From record-breaking resilience on Mount Kilimanjaro to India's AI roadmap, your story Bringing to you the latest updates from the world of human excellence and artificial intelligence.
Featured Stories:
How Jayshree Mohan, who recovered from stroke, became the fastest woman to climb and descend Mount Kilimanjaro
In October last year, Jayashree Vijay Mohan achieved two Guinness World Records in the CIH (Coordination Impairment – Hemiplegia) category – for the fastest ascent and descent of Mount Kilimanjaro by a female climber.
Behind this remarkable achievement is a story of grit, resilience and quiet determination. It is, in many ways, a triumph of the mind and body and of the spirit that refuses to surrender.
Four years ago, Jayshree suffered a stroke, and what happened next was not a dramatic comeback, but months of slow, uncertain rebuilding. She had to re-learn simple activities, including standing, walking without assistance, and relying on her balance. Read more.
Latest News:
Sarvam AI unveils two new LLMs; The 105B model is said to outperform DeepSeek's R1 and Google's Gemini Flash on key benchmarks
Bengaluru-based startup Sarvam AI has introduced two new large language models, as it expands its role in India's effort to build homegrown AI systems.
Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in Delhi, Sarvam AI co-founder Pratyush Kumar said the company has trained a 30-billion-parameter model and a 105-billion-parameter model from scratch using a mixture of experts (MOE) architecture to balance scale and efficiency. Read more.
Mukesh Ambani promises Rs 10 lakh crore to promote AI, pledges to make AI as cheap as data
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani unveiled plans to invest Rs 10 lakh crore in AI over the next seven years, one of the largest commitments to AI infrastructure announced in India.
Addressing the India AI Impact Summit, the Reliance Industries chairman introduced the initiative as the next phase of Jio's digital transformation playbook – this time aimed at reducing the cost of computing power and AI access across the country.
The investment, starting this year, will be deployed through Jio and Reliance to build what Ambani described as largely sovereign AI infrastructure. “Jio, together with Reliance, will invest Rs 10 lakh crore over the next seven years,” he said, adding that the capital outlay is “not speculative” but intended to create long-term economic and strategic value. Read more.
Funding News:
EV charging network provider Static raises $18M in funding round led by Tenacity Ventures
E.V charging network static $18 million was raised in a new funding round led by Tenacity Ventures, with participation from RCD Holdings as well as existing investors Y Combinator and Shell Ventures.
The startup will use the new funds to scale up infrastructure And will expand its presence in Tier I and II cities. It will also deploy a portion of the funding to help expand DC fast chargers across its network along major highways. It aims to deploy capital to improve the hardware lifecycle and advanced telematics for scaling, as well as help UAE pilots export.
Pluto Mobility raises $2M seed funding for last-mile EVs
Delhi-based Pluto Mobility raised $2 million in a seed round led by Version One Ventures, with participation from Grad Capital and founders and executives from Delhivery, OffBusiness, Pixel and Boom Supersonic.
Founded by Akshat Bhatia and Himanshu Panda, the startup makes scooter-sized, fully covered electric vehicles designed for delivery workloads. Pluto said its vehicles can carry “orders 2 times more than a typical 2-wheeler” and are engineered “by rethinking core engineering and design based on real-world delivery use cases.”
Akshat Bhatia said, “India's last mile challenge is not speed, incentives or apps. It is that delivery operations are built on vehicles that were never designed for delivery workloads.” Pilot deployment is planned for 2026.
Other news:
CoinDCX announces ESOP buyback worth Rs 111 crore
CoinDCX announced ESOP buyback worth Rs 111 crore for over 500 current and former employees, calling it its largest liquidity program ever.
“The Indian crypto industry has navigated an incredibly demanding landscape,” said Sumit Gupta. He said, “This buyback is not just a financial milestone; it is our way of ensuring that those who stayed the course and fueled our mission can share in the real value they have helped create.”
Founded in 2018, CoinDCX serves over 20 million users and expanded internationally through the acquisition of BitOasis. The company said the move reflects its financial position and long-term strategy.
NVIDIA, AI Grants India aim to support 500 startups
AI Grants India (AIGI) will collaborate with NVIDIA to support early-stage founders through the NVIDIA Inception program, which aims to help 500 AI startups over the next 12 months.
The initiative is expected to support over 10,000 founders with access to AI models, technical training, and infrastructure. Startups will receive guidance and access to NVIDIA developer tools and ecosystem benefits.
“The next wave of AI innovation in India will be created by early teams that have the technical depth to execute, but they need rapid access to the right tooling, mentorship and ecosystem pathways,” said Bhaskar (Bosky) Kode, co-founder of AI Grants India.
“NVIDIA is accelerating this momentum by giving founders direct access to accelerated computing,” said Tobias Halloran, director of EMEAI startups and venture capital at NVIDIA.
PhonePe launches biometric authentication for UPI payments
PhonePe launches biometric authentication for UPI payments, allowing users to authorize transactions using fingerprint or facial recognition for payments up to Rs 5,000.
The fintech company said the feature leverages device-level biometric verification as a secure two-factor authentication layer and also includes a fallback to the UPI PIN if biometric authentication fails. UPI PIN will continue to be required for transactions above Rs 5,000.
“At PhonePe, our goal has always been to make digital payments as seamless and accessible as possible for every Indian,” said Deep Aggarwal, Head of Payments, PhonePe. “By integrating biometric authentication, we are taking an important step toward a truly frictionless payments experience,” he said.
This feature is currently available for Android users.
NxtGen AI Deploys Sovereign AI Factory with Vertiv Infrastructure
NxtGen AI has deployed a national-scale sovereign AI factory in India, supported by Vertiv's data center infrastructure and accelerated by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs.
The deployment includes more than 4,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs via the Dell Integrated Rack Scalable System, running on Dell PowerEdge XE9685L liquid-cooled servers. Vertiv is providing power and thermal systems including UPS, lithium-ion energy storage and liquid cooling.
“Building a national-scale AI factory requires not only accelerated computing but also the foundation of a flexible and scalable AI infrastructure,” said AS Rajagopal, MD and CEO, NextGen AI.
“Vertiv’s 360AI approach enables NxtGen AI to deploy highly efficient, scalable and future-ready infrastructure,” said Subhasis Majumdar, Managing Director, Vertiv India.
Mirror Security, NVIDIA partner on encrypted AI inference
Mirror Security collaborated with NVIDIA to bring GPU-accelerated full homomorphic encryption to AI inference for regulated workloads.
The platform integrates NVIDIA CUDA, cuBLAS, NeMo, NeMo Retriever, and TensorRT-LLM to enable encrypted AI inference and secure AI memory. The companies said this approach allows data to remain encrypted during computation and storage.
“Sovereignty isn't about where your data lives; it's about controlling what happens to your intelligence when it moves,” said Pankaj Thapa, co-founder and CEO of Mirror Security.
“NVIDIA is accelerating this momentum by giving founders direct access to accelerated computing,” said Tobias Halloran, director of EMEAI startups and venture capital at NVIDIA.
(This article will be updated with the latest news throughout the day.)