This deployment marks the first phase of a multi-year working relationship between the two companies. Supporting up to 9,000 GPUs, the first phase is expected to go live from the first quarter of CY2027 and is designed for high-density AI training and inference. Customers will have access to the infrastructure needed to develop, train and deploy AI applications closer to their users and data.

The deployment reflects growing demand for AI-ready digital infrastructure and represents a significant milestone in STTGDC’s Built Ready growth journey, reinforcing its position as a trusted infrastructure partner for the organisations deploying AI at scale. It also demonstrates the company’s ability to support the power, cooling and operational demands of next-generation AI workloads in India.

“India’s AI ambitions will depend not only on access to compute, but on the digital infrastructure required to support increasingly complex and compute-intensive workloads at scale. We are proud to work with Neysa and its co-founder and CEO, Sharad Sanghi, whose work in building one of India’s earliest internet data centre companies helped shape the country’s data centre industry,” said Bimal Khandelwal, Chief Executive Officer – India, STTGDC. “By bringing together Neysa’s specialised AI capabilities and STTGDC’s infrastructure expertise, this deployment will help enterprises move from experimentation to real-world applications. It also represents the kind of ecosystem collaboration needed to accelerate AI adoption and strengthen India’s position in the global digital economy.”

Sharad Sanghi, CEO, Neysa, added, "We are building Neysa for the long term, to serve businesses in India and global compute customers looking to add India to their infrastructure footprint. Our customers need more than access to GPUs. They need capacity they can plan around, reliable operations and room to scale as their workloads evolve. That is why we plan the compute, platform and data centre infrastructure together. Our planned deployment at STTGDC’s Noida data centre is one part of that approach, bringing GPU infrastructure and Velocis, our AI Cloud platform, together to support AI workloads in production."

About STTGDC

STTGDC is a leading data centre platform enabling the cloud, AI and digital services that power how people live, work and connect. Headquartered in Singapore, the company operates across Asia and Europe, serving major hyperscalers, cloud service providers and enterprises. Built on trust and proven execution, STTGDC combines global scale with deep local expertise to deliver resilient, scalable and sustainable infrastructure that powers digital growth. In India, STTGDC has been designing, building and operating data centres for more than two decades, supporting the infrastructure needs of enterprises, cloud providers and public sector organisations. Today, it manages one of the country's largest white space portfolios, with more than 613MW of critical IT load across 34 facilities, including those under development, in 10 cities. Serving a diverse customer base that includes many Fortune 500 companies, STTGDC delivers the resilience, scale and service quality required for mission-critical workloads.

STTGDC is committed to achieving carbon-neutral data centre operations by 2030 and advancing responsible growth through a strong focus on sustainability, safety, ethics, integrity and inclusion.

For more information, visit www.sttgdc.com/in-en.

About Neysa

Neysa is an AI acceleration cloud provider helping enterprises and AI builders train, deploy and operate AI at scale. Its portfolio includes Neysa Velocis, a managed AI cloud platform that brings together GPU compute, orchestration, inference, observability and cost management; and Neysa Tytan, dedicated bare-metal AI infrastructure for customers that need committed capacity and greater architectural control.

Founded in 2023, Neysa is backed by Blackstone. The company combines experience in building and operating large-scale data centre and cloud infrastructure with an India-based AI infrastructure footprint.

Learn more at www.neysa.ai

While Electric scooters have been leading EV transition in India so far, Electric Motorcycles have started to make their mark. One of the Players in this segment, with highest daily running of their bikes, is One Electric from Noida.

One Electric Exports

Gaurav Uppal, CEO - One Electric, shared “Our rental operations in Delhi NCR for Ride hailing captains make KRIDN X one of India's highest-utilisation electric motorcycles. In September 2026, our OneMobility.in rental fleet in Delhi NCR averaged 117 km per bike per day while best-performing bike logged 371 km in one day.”

One Mobility Rentals

The milestone caps a seven-year journey. Since its first heavy-duty prototype in 2019, One Electric has thousands of vehicles on the road across 4 African countries and 7 Indian states, covering millions of kilometres in some of the toughest commercial duty cycles in the world.

One Electric built its first heavy-duty electric motorcycle in 2019 and received ICAT approval in 2020. In October 2020 it launched the original KRIDN, then one of India's fastest electric motorcycles, with a 95 km/h top speed and 110 km of range.

Africa became the proving ground. The company's motorcycles went on to serve:

• Togo and Benin: a pilot batch of 1,000 + bikes in 2021.

• Nairobi: battery-swapping trials in 2022, followed by the 2023 launch of a leading ride-hailing company's first electric motorcycle taxi service in Africa, with bikes carrying riders 16–18 hours and up to 200 km a day under 200 kg loads.

• Lagos: last-mile delivery fleets.

• Nairobi assembly: a local plant built with partners.

Along the way the team engineered multiple chassis from the ground up and patented several vehicle designs, made possible with its partners Nayandeep and Milan. The KRIDN family grew to include the KRIDN Sport, KRIDN XR and KRIDN X+, each shaped by data from the field.

In 2024 One Electric concluded that India needed a fully Indianized motorcycle. Its target was riders who earn a living on the bike, not enthusiasts chasing top speed. The result was the KRIDN X, designed around four choices:

• Lower top speed of 70 km/h, matched to city traffic and rider safety.

• Higher torque and range: 190+ Nm from a 3.5 kW mid-drive motor, and 80+ km per swap.

• Heavy-duty build: 17-inch wheels, a 200 kg payload and 160 mm ground clearance.

• Easily available parts, so any roadside mechanic can keep it running.

The KRIDN X was tested, homologated at ARAI – Pune, and backed by a One Electric warranty of 4 years / 1,50,000 km.

"Our riders don't need a superbike. They need a bike that starts every morning, carries a passenger and cargo all day, and can be fixed anywhere. KRIDN X is everything we learnt in past 7 years, rebuilt for Indian roads," said Gaurav Uppal, Founder and CEO, One Electric.

To put the KRIDN X to work, the company launched OneMobility.in, a rental service that gives bike-taxi and delivery riders in Delhi NCR an electric motorcycle on simple daily and weekly plans. Verified September 2026 telematics from the live fleet show:

Average Distance Per Bike          117Km / Day

Best Single Day                                   371 Km

Best Rider Earnings                          5142 Kms in Sept 26 

Distances come from on-board telematics, cross-checked against GPS.

Intelligence behind the uptime

High utilisation does not come from the motorcycle alone. One Electric says intelligence has been critical to both maintenance and operations. Every bike reports live data to OneMobility's AI-based rental platform, which handles rider onboarding, KYC, payments and fleet tracking, and runs deep machine-learning analytics on the vehicles themselves. The platform supports four disciplines:

• A strict 2-week maintenance schedule for every vehicle.

• Constant monitoring of live vehicle data: motor and controller temperatures, energy use per km, riding behaviour and regeneration.

• Early warnings, flagging overheating, abnormal energy use or risky riding before they become breakdowns.

• Prompt on-road assistance when a rider needs help.

The platform was built by Adit and Karanveer, final-year B.Tech students at the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, majoring in Artificial Intelligence.

"Every kilometre our bikes run becomes data. We use it to decide when a bike needs service, which riders need coaching and how to keep each vehicle earning. Furthermore, we realized early on that filtering noise and de-duplicating repetitive signals, would be critical for creating a useful, actionable information pipeline," said Adit /Karanveer, Co-Leads at OneMobility.in.

“Telematics show the KRIDN X uses about 30 Wh per km in Delhi traffic, so a full day’s running costs a fraction of a petrol motorcycle,” adds Adit.

Ready to scale bike-taxi operations

New rules in Delhi NCR and Maharashtra now require bike-taxi and delivery fleets to add only electric two-wheelers, and demand for electric motorcycles that can run all day is rising quickly. One Electric is one of very few companies that designs, builds, rents and runs its own electric motorcycles. It plans to expand the OneMobility fleet with partners across NCR and other cities.

“Commercial riders are the toughest test any motorcycle can face. Our bikes run 117 km a day, every day, in real bike-taxi service. We plan to first address the huge B2B market segment before launching in the B2C segment with this durable electric commuter. When daily commuters buy a KRIDN X, they’ll be buying a bike already proven over millions of commercial kilometres,” said Gaurav.

Captech Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a construction-technology company whose solutions are trusted by leading infrastructure firms across India, today relaunched its Captech eFORCE platform, the first Labour Management App designed specifically for labour contractors in India. The Made in India, AI-assisted solution deploys construction labour 5x faster than traditional methods and uniquely offers workers repeated job opportunities under the same construction company, fostering stability and long-term engagement.

As the first-ever labour contractor management app in the market, Captech eFORCE addresses critical inefficiencies in workforce mobilization. Compared to traditional methods, it makes labour deployment 5x faster and increases deployment capacity 8x, so far more workers can be mobilised in less time. Built to scale to lakhs of contractors, the platform includes dedicated training programs to onboard contractors, many of whom are not tech-savvy, through AI-assisted phone calls and WhatsApp messages. The result: labour deployment is much faster, project timelines accelerate, and contractors gain consistent income streams while construction companies secure reliable manpower supply.

Captech eFORCE went live in 2020 as a labour marketplace, and that part remains. A developer or contractor posts a requirement with the BOQ, drawings, scope and timelines attached. Labour contractors apply with their credentials. PAN, GST and bank details are checked on the platform before the work is awarded. After that, work orders, crew deployment and Digital Daily Progress Reports are handled in the same place. The senior management assigned to the project get a clear view across multiple sites showing bottlenecks and crew shortage if any.

Captech eFORCE currently works with over 5,000 labour contractors impacting close to 5,00,000 blue-collar workforces, across 30+ projects across India. 

Speaking about the relaunch, Asutosh Katyal, Founder & CEO, Captech Technologies, said, "Most contractors we work with have one recurring worry, and it is the bill. Has it been certified, and when will the money come? Until now the only way to find out was to keep calling the site office. After this relaunch the contractor and the project team look at the same record, and it ties into the ERP the company already uses. We started out as a place to find labor. Captech eFORCE is now the platform on which a construction job is run, from the work order to the final payment."

On most Indian sites, a lot of this still happens over the phone. Updates go out on WhatsApp and end up in spreadsheets, if they are recorded at all. For a contractor with crews on several projects, finding out whether a bill has been certified usually means calling someone. Then calling again.

The relaunch goes after that problem directly. Kharchi (the advance paid to workers for daily expenses) and running account (RA) bills are tracked from the day they are submitted, and the contractor can check at any point whether a bill is still being processed or has been cleared for payment. Project teams on the company side see every pending bill across their sites in a single list.

For construction companies, there's no need to change the ERP they already use, because Captech eFORCE connects to it directly. Whatever is recorded on the platform, whether a work order, a progress report or a bill, goes into the company's ERP on its own. Nobody on site has to type it in a second time.

The app also offers onboarding through AI-assisted phone calls and WhatsApp messages for contractors who are not comfortable with technology. Apart from onboarding, this also serves a dual functionality by sending them reminders and keeping them updated on their work. The platform is currently operational in multiple languages including English, Hindi, Marathi and Bangla.

About Captech Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Captech Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is a construction-technology company focused on making workforce coordination and project execution more connected, transparent and efficient. Through its flagship platform, Captech eFORCE, the company bridges the gap between construction companies, developers, labour contractors and specialised vendors by supporting contractor discovery, workforce deployment, work-order management, project tracking and payment-related workflows.

Designed around the operational realities of India’s construction sector, Captech eFORCE helps stakeholders manage key processes through a single digital platform, enabling better coordination between project requirements and workforce availability. The platform also supports multilingual access and uses technology to improve visibility, productivity and efficiency across construction operations.

Captech Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is building technology for the workforce that builds the nation.

Xoriant's transformation into a human-centric AI company under its new brand identity, New Horizons, driven by Human Ingenuity (HI/AI)

"AI asks more of us humans, not less," said Rohit Kedia, CEO, Xoriant. "Across client engagements, we have seen how Human Ingenuity does the real work alongside Artificial Intelligence. AI brings speed, scale, and pattern recognition, while HI brings judgment, creativity, and accountability, creating an HI/AI flywheel that compounds and moves forward. The implications are as pronounced for customers as they are for our talent."

Since internalizing the HI/AI philosophy, Xoriant has consistently grown its AI revenues and customer base, with 25 new customers benefiting from AI innovation paired with Human Ingenuity. The transformation also comes with the company’s commitment to its 5000+ creator engineers and future talent: building a workforce that is not just 100% AI-fluent, but whole-brain thinkers who consciously apply Human Ingenuity.

To support its growth and HI/AI philosophy, the company continues to strengthen its partnership ecosystem, holding premier partner status with Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI and Salesforce.

Xoriant’s "New Horizons" brand identity includes a refreshed visual system built around the company’s signature green, reflecting its 'resist the usual' mindset and its ambition to stand apart from the sameness in technology services. The rebrand extends across Xoriant's digital presence and client-facing touchpoints globally.

About Xoriant
Xoriant is an applied AI partner for ambitious enterprises, backed by ChrysCapital. Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, Xoriant's 5,000+ XFactors serve 75+ Fortune 500 and 150+ Global 2000 clients across BFSI, Healthcare, Hi-tech, Retail, and Manufacturing through six practice Houses. It combines Human Ingenuity (HI) with AI to turn platforms, data, and intelligence into meaningful outcomes for its customers.

Learn more at www.xoriant.com.

UNKAPPED is an Applied AI and go-to-market engineering firm built on a forward-deployed model. Its engineers work inside a client’s own systems and across departments, from sales and customer service to finance and operations. They find the work that should move to AI, build the agents and automations that do it, and stay until those systems run in production with a measured result.

Three commitments for India

At launch, UNKAPPED has made three commitments. It will take 100 Indian enterprises through its AI-readiness audit by March 2027. It will put AI into production in at least 25 of them by December 2027, each with a measured result. And it will develop 100 India-based forward-deployed engineers by the end of 2028, trained on live enterprise work rather than in a classroom.

The skills gap behind the AI gap

Indian enterprises are not short of AI ambition. Every organisation surveyed by Dun & Bradstreet this year has an AI project underway, yet 44% are still planning or piloting, and only 4% say their data is fully ready to scale AI.

“India does not have a shortage of engineers. It has a shortage of engineers who have shipped AI inside a real business,” said Neeraj Kumar, Co-founder and Chief Technology and Product Officer. “You cannot learn that from a course. Our engineers learn it the way the best forward-deployed teams do: sitting with the business, finding the work and owning the outcome until it runs.”

The India Story

India’s obstacles are also its own. Customer and operations data sits across legacy ERPs, regional systems and spreadsheets. Customers reach businesses in many languages, over WhatsApp, voice and email. The Digital Personal Data Protection rules are raising the bar for how that data can be used. And most enterprises still buy technology the way they bought software: write a specification, hand it to a build partner and wait for delivery.

“India built the world’s software. Now it has to deploy the world’s AI, and that is a different job,” said Sachin Jha, Co-Founder and CEO of UNKAPPED. “The global platforms and labs are hiringforward-deployed engineers as fast as they can, for their largest customers. Every Indian enterprise deserves the same capability, without first having to find and hire it.”

UNKAPPED works across three areas:

• Forward-deployed engineering: Engineers embedded in client teams who connect data, fix access and permissions, wire agents into existing systems and take them to production.

• Applied AI: AI agents for customer service, collections, document processing, sales and operations, with testing, evaluation, human oversight and governance built in.

• GTM engineering: Buyer signals, account scoring, routing and revenue operations engineered so sales teams spend their time on the accounts ready to buy.

“Most enterprises are buying AI the way they bought software,” said Lakshmi Sindhuri, Co-founder and Head of Enterprise Transformation. “That worked for an ERP. AI changes how the work itself gets done, so someone has to be inside the company doing it.”

UNKAPPED’s founders bring product and platform experience from a global cloud provider, enterprise transformation leadership from global banking and payments, and top 1% go-to-market expertise. Its engineers already work alongside platform and forward-deployed teams at major cloud providers. The firm works with companies from pre-seed to PE-backed enterprises, and with the investors behind them.

Every engagement begins with an AI-readiness audit. Enterprises can apply at unkapped.ai or write to hello@unkapped.ai.

About UNKAPPED

UNKAPPED Inc. is an Applied AI and go-to-market engineering firm headquartered in San Francisco. It embeds forward-deployed practice and top 1% GTM experts inside client teams. It helps companies from Series A to private equity-backed enterprises turn their technology investments into working AI systems, scalable revenue operations and measurable returns, with deep expertise in cybersecurity, developer tools, cloud and AI-native software.

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@getUnkapped

Spardha Team-Pavan Malpani, Rikhil Jain, Saurabh Srivastav, Dr. Amrita Srivastav & Saurbah Tomar

As technology reshapes education, Spardha is combining its teacher-led model with technology-enabled practice, feedback and progress tracking to create a more continuous and personalized learning experience. The new training platform is built on Spardha’s core one-on-one learning model, keeping teachers at the heart of the learning journey. Its enhanced classroom experience introduces features such as backing tracks, music tools, and student–teacher sync mode, making online music and dance learning more seamless, engaging, and effective. 

Students can access assignments, practice videos and music sheets beyond their scheduled classes as well, while tools such as the metronome, tabla, virtual keyboard, mridangam and tanpura support guided and independent practice. AI-powered session notes and monthly progress reports help students track their development and identify areas that require attention, while real-time AI-powered feedback during practice provides additional guidance.

It also monitors the quality and consistency of each teacher’s session delivery, ensuring a high standard of session hygiene. In addition, it enables continuous teacher upskilling through personalized learning journeys tailored to each teacher’s current skills, performance, and quality of service, supporting ongoing professional development.

“Technology is not replacing the music teacher. It amplifies the ability of teachers to personalize, engage and create better learning outcomes. The future of music education lies in combining the human connection and expertise of a good teacher with the data-driven intelligence of technology to deliver a deeply personalized learning journey for every student,” - Saurabh Srivastav, Founder, Spardha Learning.

The platform brings together discovery, practice and performance of thousands of new songs through Spardha’s proprietary AI based performance platform Jam Station with exciting features such as AI powered self-assessment that enable students to practice independently, evaluate their skills at run time and build greater confidence in their musical abilities. The learning journey extends beyond practice through Spardha’s phygital performance platform, which gives students regular opportunities to perform before a global audience of fellow students, teachers, parents and music enthusiasts, apply what they learn, gain real performance experience and build confidence.

The technology expansion is backed by Spardha’s growing business scale. The company currently generates close to INR 60 crore in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and is targeting INR 100 crore+ ARR by FY 2027-28 by scaling its operations from the current 55,000+ monthly live sessions capacity to 1,00,000 sessions per month by FY 2027-28. Over the longer term, Spardha is targeting to acquire 1 lakh active users globally and scale its operations to deliver 3 lakh live sessions per month by 2030. Beyond technology, Spardha is addressing key gaps in performing arts education through professionally trained teachers, structured learning and multiple unique formats of performance opportunities. Its ecosystem combines live instruction, guided practice, technology-enabled feedback, progress tracking and personalised learning, transforming music education from a weekly class into an ongoing continuous learning & performing journey.

About Spardha School of Music

Spardha School of Music is a global Performing Arts EdTech platform offering personalised, one-on-one live learning experiences in music and performing arts. Founded with the vision of becoming the most trusted platform for performing arts education globally, Spardha combines an outcome-oriented curriculum, qualified professional teachers and a technology-enabled learning ecosystem.

ORGATEC India 2026 to Spotlight India's Workplace Transformation with 'WorkNXT – Design × Technology × Experiences'

India recorded 45.5 million sq.ft. of office space absorption in H1 2026, the highest first-half figure on record, as demand from Global Capability Centers (GCCs), flexible workspace operators and large domestic occupiers continues to accelerate. According to the CBRE 2026 India Office Occupier Survey, 77% of occupiers expect their office portfolios to expand over the next two years, underlining that even as work patterns evolve, the physical workplace remains central to business strategy — provided it is designed to be more adaptable, intelligent and experience-led.

