Rodic Consultants, one of India's leading infrastructure and engineering consultancies, has partnered with Nasscom to launch the Rodic InfraAI Innovation Challenge, a first-of-its-kind initiative aimed at accelerating the adoption of artificial intelligence across India's infrastructure and strategic sectors. Supported by Startup India through outreach to DPIIT-recognised startups, the initiative seeks to bring together the country's rapidly expanding AI and deep-tech ecosystem to develop scalable, deployment-ready solutions for some of India's most pressing infrastructure challenges.

The Innovation Challenge marks the first milestone in a broader strategic partnership between Rodic Consultants and Nasscom to discover, nurture and deploy frontier AI technologies across live infrastructure projects in India. By combining Rodic’s extensive domain expertise, real-world project environments and infrastructure problem statements with Nasscom’s innovation ecosystem, while leveraging Startup India’s outreach to DPIIT-recognised startups, the partnership aims to bridge the gap between technological innovation and on-ground implementation and create pathways for promising AI solutions to be tested, validated and scaled across real-world infrastructure applications.

Unlike conventional innovation programs built around hypothetical use cases, the National AI Innovation Challenge is anchored in real-world infrastructure challenges drawn from Rodic's live projects. Participating startups will gain access to actual project contexts, enabling them to develop practical solutions with a clear pathway from concept validation to pilot implementation and eventual commercial deployment.

The inaugural edition of the Challenge will focus on four priority themes aligned with India's infrastructure needs. AI on India Energy Stack invites innovators to build solutions leveraging the Ministry of Power's emerging digital public infrastructure for the energy sector. AI for Roads, Bridges and Tunnels focuses on applications such as asset monitoring, defect detection, predictive maintenance and construction intelligence. Climate-Resilient Infrastructure seeks AI-driven solutions to strengthen roads, railways and transmission networks against floods, landslides and extreme heat. The fourth theme, GenAI for Public Works and Citizen Benefit Delivery, aims to improve access to public services and government health entitlements through multilingual AI-powered platforms.

Speaking on the partnership, Raj Kumar, CMD Rodic Consultants and CEO Rodic digital Advisory said, "India is at an inflection point where artificial intelligence can fundamentally transform how infrastructure is planned, built and managed. At Rodic, we have spent a considerable time working inside the country's most complex highways, bridges, tunnels and urban infrastructure programmes, and we know exactly where technology can make the biggest difference on the ground. Through our partnership with Nasscom, we are creating a platform that connects India's brightest AI innovators with real infrastructure challenges, not hypothetical ones. Our objective is to identify technologies that can be tested, deployed and scaled across live projects, accelerating India's digital transformation while building infrastructure that is smarter, safer and more resilient for the decades ahead."

Sharing his thoughts, Ankit Bose, Head of AI, Nasscom, said, "Infrastructure is the backbone of India's growth story, and AI has the power to reshape how it is built and maintained. The InfraAI Innovation Challenge gives tech startups access to real industry problem statements, expert mentorship and a genuine pathway to deployment. By combining Nasscom’s innovation ecosystem with Rodic's deep infrastructure expertise, we hope to accelerate practical AI adoption that delivers measurable impact across India's infrastructure landscape, while giving the country's deep-tech founders a stage where their work can truly move the needle."

The Challenge has been conceived as more than a startup competition. It is a long-term innovation platform connecting emerging AI companies with industry, enabling promising technologies to be tested, refined and deployed within live infrastructure environments. 

High-potential startups emerging from the Challenge will have the opportunity to advance into Rodic's Pilot Partnership Program, where selected solutions are validated on live projects before progressing towards commercial deployment. The partnership also envisages strategic investment in select startups as part of Rodic's long-term innovation roadmap.

Rodic Consultants has played a significant role in shaping the country's development across highways, bridges, tunnels, urban infrastructure, water, hydropower, energy, railways, metros and smart technologies. Through this collaboration, the company aims to systematically identify, validate and scale artificial intelligence, Generative AI, hardware and software innovations capable of addressing complex infrastructure challenges, creating growth opportunities for India's startup ecosystem and strengthening the country's position in AI-led infrastructure development.

About Nasscom
Nasscom represents the voice of over USD 300bn technology industry in India with the vision to establish the nation as the world's leading technology ecosystem. Boasting a diverse and influential community of over 3500 member companies, our network spans the entire spectrum of the industry from DeepTech and AI startups to multinationals and from products to services, Global Capability Centres to Engineering firms. Guided by our vision, our strategic imperatives are to accelerate skilling at scale for future-ready talent, strengthen the innovation quotient across industry verticals, create new market opportunities – both international and domestic, drive policy advocacy to advance innovation and ease of doing business, and build the industry narrative with a focus on Trust, and innovation. And, in everything we do, we will continue to champion the need for diversity and equal opportunity.

For more details visit our website nasscom.in or write to us at: comms@nasscom.in 

Millennium Group of Schools - AI Championship 2026

With Times Now, the leading English news channel from The Times Network as the Official Broadcast Partner, the championship will bring together students from schools across India to explore the creative possibilities of AI through storytelling, music, and filmmaking. Built around the theme ‘Sustainable Cities. Intelligent Futures.’, the initiative encourages students to imagine how technology and human creativity can come together to build cleaner, greener, kinder and more inclusive cities.

The championship has been designed across three age-specific categories:

• Grades 5–7: Storytelling Challenge

• Grades 8–9: Song Creation Challenge

• Grades 10–12: Short Film Challenge

With nationwide outreach, the championship aims to engage over 25,000 students, 50,000 parents and 2,000 educators, while generating more than one million digital impressions. At this scale, the initiative is designed to create a powerful school-led platform for advancing responsible AI, creativity and future-ready learning across India. Registered participants will also receive complimentary access to expert-led sessions on prompt engineering, AI ethics and digital citizenship, equipping them with the knowledge and mindset to use AI responsibly while strengthening critical thinking, creativity and innovation.

Sharing her thoughts on the launch, Neha Vaz, Head of Events & Strategic Alliances, The Millennium Group of Schools, said, "Artificial Intelligence is redefining the way the next generation will learn, create and solve problems. At The Millennium Group of Schools, we believe children should not just learn about AI, but learn to use it responsibly, creatively and with confidence. The Millennium AI Creators Championship is our effort to provide young minds with a national platform where human imagination meets technology. Guided by the philosophy, 'Human Imagination Leads. AI Assists.', the championship encourages students to use AI as a creative partner while ensuring original thinking remains at the heart of every idea." 

The championship will be evaluated by an esteemed National Jury comprising renowned leaders from the fields of artificial intelligence, education, technology, design, media, innovation and the creative industries. Confirmed jury members include Mr. Vikas Kanungo, Dr. Sujitha Kurup, Dr. Amita Kapoor along with other distinguished experts, who will assess entries based on originality, creativity, storytelling, relevance to the championship theme, responsible use of AI and overall impact. The Top 15 National Winners will be awarded an exclusive, fully sponsored AI Fellowship powered by TechnoKids in association with Knowledge Hub,

providing advanced AI learning and coding opportunities to further strengthen their AI capabilities and future-ready skills. Winners will also be awarded with robotics kits by E-BOT Plus, a uniquely designed solution for Computer Science, Coding, AI, and Robotics, built around the core principles of simplicity, intuition, and practical approach.

Sharing her views on the educational significance of the initiative, Dr. Priyanka Jain, Head of Academics, The Millennium Group of Schools, said, "The Millennium AI Creators Championship reflects our belief that education must evolve alongside technology while keeping human imagination at its core. Rather than asking students to avoid AI, we want them to learn how to use it thoughtfully, ethically and creatively. Through this initiative, students will explore real-world challenges around sustainable cities while developing critical thinking, problem-solving and creative confidence. Our goal is to nurture young learners who see AI not as a shortcut, but as a tool to amplify their ideas and contribute meaningfully to society."

Beyond being a competition, the Millennium AI Creators Championship is part of a broader national AI literacy movement that encourages students to build with AI instead of depending on it.

About The Millennium Group of Schools
The Millennium Group of Schools is a prominent chain of K-12 schools across India that follows the CBSE curriculum. Known for its holistic, child-centric approach, the institution follows the award-winning, research-backed Millennium Learning System™ (MLS™), developed through 10+ years of action research, to create personalised, experiential learning experiences that nurture curiosity, creativity, conceptual understanding and real-world application, while integrating global learning theories with the Indian education and value system.

To participate, please visit- www.aicreator.themillenniumschools.com/register

For enquiry: 87960 61075, 95950 82445

Core Team at the launch of the Quadcentrix Office

The rebranding comes as India's enterprise technology landscape undergoes a drastic transformation. The country's enterprise AI market is projected to grow from approximately USD 13 billion in 2025 to more than USD 130 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights, while IBM's Global AI Adoption Index found that 59% of large Indian enterprises already have AI actively in use, the highest share among the countries surveyed. As that shift accelerates, enterprises are increasingly looking for a single technology partner that can move fluidly across AI, blockchain and data, rather than stitching together point solutions from different vendors.

Shahzad Fatmi CEO Quadcentrix

Quadcentrix, formerly SettleMint India, has emerged to meet this demand. The rebranding signifies the company's evolution from a blockchain specialist into a full spectrum technology partner, spanning enterprise AI orchestration, blockchain trust, and data transformation.

Founded in 2019, the company has spent over six years delivering enterprise technology infrastructure, building a track record that today includes 20+ enterprise clients globally, with services and solutions delivered across 5 countries. Its work covers diverse sectors including Banking and Financial Services (BFSI), Government and Public Sector, Capital Markets, Agritech and Healthcare & Life Sciences. Having established itself in India in the last few years, the company plans to leverage its strong foothold and target a double-digit growth in the first year of the rebranded entity. 

“The market has moved faster than the vendor categories built to serve it,” said Shahzad Fatmi, CEO of Quadcentrix. “Our clients no longer come to us with a single blockchain problem to solve. They come with a business challenge that spans data, AI and trust, often all at once. Over six years, we built the team and the track record to meet them there, and Quadcentrix is the name that finally reflects that breadth.”

The name ‘Quadcentrix’ is built around two key ideas: “Quad,” representing the four pillars that power its delivery model (collaborative excellence, trusted expertise, agile delivery, and independent flexibility), and “Centrix,” reflecting a client centred approach to every engagement.

The company has confirmed that the rebranding will not impact existing client contracts, ownership structures, or the teams supporting current engagements.

Quadcentrix will begin rolling out its new brand identity across its digital presence, client communications and business materials, in the coming weeks. 

More information about the company's services, solutions and industry work is available at www.quadcentrix.com.

About Quadcentrix
Quadcentrix (formerly SettleMint India) is a technology company that helps enterprises modernise their data foundations, apply enterprise AI, and build trusted blockchain solutions. Founded in 2019, the company has delivered 6+ years of enterprise technology work for 20+ clients across 5 countries, serving sectors including Banking & Financial Services, Government & Public Sector, Capital Markets, Agritech, and Healthcare & Life Sciences. Quadcentrix is headquartered in India with a team spanning architecture, AI, engineering and delivery.

MAHE-IBM inaugurated the AI Lab in Bengaluru

The Lab was inaugurated by Prof. Madhu Veeraraghavan, Pro Vice Chancellor, MAHE Bengaluru & Nisha Gopinath, Vice President, Human Resources, IBM India and South Asia, in the presence of Shipra Sharma, CSR Leader, IBM India and South Asia, Dr. E. V. Ramana Reddy, IAS, Chairman, KSDA, Dr. Raghavendra Prabhu, Additional Registrar, MAHE Bengaluru, Dr. Iven Jose, Director, MIT Bengaluru and Dr. Dayanand, Dean, School of Computing & Engineering, along with senior leaders from IBM, faculty members, researchers, students, and industry representatives.

Powered by advanced GPU-enabled computing infrastructure, AI Lab will support cutting-edge research in machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, computer vision, natural language processing, cybersecurity, healthcare, intelligent systems and data analytics. The facility can simultaneously support 30 high-performance computing workloads. It will provide faculty members, researchers, innovators and students with world-class computational resources to develop next-generation AI solutions.

Beyond enabling advanced research, AI Lab has been envisioned as a collaborative platform/hub that bridges academia and industry. It will support industry-sponsored projects, interdisciplinary research, faculty development programmes, student innovation, hackathons, internships, startup incubation and collaborative technology development. Together, these initiatives will create an ecosystem where ideas can rapidly evolve into impactful solutions.

A defining feature of the initiative is its commitment to inclusive AI education. Through IBM SkillsBuild, IBM’s free technology education program, MIT BLRU will establish an AI Learning Initiative. The programme will offer AI awareness workshops, immersive bootcamps, hands-on training in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, IBM SkillsBuild digital credentials, mentorship from MIT BLRU faculty and student volunteers, and access to advanced computing infrastructure. By reaching students from Tier 2 and Tier 3 institutions, the initiative aims to bridge the digital divide and equip learners with industry-relevant skills for the AI-driven economy.

"I commend MIT, BLRU and IBM on launching the IBM-MIT, AI Lab and their shared commitment to advancing AI education and nurturing future-ready talent. This collaboration highlights the power of academia-industry partnerships in strengthening Karnataka's AI ecosystem. By providing access to advanced AI infrastructure, hands-on learning, and resources, the lab will empower students and researchers to accelerate innovation and develop AI-driven solutions that address societal challenges and contribute to inclusive growth," said Priyank Kharge, Cabinet Minister for Home, IT & BT, e-Governance, Government of Karnataka.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof. Madhu Veeraraghavan, Pro Vice Chancellor, MAHE Bengaluru, said, "Artificial Intelligence must become an enabler for everyone, not just a privileged few. AI Lab reflects our commitment to combining world-class research with social impact by expanding access to AI education, fostering innovation and preparing learners for an AI-driven future. Our collaboration with IBM is a significant step towards building an inclusive and globally competitive AI ecosystem."

Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India and South Asia said, "India stands at a pivotal moment in its AI journey, with the talent, innovation ecosystem, and digital foundations to lead the next wave of global AI innovation. Realising this potential requires stronger collaboration between talent, research, advanced computing, and industry. Our collaboration with MIT BLRU reflects IBM's commitment to democratizing access to emerging technologies, enterprise-grade computing, and digital skills, empowering students and researchers to advance AI innovation. Together, we are strengthening India's AI research ecosystem and driving innovations that create meaningful impact for India and the world,"

Dr. Iven Jose, Director, MIT Bengaluru, said the Centre would significantly strengthen the University's AI research ecosystem. "MIG provides our students and researchers with the computing power needed to solve complex challenges and accelerate AI innovation. By integrating advanced infrastructure with industry collaboration, we are creating an ecosystem that nurtures research excellence, hands-on learning and industry-ready talent."

MIG marks a significant milestone in Karnataka's higher education and innovation ecosystem. By combining advanced High-Performance Computing infrastructure with large-scale AI skilling, industry collaboration and community outreach, the Centre is expected to catalyse transformative research, innovation, entrepreneurship and talent development. As Artificial Intelligence continues to reshape industries and societies, MIG positions MIT Bengaluru as a leading hub for AI research, talent development and responsible innovation. 

About MAHE
Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) is an Institution of Eminence Deemed to be University. MAHE offers over 400 specialisations across 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 3rd 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 IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

India has emerged as one of the world's leading exporters of education, technology, and skilled talent. Building on this momentum, Edubex Learning, an Indian global edtech company headquartered in Kerala, is expanding access to internationally recognised education across Africa, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, and other international markets through AI-enabled learning, globally accredited qualifications, and industry-focused career development.

Edubex’s India-based operations support its growing global education ecosystem, connecting learners with internationally recognised programmes and career-focused learning

Founded in 2020, Edubex has grown from a small educational initiative into one of the leading international education providers serving Africa, with more than 10,000 learners, 1,000+ graduates, and a comprehensive portfolio of over 200 programmes spanning undergraduate degrees, postgraduate qualifications, professional diplomas, executive education, workforce development, artificial intelligence, business management, healthcare, logistics, digital technologies, and industry-specific short courses.

At a time when employers increasingly value practical skills alongside academic qualifications, Edubex is helping bridge the gap between higher education and employability by combining internationally recognised curricula with personalised mentoring and technology-driven learning experiences.

Strengthening India's Global Education Presence

India has earned worldwide recognition as a hub for technology, innovation, and higher education. Edubex is extending this reputation by connecting learners in Africa and beyond with internationally recognised qualifications through strategic partnerships with globally respected universities and awarding organisations.

Its academic collaborations include UCAM (Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia, Spain), Chartered Management Institute (CMI), United Kingdom, Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), together with other internationally recognised universities and academic institutions. These partnerships allow learners to earn globally respected qualifications while studying from their home countries, creating opportunities for career progression without geographical barriers.

By providing globally accredited education and practical workforce-focused programmes, the organisation aims to help professionals strengthen their careers while contributing to economic development and knowledge exchange across regions.

Looking Ahead

With digital learning becoming central to workforce transformation worldwide, Edubex continues to invest in academic innovation, AI-enabled education, strategic university collaborations, and globally relevant curricula.

The organisation also looks forward to engaging with universities, policymakers, employers, and international education leaders through global initiatives and industry forums, including the forthcoming Diaspora Economic Forum (DEF) 2026, where education, skills development, innovation, and cross-border collaboration are expected to remain central themes.

As India continues to strengthen its position as a global knowledge economy, Edubex remains committed to exporting educational excellence while empowering learners to build internationally competitive careers.

About Edubex Learning

Edubex Learning is an Indian global edtech company headquartered in Kerala, delivering internationally recognised higher education and professional learning opportunities to students across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and other global markets.

Established in 2020, Edubex has supported more than 10,000 learners through a portfolio of 200+ programmes, including undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, professional diplomas, executive education, AI and digital technology programmes, workforce development, and industry certifications.

Through partnerships with globally respected institutions including UCAM (Spain), Chartered Management Institute (United Kingdom), Scottish Qualifications Authority (Scotland), and other international academic partners, Edubex continues to expand access to affordable, globally recognised education that prepares learners for success in an increasingly connected world.

Website: www.edubex.com.

Chitkara University hosted the AIKosh University Engagement Programme under the IndiaAI Mission, where 250 CSE (AI) students participated in the workshop

The IndiaAI Mission, approved by the Government of India in March 2024 under the aegis of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), aims to establish India as a global leader in artificial intelligence by fostering technological self-reliance, enabling ethical and responsible AI development, and ensuring that the benefits of AI reach diverse sections of society.

As part of the IndiaAI Mission, AIKosh has been established as a comprehensive platform to facilitate access to datasets, AI models, tools, and other critical resources. Through the University Engagement Programme, AIKosh seeks to deepen AI adoption in academia, nurture emerging talent, and create opportunities for students and researchers to contribute to India’s growing AI landscape.

As part of this engagement, 250+ students from the Computer Science Engineering (Artificial Intelligence) programme at Chitkara University participated in the programme on August 6, 2026, gaining exposure to national-level AI resources, industry-relevant tools, and emerging practices in artificial intelligence.

Chitkara University is now onboarded with AIKosh as a contributor.

Speaking on this milestone, Dr. Madhu Chitkara, President and Co-founder, Chitkara University, said, "Artificial Intelligence is transforming the way we learn, innovate, and solve complex challenges. At Chitkara University, we have always believed in preparing our students for the technologies that will shape the future. Being selected for the AIKosh University Engagement Programme under the IndiaAI Mission is a recognition of our commitment towards creating future-ready professionals equipped with knowledge, skills, and a responsible understanding of AI. This collaboration will empower our students to engage with cutting-edge AI resources and contribute meaningfully to India’s vision of becoming a global AI leader."

Speaking on the initiative, Shri Md. Y. Safirulla K IAS, Director, IndiaAI Mission, said: "Guided by the vision of our Honourable Prime Minister to democratize AI, we are committed to ensuring its transformative benefits reach every individual across the nation. This commitment rests upon three foundational pillars—People, Planet, and Progress—a philosophy prominently showcased during the IndiaAI Impact Summit in February 2026. As part of our University Engagement Programme, we will work to showcase the multifaceted elements of India's thriving AI ecosystem across educational institutions nationwide this year."

The participation of Chitkara University in the AIKosh University Engagement Programme aligns with its continued focus on emerging technologies, interdisciplinary learning, and industry-oriented education. The University has been actively strengthening its AI ecosystem through advanced academic programmes, research initiatives, innovation-driven learning, and collaborations aimed at preparing students for the evolving digital economy.

Through this association, Chitkara University continues to advance its mission of nurturing technology leaders who can leverage artificial intelligence for responsible innovation and contribute towards building a digitally empowered India.

About Chitkara University

Chitkara University is a UGC-recognised and NAAC-accredited private university in North India, with campuses in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, offering career-oriented undergraduate and postgraduate programs in Engineering, Business, Healthcare, Pharmacy, Design, Architecture, Hospitality and emerging technology fields. For Class 11 and 12 students planning higher education, the University provides industry-aligned programs designed to combine academic excellence with practical exposure.

