Hello there! We have a short, concise edition today, bringing you exclusive coverage from Rising Bharat Summit 2025. We will be back with our regular edition tomorrow (April 10).

Today in New Delhi: We had a power packed lineup at the event today, including union ministers Amit Shah, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Piyush Goyal, S Jaishankar, Chirag Paswan, and Dr Jitendra Singh. 

• Top global and India tech and startup voices including Perplexity’s Aravind Srinivas, Dream Sports’ Harsh Jain, Aarin Capital’s TV Mohandas Pai, and Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis were also part of the lineup.

Catch all the action on our liveblog (or our livestream)

• India is not late in the race to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) and will be among the first nations to harness its powers, said union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. He also said the first Made-in-India chip will be ready by September this year.

• Perplexity plans to roll out a lower India-specific pricing for its premium subscription tier, Perplexity Pro, to grow its subscriber base in the country, said co-founder Aravind Srinivas.  He mentioned that India is among the company’s top 10 countries by revenue.

• Perplexity’s hiring plans in India are however on hold, Srinivas said, due to the overwhelming number of job applications that has led to a rethink in their hiring strategy. He also quipped that the constantly evolving AI landscape has made it hard for him to catch a break.

• Perplexity co-founder Aravind Srinivas argued that if engineers are not using AI when writing code, they are essentially stagnating themselves. He also defended Union minister Piyush Goyal’s recent remarks on India’s startup quality, saying it was a ‘positively provocative comment’ meant to instigate founders to build high-quality products Read more.

• Former Infosys chief financial officer and IT industry veteran Mohandas Pai has slammed what he calls 'tax terrorism' in India, saying income-tax oppression is 'enormous' and has only worsened in recent years. Read more.

• India's startup ecosystem is moving in the right direction when it comes to deep tech, albeit on a smaller scale than the United States or China. But with a bit of support and some patient capital, it’ll get there, said Dream Sports co-founder Harsh Jain. Read more.

• Amid growing concerns around deepfakes and misuse of AI-generated voices, ElevenLabs is doubling down on building guardrails into its voice cloning technology. Read more.

• India's strategy to combat reciprocal tariffs is to engage with the Trump administration, said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. Read his full address.

• AI is going to be a game-changer for India. The country needs to be prepared to be educated for the technology, said Ashoka University’s Pramath Raj Sinha. Read more.

• Former Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud called on the country’s youth to view law not merely as a profession but as a vehicle for public service and social change.

For the full coverage of the event, head over here

• Wipro’s chief executive officer Srinivas Pallia, who stepped into the corner office on the evening of April 6, 2024, is rebuilding the software major, with a sharper execution and signs of renewed momentum in large deals but the turnaround is far from complete, industry experts tell us.

• RBI has allowed NPCI to revise transaction limits for person-to-merchant (P2M) payments on UPI, paving the way for select higher-value transactions.

• Quick commerce unicorn Zepto’s gross order value (GOV) has inched closer to $4 billion, representing a year-on-year (YoY) growth of 300%, said CEO Aadit Palicha.
  
  
• The Karnataka government has held a high-level meeting to discuss a legal framework for regulating skill-based gaming industry.

• India’s largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is set to kickstart the IT earnings season on April 10. Here are the five key themes to look for.

• Bollywood’s love affair with startups continues, and this time, it’s raising a toast to India’s booming alcohol beverage industry. The latest star to enter the space is actor Ajay Devgn, who has launched GlenJourneys, a premium single malt under alco-bev startup Cartel Bros.

• Ather Energy is said to be considering cutting the size of its initial public offering by at least $50 million from an earlier target of about $400 million.

• Real-time data streaming platform Confluent and software major Infosys are working together to develop Generative AI and Agentic AI solutions that help businesses to build smarter, faster, and more autonomous AI-driven systems.

• Sarah Wynn-Williams, a Meta executive turned whistleblower, plans to testify before US Congress that the social media giant threatened the country’s interests while cozying up to China.

• RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra said the central bank will issue comprehensive norms for loans against gold jewellery and ornaments