The Platform Driving the Shift

This transformation is precisely what ORGATEC India is built to serve. As the only dedicated trade platform for workplace design, furniture, infrastructure and technology in the country, it functions as a convening point where architects, designers, corporate real estate leaders, manufacturers, technology providers and facility managers can align on a shared vision for the Indian workplace, rather than working in isolation across fragmented parts of the same project.

By bringing global design and technology benchmarks onto an Indian stage, ORGATEC India supports the adoption of sustainable, intelligent and experience-led workplace practices across the country’s fast-growing office market. For an industry expanding at record pace, this kind of shared platform for knowledge exchange, sourcing and business development is increasingly central to how the market matures, helping India’s workplace ecosystem move faster from ambition to execution, and reinforcing the country’s growing position within the global workplace conversation.

A Connected Workplace Ecosystem

Creating a workplace today is a far more interconnected process than it once was. Furniture, lighting, acoustics, technology, facility management and employee experience can no longer be planned in isolation — architects, designers, corporate real estate and procurement teams, manufacturers, technology providers and facility managers are all now involved at different stages of the same project.

ORGATEC India’s 2026 theme, WorkNXT, is built around this shift and organises the workplace journey into six connected stages:

• DESIGN — How should spaces respond to changing workstyles, people and business requirements?

• SPECIFY — How can workplace ambitions be translated into the right furniture, materials, technology and performance standards?

• PROCURE — How can organisations balance quality, cost, availability, sustainability and long-term value?

• BUILD — How can workplace concepts become adaptable, technology-enabled and future-ready environments?

• OPERATE — How can facilities, technology, data and services work together to make workplaces more efficient, responsive and sustainable?

• EXPERIENCE — What does the workplace enable people to do, how does it make them feel, and why would they want to return?

Through the exhibition and knowledge programme, WorkNXT connects these stages through product discovery, knowledge exchange, expert discussions and business engagement — bringing together the people who design workplaces with those who specify, procure, build, operate and ultimately experience them.

Executive Comment

“When we set out to shape WorkNXT as this year’s theme, the idea was to move India’s workplace conversation beyond individual products and square footage, and look at the workplace as one connected journey where design, technology and experience are working together, end to end. India’s office market is entering a defining decade, and what the industry needs now isn’t just a platform to showcase what already exists, but one that helps shape what comes next. That’s the role ORGATEC India is built to play — bringing together the architects, designers, manufacturers and technology providers who will define how India works, tomorrow,” Manoj Nandiot, Portfolio Director, Koelnmesse Pvt. Ltd.

Experience as Part of Design, Not an Afterthought

One of the most significant shifts in workplace strategy is the growing weight given to workplace experience. Modern workplaces are increasingly evaluated not just on utilisation and efficiency, but on how effectively they support collaboration, focus, creativity, wellbeing and organizational culture — and experience is now shaping decisions much earlier in the design process, rather than being added on at the end.

Acoustics, ergonomics, lighting, office furniture, workplace technology, flexibility, sustainability and hospitality-inspired amenities are converging into a single, interconnected definition of workplace experience. For ORGATEC India, this marks a broader evolution for the Indian workplace ecosystem — moving the conversation from individual products to the performance of the complete environment.

Leading Brands on the Show Floor

The strength of ORGATEC India 2026 is reflected in the leading brands confirming their participation across office furniture, ergonomic seating, acoustics, lighting and workplace technology segments — including Haworth, Kokuyo, Univicoustic, Interio by Godrej, Featherlite, Nilkamal Edge, among other segment leaders. Their presence adds significant depth to the exhibition, giving visitors direct access to global and Indian products and solutions alongside the platform’s knowledge program.

What to Expect at ORGATEC India 2026

Across three days, ORGATEC India 2026 will bring together workplace design, office and ergonomic furniture, workplace infrastructure, lighting, acoustics, flooring and materials, smart workplace technology, automation and IoT, facility and workplace management solutions, collaboration tools and future workspace technologies — alongside a dedicated knowledge platform featuring keynotes and panel discussions with architects, designers and workplace strategists.

The exhibition will also provide professionals across architecture and interior design, corporate real estate, procurement, facility and workplace management, workplace technology, real estate, GCCs and flexible workspace with opportunities to discover solutions, connect with suppliers, explore new ideas and build business relationships across the workplace ecosystem.

Event Fact File

• Event: ORGATEC India 2026 — “WorkNXT: Design × Technology × Experiences”

• Dates: 19–21 November 2026

• Venue: Jio World Convention Centre (JWCC), BKC, Mumbai, India

• Organiser: Koelnmesse India Pvt. Ltd.

• Exhibition space: 10,000 sq. m.

• Edition: 2nd edition

About ORGATEC India

ORGATEC India is a dedicated trade platform for workplace design, office furniture, workplace infrastructure, smart workplace technology and future workspace solutions. Organised by Koelnmesse Pvt Ltd, it brings together the ecosystem shaping the future of work — from architects, interior designers and corporate real estate professionals to facility managers, technology providers, manufacturers and workplace strategists. The 2026 edition is the second edition of ORGATEC India, focusing on the evolving relationship between design, technology and workplace experience.

To know more and register to visit www.orgatec-india.com

MYCPE ONE awarded in the service Export EdTech Category at the Payoneer India Cross-Border Excellence Awards 2026

Shalin (Shawn) Parikh, Co-Founder & CEO, and Nemin Vora, VP of Client Relationship Management, received the award on behalf of MYCPE ONE at the ceremony in New Delhi.

Shalin (Shawn) Parikh and Nemin Vora represented MYCPE ONE at the Payoneer India Cross-Border Excellence Awards 2026 in New Delhi

The award recognizes MYCPE ONE's approach to combining AI, automation, digital learning, and compliance technology to support the evolving needs of CPA and accounting firms. 

Unlike traditional EdTech platforms focused primarily on course delivery, MYCPE ONE combines professional education with technology and operational capabilities designed for the day-to-day needs of accounting firms. 

At the center of its learning ecosystem is MYCPE ONE's CPE platform, providing CPA and accounting firms with access to professional education across 100+ qualifications, along with tools for CPE compliance and learning management. The platform brings together 15,000+ hours of content, 50-state compliance tracking, automated reminders, audit-ready reporting, and a centralized Learning Management System for managing users, learning plans, assignments, practical training, assessments, and performance. It also supports customized learning paths, firm academies, and AI-powered learning tools to help firms develop skills across their teams. 

The company is also developing practical training programs, AI-focused academies, and AI-monitored assessments to help accounting professionals build skills for an increasingly AI-driven workplace. Its assessment platform uses AI-based monitoring to strengthen assessment integrity. 

Beyond learning, MYCPE ONE is developing an AI-first, technology-enabled offshoring model that combines offshore talent with structured workflows, digital productivity tools, candidate assessments, centralized management, and technology-enabled operations. Through its offshoring solutions, accounting firms can build their own offshore teams or use managed offshoring models while accessing accounting professionals across multiple locations. 

"This award reflects the journey we have taken at MYCPE ONE to bring technology, talent, and learning together to create more meaningful solutions for accounting and professional services firms," said Shalin (Shawn) Parikh, Co-Founder & CEO, MYCPE ONE. "We are proud to be awarded in the Service Export: EdTech category. It reinforces our belief in building solutions that help firms access the right talent, develop skills, and embrace technology as they grow globally." 

MYCPE ONE's technology and processes are backed by a SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001:2022-certified Information Security Management System covering technology, development, operations, and offshore staffing activities. 

As accounting and professional services firms look beyond geographic boundaries for talent, technology, and learning, MYCPE ONE continues to expand its capabilities across AI-enabled education, compliance, and cross-border service delivery. 

About MYCPE ONE 

MYCPE ONE is a full-stack accounting and business services platform headquartered in Ahmedabad, India, serving 3,000+ CPA and accounting firms, along with 300+ growing businesses across North America, the UK, and Europe. 

Founded by Shalin (Shawn) Parikh and Valay Parikh, the company has evolved into an integrated platform offering offshore staffing, continuing professional education and learning and development, digital marketing, website solutions, managed IT, cybersecurity, AI implementation and other professional solutions. With SOC 2 Type II certification, ISO 27001 compliance, GDPR readiness, and a proven track record of zero data breaches, MYCPE ONE delivers secure, scalable workforce, education, and business enablement solutions. 

Backed by a talent pool of 500,000+ vetted professionals and a global team of 3,000+ members, MYCPE ONE operates as a unified ecosystem supporting firms and businesses at every stage of growth.

The name change has been formally registered with the Registrar of Companies, Ministry of Corporate Affairs. While the company carries forward the experience and foundation built over the years, the Datakosa identity reflects its evolving strategic direction and its ambition to build a globally oriented technology organisation with capabilities across Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Data, Cloud and digital transformation.

The Datakosa identity reflects the company's evolution toward a technology organisation built around intelligence, security, data and digital innovation, while carrying forward the experience and customer relationships developed under the Bodhtree name.

The company is now entering an accelerated phase of business development, with a particular strategic focus on strengthening its presence in the Australian and United States markets.

Accelerating International Market Development

Datakosa sees significant opportunities in Australia and the United States, where enterprises are increasingly adopting Artificial Intelligence, automation, data-driven technologies and advanced Cyber Security solutions.

Australia is an important market in the company's international strategy, with Datakosa working to develop stronger customer relationships, technology partnerships, and business opportunities. At the same time, the company intends to progressively expand its focus on the United States, one of the world's largest markets for enterprise technology, AI and Cyber Security services.

The company believes that India's strong technology talent ecosystem, combined with its developing capabilities and international market opportunities, provides a sound foundation for building a globally competitive technology business.

AI and Cybersecurity as Strategic Focus Areas

Artificial Intelligence is expected to remain a key focus area for Datakosa. The company is working to develop AI-enabled solutions and technology services that help enterprises improve productivity, automate business processes, enhance decision-making, and derive greater value from their data.

The company's focus areas include Generative AI, AI-powered Business Intelligence, intelligent automation, enterprise AI applications, data analytics, and large language model-based solutions.

Cybersecurity is another important strategic area for the company. As enterprises increasingly operate across cloud, hybrid and distributed digital environments, the need for stronger security capabilities continues to expand. Datakosa intends to strengthen its capabilities and partnerships in this segment and meet enterprises' evolving technology and security requirements.

“The transition from Bodhtree Consulting Limited to Datakosa Limited marks an important new chapter for the company. We value the foundation and experience built over the years, while the new identity reflects the direction in which we are building the organisation.”

Prashanth Mitta, CEO of Datakosa, said, “Our focus is clear: to develop meaningful capabilities in Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity and to increasingly participate in global technology markets.”

He further added, “Australia and the United States are important markets in our international strategy. We are approaching these markets with a long-term perspective, emphasising customer relationships, technology partnerships, talent, and delivery capabilities. We are confident about the opportunities ahead, while remaining conscious that sustainable growth is built through consistent execution, customer trust and strong technology capabilities.”

Management also expressed appreciation to the company's shareholders and investors for the confidence placed in the company's strategic direction. The resolutions placed before shareholders received 99% support, reflecting strong shareholder approval for the initiatives presented by the company.

“We are deeply appreciative of the confidence placed in the company by our shareholders. The support received for the resolutions is encouraging and, more importantly, gives us an added sense of responsibility as we enter this next phase. We see this support as an expression of confidence in the direction of the company, and our responsibility now is to translate that confidence into disciplined execution, stronger capabilities and sustainable business growth.”

Building for the Long Term

Datakosa's growth strategy will focus on strengthening its technology talent, solution development capabilities, international sales and business-development functions while progressively expanding its ecosystem of technology partners and customers.

The company recognises that the global technology landscape is undergoing significant transformation, driven by AI adoption, Cybersecurity requirements, cloud migration, automation, and increasing dependence on data-driven decision-making.

We see the Datakosa identity as a reflection of our forward direction. There is considerable work ahead, but we believe the foundation we are building provides a strong platform to pursue these opportunities in a focused and measured manner. Our objective is to build a technology organisation from India that earns the confidence of global customers through capability, reliability and execution.

Datakosa remains focused on creating long-term value for its customers, employees, partners and shareholders through innovation, responsible expansion and disciplined execution.

Datakosa enters this new phase with a clear ambition: to build a globally relevant technology organisation from India, with Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity forming key pillars of its international growth strategy.

About Datakosa

Datakosa Limited, formerly known as Bodhtree Consulting Limited, is a technology-focused company pursuing opportunities across Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Data, Cloud and digital technology services. The company is focused on strengthening its technology capabilities and expanding its international presence, with particular strategic emphasis on Australia and the United States.

Website: www.datakosa.ai

SOLIZE PARTNERS India Takes Lumax IAC Live on Dassault Systemes' 3DEXPERIENCE Platform

For Lumax IAC, which develops automotive interior systems across multiple vehicle programs, managing growing product, process and configuration complexity requires engineering information to remain connected and accessible throughout product development. This transformation focused on key business objectives including establishing a unified engineering database, strengthening engineering-to-manufacturing handover, improving continuity across Bill of Materials processes and integrating critical engineering workflows within a common digital environment.

The implementation by SOLIZE PARTNERS India, draws on its 35+ years of engineering and manufacturing expertise and focused on minimizing customization while addressing Lumax IAC’s extensive variant and configuration needs. The predominantly configuration-driven approach provided a standardized yet flexible digital foundation, enabling Lumax IAC to evolve its engineering processes in line with future demands. Working across Lumax IAC’s multiple locations, the team standardized diverse engineering processes into one scalable digital environment, completing the rollout in approximately six months.

“The adoption of Dassault Systemes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides Lumax IAC with a connected digital foundation. By unifying engineering data and processes, we are strengthening continuity, improving visibility and accelerating the development of next-generation automotive interior solutions,” said Mr. Sunil Koparkar, CEO, Lumax IAC.

The go-live establishes a strong core engineering environment at Lumax IAC. With the core platform live, Lumax IAC now has a connected engineering environment that improves traceability and collaboration between engineering and downstream operations, while establishing a foundation it can build on as it digitizes further. This foundation positions the organization to progressively integrate additional processes and functions across the product lifecycle, enabling greater collaboration, efficiency and innovation.

“Successfully taking Lumax IAC live on The 3DEXPERIENCE Platform is an important milestone for both organizations. This engagement brought together our platform expertise, deep automotive domain knowledge, and understanding of complex engineering processes. More importantly, it demonstrates how technology can be translated into an engineering environment that reflects the way an organization actually develops its products,” said Mr. Mahadevan V.S., CEO & Director, SOLIZE PARTNERS India.

Deepak NG, Managing Director, India, Dassault Systemes, said, “Lumax IAC’s successful deployment highlights the power of a connected digital environment in managing complex automotive engineering processes. By uniting product data, processes, and teams on a single platform, Lumax IAC has established a strong digital foundation to accelerate innovation and drive seamless lifecycle continuity.”

The implementation reflects a collaborative approach to digital engineering, bringing together Lumax IAC’s domain expertise, Dassault Systemes’ technology and SOLIZE PARTNERS India’s engineering experience to create a connected environment for product development. The successful go-live provides a strong foundation for Lumax IAC’s continued digital evolution.

BcStep is a single-platform solution that enables seamless coordination & tracking for stakeholders in the construction sector

Construction projects typically involve multiple stakeholders, including Developers, Architects, Consultants, Project Management Consultants (PMCs), Contractors, Suppliers and large internal teams. BcStep is built as a digital ecosystem for the construction industry, that brings together all organisations, employees, support staff & vendors, to track and coordinate chats, emails, tasks, workflows and Digital ERP processes on a single unified network. BcStep combines ERP, HRM, Chat, Email and Task Manager into one connected ecosystem, to enable better communication & management while also tracking & recording it on one connected platform. This eliminates the fragmentation across multiple different software and ensures project coordination and continuity across stakeholders.

BcStep has a strong business proposition to improve efficiency in the areas of:

• Time spent searching across emails, chats and different systems

• Manual follow-ups and status tracking

• Administrative effort in coordinating meetings, tasks and communication

• Dependence on individuals to retain project history and knowledge

• Activity-wise & Category-wise task status tracking within the offices

• Overall project progress tracked for the stakeholders  

BcStep represents approximately five years of continuous product development, encompassing technology changes, product testing, architecture development and the creation and integration of its individual applications. BcStep is launching with a pan-India market focus, enabling construction organizations across India to participate in the BON ecosystem. The platform is being developed as an evolving construction operating ecosystem and has a strong roadmap focusing on further expansion of features and updates focusing on areas such as Site Management, Invoice Management, Contract Management and Material Management, along with expanding AI capabilities through the Mr. Bon AI Assistant.

“Building BcStep has been a long-term commitment for us, as we create the architecture for India’s construction sector to move past fragmented systems, and into one unified environment where stakeholders can work together,” said Kailash Anwala, Managing Director at UniSteps. “Over approximately five years, we have continuously developed, tested and refined the platform, while drawing on UniSteps’ more than two decades of experience in the construction industry across Project Management, Structural Consultancy, and MEP Consultancy. The result has been a powerful platform that translates real-world project coordination requirements into a digital format platform that is practical, connected and scalable. Over the next three years, our focus will be on building BcStep, establishing a strong base of paying organisations and developing it into a scalable recurring-revenue technology platform for the construction ecosystem.”

Over the next three years, UniSteps Consulting aims to establish BcStep as a significant technology platform for the construction industry, supported by a growing base of paying organisations and a scalable recurring-revenue model.
 

About UniSteps
UniSteps Consulting Pvt. Ltd. is a full-service, multidisciplinary construction consultancy specialising in Project Management, Structural Design and MEP Design for engineering-intensive construction projects. Founded in 2003, the company brings extensive experience across residential, commercial, corporate, hospitality, retail and other complex building projects. UniSteps provides integrated design and project management services, supporting projects from requirements and planning through construction and handover. Having completed more than 600 projects and with over 500 projects currently under design or management, UniSteps combines engineering expertise, project experience and practical construction knowledge to deliver coordinated solutions for complex building projects across India.

UniSteps Consulting Pvt. Ltd. is headquartered in Mumbai, with offices in Mumbai, Nashik and Patna.

Nexdigm Launches ERT, its First Licensed Technology Solution, to Simplify Foreign Remittance Compliance
 

As businesses continue to expand their global footprint, foreign remittance compliance has become increasingly complex. Organizations making payments outside India must manage tax documentation, certifications, approvals, and regulatory submissions throughout the remittance process. Coordinating these requirements across multiple stakeholders and managing extensive documentation through emails, spreadsheets, and fragmented communication channels can create operational inefficiencies, limited visibility, and increased compliance risks.
 

ERT was developed by Nexdigm's international tax and regulatory specialists, drawing on decades of professional services experience. ERT brings domain expertise and technology together to address this documentation-intensive area of cross-border business operations.
 

ERT digitizes and standardizes the end-to-end compliance lifecycle, enabling organizations to manage Form 145 and Form 146 requirements prescribed under India's Income-tax framework for foreign remittances through a structured workflow. The platform brings finance teams, tax professionals, business stakeholders, and Chartered Accountants together on a single system, providing
 

• Centralized documentation

• Real-time status tracking

• Role-based access controls

• Audit-ready records and comprehensive audit trails

• Enhanced visibility across the compliance lifecycle
   

ERT is available as a standalone solution or alongside Nexdigm's advisory and managed services support, and can be deployed within an organization's existing compliance ecosystem.
 

The launch represents an important milestone in Nexdigm's journey from being technology-enabled to becoming increasingly technology-led, reflecting the firm's broader push to convert client-facing expertise into scalable, licensable technology products.