The curriculum emphasises experiential learning through internships, industry projects, research opportunities and global collaborations, supported by modern infrastructure, advanced laboratories, industry mentorship and skill-based training that strengthens student employability. Backed by 2,000+ campus recruiters and 300+ international academic and industry collaborations, students gain strong placement support, international exposure, academic exchange and collaborative research opportunities.

Consistently ranked among leading institutions by national and global frameworks such as NIRF, QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education, the University maintains high academic rigour and industry relevance. With strong corporate partnerships and a focus on innovation, entrepreneurship and interdisciplinary learning, it prepares students for emerging career opportunities in India and abroad.

For more information, please visit: www.chitkara.edu.in.

Distinguished industry representatives at the 20th edition of India’s premier marketing conference, Marketing Conclave (MarCon), organised by the IAMAI, powered by Google, in Mumbai

“In the emerging agentic era, the marketing opportunity shifts from search visibility to providing the precise answers and context that enable AI agents to act on a consumer’s behalf—always with explicit permission. We are working with the industry to lay the foundation of agentic commerce with open standards like the Universal Commerce Protocol to help brands thrive and build deeper, more valuable customer relationships. As we see, agentic capabilities are redefining how people search, discover, and shop," he added.

AI has become the talking point for the entertainment industry. At a session on ‘The Producer’s Paybook: TV, OTT and What Comes Next’, Goldie Behl, Filmmaker & Founder, Rose Audio Visuals, said, "AI is a tool that will enhance creativity. Ultimately, it will be human intelligence and AI working together. Human intelligence will always be driving storytelling.” Behl further added that AI should be viewed as a creative tool rather than a replacement for writers, while stressing the need for regulations around how AI learns from existing content and intellectual property rights.

Behl noted that OTT has undergone its own evolution, with the next wave of opportunities coming from brand-backed storytelling. “But, creators must understand and authentically communicate a brand's ethos,” he added.

The second day of the conference saw participation from notable industry experts, including Prashant Gutch, Head, Search & Shopping, Ads Marketing, Google; Poorva Bhatikar, Industry Head - Mobility, Google; Archit Goyal, Search & Performance Specialist, Google; Aviral Chandra, President Marketing, Shriram General Insurance; Pankaj Sharma, Chief Executive Officer & Director, MGID; Arpit Mankar, Senior Vice President – Head – NonBollywood, Shemaroo Entertainment; Somnath Mukherjee, Head of Programmatic and Performance Marketing, Reliance Retail, and Vinay Bhartia, Director - MEA & West Asia, Semrush, who shared insights on the evolving digital marketing landscape. MarCon featured an expo with participation from more than 30 leading marketing and technology companies. Over two days, the conference witnessed a footfall of more than 2,000. 

Among the partners of Marketing Conclave 2026 are Affinity Global Advertising, Consumr.ai, Connect Network, DoubleTick, Google, Helo.ai, mFilterIt, PubLive, Vonage, BC Web Wise, LS Digital, Truecaller, Semrush (An Adobe Company), ORIGIN8, Exotel, Shemaroo and many more.

About Internet and Mobile Association of India  
The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) is a not-for-profit industry body with more than 800 members, including Indian and multinational corporations, as well as start-ups. IAMAI has been instrumental in shaping India’s digital economy. IAMAI advocates free and fair competition, and progressive and enabling laws for businesses as well as for consumers. The overarching objective of IAMAI is to ensure the progress of the internet and the digital economy. Its major areas of activities are public policy and advocacy, business to business conferences, research, promotion of start-ups and promotion of consumer trust and safety. 

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.}

Lucknow-headquartered AI-infrastructure platform InfoBay.AI. has crossed Rs 100 crores in revenue and Rs 50 crores in Profit After Tax (PAT) in FY 2025-26. While Profit Before Tax (PBT) increased to 3x, the platform clocked a Net Revenue Retention (NRR) of 140%-160% in the last fiscal year. This 10x revenue growth over the past two years is supported by a structural Gross Margin of 80%+, a hallmark of a scalable software infrastructure business.

InfoBay.AI has also expanded into five countries: Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines and Uganda, besides India, as part of its expansion plan to 14 countries by 2027. In line with its expansion plans, it has also strengthened its leadership team with a new Chief Financial Officer, VP-Global Sales and R&D Manager on board. These key hires reinforce its governance and capacity for international enterprise scaling.

"AI is here to dominate, pivoting to a mission-critical AI-infrastructure platform, InfoBay.AI, is in line with our commitment to playing an even bigger role in India's growth story. It is also a testament to our unwavering belief in continuous evolution to cater to the changing needs of the industry. We are among the most profitable AI- powered companies in India, powering half of the world's frontier labs," said Rohit Manglik, Founder & CEO, InfoBay.AI.

"InfoBay's success is founded on a strategic evolution that converted EduGorilla’s legacy assets into proprietary AI infrastructure. It is not merely a rebranding; it is a sophisticated asset-repurposing strategy that leverages years of building complex STEM and reasoning content into structured data that now fuels the TIBET engine and provides a unique "reasoning trace" foundation for AI- driven models. The team structure and operations are now entirely aligned with this structurally superior, pure-play AI mandate," he added.

InfoBay's proprietary Asset Layer now includes a massive repository of structured data, including 2 million de-identified medical patient records and 34 million vertical videos. It has an expanded linguistic moat, with audio coverage in 40 languages and educational data in 15. The platform is actively leveraging multimodal capabilities (video, audio, text) to build deeper, vertical-specific datasets in adjacent, high-value domains like Physical AI.

As InfoBay continues to expand, its focus remains laser-sharp on being the Mission-Critical AI Infrastructure Platform. Every expansion, hire, and product roadmap decision is engineered to strengthen our moats—technical (TIBET), operational, and relationship-driven—ensuring sustained, high-margin growth.  

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.

Padma Shri Sridhar Vembu with H.E. Ahmed Mir Hashim Khoori, Mr. M. F. Rawoof Ali, Dr. Ishari K. Ganesh, and Dr. Preethaa Ganesh during the inauguration of the VELS Thiruvanmiyur Campus

The campus was inaugurated by Padma Shri Sridhar Vembu, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of Zoho Corporation, in the presence of His Excellency Ahmed Mir Hashim Khoori, Member of the Federal National Council, UAE, and Board Member of the Emirates Airline Foundation, who attended as the Guest of Honour. The function was presided over by Dr. Ishari K. Ganesh, Founder-Chancellor, VELS Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies (VISTAS), along with Dr. Preethaa Ganesh, Vice President, VELS Group of Institutions.

Dr. Ishari K. Ganesh Unveils VELS' Vision for Future-Ready Education
Welcoming the distinguished guests, Dr. Ishari K. Ganesh highlighted the remarkable contributions of Padma Shri Sridhar Vembu in advancing indigenous technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and nation-building. He also acknowledged the outstanding leadership of His Excellency Ahmed Mir Hashim Khoori in strengthening educational, aviation, and international partnerships between India and the UAE.

Addressing the gathering, Dr. Ganesh emphasized that universities must continuously evolve to meet the demands of a rapidly changing technological landscape. He described the AI-Integrated Vertical University Campus as a smart, sustainable, and innovation-driven institution designed to nurture research excellence, entrepreneurship, interdisciplinary collaboration, and globally competent professionals.

Welcoming the gathering, Dr. Preethaa Ganesh, Vice President, VELS Group of Institutions, said, “Technology transforms every industry, higher education must also transform the way students learn, think, and prepare for the future. Guided by this philosophy, VELS has established India's First AI-Integrated Vertical University Campus, a campus designed not only for today's learners, but for tomorrow's leaders."

Dr. Preethaa Ganesh further stated that every aspect of the campus has been built with one purpose: to put students first. From AI-enabled classrooms and collaborative innovation hubs to industry-connected laboratories, digital learning environments, and world-class student amenities, every element has been thoughtfully designed to create the best possible learning experience.

She added that the vision behind the campus is not merely to create one of India's most technologically advanced university buildings, but to develop one of the country's finest learning ecosystems, one that nurtures graduates who are future-ready, globally competent, ethically grounded, and committed to making a meaningful impact on society.

Global Partnerships to Strengthen Industry Integration
A major highlight of the event was the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between VELS Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies (VISTAS), Aspin Holding LLC Group, and MH Cockpit to establish a Flying School in the UAE. The partnership aims to promote collaboration in aviation education, pilot training, faculty exchange, internships, skill development, research, and international career opportunities for students.

VELS also announced that it will soon sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Zoho Corporation to collaborate in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, emerging technologies, research, innovation, entrepreneurship, digital skill development, and industry-academia initiatives.

A major highlight of the campus is its Industry–Academia Centres of Excellence, established in collaboration with Intel Unnati, TCS iON, Microsoft, and Oracle Academy, enabling students to gain hands-on experience in Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing, high-performance computing, and other emerging technologies. The curriculum emphasizes experiential learning through live projects, internships, research, startup incubation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and industry engagement to prepare graduates for the rapidly evolving global workforce.

Addressing the audience, His Excellency Ahmed Mir Hashim Khoori congratulated VELS on its remarkable growth and compared the institution's journey with the phenomenal expansion of Emirates Airline. He observed that India and the UAE continue to strengthen their relationship through education, aviation, technology, innovation, and economic cooperation.

Delivering the inaugural address, Padma Shri Sridhar Vembu appreciated the vision behind the new campus and emphasized the importance of building indigenous technologies. "The VELS Thiruvanmiyur Campus is a beautifully designed institution with excellent architecture. India must build technologies from the ground up—from atoms to bits—to remain globally competitive. We must aspire to build next-generation technologies and strengthen our innovation ecosystem. Zoho looks forward to collaborating with VELS in the near future," he said.

Following the inauguration, Sridhar Vembu engaged in an interactive session with VELS students on Artificial Intelligence, entrepreneurship, research, technology, rural innovation, and nation-building. He encouraged students to develop deep technical expertise, embrace lifelong learning, solve real-world challenges through innovation, and contribute meaningfully to India's technological advancement.

The inauguration of the VELS Thiruvanmiyur Campus marks another defining milestone in the institution's journey towards redefining higher education through Artificial Intelligence, innovation, industry collaboration, global partnerships, and cutting-edge technology. More than the inauguration of a new campus, it represents the beginning of a future-focused academic ecosystem where students are empowered to become innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, and leaders capable of shaping the world of tomorrow.

To Apply : velsthiruvanmiyur.com

Speaking on the platform's full availability, Mr. Amit Gupta, Founder of EAZYPETITION LLC said, “As students, IT professional and family members of naturalized US Citizens navigate complex and repeated petition preparation for renewal of their USCIS petitions for many-many years to maintain their legal status and work authorization, eazyPetition makes it very seamless by offering one solution to store their all underlying documents and create new petition or use previous one to prepare new petition under 30 mins"

Preparing USCIS petitions often involves collecting information from multiple documents, including passports, visas, I-94 records, previous petitions, educational credentials, and employment records. The same information is frequently entered repeatedly across multiple USCIS forms, making the process time-consuming and increasing the risk of errors that can lead to Requests for Evidence (RFEs), delays, and additional legal costs.

Adding to this, Stephen D. Marino, Chair of the Board of Directors at EAZYSTAR SYSTEMS Inc., said, “The transition from a successful beta program to full availability marks an important milestone for eazyPetition. As demand for intelligent legal technology continues to grow, platforms that combine artificial intelligence with reliable workflow automation will play an increasingly important role in improving efficiency and consistency across USCIS petition preparation. We believe eazyPetition is well positioned to help individuals, employers, and legal professionals navigate complex USCIS processes with greater confidence.”

eazyPetition uses artificial intelligence to extract information from immigration documents and supporting evidence, enabling users to review, verify, and generate print-ready USCIS PDF petitions through a guided workflow. By automating repetitive data entry and streamlining document preparation, the platform enables each stakeholder involved in the petition process to complete their part of the workflow in less than 30 minutes. The platform has already been successfully used by the IT professionals in USA during its beta phase, helping simplify petition preparation while improving efficiency and accuracy.

The platform currently supports offline USCIS petition preparation, allowing completed petitions to be printed, signed, and submitted through existing USCIS filing processes. To help users navigate the immigration process, eazyPetition has also created a library of more than 200 educational YouTube tutorials covering petition preparation and filing workflows.

A key innovation behind eazyPetition is EPML (Evidence Process Markup Language), a proprietary framework developed to intelligently model immigration evidence and petition workflows. The technology enables the platform to intelligently process supporting documents, automate information extraction, and simplify the preparation of complex USCIS petitions.

Today, eazyPetition is being developed by a growing engineering team in India, leveraging the country's deep expertise in artificial intelligence, document intelligence, workflow automation, and legal technology to build next-generation solutions for U.S. immigration.

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.

What CTOs Think 2026: Scaling the agentic enterprise with confidence

The third edition of Akkodis' What CTOs Think report, What CTOs Think 2026: Scaling the agentic enterprise with confidence, features insights from 500 Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) as part of the Adecco Group's Business Leaders 2026 research of 2,000 C-suite executives, The human premium: Leadership beyond the algorithm. It shows that while AI investment continues to grow, organizations are constrained less by access to technology than by the complexity of integrating AI across enterprise systems, workflows and decision-making.

Agentic AI emerges as a defining enterprise trend

The research identifies agentic AI - systems capable of planning, decision-making and executing tasks - as the most impactful technology trend shaping organizations in 2026, cited by 40% of CTOs as a top driver of impact. This shift marks a transition from AI as a tool that supports work to one that actively participates in execution - introducing new requirements for governance, accountability and operating model design.

However, despite growing adoption, most organizations have yet to establish the structures needed to scale these systems effectively. More than half of CTOs (57%) report using AI to determine which tasks are best suited to humans versus machines, yet clarity around task allocation continues to limit progress.

Why organizations struggle to scale AI

The findings point to a clear shift: the challenge is no longer deploying AI, it is integrating it into how the enterprise operates. As organizations move beyond pilot programs, execution complexity increases across leadership alignment, governance and workforce trust:

• Only 44% of CTOs believe leadership teams have sufficient AI understanding

• Just 46% report established frameworks for responsible AI

• Only 36% express satisfaction with workforce trust levels

Persistent barriers cited by CTOs continue to limit progress:

• Lack of in-house technology skills (32%)

• Uncertainty around return on investment (31%)

• Lack of urgency at the business level (27%)

Together, these findings suggest that scaling AI is increasingly an operational challenge, not a technology constraint, requiring organizations to redesign how systems, processes and decision-making work together.

Digital transformation shifts from efficiency to innovation

The report also highlights a fundamental shift in how organizations define the value of digital transformation. For the first time, CTOs cite innovation, not efficiency, as the primary driver of digital investment, signaling a move from cost-focused optimization toward growth, differentiation and new business models.

As AI capabilities mature, the marginal gains from efficiency are diminishing, increasing the importance of innovation as a source of competitive advantage. While the shift is global, priorities vary by industry - from workforce development in aerospace to innovation acceleration in life sciences and resilience in energy - underscoring the need for sector-specific approaches to scaling AI.

AI is reshaping work, not eliminating it

Rather than driving widespread job loss, AI is fundamentally changing how work is structured at the level of skills and tasks:

• 50% of CTOs report changes in required skills

• 49% report shifts in day-to-day activities

• Only 21% report workforce reduction due to AI

This reinforces the need for organizations to redesign workflows and responsibilities to support a hybrid human-AI workforce.

"What we're seeing now is not a slowdown in AI adoption, but a moment of realism," said Jo Debecker, President & CEO of Akkodis. "Organizations are moving beyond experimentation and encountering the reality of scaling AI across complex environments. The challenge is no longer deploying AI, it's integrating it into how work gets done. The companies making progress are those redesigning their operating models, aligning technology, human expertise and governance to deliver consistent results."

From pilots to orchestration: Scaling AI requires a new operating model

The report identifies three emerging organizational approaches:

• Task Automators - using AI primarily for efficiency

• Pilot Operators - experimenting with AI but struggling to scale

• Enterprise Orchestrators - embedding AI into workflows and decision-making

Organizations that succeed are those that move beyond isolated pilots to orchestrate AI across systems, processes, and teams, integrating technology with human expertise to deliver measurable outcomes.

Access the full report here.

About Akkodis

Akkodis is a global digital engineering consulting company that enables organizations to innovate and accelerate by applying technology to redefine how processes and products are developed, powered and optimized. With deep expertise across AI, data, cloud, edge and software engineering, we offer best-in-class technology consultancy. Through our strong, scalable delivery models and specialized talent, we provide end-to-end solutions, from strategy and consulting through implementation. Our commitment to Akkodis Intelligence helps businesses connect the exponential power of technology with the irreplaceable strengths of human thinking and collaboration. Part of the Adecco Group and headquartered in Switzerland, Akkodis brings together 40,000 engineers and digital experts in over 30 countries, with services that span Consulting, Solutions and Academy. With deep experience across the world's major industries, Akkodis empowers businesses to solve complex challenges and achieve sustainable impact. akkodis.com | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | X

About the Adecco Group

The Adecco Group is the world's leading talent company. Our purpose is making the future work for everyone. Through our three global business units - Adecco, Akkodis and LHH - across 60 countries, we enable sustainable and lifelong employability for individuals, deliver digital and engineering solutions to power transformation and empower organisations to optimise their workforces. The Adecco Group leads by example and is committed to an inclusive culture, fostering sustainable employability, and supporting resilient economies and communities. The Adecco Group AG is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland (ISIN: CH0012138605) and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (ADEN). www.adeccogroup.com

(L-R) Chetan Walunj, Founder, Repos Energy; Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry; and Aditi Bhosale Walunj, Founder, Repos Energy, at VivaTech 2026, Paris
 

The moment carries significant weight. India is making its debut as AI Country Partner at VivaTech 2026, Europe’s largest technology and innovation summit, and is hosting its largest-ever national pavilion at the event. Repos Energy is among the 25 high-potential Indian startups curated by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, to represent the country under the ‘Bharat Innovates’ theme, a platform that positions India as a global hub for deep-tech innovation.
 

A key agenda at the pavilion centred on how the Government of India, led by Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, intends to actively facilitate and accelerate the introduction of Autonomous Fuelling infrastructure across the country. The ministry’s commitment to enabling this next frontier of energy transition signals a decisive policy push that goes beyond participation at a global platform. For Repos Energy, this is a defining moment of alignment, one that validates the company’s long-standing conviction that autonomous, technology-driven fuelling is not a distant aspiration but an imminent reality for India.
 

The Autonomous Fuelling prototype on display integrates AI-based demand forecasting, IoT-enabled remote monitoring, robotic dispensing mechanisms, and frictionless digital payment infrastructure, designed to support both conventional fuels and emerging energy sources. The system envisions a future where fuelling stations operate with significantly reduced human intervention, contributing to operational efficiency, safety, and the broader decarbonisation agenda.
 

Speaking on India's commitment to introducing Autonomous Fuelling infrastructure, Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, said, “India’s vision for energy transition is not just about adoption, it is about building the infrastructure that defines the future. Autonomous Fuelling is a critical piece of that puzzle, and the Government of India, through the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, is committed to creating the right policy environment to introduce and scale this technology across the country. Startups like Repos Energy, who are building at the intersection of AI, IoT, and energy, are exactly the kind of innovators that will help India lead the global energy transition. VivaTech 2026 is a fitting platform to announce this intent to the world.”
 

Aditi Bhosale Walunj and Chetan Walunj, Founders, Repos Energy, showcase their Autonomous Fuelling Solution to Piyush Goyal at VivaTech 2026, Paris
 

Speaking at VivaTech Paris, Aditi Bhosale Walunj, Founder, Repos Energy, said, “Showcasing our Autonomous Fuelling vision here, on a day when India stands tall on the world stage, is a defining moment, not just for Repos Energy, but for every Indian entrepreneur who dares to build for the world. When we started in 2017, we never imagined it would bring us here. This is proof that when you build with conviction, the world takes notice.”
 

Chetan Walunj, Founder, Repos Energy, added, “The future of energy is autonomous, intelligent, and made in India. By combining AI, IoT, and robotics, we are not just reimagining fuel delivery, we are building the infrastructure that will power the world’s energy transition. This is Repos Energy’s commitment to Viksit Bharat, and beyond.”
 

For Repos Energy, the VivaTech platform represents more than an exhibition opportunity, it is a strategic inflection point. Founded in 2017 with the deceptively simple question 'What if fuel came to you?', the company has since built a network of 2,500+ fuelling partners and served 25,000+ businesses across India, while working directly with the Government of India to establish the doorstep fuel delivery policy framework. Backed by the late Shri Ratan Tata across two funding rounds, Repos Energy has steadily evolved from a last-mile logistics innovator into an AI-driven energy transition infrastructure company, and its VivaTech showcase is the most visible articulation of that pivot yet.
 

