The tussle at the Tata Group continues while AI surges ahead, YourStory brings you today’s headlines with the latest developments across sectors. Featured stories Tata tussle puts spotlight on Hanno’s TVS deal as filings reveal 29-year lease, build-to-suit structure Regulatory filings reveal an arrangement in which TVS Motor is both the lessor of the underlying land and the customer for the facility Hanno is developing on it, with rental income projected to begin in November 2026. Read more Google Cloud pushes Gemini deeper into India’s businesses Google Cloud is expanding its agentic AI push in India through partnerships that demonstrate how AI is moving from assistance to action. At its first ‘Let’s Talk AI’ media tour stop in Bengaluru on Thursday, the company highlighted collaborations with boAt, Cropin and Pine Labs across consumer hardware, agriculture and commerce. Read more How this woman entrepreneur is building a sustainable accessories brand with plant leather Green Hermitage, founded by Gayatri Varun and Anubhav Pratap Rai, makes sustainable luxury accessories using plant-based materials. Read more Funding news Enterprise AI startup Ema raises $77M in Series B round led by Creaegis Enterprise AI startup Ema founded by former Google and Coinbase executive Surojit Chatterjee has raised $77 million in a Series B round of funding led by Creaegis. Read more ONYA raises Rs 12.5 crore to expand lab-grown diamond retail footprint Lab-grown diamond jewellery startup ONYA has raised Rs 12.5 crore in a pre-Series A funding round led by Divisa Family Office, with existing investor Zeropearl VC doubling down on its initial investment. The company had earlier raised Rs 5.5 crore in seed funding. The new capital will be used to expand ONYA’s retail footprint, strengthen digital customer acquisition, enhance online personalisation and deepen research and development in product design and manufacturing. Founded by Gaurav Choudhary and Himani Yadav, ONYA has established eight flagship stores across Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad within 20 months of launch. The company said it has reached a monthly recurring revenue of Rs 3.5 crore and plans to expand through company-owned and franchise stores. ByteAsk raises $1M led by Y Combinator ByteAsk, an AI coding startup founded by IIT Delhi graduates Anirudha Kulkarni and Pratyush Saini, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from Y Combinator, Entrepreneur First and angel investors from global quantitative trading firms. Founded in June 2026 and headquartered in San Francisco, the company operates across the US and India and is developing AI coding agents specifically for C and C++. ByteAsk is targeting developers working in defence, aerospace, robotics, high-frequency trading, finance, automotive and semiconductor industries, where reliability and performance are critical. The company has also been selected for Y Combinator’s Fall 2026 batch. The founders previously built legal AI startup LawSutra AI, which was acquired by Manupatra within four months of its launch. Nuvah raises Rs 4 Cr from angel investors Nuvah, a technology-led footwear startup focused on comfort-engineered heels, has raised Rs 4 crore in a pre-seed angel round from investors including Amit Jain, Shantanu Deshpande and Ishendra Agarwal. Founded in October 2025 by Avni Jain, an IIM Ahmedabad alumna, the company plans to use the capital for research and development, advancing its proprietary comfort technology and testing go-to-market strategies. Nuvah’s core technology, SteadyForm, is a proprietary footbed designed to respond dynamically to shifting pressure across the foot. Other news Pine Labs to deploy 10 lakh soundboxes across India Digital payments company Pine Labs has announced a strategic investment to deploy 10 lakh soundboxes across India as it seeks to strengthen the country’s digital payments infrastructure. The company said the initiative comes as UPI and other digital payment methods increasingly move beyond small-ticket transactions into new markets and business segments. Pine Labs aims to use the rollout to deepen UPI adoption while supporting merchants participating in India’s digital commerce growth. Its cloud-based soundboxes provide real-time audio confirmation of payment transactions and support remote device management, over-the-air software updates and centralised monitoring. CEO B Amrish Rau said the company intends to reinvest in the payments ecosystem as new monetisation opportunities emerge. Pine Labs operates a commerce technology platform spanning payments, issuing, credit and fintech solutions. Nykaa partners with L’Oreal VC arm to invest in Indian BPC startups Nykaa and BOLD (Business Opportunities for L’Oréal Development), the corporate venture capital fund of L’Oréal, have announced a collaboration to jointly invest in high-growth Indian beauty and personal care brands. Through the collaboration, BOLD and Nykaa