“ERT represents our ability to translate the expertise and insights built over decades of client engagement into scalable technology solutions that address real business needs. It is designed to align with our clients' evolving needs and to strengthen the value we deliver as their business environments grow more complex. ERT marks an important step in extending this approach across Nexdigm’s growth and client proposition,” Mayank Lakhani – Co-CEO, Nexdigm.
 

“Foreign remittance compliance involves multiple forms, stakeholders, approvals, and supporting documents. The compliance complexity increases with transaction volume. ERT consolidates these requirements into a single, structured process, enabling greater consistency, reduced manual intervention, and stronger oversight. The solution is designed to make the overall remittance process simpler, more controlled, and more efficient to execute,” Maulik Doshi, Managing Director – Direct Tax, Nexdigm.
 

About Nexdigm

Nexdigm is an Indian firm operating globally, delivering consulting, technology, outsourcing, and professional services across industries, helping companies address challenges across all stages of their business lifecycle. Through our direct operations in the USA, Poland, the UAE, and India, we serve a diverse client base spanning multinational corporations, listed companies, privately owned businesses, and family-owned enterprises across more than 50 countries.

flowpilot turns plain English into live workflows in one day - AI builds at speed, while your people control every critical approval

flowpilot is an AI-powered Operations OS built on a straightforward observation: enterprise workflow software has often remained out of reach for Indian SMEs because of long implementation cycles, dependence on consultants and the need to replace systems that already work.

flowpilot takes a different approach. An operations manager describes a process in plain English-such as a purchase request, stock transfer or vendor onboarding-and flowpilot generates the forms, business rules, owners, approval chains and escalations. Initial workflows can go live within one day, without coding or replacing the accounting, CRM and spreadsheet systems the business already uses.

AI creates the workflow, but it does not take control of the business. Managers decide which actions require approval, who can approve them and when an issue must be escalated. Purchases, expenses, vendor onboarding and master-data changes pause for an authorised person before moving forward, with every decision recorded in an audit trail.

After seven months in the market, flowpilot supports 40 live workflows across Indian trading, distribution and services businesses.

“Owners don’t resist software. They resist the cure being worse than the disease,” said Yugal Kishore, CEO and Co-founder of flowpilot. “Long rollouts, consultants stationed in the office and being asked to abandon systems that teams have used for years create more disruption than value. We built the opposite: describe how your business already works, and the workflow can be running by evening. AI provides the speed, but your people retain control over every decision that matters.”

Approvals reach decision-makers through WhatsApp, Slack or email, so work does not wait for someone to log into another application. Owners receive a live view of what is pending, who is responsible and where work is delayed.

PV Enterprise, a trading and distribution business operating across four warehouses and three offices, moved stock movements, orders, approvals and payment follow-ups onto flowpilot from a combination of Tally, Zoho CRM, Excel and WhatsApp. The company now uses one live operational view while continuing to use Tally for tax compliance.

flowpilot supports workflows across operations, finance and procurement, including order tracking, inventory movement, purchase requests, vendor approvals, payment follow-ups and internal sign-offs.

For details or a live workflow demonstration, visit flowpilot.svelto.ai

About flowpilot by Svelto
flowpilot by Svelto is an AI-powered Operations OS for Indian SMEs and mid-market businesses, enabling same-day deployment of governed business workflows without code or system replacement.

Vara Kumar - Co-founder and CEO, Whatfix

Since co-founding Whatfix alongside Batti in 2014, Vara has served as the architect of the company’s product and research strategy, guiding its expansion from an early-stage startup into a global leader in digital adoption serving Fortune 500 companies globally. As CEO, Vara will lead the company’s next phase of growth while preserving the core values and customer-centric culture established since its founding.

"Khadim was a visionary leader, a partner, and a dear friend," said Vara Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO of Whatfix. "Over the past twelve years, we built Whatfix on a shared conviction that technology should empower people, not stand in their way. As I step into the role of CEO, our executive leadership team and I remain deeply committed to realizing that vision, supporting our global customers and partners, and building an enduring enterprise anchored in strong fundamentals."

Under the unified leadership of Vara and the executive team, supported by the board, Whatfix continues to operate seamlessly across all regions, supporting its global customer base, technology partner ecosystem, and workforce.

About Whatfix

Whatfix is the AI-native Digital Adoption Platform built for the modern enterprise. It helps organizations close the adoption gap by enabling users to use software effectively in the flow of work, while providing visibility into where users struggle.

Whatfix delivers an AI-native platform that combines digital adoption, analytics, simulation training, and intelligent agents to help enterprises realize value from technology investments faster. Powered by AI and ScreenSense™, the platform understands user context and intent to provide real-time guidance, automate support, identify friction points, and drive continuous process optimization. This enables organizations to accelerate adoption, improve productivity, strengthen compliance, and unlock greater returns from enterprise software and AI initiatives.

Trusted by 600 enterprises globally, including 80+ Fortune 500 companies such as Shell, Schneider Electric, Mercedes Benz, Heineken, and UPS Supply Chain Solutions. Whatfix helps organizations accelerate software adoption, improve productivity, and maximize the value of digital transformation and AI investments. With a global presence spanning North America, UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Australia, Whatfix serves leading enterprises across some of the world's most complex and regulated industries. Backed by investors including Warburg Pincus, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Dragoneer, Peak XV Partners, Eight Roads, and Cisco Investments, software clicks with Whatfix.

For more information, visit the Whatfix website.

Pepper’s Agent Atlas: Turning GEO Insights into Action

Search has changed, and so has the place where a brand gets judged. People put their questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude and Google AI Overviews, and they act on what they hear without ever opening a website. Pepper tracks more than 10 million prompts across those engines, and the pattern it sees is that whether a brand turns up in those answers now decides whether it makes a buyer's shortlist at all. Sangeeta Bavi, Head of Sales for Digital Natives, Startups and Growth at Anthropic, framed the test at Index: "Go ask your marketing, product and engineering team: if you search for your product or brand, is it discoverable, and will an agent actually complete the transaction?"

Agent Atlas is built to answer that. It sits as the chat layer of Pepper's GEO platform. A question goes in the way you would put it to the sharpest analyst on the team. Atlas works across AI search visibility, rankings, analytics and content in one pass, shows what is happening, recommends what to do in order of impact, then carries out the work once it is approved.

One thing Atlas is not: software the client logs into. "You do not log in. Pepper does," is how the company puts it. Every Pepper customer is on Atlas from today, and their Pepper growth team runs it. Self-serve is not part of this release.

"We are not trying to build another tool in the category," said Anirudh Singla, Co-founder and CEO of Pepper. "We are trying to engineer organic growth for an AI era. Our understanding of organic growth has moved from SEO to Search Everywhere Optimization, and that needs strategy, agents and human subject matter experts working together."

"Atlas has brought our decision time right down," Singla said. "An analysis that used to take two weeks now runs through Atlas, so our teams spend their hours on leads and business outcomes instead. If you are a CMO with two minutes before you walk into your CEO's office, you should not have to wait a week for an agency report. You ask Atlas and you have the answer before you sit down."

Along with the launch, Pepper was clear about what it will and will not be measured on. The company said it will not sign a contract against a one-shot AI visibility score, because the same prompt run repeatedly against the same model comes back with a different answer each time. What it commits to instead goes into the contract: a full strategy and a projected number before a client signs, KPIs written in, weekly reviews against baseline, and an annual term Pepper keeps only if the number moves.

"Every AI engine is a black box today, and anyone claiming clean attribution is guessing with confidence," said Rishabh Shekhar, Co-founder and COO of Pepper. "That will change, because advertisers will not spend without reporting and these models will have to open a console. We are making sure our customers are already measuring the right things when it does."

The chain Pepper says it stands behind runs from Earned Authority, the agreement across the third-party sources that buyers and models trust, through citations and mentions, to branded search lift, to demand.

The launch came at the third Index, Pepper's GEO Growth Summit, held in Bengaluru after San Francisco and New York, in front of 150+ marketing leaders. Anant Vidur Puri, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, made the case for moving now: "Unless AI is front and center of your marketing strategy, I don't think the business can go fast." Ashutosh Wadhwani, Head of Growth at Swiggy, put the same shift more bluntly: "Stop optimizing for clicks. Start optimizing for recommendations and citations."

Pepper's argument has not changed in eight years. Organic is the channel a brand owns rather than rents. With Agent Atlas, a lean team can own all of it. Agents for scale. Humans for judgment. One team that owns the number.

Ai+ opens up Nxt Quantum OS

As part of the commitment to data sovereignty and security, Nxt Quantum enforces a strict sovereign data boundary, ensuring that 100% of application data traffic is routed through local, India-hosted infrastructure. This robust system performs automated analysis of source rules across more than 1,000 connections and 172 unique destination IPs to ensure perimeter security. Notably, all data traffic and IP pings are contained within India, with external traffic limited to essential Google core services directed solely to California and Singapore, necessary for standard operating system functions. This approach not only prioritises data integrity but also reinforces our commitment to protecting user information in line with the Nxtquantum OS framework.

Network Traffic Security Review

With v1.1, NxtQuantum OS also introduces a more streamlined privacy experience through the NxtPrivacy Dashboard, bringing application permissions together in a single interface. Users can review, modify and revoke permissions more easily, providing greater control over how applications interact with device resources and personal data. Enhanced background activity visibility helps users understand when applications access sensitive device resources while operating outside active use. Privacy alerts further help identify permissions that may be excessive, unnecessary or no longer required, enabling users to make more informed decisions about their privacy.

Commenting on the update, Madhav Sheth, CEO, NxtQuantum Shift Technologies (Ai+ Smartphone), said, “The future of technology isn't defined by what it can do. It's defined by how much people can trust it and the aspirations it enables. That belief is central to how we are building NxtQuantum OS.”

The latest enhancements are part of NxtQuantum’s broader approach to building a technology platform, in which privacy, security, and user control are considered throughout the software experience.

This commitment to transparency also extends to how Ai+ evaluates its products through Project Open Review 2.0, which enables reviewers, creators, journalists, technology enthusiasts and ethical hackers to independently test Ai+ devices and provide feedback even before launch.

About Ai+ and NxtQuantum Shift Technologies

NxtQuantum Shift Technologies is a deep-tech Indian company building secure, sovereign digital platforms for a digital-first world. Founded by Madhav Sheth, the company develops NxtQuantum OS, India's first sovereign operating system, and is committed to building technology that is designed, engineered and developed in India while remaining globally competitive.

About Ai+ Smartphone

Ai+ Smartphone is a next-generation brand built in India, delivering reliable and high-performance mobile experiences. Powered by NxtQuantum OS, India’s first sovereign mobile operating system. The brand focuses on delivering a clean design, ensuring long battery life, and maintaining trusted software performance, all while keeping prices accessible without compromising the user experience.

From redefining smartphones to pioneering AIoT products as part of the company's Connected Ecosystem, Ai+ Smartphone is creating a new standard for trust, immersive experience, and accessibility. Rooted in a privacy-first architecture and a commitment to equitable access, Ai+ Smartphone stands for more than specs — it stands for India’s next era of user-owned, future-ready technology.

Bhavesh Goswami, Founder & CEO, CloudThat | Stanford Seed Alumni

According to Gartner, by 2027, approximately 80% of the engineering workforce will need to upskill to keep pace with the rapid evolution of generative AI. At the same time, IBM research indicates that while access to AI tools is becoming widespread, employee capability and confidence in using these tools remain a significant challenge. Against this backdrop, enterprise AI adoption is increasingly dependent on the availability of trained and certified talent.

CloudThat wins the FY26 Microsoft Superstars Award - India

CloudThat’s FY26 performance reflects the growing demand for enterprise AI and cloud skills. As part of Microsoft’s FY26 campaign, CloudThat trained 3.8 lakh learners, including 2 lakh learners through M365 Copilot skilling programmes and another 85,000 learners across Azure Data & AI. The company also delivered sustained learner acquisition, strong AI skilling outcomes and consistent growth in Microsoft Certified Professionals during the year.

The recognition builds on CloudThat’s longstanding association with Microsoft. Since 2012, CloudThat has trained more than 11 lakh professionals globally, supporting over 2,000 certifications across 30+ countries. Its continued recognition by Microsoft over nine years reflects the scale and depth of its skilling and consulting capabilities.

CloudThat’s strength is also supported by its trainer ecosystem. Twenty of its in-house Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs) featured in Microsoft’s Top 100 Global MCT list for 2025, while 13 trainers were recognised under the MCT Quality Awards for 2026. This depth of certified training expertise enables the company to deliver skilling programmes at scale while maintaining a strong focus on certification and learning outcomes.

Beyond enterprise skilling, CloudThat has also expanded its work across government, public sector and higher education. Under AI Pragya, launched by the Centre for e-Governance, Government of Uttar Pradesh, in collaboration with Microsoft, CloudThat trained more than 1,560 government officials across Copilot, Azure, Responsible AI and cybersecurity. The company has also undertaken comparable programmes for the Government of the Maldives, where monthly active usage of Microsoft tools increased by 20% following the training programme.

In the higher education ecosystem, CloudThat works with institutions to integrate Microsoft technologies and certifications into academic curricula, moving beyond one-time workshops towards structured, industry-aligned learning pathways. Its curriculum partnerships include IIT (BHU) Varanasi, Shree Vaishnav Vidyapeeth University, Acharya, SKITM Indore and GD Goenka University. Through these programmes, students can progress through seven Microsoft certification pathways spanning Azure, AI, Data Science and Business Applications. CloudThat plans to expand this model to 50 institutions over the next twelve months.

Commenting on the recognition, Bhavesh Goswami, Founder and CEO, CloudThat, said, “Winning our fourth Superstars title, and our eighth Microsoft recognition overall, tells us something bigger than an award ever could: that Microsoft has trusted us with its skilling ecosystem for more than a decade, and that the trust has held even as the technology underneath it evolved over time. It gives us real confidence as we push into our next phase of growth, expanding our global footprint and building CloudThat into the kind of AI skilling institution the world will keep needing, year after year.”

With AI adoption moving rapidly from experimentation to enterprise-wide implementation, CloudThat continues to focus on building the skills required to translate technology investments into measurable outcomes. Its latest Microsoft recognition reinforces its role in enabling enterprises, governments and academic institutions to develop AI, cloud and digital capabilities at scale.

The shift is transforming how Paisabazaar builds and scales technology, significantly improving development velocity and enabling teams to take on a larger product and technology roadmap.
 

CTO Mukesh Sharma says as AI capabilities scale, Paisabazaar is able to build, test and deploy products faster and more efficiently
 

Mukesh Sharma, Chief Technology Officer, Paisabazaar, said, “AI has fundamentally changed the way our engineering teams build. But the objective is not to replace engineers—it is to make them significantly more productive, taking away repetitive development work and allowing them to spend more time on architecture, problem-solving and innovation. As AI capabilities scale, we are able to build, test and deploy products faster and more efficiently.”
 

Paisabazaar is also expanding its technology team even as AI takes on a larger role in development, reflecting the company's focus on using productivity gains to expand its technology ambition rather than simply reduce resources. As AI enhances productivity, the company sees an opportunity to build more, experiment faster and address more problems simultaneously.

AI-assisted development is now integrated across the engineering lifecycle at Paisabazaar, from writing and testing code to debugging and documentation. Engineers continue to provide human oversight across critical stages, while AI enables teams to accelerate development and focus their efforts on higher-value technology and product challenges. As the role of engineers evolves, greater emphasis is placed on systems thinking, complex problem-solving, architectural decision-making and the ability to work effectively with AI tools.

“We are not looking to build the same things with fewer people; we want to use AI to expand what we can build. AI will not reduce our ambition—it will expand the surface area of what we can build,” added Sharma.

The broader AI strategy at Paisabazaar extends beyond engineering, with the company using AI across consumer-facing experiences to simplify complex credit information, generate personalised credit insights and enable more contextual interactions. AI and machine learning are also being used across product discovery and lending journeys to enhance personalisation and decision support.
 

The company expects AI adoption across engineering and consumer experiences to deepen as the technology evolves, focusing on expanding innovation, improving productivity and delivering simpler, more personalised financial experiences at scale.

About Paisabazaar

Paisabazaar, a part of PB Fintech (listed since 2021), is India’s leading marketplace for financial products and a free credit score platform. Over the last 12+ years, Paisabazaar has earned the trust and goodwill of over 58 million consumers from 850 cities and towns across India. Paisabazaar has built wide and deep partnerships across the ecosystem, to offer a broad range of financial products, ranging from loans and cards to investments and savings along with bill payments and mobile recharge. The platform also enables consumers to check their free credit score from all 4 CICs (Credit Bureaus) in India. Paisabazaar is an ISO (27001:2013) and PCI DSS certified organisation, with industry-best controls, to safeguard the best interest of consumers.

Ai+ Nova 2 Ultra gets a new software update, bringing enhancements across camera experience, performance and security

Key Updates

1. Refined Bokeh Algorithm for Natural Portraits — The Nova 2 Ultra’s camera algorithm has been optimised for smoother, more natural background blur, helping deliver a more refined portrait photography experience. The update also addresses an intermittent connectivity-loss issue that could occur when triggering the bokeh blur algorithm, making the experience more consistent.

2. Enhanced Fluidity Across the UI — Optimisations to scrolling, app animations, app switching and system navigation deliver a smoother and more responsive interaction experience across the device.

3. August Security Patch & Stability Improvements — The update includes the latest August security patch, along with fixes for app crashes, unresponsiveness and other stability issues, supporting a more reliable overall experience.

With this update, Ai+ continues to invest in the software experience of its flagship device, refining camera performance, system fluidity and reliability through ongoing updates. The update is rolling out to Nova 2 Ultra users starting today and can be downloaded via Settings > System > Software Update > Check for Updates.

About Ai+ Smartphone

Ai+ Smartphone is an Indian technology brand delivering high-performance, accessible mobile experiences powered by NxtQuantum OS — India’s first sovereign mobile operating system. By combining clean design, long battery life and privacy-first software across its smartphone and Connected AIoT ecosystem, Ai+ Smartphone is establishing a new standard for trust, performance and user-owned technology.

SNP SE, a leading provider of software for AI-enabled digital transformation, automated data migration and data management in the SAP environment, announced the appointment of Neeraj Athalye as Managing Director, India. Based in Mumbai, Athalye will be responsible for leading SNP’s expansion helping customers build the data foundations for business AI using SNP’s Kyano® platform and Bluefield® approach.

SNP Appoints Neeraj Athalye as Managing Director for India Strengthening its Partner First and Best-Data-for Business-AI Strategy

Athalye brings with him more than 30 years of experience across enterprise software, SAP, cloud technologies and business leadership, having held senior positions at SAP, MatrixOne (Dassault Systèmes), Honda, John Deere, SUSE and, most recently, Icertis. His track record in building partner ecosystems, scaling high‑growth businesses, and driving customer‑centric innovation positions him perfectly to lead SNP’s next phase of expansion in India.

The appointment comes as SNP expands its presence in Asia Pacific and continues to invest in AI-enabled capabilities for SAP transformations. At its annual flagship event “Transformation World” in Heidelberg, Germany, in July, SNP introduced new capabilities for its Kyano platform to customers, partners and experts from across the global SAP ecosystem. Kyano brings together software for data management, migration and continuous assessment of SAP landscapes, supporting organizations throughout their SAP transformation journey. The platform also supports migrations from different ERP source systems and integrates partner capabilities through its ecosystem and Marketplace.