Repos Energy's selection under 'Bharat Innovates' and its presence at VivaTech 2026 positions it at the intersection of two of India's most consequential narratives: the global energy transition and India's emerging identity as a deep-tech exporter. The company aims to use the platform to advance strategic global partnerships and attract international interest in its Autonomous Fuelling infrastructure.
 

About Repos Energy
Founded in 2017 by Aditi Bhosale Walunj (Founder) and Chetan Walunj (Founder), Repos Energy is India’s pioneering AI-driven energy transition infrastructure and is on a mission to make all forms of energy accessible and efficient. With 2,500+ fuelling partners and 25,000+ businesses served across India, Repos Energy brings convenience, clarity, and control to nation-building organisations through technology, while doing its part for the planet. Backed by late Shri Ratan Tata, who invested in the company across two funding rounds, and having worked with the Government of India to establish the doorstep fuel delivery policy framework, Repos Energy stands for bringing a blend of innovation and excellence, to deliver value to consumers at large.

For more information, visit www.reposenergy.com.

Hero FinCorp has deployed Agentforce, Data 360, MuleSoft, Agentforce Sales, and Agentforce Service, to build a connected foundation for intelligent loan processing. With Agentforce, Hero FinCorp automates key steps across pre-sanctioning and post-sanctioning, including document extraction, application validation, PAN and Aadhaar verification, credit and bank checks, e-signature initiation, document processing, and loan disbursal — powering faster, more efficient lending at scale. Data 360 unifies Salesforce and external data sources to create a trusted foundation for automation, while MuleSoft connects government verification systems, financial institutions, and document repositories through API-led integrations. Agentforce Sales and Agentforce Service power the customer and operational workflows underpinning the lending journey. Together, these capabilities are helping Hero FinCorp streamline loan approvals and deliver better experiences for customers, dealers, and employees.

Hero FinCorp has achieved a 72% improvement in loan turnaround time for two-wheeler loan processing, with 92% of applications now going through Agentforce-enabled workflows. The company has also avoided 77% of Not In Good Order (NIGO) cases at the sales stage itself, helping reduce rework, minimise delays, and create a faster, smoother loan experience for customers and dealers. Today, the solution supports 6,461 dealers across India. These improvements are helping Hero FinCorp meet growing demand with greater agility, serve more customers, strengthen dealer relationships, and expand access to credit across India.

Commenting on the partnership, Mr. Abhimanyu Munjal, Managing Director & CEO of Hero FinCorp, shared, “At Hero FinCorp, we are leveraging AI, data and digital innovation to transform the way customers access credit. As we continue to scale our business and expand financial inclusion across India, enhancing speed, efficiency and customer experience through technology remains a strategic priority. Our collaboration with Salesforce supports this vision by helping streamline key stages of the lending lifecycle and significantly reduce turnaround times. This is an important step in our journey to build a more agile, data-driven and customer-centric lending platform that can serve customers and dealer partners at scale, while strengthening the foundation for sustained and responsible growth."

Mankiran Chowhan, Managing Director, Salesforce India, said, “As customer expectations continue to evolve and financial institutions look for new ways to deliver faster, more seamless experiences, AI is becoming a strategic enabler for the future of financial services. Hero FinCorp is at the forefront of this transformation, leveraging Agentforce, data, and automation to reimagine loan processing and unlock new levels of efficiency, scalability, and customer service. Their approach shows how organizations can apply trusted AI to modernize core business operations while staying focused on what matters most — serving customers better. We are proud to partner with Hero FinCorp as they continue to drive innovation and expand financial access across India.”

The collaboration builds on Hero FinCorp’s long-standing Salesforce foundation, with support from Salesforce Professional Services and Signature Success. After building and launching its first agent in just three weeks, Hero FinCorp is using Agentforce Builder to explore loan-processing agents for its business loans, loan against property and car loan teams, as well as a sales assistant agent to automate repetitive tasks for sales representatives. As Hero FinCorp expands its data and AI strategy, it is creating a trusted automation foundation to streamline operations, empower employees, and help more customers access financing.

About Hero FinCorp
Hero FinCorp is an Indian Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) offering a diversified portfolio of lending solutions across Retail, MSME, and Corporate segments. Its product suite includes two-wheeler, car, home (through its subsidiary Hero Housing Finance Limited), and personal loans, along with business, SME, and corporate financing. 

The company has built an extensive national presence covering 18,600+ of India’s PIN codes, supported by a network of 4,200+ touchpoints. This wide distribution net enables Hero FinCorp to deliver financing solutions across 2,000+ cities, towns, and villages across India. 

Having served over 13 million customers, Hero FinCorp operates on an AI-led architecture that integrates underwriting, analytics, and marketing capabilities across the credit lifecycle. This technology backbone enables faster underwriting, lean operating model, and credit delivery at scale. 

As part of the Hero Group, Hero FinCorp draws on a legacy of trust, integrity, and long-term institution-building envisioned by the Hero Group’s Founder, Dr. Brijmohan Lall Munjal, while advancing responsible lending and building a future-ready financial services platform. For more information, visit: www.herofincorp.com.

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.

Qualitest Becomes QualityAI: The Trusted Assurance and Engineering Partner Across Every Stage of Enterprise AI
 

Across every industry, companies are racing to adopt AI, and the pressure to demonstrate progress is rising. According to Deloitte's 2026 "State of AI in the Enterprise" report, the proportion of organizations expecting at least 40% of AI experiments to reach production is expected to more than double within six months. As AI moves from ambition to implementation, leaders need to prove that transformation is real, reliable, and effective. In a market crowded with AI claims, assurance is becoming the difference between AI momentum and AI washing.
 

"Every business wants to show it is moving fast on AI, but speed alone is not enough," said Andrew Duncan, CEO of QualityAI. "Leaders need evidence that AI is working safely, reliably, and effectively in the real world. QualityAI exists to give them that certainty, helping organizations move beyond AI claims and go live with confidence."
 

In regulated and high-trust industries, including financial services, health and life sciences, energy, utilities, and the public sector, the stakes are even higher. AI failure can create operational disruption, reputational damage, and loss of trust. As AI accelerates software development and decision-making, organizations need independent quality oversight that proves systems are ready for real-world use. That proof is becoming both a compliance imperative and a competitive differentiator.
 

Built on almost 30 years of software testing expertise, QualityAI operates across the entire quality assurance lifecycle, from early transformation planning through to go-live and post-launch optimization.
 

"Our heritage is in assurance, but our role today is much broader," Duncan said. "We work with organizations from the earliest stages of transformation, helping them define, design, engineer, test, and operate complex systems with greater certainty. That means supporting clients before launch, at go-live, and long after deployment."
 

QualityAI works with some of the world's largest technology companies developing AI models and helps enterprises embed AI into business-critical systems with greater assurance. Since 2019, it has implemented proprietary AI solutions that can accelerate software testing by up to six times, reducing the time required to validate and integrate technology across complex enterprise environments.
 

Duncan concluded, "The path to AI adoption can seem like uncharted territory, but it is familiar ground for QualityAI. We have spent almost 30 years helping enterprises trust the technology they depend on. As we look ahead, our role is clear: to help organizations design quality into the AI-powered systems that will define their future."

The Deloitte State of AI in the Enterprise report is available here: www.deloitte.com/uk/en/issues/generative-ai/state-of-ai-in-enterprise.html
 

About QualityAI

QualityAI is an AI-first quality engineering company helping enterprises deploy and scale complex systems with greater confidence. Operating across data, models, platforms, infrastructure, and operational environments, the company provides assurance and engineering expertise that helps organizations ensure systems perform reliably in real-world conditions.
 

Formerly Qualitest, QualityAI supports global enterprises across regulated and technology-driven industries, combining deep engineering heritage with AI-enabled delivery, operational assurance, and lifecycle expertise to help clients achieve certainty at go-live.

Unveiling ARIA in Mumbai: Wibmo's Agentic Risk Intelligence Assistant brings the power of AI to fraud, AML, KYC, and dispute operations

ARIA is designed to support risk teams at banks and PSPs, combining AI-driven analysis with human decision-making and accountability. This is highly relevant now, as digital payment fraud challenges becoming increasingly complex. With the sustained growth in the payments ecosystem, financial institutions are focused on improving operational risk efficiency while maintaining strong governance and oversight.

Early modelling shows ARIA achieving over 70% reduction in investigation time through agents acting in real-time, enabling teams to process significantly more cases per FTE per day. ARIA targets delivering recommendation accuracy close to 90%, designed to improve quality metrics across risk operations teams.

ARIA represents a fundamental shift in how financial institutions approach risk operations by introducing specialized AI agents that support data aggregation, analysis, and draft recommendations, while preserving human decision-making authority and governance controls at every critical juncture.

ARIA combines capabilities across investigation, decision support, and operational actioning. The platform gathers signals from transactions, risk models, customer and merchant history, linked transactions, and historical fraud patterns to automate data aggregation that typically consumes significant analyst bandwidth. Using frontier AI models, ARIA generates evidence-referenced verdicts, identifies emerging patterns through multi-signal reasoning, and provides transparent, auditable recommendations. The platform also enables SOP-driven resolutions, customer and merchant communications, reduction of false alerts, and proactive defence mechanisms against emerging anomalies.

Shailesh Paul, CEO, Wibmo, said, “As fraud becomes more sophisticated and regulatory expectations continue to evolve, risk operations teams must manage growing complexity with limited resources. ARIA is designed to help institutions scale intelligently by combining the speed and analytical capabilities of AI with the judgment, oversight, and accountability of human expertise. While AI agents assist with data analysis and recommendations, every critical decision continues to remain firmly under human control."

Unlike fully autonomous AI systems, ARIA is built with a governance-first architecture designed for enterprise financial institutions. Every recommendation continues to flow through existing approval mechanisms without autonomous production actions, while all analyses are supported by transparent reasoning chains and comprehensive audit trails. The platform brings together specialized agents across fraud, AML, KYC, and disputes within a unified framework, alongside replayable audits and complete operational provenance for every agent action.

The launch event brought together more than 50 senior leaders from banks, fintechs, payment networks, and technology organizations to discuss evolving challenges in digital payment security and the future of AI-led fraud prevention. Speakers from PayU, NPCI Bharat Billpay, Visa, Mastercard, Flipkart, CSB Bank, Jio Payment Solutions, and Network International participated in discussions around acquiring fraud risk management, authentication technologies, and risk-based decisioning.

About Wibmo

Wibmo, a PayU company, operates across entities in India, the US, and Indonesia. As a global full-stack PayTech company and an industry leader in payment security and digital payments in emerging markets, Wibmo stands out for its innovation and impact.

In addition to being India's largest authentication service provider in one of the leading digital payment markets globally, Wibmo offers comprehensive fraud and risk management solutions, digital financial services, prepaid solutions, and a broad range of merchant-acquiring services.

Learn more at: wibmo.com.

The entry places NeoSapien in one of the world's largest and most competitive consumer technology markets, where demand for AI-powered productivity and personal intelligence tools continues to grow. By launching through Amazon, the company gains access to a broad consumer base while accelerating awareness, adoption, and distribution in a market that is expected to play a central role in its long-term growth strategy.

At the centre of the expansion is Neo 1, India's first AI-native wearable, powered by NeoSapien's proprietary Second Brain Operating System. Designed to help users capture conversations, organise information, and access contextual assistance throughout the day, the device transforms real-world interactions into structured, actionable insights through an ambient AI experience.

India’s first AI wearable launches in the US, helping you remember what matters from real conversations so nothing is forgotten, Now available on Amazon US

Neo 1 will be available in the United States at a price point of USD 189. The pricing reflects NeoSapien's conviction that Indian-built AI products can compete in premium global markets on innovation, product experience, design, and trust - not cost alone.

The launch also reflects a broader shift in India's technology ecosystem. For decades, India has been recognised as a major market for global technology products and a source of engineering talent. NeoSapien's US entry signals the next phase of that evolution - one where Indian companies are increasingly building proprietary technology, creating intellectual property, and exporting products to international markets.

Traditionally, AI platforms and products have flowed from the United States to India and other global markets. NeoSapien's launch reverses that narrative, bringing an AI product conceived, built, and commercialised in India directly to American consumers. It highlights the growing maturity of India's AI ecosystem and the increasing ability of Indian startups to compete in premium global markets.

“India has often been associated with technology talent and cost-efficient execution. We believe the next chapter is very different: Indian companies building premium, proprietary products that can stand on their own in the world’s most competitive markets. Neo 1’s US launch at USD 189 reflects that conviction. This is not a value-led entry into the market; it is a premium AI product built from India for global consumers,” said Dhananjay Yadav, Co-founder of NeoSapien.

As AI moves from experimentation to everyday adoption, NeoSapien is focused on building products that help people think, remember, organise, and work more effectively. Its US launch marks an important step in the company's evolution into a global AI brand while reinforcing India's growing role in shaping the future of AI products.

About NeoSapien

Founded in 2024 by Aryan Yadav and Dhananjay, NeoSapien is a next-generation AI company shaping the future of wearable intelligence. The brand’s flagship innovation, Neo 1, is India’s first AI-native wearable, designed to transform everyday conversations into actionable insights. NeoSapien is building a new category in personal technology - one that blends adaptive intelligence with human intuition. With its proprietary Second Brain OS and a privacy-first approach, NeoSapien is on a mission to make 'Second Brain' technology a global standard, redefining how people think, work, and live in the age of AI.

To know more about the brand, please visit: Website | Instagram

Industry leaders and marketing executives at INDEX'26 New York, Pepper's summit focused on the future of AI-driven search and brand discovery

That was the ground truth at INDEX'26 New York, hosted by Pepper on May 27. More than 200 CMOs, VPs of Marketing, growth leaders, investors, and technology builders convened for the New York edition of what Pepper bills as the world's first The GEO Growth Summit - a forum built not to debate whether generative AI is disrupting search, but to determine what winning looks like on the other side of that disruption.

The results were unambiguous. Across every conversation - from the boardroom to the brand team - the same inflection point kept surfacing: organic discovery has been structurally rewired, and the strategies that drove growth for the past decade are losing their footing fast. CAC is climbing. Traditional SEO signals are weakening. Buyer journeys now fracture across seven or more touchpoints before a decision is made. And through all of it, AI models are forming opinions about brands - from reviews, citations, third-party content, and web authority - long before a human ever enters a search bar.

"INDEX was created to bring together operators who are actively rethinking how growth works in a world where AI has become the primary interface for discovery. Search is no longer about ranking pages - it is about being retrieved, cited, and trusted by AI systems. INDEX'26 is where leaders come together to understand this shift and build practical strategies to win in the new era," said Anirudh Singla, Co-Founder & CEO, Pepper.

The urgency extended well beyond the marketing function. Investors and board members, as surfaced in one of the day's most candid conversations, are already asking their portfolio companies about AI search visibility - often without the CMO in the room. For enterprise leadership teams, the message was pointed: Generative Engine Optimization is no longer a content team initiative. It has become a business continuity question.

That reality landed differently for regulated industries. In financial services, the stakes of AI getting it wrong go beyond brand damage. A misattributed claim, a hallucinated product detail, an AI-generated answer that contradicts compliance policy - these are not PR problems. They are regulatory ones. Leaders from DTCC and Arbor Realty Trust gave texture to what it means to navigate brand authority in an environment where no single team controls what an AI says about you.

"I think of myself as much more of an operations and architect of the department than a traditional marketer. We've gone from Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Architect," said Lauren Wagner Boyman, CMO, KPMG US.

The CMO role itself was on trial. Lauren Wagner Boyman of KPMG US and Drew Neisser of CMO Huddles - drawing on data from more than 600 CMO conversations - made the case that the function has been permanently restructured. Speed, agility, and content efficiency have displaced traditional brand stewardship as the core mandate. Consumer brand leaders from Uber, Unilever, Major League Soccer, and Samsung Ads confirmed the same pattern from a different angle: when AI compresses buyer choice to a single recommendation, the brand that wins is the one the model has learned to trust, not the one with the biggest media budget.

"The physical shelf had 100 options. E-commerce became endless but we shop above the fold - so 100 became 5. AI-led search is about to compress 5 into 1. You want to be that one - every time, in every platform," said Deepak Subramanian, Global VP Marketing, Unilever.

Pepper used the summit to unveil Atlas, its agentic OS for organic growth - positioned not as a GEO tool but as an outcome engine built to own traffic, citations, velocity, and pipeline in the AI era. Guy Yalif of Webflow separately debuted the AEO Maturity Model, grounded in data from millions of B2B websites, giving attendees a diagnostic framework to benchmark where their organizations actually stand. Practitioners from RocketReach, Optimizely, Stacker, and G2 closed the day with a ground-level view of what is working inside the GEO stack right now.

INDEX'26 New York follows the sold-out San Francisco edition in April, which drew more than 200 senior leaders from Salesforce, NVIDIA, Intel, Snowflake, Gong, and Demandbase. Future editions of the summit are planned for additional markets.

Rodic Consultant Team at Digital Construction Week London 2026

Built on years of infrastructure advisory experience across roads, railways, bridges, urban systems, and public infrastructure, Rodic’s AI ecosystem has been purpose-built to address the sector's most persistent challenges: fragmented workflows, disconnected data, and delayed decision-making across the project lifecycle. Designed as a secure, sovereign, and air-gapped platform, the ecosystem enables infrastructure organisations to harness AI while maintaining complete control over critical project and operational data.

Digital Construction Week (DCW) London is one of the world's leading events dedicated to digital innovation in the built environment. Bringing together industry leaders, policymakers, technology innovators, contractors, consultants, and asset owners from across the globe, the event serves as a platform for exploring emerging technologies, AI, digital delivery, BIM, and the future of infrastructure and construction.

At the event, Rodic Consultants will demonstrate six interconnected AI systems operating on a unified infrastructure intelligence stack. Together, these systems create a continuous flow of intelligence from project planning and field operations to executive decision-making and long-term asset resilience.

Rodic's Integrated AI Ecosystem for Infrastructure Delivery

• Planning Agent – Accelerates planning, feasibility assessments, and DPR preparation through structured infrastructure intelligence, enabling faster and more informed project development.

• Daily Progress Agent – Transforms field reporting by eliminating manual re-keying and enabling seamless field-to-boardroom visibility of project performance.

• Visual Monitoring Agent – Provides corridor-scale monitoring across project sites and assets through AI-enabled visual intelligence.

• Risk & Compliance Agent – Delivers audit-ready insights across contracts, compliance obligations, risk registers, and governance processes.

• Defect Management Agent – Enables AI-led identification, tracking, and resolution of infrastructure defects.

• AICIP (AI Climate Intelligence Platform) – Provides city-scale climate forecasting, resilience assessment, and climate-risk intelligence to support future-ready infrastructure planning.

Unlike standalone AI tools, Rodic's platform has been designed as a unified operating layer for infrastructure delivery. Its sovereign architecture allows deployment within highly secure environments where data privacy, auditability, regulatory compliance, and operational reliability are critical requirements.

"Infrastructure delivery is entering a new era where intelligence will become as important as engineering itself. Across the world, project owners and infrastructure agencies are looking for ways to improve productivity, strengthen governance, enhance resilience, and make faster decisions in increasingly complex environments. Our AI ecosystem has been built from decades of real-world infrastructure experience, designed specifically for the realities of project delivery and eagerly sought after by project proponents. What we are presenting at DCW is not simply a collection of AI tools, but a unified intelligence layer that connects planning, monitoring, compliance, quality assurance, and climate resilience into one secure operating ecosystem." said Shri. N.N Sinha (Managing Director- Rodic Digital And Advisory).

For Rodic Consultants, digital transformation transcends technology adoption. It represents a shift towards intelligent infrastructure delivery models where data, engineering expertise, and AI work together to improve project outcomes, strengthen institutional capabilities, and create more resilient and sustainable infrastructure systems.

The company's participation at Digital Construction Week London 2026 reflects its broader commitment to advancing the future of infrastructure delivery through secure, scalable, and purpose-built AI solutions that address the unique challenges of governments, infrastructure agencies, and project owners worldwide.

EC-Council’s ADG Framework enables secure, governed AI design through structured controls and accountability

Developed with input from practitioners and advisory board members across organizations including Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, KPMG, Deloitte, NTT Data, GE Healthcare, GlobalLogic, Prudential and Salesforce, the ADG Framework gives enterprises a unified operating model; three pillars, 12 minimum controls, and nine governance surfaces. The framework is designed to align with the EU AI Act, ISO/IEC 42001, and the NIST AI RMF.

The urgency around AI governance is rising as organizations and enterprises accelerate AI adoption across business operations. Global AI spending is projected to reach $2.5 trillion in 2026, reflecting the speed and scale of enterprise deployment. Yet governance maturity remains critically low: industry findings show that only 1% of leaders believe their AI governance capabilities have reached maturity, while 78% of executives say they would not feel confident in passing an AI governance audit within the next 90 days.

