditions. One day his dad forgot to put the two gloves in the bag, so he had to play with one. “I couldn’t play - I couldn’t feel the grip - so I’ve always stuck with the two gloves ever since.” Unlike other golfers on the professional tour, Rai wears two gloves instead of one, both black and weather-proof.

Rai is humble, polite, kind, and practices harder than most, making him popular with fellow professional golfers. “You won’t find one person on property who’s not happy” for Rai, McIlroy said after Rai’s win.

Unlike almost all sports stars, Rai is modest. He lives in a large, but not palatial, home in Florida. “He’s just not here to market himself as anybody that he’s not,” Rai’s wife Gaurika told The New York Times. Rai has no agent and no social media presence, apparently not seeking to make money from his fame. Gaurika has an Instagram account, with more than 7,100 followers, and an X/Twitter account with nearly 1,000 followers.

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(Photo: Gaurika Bishnoi and Aaron Rai at their wedding, 2025. Courtesy Bishnoi Instagram.)

Rai’s major win has boosted his popularity in the UK and the larger Indian market. So, he is likely being offered lucrative sponsorship deals by global sports and consumer brand companies.

Also, if he chooses, Rai does not have to work hard on improving his golf game. With the PGA Championship win, he can play in the tournament for life. For the next five years, he also automatically qualifies for the other majors, Masters, US Open and The British Open; as well as for the PGA Tour.

Will the fame and wealth distract Rai or will he win more tournaments, including majors? From an early age, Rai’s father bought him the best set of golf clubs. After practice and tournament rounds, his father cleaned every groove of the clubs with a pin and baby oil and put on protective covers, including on the irons.

So, unlike other professional golfers, Rai uses covers for his irons. At the press conference, after the PGA Championship, he said he leaves the plastic covers on “to remember where I came from and to respect what I have.”

In 2020, Rai earned $1.4 million in prize money for winning the Scottish Open. He treated himself to a Mitsubishi Evo car, which then cost roughly $70,000, even though he could easily afford a more expensive, luxurious Rolls Royce or Mercedes Benz. Laughing, he explained his choice to a reporter of The Times, London: The Evos, made on a budget, had no flashy interiors, “they were just pure and focused. Those are the values I believe in.”

Gaurika, a Hindu, and Rai married in 2025. In 2018, Gaurika chatted with Rai’s mother during his round at the Hero Indian Open, part of the DP World Tour. It was held at her home club, the DLF Golf Club, near Delhi. Rai’s mother asked her to wait and meet her son, she told Golfweek.

After Rai’s PGA Championship win, a follower commented on an Instagram post by Gaurika, “the more he listens to you the better he plays.”

Subscribe now

Ignatius Chithelen is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A Chartered Financial Analyst, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York.

Subscribe now

May 23, 2026

Rai’s PGA Championship win has boosted his popularity in the UK and the larger Indian market. So, he is likely being offered lucrative sponsorship deals by global sports and consumer brand companies.

Also, if he chooses, Rai does not have to work hard on improving his golf game. With the PGA Championship win, he can play in the tournament for life. For the next five years, he also automatically qualifies for the other majors, Masters, US Open and The British Open; as well as for the PGA Tour.

Will the fame, attention and wealth distract Rai or will he win more tournaments, including majors?

In 2020, Rai earned $1.4 million in prize money for winning the Scottish Open. He treated himself to a Mitsubishi Evo car, which then cost roughly $70,000, even though he could easily afford a more expensive, luxurious Rolls Royce or Mercedes Benz. Laughing, he explained his choice to a reporter of The Times, London: The Evos, made on a budget, had no flashy interiors, “they were just pure and focused. Those are the values I believe in.”

Subscribe now

(Photo: Gaurika Bishnoi and Aaron Rai at their wedding, 2025. Courtesy Bishnoi Instagram.)

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May 22, 2026

There were four players of Indian heritage, among the 156 competing for the Professional Golfers Association Championship held last week, at the Aronimink Golf Club, in suburban Philadelphia: Akshay Bhatia and Sahith Theegala, from the United States, Sudarshan Yellamaraju, Canada, and Aaron Rai, England.

Bhatia and Yellamaraju were cut after the first two rounds. Theegala finished tied for 60^th place and Rai won the championship. He is the first Englishman to win the title since 1919, the first British Asian to win a major, and only the second golfer of Indian heritage to win one of golf’s four major annual tournaments. Vijay Singh, from Fiji, won three majors: two PGA Championships, in 1998 and 2004, and the Masters in 2000.

“I would not be here without her,” Rai said about his wife Gaurika Bishnoi Rai, at the press conference after his win. She is “a real support system for my game.” Gaurika, 27-years-old, is a professional golfer from India on the Ladies European Tour,

In his twelve previous major tournament starts, Rai had never finished among the top ten players. His highest finish was being tied for 19^th at the 2025 PGA Championship and the 2024 US Open.

Last Saturday evening, after the third round of the 2026 PGA Championship, Rai was tied for 8^th place. Chatting in the car, he told Bishnoi that, while he had a good chance of winning, he was fearful of success, according to a New York Times report. He was scared that the fame, attention and demands on time, which comes with winning a major, would make him lose himself. Bishnoi told Rai that she would not let that happen, since “We’re going to lead our lives the same way.” She added, “stay true to yourself,” and he will achieve his potential. After chatting for about thirty minutes, they drove to their hotel.

Since qualifying for the PGA Tour in 2021, Rai had one prior win, at the 2024 Wyndham Championship. He had six wins on the international circuit, including the 2018 Hong Kong Open and the 2020 Scottish Open.

In ten starts on the PGA Tour this season, Rai finished four times in the top 25. The week prior to the PGA Championship he finished 5^th at the Myrtle Beach Classic.

Heading into Sunday’s final round, Rai was among 22 players within four shots of the lead, which was a PGA Championship record. The others included Scottie Scheffler, from the US, ranked number one in the world, and Rory McIlroy, from Northern Ireland, ranked number two.

Rai, who uses a driver from 2019, is not a long hitter – his average drive of 287 yards places him 151st on the PGA Tour. But he ranks fourth in driving accuracy. In putting, he ranks 154th.

During his final round at the PGA Championship, Rai’s accurate drives, combined with good putting, helped him win. He hit seven of the last eight fairways and made seven straight single putts. On the par-5 ninth hole, he made a 40-foot eagle putt. He then birdied the 11^th hole to take the lead, which he held till the end. On the 17^th hole, he sank a 70-foot birdie putt. “Was just trying to focus on speed and get it close” to the hole, Rai said at the post-event press conference. “Just kind of conspired all together for that ball to go in the hole…a real bonus.”

Shooting five under par on his final round, Rai finished at nine under par for the tournament, three strokes ahead of Spain’s Jon Rahm and American Alex Smalley. Scheffler finished tied for 14^th place and McIlroy tied for 7^th. Rai won $3.7 million in prize money, taking his total winnings on the professional golf tour to $12.3 million.

Rai, 31-years-old, is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 168 pounds, 76 kilograms. He has lived in Jacksonville, Florida, since he started playing on the PGA Tour. Like Akshay Bhatia, he did not attend college. At age seventeen, Rai started competing on the lowest rung of the professional golf circuit in the United Kingdom.

Subscribe now

Rai’s father Amrik Singh, an amateur tennis player, quit his job as a community worker so he could take him to golf practice and tournaments. From the age of ten, Rai’s parents paid the fees for him to be coached by Piers Ward and Andrew Proudman. Golf professionals in Wolverhampton, England, they now run Me and My Golf, an online academy. They continue to advise Rai, who views them as part of his family.

Since Rai was four, his father took him to hit balls at the 3 Hammers Golf Complex and also to two pitch-and-putt courses, run by the local council. The public courses “played a vital role” in Rai’s golf journey, notes the New York Times.

Speaking of the fees, the equipment and other golf expenses incurred by his parents, Rai told Golf Monthly, “It wasn’t money that we really had, to be honest.” His father sought media coverage for his son’s early golf wins, hoping to attract sponsors.

At age eight, after Rai qualified for the world junior championships, Shabir Randeree started funding Rai’s golf expenses and also paid the fees for him to attend a private secondary school in Wolverhampton. A Muslim of Pakistani heritage, he was the owner of the first golf course Rai joined. He is chairman of DCD, a London-based investment firm. Randeree, who continues to be Rai’s sponsor, has “almost been like a second father to me,” Rai said at the post-chmpionship press conference.

Rai was born and raised in Wolverhampton, a working-class city about 17 miles north of Birmingham. About a quarter of the 300,000 population are Asians, mainly Sikhs, and Blacks. Both sets of Rai’s grandparents were from India. His father Amrik Singh, a Sikh, grew up in England while his mother Dalvir Shukla is an immigrant from Kenya of Indian heritage. Rai has three older siblings, two sisters and a brother.

Asked about his parents at the PGA Championship press conference, Rai said that he “will get way too emotional…I can’t put into words how much they’ve done in terms of the support, in terms of the care, in terms of love.”

Rai imbibed the values of hard work and dedication from his parents and siblings. His mother, who is a mental health nurse, worked long hours, including taking up two jobs for a while, to provide financial support for the family. One of Rai’s sisters started working when she was 14. His father instilled in Rai the importance of building good habits on and off the golf course.