Among the new capabilities is Kyano Lorna, an Agentic AI Layer that draws on more than 30 years of SNP’s data transformation expertise to provide real-time insights and project-specific recommendations. Embedded directly into transformation projects it helps customers execute transformations faster while maintaining the highest levels of accuracy, reliability and compliance. Kyano Oros extends the platform to unstructured data which accounts for approximately 80% of enterprise data volumes and has largely remained inaccessible to traditional transformation tools. This provides a critical foundation for preparing enterprise data landscapes for modern AI applications. Together, these capabilities help India’s organizations accelerate and simplify SAP transformations while preparing their data for business AI.

India continues to see growing demand for SAP transformation projects, driven by cloud adoption, digital transformation initiatives and increasing investment in AI. This makes the country an important market within SNP’s Asia Pacific strategy. Following its partner-first approach, SNP plans to further expand its ecosystem of consulting, hyperscaler and technology partners, combining Kyano with local delivery and industry expertise to support customers throughout their transformation projects and accelerate time-to-value.

Phillip Miltiades, President & Managing Director, Asia Pacific & Japan, SNP Group: “We see significant growth potential in India and across the Asia Pacific region. India represents one of the most exciting opportunities for SNP, with growing demand for solutions that simplify complex SAP transformation programs while minimizing business disruption. Neeraj’s experience will help us further expand our market presence and strengthen our partner-first strategy to deliver scalable, software-led transformation outcomes.”

About SNP

SNP (ticker: SHF.DE) is the global technology platform leader and trusted partner for companies seeking unparalleled data-enabled transformation capabilities and business agility. SNP’s Kyano^® platform integrates all necessary capabilities and partner offerings to provide comprehensive software-based experience in data migration and management. Combined with the Bluefield^® approach, Kyano sets a comprehensive industry standard for restructuring and modernizing enterprise data faster and more securely while harnessing AI-driven innovations based on over 30 years of experience.

The company works with more than 3,000 customers of all sizes and in all industries in over 80 countries, including numerous DAX 40 and Fortune 500 companies. The SNP Group has more than 1,700 employees worldwide at over 34 locations in 22 countries. The company is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and generated revenues of around EUR 297 million in the 2025 fiscal year.

More information is available at www.snpgroup.com

Acumatica team with Vista Equity Partners and Summit Consulting Services at Hyderabad
 

The Hyderabad GCC joins Acumatica's existing operations across the United States, Canada, Serbia, and Sri Lanka. Initially focused on engineering, the center also creates opportunities for Acumatica to expand into additional disciplines over time and support continued regional growth.
 

"We have created the core of our growth engine in India with an initial seed, and we look forward to it becoming a mature tree and a major contributor to the success of Acumatica customers and Acumatica itself,” said Miten Mehta, Chief Engineering Officer of Acumatica. “India’s deep engineering talent pool, thriving technology ecosystem, and growing reputation as a destination for global innovation centers makes Hyderabad the ideal home for this next chapter of how we deliver value to small and mid-sized businesses.”
 

The new office provides a collaborative environment where Acumatica’s India-based team can develop products and capabilities that benefit customers around the world. The new center reflects Acumatica's long-term commitment to building a diverse, globally distributed engineering organization capable of driving sustained growth and customer impact.
 

Acumatica’s Hyderabad center is established in partnership with Summit Consulting Services, an ANSR company, recognized leaders in building and scaling GCCs. The collaboration brings structured capability design, talent strategy, and operational scaling expertise to Acumatica’s Hyderabad expansion.
 

Acumatica is actively hiring engineering talent for the Hyderabad GCC. To explore career opportunities, visit www.acumatica.com/careers/.

About Acumatica

Acumatica Cloud ERP is a comprehensive business management solution that was born in the cloud and built for more connected, collaborative ways of working. Designed explicitly to enable small and mid-market companies to thrive in today’s digital economy, Acumatica’s flexible solution, customer-friendly business practices and industry-specific functionality help growing businesses adapt to fast-moving markets and take control of their future.

For more information, visit acumatica.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

MAHE, Microsoft & Hitachi Systems India leadership at the launch of the AI Lab at TAPMI Manipal

The Microsoft Labs will be established at T A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Manipal; T A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Bengaluru; Manipal School of Commerce and Economics (MSCE), Manipal; Manipal Institute of Commerce, Finance and Economics (MICFE), Bengaluru; and Manipal Law School (MLS), Bengaluru. The labs will provide students and faculty with access to cutting-edge technologies and hands-on learning experiences, while supporting interdisciplinary research and industry-academia collaboration.

The labs will provide access to AI and other digital technologies, creating dedicated platforms for hands-on learning, experimentation, interdisciplinary research, and innovation. The initiative will also strengthen industry-academia engagement by enabling students and faculty to align academic learning with evolving industry requirements and real-world applications.

The event was attended by Mr Puneet Chandok, President and CEO of Microsoft India and South Asia; Mr Raj Kamal Singhal, CEO of Hitachi Systems India; and Mr Venkat Krishnan, Executive Director at Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt. Ltd. Dr Sharath K. Rao, Vice Chancellor, MAHE, chaired the event.

The two-day programme included interactions between the leadership of Microsoft and Hitachi Systems India and the MAHE community. The discussions focused on emerging opportunities in artificial intelligence, digital education, research, and the preparation for future skill requirements.

As part of the launch programme, MAHE also hosted a panel discussion titled “Beyond the Hype: How AI Is Reshaping Work, Business, and Society.” The discussion explored AI’s growing impact across workplaces, businesses, education, and society, and highlighted the need for responsible adoption and future-ready capabilities.

Dr H S Ballal, Pro Chancellor, MAHE, said, “MAHE has always believed in staying ahead of change rather than reacting to it. The launch of these AI Labs, in partnership with Microsoft and Hitachi, is a continuation of that founding vision, building an institution where innovation and ethics advance together.”

Dr Sharath K. Rao, Vice Chancellor, MAHE, said, “The MAHE-Microsoft Partnership marks an important step in our journey towards creating a technology-enabled and future-ready higher education ecosystem. Artificial intelligence and cloud technologies are transforming the way we learn, work, and innovate, and it is essential that our students and faculty engage with these technologies through meaningful, hands-on experiences. The establishment of Microsoft Labs across five of our constituent institutions will strengthen opportunities for experiential learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, research, and innovation.”

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Puneet Chandok, President, Microsoft India and South Asia, said, “India’s young talent has the potential to shape the next wave of AI-led innovation, and partnerships between academia and industry are critical to unlocking that potential. Our collaboration with MAHE will bring students and faculty closer to the technologies, tools, and skills that are shaping the future of work. The Microsoft Labs across five MAHE institutions will provide a platform for hands-on learning, experimentation, and innovation, helping learners move beyond understanding AI to applying it responsibly to solve real-world challenges.”

Mr Raj Kamal Singhal, CEO, Hitachi Systems India, said, “The convergence of technology, education, and industry is essential to building the workforce and solutions needed for a rapidly evolving digital economy. We are pleased to be part of this initiative with MAHE and Microsoft, which brings together academic expertise and industry capabilities to create meaningful opportunities for learning and innovation. As AI and cloud technologies continue to transform businesses, initiatives such as these can help students develop practical skills, embrace continuous learning, and apply technology to address problems.”

“As AI rapidly moves from experimentation to real-world application, building the right combination of technology capabilities, practical skills and industry understanding will be critical. Our association with MAHE and Microsoft provides an opportunity to bring industry perspectives closer to academia and help students understand how emerging technologies can address real business and societal challenges. At Hitachi Systems India, we believe such collaborations can play an important role in developing future-ready talent while fostering responsible and meaningful technology-led innovation.”              

The MAHE-Microsoft Partnership enhances technology-driven education and innovation, creating an environment where academic knowledge, industry insights, and emerging technologies converge to equip learners for the evolving needs of the global economy.

About Manipal Academy of Higher Education

Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) is an Institution of Eminence Deemed to be University. MAHE offers over 400 specialisations across the Health Sciences (HS), Management, Law, Humanities & Social Sciences (MLHS), and Technology & Science (T&S) streams through its constituent units at campuses in Manipal, Mangalore, Bengaluru, Jamshedpur, and Dubai. With a remarkable track record in academics, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and significant contributions to research, MAHE has earned recognition and acclaim both nationally and internationally. In 2020, the Ministry of  Education, Government of India, awarded MAHE the prestigious Institution of Eminence status. Currently ranked 3^rd in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2025 rankings, MAHE is the preferred choice for students seeking a transformative learning experience and enriching campus life, as well as for national and multinational corporations seeking top talent.

About Microsoft India

Microsoft India enables individuals and organisations to achieve more through innovative cloud, AI, productivity, and digital transformation solutions. The company works closely with educational institutions, enterprises, startups, and government organisations to drive technology-led growth and innovation.

About Hitachi Systems India Pvt. Ltd.

Hitachi Systems India Pvt. Ltd. is a leading IT services and digital transformation company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Systems, Ltd., leveraging deep domain expertise, advanced technology capabilities, and the strength of the Hitachi Group. The company provides end-to-end services spanning cloud, cybersecurity, data centre, and network services, observability services, managed services, and enterprise technology solutions across India.

Vineet Jain, CEO, BlueRose Technologies
 

“Every breach in physical custody shares the same root cause—somewhere along the chain, someone gained unauthorized access without immediate detection,” said Vineet Jain, CEO of BlueRose Technologies. “Diamond makes undetected intrusion impossible. It doesn’t just lock high-stakes consignments away; it actively stands guard, enforces multi-factor custody protocols, and reports anomalies in real time. That is the level of assurance secure physical logistics has always required.”

The Core Problem: The Silent Threat in Physical Transport

For governments, legal institutions, financial organizations, and regulatory bodies, transporting confidential paper documents and high-value materials remains a critical vulnerability. Traditional chain-of-custody protocols rely heavily on manual processes, padlocks, paper trails, and basic physical seals - leaving a dangerous blind spot where quiet, undetected access or copying can occur during transit. Diamond replaces these passive security measures with an intelligent, active ecosystem that automatically enforces strict rules of custody.

How Diamond Guarantees Secure Physical Delivery

• Geo-Fenced Locking: Each Diamond unit is programmed with the exact geographic coordinates where it is permitted to unlock. Transported anywhere else, the unit remains immutably sealed, ensuring contents are released exclusively within authorized target locations.

• Time-Locked Custody: Every unit operates on a precise temporal window. Materials cannot be accessed before the scheduled time, eliminating early-access exposure, and automated tracking flags any failure to open on schedule.

• Dual-Control Access Control: Unlocking a Diamond container requires two authorized officials acting in tandem, each utilizing cryptographic credentials linked to their personal registered devices. This multi-factor principle eliminates single-point insider threats.

• Continuous Fleet & Journey Monitoring: From dispatch to final arrival, each unit streams status updates to confirm its location, structural integrity, and route alignment. Every step of the journey is logged for complete end-to-end traceability.

• Tamper-Proof Hardware Architecture: Should an intruder attempt to force, breach, or interfere with a unit, Diamond permanently records the event in its onboard memory and triggers an immediate alert—even if power or communications are disrupted. When the container arrives, stakeholders know with complete legal certainty whether the seal held unbroken.

Powered by Advanced Security Technologies

Diamond brings together an enterprise-grade convergence of hardware, software, satellite positioning, real-time fleet telematics, and tamper-evident sensor systems into a single, field-ready platform.

Built with a multi-layered defense architecture, defeating any single safeguard leaves an intruder facing additional security controls and ensures a permanent digital audit trail. The innovations underlying Diamond rely on patent-pending technology, establishing a new standard for physical information security and verifiable custody.

Universal Applications Across High-Stakes Industries

While designed to safeguard the transport of confidential paper records, Diamond’s architecture is purpose-built for any scenario where chain of custody, exact timing, and absolute trust are non-negotiable:

• Education & Academics: Examination materials, standardized test papers, and confidential university certification evaluations.

• Legal & Financial: Classified court filings, sensitive merger-and-acquisition documentation, and confidential contracts.

• Government & Defence: Classified communications, sensitive policy documents, and secure physical keys/credentials.

• High-Value Assets: Regulated materials, high-worth commodities, and sensitive physical media.
   

Wherever institutions need to answer "Who opened this, where, and when—and can it be proven?" Diamond provides an undeniable answer.
 

Availability

Diamond is available now for enterprise, institutional, and government partners. To arrange a briefing or a live demonstration, contact BlueRose Technologies via the details below.
 

BlueRose Technologies Pvt. Ltd.: Ria Jain | email: ria.jain@bluerose-tech.com | Phone: +91 6364 247273
 

Success in today’s payment landscape requires issuers to enhance both the customer experience and the efficiency of their internal operations. 

For cardholders, payment experiences are expected to be instant, seamless, and connected across both physical and digital channels. Customers increasingly demand faster card delivery, premium personalization, instant activation, real-time card controls, instant digital issuance, push provisioning to mobile wallets, and secure frictionless payments—all directly accessible through their banking applications.

For issuers, these expectations require modern infrastructure that supports real-time issuance, production, tracking, digitization capabilities, and API-driven issuance operations to support stock and forecast management. Banks and fintechs require standardized APIs to support instant issuance and digital use cases and simplify integration by minimizing connections to third-party platforms and mobile apps.

Personalization as a Service: The digital backbone of modern payment card journeys
Since March 2025, IST has rolled out a new suite of APIs that modernize how issuers, IST personalization centers, and delivery systems interact. These APIs enable every step of the card issuance process—from order to delivery—to be tracked in near real-time. Card personalization APIs redefine what’s possible by converting a static production step into a dynamic, connected service. This shift creates the digital backbone that powers real-time issuance, automated workflows, and an entire ecosystem of real-time digital services throughout the payment credential lifecycle.

“The shift to API-based personalization is about unlocking new value potential for our customers. It unlocks operations from batch constraints, real-time innovation for customer experience teams, and frees up workflows from manual silos. Issuers don’t just become more efficient; they become more agile, more responsive, and better equipped to deliver the personalized experiences customers now expect. That’s the real power of this transformation,” said Elyette Roux, EVP Payment Services, IST.

A comprehensive API suite covering the full card lifecycle
Building on its personalization capabilities, IST is expanding its offering with a new suite of APIs that spans from physical card personalization to full digitalization services and beyond. These modular building blocks enable issuers to easily access, combine, and scale a comprehensive set of payment capabilities, accelerating innovation while reducing integration and operational complexity.

Designed to connect seamlessly with issuer back-end systems (including Card Management Systems and Authorization Servers) as well as mobile applications, the IST APIs are organized into five core service families aligned with the card lifecycle.

• Issuance APIs: Enables issuers to orchestrate and automate the complete card issuance lifecycle covering the creation, personalization, provisioning, and delivery of physical and digital payment cards. For physical cards, these APIs support card pulls, inventory management, PIN/CVV generation etc.

• Lifecycle APIs: Allow issuers to manage the full physical and digital card lifecycle in real-time, including production and shipment status updates, PIN services, renewals, replacements, and tokens and wallet management. Issuers can also securely process and orchestrate proximity and remote digital payment transactions and card services in real-time, including wallet interactions, workflow authorizations, tokenized payment transactions, and fraud controls.

• Authentication APIs: Enables strong and secure end-user FIDO-based authentication, especially in the context of online operations and agent-initiated payments.

• Customer Experience APIs and Mobile SDKs: Exposes mobile-first card services designed to enhance cardholder experiences directly within banking applications, including card art selection, card delivery tracking, access to digital inserts, card activation, secure display of card details and PIN, virtual card generation, push provisioning to mobile wallets, mobile authentication, and tap-to-pay enablement.

• Payment Cryptography & Key Management APIs: Enables banks to secure their payment card issuance infrastructure with our HSM-as-a-Service, managing cryptographic keys, encryption, and transaction signing. Issuers can also access the IST test environment to explore the quantum-ready cryptographic library and build future-proof applications.

With more than 700 million physical payment products issued in 2025, IST combines proven expertise in large-scale physical card issuance with advanced digital payment capabilities. As a major independent tokenization provider, the company has now provisioned more than 500 million payment tokens across a wide variety of digital payment use cases. Built on PCI-certified, resilient, secure, and scalable SaaS platforms, IST’s API-driven services enable issuers to accelerate innovation while benefiting from a flexible business model and modular approach, allowing issuers to select and consume only the services they need.

Nicole Eberhardt, Global Chief Executive Officer, Asset Vantage

Today, Asset Vantage supports more than 400 families across 10 countries, helping manage over USD 400 billion in assets through a unified platform that brings together data aggregation, accounting, portfolio reporting and analytics, and document management. The platform provides family offices and their trusted advisors, including Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) and Multi-Family Offices (MFOs), with a single source of truth across entities, currencies, and asset classes. By bringing together the general ledger and the investments book, it delivers secure, audit-ready data while ensuring clients retain complete ownership and control of their information. In addition, the platform safeguards highly sensitive financial information while supporting the governance needs of modern family offices.

Nicole's appointment comes as family offices navigate increasing complexity across global investments, governance, reporting and cross-border structures, while artificial intelligence reshapes the future of wealth management. She brings more than 25 years of experience in financial services technology. An accountant by training, Nicole has spent her career building and scaling the accounting and reporting platforms relied upon by family offices, alternative investment managers and their trusted advisors.

Sunil K. Dalal, Founder & Chairman, UNIDEL Group, said, “Asset Vantage was founded on a simple belief - that family offices deserve technology built around their real-time financial operations needs. As we look to the future, our ambition is to evolve on the back of our deep domain expertise, continuous innovation, and enduring client trust. Nicole embodies these values. She brings the experience, judgement and leadership to guide Asset Vantage through its next phase of growth while remaining true to the principles on which it was built.” 

Nicole Eberhardt, Global Chief Executive Officer, Asset Vantage, said, “Clients today expect more than technology - they need a trusted partner with stable ownership that helps them navigate increasing complexity with confidence. Our focus will be on continuing investments in a platform that gives clients greater clarity, control and agility as their needs evolve, and helping family offices, complex asset allocators, CPA firms, and MFOs, manage wealth with confidence across generations. I am excited to lead Asset Vantage into its next chapter, continuing to strengthen our capabilities and create long-term value for family offices around the world.”

Originally developed to manage the family office of UNIDEL's founder, Asset Vantage remains one of the few platforms built on a native general ledger architecture rather than disconnected reporting systems. By combining accounting and reporting in a single platform, it enables family offices to operate with greater transparency, efficiency, and confidence.

About Asset Vantage
Asset Vantage, a UNIDEL Company, founded in 2011, empowers families and their trusted advisors with integrated solutions that deliver deep insights into investments and enhanced control over their financial legacy. Powered by integrated general ledger capabilities and advanced performance reporting, the platform delivers a complete, real-time view of assets, liabilities, and overall wealth, enabling principals and their trusted advisors to make confident, informed decisions. Today, Asset Vantage supports more than 400 families across 10+ countries and helps oversee more than USD 400 billion in assets.

For more information, visit www.assetvantage.com.

DS Group Leads the Digital Transformation Dialogue in FMCG with ASCEND 2026

The event showcased practical applications across Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, Agentic AI, Machine Learning, Data Analytics, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Data Privacy, Enterprise Applications, Robotic Process Automation, Industry 4.0 and Sustainability Technologies. Leading technology partners including SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce, Snowflake, PwC, EY, Deloitte, Grant Thornton, Bizom, Mitsubishi, PeopleStrong, o9 Solutions and others demonstrated how emerging technologies are creating measurable business impact across industries. Employees experienced interactive technology showcases, live demonstrations, expert sessions, workshops, panel discussions, innovation labs and immersive learning experiences designed to encourage experimentation and accelerate digital adoption across every function.

Over the last three years, DS Group has significantly accelerated its digital transformation journey by doubling its technology investments, expanding its technology ecosystem from nearly 20 partners to over 50, and implementing enterprise-wide digital solutions across multiple businesses. As it approaches its centenary, the DS Group plans to triple its investments in technology, recognising digital innovation as a key enabler of future growth. 