The widening gap between AI acceleration and AI accountability is increasing pressure on organizations to address technical, societal, operational, and systemic AI risk at the same time. Many are deploying increasingly autonomous AI systems while still relying on fragmented policies, outdated security models, and governance structures that struggle under real-world operating pressure.

The ADG Framework has been developed to close this gap. More than a theoretical governance model, ADG is a practitioner-led execution framework engineered for real-world deployment. Designed by professionals actively managing AI risk in some of the world’s most complex operating environments, the framework establishes enforceable minimum controls, operational validation standards, governance surfaces, implementation overlays, and accountability mechanisms that organizations can apply across AI systems, agentic AI environments, multi-model architectures, and large language model ecosystems.

“Most organizations approached AI with a deploy-first mindset, prioritizing speed while governance and security struggled to keep pace,” said Jay Bavisi, Group President, EC-Council. “The result is that organizations are now scaling AI systems faster than they can securely govern them. The ADG Framework was developed to restore operational discipline, establish accountability, and help organizations operationalize AI responsibly before governance failures become systemic business liabilities.”

AI Without Guardrails Is a Business Risk

The ADG Framework is organized around three deeply integrated operational functions designed to create a complete governance life cycle for modern AI systems:

Adopt

Helps organizations align AI deployment with business objectives, operational readiness, workforce capability, and implementation accountability.

Defend

Focuses on securing AI systems against evolving threats including prompt injection, adversarial manipulation, model exploitation, data poisoning, and AI supply chain compromise.

Govern

Embeds oversight, auditability, governance accountability, and risk management into AI systems from deployment through enterprise-scale operations.

Together, the framework introduces 12 minimum controls, nine governance surfaces, nine deployment overlays, and three autonomy tiers covering technical, societal, operational, and systemic AI risk domains. Every control references major global standards and frameworks including the EU AI Act, ISO/IEC 42001, NIST AI RMF, OWASP Top 10 for LLM and Agentic AI, and MITRE ATLAS, helping organizations strengthen governance maturity while reducing compliance fragmentation.

AI Readiness Self-Assessment Tool Introduces Operational Visibility

Alongside the framework, EC-Council has launched a free AI Readiness Self-Assessment Tool to help organizations evaluate their governance posture before vulnerabilities emerge at scale.

The tool enables organizations to measure AI maturity across governance readiness, implementation discipline, operational resilience, security posture, and accountability structures while mapping findings into a prioritized implementation roadmap. For boards, regulators, and executive leadership teams facing growing scrutiny around AI governance, the tool provides an evidence-based view of organizational AI exposure and governance preparedness.

“The framework’s three pillars reflect the cross-functional model that leading AI organizations like Salesforce have used to scale AI responsibly. It establishes a solid, replicable blueprint across any industry, deployment model, or regulatory environment.” said Kathy Baxter, Principal Architect, VP of Responsible AI & Tech at Salesforce, AI Advisory Board Member, and Contributor to the ADG Framework.

New AI Certifications Aligned to the ADG Framework

To support implementation of the framework, EC-Council has also introduced three new AI certifications aligned with the ADG operating model. The certifications are designed to help organizations build workforce capabilities around AI governance, offensive AI security, and responsible AI implementation.

The certifications include:

• Certified AI Program Manager (CAIPM)

• Certified Offensive AI Security Professional (COASP)

• Certified Responsible AI Governance and Ethics Professional (CRAGE)

The programs help practitioners evaluate, test, secure, and govern AI systems across modern operating environments.

“The ADG Framework is the operating model that enterprise AI has been missing. It turns abstract standards into auditable practices and resolves the real tension between delivery speed and safety. For a board, that is the difference between scaling a fleet of agents with confidence and taking a leap of faith.” said Lewis V. Adams, VP, Enterprise AI & Capital Productivity Transformation at Citi, AI Advisory Board Member, and Contributor to the ADG Framework.

Open, Community-Driven, and Built to Scale

The ADG Framework is designed as an open, community-driven initiative that organizations can adopt freely, without licensing fees or vendor lock-in. It is structured to evolve alongside AI technologies while enabling practitioners, enterprises, governance leaders, and security teams to contribute to the continued development of operational AI governance standards.

“The industry doesn’t lack AI frameworks; it lacks operational clarity. The ADG framework places a strong emphasis on AI security, particularly in addressing adversarial risks and model vulnerabilities, while also mapping broader governance and regulatory expectations. What’s especially valuable is its inclusion of measurable indicators, which helps organizations move from high-level principles to more actionable and trackable AI risk management as they transition into real-world deployment.” said ShanShan Pa, Global Head of AI & Data Governance at GlobalLogic, AI Advisory Board Member, and Contributor to the ADG Framework.

The ADG AI Framework, AI Readiness Self-Assessment Tool, implementation guidance, and supporting certification programs are now available through EC-Council Official Website.

About EC-Council

EC-Council is the creator of the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) program and a leader in cybersecurity education. Founded in 2001, EC-Council’s mission is to provide high-quality training and certifications for cybersecurity professionals to keep organizations safe from cyber threats.

EC-Council offers over 200 certifications and degrees in various cybersecurity domains, including forensics, security analysis, threat intelligence, and information security.

An ISO/IEC 17024-accredited organization, EC-Council has certified over 400,000 professionals worldwide and serves clients ranging from government agencies to Fortune 100 companies. EC-Council is the gold standard in cybersecurity certification, trusted by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and leading global corporations.

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.

NJF Holdings founder Nicole Junkermann thinks that framing misses something important. And she thinks India is the country best placed to prove it.
 

Nicole Junkermann says India’s digital infrastructure creates strategic AI advantage
 

Junkermann, early investor in AI companies including Anthropic and Groq, acquired by Nvidia, has spent more than a decade investing at the intersection of technology, life sciences and human behaviour. Her view, developed through that work and codified in what she calls The Human Code, is that the AI economy will ultimately be won not by the markets with the most capability but by those that build the most trust.
 

"Capability in AI is becoming less scarce. The models are getting better everywhere, faster than anyone expected. What isn't becoming less scarce is trust. People and institutions choosing to rely on AI systems, to integrate them into decisions that matter, to build their lives and businesses around them. That's the harder thing to build. And it turns out India has some significant structural advantages in building it."
 

Why trust is the scarcer resource

The first generation of AI development was largely a capability race. The second is shaping up to be a trust race. The difference matters because capability without trust doesn't scale into the parts of the economy where AI creates the most value: healthcare, finance, education, public services, legal systems. Those are domains where adoption depends on confidence, and confidence depends on something more than technical performance.
 

Junkermann draws a direct parallel with sport, an industry she knows from the other side of her portfolio through Gameday by NJF Holdings, her sports investment platform.
 

"Sport is the only commercial system that has built mass trust across cultures, income levels and generations without a regulatory mandate. It does that because the architecture is transparent: the rules are public, the outcomes are unscripted, the consequences of violations are real. AI systems that want to earn the same kind of trust need to think about architecture in the same way. Not compliance. Architecture."
 

India's structural position

What makes India interesting, in Nicole Junkermann's view, is a combination of factors that most major AI markets don't share simultaneously.
 

India is building its AI infrastructure now, with the failures of the first generation visible. The United States built its technology ecosystem before the trust problem was fully understood. The consequences, around data privacy, algorithmic bias and platform accountability, took years to become apparent and are still being addressed. India can see those consequences clearly and build differently from the start.
 

India also has a demonstrated capacity to build digital systems that earn mass trust at scale. UPI is used by hundreds of millions of people across every income level. Aadhaar created a digital identity infrastructure of extraordinary reach. These weren't just technical achievements. They were trust achievements: systems that people with no prior relationship with digital finance chose to rely on, quickly and in large numbers.
 

"What India has already proved with payments and identity is that it can build digital infrastructure that earns trust across an enormously diverse population. That's not a small thing. Most countries haven't done it. The question is whether the same instinct gets applied to AI, and I think the conditions are there for it to happen."
 

The Human Code and long-term value

The argument connects to The Human Code, the values framework that underpins NJF Holdings' investment philosophy across both its technology portfolio and Gameday. Its central claim is that the most durable commercial value is created by systems that strengthen trust rather than exploit it, and that in an AI-accelerated economy that distinction is becoming more consequential, not less.
 

For investors, Junkermann argues, this has direct and urgent practical implications. AI companies that build trust into their architecture from the start will have lower adoption friction, stronger retention, more durable regulatory relationships and better long-term economics than those that treat trust as a compliance problem to be managed.
 

India, with its scale, its engineering talent and its proven instinct for building digital systems that work for everyone, is well placed to produce those companies.
 

About NJF Holdings

NJF Holdings is a global investment group founded by Nicole Junkermann. It operates across two principal activities: NJF Capital, a venture portfolio of more than 40 companies focused on early-stage investment in artificial intelligence, deep tech and life sciences; and Gameday by NJF Holdings, a sports investment and platform business focused on building long-term commercial and digital infrastructure across professional leagues and media.
 

Notable NJF Capital investments include SpaceX, Revolut, Rippling and Groq, acquired by Nvidia.
 

For more information, visit NJFHoldings.com.

Nikos Christodoulides, President of Cyprus, with delegation members Evgenios Evgeniou, Dr. Nicodemos Damianou, Demetris Skourides joined by Avinash Mudaliar, CEO HT Labs

Representing HT Labs, the innovation and technology arm of HT Media Group, Avinash Mudaliar, Co-Founder and CEO, participated in discussions that traversed artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, startup ecosystems, media-tech, intellectual property frameworks, and the strategic evolution of Cyprus into a gateway for ambitious Indian enterprises entering Europe.

His Excellency President Christodoulides, who has rapidly emerged as one of Europe’s more reform-minded and globally outward-looking leaders since assuming office in 2023, has sought to reposition Cyprus beyond the narrow confines of geography and into the broader theatre of technology, innovation, and strategic diplomacy. A former diplomat, Foreign Minister, Government Spokesperson, and scholar of political science, the President brought to the proceedings both measured intellect and unmistakable strategic intent.

The engagement reflected the increasingly vigorous India–Cyprus Strategic Partnership, which is now extending well beyond diplomacy into investment, entrepreneurship, AI, digital transformation, media-tech, and innovation-led economic collaboration.

The proceedings commenced under the stewardship of Chairman Evgenios Evgeniou, Chairman of Invest Cyprus, whose opening remarks set the tone for what would become less a ceremonial conference and more a pragmatic tête-à-tête between ecosystems.

With considerable elegance and strategic acuity, Evgeniou introduced His Excellency and commenced the discussion through references to India’s great entrepreneurial and technological narratives. By invoking Indian success stories — the rise of technology-led enterprises, startup dynamism, digital public infrastructure, and innovation at scale — he immediately established intellectual common ground between Cyprus and India.

The effect was unmistakable. The conversation moved swiftly beyond diplomatic pleasantries into substantive discussions around AI-led growth, startup acceleration, digital infrastructure, cross-border innovation, and the role of agile economies in shaping the next phase of global technological transformation.

Evgenios Evgeniou, Chairman of Invest Cyprus, remarked, “During the investors’ roundtable, leading Indian companies and entrepreneurs had the opportunity to hear directly from His Excellency President Nikos Christodoulides about the prospects Cyprus offers as a springboard for growth into the European Union, a regional business hub for the wider Middle East, and an emerging investment destination across sectors ranging from technology and financial services to education, logistics, pharmaceuticals, and advanced innovation ecosystems.

We are extremely encouraged by the response and the depth of interest demonstrated by several major Indian enterprises. A number of companies expressed serious intent towards exploring investments and long-term strategic partnerships in Cyprus. We will now undertake systematic follow-up with participating organisations and entrepreneurs to facilitate deeper engagement, provide the necessary support frameworks, and explore tangible co-building opportunities in the near future.”

Particular attention was paid to Cyprus’s emergence as a business-friendly and innovation-oriented European base for Indian enterprises seeking expansion into EU markets.

Dr. Nicodemos Damianou, Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, articulated Cyprus’s long-term vision with notable precision. He outlined a future-facing policy architecture centred around innovation sandboxes, AI enablement, startup acceleration, regulatory agility, and experimentation environments designed to allow companies to iterate rapidly while remaining connected to European frameworks and institutions.

Demetris Skourides, Chief Scientist of the Republic of Cyprus, who has been actively engaging with the Indian technology and startup ecosystem since 2024, reiterated Cyprus’s ambition to emerge as a regional innovation hub and a strategic gateway into Europe for Indian enterprises. He highlighted the country’s globally competitive IP Box regime, which offers an effective tax rate as low as 3% on qualifying intellectual property income, alongside a 120% deduction on eligible R&D expenditure.

Indian companies already operating from Cyprus reinforced the country’s growing reputation as an intelligent European operating base for AI firms, SaaS enterprises, startups, digital platforms, and media-tech organisations seeking global scale.

HT Labs, widely recognised for its strengths across product engineering, artificial intelligence, consumer technology ecosystems, digital platforms, recommendation systems, content intelligence, and large-scale media-tech innovation, shared perspectives on the future of AI-led infrastructure and scalable technology systems.

Mudaliar’s participation drew particular interest owing to his long-standing experience across product, media, technology, and consumer internet businesses. Over the years, he has been associated with building and scaling several digital ecosystems and innovation-led products across media, entertainment, content discovery, and platform businesses. His experience in navigating the intersection of technology, AI, user behaviour, and digital transformation positioned him as one of the principal voices from the Indian delegation during the strategic discussions.

HT Labs also expressed strong interest in leveraging Cyprus’s sandbox environments and innovation-friendly regulatory frameworks to test and scale its emerging Technology-as-a-Service (TaaS) and Slurrp businesses. Discussions explored the possibility of co-building opportunities across AI-led media systems, digital infrastructure, recommendation engines, content intelligence frameworks, and next-generation consumer engagement platforms, using Cyprus as an agile experimentation and European deployment base.

Speaking during the engagement, Avinash Mudaliar observed, “Cyprus is fast emerging as a strategic innovation bridge connecting India to Europe. What distinguishes the country is its ability to combine European market access with agile policymaking, startup-friendly thinking, and a deeply collaborative innovation ecosystem. The passion, consistency, and commitment exhibited by Cyprus towards building future-facing technology infrastructure is extraordinary. For Indian businesses seeking global scale in AI, media-tech, and digital infrastructure, Cyprus presents a compelling opportunity.”

Demetris Skourides remarked, “Cyprus is building a future-ready innovation ecosystem designed for global collaboration across AI, digital transformation, and emerging technologies. With strong incentives including the 3% IP Box regime, 120% R&D deductions, startup and digital nomad visa programmes, and a focus on entrepreneurial agility and international co-creation, we aim to become a trusted gateway for companies seeking long-term growth in Europe. The arrival of global innovation ecosystems such as Plug and Play and semiconductor design firm Tenstorrent, combined with the technology sector contributing nearly 16% to Cyprus’s GDP, is a strong signal of international investor confidence in Cyprus’s innovation economy.”

Special mention must also be made of Stavros Stavrou, President of the Cyprus-India Business Association, whose stewardship of the wider engagement ecosystem ensured that discussions retained both strategic seriousness and uncommon warmth. His efforts in strengthening India–Cyprus commercial and innovation relationships were visible throughout the proceedings, particularly in fostering an environment where governments, investors, startups, and technology leaders could engage with unusual candour and intellectual openness.

Following the formal roundtable discussions, both Stavros Stavrou and Demetris Skourides spent additional time in detailed post-session conversations around long-term India–Cyprus collaboration opportunities, AI ecosystems, innovation sandboxes, and the future of technology-led partnerships between Indian enterprises and Cyprus. These interactions moved beyond protocol and reflected a genuine intent towards sustained engagement, co-building possibilities, and strategic technology partnerships.

Their acknowledgement and appreciation of HT Labs’ participation reflected the seriousness with which the Cyprus ecosystem is approaching long-term collaboration with Indian innovation leaders.

By the conclusion of the roundtable, one truth had become abundantly clear: Cyprus no longer seeks merely to participate in the European innovation conversation. It seeks to shape it.

And for Indian enterprises standing at the threshold of global expansion, Cyprus is making an increasingly persuasive case that the road into Europe may well pass through Nicosia.

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

Skip the guesswork and let GoCredit AI map out your personalized, high-impact path to an excellent credit score

Today, that changes.

GoCredit’s deep-tech research division TARA AI Labs has released BASIC — Behavioural Analytics for Score Improvement in Credit. It is an AI engine built to do something no Indian credit tool has done before: read your actual credit report and tell you, specifically, what to do next. Not generic tips. A personal plan, built from your own credit data, that shows exactly which actions will move your score, by how much, and in what order.

The full framework is published as a research paper at taralabs.ai/paper/basic-paper. To our knowledge, it is the first research paper in India to treat credit score improvement as its own machine learning problem. The paper introduces a new field of study — Behavioural Credit Analytics — focused on turning AI insight into measurable consumer benefit.

The 300 Million Indians the System Forgot
India has over 300 million credit-active consumers. Most of them sit in the middle. Not chronic defaulters. Not prime borrowers. They sit in a near-prime band where a 50-point swing in their credit score is the difference between a loan at 12% and a loan at 22%. The difference between approval and rejection. The difference between buying a two-wheeler this month or waiting another year.

These are gig workers in Bengaluru. Self-employed shopkeepers in Indore. Salaried professionals in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities whose financial lives don’t fit the templates that credit scoring models were built for. They check their score every month on an app. They see the number. They feel the weight of it. And they have nowhere to turn for a real plan.

“Credit scores answer one question well — where are you? They were never designed to answer the next one: how do you move? We see this every day. People come to us with scores of 580, 620, 650 — not because they’re irresponsible, but because nobody has shown them how to move. Until BASIC, nobody was giving these borrowers a real, personalised plan to fix their financial future. That’s what we set out to change,” said  Anupam Acharya, Co-founder and CEO of GoCredit.

What’s Different About BASIC
Until now, an Indian consumer with a low credit score had three options. Generic advice from public websites. Paid credit counsellors who couldn’t see their actual report. Rule-based simulators that gave the same answer to everyone, regardless of profile.

None of these produced a real, personal plan. None of them could tell a specific borrower with a specific credit profile what to do, in what order, to gain the most points in the least time. That is what BASIC does — and as far as we know, no one has done it before in India.

So what makes BASIC work? Most credit models look only at where you are today. BASIC looks at where you are, where you’ve been, and how fast you’re moving — for every part of your credit profile. Trained on the credit histories of more than a million Indian borrowers over four years, BASIC can predict your next-month credit score with an average error of just 16 points. On the 300–900 credit score scale, that is under 2.2% off. Standard deep-learning models trained on the same data are about four times less accurate.

“A credit score isn't just where you are today - it's where you're heading. Most score simulators miss this: they look at your current credit attributes in isolation, when bureau algorithms are actually responding to how those attributes are changing over time. We trained BASIC on the rate of change alongside the current value, which is the temporal structure the bureaus actually reward. That's why the recommendations move scores instead of just describing them,” said Pranav Murali, Co-founder and Lead AI Engineer at GoCredit.

Already Used by Over 2 Lakh Indians
This is not a research preview. BASIC is already live on the GoCredit Android app, where it powers a feature called Credit Score Boost — used by over 2 lakh Indians so far.

Among the 50,000 monthly active paying subscribers, 10,000 — one in five — have improved their credit scores by 50 points or more within two months of actively following BASIC’s recommendations.

For these 10,000 borrowers, that 50-point gain is not abstract. For someone near the prime threshold, it can be the difference between a loan rejection and an approval. It can mean an EMI at 12% instead of 22%. For many, it is the first time their credit score has moved in their favour in years — and the first time anyone has shown them how to make it happen.

“We meet borrowers every day who tell us they’ve been trying to fix their score for two or three years and getting nowhere. Two months later they show us their app and the number has moved up by 60, 70, 80 points. That moment — when a borrower realises they’re not stuck, that the system isn’t a black box anymore — that’s why we built this,” said Anupam Acharya, Co-founder and CEO of GoCredit.

Now Opening to Lenders: The ScoreBoost API
TARA AI Labs is also announcing today that the same engine is now available to financial institutions through the ScoreBoost API. The API is live with select pilot partners.

For the first time, a lender selling a loan, credit card, or BNPL product can show a borrower — right at the point of sale — how that product will affect their credit score over the next 6 to 12 months. A consumer comparing two credit cards can see, before signing up, which one is more likely to help their score and which one might hurt it. A lender offering a secured loan can show the borrower exactly how the product fits into their improvement journey.

“Indian lenders today sell loans without showing customers the consequence on their credit profile. That information asymmetry has been one of the most under-discussed problems in retail lending. ScoreBoost API closes it. A lender can integrate our engine and tell a borrower: here is what this product will do to your credit score. It changes the conversation from ‘do you qualify?’ to ‘is this the right product for where you’re trying to go?,” said Shubham Arawkar, Co-founder and CTO of GoCredit.

ScoreBoost API is currently in pilot with select NBFCs and digital lending platforms. Broader availability will be announced later in 2026.

