India on track in AI race, says Amitabh Kant; Bubble Me's self-care bet

Hello,

An IPO plan in the making.

Walmart-backed PhonePe on Thursday said it has started preparing for an IPO on the Indian stock exchanges.

In December 2022, PhonePe moved its base from Singapore to India, eyeing a public listing on the domestic bourses. Later, the Sameer Nigam-led fintech giant established a clear corporate structure with each of its new non-payment businesses as fully owned units to prepare for its public debut plans.

Retail giant Walmart, meanwhile, plans to step up sourcing products, including toys, from India, reports Business Standard. This comes at a time when India is working on becoming a global hub for toy manufacturing.

ICYMI: India’s toy story gets a boost from the government.

Elsewhere, Apple announced a new iPhone that brings AI features at a lower cost than its flagship handsets. The question is whether Apple’s bet on the cheaper iPhone 16e will pay off given that the company saw iPhone sales drop late last year. 

Lastly, while companies are adding AI features to devices to increase sales, some consumers are paying money to lock their phones in a box to disconnect from the digital world. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• India on track in AI race: Amitabh Kant
• Self-care without a bathtub
• Fresher hiring intent jumps in H1 FY25

Here’s your trivia for today: What children's book character lives in the Hundred Acre Woods?

Interview

India on track in AI race: Amitabh Kant

Early advances in AI in the United States and China notwithstanding, the future will be shaped by how India innovates, scales, and democratises this technology, said Amitabh Kant, India’s G20 Sherpa and the former NITI Aayog CEO.

"Technological races are never won by those who do the first round of innovation," said the former bureaucrat, when asked if India was late in building foundational AI technologies, an area dominated by the US and China currently. “The race has just begun.”

India advantage:

• Kant doesn’t reckon that this market should be talked about as a binary choice between the US and China. Pointing to India’s advantages, he said, “None of these countries have 500,000 engineers. None of them have such a high adoption rate. And none of them have the culture of innovating smarter."
• However, according to him, India needs to carry out the following: do nimble cost-effective engineering, provide computing power for research, and build foundational models, especially multilingual and multimodal ones, based on “India’s civilisational strength.”
• He termed the new US regulations on AI hardware exports as “very, very regressive.” These regulations place countries in three tiers, the first of which features 18 US partners such as the UK and Germany and hardly face any restrictions when it comes to sourcing US AI hardware. India figures in the second tier.

<Funding Alert>

Startup: Dogsee Chew

Amount: $8M

Round: Series B

Startup: NOTO Ice Cream

Amount: Rs 15 Cr

Round: Growth

Startup: Onetab.ai

Amount: $3.3M

Round: Seed

Startup

Self-care without a bathtub

"Self-care isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. Taking time to rest, recharge, and care for yourself isn’t an indulgence—it’s essential for overall well-being, balance, and a healthier mind and body,” Akshina Jindal, Founder of Bubble Me, tells YourStory.

Launched in June 2024, Bubble Me focuses on curated bath and body experiences. The bootstrapped brand offers around 25 SKUs across nine categories, including hand washes, body lotions, candles, and its signature product—bath salts. Prices range from Rs 299 to Rs 999.

Me time:

• It offers fragrances like Gendha Phool, Crimson, and Chamoli. “Fragrances have the power to transport you, evoke memories, and alter your mood. That’s the essence of Bubble Me,” she says.
• Bubble Me has gained a customer base of around 7,000 within six months of launching, with a monthly growth rate of 30-40% and a retention rate of 28%. It aims to reach 100,000 customers by 2025.
• Currently available in the outlets of Bombay Gourmet Store in Mumbai and Bengaluru, the brand is expanding into retail chains like Reliance and Model Bazaar while strengthening its online presence through Zepto and Blinkit for nationwide accessibility.

Jobs

Fresher hiring intent jumps in H1 FY25

Around 74% of employers surveyed across India plan to hire freshers in their organisations during the first half of 2025 (January to June), signalling a positive shift in hiring sentiment for first-time job seekers. 

Fresher hiring intent in the first half of 2025 (H1 2025)—which represents the proportion of employers willing to recruit fresh graduates—has increased from 68% in the same period of 2024, according to the TeamLease EdTech Career Outlook Report (HY1, January – June 2025).

Key takeaways:

• The top three industries expressing increased intent to hire freshers during H1 2025 are: ecommerce and technology startups, rising to 70% from 55%; manufacturing, climbing to 66% from 48%; and engineering and infrastructure, jumping to 62% from 53%.
• Meanwhile, fresher hiring sentiment in the information technology (IT) industry, which had dipped during the same period last year, has been steadily rising—from 42% in H1 2024 to 45% in H2 2024, reaching 59% in H1 2025.
• The career outlook report also highlights the in-demand domain skills for freshers, including network security, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, robotic process automation, ecommerce management, and biotechnology.

News & updates

• Not available: Google is pulling its AI assistant Gemini from the main Google app for iOS devices. The move is meant to encourage users to download the standalone Gemini app instead, allowing Google to more directly compete with other consumer-facing AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity.
• Comeback: Alibaba Group reported a faster-than-projected 8% rise in sales to 280.2 billion yuan ($38.6 billion) in the December quarter—in more than a year, reflecting a turnaround in its commerce business and big strides in AI.
• Production: Airbus aims to make 820 planes this year, as the world’s biggest aerospace manufacturer attempts to overcome problems in its supply chain. The European company said deliveries would rise by 7% compared to the 766 planes made last year, as it reported an 8% drop in income for 2024 excluding various charges, to €5.4 billion (£4.7 billion).

What children's book character lives in the Hundred Acre Woods?

Answer: Winnie-the-Pooh

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