Santosh K Singh, Senior Vice President, Information Technology, DS Group, said, “Technology today is not merely about digitising processes; it is about reimagining the way businesses create value. At DS Group, every technology investment is guided by one principle, business impact. Whether it is AI-powered decision-making, intelligent supply chains, cloud transformation or enterprise-wide data capabilities, technology must enable faster decisions, greater efficiency and sustainable growth. As we move towards becoming a Rs. 20,000 crore organisation by our centenary year, technology will be one of our strongest growth enablers. Our objective is to build a future-ready enterprise where innovation is embedded across every business, every function and every employee. ASCEND 2026 reflects that vision by bringing together people, ideas and technology on one platform to accelerate learning, collaboration and transformation.”

ASCEND also reflected DS Group’s commitment to responsible growth. Conducted as a paperless, digital-first event, it demonstrated how technology can simultaneously enhance operational efficiency while supporting sustainability goals. More than a technology showcase, ASCEND 2026 represented a cultural shift, one that encourages curiosity, continuous learning and cross-functional collaboration. It highlighted DS Group’s commitment to staying ahead of the technology curve by adopting new technologies and best practices in the industry, ensuring the organisation remains relevant, resilient and future-ready in an increasingly digital world.

With the successful conclusion of ASCEND 2026, DS Group has strengthened its position as one of the few FMCG organisations driving an enterprise-wide conversation on digital transformation, demonstrating that the future of business will be shaped not just by products and brands, but by the intelligent application of technology across the entire value chain.

About DS Group
The DS Group (Dharampal Satyapal Group) is a one of the leading FMCG conglomerates and a Multi-Business Corporation with a strong Indian and International presence. Founded in the year 1929, it is an inspiring and successful business story that blends a remarkable history and legacy with visionary growth. It has an extensive and diverse portfolio with presence in Food and Beverage, Confectionery, Mouth Freshener, Hospitality, Agri, Luxury Retail businesses, and other investments. Catch, Pulse, Pass Pass, Silver Pearls, Ksheer, Rajnigandha, Ovino, L’Opera, Le Marche, Birthright, LuvIt, Chingles, Golmol, Namah are some of the leading brands, the Group proudly shelters today.

As a corporate, DS Group is guided by a clear set of values that are built on a strong foundation of collective good to give back to society and protect the planet. The DS Headquarters has been awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification, under the USGBC (US Green Building Council) existing building O&M (Operation and Maintenance) program version 4.0. The DS Headquarters has also received LEED Zero Carbon Certification, by the USGBC. DS Group has aligned its financial performance with global ESG priorities with the launch of a pioneering Double Materiality Assessment across all businesses. Further demonstrating its environmental leadership, the DS Group has a water positivity index at 1.8 across its business units in 30 locations of India.

For details, log onto www.dsgroup.com

This expansion featured the availability of Agentforce, Salesforce's platform for building, deploying and scaling AI agents, and Data 360, the engine that unifies data and insights, giving AI the context it requires. Core applications like Agentforce Sales, Agentforce Service, Slack, and Tableau Next are also included, providing a complete foundation for customers.

By purchasing Salesforce products in AWS Marketplace, businesses in India can simplify procurement and IT management processes while benefiting from features such as consolidated billing, customized pricing, and a centralized view of their technology investments. This collaboration between Salesforce and AWS, first established in 2016, underscores both companies' commitment to delivering innovative solutions powered by data and agentic artificial intelligence. These technologies empower businesses to integrate advanced capabilities into their daily operations securely and responsibly.

Comments on the news
Mankiran Chowhan, Managing director at Salesforce India, said, "Indian enterprises are no longer asking if AI will transform their business, they know it will. The challenge is turning that ambition into action. Complex procurement processes, siloed data, and disconnected systems often slow down AI adoption. By bringing Salesforce to AWS Marketplace in India, we are making it easier for businesses to access and deploy our solutions through an infrastructure they already trust and use. This will help customers move faster, maximize their existing cloud investments, and accelerate time-to-value from their AI and digital transformation initiatives."

Customers in India can now purchase Salesforce products directly through AWS Marketplace today. For more information about product availability and details, visit www.salesforce.com/partners/aws.

About Salesforce
Salesforce helps organizations of any size become agentic enterprises - integrating humans, agents, apps, and data on a trusted, unified platform to unlock unprecedented growth and innovation. Visit www.salesforce.com/in/ for more information.

Pricing and packaging are subject to change. Availability may vary by region and is governed by customer agreements. Customers should base purchasing decisions on products and services currently available.

About Amazon Web Services India Services Private Limited 
Amazon Web Services India Private Limited undertakes the resale and marketing of AWS Cloud services in India.

^{*Salesforce, the #1 CRM, powered by AI technology and capabilities.}

According to the research, customer expectations are rising rapidly as organizations seek integrated outcomes across AI, cybersecurity, hybrid cloud, automation, analytics and managed services. Vendors and partners increasingly struggle to meet those market demands independently with solutions requiring cross-platform integration, multi-vendor coordination, lifecycle support and operational consistency.

The GTDC and Channelnomics report validates distribution's position as the connective layer that closes these execution gaps. Through partner enablement, technical resources, financing, marketplace operations, compliance support, lifecycle management and ecosystem orchestration, distributors empower vendors and solution providers, allowing channel partners to deliver outcomes that no single organization can efficiently provide alone.

"Technology innovation is creating tremendous opportunities, but it is also making go-to-market execution more complex," said Frank Vitagliano, CEO of GTDC. "Distributors have continued to invest in the platforms, programs, services and expertise needed to help vendors and partners bring AI, cloud, cybersecurity and other advanced solutions to market more efficiently. This research reinforces what we see every day across the IT ecosystem: distribution is becoming more valuable because it helps turn innovation into scalable execution."

According to the report, distribution can raise execution capability to more than 80% across key go-to-market functions and motions. Vendors leveraging distribution strategically also improve operational efficiency, partner readiness, sales velocity, market reach, forecasting discipline and customer retention. The research further identifies meaningful economic benefits, including 15%-52% cost savings and 4x-8.5x ROI.

"Customers are no longer buying isolated products or stand-alone services; they expect integrated outcomes delivered across increasingly complex ecosystems," said Larry Walsh, CEO and Chief Analyst at Channelnomics. "That creates a gap between what clients need and what vendors or partners can consistently deliver on their own. Distribution overcomes those obstacles by aggregating the resources, capabilities and operational infrastructure required to execute at scale."

The study highlights several key findings, including:

• Execution is a true constraint. The market challenge is less about innovation and more about delivering integrated outcomes consistently at scale.

• Customer expectations exceed channel capability. For example, 76% of customers see multi-vendor systems support as a critical need, but only 22% believe IT partners have that capability. While 70% value AI integration, only 38% see sufficient expertise in this area.

• Vendors need strategic distribution support. Top vendor priorities include demonstrable ROI and value visibility (88%), strategic GTM alignment (85%), and partner recruitment and enablement (83%).

• Partners need distribution to manage complexity. The top priority is ecosystem access, multi-vendor integration and solution bundling (91%), followed by AI-driven technical support (89%).

• Distribution is becoming a force multiplier. In addition to helping vendors scale ecosystem selling, distributors reduce operational friction, support recurring revenue, expand reach and improve customer outcomes.

The report also outlines a vendor playbook for scaling ecosystem execution, recommending that vendors align distributors to their go-to-market strategies, build ecosystem-led sales models, accelerate AI readiness, expand marketplace and lifecycle operations, improve API and workflow integration, and modernize performance measurement.

The full report, The Evolving Role of Distribution in Technology Go-To-Market Models, as well as other industry research and resources, is available at no cost on the GTDC Knowledge Hub.
 

About the GTDC
The Global Technology Distribution Council is the industry consortium representing the world's leading tech distributors. GTDC members drive more than $200 billion in annual worldwide sales of products, services and solutions through diverse business channels. GTDC conferences support the development and expansion of strategic supply-chain partnerships that continually address the fast-changing marketplace needs of vendors, end customers and distributors. GTDC members include AB S.A, Arrow Electronics, CMS Distribution, Computer Gross Italia S.p.A., D&H Distributing, ELKO Group, Esprinet S.p.A., Exclusive Networks, Infinigate, Ingram Micro, Intcomex, Logicom Public Limited, Mindware, ​Nexora, Redington Limited, SiS Technologies, Tarsus Distribution, TD SYNNEX, TIM AG, VSTECS Holdings Limited and Westcon-Comstor.

SwiftPAL earns a place in the Global EdTech Prize 2026 top 25 shortlist, spotlighting its mission to close learning gaps at scale across India

Judged by educators themselves, the prize provides a vital platform to help companies and organisations scale their products, tools, or services and their impact worldwide. It celebrates EdTechs that are making a real difference to the next generation and champions innovative tech solutions that actually work for the people who matter most – educators, their students, and their communities.

The prize is awarded in three categories: Majors, Start-ups, and Non-profits, with winners announced live at the World Schools Summit in London on January 17, 2027.

Vikas Pota, Founder of T4 Education and the Global EdTech Prize, said, “I want to congratulate SwiftPAL from ConveGenius.AI in India on being named in the Top 25 shortlists for this, the second Global EdTech Prize.

Technology in the classroom holds the enormous potential to close learning gaps and fully equip today’s young people for the rapidly emerging workplace of tomorrow. But we can only harness technology effectively when it is made to work for educators to tackle the challenges they face every day.

Judged by educators themselves, the Global EdTech Prize exists to bridge the gap between technology and teachers and give a global platform to the solutions that are making a real impact in classrooms so that impact can be scaled worldwide.”

Shashank Pandey, Co-Founder, ConveGenius.AI  said, Over the last decade, we have learned that learning outcomes at scale improve when policy, budgets, programmes, technology, and people work in harmony. Technology and AI can be powerful accelerators when aligned with national priorities and implemented well.

Independent third-party research shows that students using ConveGenius’ PAL platform learn 2.3 times faster, helping bridge years of accumulated learning gaps.

Being named a global finalist for the Global EdTech Prize 2026 is a tremendous honour. It validates a decade of conviction, execution, and partnership with state governments to create a level playing field for every child.

About SwiftPAL by ConveGenius

SwiftPAL is ConveGenius's personalised adaptive learning platform, built for learners of Bharat to support them with their journey towards their grade-level outcomes. SwiftPAL starts the journey with each learner at their present-day level, moving with them at their pace.

We are all aware that ASER 2024 found that only 23.4% of Std III children in government schools can read a Std II-level text, even though 98% of children that age are enrolled in school. Globally, the World Bank and UNESCO describe this as "learning poverty", estimating that 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text. This is the specific gap SwiftPAL has been built to close: the gap between being enrolled in school and actually learning at grade level.

SwiftPAL works by first diagnosing what a learner actually knows, rather than what their textbook assumes they should know by now, using adaptive assessments that identify missed concepts and gaps from previous grades. Based on this diagnosis, it builds an individual learning path unique to each learner instead of assigning the same grade-level content to everyone. A learner who is lacking in understanding and application of a particular concept is given ample guided practice followed by opportunities to demonstrate their gained mastery. Students work through videos, practice questions, hints and retries on the devices inside school ICT labs, dedicating two class periods a week to catching up with their grade-level concepts via SwiftPal. This is how SwiftPAL supports learners demonstrating measurable learning gains and catching up with their grade-level concepts.

An independent randomised controlled trial by the University of Chicago's Development Innovation Lab, led by Nobel laureate Dr Michael Kremer, tracked SwiftPAL across 120 schools in all 26 districts of Andhra Pradesh over 17 months. The study validated that students using SwiftPAL learned 2.3 times faster than expected, clocking in close to two additional years of learning.

In Uttar Pradesh, under India's first outcomes-based financing model in public education, students using SwiftPAL outperformed peers by 16 to 54 percentage points across subjects, evaluated independently across 280 schools, covering 72,000 students.

In Rajasthan, the programme has scaled from a 60-school pilot to more than 3,700 schools on government mandate.

SwiftPAL now reaches over 4 million students across 15,000+ schools, in 22 Indian states and 145 districts, at a cost of USD 10–35 per student per year. The programme has been recognised with the CIPS Innovation Award 2025, named a Government of India GeM Top Seller in the Startup Category, and awarded Best Personalised and Adaptive Learning Solution at the 16th World Education Summit.
 

About T4 Education

We believe every child, everywhere, deserves a good education. We are building the world's largest community of teachers and schools to achieve this. Together. Our digital media platform provides opportunities for educators to network, collaborate, share good practices, and support each other's efforts to improve learning and school culture. We work to amplify teachers’ voices because the world we want to see will only be built by listening to those at the heart of education.

What’s Next?

The Global EdTech Prize is awarded annually in three categories: Majors, Start-ups, and Non-Profits, recognising outstanding EdTech products, tools, or services based on rigorous criteria.

The top 10 finalists for each of the three categories will be announced in September, with finalists invited to the World Schools Summit, where they will showcase their work before an expert panel comprising leading figures in the technology and education sectors, including investors and policymakers from around the world.

The expert panel will narrow down the final 3 per category who will present their products and tools before educators at the World Schools Summit. Educators will vote by secret ballot to determine the winner of each category, and they will be announced live on stage at the culmination of the summit.

Under the agreement, Fikra Ventures is Glimmer’s exclusive commercialisation, marketing and distribution partner in the Gulf region. Fikra Ventures will use that position to build a new portfolio company to deploy Glimmer’s FinomeAI suite for enterprises across the region.

The new company will develop Arabic-language and regionally compliant solutions on top of Glimmer’s products, reducing the localisation and compliance burden on customers and shortening deployment timelines. Fikra Ventures will provide the venture-building, capital, and commercial infrastructure, with Glimmer providing the underlying technology.

Glimmer’s products already operate at production scale, processing more than 1,000,000 loan applications each month across live financial services deployments. To date, the suite has delivered:

• Fraud investigation turnaround reduced from one to two days to 20–30 minutes per case at a financial institution, with an audit-ready log trail generated automatically

• An 8% lift in onboarding conversion for a non-bank lender, with customer acquisition spend held flat

• A ~6% improvement in portfolio collection rate at low incremental cost per asset

Glimmer’s enterprise AI platform supports a broad range of complex and regulated workflows, spanning document intelligence, decisioning, conversational journeys, voice automation, personalised video, model development, policy intelligence and enterprise knowledge access. Its products include Data Quotient for explainable, audit-ready decisioning; ConvFlow for guided conversational journeys across customer acquisition, onboarding and servicing; Klaris for end-to-end voice automation across high-volume customer interactions; SynthVid for personalised video at scale; and Meridian for faster model development and deployment.

The new company will run regional go-to-market and customer support, from pilots through production deployment. Early focus areas span collections, customer acquisition, onboarding, servicing, marketing outreach, underwriting, fraud investigation and regulatory workflows.

“Fikra turns proven global technology into regional companies. Glimmer’s platform processes over one million loan applications a month, giving us the foundation to build a significant Gulf business,” said Wael Aburida, Founder & Managing Partner of Fikra Ventures. “Banks, lenders, telecom operators and large enterprises here are actively looking for solutions that improve conversion, reduce costs and deliver better customer outcomes at scale. This partnership gives us the technology, venture-building structure and commercial access to pursue that opportunity.”

The initial commercialisation effort will focus on financial services and lending, where institutions face pressure to modernise collections, customer communication, underwriting and operating workflows without compromising governance or control. Over time, the companies see scope to extend these capabilities to other high-volume enterprise environments facing similar challenges around automation, decision-making and customer engagement.

“Our partnership with Fikra Ventures gives us the regional relationships, market understanding and commercial platform to take our capabilities to enterprises across the Gulf,” said Saurabh Nigam, Chief Executive Officer of Glimmer Technologies. “Enterprise AI creates real value when it moves beyond experimentation and becomes part of the workflows that businesses depend on every day. We have built and proven our technology in complex, high-volume environments where accuracy, governance and measurable outcomes matter. Together, we can help enterprises use AI to make better decisions, automate critical processes and deliver more intelligent customer experiences at scale.”

The companies will begin with Arabic-localised product demonstrations and market-specific pilots for enterprise customers in the Gulf, with plans to extend into the greater MENA region. Initial demonstrations will include Arabic and bilingual use cases across collections, marketing outreach, conversational onboarding, voice automation and document-led decisioning.

The partnership extends Fikra Ventures’ model of turning commercially relevant AI into companies with clear pathways to regional adoption and international scale.

About Glimmer Technologies

Glimmer Technologies is an enterprise AI company building the future of financial intelligence. Operating at the intersection of deep AI capability and real-world enterprise workflows, Glimmer develops intelligent platforms that help businesses interpret complex data, make faster decisions, automate operations, and deliver better customer journeys.

Its ecosystem brings together FinomeAI, a GenAI intelligence platform for document processing, risk insights, compliance, customer journeys, and operational automation; Flo, a configurable lending stack for digital credit operations across LOS, LMS, and modular workflows; and ZestMoney, one of India’s widely known Buy Now, Pay Later platforms.

To know more, please visit: www.glimmertech.in

About Fikra Ventures

Fikra Ventures is a global AI-native venture studio that builds and scales applied AI companies. The studio combines venture ideation, technical execution, strategic partnerships, founder development, and commercialisation support to create ventures with clear market relevance.

Fikra Ventures works with founders, technical leaders, corporates, governments, universities, investors, and strategic partners to turn commercially relevant AI opportunities into scalable companies. Fikra Ventures Holdings Limited is registered in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM).

For more information, visit www.fikra.ventures and follow us on @fikraventures #fikraventures.

SAP Learning Hub, student edition

A student graduating in Bengaluru or Pune might, within months, be collaborating with colleagues in Berlin or clients in Singapore. Workplaces have moved faster than classrooms in this respect, and that gap is exactly why continuous learning now matters almost as much as the degree itself.

Enterprise technology is a big part of that gap. Large organizations run on integrated systems that touch everything from finance and procurement to supply chains and customer service. Most students never encounter these systems until they’re already on the job, at which point they’re expected to learn them on the fly.

SAP thinks students shouldn’t have to wait that long. Through SAP Learning Hub, student edition, eligible final-year college and university students in India get free access to premium SAP learning resources once they complete academic verification — no subscription, no hidden cost. Students pick learning journeys based on what interests them, sit in on expert-led sessions, get hands-on time with real practice systems, and join a learning community that stretches well beyond their own campus. The program also covers two SAP Certification exam attempts, so students walk away with credentials employers recognize internationally.

“Today's careers are rarely confined to one geography,” says David Chaviano, Program Manager, SAP Learning Hub, student edition. “Students who understand how businesses operate, and who keep learning throughout their careers, will be better prepared to succeed in an increasingly connected economy.”

None of this is limited to engineering or computer science students, either. Whether you’re studying commerce, management, or a technical discipline, there are learning paths in finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, customer experience, analytics, and business technology. The goal isn’t to churn out software users, it’s to help students understand how modern organizations actually function.

Global careers, it turns out, usually start with local preparation. Getting a head start on industry-relevant skills before graduation can make that first jump from campus to workplace feel a lot less daunting, and considerably more rewarding. For India’s graduates entering an increasingly connected economy, understanding how global businesses work may end up mattering just as much as the degree hanging on the wall.

Eligible final-year students can register for SAP Learning Hub, student edition at https://learning.sap.com/free-student-edition

Agentforce Sales brings structure and visibility to the revenue engine. Instead of relying on spreadsheets, manual updates or one individual to maintain customer records, businesses get a real-time view of every lead, opportunity and pipeline. Automated lead assignment, workflow automation and mobile access help sales teams move faster, while built-in AI capabilities—including opportunity scoring, forecasting and intelligent recommendations—help teams focus on the opportunities that matter most without requiring specialist expertise.