Privacy and Regulatory Architecture
BASIC works only on consumer-consented credit data, accessed through official APIs under the consumer-initiated credit information report framework of the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act, 2005. All data handling also complies with India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. No bank account access, no SMS reading, no invasive data collection — by design.

BASIC is deployed strictly as a consumer-facing advisory system. Its outputs are not routed — through any production pathway — into GoCredit’s lending decisions, underwriting models, or partner lenders’ scoring engines. The advisory model and the lending stack are operationally separated systems.

“A model trained to help consumers improve their scores shouldn’t simultaneously be used to judge them. We enforce that separation operationally — BASIC’s outputs have no production pathway into any lending decision engine, ours or anyone else’s,” said Shubham Arawkar, Co-founder and CTO of GoCredit.

Availability

• Credit Score Boost is available now on the GoCredit Android app at INR 199/month.

• ScoreBoost API is in pilot with select financial institutions; institutional partners can request access at research@taralabs.ai.

• The full BASIC research paper is available at taralabs.ai/paper/basic-paper.

About TARA AI Labs
TARA AI Labs is the deep-tech research division of GoCredit, focused on responsible AI for credit and financial empowerment in emerging markets. The lab publishes research on credit modelling, applied AI on financial data, and consumer-centric AI design. taralabs.ai.

About GoCredit
GoCredit is an AI-powered personal finance platform helping Indians access credit and improve their financial health, with over INR 120 crore in loan disbursals facilitated across 50+ RBI-regulated lending partners. gocredit.money.

Akkodis recognized in HFS Horizons Agentic Services, 2026 report

The report positions Akkodis as an Enterprise Innovator, citing its strengths in delivering agentic services grounded in strong data foundations and governed execution. HFS Research notes Akkodis' ability to support enterprise-level transformation, helping organizations scale agentic AI across core workflows while maintaining governance, traceability and operational control, with demonstrated production deployments and measurable business outcomes.

From agentic AI pilots to enterprise production
Agentic AI represents a shift from AI-assisted productivity to autonomous, goal-driven execution embedded into end-to-end workflows. While adoption is accelerating, many enterprises continue to struggle to scale beyond pilots due to challenges related to data readiness, governance, trust and accountability. The HFS Horizons: Agentic Services, 2026 report examines which service providers are closing this gap by moving agentic AI from experimentation into enterprise production.

In its assessment, HFS Research highlights Akkodis' focus on governance, data foundations and execution at scale, emphasizing several strengths:

• Governed agentic services with measurable impact - Akkodis delivers agentic services that embed governed AI agents into enterprise workflows, improving employee engagement, productivity, and business performance with measurable P&L impact.

• Platform-anchored delivery and adoption at scale - AI-Core, Akkodis' industrial AI and agent orchestration platform, together with a productized data architecture, enable context-aware agent execution across enterprise environments, supporting production-scale use cases backed by global AI labs and structured adoption programs.

• Data-led architecture with enterprise governance - Akkodis' data-led agentic architecture is operationalized through a structured, multi-phase data pipeline with built-in governance gates, run-time approvals, auditability, and ROI-led use-case prioritization.

• Services-as-Software progression - Akkodis is shifting toward Services-as-Software, citing autonomous, reusable agentic components that reduce execution time, increase throughput and accelerate delivery without scaling delivery effort.

Demonstrated outcomes cited by HFS Research
HFS Research highlights production-level outcomes delivered through Akkodis' agentic services, underscoring the real-world impact of governed agentic execution. In the public sector, the report cites Akkodis' work with an Australian education authority where specialized AI agents cut lesson-plan creation time by 50-60%, reducing administrative effort and enabling educators to focus on higher-value work. In manufacturing, HFS points to deployments where Akkodis' agentic intelligence helped a global client reduce take-back orders by 20-30%, cut scrap by 30-40%, and achieve greater than 90% forecasting accuracy, driving meaningful gains in efficiency, quality and decision-making at scale.

"We're proud to be recognized by HFS Research as an Enterprise Innovator in agentic services," said Jo Debecker, President & CEO of Akkodis. "As organizations move from AI experimentation to real execution, the challenge isn't ambition - it's delivering agentic AI that can run reliably in production.

At Akkodis, we focus on engineering-led, governed execution that helps enterprises scale agentic AI responsibly across core workflows with trust, accountability and measurable impact."

"Akkodis brings a distinctive engineering-led approach to agentic services, combining deep technical expertise with industry knowledge to embed intelligent agents into complex product and operational environments, enabling enterprises to move from experimentation to scalable, real-world AI impact," said David Cushman, Executive Research Leader, HFS.

Media contacts
Anne Friedrich
SVP, Global Head of Communications, Akkodis
M. +4915174633470
E. anne.friedrich@adeccogroup.com

Lisa Bushka
VP, External Communications, Akkodis
M. +18604630770
E. lisa.bushka@adeccogroup.com

About Akkodis
Akkodis is a global digital engineering consulting company that enables organizations to innovate and accelerate by applying technology to redefine how processes and products are developed, powered and optimized. With deep expertise across AI, data, cloud, edge and software engineering, we offer best-in-class technology consultancy. Through our strong, scalable delivery models and specialized talent, we provide end-to-end solutions, from strategy and consulting through implementation. Our commitment to Akkodis Intelligence helps businesses connect the exponential power of technology with the irreplaceable strengths of human thinking and collaboration. Part of the Adecco Group and headquartered in Switzerland, Akkodis brings together 40,000 engineers and digital experts in over 30 countries, with services that span Consulting, Solutions and Academy. With deep experience across the world's major industries, Akkodis empowers businesses to solve complex challenges and achieve sustainable impact. akkodis.com | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | X

About the Adecco Group
The Adecco Group is the world's leading talent company. Our purpose is making the future work for everyone. Through our three global business units - Adecco, Akkodis and LHH - across 60 countries, we enable sustainable and lifelong employability for individuals, deliver digital and engineering solutions to power transformation and empower organisations to optimise their workforces. The Adecco Group leads by example and is committed to an inclusive culture, fostering sustainable employability, and supporting resilient economies and communities. The Adecco Group AG is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland (ISIN: CH0012138605) and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (ADEN). www.adeccogroup.com

About HFS
HFS Research is a leading research and advisory authority on enterprise transformation, serving Fortune 500 companies with fearless insights and actionable strategies. With unparalleled access to Global 2000 executives and deep expertise in AI, automation, and digital business models, HFS empowers organizations to make confident decisions that create sustainable competitive advantage. For more information, visit www.hfsresearch.com.

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.

While AI is already reshaping how content is produced, distributed and consumed, the core of sport remains fundamentally human. Live competition, physical performance and unscripted outcomes are not easily replicated or automated.

Nicole Junkermann - the magic of sport can’t be replaced by an algorithm

According to Nicole Junkermann, founder of Gameday by NJF Holdings, this gives sport a unique position in the emerging AI economy.

“AI can enhance sport, analyse it and distribute it,” she says. “But it can’t replace it. The unpredictability of human competition is exactly what makes it valuable.”

This dynamic is becoming increasingly relevant in India, where sport is undergoing rapid commercial and cultural expansion.

Cricket remains dominant, with the Indian Premier League now one of the most valuable sports properties in the world. But growth is no longer limited to a single discipline. Football, kabaddi, badminton and women’s sport are all attracting rising audiences, investment and media attention.

At the same time, India is one of the most digitally connected markets globally. Hundreds of millions of fans consume sport through mobile devices, social platforms and streaming services. This creates a powerful intersection between technology and live content.

AI is accelerating that shift.

From personalised highlights and real-time analytics to fan engagement tools and data-driven sponsorship models, AI is transforming the way sport is experienced and monetised. But crucially, it is doing so without displacing the underlying product. Instead, it is amplifying it.

“Sport is becoming a kind of anchor asset in a digital world,” Junkermann says. “As more content becomes synthetic or automated, authentic live experiences become more valuable, not less.”

India is particularly well positioned to capitalise on this trend.

The country combines scale, passion and a young, mobile-first audience. Leagues such as the IPL and Pro Kabaddi League have already demonstrated how sport can be packaged, distributed and monetised in new ways. The next phase will involve deeper integration of technology to expand reach and engagement further.

This includes direct-to-consumer platforms, athlete-led content, creator partnerships and new commercial models built around data and personalisation.

It also includes the rise of women’s sport, which remains underpenetrated but is growing rapidly, both in India and globally. As investment increases, these leagues have the potential to scale quickly in a digital-first environment.

The broader implication is that sport is not being disrupted by AI in the same way as other sectors. It is being revalued.

In a world where algorithms can generate text, images and even video, the scarcity of genuine, unscripted human performance becomes more pronounced. That scarcity underpins long-term economic value.

“AI will change almost every industry,” Nicole Junkermann, who was born in 1980, adds. “But sport isn’t just content. It’s competition, identity and emotion. Those are much harder to automate.”

For India’s investors, media companies and policymakers, the opportunity is clear. By combining technological innovation with strong underlying sports assets, the country can build a more resilient and globally competitive sports ecosystem.

In the age of AI, that may prove to be a decisive advantage.

About Gameday by NJF Holdings

Gameday by NJF Holdings is a sports investment and strategic platform founded by Nicole Junkermann, born in 1980. Focused on building long-term value across leagues, media and sports technology, Gameday’s approach centres on structural growth, digital transformation and scalable fan ecosystems.

The platform 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. Gameday by NJF Holdings is also behind Cayo TV, a next-generation sports media platform designed to expand access, engagement and modern distribution for live sport audiences.

For more information visit: gameday.team

CBRE South Asia Pvt. Ltd, India’s leading real estate consulting firm, today announced the launch of Investment IQ Pro at the CII BFSI Summit 2026 in Mumbai, the next-generation version of its flagship Investment Risk Monitoring platform Investment IQ. CBRE was the Knowledge Partner at the Summit.

The platform is an AI-powered workflow solution and is designed to streamline and transform real estate investment processes by replacing fragmented, manual systems with intelligent automation.

Building on the strong adoption of Investment IQ, which already counts several of India’s leading financial institutions as well as Developers among its clients, with more in active onboarding, the Pro version marks a significant advancement in capability. It introduces India’s first AI-native, regulatory-compliant workflow platform purpose-built for real estate capital, built around a Four-Way Integrated Visibility model: developers, consultants, lenders, and trustees operating within a single, real-time dashboard.

This replaces the fragmented, email-driven coordination that has historically existed in the sector. The platform cuts turnaround times for NOC approvals and invoice processing from several days to just a few minutes, automates project spend verification, and embeds active error detection and immutable audit trails - critical for lenders operating under strict regulatory scrutiny.

“Investment IQ Pro represents the next phase of our digital transformation journey in real estate advisory,” said Anshuman Magazine, Chairman & CEO - India, South-East Asia, Middle East & Africa, CBRE. “While the first iteration addressed visibility and monitoring, this platform goes a step further by fundamentally re-engineering how investment workflows operate. By embedding AI-led automation and creating a unified ecosystem for all stakeholders, we are enabling faster, more transparent and data-driven decision-making. This will not only enhance operational efficiency but also unlock greater value for developers, lenders and investors across the region.”

India’s real estate investment process has been burdened by some inefficiencies: reporting lags, invoices requiring manual review, and lenders operating without a unified, real-time view of portfolio exposure. Investment IQ Pro addresses this through intelligent automation, using advanced OCR to read and validate documents simultaneously, providing shared dashboards for all four stakeholder groups, and converting pooled transaction data into actionable early warning signals.

The result is faster collections, reduced capital drag, sharper underwriting, and stronger project cashflows.

Rami Kaushal, Managing Director, Consulting & Valuation Services, India, Middle East & Africa, CBRE, said, “Investment IQ Pro addresses some of the most persistent structural inefficiencies in real estate investment like fragmented approvals, limited real-time visibility, and compliance gaps that institutional capital can no longer afford to overlook. By reducing turnaround times, embedding regulatory compliance by design, and converting pooled project data into sharper underwriting intelligence, the platform sets a new benchmark for how this industry operates. Our ambition is to make Investment IQ Pro the dominant operating standard for real estate investment management in India over the next two years, and this launch marks the decisive step toward that goal.”

The platform has been designed with compliance at its core and aligns with the RBI’s compliance requirements and SOC-1 standards, offering secure, immutable audit trails essential for institutional investors and lenders. The configurable multi-layer approval system and integrated digital signing tools also allow organizations to align workflows with their internal governance and risk structures.

By addressing inefficiencies across the developer-consultant-lender ecosystem, Investment IQ Pro delivers measurable financial benefits, including reduced capital drag, faster collections, improved vendor relationships, and enhanced portfolio performance.

With several real estate stakeholders already onboarding onto the platform and more in advanced discussions, CBRE aims to establish Investment IQ Pro as the operating standard for digital-first real estate investment management in India.

About CBRE Group, Inc.

CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE: CBRE), a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company headquartered in Dallas, is the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm (based on 2025 revenue). The company has more than 155,000 employees (including Turner & Townsend employees) serving clients in more than 100 countries. CBRE serves clients through four business segments: Advisory (leasing, sales, debt origination, mortgage servicing, valuations); Building Operations & Experience (facilities management, property management, flex space & experience, data center solutions); Project Management (program management, project management, cost consulting); Real Estate Investments (investment management, development).

Please visit our website at www.cbre.com.

CBRE was the first International Property Consultancy to set up an office in India in 1994. Since then, the operations have grown to include more than 13,000 professionals across 15 offices, with a presence in over 100 cities in India. In 2025, CBRE topped the list of India’s “Best Employers” by TIME and Statista. As a leading international property consultancy, CBRE provides clients with a wide range of real estate solutions, including Strategic Consulting, Valuations/Appraisals, Capital Markets, Leasing, Global Workplace Solutions & Property Management, and Project Management. The guiding principle at CBRE is to provide strategic solutions that make real estate holdings more productive and economically efficient for its clients across all service lines. Please visit our website at www.cbre.co.in.

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Unlike existing AI travel assistants that are limited to single-destination searches or require users to switch between multiple platforms to piece together a journey, DIYA enables end-to-end multi-city planning and booking within a single, continuous chat conversation. From intuitively understanding traveler intent to surfacing the best flight options and recommending hotels across destinations, DIYA goes a step further by creating ready-to-book packages and curating relevant local experiences.

Travellers can now simply describe their multi-city travel plans in natural language, e.g “Plan a 7-day trip covering Bali & Singapore for 2 people. I'll start from Delhi on July 17.” and DIYA will instantly create a comprehensive, bookable itinerary that includes flights, hotel stays, & packages across cities, and curated activity recommendations, eliminating the need to navigate multiple tabs or manually build itineraries.

DIYA accommodates a range of journey structures: one-way trips across cities, return flights from same or a different destination, or full multi-country loops. It recommends hotels for each stop and suggests relevant experiences, reducing trip-planning time from hours or days to minutes.

This builds on DIYA’s existing capabilities as a generative AI-powered travel assistant that offers end-to-end trip planning, booking, and post-booking support across chat and voice in over 100 languages. Powered by advanced AI models including Google’s Gemini, DIYA leverages natural language processing, real-time integrations, and retrieval-augmented generation to deliver personalized, context-aware travel experiences.

Commenting on the development, Siddhartha Gupta, Chief Executive Officer, Yatra Online, said, “The gap in online travel has never really been about access to options. There are plenty of those. The real problem has always been the effort it takes to turn those options into an actual trip. Travellers were left to do all the hard work themselves - coordinating across platforms, second-guessing their choices, and spending weekends on planning instead of looking forward to the journey. With DIYA, we are taking a major step forward in closing that gap. From the first message to the final booking, DIYA holds the entire experience together- intelligently, conversationally, and in real time. That, for us, is what making travel truly intelligent looks like.”

“DIYA leverages the semantic intelligence of Large Language Models to deeply understand traveler intent and sentiment. It then applies advanced reasoning to craft highly personalized itineraries and dynamic travel packages-seamlessly identifying the best flights and hotels in real time. Users can continue to refine the package until it’s perfectly aligned with their needs,” adds Shakti Goel, Chief Architect and Data Scientist, Yatra Online.

Since DIYA’s launch in August 2025, Yatra continues to expand its capabilities as a consumer-first AI travel assistant, moving closer to fully autonomous, end-to-end travel planning. By combining conversational intelligence with real-time execution across flights, hotels, and experiences, DIYA is redefining how travellers discover, plan, and book increasingly complex journeys in a faster, more intuitive way.

For more details, please contact: yatra@prpundithavasred.com.

About Yatra Online Limited
Yatra Online Limited (BSE: 543992, NSE: YATRA) is India’s Largest Corporate Travel services provider and one of India's leading consumer travel companies. Through the website, www.yatra.com, mobile applications, Corporate SaaS platform, and other associated platforms, leisure and business travelers can explore, research, compare prices and book a wide range of services. which include domestic and international air ticketing, hotel bookings. homestays, holiday packages, bus ticketing, rail ticketing activities and ancillary services catering to the travel needs. Experience of being a NASDAQ listed company and managing public shareholders. Experienced management team and strong corporate governance comprising industry executives with deep roots in the travel industry with 90+ years of accumulated experience.

Supported by dedicated tech anchors and platforms like Lovable, Claude, and Base44, the tools aided even the non-technical teams successfully built functional solutions. Industry leaders including Shrijay Sheth, Co-Founder, Legalwiz, Rishit Shah, Co-Founder, Kinetiq, Druman Patel, Partner, Manubhai and Shah LLP and Manan Shah, Executive Director, Ardeko Asset Management mentored the participating teams.

Commenting on the initiative Mr. Umesh Uttamchandani, Managing Director, Dev Accelerator Limited, said, "The AI conversation is no longer about isolated pilots. It is about embedding intelligence into the fabric of how organisations operate. DevXplore AI is a reflection of this shift, where problem solving is becoming faster, more contextual, and deeply aligned to business priorities. The real value lies not just in what was built over 48 hours, but in how this mindset will scale across the organisation.”

The hackathon produced highly practical tools across various departments. Some key innovations include:

• Finance: AI tools for automatic TDS and GST reconciliation against internal systems and automated multi stage payment trackers.

• Operations: Multilingual staff onboarding assistants and predictive pantry restock bots driven by simple voice notes.

• Sales and Marketing: A prospect intelligence engine to track high intent leads and a conversational AdsGPT for instant performance insights through cross platform ad.

• HR and Legal: Semantic matching engines for CV scoring and automated compliance deadline trackers for regulatory filings.

At a time when enterprises are grappling with how to scale AI adoption meaningfully, DevXplore AI demonstrates a shift from top down strategy to bottom up innovation, enabling teams closest to business problems to design and deploy solutions with immediate relevance.

The hackathon culminated in a comprehensive jury evaluation focused on the final builds the depth of problem understanding and the effective application of AI. Recognitions were awarded across six dynamic categories including; Most Likely to Ship, Biggest Time Saver, Most Creative Use of AI Best, Interdepartmental Thinking, Crowd Favourite, and Steepest Learning Curve Climbed.

Beyond the tangible outputs, the true success of DevXplore AI was the visible mindset shift across the organization. It sparked organic collaboration and moved teams from simply identifying problems to actively building solutions.

About Dev Accelerator Limited

Dev Accelerator Limited (NSE: DEVX; BSE: 544513) is an enterprise focused full solution managed workspace platform. We design build and operate custom offices end to end covering site selection bespoke fit outs technology integration and facility management under a single SLA. With one of India’s largest Tier 2 footprints by operational flex stock DevX serves enterprises startups and global corporations with collaborative customizable work environments across the country.
 

The company operates 28 centres across multiple Indian cities with over 14,000 seats and 8.6 lakh sq. ft. under management. This complemented by design, build, and allied services that ensure fast handovers and consistent standards.
 

For more information, please visit www.devx.work.

Business Core Solutions acquires Techie2Pillar for AI scaling

This move is part of BCS’s plan to strengthen how it delivers AI solutions for enterprises and expand its Agentic Service as a Software (ASaaS) offerings, enabling organizations to move from fragmented automation efforts to more structured, scalable execution models.

The acquisition comes after six months of collaboration between the two companies. During this period, Business Core Solutions and Techie2Pillar worked on real business use cases using conversational and AI-driven agents. These engagements demonstrated how AI can move beyond experiments and be used effectively in everyday business operations, particularly in areas where real-time interaction, decision-making, and workflow execution are critical.

With this acquisition, Techie2Pillar will be integrated into BCS’ Agentic Service as a Software (ASaaS) portfolio and will form the foundation of Proxyn.ai, a newly established sister company of BCS. This integration brings together Techie2Pillar’s expertise in voice and conversational AI with BCS’ library of 400+ ready-to-deploy agent blueprints, refined across 60+ enterprise environments strengthening BCS’ ability to design and deploy outcome-driven structured and scalable enterprise AI execution.