will take minority stakes in emerging Indian beauty and wellness brands with strong consumer traction and distinctive propositions. Such investments will be purely financial and minority in nature, where founders retain full ownership control and continue to run their businesses independently, with their own teams, culture, and creative direction. BOLD and Nykaa will act as long-term partners beyond capital to the brands they back, offering mentorship, guidance, and the opportunity to benefit from L’Oréal’s global beauty expertise, alongside Nykaa’s deep omnichannel retail network and consumer ecosystem understanding. The intent is to help ambitious Indian beauty founders scale faster and build enduring brands for India & the world. Gupshup launches Agentic AI solution for real estate Conversational AI platform Gupshup has launched an Agentic AI solution for the real estate sector, designed to support customers throughout the property buying journey. The solution combines agentic AI, structured workflows and integrations with property, inventory and CRM systems, enabling prospective buyers to discover properties, ask questions, share requirements and take actions through WhatsApp and voice. The system can gather details such as budget, preferred location, property type and purchase timeline before qualifying leads and triggering the next sales step. Customers can also download brochures, request callbacks, schedule appointments and connect with sales representatives. Developers can extend the platform to post-sales services including maintenance requests and document access. Gupshup said the solution is available globally and supports regional languages and dialects. Imagine Learning opens Bengaluru technology and product centre US-based education company Imagine Learning has opened a new centre in Bengaluru as part of its long-term investment in India and expansion of its global product and technology capabilities. The centre will support hiring across software engineering, product, AI, data science, cloud and platform engineering, quality engineering and cybersecurity. India-based teams will work on products and platforms used by educators globally. The company said Bengaluru’s technology and AI ecosystem provides an opportunity to build an integrated product and technology organisation. Imagine Learning develops K–12 curriculum and learning solutions and serves more than 18 million students, two million teachers and 38,000 schools in the US. Its Bengaluru operation will also contribute to the company’s Curriculum-Informed AI approach, which combines AI with curriculum content, academic standards and research-backed instructional practices. Fuel Cycle opens Navi Mumbai GCC for AI and product development US-based AI-powered consumer insights platform Fuel Cycle has opened a Global Capability Centre in Navi Mumbai, marking an expansion of its global technology and product operations. Located in Vashi, the centre will initially have capacity for 50 employees, with plans to scale over the coming quarters. The GCC will serve as a hub for engineering, artificial intelligence and product development and will work with Fuel Cycle teams in the US and other global markets. The company said the centre will contribute to core product development while strengthening its engineering and data infrastructure. Hiring is expected across AI and machine learning, data engineering, product engineering, UX, research technology and cloud functions. Fuel Cycle said the expansion reflects its focus on using India’s technology and AI talent to build products for a global customer base. Mythic AI launches Bengaluru centre to expand AI chip engineering Semiconductor company Mythic AI has launched a Bengaluru Centre of Excellence as part of its India expansion, with plans to build an AI chip development team and expand its workforce. The company develops analog compute-in-memory technology designed for energy-efficient AI inference. Its Vanguard platform combines analog and digital computing on a single chiplet and is targeted at applications including automotive ADAS, defence and edge AI. Mythic said its Bengaluru team will contribute across architecture, front-end design, physical design and design-for-test, while also advancing analog and digital chiplet integration. The company plans to quadruple its India workforce by the first quarter of 2027 and eventually expand the team into product development, testing, systems engineering and intelligent sensing chips. The move deepens Mythic’s engagement with India’s semiconductor and AI ecosystem. CHRIST University, Salesforce set up AI Innovation Lab CHRIST (Deemed to be University) has partnered with Salesforce to establish the Salesforce AI Innovation Lab and Academia Centre of Excellence. The initiative will give students and faculty hands-on exposure to agentic AI solutions, enterprise workflows and Salesforce technologies including Agentforce, Data 360 and Tableau