Category World News

According to media reports, India’s tax authorities and market regulator are considering expanding their investigation into the US-based Jane Street Group, which has previously been accused of price rigging in the Bombay Stock Exchange’s benchmark Sensex.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), a market regulator, recently seized 48.43 billion rupees ($570 million) and prohibited four Jane Street-related companies from trading on the market for alleged price manipulation in the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

In the world’s largest option trading market, SEBI’s order has sparked controversy in Indian markets and raised concerns about investor protection and regulator surveillance. Due to the ban on Jane Street, trading in India’s weekly equity index options decreased by a third, according to a report released on Thursday by Reuters.

Equity option trading enables investors to purchase or sell shares at a predetermined price and date. Retail investors jumped onto the Indian market as the market quickly expanded to handle more than half of all global options trades.

This rapid rise was hampered by price manipulation until a New York court case in April 2024, in which Jane Street claimed Millennium Partners had allegedly stolen its algorithms, which enabled it to gain entry to the Indian options market. Mayank Bansal, a whistleblower, then presented data to SEBI demonstrating the trading patterns of Jane Street. Bansal had agreed to talk to Al Jazeera about how he had argued the matter with SEBI, but he later changed his mind.

The regulator stated on July 3 in a thorough interim order that “by preponderance of probability, there is no economic rationale that can account for this sudden burst of large and aggressive activity… other than the intention to manipulate the price of securities and index benchmark.”

SEBI claims that at the start of trade, Jane Street built large short positions in index options and accumulated large long positions in stocks that are a part of the NSE’s Bank Index. It would reverse its trades in the cash and futures segments to bring down the index and make significant profits in the options segment at market closing time.

Some of the offshore companies that engaged in these trades blurred this pattern.

According to Joby Mathew, managing partner at&nbsp, the&nbsp, law firm Joby Mathew and Associates&nbsp, and a former SEBI legal officer, “Lawyers can] push back with SEBI on jurisdiction-related issues, but SEBI can take action when underlying [Indian] securities are issued,”

Jane Street has retained legal counsel to defend the case against SEBI’s findings. The investigation and final report are pending, so it has deposited the 48.43 billion rupees ($563 million) of allegedly illicit gains in an account.

Sumit Agarwal, a former SEBI officer and cofounder of Regstreet Law Advisors, stated in an emailed response that “such processes typically take eight to 24 months,” especially in “complex manipulation cases.”

The investigation cannot, however, be a part of a more comprehensive examination of Jane Street and the regulator’s responsibility to identify and stop such transactions as quickly as possible and safeguard retail investors.

Highly volatile and speculative

Retail investors were drawn to India’s options market as it expanded because of the prospect of quick gains and less fettered trades compared to the equities market, where a rapidly rising stock could hit circuit breakers, causing a stop in trading to stop manipulation.

According to Mathew, his clients in the options trading industry range from students to renowned cardiologists who may not be well-versed in the market but were persuaded by traders or social media influencers. The majority of the time, they lost money.

Retail investors account for nearly half of the Indian options market, according to Deven Choksey, managing director of Mumbai-based KR Choksey Shares and Securities, while Jane Street and other well-known companies account for only a small portion. It’s like facing a race car in a bullock cart. Their interaction is certain to result in accidents.

If it was discovered that Jane Street had manipulated the market, retail investors would have lost money from the transaction.

Retail investors have lost money in the option segment, according to Bhargavi Zaveri, a researcher who previously worked for the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and is currently working as a doctoral researcher at the National University of Singapore.

In these circumstances, it can be challenging to find and compensate investors. Therefore, it might be difficult to distribute the money to retail investors who lost money even if the final order goes against Jane Street and the 48.43 billion rupees fine is put into an investor protection fund. According to experts, the best defense might be to stop illicit trades early.

SEBI claims to have a surveillance system and is able to effectively monitor the markets. Choksey affirms.