Speaking on the acquisition, Prakash Palani, CTO of BCS, said “Many organizations have strong ideas for AI, but the real challenge lies in executing them consistently at scale. This acquisition strengthens our ability to deliver reliable production-ready AI Solutions. Through Proxyn.ai, we are enabling faster agentic use cases deployment with reduced risk, while our Agentic System Integrator model, supported by platforms like Symphony, Anugal, and deKorvai, ensures governance and scalability across the enterprise.”

Bharanish, CTO of Techie2Pillar, said, “Our collaboration with BCS has already shown how conversational AI can deliver real business impact. By becoming part of BCS’s ASaaS portfolio, we can now better design and deploy AI systems that integrate smoothly with enterprise tools.”

Together, the combined capabilities are intended to help enterprises move from fragmented automation initiatives to structured, agent-driven operations, addressing one of the key challenges in AI adoption, scaling from pilot programs to production systems.

 About Business Core Solutions

Business Core Solutions (BCS) is a global enterprise transformation company, recognized as the world’s first Agentic System Integrator. Founded in 2014, the company operates across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and India, providing services across enterprise ecosystems including SAP, Salesforce, OpenText, AI/ML, Agentic Orchestration, Cloud, and Data Analytics.

These capabilities are complemented by its platforms, Symphony for orchestration, Anugal for identity governance, and deKorvai for data intelligence, which enable control, coordination, and visibility across enterprise systems. BCS supports organizations in improving execution efficiency, reducing operational complexity, and delivering consistent outcomes across processes.

 For more information, visit www.businesscoresolutions.com

Santosh Mishra

In his new role, Santosh will lead the development and execution of Alta’s AI-focused initiatives, with a strong emphasis on integrating cutting edge technologies into the learning ecosystem. He will work closely with academic and product teams to strengthen the institution’s AI-first approach and ensure that learners are equipped with industry relevant skills aligned with the evolving demands of the technology landscape.

An alumnus of the NIT , Tiruchirappalli, Santosh has built a strong reputation as an educator and mentor in the technology space. Over the years, he has guided more than 50,000 students globally, helping them navigate technical interviews and build sustainable careers in software engineering. His structured teaching approach and practical insights have made him a trusted voice among aspiring engineers and working professionals alike.

Santosh is also an accomplished author, having written more than ten technical books focused on software engineering principles and system architecture. His work simplifies complex concepts for learners and bridges the gap between academic knowledge and real world application. Beyond publishing, his contributions to tech education have been widely recognised across leading media platforms including AajTak, ABP News, Economic Times, Humans of Bombay, and JoshTalks. His impact earned him a feature at Times Square, underscoring his growing influence in the global education and technology ecosystem.

This appointment comes at a time when Alta School of Technology is strengthening its focus on building an AI-led curriculum that prepares students for the next wave of technological transformation. The institution continues to invest in leadership and innovation to enhance its offerings and expand its reach among learners seeking practical and future ready education.

Commenting on the appointment, Ashish Munjal, Founder of Alta School of Technology, added, “At Alta, we believe that the future of education lies in bridging the gap between learning and real world application. Santosh’s experience across leading technology organisations and his deep engagement with the student community will help us accelerate this vision. His leadership will further strengthen our commitment to delivering high quality, outcome driven education powered by emerging technologies.”

Harshit Agarwal, Founding Director at Alta School of Technology, said, “We are delighted to welcome Santosh to Alta. His strong foundation in technology combined with his passion for teaching makes him uniquely positioned to drive our AI innovation efforts. As we continue to evolve our curriculum, his insights will play a crucial role in shaping programs that are both industry aligned and learner centric.”

Sharing his thoughts on joining the organization, Santosh Mishra said, “I am excited to be a part of Alta School of Technology at a time when AI is redefining how we learn and work. I look forward to contributing to an ecosystem that prioritises practical learning and empowers students to build meaningful careers. Together, we aim to create programs that not only teach technology but also enable learners to think critically and innovate with confidence.”

With this appointment, Alta School of Technology continues to reinforce its position as a forward looking institution focused on innovation, scalability, and impactful learning experiences in the field of technology education.

About Alta School of Technology
Alta School of Technology is an AI-first computer science institute focused on delivering industry-integrated, hands-on learning. Founded by Ashish Munjal and Harshit Aggarwal, Alta combines real-world projects, expert mentorship, and a portfolio-driven approach to build future-ready engineers.

(L- R) Anirudh Singla, Co - founder and CEO of Pepper, Vamshi Sriperumbudur, Former Palo Alto Networks SASE CMO, Kishan Panpalia, Founding Team of Pepper & Rishabh Shekhar, Co-founder and COO of Pepper

INDEX’26 featured a distinguished lineup of global leaders at the forefront of marketing, AI, and technology. The event opened with a keynote by Dane Vahey, Head of B2B at OpenAI, followed by Alexandra London, CMO at G2.

The summit witnessed overwhelming demand, with registrations closing at 2.5 times capacity and over 80 professionals waitlisted—achieved entirely without paid promotion. This strong organic response signals a growing urgency among enterprises to understand and adapt to AI-led discovery and visibility.

Anirudh Singla, Co-founder & CEO, Pepper said, “INDEX’26 was never meant to be another marketing conference—it was designed as a room for operators who are actively rethinking growth in an AI-first world. What we saw in San Francisco validates a much larger shift: enterprises are no longer asking if AI will change discovery, but how fast they need to adapt to it. The level of demand, the depth of conversations, and the quality of leaders in the room—from platforms like OpenAI, LinkedIn, and Reddit—signal that Generative Engine Optimization is moving from concept to implementation. INDEX is our way of building a global movement around this shift—grounded in real insights, real operators, and real outcomes.”

An ecosystem panel featuring Dev Khare of Lightspeed Ventures, Sid Arora from LinkedIn, and DJ Capobianco of Reddit explored how shifting market dynamics are redefining growth strategies. The conference also featured prominent speakers including Joyce Hwang from Dropbox, Heidi Bullock from Marketo, Christine Royston from Wrike, along with Amanda Kahlow, Drew Neisser, Sydney Sloan, Elay Cohen, and AJ Gandhi.

The audience comprised a highly curated group of enterprise decision-makers, including leaders from Salesforce, Nvidia, Intel, Snowflake, Gong, 6sense, Demandbase, JFrog, Zendesk, and Tealium, including CMOs, VPs, and Heads of Marketing.

A key highlight of the summit was Pepper’s Founding member Kishan Panpalia’s GEO research presentation, which drew standing-room-only participation. The session drove exceptional engagement, with over 500 screenshots captured by attendees across a 20-slide presentation—an uncommon response for a research-focused session and a strong indicator of the relevance of GEO frameworks.

Reflecting on the broader shift, Dev Khare remarked, “It’s not marketing that’s changing—it’s market structures.” This insight resonated deeply with attendees, reinforcing the need for organizations to rethink not just tactics, but the fundamental systems driving demand.

Within 24 hours of the event, industry leaders including Claire Darling, Genefa Murphy, Anand Akela, Meghan Keough, Sandra Lopez, Karen Brewer, and David DeJonghe shared organic, unsolicited feedback on LinkedIn, calling INDEX’26 one of the highest-quality marketing conferences of the year.

INDEX’26 stands as a testament to the power of conviction-led community building. Without the backing of large-scale funding or agency amplification, Pepper successfully brought together global technology platforms and enterprise leaders in one room—driven purely by relevance, insight, and industry trust.

Building on the momentum from San Francisco, INDEX’26 will next take place in New York City on May 27, as Pepper continues to expand its global footprint and lead the conversation on AI-first growth and GEO adoption.

BrandIQ: AI-Powered, Forward-looking Brand Intelligence

What is BrandIQ?
BrandIQ is an always-on brand intelligence platform developed by TheSixth.AI, SixthFactor's proprietary AI analytics division. It continuously monitors and analyses digital brand signals across four interconnected dimensions to deliver a unified, live, real-time view of brand awareness, perception, trust, and advocacy, replacing the rearview mirror of periodic surveys with forward-looking intelligence.

• AI & LLM Visibility: How a brand is represented in AI-generated responses across large language models including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity

• Search Performance: How a brand surfaces, ranks, and competes in organic and paid search environments

• Social Narrative: How brand-related conversations form and travel across social platforms

• Consumer Reviews & Validation: How consumer sentiment and trust signals play out through public reviews and ratings

Today's consumer spends 6–7 hours online daily (Telefonica, 2025), searching, reviewing, comparing, and reacting publicly. Before they buy, they sense-check. Before they trust, they search. What looks like everyday digital behaviour is in reality live brand experience, playing out continuously, at scale, largely outside the view of traditional brand tracking. BrandIQ is built to change that.

Developed by TheSixth.AI, SixthFactor's proprietary AI-led insights division, BrandIQ has been launched globally, with its India debut marking a major expansion of the platform's footprint, bringing always-on brand intelligence to India, home to nearly 1.02 billion internet users and one of the world's fastest-growing digital consumer markets (Reuters, Jan 2026).

BrandIQ's methodology is AI-powered, human-led, and research-grade with analytical models and correlative data analysis. Advanced AI models process the scale and complexity of digital signals. Human expertise interprets them, delivering structured intelligence that can be acted upon, not just observed. Each engagement is bespoke, built around a brand's specific category, competitive context, and strategic questions. Crucially, BrandIQ is one of the few brand intelligence platforms to include Generative AI Visibility as a core tracking dimension, monitoring how brands appear in responses generated by large language models such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity, a channel that now influences consumer decisions before a traditional search even takes place.

Himanshu Vashishtha, Founder and Global CEO, SixthFactor, said, "Brands today are navigating a digital ecosystem that is more complex, faster moving, and more consequential than anything traditional tracking was built for. BrandIQ is our answer to that. It gives our partners a complete, real-time view of their digital brand health, so that every brand decision starts from the clearest, most current picture of where they stand."

Diptanshu Ray, Managing Director, SixthFactor India, stated, "India is one of the most digitally active consumer markets in the world, and the signals that shape brand perception here are richer, faster, and more complex than ever before. Brand decisions today need to be informed by what consumers are searching, saying, and experiencing in real time. BrandIQ makes that possible, delivering structured, decision-ready intelligence that turns digital signals into genuine competitive advantage."

Faisal Khan, Managing Director, TheSixth.AI, added, "Most AI tools today are built to listen. BrandIQ is built to understand. The AI models powering this solution handle the complexity and scale. The structured analytical framework and correlation modelling applied on top of that make it research-grade. And human judgment ensures the intelligence is real."

Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is BrandIQ?
BrandIQ is an AI-powered brand health intelligence platform by SixthFactor that tracks digital brand signals in real time across AI/LLM environments, search, social media, and consumer reviews.
Q: Who is BrandIQ designed for?
BrandIQ is built for brand managers, CMOs, and insights teams at mid-to-large organisations seeking always-on visibility into how their brand is perceived and experienced across digital channels.
Q: How is BrandIQ different from traditional brand tracking?
Traditional brand tracking relies on periodic consumer surveys, which provide a retrospective snapshot. BrandIQ delivers continuous, real-time intelligence across live digital signals, including AI-generated brand mentions, a channel not captured by any legacy tracking methodology.
Q: In which markets is BrandIQ currently available?
BrandIQ is now live for clients across global markets.

About SixthFactor 
SixthFactor is an insights consultancy, powered by Behavioural Sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Design Thinking, that gives organizations clarity, predictability and profitability at every step of their growth journey. Founded in 2012 and home to the Middle East's first Neuro Lab, the firm is headquartered in Dubai, with offices in Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore, and the United States. SixthFactor deploys a full spectrum of qualitative, quantitative, and advanced research methodologies including neuromarketing, AI analytics (TheSixth.AI), ethnographic research and Design Thinking sprints along with proprietary Behavioural Economics frameworks, translating insight into commercial action. Clients include HSBC, Visa, IKEA, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Nestlé, Flipkart, ITC, Birla White, Asian Paints, Emami, Tata Consumer Products, Dabur and other global and regional leaders. 

Website : www.sixthfactor.in ; www.thesixth.ai.
LinkedIn : www.linkedin.com/company/sixthfactor-consulting
Business Contact for Queries or to book a BrandIQ demo : Arjun Urs | arjun.urs@sixthfactor.com.

The findings are based on a global survey of 335 senior decision-makers (Director level and above) across North America, Europe, APAC, and India, with the majority (97%) reporting annual revenues exceeding $1 billion.

Key Findings Highlight Why Digital Adoption Is Critical to Digital Transformation Success

• $10.9M at risk: A mid-sized organization of 1,000 employees stands to lose an estimated $10.9 million annually due to ineffective digital adoption.

• 728 hours lost per employee: Workers spend hundreds of hours navigating poorly adopted or complex digital environments. 

• AI adoption gap: While 76% of leaders prioritize AI adoption, only 27% view digital adoption as a critical enabler.

• DAP maturity drives outcomes: Proficient organizations significantly outperform emergent peers on key metrics, including improved user experience (53% vs. 28%) and ROI maximization (56% vs. 28%).

As enterprises scale AI, digital adoption maturity becomes critical. Governance, workflow integration, and measurement determine impact. Modern DAPs are emerging as the orchestrator of AI execution, embedding governance, workflow intelligence and real-time contextual guidance directly into enterprise workflows to ensure measurable outcomes at scale.

Find the full insights from the Whatfix-commissioned Forrester Consulting study here. The study also includes a Forrester-defined framework for organizations to evaluate their digital adoption maturity.

“Enterprises are buying and building AI faster than ever, but adoption is not keeping pace,” said Khadim Batti, Co-founder and CEO of Whatfix. “The real challenge is operationalizing intelligence inside real workflows with governance and measurable outcomes. Digital adoption maturity is no longer optional, it has become the difference between AI ambition and AI outcomes.”

“We treat AI as driving intelligence into whatever we do. With frequent changes in content creators, consistency and speed of delivery are critical for us. This is where AI plays a powerful role,” said Satyen Shah, Vice President – IT & Digital Solutions, JSW Steel. “AI is helping us contextualize user queries across Salesforce modules and deliver highly relevant, in-the-flow support. AI without context is of no use, and Whatfix’s roadmap around contextual intelligence and automation is creating real impact for us.”

Whatfix Momentum in 2025
Financial and Market Momentum Reinforce Category Leadership
In 2025, Whatfix continued its strong growth trajectory, registering 31% year-over-year revenue growth alongside a consistent margin expansion. Built on a foundation of robust core SaaS economics and improving operating leverage, the company continues to drive its growth agenda. This momentum was further validated by the 2025 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™, where Whatfix is recognised as the top-ranked DAP for the fifth consecutive year and rising to #279 globally, a 24% jump in ranking, achieving a remarkable 275% growth rate. Whatfix’s evolution toward an agentic product suite and AI-first innovation was also reinforced by the inclusion of its multi-product offerings—Digital Adoption, Product Analytics, and Mirror—in the 2025 Gartner Market Guides for both DAP and Product Analytics.

As the only Digital Adoption Platform recognized as a "Customers’ Choice" vendor in the Gartner Voice of the Customer report for the third consecutive year, Whatfix continues to attract market leaders. New customers continue to drive growth, accounting for 44% of the new business, with a strong expansion and new wins across a portfolio of enterprise logos, including Shell, Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Experian, Compass Group USA, Ceva Logistics, IDEXX Laboratories, Grant Thornton, and Sentry Insurance. This growth was achieved while maintaining a 99.9% CSAT score and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 53, reflecting deep product adoption and sustained customer value. Furthermore, Whatfix expanded its partner ecosystem to over 150 global partners, scaling AI-driven digital transformation across diverse industries and geographies.

Whatfix Product Suite: Accelerating AI Powered Digital Transformation
Artificial Intelligence
Screensense advanced as the core AI engine behind Whatfix, strengthening its ability to understand screen structure, workflow context, and user intent in real time.

Agentic Product-Suite 
Whatfix launched a unified suite of AI Agents—Authoring, Guidance, Insights, and specialized domain agents. These were designed as a native intelligence layer embedded across the Whatfix suite, transforming how enterprises create content, guide users, and generate insights across their digital ecosystems.

Early enterprise adopters are already seeing measurable impact, including:

• 30–40% reduction in content creation effort with the Authoring Agent

• 3–4x faster analysis cycles enabled by the Insights Agent

• 4–5x increase in information discovery and search usage through the Guidance Agent

More than 30% of new enterprise buyers in the second half of 2025 adopted AI Agents as part of their Whatfix rollout, signaling a clear shift toward AI-first digital adoption strategies.

Seek for Salesforce was also introduced in 2025 as the world’s first AI Agent to independently navigate workflows and complete Salesforce Trailhead Admin Challenges. This milestone marked a shift from AI that guides users to AI that executes tasks within enterprise systems—reinforcing Whatfix’s vision of governed, autonomous execution at scale.

Launched a Faster Way to Create Flows with Quick Capture Mode in DAP
Authors could now record all steps in one go, and Whatfix automatically generates the flow based on application context and user intent. Using the Authoring Agent, they can refine step titles and descriptions with AI prompts to match user needs. This reduces the number of clicks required to build guidance by 3X and cuts content creation time by up to 50%, significantly accelerating in-app guidance creation at scale.

Mirror Expands into a New Market with AI Roleplay
Mirror emerged as a major growth engine in 2025, with ARR tripling year-over-year following the launch of AI Roleplay. Mirror is now the world’s first GenAI-powered simulation and roleplay training solution that combines system simulation and AI-driven roleplay in a unified environment.

AI Roleplay addresses a critical enterprise gap of moving beyond system training to real-world readiness. By enabling teams to practice conversations, edge cases, and decision-making scenarios, organizations are reducing time-to-proficiency and improving customer experience outcomes at scale.

Product Analytics Advances from Insights to Action
Product Analytics evolved into a true Insights-to-Action platform, directly connecting behavioral data with in-app execution through the Digital Adoption Platform.

Key advancements included:

• Ask Whatfix AI maturing into an AI Analyst capable of contextual reasoning and automated action

• Real-Time Cohorts enabling instant user segmentation

• Session Replay for qualitative behavioral analysis

• Autocapture eliminating manual tagging and accelerating time-to-insight

Together, these capabilities enable enterprises to identify friction as it occurs and immediately trigger contextual flows or guidance.

2026 and beyond: 
Whatfix continues to advance the future of digital transformation by embedding AI into execution at scale. Through Whatfix University, the company has certified 6,500+ professionals, strengthening a growing global DAP community.

In early 2026, Whatfix strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of Amit Sureka as Chief Financial Officer, alongside the return of Patrick Ashamalla as Head of Product Research & Design and the addition of Vasupradha S as Head of Analyst Relations & Market Intelligence, as it scales its AI-native platform globally.

The company continues to receive recognition for its growth, AI innovation, product leadership, and customer centricity including the 2025 AI Breakthrough Award for Product Analytics, InfoWorld’s Technology of the Year Award for Mirror, 2026 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards finalist, G2 best software awards and ranking as a #1 DAP leader on the G2 Grid, Gold Stevie for Customer Service Department of the Year.

As enterprises scale AI, Whatfix will continue expanding its autonomous execution capabilities, positioning its platform as the orchestration layer for AI-driven digital transformation at scale. To support this next phase of AI led growth, the company will pursue disciplined expansion through sustained organic innovation and selective strategic acquisitions, further strengthening its platform capabilities and global enterprise footprint.

About Whatfix
Whatfix is an AI platform advancing  the “userization” of enterprise applications—empowering companies to maximize the ROI of their digital investments. Powered by a proprietary AI engine ScreenSense, Whatfix continuously interprets application workflow context and user intent to boost user productivity, ensure process compliance, and elevate user experience across applications and AI tools. The product portfolio includes a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP), Mirror for hands-on system simulation and AI Roleplay training, and Product and AI agent Analytics for no-code actionable insights. With seven offices across the US, India, UK, Germany, Singapore, and Australia, Whatfix supports 700+ enterprises, including 80+ Fortune 500s like Shell, Schneider Electric, and UPS Supply Chain Solutions. Backed by investors such as 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.

Primetrace, India’s leading AI-first consumer startup, announced it has scaled to a INR 550 Cr Annual Revenue Run Rate (ARR) with INR 200 Cr EBITDA run rate as of February 2026. This marks a rare profitability milestone in India's consumer app ecosystem that runs on high cash burn, vanity metrics and broken unit economics. Primetrace has delivered 50x revenue growth over three years — building its growth on real user needs, deep engagement, and strong retention.

Primetrace Team: Naveen Dewangan, Co-founder, Tech; Abhishek Kejriwal, Founder & CEO; Vipul Allawadhi, Co-founder & CPO; ⁠Mohit Sharma, Co-founder, Tech

Primetrace operates a ‘house of apps’ model, identifying large consumer opportunities to build AI-native products around everyday use cases. The company focuses on retention and proven engagement before scaling distribution through a subscription-based monetization strategy.

The company’s product portfolio includes Kutumb (a community platform used by 2 Lakh communities), Crafto AI (AI-powered content creation app used by 200M users), Tarot AI (AI-powered personalised tarot readings), Polo (an inclusive dating platform), and Sundar AI (an AI-powered image enhancement platform). Each of the apps are the most downloaded in their respective categories – with cumulative downloads exceeding 350 million.