Next. Through Salesforce’s Trailhead platform, learners will also receive access to role-based training, learning pathways and professional credentials. The university said the collaboration will strengthen interdisciplinary research, entrepreneurship and industry-oriented learning while supporting its AI Vision 2030. The partnership is aimed at bridging the gap between classroom education and enterprise technology requirements. CHRIST University has more than 40,000 students and nearly 5,000 faculty members across its campuses in India. AutoMovers Group lines up Rs 500 crore investment plans AutoMovers Group, a multi-brand automotive retail company, has announced a Rs 500 crore investment plan for the next three years, starting Q1 FY 2026-27. With more than Rs 200 crore already invested in CAPEX, the company is now planning the next phase of expansion, with a focus on strengthening its sales and service network, and expanding its manufacturing capacity. The plan comes as the company aims to support growing customer demand while building a larger and more efficient automotive network across key markets. The Rs 500 crore investment will be spread across four key areas - Rs 150 crore will go towards CAPEX expansion, including new workshops, and authorised service outlets. Another Rs 150 crore will be used to increase the inventory of commercial and passenger vehicles, taking the total stock capacity to more than 2,000 vehicles. Of the remaining Rs 200 crore, Rs 100 crore will be kept as a reserve for working capital and future expansion, while the other Rs 100 crore will be used to expand the trailer manufacturing facility in Lucknow. Offgrid Energy Labs signs MoU with Keele University of UK India-origin deep-tech energy storage company Offgrid Energy Labs has signed an MoU with Keele University in the UK to deploy its ZincGel long-duration energy storage technology on the university campus. The pilot will be installed at Keele’s Low Carbon Energy Generation Park and will use batteries manufactured at Offgrid’s facility in Hampshire. The project is expected to assess the technology’s ability to store around 1 MWh of surplus renewable energy each month while evaluating safety, depth of discharge and round-trip performance. ZincGel uses proprietary zinc-bromine chemistry and is designed for six- to 16-hour discharge durations. Unlike lithium-based systems, the technology uses zinc and bromine and is designed to be non-flammable. The project could pave the way for a larger multi-MWh deployment at Keele. Cognizant, Cognition report AI-led gains at Odyssey Logistics Cognizant and Cognition have announced production results from autonomous AI engineering work at logistics company Odyssey Logistics using Cognition’s Devin AI software engineer. A seven-member Cognizant team used Devin to convert legacy Microsoft Access and Visual Basic for Applications forms into cloud-native applications while generating tests, deployment pipelines and documentation. The project recorded a roughly one-third increase in delivery throughput and a 37% net cost saving compared with the conventional approach, according to the companies. Cognizant said it has trained more than 3,000 associates on Devin and that its own engineering work has seen more than a 50% reduction in time to release-ready code. The collaboration has also expanded into modernisation, quality engineering and cybersecurity offerings. Cognizant and Cognition plan to explore additional applications across software development and maintenance. PayGlocal gets IFSCA approval for GIFT-IFSC payments subsidiary Cross-border payments company PayGlocal has received in-principle approval from the International Financial Services Centres Authority to establish a wholly owned subsidiary as a Payment Service Provider in GIFT-IFSC. The approval covers account issuance, including e-money accounts, cross-border money transfers and merchant acquisition. PayGlocal had earlier received final RBI authorisation to operate as a Payment Aggregator for cross-border inward and outward transactions and has also registered as a Money Services Business with the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The company said the GIFT City presence will provide a regulated base for developing payment capabilities aimed at international businesses while continuing to build technology and operations from India. PayGlocal enables merchants to accept payments across 130-plus currencies and 40-plus global and local payment methods. Nawgati crosses 3.5 million users on fuel-tech platform Fuel-tech and mobility infrastructure platform Nawgati has crossed 3.5 million users on its fuelling app, which provides real-time information on fuel station queues, availability and pricing. The company said its platform addresses congestion at fuel stations, particularly for commercial drivers who can lose significant working time while waiting. Nawgati was founded in 2019 after its founders