According to SEBI’s estimates, the interim order is based on trades made by Jane Street between January 1, 2023 and March 31, 2025.

According to Regstreet’s Agarwal, “SEBI’s own 2024 consultations flagged expiration day options as highly speculative and volatile.”

Option expiration dates are set for India every fortnightly, which is when they must be settled. When allegedly Jane Street manipulated prices?

According to SEBI, “The above trading activity appears to be fraudulent and manipulative in a February 6 letter.” However, it didn’t finish up its July 3 order to curb Jane Street.

According to Agarwal, SEBI’s recent policies that restrict weekly expirations, tightening spreads, and higher margins “reflect a push for greater protection” for retail investors.

However, Choksey points out that the best way to safeguard retail investors would be to have them trade independently from proprietary trading companies in the options industry.

Nowhere in the world will you find so many retail investors, as Gandhi once said. Therefore, SEBI&nbsp must create product differentiation by customer segment. Chiksey claims to protect retail investors.

proving manipulation: difficulties

Jane Street allegedly told employees it was “basic index arbitrage trading” in an internal email, and described SEBI’s claims as “extremely inflammatory.” It retained Khaitan and Co, a law firm based in Mumbai, to represent it before SEBI.

Experts are divided on whether a SEBI investigation will be able to demonstrate that price manipulation involves demonstrating intent, which can be challenging. According to Mathew, a former attorney, “trading to incur losses makes no sense, and so it indicates manipulation.”

Zaveri for NUS claims that the clarity is not that great. “I believe there are three issues being merged here.” One, the underlying cash segment’s size being greater than the options segment’s. Two, that retail investors have lost money in the options market, which I’m not sure has been accurately stated. Three, Jane Street “argued between the highly liquid options segment and the illiquid cash segment.”

The three incidents, in her opinion, may not demonstrate the manipulator’s intentions.

A manipulation finding is challenging without clear intent evidence, according to Regstreet’s Agarwal, and “Jane Street can argue its expiry day trades were legitimate index arbitrage recognized by regulators,” according to Regstreet’s Agarwal.

Jane Street’s reputation may be impacted by SEBI’s actions. According to a Bloomberg investigation last month, Robert Granieri, a cofounder of Jane Street, was duped into giving money to a coup attempt in South Sudan.

New Delhi, India – Tesla is finally cruising in India, the world’s third-largest car market, with the launch of its Model Y. The rollout marks the culmination of a decade-long, topsy-turvy journey.

Showcased at its new showroom in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, on Tuesday, Tesla’s Model Y is now on sale for about $70,000, a price comparatively higher than in any other major market.

Elon Musk’s electric vehicle (EV) company is braving high tariffs and stiff competition in India’s nascent but rapidly expanding EV market.

As New Delhi negotiates a trade deal with the United States, India’s car sector tariffs, arguably among the highest in the world, are a central topic.

“Tesla’s entry into India marks a significant expansion of the company’s global footprint,” said Kwan Wongwetsawat, a senior auto analyst at the research firm GlobalData. “Before this decision, Tesla faced several market challenges,” he said, ranging from geopolitical concerns, a decline in global sales, and an uncertain launch schedule for a new compact model.

So, what’s the buzz about Tesla coming to India? Can it leverage the developing Indian market? And can India give a shoulder to Musk’s EV giant as its global sales plummet?

What is Tesla offering in India?

To start with, in India, Tesla has chosen to offer its Model Y in the mid-range luxury segment, combining its hallmark features: minimalist design, high performance, and long-range driving distance.

The driver-assistance technology is available as an add-on for 600,000 Indian rupees, or $7,000. Tesla is offering two variants of Model Y in India: the rear-wheel drive (RWD) and the long-range RWD edition. While the RWD has a range of up to 500 kilometres (310 miles) on a single charge, the long-range variant has a range of 622km (386 miles).