Primetrace is powered by a proprietary AI infrastructure built specifically for the Indian market. Rather than relying on standard third-party solutions, the company engineers true AI-first products for Bharat using custom model training and proprietary datasets. Primetrace has built an intelligence layer that deeply understands the needs and preferences of Bharat users.

The company has also received industry recognition for the scale of its technology adoption. OpenAI recognised Primetrace for surpassing 10 billion tokens in usage, while the company ranks among the top service users of Google AI in India. Primetrace had earlier raised $30 million in funding from Tiger Global and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India), providing the foundation for building and scaling its AI-driven consumer app ecosystem.

Talking about the company’s approach to building and scaling consumer products in India, Abhishek Kejriwal, Founder and CEO, Primetrace, said, “India's consumer AI opportunity is massive and largely uncaptured. Over the next decade, AI will transform every digital touchpoint for a billion Bharat users — how they learn, earn, communicate, and make decisions. Primetrace is here to lead that transformation. Our greatest strength is the deep, real-world understanding of daily user behavior we've gained through our proprietary dataset across our suite of products. This is the right time, this is the right market, and we have the right playbook. Our goal is clear: to build AI-powered apps that empower one billion Bharat users every single day.”

Looking ahead, Primetrace is actively expanding its suite of AI-native applications to solve everyday needs for Indian consumers. Driven by a dedicated internal research and development team, the company is constantly exploring new high-utility categories across the digital ecosystem. Their long-term mission is singular and focused: to build the native AI products that powers daily lives of Bharat.

ad:tech New Delhi 2026 opens at “The Bold Front,” spotlighting AI’s growing role in shaping the future of marketing

Held under the theme “The Bold Front,” the conference set the stage for conversations around a rapidly transforming industry where human creativity and intelligent technology are converging to redefine how brands connect with audiences.

Reflecting on the broader momentum at “The Bold Front,” Jaswant Singh, Country Managing Director, ad:tech India, noted how the conference captures the strategic pivot taking place across marketing today: "Consumer expectations are changing faster than ever, and brands must respond with intelligence and agility. At ad:tech New Delhi 2026, we are discussing how AI, data, and programmatic media can help organisations understand audiences more deeply and deliver relevant experiences. Success is now defined not only by reach but by the trust and value a brand creates at every touchpoint. Companies are exploring how to combine creativity with insight to foster stronger engagement. Creativity and human judgement remain essential, but technology is amplifying their reach. This is how the industry can build both growth and resilience for the future."

Over the past 15 years, ad:tech New Delhi has emerged as one of India’s most influential platforms for marketing innovation, enabling industry leaders to exchange ideas, explore new technologies, and navigate the evolving digital ecosystem.

At the 2026 edition, the expo hall was buzzing with energy. Over 70 companies, along with their experts and brand teams, demonstrated the latest innovation in AI, programmatic advertising, martech, data intelligence, and digital media solutions. Attendees also engaged in partner sessions by Google, Amazon, Magnite, and Click2Commission, gaining practical insights on platform strategies, publisher success, and emerging trends. Playful activations like Jenga, Tetris, and table tennis brought a fun, engaging dimension to the experience.

With participation from global tech companies, agencies, publishers, and marketing leaders, the scale and diversity of the event highlight the rapid growth and dynamism of India’s marketing technology ecosystem.

Exploring “The Bold Front” of Marketing
Across three stages- VISION, LIVE, and DEEP DIVE- Day 1 explored how marketing leadership is evolving as the industry moves from experimentation with AI toward deeper integration across the marketing stack.

The opening keynote, delivered by Jamie Jouning, Global Head of Advertising, The Economist, highlighted the importance of smarter systems in an AI-driven environment:

“We’re operating in a world of constant uncertainty, where AI is accelerating, but adoption remains uneven. Success won’t come from moving fastest, but from designing the smartest systems and making sharper choices about what truly matters.”

Sessions throughout the day examined AI-powered programmatic advertising, media buying, connected TV, search, generative AI in marketing workflows, and the evolving role of creators and youth culture. Speakers highlighted how AI is not replacing creative thinking, but expanding possibilities for experimentation and innovation. Panels also addressed ethical AI, transparency, and building consumer trust in automated systems.

Practical Insights and Emerging Trends
Creativity in the age of intelligent technology was another central theme, with speakers highlighting how AI is not replacing creative thinking but expanding the possibilities for experimentation and innovation in storytelling. David Shing, aka Digital Prophet, emphasized this evolving dynamic:

“Design has continually evolved with technology. From the shift from paper-led creativity to desktop publishing, each disruption has redefined the role of the creator. Today, AI marks the next inflection point, where it almost feels as though technology can anticipate our intent. As we express ideas, systems are increasingly able to translate them into outputs in real time, blurring the line between imagination and execution.”

Discussions explored hybrid operating models where human expertise works alongside AI-driven systems, as well as the growth of connected TV and quick commerce. Speakers emphasized that effective marketing in 2026 requires balancing speed and scale with intelligence, simplification, and data-driven decision-making.

“Television is far from stagnant; it is evolving through a hybrid model that blends the strengths of linear with the precision of digital. This synergy between scale and performance is redefining how marketers approach media investments today,” said Prasad Sanagavarapu, Invidi, summarising insights from the day’s media sessions.

The afternoon sessions further examined AI-native operating models, content as a core currency, commerce acceleration, and the rise of intelligent search, showcasing how marketing leaders are translating technological transformation into business growth.

Consumer behaviour in the age of AI was highlighted by Paul D’Arcy, Moloco:
"Technology is moving faster than ever, and the 2026 AI Disruption Index makes one thing clear: if your value proposition is purely transactional, you are vulnerable. The only true defense against AI disintermediation is the strength of your customer relationship. When disruption is high, trust is the only currency that doesn't devalue."

The Conversation Continues
By the close of Day 1, a clear theme had emerged across discussions: artificial intelligence is no longer simply enhancing marketing tools. In fact, it is reshaping the entire operating system of the industry.

From programmatic infrastructure and AI-powered creativity to connected TV, quick commerce, and intelligent search, marketers at ad:tech New Delhi 2026 are exploring how to navigate this new frontier where human insight and machine intelligence work together.

The day concluded with the ad:tech Honours Awards, celebrating the organisations and innovators pushing the boundaries of marketing technology.

With one more day of discussions, showcases, and networking ahead, ad:tech New Delhi 2026 continues to bring the industry together to explore what lies beyond today’s digital frontier.

About ad:tech

ad:tech New Delhi is part of the Comexposium Group, one of the world’s leading event organisers, hosting 150+ B2C and B2B events across industries including IT, security, digital, high-tech, and more. Comexposium operates in 23+ global economic growth zones, bringing together over 3.5 million visitors and 48,000 exhibitors worldwide.

Dr. Satya Nitta, Co-founder and CEO of Emergence

Backed by tens of millions of dollars in initial inward R&D investment, with significant long-term expansion planned, EIL is expected to scale to 500 world-class research scientists and engineers over the next three to four years – marking one of the most ambitious expansions of frontier AI research capacity in India.

Strategically located near the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, EIL will collaborate closely with the IISc ecosystem through joint research, exchanges, hackathons, and summer schools to build a next-generation talent pipeline in autonomous systems. Professor Siddhartha Gadgil of IISc joins as Chief Scientist while maintaining his academic affiliation.

Emergence India Labs is envisioned not only as a research center, but as the nucleus of a broader public-private partnership to ensure that India builds foundational AI technologies domestically rather than importing them. While the initiative begins within Emergence, the long-term ambition is to convene government, industry, academia, and global technology leaders around a shared mission: building the foundational systems that will power the next generation of digital and physical infrastructure. Emergence issued a call to action for partners to join this endeavor, with success over the next five years measured by how effectively Emergence India Labs catalyzes frontier R&D programs to be headquartered in India.

Central to that ambition is the lab’s structural design. Unlike multinational R&D outposts that operate as satellite extensions of overseas global headquarters, Emergence India Labs is conceived as a core, AI-native R&D epicenter in India, designed to anchor sovereign AI capability. For more than two decades, India’s technology sector has been centered on IT services; the next chapter will be defined by building frontier autonomous systems that transform enterprise software, AI capable of operating digital infrastructure, with the same foundational technologies powering advances in physical AI domains such as manufacturing, logistics, ports, factories, and essential infrastructure. AI adoption in Indian manufacturing has already surged – with 65% of manufacturers integrating AI by 2024, up from 45% in 2022 – and the domestic AI-in-manufacturing market projected to grow at roughly 40% annually, surpassing $8 billion by 2030.

Recent global research indicators underscore the urgency of this moment. The Nature Index 2025 Research Leaders report shows that Chinese universities now occupy nine of the top ten global research positions in natural sciences, a dramatic shift east in global scientific leadership over the past decade. In parallel, in 2024, China accounted for more than half of all industrial robot installations worldwide – roughly 54% of the global total – with hundreds of thousands of new robots deployed in factories each year. As technological power rebalances globally, India has a strategic opportunity to position itself at the frontier of autonomous systems research.

The launch reflects a broader global shift in AI. The debate is no longer only about training the largest language models, but about developing the autonomous systems layer that enables AI to operate safely and reliably in real-world environments.

“We believe the most immediate opportunity lies in building autonomous AI systems capable of operating the world’s most mission-critical digital infrastructure – from financial networks and telecom platforms to cloud and digital public systems,” said Satya Nitta, Co-founder and CEO of Emergence. “By mastering autonomy in the digital realm, we establish the foundation to extend into robotics, advanced manufacturing, and next-generation industrial infrastructure.”

“For more than two decades, India’s technology sector has been anchored in IT services,” Nitta added. “The next chapter must be defined by building frontier autonomous systems that power critical infrastructure. The hardest problem in robotics isn’t movement – it’s thinking. By focusing on agentic systems, we are solving reasoning under uncertainty. Around the world, leading economies are embedding AI into physical systems at scale. India must participate fully in shaping that transformation.”

“Ultimately, our success will be defined by whether Emergence India Labs helps anchor more frontier R&D in India – making the country a primary home for breakthrough innovation and enabling world-class talent to build and lead from here.”

EIL will place particular emphasis on building a talent pipeline around LEAN as a grounding layer for AI agents, demonstrating how formal verification can be embedded at every level of autonomous decision-making.

“The convergence of formal proof systems and the explosive growth of artificial intelligence creates an unprecedented opportunity – and necessity – to build reliable, mathematically grounded autonomous systems,” said Professor Siddhartha Gadgil of the Indian Institute of Science and Chief Scientist at Emergence India Labs. “Driven by a rich scientific tradition and a dynamic generation of engineers and entrepreneurs, India has the potential to drive this new frontier. By anchoring the entire spectrum of innovation here in Bangalore, from foundational research to real-world application, we will catalyze an ecosystem of sustained, world-class breakthroughs, ensuring India helps architect the future of intelligent systems.”

Anchoring Frontier Research in India

Emergence is widely recognized as a leading agentic AI company, distinguished by its patent-to-research ratio and a team of resident scientists drawn from the world’s foremost R&D institutions, including Google DeepMind, IBM T.J. Watson Research Labs, and the Allen Institute for AI. The company has pioneered several benchmark-leading advances in autonomous agents, including its breakthrough in recursive intelligence, enabling AI systems to autonomously generate new AI capabilities. Central to its approach is a formally verified control architecture for large-scale autonomous AI systems, separating stochastic reasoning from deterministic execution and enforcing mathematical guarantees at runtime.

“Thousands of Indian researchers, engineers, and technology leaders are at the heart of many of the world’s most significant AI breakthroughs, contributing across leading Silicon Valley labs and global technology companies,” added Nitta. “The talent is not in question. The strategic opportunity now is to anchor more of that leadership at home – and to channel it towards areas such as autonomous systems that operate critical infrastructure. India has also long demonstrated disciplined, resource-efficient innovation. Its successful Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing – delivered at a significantly lower cost to comparable international missions – stands as another powerful example of strategic engineering excellence.”

Inward Investment and Ecosystem Impact

Led by internationally recognized scientists, including Dr. Prasenjit Dey (PhD, EPFL; IIT Delhi), who will lead the lab on the ground in India, Dr. Ravi Kokku (PhD, UT Austin; IIT Kharagpur), and Professor Siddhartha Gadgil of IISc (PhD, CalTech, Indian Statistical Institute), Emergence India Labs, aims to strengthen India’s AI ecosystem by:

• Supporting the local start-up ecosystem with access to frontier autonomous systems technologies

• Developing top-tier AI research talent in collaboration with academia, industry, and government

• Anchoring breakthroughs in autonomous systems within India

• Contributing to the development of next-generation autonomous systems capable of operating mission-critical digital and physical infrastructure built in India

• Publishing frontier research in leading global venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR)

“This is a national-scale scientific moonshot,” added Nitta. “For researchers, it is a chance to do career-defining work at the frontier of autonomous intelligence. For investors, it is an opportunity to back a platform with generational impact. And for India, it signals the next step in an ongoing journey – strengthening its position as one of the defining centers of gravity in the global AI landscape.” 

“Today, we urge public and private investors, national labs, R&D centers, universities, and technology leaders to join us in this endeavor to scale the next generation of frontier AI innovation from India.”

This launch introduces a new paradigm for DevOps: Intent-Driven Testing, designed to bridge the "Velocity and Quality Gap", the widening distance between how fast AI generates code and how slowly teams can validate it for enterprise-grade quality.

High-quality test creation is one of software development's most persistent bottlenecks. Developers spend 30%+ of their time writing and maintaining test suites, while non-technical team members, business analysts, product managers, and manual QA testers with deep domain knowledge remain locked out of automation entirely due to the coding expertise required.

Disrupting the $1 Trillion Quality Assurance & Engineering Spend
Today, Fortune 2000 companies dedicate 22% to 25% of their total IT budgets to Quality Assurance & Engineering, representing over $1 trillion in aggregate annual spend across global enterprise IT. As these enterprises adopt GenAI to ship code at up to 10x their historical velocity, they face several key challenges:

• Test Authoring Speed and Ensuring Quality: 89% of CIOs report that "Test Authoring Speed" is now the primary hurdle to AI-driven delivery

• The Coverage Deficit: Automated test coverage for complex journeys typically plateaus at under 35%

• The Maintenance Trap: Teams spend 40% of their working hours fixing "flaky" tests or maintaining legacy scripts

"AI can generate millions of lines of code in minutes," said Dr. Prince Kohli, CEO of Sauce Labs. "The question for enterprises is: Can you verify it and trust it with your business? We are solving this problem, permanently."

Reinventing for the AI Era: Intent-Driven Testing
Today, Sauce Labs is reinventing the future of test automation with Intent-Driven Testing that replaces brittle, hand-coded test scripts with autonomous, self-improving test suites and validation.

Sauce AI for Test Authoring automatically understands intended application behavior by scanning the application workflow or interpreting specifications written by product managers or designs from tools such as Figma. In addition, it allows engineers, application developers and product managers to describe application behavior in natural language. The platform then autonomously generates complete, executable test suites for web, Android, and iOS, with the option to execute them in the Sauce Labs Test Cloud, and automatically reports the results, including insights on where to look and what to fix. Key capabilities include:

• 90%+ Faster Automated Test Case Generation: Achieving real-time test creation from product specifications.

• Resilient, Stable Test Scripts: Framework-agnostic tests built to adapt to application changes, with significantly fewer flaky failures and less maintenance overhead.

• 99%+ Automatic Coverage: Eliminating "blind spots" in the user journey.

• Built-in Review and Editing: Ensuring human oversight and control over AI-generated tests, allowing teams to validate, refine, and maintain reliability.

• Autonomous Learning Loop: Continuous feedback that improves test accuracy.

The Data Moat: Deep Domain-Specific Testing Expertise
Sauce AI for Test Authoring surpasses general-purpose AI with a superior understanding of application workflow and user intent, generating stable OS-agnostic and device-agnostic tests. Fueled by the industry's most robust proprietary dataset, 8.7 billion real-world test runs, this "Data Moat" enables 41% faster root-cause analysis than general-purpose LLMs. Trusted by 80% of the world's top ten financial institutions, Sauce Labs offers enterprise-grade platform capabilities for complex software environments.

"Setting up mobile testing is traditionally painful and can take days and weeks. Sauce AI for Test Authoring's no-code capability gives our team something they simply weren't able to do before. It turns a major bottleneck into an automated process that anyone can navigate," said a Director of Engineering at a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company participating in the Sauce AI for Test Authoring early access program.

Availability
Sauce AI for Test Authoring is available now for enterprise customers. To learn how to reclaim your IT budget and join the Intent-Driven Test era, visit saucelabs.com/solutions/ai

About Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs is the world's largest full-lifecycle, test automation platform, and the company behind Selenium. Trusted by 80% of the world's top ten largest financial institutions and over 300,000 enterprise users, Sauce Labs provides the only AI platform capable of turning business intent into autonomous testing and quality assurance. With a proprietary dataset of 8.7 billion test runs, Sauce Labs empowers the Fortune 2000 to bridge the gap between AI-driven code generation and enterprise-grade software quality.

Learn more at saucelabs.com.

Inuguration of AI & Robotics Lab at Bharat Sevashram Sangha

The Swami Pranavananda AI & Robotics Lab was inaugurated at Bharat Sevashram Sangha, Sriniwaspuri, New Delhi by Smt. Nidhi Khare IAS, Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India. Ms. Nisha Damor, IAS, Addl. Collector, Indore, Madhya Pradesh, Capt. (Dr.) Indu Boken Kasana, District Education Officer, Gurugram, Haryana, and Swamy Atmajnanananda Ji Maharaj, Secretary Delhi, Bharat Sevashram Sangha, were guests of honour.

The lab is a project of the Bharat Tech-Shakti Mission, spearheaded by three volunteers: Basab Dasgupta, Dhirender Saini, and Aditya Sen. All three are working professionals who conceived, planned, and built this lab entirely in their personal time, drawing no salary or benefit from the Mission. For them, this is deliberate, selfless service — a choice to give back to the community precisely because their careers have given them skills that most people around them never had access to. The Mission’s tagline, Srijan Se Shakti, meaning strength through creation, frames their conviction: that hands-on practice with AI tools is what separates a passive consumer of technology from someone who can build with it.

The lab’s curriculum is built around exactly the skills that matter most right now. Learners will work with text generation and image creation tools, build voice-controlled applications, run computer vision experiments, and use platforms like Google Teachable Machine to understand how machines learn from data. The advanced track goes further: model training, IoT-enabled smart device control using Raspberry Pi and Arduino, and building real applications through APIs. Crucially, the lab also teaches what it calls “vibe coding” — describing what you want in plain language, and having AI write the code for you. This single skill has the potential to open software creation to people who never studied programming.

Responsible use of AI is woven into every track. Learners are taught not just what AI can do, but when not to trust it, how to check its outputs, and what ethical responsibilities come with using tools that can generate text, images, and decisions at scale.

The physical infrastructure matches the ambition. Five high-performance desktop workstations, a 65-inch EDLA-certified interactive smart board, Raspberry Pi computers, a complete Arduino sensor kit, an Alexa Echo Dot connected to IoT-enabled smart devices, UPS support, and fibre broadband with WiFi coverage make this a fully networked, production-grade learning environment.

The lab admits anyone. No entrance test, no age limit, no prior computer knowledge required. Three tracks serve three audiences: Beginner, for those starting from zero; Intermediate, for those with some computer familiarity who want deeper exposure to data analysis and hardware; and Advanced, for those with a programming background who want to work on model behaviour, IoT, and API-based applications. A Class 5 student and a 55-year-old first-time computer user can both walk in on the same day and find a starting point.

Demo classes are scheduled to begin the week of 21 March 2026. For enrolment and further details, contact the lab directly located at Swami Pranavananda Marg, Sriniwaspuri, New Delhi.

Remarks from the Inauguration

“AI is no longer a tool only for the technologist. It is fast becoming as fundamental as reading and writing. An initiative that teaches a first-generation learner to use these tools is not just building a skill — it is building a future.”

- Smt. Nidhi Khare IAS, Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India

“Swami Pranavananda taught us that true seva is giving people the power to stand on their own feet. Every technology has transformed the world in its time. Today that technology is AI. This lab carries forward the Sangha’s founding purpose in the language of our era.”

- Swamy Atmajnanananda Ji Maharaj, Secretary Delhi, Bharat Sevashram Sangha

“Artificial intelligence must not become another wall that separates the privileged from the rest. Initiatives like this lab are about tearing that wall down — one learner at a time. When a girl from a modest household walks into this lab and builds something with AI, she is not just learning a skill — she is rewriting what is possible for herself and every woman who follows her.”

- Ms. Nisha Damor, IAS, Addl. Collector, Indore, Madhya Pradesh

“Students today are growing up in a world where AI will decide who gets a job interview and who does not. A school student who understands how these tools work has a head start that no textbook can give them. Initiatives like this should exist in every district of India.”