observed CNG cab drivers spending up to an hour a day in fuel queues. The company has since expanded from a consumer information platform into a full-stack fuel retail data business focused on reducing congestion and improving fuel availability. Its Aaveg platform uses deep learning and real-time analytics to support fuel station operations and fleet management. Nawgati said it is now expanding internationally, beginning with the UAE and Sri Lanka. Jaro Education plans to increase AI programmes to 25-30% of portfolio Jaro Education is expanding its executive education portfolio in artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, with plans to increase the share of such programmes from around 15% currently to 25-30% by FY27. The company said its expanded offering will target CXOs, senior leaders, business professionals, working executives and technical talent. Planned programmes will cover AI leadership, business applications, domain-specific use cases and emerging technologies. Jaro already offers programmes with institutions including IIT Roorkee, IISc Bengaluru, IIM Mumbai, IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi. The company said the expansion reflects increasing demand for professionals who can apply AI across business functions as organisations move from experimentation towards broader enterprise adoption. The programmes will emphasise practical, career-oriented learning and industry-aligned outcomes. Eco Hotels upgrades to Hotelogix multi-property management system Eco Hotels and Resorts has upgraded to Hotelogix’s enterprise-grade multi-property management system to centralise operations across its hotel portfolio. The BSE-listed company currently operates nine properties in India and plans to add 10 more in the near future. Hotelogix said the deployment will provide consolidated visibility across properties, centralised reporting and improved control over group-wide operations. Eco Hotels previously used a limited system that lacked centralised oversight and integration with key third-party tools, including channel management platforms. The new system is expected to help the company standardise processes, monitor performance and manage new properties more efficiently. Hotelogix provides cloud-based hotel technology solutions and said its systems are used by more than 12,000 hotels across over 100 countries. ASMS, Ampivo to expand digital agriculture platform across rural network Avio Smart Market Stack and Ampivo Smart Technologies are deepening their collaboration to introduce Ampivo’s digital agriculture platform, Agri Kisan Setu, across identified villages in ASMS’ rural network. The application, available in seven languages, provides farmers and rural stakeholders with access to farm management tools, agricultural market information, price discovery, buyer and seller connectivity, government scheme information and specialised services such as drone-based solutions. Ampivo is also developing capabilities for carbon credits and digital measurement, reporting and verification, alongside workflows to help farmers identify relevant government schemes and entitlements. The initial collaboration will focus on onboarding farmers across selected ASMS network villages. The companies will subsequently evaluate deeper integration involving digital advisory, service delivery and eligible sustainability and carbon-credit programmes. Truecaller partners with LinkedIn for professional identity verification Truecaller has announced a global partnership with LinkedIn to bring professional identity information into its caller identification experience. The integration will allow users to connect their LinkedIn profiles with Truecaller and, where available, display verified professional information alongside caller details. The companies said the initiative is aimed at providing additional context when people receive calls from individuals they have not previously met, including recruiters, suppliers and business contacts. New users can also use Login with LinkedIn to simplify account creation. Connecting a LinkedIn profile and displaying professional information on Truecaller remain optional. The integration is currently available to Truecaller users on Android worldwide, with an iPhone rollout planned subsequently. Truecaller said its platform has more than 500 million active users globally, making caller identity a significant part of its communication service. iThrive appoints former client services head Saloni Kulkarni to board Functional medicine company iThrive has appointed Saloni Kulkarni, its former head of Client Services, to its Board of Directors. Kulkarni joined iThrive in 2021 as a Functional Nutritionist after completing her bachelor’s degree in nutrition and subsequently took on additional responsibilities within the company. She will continue contributing to iThrive’s strategic direction, with a focus on strengthening its functional nutrition practice