New Delhi, July 10 -- India Inc is sitting on an unprecedented mountain of cash. A Mint analysis of 285 listed entities (excluding banking, finance and insurance companies, which have some statutory cash requirements) showed their cash and cash equivalents grew to Rs.5.09 trillion in FY25, up 12% year-on-year. To put it in perspective, that's nearly thrice the country's total outlay for capital expenditure on defence services.

What's more, this tendency to hoard cash isn't new. According to the analysis, the ratio of cash to total assets for these 285 companies grew from 8.4% in FY19 to a high of 32.1% in the covid year of FY21 (understandably so) before dropping. In FY25 it was 11.8%, still substantially higher than the pre-covid level ...