For many SMBs, the biggest challenge isn't adopting new technology—it's getting people to use it. That's where Slack becomes a powerful advantage. Already familiar and loved by many growing businesses, Slack has evolved beyond team messaging to become the "work operating system" where employees collaborate, make decisions and keep work moving. From sales and customer support to HR, IT, operations and external collaboration, teams work together in one place. For smaller businesses, where employees wear multiple hats, every hour saved has an outsized impact on productivity and growth.

Tableau completes the picture by turning business data into actionable insights. Rather than waiting for static reports or manually compiled spreadsheets, founders and business leaders can monitor pipeline health, revenue trends and business performance through live, mobile-friendly dashboards. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes analytics accessible to every business user, while native connectivity with Salesforce provides real-time visibility into sales performance without the complexity of separate data warehouses or extensive integration projects.

Together, Agentforce Sales, Slack and Tableau create a connected operating system for growth—helping Indian SMBs sell smarter, collaborate faster and make confident decisions, all from a single platform that can be deployed in just four-six weeks. The SMB Growth Kit will be available immediately and includes structured onboarding, hands-on setup and post-go-live support. Teams can adopt AI-ready systems without turning implementation into another operational burden. The offering will be delivered in collaboration with select Salesforce reseller partners across India, helping ensure SMB customers receive a consistent onboarding, implementation and go-live experience.

Additional Comments on the News:

Mankiran Chowhan, Managing Director, Salesforce India, said, “India’s SMBs are moving quickly toward AI, but ambition alone is not enough. Many businesses are investing in AI, but far fewer have implemented it because their customer data, team conversations and business insights are still scattered. SMB Growth Kit gives growing businesses one connected system where sales activity, team conversations and live insights work together — helping teams act with more confidence, fewer blind spots and less guesswork.”

Swaroop Kaja, RVP - Sales, Salesforce India, said, “We launched SMB Growth Kit to give growing businesses one connected way to run sales, collaborate on deals and understand business performance in real time. With Agentforce Sales, Slack and Tableau working together, teams can spend less time chasing updates and more time moving customers forward. That is the immediate value: clearer pipeline, faster decisions and fewer blind spots. As these businesses grow, that connected data foundation also gives them a stronger base for using AI in ways that are trusted, useful and grounded in the reality of their business.”

Availability

SMB Growth Kit is available in India for small and medium businesses, exclusively through select Salesforce reseller partners. Salesforce teams support customers with structured onboarding, hands-on setup and post-go-live support, with businesses designed to be live and operational within four-six weeks of starting.

*Salesforce, the #1 CRM, powered by AI technology and capabilities.

About Salesforce

Salesforce helps organizations of any size become agentic enterprises - integrating humans, agents, apps, and data on a trusted, unified platform to unlock unprecedented growth and innovation.

Visit www.salesforce.com/in/ for more information.

Disclaimer: Pricing and packaging are subject to change. Availability may vary by region and is governed by customer agreements. Customers should base purchasing decisions on products and services currently available.

CloudifyOps | MIXIMO

Built with an AI-first approach, MIXIMO helps organizations understand their infrastructure and applications, map dependencies, and make migration decisions based on real utilization data rather than guesswork. Supporting AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform as both source and target environments, it enables both on-premises-to-cloud and multi-cloud transformation through one platform.

Sushanth Bellapu, Founder and CTO, CloudifyOps / MIXIMO, said, “The industry has long treated cloud migration as a logistics problem. MIXIMO reframes it as an intelligence problem. Built by engineers who have navigated large-scale transformations firsthand, MIXIMO applies AI to understand applications, dependencies, and modernisation opportunities before a single workload moves. The result is predictable outcomes, lower risk, and infrastructure that is truly cloud-native not just cloud-hosted.”

MIXIMO combines automated infrastructure and application discovery, portfolio assessment, dependency mapping, and AI-driven instance and service recommendations in one platform. Discovery supports agent-based, agentless, and repository-based approaches, enabling assessment at scale.

The platform supports three migration strategies: Rehost, Replatform, and Refactor, making it suitable for different cloud transformation journeys. Its tri-mode instance recommendations provide 1-to-1, cost-effective, and high-performance mapping based on actual source utilization. MIXIMO also automatically generates a visual and actionable End State Blueprint for individual workloads, helping teams plan their migration architecture with greater clarity.

“We are not entering the migration tooling market; we are creating the migration intelligence category,” said Vaitheeswaran Krishna Subramanian, CEO, CloudifyOps. “MIXIMO turns years of migration expertise into a platform, making intelligence-led migration available to any engineering team, at any scale.”

MIXIMO is designed for startups, SMBs, and enterprises across healthcare, BFSI, SaaS and technology, e-commerce, logistics, and manufacturing. For organisations with data sovereignty and compliance requirements particularly in BFSI and healthcare MIXIMO supports self-hosted and hybrid LLM deployment, ensuring sensitive infrastructure data remains within the organisation's own environment.

With MIXIMO, CloudifyOps aims to make cloud transformation more intelligent, predictable and accessible for businesses at every cloud maturity stage.

CloudifyOps is India's leading AI Transformation Partner, helping enterprises move from manual complexity to autonomy through AI, cloud, and intelligent operations. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Bengaluru, with offices in Chennai, Dubai, and the United States, CloudifyOps combines over a decade of mission-critical cloud engineering with purpose-built AI capabilities.

An AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and one of the few organisations in India to hold the AWS AI Services Competency across both Generative AI and Agentic AI, CloudifyOps serves businesses across BFSI, healthcare, SaaS, and enterprise technology sectors in India, the Middle East, and the United States. With a team of over 150 cloud and AI specialists, CloudifyOps delivers AI Transformation, Cloud Transformation and Managed Services.

For more information, cloudifyops.com and miximo.ai.

Union Bank of India Engages Leegality's Consentin for DPDP Compliance

The DPDP Act (Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023) is a new data protection law that strictly regulates how businesses in India can collect, process and use customer data. The Act and accompanying rules have a compliance deadline of May 13, 2027. Every business that handles personal data in India will soon be required to implement systems for consent, data processing, and governance.

Banks handle large volumes of sensitive financial and personal data, making early action on the DPDP Act especially important for the sector. With the compliance deadline approaching, banks are increasingly expected to have their consent and data governance systems ready well ahead of time.

The engagement has already shown initial results, with Cookie Consent being successfully implemented on Union Bank of India’s Corporate Website. Cookies are small files stored by a visitor's browser to remember preferences and track behaviour and under the DPDP Act, they can only be set after a visitor gives clear, informed consent. With the DPDP deadline approaching, businesses across India are now racing to ensure that cookie practices are compliant - making it an early and visible marker of a company's broader compliance efforts.

The implementation of Consent Management and Data Discovery capabilities is currently underway across the Bank’s applications to support its broader data privacy and compliance initiatives. 

Consentin consolidates all of an enterprise's DPDP needs - spanning consent management, privacy notices, data retention and withdrawal, cookie compliance, privacy assessments, third-party risk management, and regulatory breach reporting - into a single, easy-to-use platform. A unified dashboard gives compliance teams complete visibility into consent status and data flows across the organisation. It can be deployed on-prem or as a SaaS solution, depending on the enterprise's infrastructure.

"We're proud to be trusted by an institution of Union Bank of India's scale with its DPDP compliance foundation," said Shivam Singla, CEO, Leegality. "We believe their move will help set the pace for how the wider banking sector approaches privacy compliance." 

About Consentin

Consentin is a DPDP compliance platform, developed by Leegality, built to meet the full spectrum of privacy compliance needs for Indian enterprises through one unified, secure platform.

Leegality is a document infrastructure platform that is used by more than 5000 Indian companies to build paperless workflows for agreements, forms and other legal documents. Every year, Leegality processes over 50 million eSigns and 3 million eStamps.

About Union Bank of India

Union Bank of India is one of the country's leading public sector banks, headquartered in Mumbai and established on November 11, 1919. Today, Union Bank operates a network of 8,675+ domestic branches, 8,650+ ATMs, 73,600+ employees and 26,000+ BC Points with a total business of Rs. 23.85 Lakh Crore.

• Map Lineage: Build comprehensive, interactive family trees that trace ancestral roots and connect extended relatives worldwide.

• Archive Oral Histories: Document complex migration journeys, record grandparents' stories in their own words, and pass down treasured family traditions.

• Preserve Cultural Identity: Securely store private photographs, heirloom recipes, and milestone memories within their true historical context, free from the noise of public social media.

Left to Right: Vineet Jain, Co-Founder and CEO, Tulasidasappa, Co-Founder and COO

The founders envisioned LifeTree as a conscious structured movement to ensure that no family loses its stories, culture or identity to the passage of time. "Over the years, we realized that while technology has helped us stay connected with the world, it has not necessarily helped us stay connected with our own families," said Vineet Jain, Co-Founder & CEO of BlueRose Technologies. “We are aiming to tell the world how to digitally preserve your grandparents’ stories or “Using new tech to break through genealogy brick walls.”. He further continued "Many of the stories, traditions, and experiences that define who we are slowly disappearing. LifeTree was created as a conscious effort to help families preserve those memories and create a legacy that future generations can cherish."

Tulasidasappa, Co-Founder & COO shared that, “It’s been my personal passion and a simple thought that my children to have documented evidence of who are their ancestors and thus LifeTree was created to help families document their past, celebrate their present, and preserve their future, In a world where families are more connected digitally than ever before” LifeTree was born from a shared realization among its founders. Reclaiming the Family Circle from Public social media Unlike conventional social networks engineered for public broadcasting and viral engagement, LifeTree operates as a closed, private ecosystem. The platform addresses a growing global fatigue with mainstream social media, where intimate family moments are often exposed to public scrutiny, data tracking, and algorithmic distractions. By shifting the focus from "likes" to legacy, LifeTree creates a safe space dedicated entirely to authentic family connection."

YouTube link: youtu.be/s3WILRrgsmw?si=hwZxYNQAHU3D9fRz

Built on a foundation of absolute privacy, LifeTree introduces a clean, distraction-free environment. The platform features an uncompromising commitment to data integrity: it contains zero advertisements, employs no data-selling monetization models, and uses no algorithmic feeds to vie for user attention. Control remains entirely in the hands of the family, ensuring that personal data and historical records are never commoditized.

As families continue to evolve and spread across the globe, LifeTree serves as a permanent, living repository, ensuring that a family's unique history, culture, and values are seamlessly preserved and safely passed down to future generations.

About BlueRose Technologies

BlueRose Technologies (BRT) is a Bangalore-based technology enterprise specializing in innovative enterprise solutions and digital platforms. Driven by a commitment to data privacy and user-centric design, the company develops cutting-edge tools that address real-world challenges in connectivity, automation, and digital preservation.

About LifeTree

LifeTree is the brain child of BlueRose Technologies - a global transformation partner delivering IT Consulting, Solutions, managed services across 25 Countries including US, Europe, APAC and Middle East. LifeTree is an app built on the thought to preserve the memories that slip away in the current trend of joint families to nuclear homes distancing from their roots about cultural learning and family bonding. LifeTree is an initiative to build, connect, preserve and celebrate the family traditions and heirloom.

For more information, please contact BlueRose Technologies: +91 99455 26669

Keeper protects over 95,000 organizations, which includes many Fortune 500 enterprises and public sector agencies. The company is quickly emerging as the market standard for AI-native identity security for enterprises globally with its leading zero-trust and zero-knowledge identity security platform. In 2025, leading analyst firm Gartner recognized Keeper as the second-fastest-growing security software competitor globally, second only to Google.* This recognition underscores Keeper’s rapid market expansion in addressing identity security challenges created by cloud transformation and artificial intelligence adoption across enterprise infrastructure and endpoints.

Keeper is now growing at over 4x the industry average.

Keeper Security is now growing at over 4x the industry average

This market-leading growth is driven by the explosion of identities in the agentic AI age and relentless focus on innovation to protect customers, as evidenced by the release of its unified privileged access management and identity security platform, KeeperPAM®, which protects both human and Non-Human Identities (NHIs), including service accounts, machine identities, databases, AI agents and agentic workloads. Since the launch of KeeperPAM in February 2025, KeeperPAM revenue has exhibited 10x year-over-year growth and Keeper has seen industry-leading new customer growth, adding an average of 850 new organizations every month. In the last fifteen months, Keeper added over 400 innovative features and products to KeeperPAM.

“Identity is the new security perimeter,” said Darren Guccione, CEO and Co-founder of Keeper Security. “As enterprises increasingly deploy AI agents and autonomous systems, the number of privileged identities and machine credentials is growing exponentially. Organizations need a modern, unified platform that secures every identity – human and non-human – and governs every privileged interaction. Our growth reflects the market’s demand for a platform purpose-built to address these challenges.”

Keeper’s cloud-native cybersecurity platform delivers a comprehensive approach to identity security and privileged access management by unifying enterprise password management, secrets management, privileged session management, database management and endpoint privilege management in a single platform. Keeper’s AI-native identity security strategy seamlessly extends these capabilities to non-human identities and agentic AI environments, enabling organizations to discover, manage and secure machine credentials and autonomous workloads with the same rigor applied to human users.

As enterprises adopt AI technologies at scale, the proliferation of non-human identities is rapidly outpacing that of human identities by 150:1, according to reports, thereby creating new attack surfaces and operational complexity. Keeper’s platform helps organizations establish identity-first security strategies that provide security, visibility, governance and least-privilege controls across their entire identity ecosystem.

"Autonomous agents, frontier LLMs and machine-to-machine workflows are operating inside enterprise environments right now – without adequate governance, secrets management or access controls,” said Craig Lurey, CTO and Co-founder of Keeper Security. “Keeper is purpose-built to solve this problem at scale.”

The company’s continued growth and market recognition reinforce its position as one of the cybersecurity industry’s most innovative and fastest-growing providers of AI-native identity security and privileged access management solutions. Keeper’s financial profile combines best-in-class growth, profitability and a debt-free capital structure and is an asset positioned to efficiently lead identity security in the agentic AI age.

"Surpassing USD 225 million in ARR confirms what we've heard in every enterprise conversation – that securing non-human identities is the defining security challenge of the AI era," said Darren Guccione, CEO of Keeper Security. “We have established an accelerated path to USD 1 billion in ARR which, coupled with our technology roadmap, will provide optionality for a public offering.”

Source Citation:

Gartner, Market Share Analysis: Security Software, Worldwide, 2025, Rahul Yadav, Deepali, 11 May 2026

Gartner is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's Business and Technology Insights Organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Keeper Security

Keeper Security is the leading zero-trust and zero-knowledge identity security solution, trusted by millions of people and thousands of organizations globally. KeeperPAM® is Keeper's privileged access management platform that unifies password and passkey management, secrets management, privileged session management and endpoint privilege management in a single cloud-native platform, protected with quantum-resistant encryption. KeeperAI delivers real-time, AI-native threat detection across every privileged session. As AI agents proliferate and identity becomes the defining attack surface, Keeper governs access for humans, machines, non-human identities and AI agents, serving as the unified control plane for access, compliance and visibility across the enterprise.

For more information, visit KeeperSecurity.com

L to R: Gaurav Jain, Achintya Gupta and Piyush Agarwal

Unlike traditional datasets that rely on static job titles or company-level segmentation, Reo.Dev’s Developer Knowledge Graph maps engineers based on what they are actively building, the technologies they use, the projects they contribute to, and the signals they leave across the internet. The system unifies fragmented developer footprints into a continuously evolving intelligence layer that reflects real technical behavior rather than inferred roles.

Today, the Developer Knowledge Graph includes 100M+ engineers, 30,000+ technologies, and 250+ tech functions, built by aggregating and correlating data from sources such as GitHub, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn, X, and specialized technical datasets. This enables DevTool companies to move beyond outdated outbound models and instead target developers based on real-time technical context and intent.

At the core of the platform is a fundamentally new approach to B2B technical intelligence: instead of relying on titles like “backend engineer” or “platform architect,” Reo.Dev builds a living map of engineering activity, capturing what systems developers are building, what frameworks they are adopting, and what technical problems they are actively solving. This allows go-to-market teams to identify audiences with far greater precision and relevance.

“Building and selling into technical audiences has always been difficult because the right data simply didn’t exist in one place,” said Achintya Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of Reo.Dev. “For example, if you’re an observability platform, you don’t just want to reach engineers with certain titles, you want to reach the ones actively building in the environments you support. That level of clarity was missing. With the Developer Knowledge Graph, we’ve brought together signals from across GitHub, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn, X, and technical ecosystems to finally make that possible.”

Achintya added, “Today, we’re at over 100 million developer profiles mapped across 30,000 technologies and 250+ technical functions. And this is just the beginning—the graph deepens with every developer action, making it more accurate and more powerful over time. For companies selling into technical teams, this changes the probability of reaching the right audience strongly.”

The platform is designed to solve one of the most persistent challenges in technical go-to-market strategy: building accurate, high-intent audience lists. By understanding the technologies developers are using, the projects they are contributing to, and the problems they are solving, Reo.Dev enables companies to align outreach with real engineering context, whether that involves LLM infrastructure, observability, DevOps, or application performance optimization.

The announcement comes as part of “Launch Month” at Reo.Dev, with the Developer Knowledge Graph serving as the foundational layer for a broader suite of upcoming capabilities aimed at redefining how DevTool companies’ approach GTM intelligence.

Reo.Dev continues to position itself at the intersection of AI-native intent systems and developer-first go-to-market infrastructure. Founded in 2023 and backed by Heavybit, the platform is already trusted by over 100 leading DevTool companies worldwide.

As the company puts it, the goal is simple: to build a living universe of developers—one where every signal brings go-to-market teams closer to the right engineer, at the right time, with the right context.

The announcement builds on the strategic partnership between Neurealm and CoreStack established in 2025, expanding the collaboration through enterprise-ready GovernOps offerings designed to help organizations optimize, govern, and scale cloud and AI environments with measurable business outcomes.

The GovernOps portfolio combines Neurealm's AI-led managed services, platform engineering, cloud transformation, and operational expertise with CoreStack's AI-powered governance and automation platform to deliver continuous optimization across CloudOps, FinOps+, SecOps, and AI governance.

GovernOps Portfolio: Purpose-Built Enterprise Offerings

The initial GovernOps portfolio includes three bundled enterprise offerings:

• Cloud Visibility & Cost Baseline - Designed to help organizations rapidly gain visibility into cloud environments, identify optimization opportunities, and establish governance baselines.

• FinOps Optimization Program - A managed optimization offering focused on continuous cloud cost reduction, policy enforcement, operational efficiency, and financial governance.

• Kubernetes Optimization & Resilience Operations - A platform engineering and operations offering designed to improve Kubernetes efficiency, resilience, scalability, and BC/DR readiness.

Together, the offerings help enterprises move from fragmented cloud management approaches toward intelligent, AI-driven operational models with continuous governance and optimization.

"Organizations are looking for operational models that can keep pace with accelerating AI and cloud adoption," said Harmeet Chauhan, CEO of Neurealm. "Through NeuGAIN and our collaboration with CoreStack, we are bringing together intelligent governance, automation, and operational expertise to help enterprises scale securely, efficiently, and with greater operational visibility."

"At CoreStack, we believe the future of enterprise operations will be driven by intelligent governance, automation, and continuous optimization," said Ezhilarasan (Ez) Natarajan, CEO of CoreStack. "Our partnership with Neurealm enables enterprises to move beyond visibility into real operational outcomes through AI-powered governance and intelligent cloud operations at scale."

GovernOps offerings will be delivered through Neurealm's RunOps, Cloud Transformation, AI Engineering, and Cybersecurity Practices, with an initial focus on healthcare, financial services, and other regulated industries.

About Neurealm

Neurealm is an AI-first technology services company helping enterprises build the intelligent systems that power the future. We work across the full Physical AI to Agentic AI spectrum, from edge devices to autonomous agents, and help enterprises move from AI experimentation to production-grade deployment, powered by NeuGAIN, our unified AI platform. Our outcome-driven, engineering-led approach spans AI, Engineering, Data, RunOps and more, serving 250+ enterprises worldwide.