and advancing the organisation’s work in nutrition and wellness. Founder and CEO Mugdha Pradhan said Kulkarni’s career progression reflects the opportunities the company seeks to create for women professionals. iThrive said the appointment also marks a milestone for its leadership structure, with its board currently represented entirely by women. Kulkarni will continue working on the company’s strategic and functional nutrition initiatives. Qlik, ICT Academy renew partnership to reach one million students Data and analytics company Qlik and ICT Academy have renewed their memorandum of understanding to expand data literacy, analytics and AI education to one million additional students. The collaboration will establish and expand Centres of Excellence, help educators incorporate data and AI concepts into curricula, and deliver student learning programmes, Learnathons and applied problem-solving challenges. The partnership has so far reached more than 200,000 students and educators. Qlik and ICT Academy said the next phase will expand the model nationally and support qualifications and certifications that demonstrate workforce-relevant capabilities. India is the largest footprint of Qlik’s Academic Program in Asia Pacific, with more than 1,100 universities, colleges and institutions participating. The programme also operates five Centres of Excellence across Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. Mygate launches community-based carpooling feature Community management platform Mygate has introduced a carpooling feature that allows residents to discover and coordinate shared rides with neighbours travelling along similar routes. The feature enables users to create recurring rides, specify destinations and available seats and share pickup information. Mygate said the service is designed to provide a more familiar environment for ride-sharing than platforms that connect strangers. The feature was initially piloted across 50 communities, where more than 4,000 users participated during a 15-day period. Mygate estimates that if 20% of its 5.7 million residents use the service, approximately 18.2 crore litres of fuel could potentially be saved annually. The company currently serves more than 5.7 million homes across over 27,000 gated communities and plans to expand the carpooling service across its platform. LTTS, Cognite partner to develop industrial AI solutions L&T Technology Services has partnered with industrial AI company Cognite to develop and deliver AI and data solutions for asset-intensive industries. As part of the collaboration, LTTS has established a Cognite Centre of Excellence and certified an initial group of more than 50 engineers. The companies will co-develop solutions for sectors including oil and gas, chemicals, LNG, consumer goods, mining and industrial manufacturing. The partnership combines LTTS’ engineering and asset lifecycle expertise with Cognite’s industrial AI and data capabilities. The companies have already begun a project with a global top-10 oil and gas company to transform a manual mechanical-integrity process into a contextualised digital workflow. LTTS and Cognite said the collaboration will support applications including digital twins, predictive maintenance and operational intelligence across industrial enterprises. Procol unveils agentic AI command centre for procurement Agentic AI procurement platform Procol is set to showcase a role-based command centre at DPW Amsterdam 2026 that enables procurement teams to initiate complete workflows through plain-language requests. Powered by its Clara AI orchestration layer, the platform can coordinate sourcing, budget checks and approvals across systems including SAP Ariba, Coupa and Oracle without requiring data migration. Procol said early enterprise deployments have recorded up to 15% lower operational processing costs, an 80% reduction in procurement cycle times and a 99% decline in manual platform touchpoints. The system can interpret requests, identify suppliers, verify budgets and issue requests for quotations. In one example cited by the company, quote-comparison turnaround was reduced from 6.4 days to one day. NETSCOUT adds MCP connectivity to Omnis AI Insights NETSCOUT Systems has announced Model Context Protocol connectivity for its Omnis AI Insights solution, allowing AI assistants and agents to access AI-ready Smart Data on demand. The company said its Smart Data is generated using its Adaptive Service Intelligence technology, which extracts operational context from network data before it reaches downstream AI systems. NETSCOUT said the approach can reduce the volume and complexity of raw telemetry processing while providing AI models with richer operational evidence. The new capability also supports integrations with platforms including Splunk, ELK Stack, Datadog, ServiceNow and Dynatrace, extending existing network infrastructure investments. (The copy will be updated with the latest news)