Three or four times a week, Rai watched tapes of Tiger Woods playing in amateur and professional tournaments. He also watched soccer games on TV, is a supporter of Manchester United and a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo, who played for the team.

Up until he was about eight, Rai wanted to be a Formula One race car driver. His interest in golf was due to an accident. His mother bought him a set of plastic golf clubs, mistaking them for hockey clubs.

Rai’s parents, unlike most Indian parents, encouraged him to pursue golf. For other Indian parents, Rai told BBC in 2018, “It was more about getting an education and a proper job, and sport or tennis at that time was never really seen as a proper job.”

Growing up in England, he played golf with two gloves to keep his hands warm and maintain his grip in the often cold, rainy conditions. One day his dad forgot to put the two gloves in the bag, so he had to play with one. “I couldn’t play - I couldn’t feel the grip - so I’ve always stuck with the two gloves ever since.” Unlike other golfers on the professional tour, Rai wears two gloves instead of one, both black and weather-proof.

Rai is humble, polite, kind, and practices harder than most, making him popular with fellow professional golfers. “You won’t find one person on property who’s not happy” for Rai, McIlroy said after Rai’s win.

Unlike almost all sports stars, Rai is modest. He lives in a large, but not palatial, home in Florida. “He’s just not here to market himself as anybody that he’s not,” Rai’s wife Gaurika told The New York Times. Rai has no agent and no social media presence, apparently not seeking to make money from his fame. Gaurika has an Instagram account, with more than 7,100 followers, and an X/Twitter account with nearly 1,000 followers.

Rai’s major win has boosted his popularity in the UK and the larger Indian market. So, he is likely being offered lucrative sponsorship deals by global sports and consumer brand companies.

Also, if he chooses, Rai does not have to work hard on improving his golf game. With the PGA Championship win, he can play in the tournament for life. For the next five years, he also automatically qualifies for the other majors, Masters, US Open and The British Open; as well as for the PGA Tour.

Will the fame and wealth distract Rai or will he win more tournaments, including majors? From an early age, Rai’s father bought him the best set of golf clubs. After practice and tournament rounds, his father cleaned every groove of the clubs with a pin and baby oil and put on protective covers, including on the irons.

So, unlike other professional golfers, Rai uses covers for his irons. At the press conference, after the PGA Championship, he said he leaves the plastic covers on “to remember where I came from and to respect what I have.”

In 2020, Rai earned $1.4 million in prize money for winning the Scottish Open. He treated himself to a Mitsubishi Evo car, which then cost roughly $70,000, even though he could easily afford a more expensive, luxurious Rolls Royce or Mercedes Benz. Laughing, he explained his choice to a reporter of The Times, London: The Evos, made on a budget, had no flashy interiors, “they were just pure and focused. Those are the values I believe in.”

Gaurika, a Hindu, and Rai married in 2025. In 2018, Gaurika chatted with Rai’s mother during his round at the Hero Indian Open, part of the DP World Tour. It was held at her home club, the DLF Golf Club, near Delhi. Rai’s mother asked her to wait and meet her son, she told Golfweek.

After Rai’s PGA Championship win, a follower posted on Gaurika’s Instagram, “the more he listens to you the better he plays.”

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(Photo: Gaurika Bishnoi and Aaron Rai at their wedding, 2025. Courtesy Bishnoi Instagram.)

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(Image: Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

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By Ignatius Chithelen. He is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A CFA, Chithelen is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York.

May 21, 2026

Since the 2010s, most top students from India, including from the reputed Indian Institutes of Technology, avoid pursuing advanced degrees in the US since they have to borrow large sums to cover their costs.

Currently, most Indians pursuing MS degrees in the US are from mid-or-low tier colleges in India, who ignore the burden of debt, believing they will find better career opportunities in the US than in India. They are influenced by the stream of stories on the success of Indian professionals in the US, widely covered by the media in India.

Yes, many of the engineers and doctors, who migrated to the US in the 1970’s and 1980’s, achieved professional and financial success. But they were the top students in India, from the IITs and the best medical colleges. Most of them did not take on large debt to pursue advanced education in the US. More important, most found jobs in the US upon graduation.

Expecting to repeat their success today is like driving a car by looking in the rear-view mirror. The current reality, as Krishna and his classmates have found, is that the prospects of students from India finding a job in the US, especially after earning a MS from a mid-or-low ranked university, is one in twenty; US job prospects are far lower for Indians with non-STEM MS degrees. The intense competition among college graduates for jobs in India is now occurring among Indian Master’s graduates in the US.

I see Krishna at the cocktail reception after the conference ends. I wish him good luck in finding a job and paying off his debt.

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Ignatius Chithelen is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A CFA, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York.

(Image: Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

By Ignatius Chithelen

May 17, 2026

“I just rushed here after my classes,” says Krishna R, as he introduces himself. We met last week in New York, at a conference on Trends in Credit Markets held by a financial data provider.

He was registered for the conference by the job placement office of a university in the New York area, where he just completed a MS in Finance. “I came here to network with employees of Fitch and Moody’s (which are financial rating agencies.) I want to find out what skills they seek in entry level employees,” he says.

Krishna, who graduates this week, has not found a job in the United States. How about the other students from India in your class, I ask. “Only four found jobs” in the US, he says. “There are ninety Indians in my class. We make up half of the 180 students” in the MS program. Why did only four Indians, and not the others, find jobs, I ask? “They have more experience. More than five years,” says Krishna.

The key MS Finance courses include Data Analytics, Corporate Finance, Capital Markets, and Risk Management, all of which require good numerical skills. Employers in the US, hiring for such roles at the entry level, prefer candidates with an undergraduate degree, or at least a minor, in either math, statistics, accounting, or econometrics.

Krishna, 26-years-old, earned a BA in Economics and Finance from a mid-ranked college in Chennai, India. Employers in the US may not hire him since he did not study math, I say. “No. It is because I have only two years of experience,” he says. He worked as a junior analyst in the credit department of a major private Indian finance company in Bangalore. “I have financial skills,” adds Krishna. “I passed the second level CFA exam” in 2024, before he came to study in the US.

The tuition, room, meals and other costs totaled about $130,000 for Krishna’s two-year Master’s. “I got a scholarship. It covered half my costs,” he says. “It was merit-based. I got 750 on the GMAT. Higher than the 730 minimum required for admission to Harvard’s MBA program,” he says.

More business schools in the US “are giving steep discounts on tuition that can save students up to 50%,” The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Also, the Journal reported, that “The unemployment rate for workers (in the US) under 35 with a master’s degree has rarely been higher in the past 20 years…”

Most Master’s programs in the US, including at the top business schools, offer “merit” scholarships to fill up the class. Apparently, by analyzing data of past students with similar financial backgrounds, universities offer an amount of scholarship which is most likely to attract a student to enroll, by borrowing the funds needed to cover the rest of the costs.

US universities face large, rising budget deficits, with even some major ones having to cut faculty and staff. Part of the reason is that, after years of sharp increases, foreign enrollments in MS programs are declining. This is because there are far fewer jobs for foreign graduates in the US and due to visa restrictions. To try to make up the shortfall in revenues, US universities offer teaser scholarships, pay consultants in India $10,000 for each student they help enroll, and use other aggressive strategies to recruit more students from India. The rational guiding faculty and officials at US universities is the version of India publicized by Indian government officials: there is a rapidly growing, wealthier middle class in India due to the country’s strong economic growth.

As is evident from Krishna’s class, students from India provide a sizeable portion of the revenues for many MS programs in the US. In the 2024-25 academic year, there were 363,000 students from India in the US, with 90 percent of them pursuing Master’s degrees. That year, they are estimated to have spent at least $24 billion to study in the US.

Scores on the Graduate Management Admission Test, GMAT, are not required by most MBA and MS programs in the US, including by the university Krishna attended. In fact, even the Harvard Business School has no minimum score requirement on the GMAT or even the less rigorous GRE test. Only 28 percent of the 943 students, in the Harvard MBA Class of 2027, submitted scores for the old, more rigorous GMAT 10^th Edition; the scores ranged from below 690 to above 770.

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Krishna, along with 85 of his classmates, will have to leave the US within a month since it is highly unlikely an employer will hire them on a practical training visa. They return to India with a huge education debt burden to repay.

Krishna borrowed $65,000 from a private lender in India, with no collateral, at an annual interest rate of 10.5%. The lender “saw I have a good chance to repay the loan,” he says. “I got into a good university. I had high GMAT scores. I passed the first two CFA exams.” His parents were against him borrowing such a large sum. “My parents did not have to put up collateral for the loan,” says Krishna, as he wipes sweat from his forehead.

Major Indian banks, including the government-run State Bank of India, require collateral, usually the family home, for foreign education loans above Rupees five million, or $52,000. Also, apparently to reduce its losses on the loans, State Bank lends only to students admitted to one of the top 100 universities around the world. The university Krishna attended is not among the 36 US universities on the list. The terms of the State Bank loans are far more consumer friendly than on those made by private lenders, including interest rates which are two or more percent lower.