About CoreStack

CoreStack is the leading Agentic Governance OS for FinOps, security, and compliance in the AI-accelerated enterprise. It enables organizations to achieve Velocity with Control by continuously and intelligently governing cost, risk, compliance, and operations across cloud, SaaS, and AI-driven systems - operating at machine speed so enterprises can scale faster without increasing risk or cost. Trusted by over 1,000 global enterprises and partners across 40+ countries, CoreStack governs more than USD 3B in annual cloud consumption and is a Microsoft Azure (Legacy) Gold Partner, AWS Technology Partner with Cloud Operations Competency, Oracle Cloud Build Partner, and Google Cloud Build Partner.

Nicholas Kirk, CEO, PageGroup

39 percent hiring managers are prioritising skills over education or career history pushing the candidates to apply for job adverts promoting skills, underscoring that capability now beats credentials. While the adoption of skills-based hiring is growing, it is not yet widespread.

AI has moved from novelty to normality, changing processes, behaviours and outcomes for both sides. 47 percent of professionals reported using it regularly at work in the 2024 Talent Trends survey, a figure that has now risen to 73 percent this year.

In today's dynamic job market, candidates are making decisions through the lens of trust, demanding transparency around pay, flexibility, and working conditions that align with their lives. While expectations are comprehensive, the drive for work-life balance is paramount – a consistent trend highlighted in last year's 2025 Talent Trends report where it was considered important by 81 percent of professionals.

Skills: Capability Over Credentials

Finding the right skills remains the core hiring challenge & candidates are responding accordingly too - 77 percent say they are more likely to apply when skills are highlighted as the most important element in a job advert, though 32 percent of Indian employers still prefer degrees or a linear career path, and 42 percent weigh both equally.

The struggle to find qualified talent is intensifying. The lack of required skills is the biggest recruitment challenge over the past year. This growing gap is prompting a shift towards skills-based hiring, an approach overwhelmingly supported by 99 percent of its adopters who report clear benefits, including better capability identification (49 percent) and improved matching to current and future needs (48 percent). Momentum is building, as 39 percent of hiring managers plan to move towards skills-first models.

AI: Embedded on Both Sides of Hiring

GenAI adoption among Indian professionals has grown rapidly — from 47 percent in 2024 to 64 percent in 2025, and now 73 percent in 2026. It is equally present in the hiring process: 76 percent of job applicants use AI to tailor their applications, while 78 percent of hiring managers use it to draft job descriptions and candidate communications. Yet as AI-polished CVs become the norm, a blind spot is emerging — while 81 percent of hiring managers believe they can identify AI-generated applications, 19 percent admit they cannot. As differentiation on paper becomes harder, the real edge shifts to what AI cannot replicate: judgement, lived experience, and genuine two-way conversation. Structured tasks and scenario walkthroughs are increasingly essential to reveal true capability.

Professionals' Priorities: Flexibility, Trust, and Transparency

Work-life balance and job satisfaction jointly top what professionals value most at work (87 percent each), followed by a good salary and career success (85 percent each) — signalling that professionals are not choosing flexibility over ambition, but expecting both. Yet 43 percent fear they would sacrifice work-life balance by changing roles, a concern that outweighs pay, job security or progression. When flexibility slips in a current role, 61 percent say they would actively start looking elsewhere. Pay transparency matters equally: around one in three active job seekers come from organisations with non-transparent salary structures, while globally, 50 percent of employers with transparent pay say hiring has been more straightforward. First impressions also carry significant weight — 45 percent of new hires consider leaving on their very first day due to a poor onboarding experience.

Nicholas Kirk, CEO, PageGroup said, “The world of work continues to shift at pace. Markets remain unsettled, expectations are evolving, and technology is fundamentally reshaping how employers and candidates connect. Our latest Talent Trends report reinforces that hiring today is more complex and more competitive than ever—but it also reveals where the real opportunities lie.

Globally, 64 percent of professionals are now using GenAI at work, with India leading at 73 percent. Yet what genuinely matters is cutting through the hype to focus on what really counts: skills, clarity and good judgement. We’re seeing this shift in action - 77 percent of Indian candidates are more likely to apply for a role when the job description prioritises skills over credentials, compared to 62 percent globally. This skills-first approach creates stability and confidence, even in unpredictable times, and represents a fundamental evolution in how talent and opportunity find each other.”

"Hiring today is more complex, more competitive and more human than ever. Contracting and agile workforce models are becoming an increasingly important part of workforce planning. With continued uncertainty, many organisations particularly MNCs, are leaning on contract and interim talent to stay flexible, respond quickly to change and access specialist skills when they’re needed most,” added Nilay Khandelwal, Senior Managing Director – India & Singapore, Michael Page.

The report's central message is clear: the future of hiring is not humans versus technology — it is designing processes where AI supports efficiency and people lead decisions. Organisations that combine skills-first thinking with transparency and human-led assessment will be best placed to attract and retain the talent that makes a real difference.

Methodology:

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from an online survey conducted by PageGroup. The Talent Trends 2026 survey is a quantitative online study gathering the views of 60,000 professionals globally over 170 countries. The India sample comprised 3,552 survey participants.

DigiDoc, backed by Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited (StockHolding) and integrated natively within the Melento.ai platform, is a modern digital stamping solution that enables enterprises to generate legally compliant stamp papers in real time through a seamless, API-driven workflow.

The launch addresses one of the most operationally fragmented areas in enterprise documentation — stamp paper procurement and execution — by eliminating traditional dependencies on physical procurement, manual coordination, and multiple vendor integrations.

With a single integration through Melento, enterprises can now access digital stamping capabilities across multiple States / Union Territories while remaining compliant with State / Union Territories-specific regulations.

A key differentiator of StockHolding DigiDoc is its Digital Mode, which delivers a completely paperless stamping experience across multiple States / Union Territories in India. From stamp generation to document delivery, the entire process is executed electronically without physical intervention.

The platform also supports a Hybrid/Physical Mode for organizations operating in workflows that require partial physical execution.

What Enterprises Gain with StockHolding DigiDoc + Melento

• Real-time generation of legally compliant stamped documents

• Automatic calculation of stamp duty based on state-specific laws

• API-driven workflows eliminating manual processing and vendor dependency

• Unified multi-state digital stamping access through a single integration

• Prepaid wallet-based payment processing for operational efficiency

• Support for fully paperless and hybrid execution workflows

Speaking about the launch, Krupesh Bhat, CEO of Melento, said, “Melento becoming one of the leading companies to introduce StockHolding DigiDoc in the Indian market is a significant milestone in the modernization of enterprise documentation infrastructure. Enterprises today are looking for intelligent, scalable, and compliant workflows that reduce operational friction while accelerating execution. By integrating StockHolding DigiDoc within Melento, we are enabling organizations to move from fragmented, manual stamping processes to real-time digital execution at enterprise scale.”

Mr Atul Saxena, MD & CEO, Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited (StockHolding), added, “StockHolding Digidoc represents the next evolution of compliant digital stamping infrastructure, along with providing an end-to-end document execution in India. The collaboration between StockHolding and Melento combines trusted digital stamping capabilities with modern enterprise workflow automation, helping organizations simplify execution, improve compliance readiness, and accelerate digital transformation initiatives.”

The introduction of StockHolding DigiDoc further strengthens Melento’s vision of building an AI-powered enterprise workflow infrastructure that combines contract intelligence, governance automation, compliance, and digital execution within a unified platform.

The solution is expected to benefit enterprises across BFSI, insurance, fintech, procurement, legal, and other regulated sectors where document execution, compliance, and operational speed are critical.

As organizations increasingly move toward AI-led and digital-first operating models, StockHolding DigiDoc on Melento provides a scalable foundation for modernizing one of the most compliance-sensitive enterprise processes in India.

About Melento
Melento (formerly SignDesk) is the world's first AI-powered collaborative intelligence platform that helps enterprises streamline contracting workflows, improve governance, reduce operational complexity, and unlock strategic insights through automation and AI. They serve 3000+ brands globally, processing over 75mn+ transactions annually.

For more information, please log on to https://melento.ai/

About StockHolding Corporation of India Limited
Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited (StockHolding) is a leading financial services institution providing trusted technology-led infrastructure and digital services across domains, including e-stamping and digital documentation solutions in India.

For more information, please log on to https://www.stockholding.com/

The APMEA Direct Booking Friction Report 2026

The report maps, for the first time, exactly where and why hotels across APMEA are losing direct bookings before a guest ever reaches checkout, uncovering friction across visibility, pricing, booking experience, and guest trust. The findings also reveal sharp regional differences in digital maturity, pricing discipline, and booking experience readiness across APMEA markets.

What the Audit Found

• Before the journey begins: Visibility: 42% of hotels don't appear on Page 1 for unbranded search queries. Nearly half the market is invisible to high-intent travelers before consideration even starts.

• At the comparison stage: Reputation and rates: 63% of properties list higher rates on their own website than on OTAs, actively losing guests to third-party platforms on price.

• At the booking stage: Speed and experience: 72% of hotel websites fail the 3-second load benchmark. Average mobile load times reach 4.1 seconds. When a guest does persist, they face an average of 4 clicks to confirm a reservation against a global benchmark of 3. Every additional second and every additional click is a door left open for abandonment.

• At the commitment stage: Trust and transparency: 44% of hotels withhold taxes and fees until the final payment screen, the single largest checkout abandonment trigger in the study. And 1 in 3 properties expose guests to a URL or domain disconnect between their website and booking engine, introducing security anxiety at the precise moment trust is most fragile. 

“The findings of this report highlight a growing gap between where guests are actually being lost. The direct booking journey has become too fragmented across search, pricing, booking engine, and guest experience, while travelers increasingly expect a seamless experience across every touchpoint. What makes this moment urgent is that AI search is changing the rules of visibility faster than most hotels realize. Brands moving to unified platforms to fix these systematic gaps are already seeing up to 5X growth in direct revenue within 90 days, while hotels operating disconnected systems risk becoming invisible before the booking journey even begins,” said Ashish Sikka, Business Head - UNO Platforms, RateGain. 

The report also found significant regional variation across APMEA markets. Singapore and Thailand set the regional benchmark with average load times of 2.9 seconds and the strongest direct price parity discipline. The Maldives recorded the highest friction scores across speed, OTA bundle dominance, and pricing opacity.

The Direct Booking Friction Report 2026 is available for free download at www.uno.rategain.com/direct-booking-friction-report-apmea-2026. Benchmark your property against other hotels and identify which friction points are costing you the most.

Report Methodology
The Direct Booking Friction Report 2026 evaluated booking journeys across 65 hotel properties in India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Maldives, analyzing visibility, pricing parity, website performance, booking flow efficiency, and checkout transparency benchmarks across the direct booking journey.

About RateGain
RateGain Travel Technologies Limited is a global provider of AI-powered SaaS solutions for travel and hospitality, working with 13,000+ customers and 700+ partners across 160+ countries. RateGain helps travel and hospitality businesses accelerate revenue generation through acquisition, retention, and wallet share expansion.

Today, RateGain is one of the world’s largest processors of electronic transactions, price points, and travel intent data, enabling revenue management, distribution, and marketing teams across hotels, airlines, destination marketing organizations, online travel agents, metasearch companies, package providers, car rentals, travel management companies, cruises, and ferries to drive better business outcomes.

Founded in 2004 and headquartered in India, RateGain works with 33 of the Top 40 Hotel Chains, 4 of the Top 5 Airlines, 7 of the Top 10 Car Rental companies, and all leading DMOs, OTAs, and metasearch platforms, including 25 Global Fortune 500 companies, unlocking new revenue every day.

Expansion strengthens ATOSS’ global AI capabilities and supports future product innovation

ATOSS is opening its new hub at International Tech Park Bengaluru (ITPB), dedicated to building the next generation of agentic AI for intelligent workforce management solutions. The Bengaluru hub brings together a highly skilled team of experts focused on multi-agent systems, conversational AI, reinforcement learning, large-scale optimization, and forecasting, all directed toward AI agents that can plan, simulate, and orchestrate work in real time for customers. They will work in close collaboration with the R&D units in Munich, Germany, as well as Sibiu and Timișoara in Romania.

Bengaluru is a prime hotspot for AI and software development – an ideal environment to attract the brightest minds for ATOSS’ vision and to reinforce the company’s ambition to be a technological frontrunner.

“With our new location in Bengaluru, we are investing specifically in the future of our technology stack and expanding our position in AI-powered workforce management software,” says Pritim Kumar Krishnamoorthy, COO of ATOSS. “This new hub will bring top talent into our network, working hand-in-hand with our teams worldwide to deliver on a global scale. By combining unique perspectives and expertise, we’ll innovate faster and design smarter – together,” he continues.

The opening of the technology hub in Bengaluru represents another important milestone in the company’s international expansion and AI-first innovation strategy and underlines ATOSS’ commitment to actively shaping the future of work through intelligent technologies, consistent investment in innovation and deep expertise.

Press information and images are available for download here: www.atoss.com/en/news-press.

About ATOSS
ATOSS Software SE is a provider of technology and consulting solutions for professional workforce management and demand-optimized workforce deployment. Whether time and attendance management, self-services, mobile apps, workforce forecasting, sophisticated workforce scheduling or strategic capacity and requirement planning. ATOSS has just the right solution – both in the cloud, on-premises and for SAP users. The modular product families feature the highest level of functionality, technology and platform independence. With around 21,100 customers, ATOSS workforce management solutions make a measurable contribution to increased value creation and competitiveness. At the same time, they ensure greater planning fairness and satisfaction at the workplace. Customers include companies such as Barry Callebaut, C&A, Charite, City of Munich, Decathlon, Deutsche Bahn, Lufthansa, OBI, Primark and W.L. Gore & Associates.

Further information: www.atoss.com.

ATOSS Software SE
Nadine Steible
Rosenheimer Street 141 h
81671 Munich, Germany
public.relations@atoss.com

ATOSS Software India Private Limited
Discoverer Building – 5^th Floor, Unit-7
International Tech Park
Pattandur Agrahara Whitefield
Bangalore 560 066, India

The move signals Gameday's view that India's sports economy has reached an inflection point: audiences are large and growing, commercial interest is rising, but the data and technology infrastructure that converts fan attention into durable commercial value has not kept pace.
 

Nicole Junkermann: India’s sports future will be built on data, technology and audience infrastructure
 

"India generates some of the most intense sports consumption data in the world. The problem is that most of it disappears. Every match watched, every highlight shared, every fantasy team assembled produces a signal. But across India's sports ecosystem, those signals are fragmented, undercaptured and largely invisible to the leagues and investors who could use them most."
 

Gameday's platform approach, developed through its partnership with Lega Volley Femminile in Italy, centres on building what Nicole Junkermann describes as the infrastructure layer beneath sport: content automation, audience analytics, fan identity platforms, direct engagement tools and modern sponsorship measurement systems.
 

At LVF, Europe's leading women's volleyball league, the platform has supported a significant expansion in digital reach, content output and commercial partnerships since Gameday became the league's largest shareholder. The approach is now being applied to new markets, with India identified as the most significant near-term opportunity.
 

The data infrastructure gap

Junkermann argues that the gap between India's sporting ambition and its data infrastructure represents one of the most addressable structural problems in the country's sports economy.
 

The Indian Premier League consistently ranks among the most-watched sporting events globally. Football, kabaddi, volleyball and women's sport are adding new audiences at pace. Internet users are expected to exceed 900m within the next few years, with mobile-first consumption as the default across the country.
 

But the commercial infrastructure to capture, structure and monetise that audience behaviour is underdeveloped relative to the size of the opportunity.
 

"Compare what India's leagues have built to what the NFL, NBA and Premier League have developed over time. Their competitive advantages today aren't primarily about the sport. They're about the sophistication of the systems beneath it: personalisation engines, loyalty platforms, second-screen experiences, sponsorship measurement tools built on years of granular audience data. India can build those systems. It doesn't have legacy infrastructure to protect, which means it can build the right ones from scratch."
 

Leagues as data platforms

Gameday's approach treats leagues as data platforms rather than sports administrators. The commercial implications are significant: leagues that understand their audiences directly, rather than through intermediaries, can price sponsorship more accurately, distribute content more efficiently and build year-round fan relationships rather than seasonal spikes.
 

For India's growing portfolio of professional leagues, that shift in approach could materially change the long-term economics of the sector.
 

Gameday will share further details on its India market plans, including specific league and technology partnerships, in the coming months.

About Gameday by NJF Holdings

Gameday by NJF Holdings is a sports investment and strategic platform founded by Nicole Junkermann. Focused on building long-term value across leagues, media and sports technology, its approach centres on structural growth, digital transformation and scalable fan ecosystems.
 

Gameday is the largest shareholder in Italy's professional women's volleyball league, Lega Volley Femminile (LVF), where it is supporting league-level commercial and digital development.
 

For more information, visit gameday.team.

Inkers Technology, a construction intelligence company today announced the launch of Kael, an AI-native platform designed to transform how construction and real estate projects are planned, monitored, and delivered. Kael introduces a predictive intelligence layer that enables teams to anticipate risks, model financial impact, and act before issues escalate into delays or cost overruns. 

Inkers Technology Launches Kael, India’s First AI-Native Construction Intelligence Platform

Speaking about the launch, Argenio Antao, Chief Business Officer, Inkers Technology. said, “At a time when the global construction industry faces a productivity gap estimated at over $40 trillion, Kael is addressing one of the sector’s most fundamental challenges: the lack of actionable intelligence even as the industry generates ample data. Construction projects today generate massive volumes of fragmented information across schedules, drawings, site reports, and communication channels, often making decision-making reactive and inefficient.”

He further added, “Kael’s AI-powered project management platform unifies this data into a single intelligence layer, enabling real-time, decision-ready insights that drive operational excellence across projects. By combining product innovation with deep consulting expertise, Kael is paving the way for a more strategic advisory role in the industry, where technology and consulting come together to help businesses move from managing projects to transforming outcomes.”

Unlike traditional project management tools or consultancy-led models, Kael is built as an AI-led orchestration engine. It continuously scans millions of data points across project workflows, detects emerging risks, and routes actionable insights to the right stakeholders. This allows project managers to move from manual reporting cycles to intelligence-led decision-making.

The platform is complemented by Observance, Inkers’ operational intelligence solution that leverages computer vision, LiDAR, and real-time analytics to create a live digital twin of construction sites. Together, Kael and Observance bridge the gap between site-level activity and boardroom strategy, delivering end-to-end visibility, predictive foresight, and execution control.

“Construction is data-rich, the opportunity lies in turning that information into actionable intelligence,” said Rohan, CTO, Inkers Technology. “With Kael we’ve built an AI-native system that doesn’t just analyse information, but understands context, predicts outcomes, and orchestrates action. The shift we’re enabling is fundamental: from dashboards that report the past to intelligence that actively shapes the future of a project. That’s the difference between seeing risk and staying ahead of it.”

Early deployments have demonstrated measurable impact across project teams. By automating reporting and surfacing critical insights, Kael enables project managers to reclaim up to 3–4 hours daily. More importantly, early risk detection helps avoid cascading delays and cost escalations, while providing leadership with unfiltered, real-time visibility into project health.

As India continues to see rapid infrastructure and real estate expansion, with significant capital deployed across sectors, Kael aims to bring predictability and control to project delivery at scale. Globally, the company sees this as a defining moment where AI moves from experimentation to real-world orchestration in construction.

About Inkers Technology
Inkers Technology is a construction intelligence company focused on transforming project delivery through AI-led platforms. By combining deep industry expertise with advanced artificial intelligence, Inkers is building systems that turn fragmented project data into predictive, decision-ready intelligence enabling faster, smarter, and more reliable construction outcomes.