In the Indian market, the Model Y will go head-to-head with other premium electric SUVs, such as the Mercedes-Benz EQB, BMW iX1, Volvo EC40, and Kia EV6. Tesla offers a four-year, or 80,000km, vehicle warranty for the battery and drive unit, whichever comes first.

“Tesla is the biggest EV company in the world, and its entry in India is a big milestone for the national EV industry,” said Puneet Gupta, who leads the India and Southeast Asia teams at automotive intelligence firm S&P Global Mobility.

“It’s not just about selling cars in India. But Tesla’s entry can help India to build the EV ecosystem,” Gupta told Al Jazeera. “And the biggest impact of a company like Tesla is that it boosts people’s confidence in EVs as a category.”

The Model Y reaches a top speed of 201km/h (125mph), with six coloured exterior finishes. It is equipped with standard features such as automatic emergency braking, forward collision alerts, blind spot monitoring, and lane departure warnings. Tesla’s signature Dashcam and Sentry Mode provide real-time recording and alerts for suspicious activity, even when the vehicle is parked.

Why is Tesla so expensive in India?

Tesla’s Model Y rear-wheel drive is priced at 6 million Indian rupees, or $70,000, while the long-range RWD edition is priced at about 6.8 million Indian rupees, or just below $80,000.

Tesla’s website does not provide the price breakdown, including delineating the additional import tariff costs and levies imposed by a state.

These prices for Model Y are higher than in any other major car market. They start at $44,990 in the United States, $36,700 in China, and $53,700 in Germany.

India currently imposes one of the highest import duty tariffs on fully built cars in the world, significantly shooting up prices of foreign vehicles, including EVs like those from Tesla.

Until recently, India imposed a 110 percent import duty on all fully built vehicles. The Indian government revised this policy, lowering the import duty to 15 percent for carmakers committing to invest and set up local manufacturing facilities within a three-year timeframe.

This steep tariff structure has been a point of contention for global carmakers like Tesla, which has long lobbied for a reduction in duties to test market viability before committing to local manufacturing.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticised and called out India as a “tariff king”. Both countries continue to negotiate a trade agreement, where the auto sector reportedly remains a central focus. Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has also noted that “import duties [in India] are the highest in the world by far of any large country!”

What is India’s EV sector like?

India has set a national goal of achieving 30 percent EV adoption by 2030.

While electric car sales in India increased by 20 percent in 2024 from the year before, EVs still represented just 2.5 percent of the total 4.3 million passenger vehicles sold. Despite its relatively small base, the EV sector in India is projected to grow rapidly, from its current market value of $54.41bn to $111bn by 2029.

Currently, local manufacturers dominate the space, offering competitively priced EVs tailored to India’s cost-conscious consumers. Tata leads with approximately 60 percent of the market share in the electric car segment, followed by JSW MG Motor India – a collaboration between India’s JSW Group and China’s SAIC Motor – and then Mahindra & Mahindra.

High-end electric cars, priced above $20,000, made up a minuscule 6.6 percent of total EV sales last year. This is where Tesla will have to compete with the likes of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, KIA and Audi.

How are Tesla sales faring in other markets?

Tesla is coming to India as its EV sales plunge in global markets, and as the company bets on its revised Model Y to turn its fortunes around.

In its home market, the US, sales continued to fall in the second quarter of 2025 by 6.3 percent, marking Tesla’s third straight quarterly drop in year-over-year domestic sales.

Facing protests against Musk’s politics and earlier involvement with the Trump administration, sales have fallen for five straight months in Europe. With some consumers switching to cheaper Chinese EVs, Tesla’s market share has dropped to just 1.2 percent in May from 1.8 percent a year ago.

In China, Tesla’s second-biggest market, the Q2 deliveries fell by nearly 12 percent.

“Tesla has been facing tough times globally, so the company also desperately wants new markets, and India, being the world’s third-largest market, is a great opportunity for them to make up for some loss,” said Gupta of S&P Global Mobility.

In several countries, Tesla’s Chinese competitors are outselling Musk’s EVs. And that’s where the vast Indian market comes into the equation for Tesla, noted experts.