Like Krishna, most Indians who study in the US are not from wealthy families. So, they borrow $50,000 to $200,000 from Indian banks and lenders to pay for their education expenses, depending on whether they pursue one-or-two year-Master’s degree, at state or private US universities.

Krishna grew up in Chennai where his father works in a white-collar job at a government-run company. While working for a finance company in Bangalore, Krishna met colleagues who had worked in the US for three or more years and saved a decent amount, even after paying for loans for their American MBA or MS Finance degrees. So, he decided to seek a financial job in the US by pursuing a MS in Finance. “I wanted to study in New York. It is the financial center,” he says. Krishna had no interest in studying in the United Kingdom, even though the total costs are roughly a third to half lower than in the US.

Most universities in the US, especially those in the big cities, offer several Master’s degrees in finance, full-time and part-time and on campus and online. Programs include MBAs, Finance, Quantitative Finance, Data Analytics, and Risk Management. In addition to finance, in their drive to bring in more revenues, many of the big universities offer more than a 100 Master’s programs, most of which offer limited job prospects, including for American students.

Krishna applied to eight US universities, four top schools and the rest of lower quality in the New York area. How did he choose them, I ask. “I used the rankings published by the Financial Times. I also looked at job placement information” from the schools, he says.

Business schools in the New York City area emphasize that students will study in New York, the financial capital of the world, minutes from Wall Street; they can participate in a broad range of networking opportunities; and work as interns at financial firms. They also highlight that their MS degrees are Science, Technology, Engineering and Math programs. This allows Indian and other foreign students to be eligible for employment for up to three years on the Optional Practical Training visas, unlike one year for those with non-STEM degrees.

Krishna was rejected by Princeton, Columbia, New York University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Baruch College. He was accepted by the University of Southern California. “The cost was $200,000. They did not offer me any scholarship,” he says. He was also accepted by Pace University in New York. “Pace gave me a similar scholarship. But it is ranked lower than the university I attended.”

The university where Krishna earned his MS is ranked in the 50’s, only a few steps higher than Pace and slightly lower than the University of Southern California. The Financial Times ranks 70 MS Finance programs around the world.

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In 2024, before President Donald Trump’s changes in work visa policies, a student from India, with a STEM MS or PhD, had at best a one in three chance of being hired on a practical training visa. I ask Krishna how he knew if the rankings and job placement data would mean he will find a job in the US upon graduation. “I connected with recent graduates on LinkedIn,” he says. “They said if you get good grades and have experience you can find a job.” But do grades matter, I ask. He has good grades but not found a job.

I ask Krishna if he realized that Trump’s visa policies would lead to far fewer jobs in the US for students from India. When Trump was elected in 2024, “I was already in my first semester,” he says. I ask, did you not want to return to India and avoid at least $48,000 in debt. “I was getting top grades,” says Krishna. “I decided to continue.”

Given the massive unemployment among college graduates in India, Krishna evidently has good skills and work habits to be hired by a major financial firm in Bangalore. I ask if he should have stayed on the job and finished his CFA instead of borrowing $65,000 for an American MS degree. He leaves, saying he must network with employees of the rating agencies.

The US based CFA Institute confers the Chartered Financial Analysts designation to those passing all three exams. The fees for the exams, including for study materials and practice exams, total $3,520 for early registrants. Each exam lasts 4.5 hours, split into two sessions. In 2025, more than 150,000 candidates sat for the exams around the world. A quarter of them were from India, where the exams are held in 26 cities. The pass rate, for completing all three exams in the minimum 18 months, is around 10 percent. There are more than 200,000 CFAs around the world. Financial firms, including in the US, hire CFAs and many employees earn the charter while working, which enhances their career prospects.

Since the 2010s, most top students from India, including from the reputed Indian Institutes of Technology, avoid pursuing advanced degrees in the US since they have to borrow large sums to cover their costs.

Currently, most Indians pursuing MS degrees in the US are from mid-or-low tier colleges in India, who ignore the burden of debt, believing they will find better career opportunities in the US than in India. They are influenced by the stream of stories on the success of Indian professionals in the US, widely covered by the media in India.

Yes, many of the engineers and doctors, who migrated to the US in the 1970’s and 1980’s, achieved professional and financial success. But they were the top students in India, from the IITs and the best medical colleges. Most of them did not take on large debt to pursue advanced education in the US. More important, most found jobs in the US upon graduation.

Expecting to repeat their success today is like driving a car by looking in the rear-view mirror. The current reality, as Krishna and his classmates have found, is that the prospects of students from India finding a job in the US, especially after earning a MS from a mid-or-low ranked university, is one in twenty; US job prospects are far lower for Indians with non-STEM MS degrees. The intense competition among college graduates for jobs in India is now occurring among Indian Master’s graduates in the US.

I see Krishna at the cocktail reception after the conference ends. I wish him good luck in finding a job and paying off his debt.

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(The student is referred to as Krishna.R, not his real name, to protect his identify.)

Story updated May 17, 2026.

Ignatius Chithelen is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A CFA, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York.

(Image: Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

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January 18, 2026

Indians are hearing grim stories from relatives, neighbors and friends as several hundred thousand students return to India since they could not find jobs in the United States, United Kingdom and other foreign countries, after earning mostly Master’s degrees. Most of them are burdened with large education loans, with some unable to find work in India. Such stories are also being covered by Indian news sites and on social media posts.

Most Indians who study abroad are not from wealthy families. So, they borrow $50,000 to $200,000 from Indian banks to pay the tuition, living expenses, meals and other expenses in the US, depending on whether they are pursuing one-or-two year-Master’s degree, at state or private universities. Indians studying in the UK borrow loans ranging from $40,000 to $90,000.

Students from India provide a sizeable portion of the revenues of advanced education institutions in both countries. In the 2024-25 academic year, there were 363,000 Indians at colleges and universities in the US. That year, they spent at least $24 billion to study in the US. This is based on the $67,000 annual total costs of pursuing an MS degree at Arizona State University, which is popular with Indians. The costs are higher at private schools.

In the current academic year, there are around 98,000 students from India pursuing advanced degrees in the UK, who will spend at least $4 billion. This is based on $40,000 in annual costs to pursue an MS degree at the University of Manchester.

US and UK universities face large, rising budget deficits, with even some major ones having to cut faculty and staff. Part of the reason is that, after years of sharp increases, foreign graduate student enrollments are declining. In the current 2025-2026 academic year, graduate programs at US universities saw a six percent decline in new enrollment of foreign students. This was on top of a 15 percent decline in 2024-25. As a result, over the past two years, the annual graduate fee revenues of US universities has fallen by a fifth, at least an estimated $4 billion. There are fewer foreign students in the US - and UK - due to reduced job opportunities and adverse changes in work visa policies.

US universities face a further decline in foreign student enrollment for the upcoming 2026-2027 academic year. Starting next week, the Trump Administration will pause processing visas, including for students, for citizens of 75 countries. They include Brazil, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Egypt, which, in 2023-2024, had more than 55,000 students at US universities, including 17,000 each from Bangladesh and Brazil. To try to make up the shortfall in revenues, US - and UK - universities will likely be more aggressive in their recruiting strategies in India.

Apparently, university officials expect such strategies, combined with the allure of the American dream or a foreign degree, is enough to convince applicants in India. In fact, in their pitches to students, officials make no direct, upfront mention that most will need to borrow large sums to study in the US or UK. Instead, as one of them describes it, “an American degree represents a major financial and personal investment, often involving family resources and expectations.”

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The recruitment strategies of US and UK universities cover a wide range from paying consultants in India to boosting the class size of popular STEM degrees. US and UK universities pay $5,000 or more to admission consultants and agents in India for every student they help enroll. Such payments are not disclosed to the applicants, who also have to pay the consultants a fee.

Many MS programs no longer require scores of the basic Graduate Record Examination, let alone on advanced tests. In their greed to earn fees, some admission consultants in India guide students to apply to programs that do not require test scores and hence have an easier admission criteria. Employers though do not value such degrees, which further reduces the odds of an Indian graduate being hired on a work visa in the US or UK.

Then, there has been a rapid increase in the number of MS programs, especially in STEM. Some universities, especially in the major US and UK cities, offer more than a hundred MS programs. Also, MBA programs have been transformed into STEM degrees to increase their appeal to foreign students. In the US, a foreign MBA graduate qualifies for a three-year practical training work visa, compared to a one-year visa for those with non-STEM degrees - assuming they can find a job.

Another fee-raising strategy is to boost the capacity of STEM degrees which have better job prospects. For instance, there are more than one thousand students, mostly foreigners, in popular MS data science programs. The universities ignore the fact that a large class, filled by lowering admission standards, reduces the chances of a foreign graduate finding a job in the US or UK.

Foreign students are charged full fees, unlike many domestic students. So, a key strategy of many US universities is to offer teaser scholarships. Typically, they are given to students with work experience who are likely to find jobs upon graduation. This helps boost the program’s job placement rate and makes it more appealing to future applicants.