What Red Hat announced

With today’s general availability of Red Hat Desktop, Red Hat is providing commercial support for the Red Hat build of Podman Desktop, creating a more reliable foundation for local container and AI development. Red Hat Desktop also includes capabilities for isolated AI agent sandboxing, an initiative designed to help developers execute and test autonomous agents in a protected sandbox on their local hardware, preventing unverified agent actions from affecting the host OS. Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite also adds new capabilities, including a trusted software factory, Red Hat Trusted Libraries and AI-driven exploit intelligence to modernize security across the software supply chain. These new features use AI to determine if known vulnerabilities in generated code are relevant to a specific application runtime, allowing developers to prioritize remediation based on actual risk.
 

Why this matters

As the volume of AI-generated code increases, developers need a workflow that balances local experimentation with enterprise-grade deployment. Whether developers start locally with Red Hat Desktop or in a cloud-based development environment via Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces, they receive the same consistency and governance required for enterprise production. By unifying these environments and transitioning to production scale with Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat enables teams to treat AI agents as tier-one applications. This approach provides a security-driven path to production, enabling developers to move from experimental local sandboxes to verified, scalable innovation across the hybrid cloud.
 

What Red Hat experts are saying

"The transition to agentic AI expands the requirements for modern application development," said James Labocki, Senior Director, Product Management, Red Hat. "By establishing a trusted production path across the hybrid cloud with Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite and providing consistent environments through Red Hat Desktop and Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces, we’re helping developers accelerate and own their AI strategy with the same rigor they apply to their core IT applications."

Key takeaways

• Standardized AI lifecycle: Red Hat provides a more consistent experience from local machines to the cloud, helping organizations move AI from experimental projects to repeatable production workflows.

• Maintain developer choice: Red Hat has expanded support in Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces, a Red Hat OpenShift feature, to include integration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Kiro coding assistant (technical preview). This joins existing integration for Microsoft Copilot, Claude CLI and more, providing the flexibility to use preferred coding assistants and environments from local machines.

• Shift security left: Built on Red Hat Hardened Images and Red Hat Trusted Libraries (both available with SLSA Level 3 origin and integrity), these tools provide a software supply chain that is transparent and verifiable before code is even written.

• Sandbox-first testing: Developers can execute autonomous agents in an isolated environment, providing a safety layer to observe agent behaviors before cluster deployment.

Deeper details:

Red Hat Desktop and Podman integration
Red Hat Desktop delivers an enterprise-supported environment for local container and AI development centered on the hardened and supported Red Hat build of Podman Desktop. Developers can easily access the full library of Red Hat Hardened Images from their laptop, while connecting to local or remote OpenShift clusters for unit testing. This ensures that the container running on the developer's machine is architecturally consistent with the one running in production. Developers looking to test sandboxed AI agents can find more information at www.openkaiden.ai.
 

Flexible coding assistants

Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces now provides an extensible framework that allows developers to integrate preferred AI-driven tools directly into their cloud-based IDE. This includes new support for the AWS Kiro coding assistant (technical preview), alongside existing integrations for Microsoft Copilot, Claude CLI, Cline, Continue, Roo and more. By supporting both proprietary and open-source assistants, Red Hat enables teams to use frontier models or host private models, helping to align developer productivity tools with corporate security and sovereignty requirements.
 

Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite enhancements
The latest version of Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite introduces the developer preview of a trusted software factory based on accepted CNCF best practices and Red Hat’s internal build processes. This provides a standards-based CI/CD implementation that customers can use as-is or tweak and replicate to meet specific needs. Additional features include:

• Red Hat Trusted Libraries: Curated Python packages built on SLSA Level 3 infrastructure with added  software bill of materials (SBOMs) and cryptographic signatures to help provide a more transparent and verifiable software supply chain.

• Exploit intelligence: Developed using the NVIDIA AI blueprint for vulnerability analysis, this capability uses AI-driven code reasoning to determine if a vulnerable function is actually reachable in an application's runtime environment. By isolating exploitable code paths from broader vulnerability data, Red Hat helps developers prioritize fixes that actually impact security.
   

Red Hat Summit

Join the Red Hat Summit keynotes live on YouTube to hear the latest from Red Hat executives, customers and partners:

• The next platform is choice — Tuesday, May 12, 8:30-10 a.m. EDT

• The AI-ready enterprise is here — Wednesday, May 13, 9-10 a.m. EDT
   

Learn more:

• OpenShift: Consistent integration for the hybrid enterprise

• Red Hat Hardened Images Accelerates Cloud-Native Development and Zero-CVE Strategies

• Red Hat Desktop brings Kubernetes-aligned development to the desktop

• From experimentation to production: Building trust in the agentic AI era

• Learn more about Red Hat Summit

• See all of Red Hat’s announcements this week in the Red Hat Summit newsroom

• Follow @RedHatSummit or #RHSummit on X for event-specific updates

Connect with Red Hat

• Learn more about Red Hat

• Get more news in the Red Hat newsroom

• Read the Red Hat blog

• Follow Red Hat on X

• Follow Red Hat on Instagram

• Watch Red Hat videos on YouTube

• Follow Red Hat on LinkedIn

About Red Hat

Red Hat is the open hybrid cloud technology leader, delivering a trusted, consistent and comprehensive foundation for transformative IT innovation and AI applications. Its portfolio of cloud, developer, AI, Linux, automation and application platform technologies enables any application, anywhere—from the datacenter to the edge. As the world's leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, Red Hat invests in open ecosystems and communities to solve tomorrow's IT challenges. Collaborating with partners and customers, Red Hat helps them build, connect, automate, secure and manage their IT environments, supported by consulting services and award-winning training and certification offerings.

Forward-Looking Statements

Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on the company’s current assumptions regarding future business and financial performance.  These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Any forward-looking statement in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Except as required by law, the company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Red Hat logo and OpenShift are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, LLC or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.

Leo Digital wins digital mandate for Olectra Greentech Limited

This partnership marks a strategic milestone in Leo Digital’s continued expansion across the electrification and sustainability ecosystem — spanning energy infrastructure, distribution, and now, electric mobility.

Olectra, led by Managing Director, Mahesh Babu has been at the forefront of India’s transition to sustainable public transportation, with a strong focus on electric buses and large-scale mobility solutions. Through this collaboration, Leo Digital will lead the brand’s digital strategy, communication, and platform presence — with a clear focus on strengthening leadership positioning, enhancing stakeholder engagement, and building a future-ready digital ecosystem.

Both organizations share a common vision of accelerating India’s clean mobility narrative through the convergence of technology, storytelling, and digital innovation.

Commenting on the partnership, Suhas Shankarappa, Group Head, NxG World said, “At Leo Digital, we’ve always believed in partnering with brands that are driven by purpose and long-term impact. Our vision is to enable the next generation of growth - sustainably - by bringing together technology, data, and meaningful storytelling. Olectra represents exactly that intersection, leading India’s transition towards clean mobility at scale.”

Leo Digital would work closely with Anand Kumar, Head of Brand, Marketing, Digital & Communications in strengthening the brand presence across Markets. The partnership will focus on building an integrated and future-ready communication ecosystem spanning brand strategy, community management, and market-facing campaigns - further reinforcing Olectra’s positioning as a leader in India’s rapidly evolving electric mobility sector.

With a shared commitment to innovation and sustainability, the partnership is set to drive meaningful impact — shaping the future of mobility while reinforcing Olectra’s position as a category leader.

About Leo Digital

Leo Digital is part of NxG World - a global consulting and innovation-led firm focused on enabling next-generation, sustainable growth for enterprises across industries.

With deep expertise across digital strategy, performance marketing, and platform development, Leo Digital partners with large enterprises in building scalable, future-ready digital ecosystems that drive measurable business impact.

Nicole Junkermann - AI needs a moral framework

Drawing on her work with technology companies and policymakers across Europe and Asia, investor and NJF Holdings founder Nicole Junkermann argues that the next phase of AI development will depend less on oversight frameworks and more on the values embedded into the technology itself.

“Regulation can limit harm after the fact,” she says. “But it doesn’t determine what gets built, or why. That’s a question of incentives, design choices and ultimately moral judgement.”

India is emerging as one of the most important testing grounds for this shift.

With its combination of engineering talent, digital infrastructure, entrepreneurial energy and public sector ambition, the country is not simply adopting AI. It is actively shaping how it is developed and deployed. Initiatives such as the IndiaAI Mission are accelerating investment into sovereign AI capabilities, from compute infrastructure to research and startups, with an explicit focus on responsible and inclusive deployment.

At the same time, a new generation of Indian AI companies is beginning to take shape. Firms such as Sarvam AI and Krutrim are focused on building models and systems tailored to India’s linguistic, cultural and economic context, rather than replicating Western approaches. Their focus is less on frontier scale alone, and more on real-world applicability.

That combination creates a unique opportunity.

While much of the global AI ecosystem is concentrated in the United States and China, India is not locked into either model. It has the space to define its own approach, one that integrates innovation with societal priorities from the outset.

“India doesn’t have to retrofit ethics into AI later,” Nicole Junkermann says. “It can build them in from the start. That’s a structural advantage.”

This matters because the limitations of current governance models are becoming clearer. Regulatory frameworks such as the EU’s AI Act focus heavily on classification, compliance and enforcement. These are necessary tools, but they are reactive by nature.

They struggle to address deeper questions: what kinds of systems should be built, what outcomes should they optimise for, and how should trade-offs between efficiency, fairness and human agency be resolved.

In practice, many of these decisions are already being made at the design stage by engineers, product teams and private companies.

That is where India’s opportunity lies.

By embedding ethical frameworks into education, research and product development, India can influence AI not just at the level of policy, but at the level of architecture. This includes aligning incentives for developers, setting expectations for corporate behaviour, and integrating ethical reasoning into technical training.

The implications extend beyond India itself.

As AI systems become globally distributed, the norms and principles embedded within them will travel across borders. Countries that shape those norms early will have disproportionate influence over how the technology evolves.

“AI is becoming a foundational layer of the global economy,” Nicole Junkermann adds. “The question is not just who builds it, but what values it reflects.”

The global race in AI is often framed around capability and scale. But a different contest is now emerging, one defined by trust, usability and alignment with society. The United States may lead in frontier models, and China in rapid deployment. India’s opportunity is to lead in how AI is applied, integrated and governed in the real world.

For policymakers, investors and technology leaders, the message is clear. The next phase of AI competition won’t be defined solely by compute, capital or capability. It will also be defined by trust.

And trust, in the age of intelligent systems, is ultimately a moral construct.

About Nicole Junkermann

Nicole Junkermann, born in 1980, is an international investor and entrepreneur focused on technology, artificial intelligence and life sciences. She is the founder of NJF Holdings, leading its venture arm NJF Capital and Gameday by NJF Holdings.

Through NJF Capital, she has built a portfolio of more than 40 companies, with a focus on early-stage investments in artificial intelligence, deep tech and life sciences. Notable investments include SpaceX, Rippling and Revolut, as well as Groq, where Nicole was an early and major investor prior to its recent acquisition by Nvidia.

For more information about Nicole Junkermann, The Human Code and NJF Holdings, visit NJFHoldings.com

The Human Code: NJF Holdings’ Investment Philosophy

As India accelerates across AI, digital public infrastructure, healthcare innovation, entrepreneurship and advanced manufacturing, The Human Code offers a framework for ensuring that progress remains human at its core.

The Human Code sits beneath Nicole Junkermann’s work across NJF Holdings, including NJF Capital and Gameday by NJF Holdings. It is built on a central belief: the most valuable progress is progress that strengthens people, trust and long-term prosperity.

“India is one of the most exciting countries in the world right now,” said Nicole Junkermann. “The scale of ambition, entrepreneurial energy and digital transformation is extraordinary. But the strongest growth is always growth guided by purpose, trust and long-term thinking.”

AI Regulation Is Not Enough. We Need AI Morals

Nicole Junkermann has previously argued that while regulation is necessary, it is not sufficient for the AI age.

Governments around the world are developing new rules for artificial intelligence. India is building its own approach while balancing innovation, inclusion and economic growth. Across markets, industry leaders speak of guardrails, alignment and safety.

But The Human Code argues that rules alone cannot answer the deeper question of what kind of future societies want to build.

Regulation can reduce harm and create accountability. It can define standards and responsibilities. But it rarely answers why technology should exist, what values it should protect or how human dignity should be preserved.

For Nicole Junkermann, the next phase of AI leadership will require not only technical excellence, but moral imagination.

“We don’t just need smarter systems. We need wiser choices about how those systems are built, funded and used,” she said.

Why This Matters for India

India has become a global leader in technology adoption, startup creation and digital systems built at scale. From payments innovation and digital identity to health technology and AI capability, the country is demonstrating how digital infrastructure can reach hundreds of millions of people.

That creates significant opportunity for founders, investors, institutions and global partners.

But growth at scale also raises important questions:

• How is trust built across large populations?

• How should AI be deployed responsibly?

• How can innovation remain inclusive?

• How do organisations balance speed with resilience?

• What creates durable value rather than short-term hype?

• How can technology strengthen dignity rather than reduce people to data points?

The Human Code is designed to help answer those questions.

A Framework for Responsible AI and Long-Term Value

Rather than focusing only on short-term returns or market noise, The Human Code prioritises enduring value creation through trust, discipline, resilience, responsibility and patience.

It asks a different set of questions from traditional growth models:

• Does this strengthen trust or weaken it?

• Does technology extend human agency or reduce it?

• Is growth durable or cosmetic?

• Does leadership combine ambition with character?

• What happens when success arrives at scale?

• Does this make humanity stronger?

For Nicole Junkermann, those principles are increasingly relevant in fast-growing markets where AI and automation can reshape daily life quickly.

Artificial intelligence can improve productivity, widen access to expertise, accelerate research and support better services across healthcare, finance, education, logistics and manufacturing.

But if organisations pursue scale without stewardship, efficiency without ethics or growth without trust, they risk building faster without building better.

Trust, she argues, may become one of the scarcest and most valuable assets of the AI century.

Capital Has a Critical Role

The Human Code also highlights the responsibility of capital.

What gets funded gets built. Investment decisions influence which technologies scale, which behaviours are incentivised and which institutions gain power.

For Nicole Junkermann, ethical due diligence should increasingly sit alongside financial due diligence. Before asking how large a company may become, investors should also ask what dependencies it creates, what behaviour it rewards and who may be left behind.

That is not idealism, but pragmatic foresight in a world where trust can be difficult to rebuild once lost.

Long-Term Opportunity in India

India’s growth story, with its combination of talent, scale, rising ambition and digital capability, creates fertile ground for long-term investment thinking.

Some of the strongest opportunities emerge in sectors where patience is required before consensus forms. Areas such as life sciences, frontier technology, women’s sport, climate solutions and foundational infrastructure can demand conviction before markets fully recognise their value.

While short-term markets often chase attention, long-term builders create compounding advantage.

About Nicole Junkermann

Nicole Junkermann is an international investor and entrepreneur focused on technology, artificial intelligence and life sciences. She is the founder of NJF Holdings, leading its venture arm NJF Capital and Gameday by NJF Holdings.

Through NJF Capital, she has built a portfolio of more than 40 companies, with a focus on early-stage investments in artificial intelligence, deep tech and life sciences. Notable investments include SpaceX, Rippling and Revolut, as well as Groq, where Nicole was an early and major investor prior to its recent acquisition by Nvidia.

For more information about Nicole Junkermann, The Human Code and NJF Holdings, visit NJFHoldings.com.

Shajai Jacob

ANACITY was recognised as the highest-rated tech platform globally amongst the final cohort at the accelerator program. As a leading provider of real estate enterprise technology in India and the Middle East, ANACITY was selected on the strength of its developer client portfolio, which includes leading residential players such as DLF, Signature Global, Emaar India, Mahindra Lifespaces, Puravankara, Gera, Birla Estates and more, as well as major commercial asset owners like Blackstone–KRT REIT, Brigade, Embassy, Solitaire, etc. 

This extensive portfolio presents a significant market opportunity for Panasonic, offering direct access to large, established developments where engagement can be streamlined through the developer, enabling faster and more efficient deployment without the need to navigate multiple stakeholders. The selection process followed a rigorous evaluation that included vetting the various innovations with several developers across India. 

Commenting on the collaboration, Shajai Jacob, MD & CEO, ANACITY, said, “The collaboration with Panasonic is a strong endorsement of ANACITY’s vision to redefine community living through technology as well as our distribution reach and access with large Grade A developers across India and Middle East. Being chosen from a global pool of innovators reflects the strength of our tech platform, our focus on user experience, and our commitment to building secure and innovative ecosystems. We are reimagining how communities interact with technology – making it more seamless, intuitive, and impactful.”

Otaki Kiyoshi

Otaki Kiyoshi, President, Electric Works Company, Panasonic Corporation, said “As this program enters its fifth year, we are very pleased that it is gaining recognition both inside and outside the company. We aim to build a co-creation consortium and further integrate three functions: creating new value and solutions, testing hypotheses from a customer perspective, and building a co-creation platform. By combining the proactive challenges of our employees with the power of startups, we will connect these initiatives to social implementation and support the creation of new businesses as a company, so that we can contribute to society.”

This first-of-its-kind collaboration will integrate Panasonic's home IoT hardware suite – including video door phones, CCTV systems, lobby station monitors, and smart locks – directly into ANACITY's mobile-first ecosystem, enabling real-time visitor visibility, camera view at the gate and main doors, remote access management, and seamless control across all entry points from user mobiles. 

The co-creation model will enable more secure, responsive, and integrated living for over 100 enterprise real estate developers, 750,000 households, as well as enhance workplace experiences across 150 million sq.ft. of office space for ANACITY’s enterprise clients in India and globally. Unlike conventional accelerator programs, this initiative is designed as a market-moving co-creation engagement, bringing together Panasonic’s hardware capabilities, ANACITY’s real estate distribution reach of developers and its digital platform to build scalable, real-world solutions. As part of the broader roadmap, the partnership is expected to expand into Panasonic’s wellness and sustainability offerings, including HVAC systems, environmental sensors, indoor air quality (IAQ) monitoring and energy management solutions such as solar and EV infrastructure.

This collaboration reflects strong strategic alignment between the two organisations. ANACITY’s enterprise distribution reach across large developers and innovative tech platform serves as a digital backbone for communities, connecting workplace tenants, residents, developers, asset managers, and operations through a unified interface, while Panasonic’s ecosystem represents the physical infrastructure layer.

With strong and growing presence across India and the Middle East, ANACITY is purpose-built for modern residential living – and the partnership with Panasonic represents a natural expansion of IoT-enabled community operations within that ecosystem.

About ANACITY
A mobile-first SaaS platform, ANACITY leads the digital transformation of residential and commercial real estate in Middle East and globally. An integral part of ANAROCK Group, India’s leading full-stack services firm, ANACITY is unmatched provider of highly awarded enterprise technology, it creates, powers and engages communities across the post-sales, post-possession and workplace experience lifecycle. ANACITY collaborates with leading real estate developers, asset owners, and facility managers, bringing to life innovative digital interventions which deliver a delightful experience to their residents, users and employees. Please visit: www.anacity.com/about-us.

About Panasonic Corporation Electric Works Company
The Electric Works Company of Panasonic Corporation provides people cantered electrical equipment and digital solutions for all kinds of life spaces, including homes, offices, commercial and public facilities. By integrating electrical equipment with advanced digital technologies, the company delivers safe, comfortable, and sustainable environments, contributing to a better today and a better tomorrow. By integrating electrical equipment with advanced digital technologies, the company delivers safe, comfortable, and sustainable environments, contributing to a better today and a better tomorrow. Please visit: www.panasonic.net/ew.