Due to geopolitical tensions between India and China, rival Asian neighbours, only a few Chinese EVs are pitching to the Indian market. In 2023, the Indian government rejected BYD’s proposal to establish a $1bn factory locally. While SAIC Motor operates in India in collaboration with India’s JSW Group, BYD relies on importing multiple models.

“BYD is a direct competitor to Tesla, but the brand is also facing challenges in India and has yet to establish local production in the country,” said Wongwetsat. As a result, he added that both Tesla’s prices in India and those of BYD are higher than in other markets. “However, there is a clear price distinction between Tesla and local competitors like Tata, MG, and Mahindra,” placing Musk’s company in the luxury segment.

Unlike other Chinese-dominated EV markets in Asia, India offers a rather open market for Tesla to introduce high-end features and build an ecosystem from the ground up.

“The Chinese companies are not comfortable investing in India, and even Indian consumers are not comfortable buying Chinese due to the uncertain geopolitical situation,” said Gupta.

“For now, the Indian market’s positioning is a very good advantage for Tesla, where you really don’t get competition from Chinese, which is really killing Tesla both in terms of price and features,” Gupta told Al Jazeera.

What challenges does Tesla face in India?

For starters, India, which has the world’s biggest population, is a starkly unequal country, where 90 percent of the population does not have discretionary spending capacity. Tesla’s base offering is priced at $70,000, where, on a national average, per capita income is $2,880.

Another concern is that India’s infrastructure, including the condition of its roads and poor traffic discipline, could pose challenges for Tesla vehicles’ lower ground clearance.

India has only one charging station for every 235 EVs, with a total of 26,367 public charging stations nationwide for its 1.46 billion people. In contrast, the US has more than 61,000 charging stations for its 330 million people.

At its media-only launch in Mumbai on Tuesday, Isabel Fan, Tesla’s regional director, said, “We are here to create the ecosystem, to invest in the necessary infrastructure, including the charging infrastructure.” Tesla announced that it will set up four charging stations in Mumbai. More will come to Delhi soon.

“We are building from 0 to 100. It will take time to cover the whole country,” Fan said.

Reading into the Indian EV market, Wongwetsat of GlobalData said that “Tesla’s arrival may not significantly impact overall battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales in India, but it could attract demand from consumers interested in luxury brands like BMW and Audi.”

Additionally, the launch of Tesla cars in India may be just one aspect of Tesla’s broader ecosystem, Wongwetsat said, which includes sectors such as solar energy, energy storage systems, and even the space industry, all of which could enhance Tesla’s appeal.

Will Tesla lose subsidies in the US?

Musk and the US president’s apparent public fallout took a sharp turn earlier this month as Trump threatened to cut off billions in federal environmental subsidies that have benefitted Tesla and Musk’s other companies.

The clash follows Musk’s renewed criticism of Trump’s tax and spending bill, which includes provisions to eliminate key clean energy incentives – specifically, the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicles that has long supported Tesla’s market growth.

Andreas Hutapea assumed he would not have much trouble finding a stable career after graduating from college with a law degree two years ago.

Hutapea actually encountered several rejections.

In his attempt to work as a trainee prosecutor, Hutapea first failed to pass Indonesia’s notoriously difficult civil service exams, which only about 3% of applicants received.

Hutapea had a dream about joining the army before going to law school, but he was unable to meet the height requirement.

Hutapea eventually moved back in with his parents, who operate a simple store selling oil, eggs, rice, and other groceries after his money ran out and left the student housing he was renting.

Since then, Hutapea has been employed at his parents’ store in a small town in Medan, North Sumatra’s capital.

Hutapea, who graduated from high school in 2020, told Al Jazeera, “I open the shop for them in the morning, sit there all day serving customers, and then help close the store at night.”

I can’t blame my parents for not paying me a wage for my labor, she said. I’m getting free lodging and food. ”

In his search for stable, well-paying employment, Hutapea is not the only one.