- Capt. (Dr.) Indu Boken Kasana, District Education Officer, Gurugram, Haryana

• 66% of Indian developers say accountability for AI-generated outcomes falls on them personally, while just 4% say accountability remains unclear.

• 70% of Indian developers trust AI tools to be fair across genders. Across respondents, 65% of women developers expressed trust, compared with 72% of men developers.

• 36% of Indian developers say AI has increased women’s visibility or opportunities in software teams, while 31% say they have not observed a noticeable change, and 12% say it has reduced visibility or opportunities.

• 90% of Indian developers feel that using AI and developing AI-related skills is improving their career momentum.
   

Who Indian Developers Believe Is Accountable for AI Outcomes

The findings point to a broader inflection point in enterprise AI adoption. AI is accelerating career mobility and productivity, while responsibility and validation are consolidating at the individual contributor level as governance models continue to formalize.

These results reflect how AI-powered software development is reshaping both delivery workflows and career trajectories inside modern engineering teams in India.

“AI isn’t a side tool anymore. It’s embedded in production workflows. And once it touches production, accountability changes. That’s great for career mobility, and infrastructure demands accountability,” said Nacho De Marco, CEO and Co-Founder of BairesDev. “As adoption accelerates, our data shows developers feel personally responsible for AI outcomes. What we’re seeing is a shift toward disciplined review. The teams that scale AI successfully are the ones that treat validation as engineering, not as an afterthought.”

Indian developers broadly report confidence in AI adoption, with 92% saying they feel comfortable using AI tools and 58% stating the benefits outweigh the overhead.

However, validation remains a growing focus among Indian developers:
 

• 60% say evaluating AI output critically is the baseline skill for 2026.

• 68% say a lack of knowledge about validating AI outputs is the most common gap they see in teams adopting AI tools.

• 34% cite deadline pressure as the primary barrier to verification of AI-generated work.

“Building accountability into AI-assisted processes doesn’t have to be complicated,” said De Marco. “AI is drafting the first version of the code, but a human still owns the final decision. That means validating outputs, testing rigorously, and taking responsibility before anything goes live.”
 

In enterprise AI deployment environments, accountability typically includes code review and validation processes, testing standards, documentation requirements, and production monitoring.

Access Determines Who Benefits from AI

Indian developers identified the top factors influencing who benefits most from AI adoption:
 

• 68% cite access to tools, training, and infrastructure as the top factor, tied with willingness to experiment.
• 58% say seniority and experience remain a driving factor.
• 51% cite organizational culture and team norms.

Among Indian women developers surveyed, team culture and norms (60%) ranked above seniority and experience (56%) as determinants of advancement through AI skills. This suggests that AI advantage is increasingly shaped by enablement environments, not just tenure.

Dev Barometer is a quarterly survey conducted by BairesDev, a nearshore software development company working with organizations including Abbott, Adobe, Coca-Cola, eBay, Google, HP, and Rolls-Royce.

Q1 2026 edition surveyed 1,329 developers across 61 countries in January 2026, including 200 developers from India. Among Indian respondents, 36% had eight or more years of professional experience, and 29% were women.

Media OutReach Newswire, Asia Pacific's Global Newswire, has introduced functionality for AI search, empowering brands and boosting PR visibility.

The AI search enabling tech, in combination with Media OutReach Newswire's guaranteed online news posting exclusively on real and authentic media, enhance SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) for AI search. This increases the visibility and reach of press releases distributed via Media OutReach Newswire.

Schema Markup Code is added to Media OutReach Newswire press releases posted online. This key piece of technology significantly enhances both SEO and GEO.

The code helps search engines index, find and list content in search results, while making AI models like LLMs discover, understand, surface and cite content in AI generated answers – increasing the visibility and reach of press releases.

LLMs and other AI models rely heavily on credible, and authoritative online sources, and among the top-ranked are authentic news media sites – sources with authority, content frequency, consistency and with strong E-E-A-T signals, signalling authenticity.

Media OutReach Newswire is the only global newswire that offers Guaranteed Online Posting exclusively on real, authentic news media sites.

Press releases with Schema Markup code, published verbatim on real online news media sites, are seen by LLMs as trusted information, enhancing both SEO and GEO. As a result, Media OutReach Newswire's press release distribution builds trust with journalists and audiences, while empowering SEO, GEO for AI search and LLM citations.

Jennifer Kok, Founder & CEO of Media OutReach Newswire, said: "As part of our continuous strive to redefine press release distribution, we are pleased to introduce this research-based technology, which, combined with our guaranteed online news postings, empowers both SEO, GEO for AI search, as well as LLM citations. I am proud of our strong focus on innovation and that we the only newswire that provides guaranteed online news posting exclusively and 100% on real, authentic news media."

Media OutReach Newswire continuously adopts and develops AI technology to further improve its Total Communications Solutions, helping PR professionals achieve success, with targeted distribution, direct journalist access, guaranteed visibility on real news media, data insights, ready-to-use reporting, and C-suite ready PR campaign intelligence showing ROI.

About Media OutReach Newswire

Media OutReach Newswire is Asia Pacific's first global newswire, serving as a trusted partner to the media, and PR professionals at corporations, agencies and governments across the region and the globe.

Founded in 2009 as a champion of the PR industry, Media OutReach Newswire leverages next-generation technology to redefine press release distribution and reporting, with data insights and PR campaign intelligence, providing total communications solutions for PR professionals.

With a global network of 200,000 journalists and editors, 70,000+ media titles, 1,500 media partners, and more than 40 languages, Media OutReach Newswire is the only newswire with guaranteed verbatim postings exclusively on real news sites. Press releases on authentic media are trusted by search engines and AI models, powering both SEO and AI search GEO, surfacing brands for LLM citations.

Headquartered in Hong Kong, with offices across China, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Taiwan, the global press release distribution network spans Asia Pacific and Southeast Asia, the US, Canada, South and Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

For more information about our services, solutions and network, please visit www.media-outreach.com.

Medigo AI-powered health screening robot for preventive healthcare screening

Built and engineered in India, Medigo Robot introduces a scalable healthcare robotic solution designed to support early detection and routine health monitoring. The AI-powered system enables individuals to assess 65+ health parameters and receive a structured health report in approximately 3 minutes.

Preventive healthcare depends on early and reliable screening, yet access to screening infrastructure remains limited across many regions. Globally, 537 million adults live with diabetes and nearly 45% remain undiagnosed, while 1.28 billion people are affected by hypertension, much of it undetected in low- and middle-income countries. Medigo addresses this gap by enabling rapid health screening with up to 95% screening accuracy, delivering technology-enabled assessments that can be deployed across hospitals, transit hubs, corporate campuses, educational institutions, and community health programs.

 
Through an AI-guided interface and integrated medical sensors, the health screening robot captures key health indicators and generates reports that can be delivered digitally or printed on-site. Screenings can include blood glucose and HbA1c for diabetes, blood pressure and ECG monitoring, cholesterol and lung function tests, infectious disease screenings such as HIV and TB, and mental health assessments including ASD. Multilingual interaction and telemedicine connectivity also allow users to consult remote medical professionals when further evaluation is required.

By combining robotics, artificial intelligence, and connected healthcare technologies, Medigo introduces a practical model for robotic health screening infrastructure, enabling healthcare providers, governments, and institutions to conduct preventive health screening programs at scale.

“Medigo is the result of years spent building the artificial intelligence capability, engineering depth, and healthcare expertise required to make large-scale screening possible. It was developed with a clear understanding of the environments it will operate in, the populations it will serve, and the institutions it will work alongside. Its real impact lies in the millions of lives that can benefit from earlier detection and better access to care. With proprietary AI systems, centralized data infrastructure, and a growing installed base, each deployment strengthens the foundation we are building as we work toward creating one of the most important health screening infrastructures in the emerging world.” — Manav Patel, Managing Director, Kody Technolab Limited.  

As healthcare systems increasingly prioritize preventive care and early detection, Medigo Robot provides a scalable platform for rapid health screening and supports efforts to expand healthcare access across both urban and underserved regions. 

About Kody Technolab Limited 
Kody Technolab Limited is a deep-technology company specializing in intelligent software systems and robotics platforms. With expertise spanning artificial intelligence, software engineering, and advanced robotics, the company develops technology solutions designed for large-scale real-world deployment. Kody Technolab’s robots operate across enterprise, retail, healthcare, and public environments, supporting automation, digital interaction, and infrastructure-driven technology applications.

• Serving over 13 million customers with a distribution footprint covering over 18,600  of India’s PIN codes (as of March 31, 2025)

• Reflects the company’s focus on leveraging technology and AI integration alongside organisational capability and talent development

As artificial intelligence and advanced analytics reshape credit decisioning across India’s lending ecosystem, financial institutions are now increasingly combining advanced analytics with organisational capability to deliver faster credit access and scalable growth.

Reflecting this shift, Hero FinCorp Limited, an Indian Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC), has received two industry recognitions for its tech-led lending architecture and organisational practices.

The company has been awarded Best Digital Strategy Delivering Business Value (MSME Lending) at the 3rd Annual NBFC & Fintech Excellence Awards 2026, held in Mumbai. In addition, Hero FinCorp also received recognition for Significant Achievement in HR Excellence at the 16th CII National HR Excellence Awards 2026.

Introducing Project Dhruv Tara
At the core of Hero FinCorp’s digital lending evolution is Project Dhruv Tara, the company’s AI-led lending architecture designed with the aim to strengthen credit decisioning, reduce cyclical exposure and improve portfolio predictability.

Drawing on a combination of diverse datasets, and advanced analytics, Project Dhruv Tara enables the company to evaluate credit opportunities more holistically and identify higher quality borrowers on a segment-level.

By strengthening decision intelligence across the credit lifecycle, the initiative supports Hero FinCorp in building a more predictable and resilient loan portfolio, with the aim to enable  faster and more seamless credit access for customers.

AI-Led Decision Intelligence
Hero FinCorp’s technology architecture integrates underwriting intelligence, advanced analytics, and data-driven customer insights with the aim to strengthen credit governance and improve decision accuracy.

These capabilities allow the company to better understand borrower behaviour, evaluate risk across multiple dimensions, and tailor credit offerings in a disciplined and scalable manner.

This technology-led approach also enables faster loan assessments, streamlined onboarding, and improved operational efficiency, delivering a smoother borrowing experience for customers.

With over 13 million customers and a distribution footprint spanning over 18,600 of India’s PIN codes (as of March 31, 2026), Hero FinCorp is leveraging technology and AI integration with an aim to enable scalable credit deployment across urban, semi-urban, and emerging MSME clusters.

Building Organisational Capability
Alongside its investments in tech-led AI-based models, Hero FinCorp continues to work towards strengthening organisational capability through structured talent management and leadership development initiatives.

The recognition at the CII National HR Excellence Awards 2026 reflects the company’s focus on human potential initiatives that support its evolving technology-enabled operating model.

Commenting on the recognition, Ms. Priya Kashyap, Chief Operating Officer & Chief of Staff, Hero FinCorp, said: “At Hero FinCorp, we see data intelligence and advanced analytics as a key strategy towards building a resilient and responsible lending institution. Project Dhruv Tara represents an important step in this journey, enabling us to combine diverse data signals with technology-led decisioning to strengthen credit quality and improve the speed of credit delivery. Equally important is building the organisational capability required to sustain this transformation. The recognition for HR excellence reflects our continued focus on developing and retaining top talent that can support long-term growth in an evolving financial services landscape.”

These recognitions underscore Hero FinCorp’s ongoing efforts to strengthen both its lending intelligence and human potential as the financial services sector increasingly adopts data-driven operating models.

Project Dhruv Tara serves as a strategic anchor for Hero FinCorp’s AI-led lending journey, guiding the company’s efforts to deliver responsible credit access.

About Hero FinCorp
Hero FinCorp is an Indian Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) offering a diversified portfolio of lending solutions across Retail, MSME, and Corporate segments. Its product suite includes two-wheeler, car, home, and personal loans, along with business, SME, and corporate financing.

The company has built an extensive national presence covering 18,600+ of India’s PIN codes, supported by a network of 4,200+ touchpoints. This wide distribution net enables Hero FinCorp to deliver financing solutions across 2,000+ cities, towns, and villages across India.

Having served over 13 million customers, Hero FinCorp operates on an AI-led architecture that integrates underwriting, analytics, and marketing capabilities across the credit lifecycle. This technology backbone enables faster underwriting, lean operating model, and credit delivery at scale.

As part of the Hero Group, Hero FinCorp draws on a legacy of trust, integrity, and long-term institution-building envisioned by the Hero Group’s Founder, Dr. Brijmohan Lall Munjal, while advancing responsible lending and building a future-ready financial services platform.

(All data as of March 31, 2025)

With this launch, Mirror evolves beyond system simulation to combine adaptive AI-driven roleplay with realistic enterprise application simulations, enabling frontline teams to practice customer conversations and workflows together in a single, risk-free environment.

Strong Market Momentum 
Mirror’s expansion is backed by rapid enterprise adoption. With the introduction of AI Roleplay in 2025, Mirror’s ARR grew more than 200% year over year. Having raced to $3M ARR in just 6 quarters, Whatfix expects Mirror revenue to grow 3x in 2026, driven by large-scale deployments across customer support and operations teams. Multiple Fortune 100 organizations have already implemented Mirror with AI Roleplay training as part of their frontline training programs, reporting early improvements in metrics such as time-to-proficiency, Average Handle Time (AHT), and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).

From System Training to Real-World Readiness
Mirror was launched in 2024 to help enterprises train employees on complex systems without putting live environments—or customers—at risk. As adoption grew, Whatfix identified a broader gap: teams also needed a safe way to practice the most unpredictable part of their roles—customer conversations. AI Roleplay training closes that gap.

While many solutions offer AI roleplay as a standalone capability, they lack system context. Mirror uniquely combines adaptive AI conversations with high-fidelity system simulations, allowing employees to practice what to say and how to work together in the exact environment where performance happens. 

This shift reflects a broader change in how enterprises approach workforce readiness in an AI-driven world.

“Despite accelerating enterprise adoption, only about a third of organizations feel very effective today. Simulation teaches process, and roleplay builds judgment and confidence,” said Khadim Batti, Co-Founder and CEO of Whatfix. “With AI Roleplay in Mirror, we’re helping enterprises reduce time-to-proficiency and improve customer outcomes by preparing employees for real-world situations before they go live.”

Key capabilities of AI Roleplay training in Mirror include:

• Adaptive AI roleplay training conversations that respond in real time to learner inputs, mirroring real customer interactions

• Rapid roleplay training creation using AI prompts to reduce time and effort to scale practice experiences.

• Built-in readiness evaluation within simulated workflows, giving leaders clear visibility into performance before go-live

• Multi-language support to enable consistent, scalable training for global teams

Industry analysts see this convergence of AI roleplay and system simulation as a critical shift in how enterprises enable customer-facing teams.

“By combining AI-driven roleplay and system simulation in a single solution, Whatfix offers organizations a unified approach to employee enablement-especially for customer-facing roles-allowing learners to safely gain hands-on experience before transitioning to live systems,” said Gina Smith, Research Director at IDC.

AI Roleplay training is available today as part of Whatfix Mirror. Learn more at:  whatfix.com/products/mirror/

Advancing AI-First Enterprise Enablement
AI Roleplay training in Mirror is part of Whatfix’s broader AI-native strategy focused on measurable outcomes and execution readiness. By applying AI to high-impact moments, where employees interact with systems and customers, Whatfix helps enterprises reduce risk, accelerate performance, and deliver better customer experiences at scale.

About Whatfix
Whatfix is an AI platform advancing the “userization” of enterprise applications, empowering companies to maximize the ROI of their digital investments. Powered by a proprietary AI engine ScreenSense, Whatfix continuously interprets application workflow context and user intent to boost user productivity, ensure process compliance, and elevate user experience across applications and AI tools. The product portfolio includes a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP), Mirror for hands-on system simulation and AI Roleplay based training, and Product and AI agent Analytics for no-code insights. With seven offices across the US, India, UK, Germany, Singapore, and Australia, Whatfix supports 700+ enterprises, including 80+ Fortune 500s like Shell, Schneider Electric, and UPS Supply Chain Solutions. Backed by investors such as 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.

DocuGenie.AI™, SecureKloud’s Intelligent Document Automation (IDA) platform, is now available on the Google Cloud Marketplace

This milestone marks a significant step in SecureKloud’s global growth journey. The listing further strengthens SecureKloud’s SaaS strategy and opens new opportunities for global enterprise adoption. Enterprises can now discover, procure, and deploy DocuGenie.AI faster, integrating it seamlessly into their existing cloud and enterprise ecosystems to accelerate adoption and simplify onboarding.

DocuGenie.AI is an AI-native, cloud-agnostic SaaS platform built to transform how organizations process and manage business-critical documents. Leveraging advanced technologies including GenAI, machine learning, LLMs, VLMs, SLMs, RPA, and intelligent data extraction, the platform automates high-volume document workflows with speed, accuracy, and built-in intelligence.

The platform is already witnessing rapid adoption among enterprise customers across key industries. In the NBFC and banking sector, DocuGenie.AI enables automation of KYC processing and verification, bank statement analysis, financial document extraction, and end-to-end lending workflows. In the logistics and transportation industry, organizations are using the platform to automate high-volume operational documents such as Proof of Delivery (POD), trip sheets significantly reducing manual effort and improving turnaround times.

Organizations deploying DocuGenie.AI are able to handle large-scale document volumes with greater speed and accuracy, realizing measurable productivity gains and operational ROI within days of implementation. By minimizing manual intervention and accelerating processing cycles, the platform helps enterprises reduce operational costs, strengthen compliance, and improve decision quality across financial services, lending, logistics, manufacturing, and enterprise operations.

“Being listed on Google Cloud Marketplace is further validation of the enterprise readiness, security, and scalability built into DocuGenie.AI,” said Venkat Krish, CRO & Whole-Time Director, SecureKloud Technologies. “In a relatively short span, the platform has gained strong enterprise traction and enabled us to onboard marquee customers across industries. This milestone is a feather in the cap for our team and positions DocuGenie.AI on a global stage as we continue to help organizations accelerate their AI-led automation journey.”

To learn more, visit: www.docugenieai.com.

About SecureKloud Technologies

SecureKloud Technologies Ltd. (NSE: SECURKLOUD | BSE: 512161) is a global technology company with over 17 years of expertise in AI-powered digital transformation, cloud-native SaaS enablement, managed services, and cybersecurity. Its portfolio spans Intelligent Document Automation with DocuGenie.AI™, AI and Data Engineering, Cloud Transformation, FinOps, SaaS Delivery, and 24x7 Managed Services. Backed by industry-recognized certifications and compliance frameworks including SOC 2, ISO 27001:2022, GDPR, ISO 9001, ISO 20000, and CMMI Level 3, SecureKloud delivers secure, scalable, and compliant digital operations for modern enterprises.

Visit: www.securekloud.com.

MAHE Partners with OpenAI to Drive Responsible and Ethical AI in Higher Education
 

Lt. Gen. (Dr.) M D Venkatesh, Vice Chancellor, VSM (Retd.), MAHE, said, "MAHE has always been guided by academic excellence and innovation. Our partnership with OpenAI represents a strategic step toward embedding AI as a transformative enabler across teaching, research, and administration. By integrating advanced AI tools responsibly, we aim to enhance learning outcomes, accelerate research impact, and prepare our students for leadership in an AI-driven world."
 

The collaboration will focus on building AI literacy across disciplines, ensuring that students from Health Sciences, Technology & Science, Management, Law, Humanities & Social Sciences, and allied fields gain practical exposure to AI applications relevant to their domains. MAHE will also promote interdisciplinary research and innovation using AI to address complex real-world challenges. MAHE will also establish structured AI governance guidelines to ensure responsible, ethical, and transparent governance use of artificial intelligence across academic functions.
 

The partnership aligns with MAHE’s long-term digital transformation roadmap and reinforces its commitment to innovation, industry relevance, and societal impact. With this collaboration, MAHE reinforces its vision of becoming a globally benchmarked, AI-enabled university committed to shaping responsible innovation and future-ready leaders.
 

About Manipal Academy of Higher Education

Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) is an Institution of Eminence Deemed-to-be University, offering over 400 specialisations across Health Sciences, Management, Law, Humanities & Social Sciences, and Technology & Science. MAHE operates through its constituent institutions across campuses in Manipal, Mangalore, Bengaluru, Jamshedpur, and Dubai.
 

Renowned for its academic excellence, world-class infrastructure, and impactful research contributions, MAHE has earned strong national and international recognition. In 2020, the Ministry of Education, Government of India, conferred MAHE with the prestigious Institution of Eminence status. Currently ranked 3rd in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), MAHE continues to be a preferred destination for students seeking a transformative learning experience and vibrant campus life, as well as for national and multinational organisations seeking top talent.