The scholarships though are similar to discount coupons offered by a vendor trying to sell more bottles of shampoo - at best they cover only 10 percent to 20 percent of the tuition. And yet, many Indians, feeling honored to receive a scholarship, eagerly borrow large sums to pay for 80 percent of the tuition and all the other expenses. This year, the universities will likely offer many more scholarships. After all, instead of receiving no revenues, a scholarship can bring in 80 percent of the tuition.

Recently, many STEM MS programs in the US have begun offering foreign students an extra semester or two of campus internships, for a fee. The stated goal is to provide work experience. The internships though enable foreign students, who do not find jobs upon graduation, to stay on longer and continue to apply for jobs in the US. However, given the work visa policies and the intense competition, very few foreign graduates of even the top STEM programs find jobs during the campus internships.

Soon, defaults by Indians on their foreign education loans will start to rise, risking them losing their family homes, which was put up as collateral, to the banks. Far fewer of them are finding jobs upon graduation in the US or UK, which typically helps them repay at least part of their loans. This is because the US has imposed a $100,000 fee and other restrictions on work visas for foreigners while the UK has stopped the automatic issuance of three-year work visas to foreign STEM graduates.

“Regretting Masters in USA…Jobless, Huge Debt,” is the title of a post on Reddit by a 25-year-old professional. He was a cloud engineer in India with a major global technology company, earning $18,000 per year. He gave up the job and borrowed $50,000, at an interest rate of 12.5 percent, to pursue a US degree. He writes, “Right now, I’m regretting my decision of moving to the US considering the financial stress and uncertainty I am facing.”

Perhaps such stories will convince more students from India to avoid the foreign education debt trap. While ignoring the scholarships, internships and other apparently tempting offers, they should focus on one simple measure to protect themselves and their families: pursue an advanced STEM degree, even from a major US and UK university, only if it can be funded with a loan which can be repaid within ten years, based on a salary earned in India.

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For weekly Global Indian Times stories kindly subscribe. Easiest way is to email us stating Subscribe at: gitimescontact@gmail.com

(Image: Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

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January 18, 2026

Indians are hearing grim stories from relatives, neighbors and friends as several hundred thousand students return to India since they could not find jobs in the United States, United Kingdom and other foreign countries, after earning mostly Master’s degrees. Most of them are burdened with large education loans, with some unable to find work in India. Such stories are also being covered by Indian news sites and on social media posts.

Most Indians who study abroad are not from wealthy families. So, they borrow $50,000 to $200,000 from Indian banks to pay the tuition, living expenses, meals and other expenses in the US, depending on whether they are pursuing one-or-two year-Master’s degree, at state or private universities. Indians studying in the UK borrow loans ranging from $40,000 to $90,000.

Students from India provide a sizeable portion of the revenues of advanced education institutions in both countries. In the 2024-25 academic year, there were 363,000 Indians at colleges and universities in the US. That year, they spent at least $24 billion to study in the US. This is based on the $67,000 annual total costs of pursuing an MS degree at Arizona State University, which is popular with Indians. The costs are higher at private schools.

In the current academic year, there are around 98,000 students from India pursuing advanced degrees in the UK, who will spend at least $4 billion. This is based on $40,000 in annual costs to pursue an MS degree at the University of Manchester.

US and UK universities face large, rising budget deficits, with even some major ones having to cut faculty and staff. Part of the reason is that, after years of sharp increases, foreign graduate student enrollments are declining. In the current 2025-2026 academic year, graduate programs at US universities saw a six percent decline in new enrollment of foreign students. This was on top of a 15 percent decline in 2024-25. As a result, over the past two years, the annual graduate fee revenues of US universities has fallen by a fifth, at least an estimated $4 billion. There are fewer foreign students in the US - and UK - due to reduced job opportunities and adverse changes in work visa policies.

US universities face a further decline in foreign student enrollment for the upcoming 2026-2027 academic year. Starting next week, the Trump Administration will pause processing visas, including for students, for citizens of 75 countries. They include Brazil, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Egypt, which, in 2023-2024, had more than 55,000 students at US universities, including 17,000 each from Bangladesh and Brazil. To try to make up the shortfall in revenues, US - and UK - universities will likely be more aggressive in their recruiting strategies in India.

Apparently, university officials expect such strategies, combined with the allure of the American dream or a foreign degree, is enough to convince applicants in India. In fact, in their pitches to students, officials make no direct, upfront mention that most will need to borrow large sums to study in the US or UK. Instead, as one of them describes it, “an American degree represents a major financial and personal investment, often involving family resources and expectations.”

Subscribe now

The recruitment strategies of US and UK universities cover a wide range from paying consultants in India to boosting the class size of popular STEM degrees. US and UK universities pay $5,000 or more to admission consultants and agents in India for every student they help enroll. Such payments are not disclosed to the applicants, who also have to pay the consultants a fee.

Many MS programs no longer require scores of the basic Graduate Record Examination, let alone on advanced tests. In their greed to earn fees, some admission consultants in India guide students to apply to programs that do not require test scores and hence have an easier admission criteria. Employers though do not value such degrees, which further reduces the odds of an Indian graduate being hired on a work visa in the US or UK.

Then, there has been a rapid increase in the number of MS programs, especially in STEM. Some universities, especially in the major US and UK cities, offer more than a hundred MS programs. Also, MBA programs have been transformed into STEM degrees to increase their appeal to foreign students. In the US, a foreign MBA graduate qualifies for a three-year practical training work visa, compared to a one-year visa for those with non-STEM degrees - assuming they can find a job.

Another fee-raising strategy is to boost the capacity of STEM degrees which have better job prospects. For instance, there are more than one thousand students, mostly foreigners, in popular MS data science programs. The universities ignore the fact that a large class, filled by lowering admission standards, reduces the chances of a foreign graduate finding a job in the US or UK.

Foreign students are charged full fees, unlike many domestic students. So, a key strategy of many US universities is to offer teaser scholarships. Typically, they are given to students with work experience who are likely to find jobs upon graduation. This helps boost the program’s job placement rate and makes it more appealing to future applicants.

The scholarships though are similar to discount coupons offered by a vendor trying to sell more bottles of shampoo - at best they cover only 10 percent to 20 percent of the tuition. And yet, many Indians, feeling honored to receive a scholarship, eagerly borrow large sums to pay for 80 percent of the tuition and all the other expenses. This year, the universities will likely offer many more scholarships. After all, instead of receiving no revenues, a scholarship can bring in 80 percent of the tuition.

Recently, many STEM MS programs in the US have begun offering foreign students an extra semester or two of campus internships, for a fee. The stated goal is to provide work experience. The internships though enable foreign students, who do not find jobs upon graduation, to stay on longer and continue to apply for jobs in the US. However, given the work visa policies and the intense competition, very few foreign graduates of even the top STEM programs find jobs during the campus internships.

Soon, defaults by Indians on their foreign education loans will start to rise, risking them losing their family homes, which was put up as collateral, to the banks. Far fewer of them are finding jobs upon graduation in the US or UK, which typically helps them repay at least part of their loans. This is because the US has imposed a $100,000 fee and other restrictions on work visas for foreigners while the UK has stopped the automatic issuance of three-year work visas to foreign STEM graduates.

“Regretting Masters in USA…Jobless, Huge Debt,” is the title of a post on Reddit by a 25-year-old professional. He was a cloud engineer in India with a major global technology company, earning $18,000 per year. He gave up the job and borrowed $50,000, at an interest rate of 12.5 percent, to pursue a US degree. He writes, “Right now, I’m regretting my decision of moving to the US considering the financial stress and uncertainty I am facing.”

Perhaps such stories will convince more students from India to avoid the foreign education debt trap. While ignoring the scholarships, internships and other apparently tempting offers, they should focus on one simple measure to protect themselves and their families: pursue an advanced STEM degree, even from a major US and UK university, only if it can be funded with a loan which can be repaid within ten years, based on a salary earned in India.

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For weekly Global Indian Times stories kindly subscribe. Easiest way is to email us stating Subscribe at: gitimescontact@gmail.com

(Photo: Protest in Washington DC demanding release of all Jeffrey Epstein files. Courtesy: Creative Commons.)

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May 1, 2026

Starting in July, Deepak Chopra will no longer be a Voluntary Clinical Professor, without salary, at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. The university “is aware that Deepak Chopra, MD, has been mentioned” in the Jeffrey Esptein files, a university spokesperson told the media. The “crimes Jeffrey Epstein committed were horrific, and any association with him is regrettable.” Chopra’s appointment at the university has “an expected job end date of 6/30/26,” the spokesperson added.

In July 2019, Epstein was arrested by US prosecutors on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of underage girls”, including at his homes in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida. He “knew that many of his victims were under 18…”, according to a United States Department of Justice statement. Epstein, 66, died of suicide the next month, while being held in a prison in New York.

Chopra is mentioned 3,354 times in the Epstein files, according to the public database of millions of files released by the Justice Department. In a post on X/Twitter, Chopra states some of his email exchanges with Epstein “reflect poor judgement in tone…Any contact I had was limited and unrelated to abusive activity.” One reader responded on X/Twitter, “Mr Chopra fails to mention that his emails are dated after Mr Epstein had been tried and found guilty of inappropriate sexual conduct with minors.”