One of Asia’s highest rates of youth unemployment is in Indonesia.

According to government statistics, about one-third of Indonesia’s more than 44 million teenagers between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed, which is more than twice the rate of youth unemployment in neighboring Thailand and Vietnam.

Young Indonesians expressed far more pessimistic attitudes toward the government and the economy than their peers in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam according to a survey conducted by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore in January.

Compared to the survey’s survey, which found that 58 percent of Indonesian youth said they were optimistic about the government’s economic plans, compared to an average of 75% in the six nations.

When university students organized the Indonesia Gelap, or Dark Indonesia, movement to protest government plans to reduce public spending, some of this angst started to spread to the streets in February.

The high rate of jobless youth in Southeast Asia’s largest economy is attributed to a number of factors, including labor-heavy labor laws that make it difficult to hire, and low wages that fail to entice competent workers.

According to Adinova Fauri, an economist at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Indonesia, many people choose to work outside the labor market rather than to earn salaries below expectations, according to Al Jazeera.

People turn to the informal sector, which has lower productivity and protection, because good jobs are not readily available. ”

More than 280 million people live in Indonesia, which has long struggled with youth unemployment.

While the rate is still high in comparison to the rest of the country, governments have made some progress over the years in assisting more young people in finding employment. As recently as a decade ago, it was estimated that one-quarter of young Indonesians were without a job.

President of Indonesia, former president of Indonesia and former prime minister of the army, Prabowo Subianto, has acknowledged the need to create more jobs by forming task forces to combat unemployment and negotiate trade agreements with US President Donald Trump.

After Trump announced a reduction of tariffs on Indonesian goods from 32 to 19 percent, Prabowo hailed the start of “a new era of mutual benefit” for Indonesia and the US on Wednesday.

Although older people are less likely to be unemployed, Indonesia has a jobless rate of about 80%. 5 percent: The majority of the work is inert and poorly compensated.

According to the Bureau of Statistics’ 2024 figures, 56% of Indonesia’s workforce works in the informal sector, leaving millions of people without social security protections and in unsafe conditions.

According to Deniey Adi Purwanto, a lecturer in the Department of Economics at IPB University in Bogor, the decline in the open unemployment rate does not necessarily reflect strong employment results.

Both informal employment and the quality of employment are still significant issues. ”

However, for young people, there is a particularly severe disconnect between job seekers and job seekers.

There is a high level of informality among graduates of secondary and tertiary education, according to Purwanto, who also contends that the needs of the labor market are not always met.

The pressure on the labor market is much higher because Indonesia has a sizable population of young people.

Additionally, he continued, “We have rapidly increasing secondary and higher education levels.”

Many young college graduates choose to wait for suitable jobs, which leads to unemployment, rather than avoiding informal or low-paid jobs. ”

In comparison to neighbours like Vietnam or Malaysia, Purwanto claimed that Indonesia also lacked effective vocational training and apprenticeship programs.

He cited more industry-university linkage schemes and graduate employability programs as examples of Malaysians.

The problem is made worse by the startling regional disparities that Indonesia, which consists of about 17,000 islands, have. Young people in remote and rural areas find it particularly challenging to get good jobs.

This is especially true in areas that are farther away from Java, where Jakarta is the country’s capital and where more than half the population lives.

When Hutapea moved back with his parents, who reside about two hours away from Medan, he first saw this.

Hutapea, who has a law degree, has been struggling for employment since moving out of his parents’ shop.

Hutapea recently had her interview for a job replenishing banknotes in ATMs. She also has a side job setting up sound systems for weddings and parties.

But despite his best efforts, he never heard back from the recruiter.

It is difficult to believe that Hutapea’s efforts were in vain because he took some of his law school coursework during the summer holidays so he could graduate a year early.

Hutapea said, “I didn’t want to burden my parents, who were already paying my entire university costs.”