In 2018, Epstein’s guilty plea and conviction in 2008 was widely covered by the media following an investigative report by the Miami Herald. In 2008, Epstein began serving an eighteen-month prison term after “pleading guilty to soliciting sex from girls as young as 14,” The Guardian reported. The news was widely covered at the time, including by TV channels.

The email exchanges between Chopra and Epstein include talk of sex, “prey” and “cute girls”, with Chopra urging Epstein to come with “your girls” to one of his workshops in Switzerland, CNN reported. The exchanges between them, including meeting at Epstein’s homes in New York and Florida, occurred from 2016 to 2019, the report added.

In 2017, Epstein made a donation to a UC San Diego laboratory led by Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran, a director of the university’s department of psychology. Chopra introduced Epstein to Ramachandran, according to the UCSD Guardian. Ramachandran continues as an Emeritus Professor at the university.

On his website, Chopra, 79-years-old, is described as pursuing a mission “to create a more balanced, peaceful, joyful and healthier world…Dedicated to blending ancient spiritual wisdom with modern science, advocating for holistic well-being, self-awareness, and the boundless potential of human consciousness.” An author, and speaker, Chopra was a spiritual guru to Oprah Winfrey, the Beatle George Harrison, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson and other celebrities.

Starting today, May 1, Chopra offers “A 40-day embodied yoga journey,” to discover “your body as a living field of awareness, intelligence, and timeless presence. One posture at a time.” The fee for the virtual program is US $149. Chopra’s site also offers other courses including one titled Happiness Prescription for $39.99. An upcoming Chopra program is titled “Love In Action.”

Then, for $29.99 a month, there is the Deepak Chopra Membership. The site states it is a “daily sanctuary for conscious living…(which) supports balance, clarity, and well-being. Find stillness, insight, and connection with Deepak’s direct presence and a private global community rooted in compassion and shared growth.”

In 1996, Chopra co-founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California. The Center offered programs that integrate the healing arts of the East with modern Western medicine “to help people experience physical healing, emotional freedom, and higher states of consciousness.” The Carlsbad center, which reportedly closed in 2019, was acquired by Deepak Chopra’s Chopra Global, a healthcare company.

Earlier, Chopra was the Chief of Staff at the Boston Regional Medical Center. “My ambition,” he writes, “was to equal or surpass my American colleagues.” Chopra served as a professor at Tufts University and Boston University. In 2004, he obtained his medical license in California, and, in 1973, in Massachusetts, according to EBSCO, a research database. He began his career as an endocrinologist.

Chopra moved to the US in 1968, recruited during a shortage of doctors. He completed his medical internship and residency in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Virginia. He earned a medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. He was born in New Delhi.

Chopra also runs Chat with DeepakChopra.ai, an online artificial intelligence-based platform to “Unlock Your Infinite Potential.” The fee is 50¢ per session.

“The wellness industry already has zero accountability structures” writes Liz Bucar in a piece titled, How Deepak Chopra’s AI spirituality is hijacking spiritual hunger, in religionnews.com. “No licensing boards. No ethics committees. No regulatory oversight. No complaint processes. Now we’re automating the very thing that had no guardrails to begin with.” A professor of religion at Northeastern University, Boston, Bucar is author of the book “Beyond Wellness.””

A 1997 Newsweek report, titled Don’t Mess With Deepak, refers to lawsuits filed by Chopra against publications, including The Journal of the American Medical Association for printing an article “that he believed mocked his beliefs.” In 1996, after Chopra was accused of sexual harassment, he pre-emptively sued the plaintiff--and her lawyers--for allegedly threatening to file a “meritless’‘ claim, the weekly reported.

A piece in TIME stated that “the immense frustration some critics feel about Chopra’s vagueness, his seeming unwillingness to distinguish between fact and metaphor and his chronic overpromising is not simply intellectual nitpicking.”

Thousands of mentions of Chopra in the Epstein files, “adds one more accolade to Chopra’s resume — friend of one of the most notorious sex-traffickers of minors in history,” states a report in the Voice of San Diego. The report adds, “the messages themselves do not prove wrongdoing on Chopra’s part.”

Among the victims of Epstein was Rina Oh, an Indian student who lived briefly in Epstein’s mansion in Florida. “I was trapped, with no transportation, no money, and threats of physical harm. That fear kept me silent for decades,” Oh told India Today. She told NDTV, “it was very easy to manipulate me. I was already very damaged. Jeffrey (Epstein) saw that, and he took advantage of me.”

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May 9, 2026

“I am a trailblazer,” Aziz Ansari said playing the role of Kash Patel, Director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, on the TV show Saturday Night Live last weekend. “I am the first Indian person to suck at their job. Everyone says Indian people are smart, hardworking, incredibly intelligent. I have proved without a shadow of doubt that we can be just as incapable and incompetent as the Whites.”

Ansari added, “This FBI director has never been drunk or hungover on the job.” This week, The Atlantic reported that Patel gives out 750-milliliter bottles of bourbon engraved with the words “Kash Patel FBI Director”. An FBI spokesperson told the magazine that the gifts of alcohol bottles are “part of a tradition” and that Patel “has followed all applicable ethical guidelines and pays for any personal gift himself.”

Last month, The Atlantic reported that FBI officials were alarmed by what they said was FBI director Patel’s erratic behavior and “episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.” Patel told Fox News Digital, “The Atlantic’s story is a lie…I took this job to protect the American people…” Patel has filed a lawsuit against The Atlantic and its staff writer, Sarah Fitzpatrick, alleging they published ”a sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece...” The lawsuit seeks $250 million in “compensatory, special, and punitive damages.”

The FBI has launched a criminal leak investigation focusing on Fitzpatrick, the Atlantic journalist, according to MS NOW. An FBI spokesperson denied the investigation, telling the publication, “This is completely false…the reporter you mention is not being investigated at all.”

Earlier, Kashyap (Kash- he also spells it as Ka$h) Pramod Patel served as the Chief of Staff of Defense Secretary Chris Miller during part of the first Trump Administration, 2016-2020. Patel served as the Deputy Assistant to President Trump and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council. He also served as Principal Deputy to the Acting Director of National Intelligence.

Before joining the Trump Administration, Patel was the National Security Advisor and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Earlier, Patel was a terrorism prosecutor at the Department of Justice and its Liaison Officer to Joint Special Operations Command. He began his career as a public defender, trying cases ranging from murder, to narco-trafficking and financial crimes in jury trials in state and federal courts.

A native of New York, Patel completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Richmond, in Virginia, before earning his law degree from Pace University, New York. Patel was born and raised in Garden City, Long Island, New York. His parents have family ties in Gujarat, India. Patel’s mother is from Tanzania and father from Uganda, NDTV reported. In 1970, his parents immigrated to the U.S. via Canada.

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Last year, several comedians and others were upset at Aziz Ansari, Nimesh Patel, Jimmy Carr, Dave Chappelle, Pete Davidson and other comedians for performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, Saudi Arabia. The organizers reportedly paid the comedians from $375,000 to as much as $1.6 million to perform at the festival held in September and October, 2025.

“The money is coming straight from the Crown Prince (Mohammed bin Salman), who actively executes journalists,” Atsuko Okatsuka, posted on X/Twitter, stating she declined to perform at the festival. The comedians had to “adhere to censorship rules.” She posted a photo of the agreement which participating comedians signed, including agreeing not to perform any material that ridicules the “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” or the Saudi Royal family.

In October, late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel asked Ansari, “I’m curious as to why you decided” to take part in the Riyadh Comedy Festival. The Saudi Arabian regime, led by the Crown Prince, has “done a lot of horrible, horrible things,” Kimmel noted.

“You kind of have to make a choice of whether you’re going to isolate or engage. For me, especially being me and looking the way I do and being from a Muslim background, it felt like something I should be a part of. And I hope it pushes things in a positive direction.” Ansari told Kimmel that he was donating part of the fees he earned in Riyadh to Reporters Without Border and Human Rights Watch.

Global Indian Times

A High and a Low Act by Comedian Aziz Ansari

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8 months ago · 2 likes · Global Indian Times

Ansari started out in television, including the hit comedy Parks and Recreation (2009). He co-starred in the comedy 30 Minutes or Less (2011). He earned a degree, with a business major, from New York University, 2004. He graduated from the South Carolina Governor’s School for Math and Science in Hartsville. Earlier, he attended Marlboro Academy, a private school in Bennettsville, South Carolina. Ansari was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Fatima, a medical office worker, and Shoukath, a gastroenterologist. His parents are from Tamil Nadu, India.

The Saturday Night Live episode, on May 2, with Aziz Ansari playing FBI director Kash Patel was a popular hit. So far, the video of the comedic skit posted on YouTube has gotten more than seven million views.

The FBI has traditionally had a zero-tolerance approach to unauthorized use of alcohol on the job and for its misuse while off duty, The Atlantic notes. Margaret Donovan, lawyer for Steven Jensen who was fired from his job at the FBI in August 2025, told the magazine, that the role of the FBI director “is one of the most serious jobs in the country, not a vehicle for self-promotion and branding.”

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(Photo: Manoj Badale, part owner of the Rajasthan Royals cricket team. Courtesy British Asian Trust.)

By Cherian Samuel

Most Indian cricket pundits predict valuations of Indian league teams will keep rising, with some forecasting they will exceed $5 billion by 2035. In contrast, a report from D&P Advisory, a valuation consultancy based in Bengaluru, says the Indian men’s league is “grappling with maturity and recalibration.” This is in part because the consolidation of TV platforms in India “has transformed the media rights ecosystem, altering the balance of competition and value creation.”

Is there any significance, for the future valuation of Indian league cricket teams, when an investor like Manoj Badale, with a good track record, is selling his stake in the Rajasthan Royals?

Cherian Samuel, a writer based in Washington DC, retired from the World Bank. He earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland.

(Photo: Protest in Washington DC demanding release of all Jeffrey Epstein files. Courtesy: Creative Commons.)

May 1, 2026

Chopra is mentioned 3,354 times in the Epstein files, according to the public database of millions of files released by the Justice Department. In a post on X/Twitter, Chopra states some of his email exchanges with Epstein “reflect poor judgement in tone…Any contact I had was limited and unrelated to abusive activity.” One reader responded on X/Twitter, “Mr Chopra fails to mention that his emails are dated after Mr Epstein had been tried and found guilty of inappropriate sexual conduct with minors.”

Among the victims of Epstein was Rina Oh, an Indian student who lived briefly in Epstein’s mansion in Florida. “I was trapped, with no transportation, no money, and threats of physical harm. That fear kept me silent for decades,” Oh told India Today. She told NDTV, “it was very easy to manipulate me. I was already very damaged. Jeffrey (Epstein) saw that, and he took advantage of me.”

(Photo: Protest in Washington DC demanding release of all Jeffrey Epstein files. Courtesy: Creative Commons.)

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May 1, 2026

Starting in July, Deepak Chopra will no longer be a Voluntary Clinical Professor, without salary, at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. The university “is aware that Deepak Chopra, MD, has been mentioned” in the Jeffrey Esptein files, a university spokesperson told the media. The “crimes Jeffrey Epstein committed were horrific, and any association with him is regrettable.” Chopra’s appointment at the university has “an expected job end date of 6/30/26,” the spokesperson added.

In July 2019, Epstein was arrested by US prosecutors on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of underage girls”, including at his homes in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida. He “knew that many of his victims were under 18…”, according to a United States Department of Justice statement. Epstein, 66, died of suicide the next month, while being held in a prison in New York.

Chopra is mentioned 3,354 times in the Epstein files, according to the public database of millions of files released by the Justice Department. In a post on X/Twitter, Chopra states some of his email exchanges with Epstein “reflect poor judgement in tone…Any contact I had was limited and unrelated to abusive activity.” One reader responded on X/Twitter, “Mr Chopra fails to mention that his emails are dated after Mr Epstein had been tried and found guilty of inappropriate sexual conduct with minors.”

In 2018, Epstein’s guilty plea and conviction in 2008 was widely covered by the media following an investigative report by the Miami Herald. In 2008, Epstein began serving an eighteen-month prison term after “pleading guilty to soliciting sex from girls as young as 14,” The Guardian reported. The news was widely covered at the time, including by TV channels.

The email exchanges between Chopra and Epstein include talk of sex, “prey” and “cute girls”, with Chopra urging Epstein to come with “your girls” to one of his workshops in Switzerland, CNN reported. The exchanges between them, including meeting at Epstein’s homes in New York and Florida, occurred from 2016 to 2019, the report added.

In 2017, Epstein made a donation to a UC San Diego laboratory led by Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran, a director of the university’s department of psychology. Chopra introduced Epstein to Ramachandran, according to the UCSD Guardian. Ramachandran continues as an Emeritus Professor at the university.

On his website, Chopra, 79-years-old, is described as pursuing a mission “to create a more balanced, peaceful, joyful and healthier world…Dedicated to blending ancient spiritual wisdom with modern science, advocating for holistic well-being, self-awareness, and the boundless potential of human consciousness.” An author, and speaker, Chopra was a spiritual guru to Oprah Winfrey, the Beatle George Harrison, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson and other celebrities.

Starting today, May 1, Chopra offers “A 40-day embodied yoga journey,” to discover “your body as a living field of awareness, intelligence, and timeless presence. One posture at a time.” The fee for the virtual program is US $149. Chopra’s site also offers other courses including one titled Happiness Prescription for $39.99. An upcoming Chopra program is titled “Love In Action.”

Then, for $29.99 a month, there is the Deepak Chopra Membership. The site states it is a “daily sanctuary for conscious living…(which) supports balance, clarity, and well-being. Find stillness, insight, and connection with Deepak’s direct presence and a private global community rooted in compassion and shared growth.”

In 1996, Chopra co-founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California. The Center offered programs that integrate the healing arts of the East with modern Western medicine “to help people experience physical healing, emotional freedom, and higher states of consciousness.” The Carlsbad center, which reportedly closed in 2019, was acquired by Deepak Chopra’s Chopra Global, a healthcare company.

Earlier, Chopra was the Chief of Staff at the Boston Regional Medical Center. “My ambition,” he writes, “was to equal or surpass my American colleagues.” Chopra served as a professor at Tufts University and Boston University. In 2004, he obtained his medical license in California, and, in 1973, in Massachusetts, according to EBSCO, a research database. He began his career as an endocrinologist.

Chopra moved to the US in 1968, recruited during a shortage of doctors. He completed his medical internship and residency in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Virginia. He earned a medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. He was born in New Delhi.

Chopra also runs Chat with DeepakChopra.ai, an online artificial intelligence-based platform to “Unlock Your Infinite Potential.” The fee is 50¢ per session.

“The wellness industry already has zero accountability structures” writes Liz Bucar in a piece titled, How Deepak Chopra’s AI spirituality is hijacking spiritual hunger, in religionnews.com. “No licensing boards. No ethics committees. No regulatory oversight. No complaint processes. Now we’re automating the very thing that had no guardrails to begin with.” A professor of religion at Northeastern University, Boston, Bucar is author of the book “Beyond Wellness.””

A 1997 Newsweek report, titled Don’t Mess With Deepak, refers to lawsuits filed by Chopra against publications, including The Journal of the American Medical Association for printing an article “that he believed mocked his beliefs.” In 1996, after Chopra was accused of sexual harassment, he pre-emptively sued the plaintiff--and her lawyers--for allegedly threatening to file a “meritless’‘ claim, the weekly reported.

A piece in TIME stated that “the immense frustration some critics feel about Chopra’s vagueness, his seeming unwillingness to distinguish between fact and metaphor and his chronic overpromising is not simply intellectual nitpicking.”

Thousands of mentions of Chopra in the Epstein files, “adds one more accolade to Chopra’s resume — friend of one of the most notorious sex-traffickers of minors in history,” states a report in the Voice of San Diego. The report adds, “the messages themselves do not prove wrongdoing on Chopra’s part.”

Among the victims of Epstein was Rina Oh, an Indian student who lived briefly in Epstein’s mansion in Florida. “I was trapped, with no transportation, no money, and threats of physical harm. That fear kept me silent for decades,” Oh told India Today. She told NDTV, “it was very easy to manipulate me. I was already very damaged. Jeffrey (Epstein) saw that, and he took advantage of me.”

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April 24, 2026

By Cherian Samuel

In March, a group of American investors agreed to pay Rupees 153 billion, US $1.6 billion, for the Rajasthan Royals, according to ESPNcricinfo. The Royals are a ​men’s cricket team in the Indian Premier League based in Jaipur, Rajasthan.​

When the sale closes, the original owners of the Royals, which is a group led by Manoj Badale, will apparently earn a 2,400% gain on their purchase of the team in 2008. Such a 19% compound annual return, over the past eighteen years, beats the investment gains of most stock, private equity and venture funds in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Indian league is a cricket contest, in the Twenty20 format, among ten teams based in major Indian cities. Two teams play a single innings each, limited to a maximum of twenty overs, 120 legal deliveries. The owners of the Royals also own similarly branded cricket teams, the Paarl Royals in the South African League and the Barbados Royals in the Caribbean Premier League.

According to ESPN, other current owners of the Royals include Lachlan Murdoch, chief executive of New York based media company Fox Corporation, and Red Bird Capital, New York, which manages $14 billion, including investments in sports teams.

The buyers of the Royals is a group reportedly led by Kal Somani, an existing investor in the franchise. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, he is the founder of IntraEdge, an outsourcing company, and co-owner of Academian, an education technology services company. The other buyers are Rob Walton, an heir to the Walmart fortune and ​part of the group which owns the National Football League’s (NFL’s) Denver Broncos ​team, and Michael Hamp, son of Sheila Ford Hamp, member of the Ford Motor Company family ​which owns the NFL’s Detroit Lions​ team.

Also, in March, ​a group of Indian and American buyers agreed to pay Rupees 166 billion, US $1.8 billion​, for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru cricket franchise. The Challengers’ men’s and women’s teams won the​ir respective league titles in 2025.

The buyers are led by the Aditya Birla Group​, an Indian family which runs aluminum, cement and other companies in forty countries, with a total market value of more than $100 billion. The other buyers are the Times of India Group, Bolt Ventures, and Blackstone. The ​share of ownership among the partners ​is not disclosed.

Blackstone​ is a New York​ based firm managing $1.3 trillion in assets, ranging from equities, bonds, real estate, private equity, and sports teams.​ It has a market value of $89 billion. Bolt ventures, the private investment platform of David Blitzer, owns other sports properties including the Crystal Palace Football Club in the U​K Premier League and the Philadelphia 76ers in the US National Basketball Association league. ​​Blitzer is the Chairman of Blackstone’s Tactical Opportunities Group and earlier led the firm’s European private equity business. He joined Blackstone in 1991 and has a net worth of $4 billion, according to Forbes.

The Challengers is being sold by an Indian-subsidiary of Diageo, the London-based vendor of Johnnie Walker whiskey and other alcoholic drinks. The sale of the cricket franchise is expected to close after it receives legal, regulatory and other approvals.

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(Photo: Sanju Samson, with the 2026 T-20 Cricket World Cup. Samson is a member of the Chennai Super Kings IPL team. Courtesy: ICC.)

In 2025, revenues from sports in India totaled Rupees 189 billion, US $2 billion.​ according to a WPP Media report. Cricket accounted for an estimated nine tenths of the revenues. Men’s cricket has always been a big business in India. In fact​, it ​continues to be the only major sports business in India, boosted by the ​Indian Premier League. The league was launched in 2008 by the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The Board sought to copy the financial success of the T20 Blast, now known as the Vitality Blast, which was launched in the UK in 2003.

The Indian league gives Indians, who are huge cricket fans, an added jolt of entertainment: ten teams playing 84 matches over two months, from March to May. The Twenty20 games are fast paced three-​to-four-hour contests, featuring the top Indian and foreign cricketers.

The teams pay large sums to hire the best talent from major cricket playing nations. Among the foreigners playing in the current 2026 season are Australian Cameron Green. The Kolkata Knight Riders are paying him a record Rupees 250 million, US $2.6 million, according to the BBC. Other foreign players include Heinrich Klaasen from South Africa, Jos Buttler, England, Matheesha Pathirana, Sri Lanka, Mustafizur Rahman, Bangladesh, and Sherfane Rutherford, West Indies.

Among the highest paid Indian players are Virat Kohli, who earns Rupees 210 million, playing for the Bengaluru Challengers; Sanju Samson, who earns Rupees 180 million, US $1.9 million, playing for the Chennai Super Kings; and Kartik Sharma and Prashant Veer, who both earn around Rupees 160 million, US $1.7 million. In March, Samson’s batting was key to India winning the 2026 T20 World Cup.

The Indian league teams are also sprinkled with aging, former Indian superstars like Mahendra Dhoni, 44. They are there more to attract cricket fans dripping in nostalgia. The games are also spiced with cheerleaders, music, and fireworks.

The league’s season attracts more than a billion viewers on TV and online platforms, the most watched cricket league in the world. They include more than 400 million unique TV viewers, according to CVC, which is part owner of the Gujarat Titans league team. Given such a massive, growing audience, most of the league’s revenues comes from fees for the global TV broadcast and digital media rights.

The current five-year media rights deal for the Indian league, valid from 2023 to 2027, brings in more than Rupees 484 billion, US $6.2 billion, or more than US $1.2 billion per year, according to sportspro.com.​ The Indian cricket board retains half of this revenue while the league teams share 45%, according to IPL.com.​ The teams also earn revenue from local sponsors and sales of tickets, jerseys and other merchandise.

The current media rights were bought, following an auction in 2022, by a group comprising Star India, Viacom18, and Times Internet. The price ​they paid was reportedly more than double what Star India paid for the 2018 to 2022 ​media rights, Rupees 165 billion, US $2.6 billion, according to sportspro.com.​ Star India was then part of the US media giant Walt Disney.

Times Internet is part of the Mumbai based Times of India Group. The group owns Willow which broadcasts all major cricket matches, including the Indian league, in the U.S. Willow charges a US $9.99 monthly subscription; it also offers a US $79.99 annual plan.

In November 2024, Star India merged with Viacom18 to form JioStar. While Disney owns 37%, JioStar is controlled by Reliance Industries. Reliance is India’s largest private company, with fiscal year 2026 revenues of US $124 billion, operating in a range of businesses including energy, petro-chemicals and media. Mukesh Ambani is Chairman of Reliance while his wife Nita Ambani is Chairperson of JioStar.

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(Photo: Manoj Badale, former lead-owner of Rajasthan Royals. Courtesy British Asian Trust.)

The annual fees for the Indian cricket league’s media rights have reportedly risen twelve-fold since the first season. Japan’s Sony bought the TV rights for the first ten IPL seasons, 2008 to 2017, for a total $1 billion, $100 million a year, according to ESPNcricinfo.

The sharp rise in media fees have boosted the valuations of Indian league teams, both the resale price of existing teams and the prices paid at auctions for new franchisees. In 2021, nine bidders reportedly took part in an auction held in Dubai by the cricket board for new Indian league teams. The RP Sanjiv Goenka Group, an Indian business family, won the bid for the Lucknow Super Giants for a price of Rupees 71 billion, US $964 million, according to ESPN. CVC Partners won the bid for the Gujarat Titans, based in A​hmedabad, for reportedly Rupees 56 billion, US $750 million. CVC, based in Luxembourg, is a global investor, including in private equity, credit and sports teams, with Euro 205 billion ​in assets under management.

In 2008, the cricket board reportedly secured $724 million when it auctioned the eight initial franchisees. The original teams were the Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Chennai Super Kings, Rajasthan Royals, Delhi Daredevils, now Delhi Capitals, Kings XI Punjab, now Punjab Kings, and Deccan Chargers. In 2013, the Chargers were replaced by Sunrisers Hyderabad.

The initial owners were wealthy Indian business families, Indian companies, and Bollywood stars. The Mumbai Indians, for instance, is owned by a subsidiary of Mumbai-based Reliance Industries. It is controlled by Mukesh Ambani, who has a net worth of $92 billion, according to Forbes. Reliance also owns JioStar, which is the major current owner of the Indian league’s media rights. The Chennai Super Kings is owned by a subsidiary of India Cements, whose chairman is N. Srinivasan, a former president of the cricket board. The Kolkata Knight Riders is owned by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, and actress Juhi Chawla and her husband Jay Mehta, of the Mehta Group.

Following the success of the UK and Indian Twenty20 leagues, similar leagues have been launched in other countries: the Big Bash League, Australia, 2011; Bangladesh Premier League, 2012; Caribbean Premier League, West Indies, 2013; and the Pakistan Super League, 2016. Given the size of India’s population, and its fervent cricket fans, the Indian league has the biggest audience and is the richest league.

In recent years, similar to the Rajasthan Royals, Indian league franchise owners have bought teams in other national leagues. For instance, the owner of the Mumbai Indians team also owns the New York team in the US league, the Cape Town team in South Africa, and the Emirates team. The Chennai Super Kings owns Joburg Super Kings, in South Africa, and Texas Super Kings in the US. And the Kolkata Knight Riders owns the LA Knight Riders, US, and Abu Dhabi Knight Riders.

A group of investors led by Manoj Badale owns 65% of the Royals franchise, according to msn.com. In the 2008 auction, Badale’s group​ reported​ly paid $67 million,​ the lowest price among the eight initial franchises. This was possibly because there were few competing bidders for the team since it is based in Jaipur. It is a far smaller city compared to Mumbai or Bengaluru, whose franchises were originally bought for around $111 million each, according to msn.com.

The sale of the Royals, when completed, may be one of Badale’s major investment successes. He is a British-Indian ​co-founder of more than 15 businesses, largely technology-related, since 1998. Badale, 58-years-old, and Charles Mindenhall co-​founded ​London-based Blenheim Chalcot, ​a digital venture ​investor. In 2011, Blenheim bought Home Learning College, the UK’s largest online vocational learning provider.

Badale is the co-founder of netdecisions group, a major internet services provider, which is now Agilisys, an information technology services and outsourcing business based in Alpharetta, a suburb of Atlanta, US. Earlier, Badale was a partner at Monitor Company​, working in the UK, Germany and India. He earned an MA in economics from Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. Badale, who was born in Dhule, Maharashtra, India, grew up in the UK.

In a 2023 interview with the Business of Sport, Badale said that the financial success of the Royals was due to the management’s long-term strategy based on collecting and analyzing data, ranging from trends in performance of batters and bowlers to size of audiences. This enabled the Royals to run a lean operation, with tight cost controls, and hire, at a cheap price, less-known cricketers with the potential to perform well in the twenty overs league match format.

Most Indian cricket pundits predict valuations of Indian league teams will keep rising, with some forecasting they will exceed $5 billion by 2035. In contrast, a report from D&P Advisory, a valuation consultancy based in Bengaluru, says the Indian men’s league is “grappling with maturity and recalibration.” This is in part because the consolidation of TV platforms in India “has transformed the media rights ecosystem, altering the balance of competition and value creation.”

Is there any significance, for the future valuation of Indian league cricket teams, when an investor like Manoj Badale, with a good track record, is selling his stake in the Rajasthan Royals?

(Story updated April 25, 2026.)

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Cherian Samuel, a writer based in Washington DC, retired from the World Bank. He earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland.

(Photo: A coconut tree climber in Kerala. Courtesy Wikipedia.)

By Sunil Mani

April 3, 2026

Over the past twenty-five years, the total area of coconut farms in Kerala has shrunk by roughly a quarter, according to the state’s Planning Board. In 2024–25, coconut cultivation covered nearly 770,000 hectares. These farms still account for nearly a third of the state’s total cropped area. So, by far, coconut continues to be Kerala’s biggest farmed crop and a key part of its economy. Rubber is the state’s second largest crop covering about a fifth of the farmed area.

Coconut products are a key ingredient in a Keralite’s daily food consumption, from breakfast and meals to snacks. The fruit is also used to produce a wide range of processed products. Oil, which is extracted from copra, dried coconut kernel, is the major processed product. Major oil brands operating in the state include Marico’s Parachute and local vendors like Kerafed and Mezhukkattil Mills. Other kernel-based products include desiccated coconut, coconut milk and cream. Also, virgin coconut oil which is made by cold-processing fresh kernel.

The water from tender coconuts is a popular natural health beverage all over India. The coconut shell is a raw material used for producing activated carbon, which is a value-added export. Then, coir and coir pith, derived from the husk, are inputs for the state’s coir industry.

The total annual value of Kerala’s coconut economy is estimated to be more than Rs 35,000 crores, US $3.8 billion. Coconut oil and kernel products account for more than half, coir and coir products for about a fifth, and virgin oil, activated carbon and other products account for the rest.

The coconut economy in Kerala, including cultivation, harvesting, processing, and marketing, is estimated to employ more than 3.5 million, making it the largest single employer in the state. Nearly a quarter of them are employed in coir-related jobs.

The decline in area under coconut cultivation in Kerala is mainly due to the conversion of farms into real estate development, homes and apartment and commercial buildings. Some of the development is carried out by the landowners themselves, especially those who have the funds to invest.

Demand for real estate continues to be strong due to rising household incomes, especially for families with sons and daughters working abroad, mainly in the Persian Gulf countries. Another factor fuelling demand is the state’s rising population, currently around 35 million.

Over the past two decades, land prices in Kerala have seen a sharp increase driven in large part by strong demand from Keralites, especially emigrant sons and daughters working in the Persian Gulf countries. According to Kerala government data, land prices in the state have more than doubled since 2010, with prices rising far higher in Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, and other urban areas. Contrary to official data, land prices in the state have likely risen by more than four times in the past 25 years according to real estate investors and brokers.

Under current farming practices, the net returns, after all costs, from coconut cultivation in Kerala range from about Rupees 30,000, US $300, to Rupees 70,000, US $720, per hectare annually. So, a household growing coconuts, even in a remote rural region of Kerala, can earn eight times more per year by selling the land and investing the proceeds in a safe, fixed income deposit with a government-run bank, than from selling coconuts. The only thing holding back more growers from selling land is a farming family’s age-old eagerness to hold onto their land. Also, some of them are holding on hoping to sell when prices rise even higher.

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(Photo: A coconut grove in Kerala. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons.)

For centuries, coconut farming has played a key role in Kerala’s economy. The coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, is deeply intertwined with everyday life, serving as a culinary staple, a source of livelihood, and a cornerstone of cultural identity. In fact, the very name Keralam is derived from the Malayalam word kera, meaning coconut tree, signifying that the region is the “land of coconut trees.”

The decline in Kerala’s annual coconut output is sharper than the decline in coconut farming area. In 2024–25, roughly 5.6 billion coconuts were harvested in the state, down by half over the past decade, according to the Coconut Board. With rising harvests in others states, Kerala’s share of India’s coconut production has fallen to about two-fifths, down from two thirds in the early 1970s. Since 2022, Kerala is estimated to be the third largest coconut producer, trailing the neighboring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The sharper decline in output per hectare, for coconut farms in Kerala, is due to a drop in productivity. In 2024–25, coconut farms in the state harvested roughly 7,211 nuts per hectare, more than a fifth below the all-India average of 9871 nuts.

A major reason for the lower productivity is that coconut cultivation in Kerala has largely become a homestead-based activity, characterised by scattered trees. Unlike in other states, many growers in Kerala have not adopted advanced yield-enhancing practices. The practices include integrated drip irrigation and fertilization, high-density planting and monocropping, use of hybrid/dwarf varieties, integrated nutrient and pest management, and mechanised harvesting tools which enhance the capabilities of tree climbers.

Also, Kerala faces an acute shortage of coconut tree climbers which has reduced routine maintenance, such as crown cleaning and early disease detection as well as harvesting efficiency. Overall, a shortage of labor in the state has led to higher wages for climbers and other laborers, which reduces a grower’s income.

Another factor reducing coconut farm yields in Kerala is the shorter, more intense rainfall, rising temperatures, and heat stress. Such climate changes have made the trees more vulnerable to pests and diseases like root wilt and the red palm weevil.

Not surprisingly, the decline in coconut production in Kerala has led to a spike in prices, raising the cost of food. Since 2019, the retail price of a coconut has more than doubled to Rupees 70, US 80 cents. Coconut oil prices have soared with premium brands selling for as high as Rupees 770, US $8, per litre.

Since the mid-2010’s, with sliding harvests and rising consumption, Kerala has been a net buyer of coconuts from other states. Major oil mills in Kerala are buying from growers in other states, mainly neighboring Tamil Nadu where growers offer lower prices, than in Kerala, to bulk buyers. In the past, traders in Kerala bought coconuts from local farmers, turned them into copra and then sold the copra to mills for oil extraction.

Even while retail prices have risen, there is a large gap between what coconut growers in Kerala earn and what consumers pay. In February 2026, price data shows that growers received about half the retail price: farm‑gate prices were about Rs 26, US $0.24, per kilogram of copra in Kerala compared with an average retail price of around Rs 59, US $0.60). Both farm‑gate and retail prices fluctuate widely with changes in supply and demand.

Most growers in Kerala sell raw coconuts and not copra and other value-added products. In an effort to help raise a grower’s income, Keralaagro shops, set up by the Kerala government, buys coconuts - and other produce- from farmers. The produce is sold directly to consumers, cutting off the profits pocketed by traders and other intermediaries. However, the government-run stores have minimal impact since there are only about 30 outlets, selling well under one percent of the state’s coconut output. Keralaagro hence appears to be more of a model to demonstrate the potential of raising farm incomes, by bypassing traders, rather than a state-wide solution to raise farm incomes.

Roughly two thirds of Kerala’s coconut harvest is processed into copra and oil, with nearly all of the value-added tasks being done by traders and oil mill owners. Kerafed, the Government of Kerala’s coconut cooperative, procures, processes and distributes coconuts, copra and coconut oil. But this mainly benefits traders and mill-owners. Kerafed wholesales the oil and copra to distributors and retailers, who reach about 14,000 retail stores across Kerala. Keraafed competes with Keraagro since both of them buy coconuts from farmers. However, Kerafed is a much larger operation.

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(Photo: A coconut farm in Kerala. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons.)

In 2025, to try and tackle the decline in farming area and productivity, Kerala’s Coconut Board introduced several measures. The grant for a new planting was raised sharply from Rupees 6,500, US $68, per hectare to Rupees 56,000, US $590. The board is also promoting multi-cropping, growing coconuts with banana, pineapple, cocoa, pepper and grass, to boost a grower’s income. It is also funding entrepreneurs to set up startup business to process coconuts into value-added products.

Between 2020 and 2025, Kerala’s Agriculture Department distributed more than 5.6 million coconut seedlings to growers, mostly at subsidized prices. They included both dwarf and tall, hybrid trees. Roughly three quarters of the seedlings were planted.

The dwarf trees will begin bearing fruit in about four years, while the tall varieties will take around seven years. By 2030, if a substantial share of the new plantings survive to maturity, annual coconut output in Kerala could rise by several hundred million nuts.

Even while the coconut farming area in Kerala shrinks, incomes of the remaining farming households can be raised by shifting from homestead cultivation to commercial cropping on larger size farms. One way to do this is to raise the limits on land ownership. This is highly unlikely since distribution of farmland, to laborers and small farmers who farm crops, has been the focus of major political struggles in the state for more than a century.

Another option is for households in Kerala to farm coconuts collectively via co-operatives. Yet, while there are several hundred co-operatives in the state, they operate as purchasing and marketing groups, not as entities collectively farming land. Or, households should be allowed to lease farm their land to growers who want to cultivate a larger area. Leasing of farm land is legally permitted, with regulations, in several Indian states, including Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. Kerala is among the states which imposes restrictions or bans on leasing farm land.

The Kerala government could try to curtail land sales for real estate development by taxing purchases at very high rates. But this will anger emigrant workers who eagerly look forward to a retired life in a home they own in Kerala. The emigrant Keralites account for a major share of the consumption spending in the state.

As land prices keep rising, more households will likely sell their coconut farms, including some with newly planted seedlings.

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Sunil Mani is a visiting professor, Centre for Development Studies, and Ahmedabad University, both in India. The views expressed are personal.