Hyderabad wins India’s digital payments race; AI as a workflow translator

Hello,

What’s the impact of the US government’s 100% tariff on branded drug imports on India? 

Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), which represents 23 leading Indian pharma firms, including Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Sun Pharma, Lupin, and Zydus Lifesciences, says the latest tariff will not affect generic drugmakers. 

Indian pharma companies largely export generics to the US market. Nevertheless, investors remained jittery. 

Shares of Sun Pharmaceutical and Divi’s Laboratories fell by 2.5% and 3.5% on Friday, with even the sector benchmark Nifty Pharma Index falling by over 2%. 

These tariffs on branded drugs are expected to affect their produces who have not started construction of their plants in the US by October 1. However, many big drugmakers already have US plants or are building them.  

In other news, TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, stands to earn about half of the profit from the platform’s US operation even after it sells majority ownership to American investors.

Lastly, the finale of James Cameron’s Avatar franchise is finally here. There’s lot happening in Avatar: Fire and Ash, as The Guardian writes, “We get a full-blown theological crisis, and a planet that might be running out of breathable air.”

Are you ready to go back to Pandora?

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Hyderabad wins India’s digital payments race
• AI as a workflow translator
• Kerala’s largest youth maker movement

Here’s your trivia for today: What constant is referred to as "The Universe's Clock"?

Insight

Hyderabad wins India’s digital payments race

India’s retail economy is undergoing a sharp transformation as digital transactions increasingly dominate consumer spending patterns. According to NeoGrowth’s 9th edition of its NeoInsights study, How India Pays, 74% of all retail spends across the country’s top 29 cities are now digital, up significantly from 45% just two years ago.

Hyderabad tops the list with 82% of retail transactions being digital, closely followed by Bengaluru and Pune at 79% each.

Digital payment adoption: 

• Among non-metro cities, Visakhapatnam (76%), Nagpur (71%), and Chandigarh (68%) are leading the way in digital adoption. In contrast, Kolkata (55%), Jamshedpur (54%), Madurai (52%), and Rajkot (48%) continue to rely more heavily on cash.
• Digital payments are now entrenched across both discretionary and essential spending categories. Personal grooming (83%), education (81%), and dining (80%) top the charts for digital adoption.
• Younger entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s report that nearly 80% of their revenues now come from digital payments. Seasoned retailers aged 50 and above are closing the gap quickly.

Top Funding Deals of the Week

Startup: Emergent

Amount: $23M

Round: Series A

Startup: Handpickd

Amount: $15M

Round: Series A

Startup: Rocket

Amount: $15M

Round: Seed

DevSparks

AI as a workflow translator

Artificial intelligence is already reshaping how products are built. It speeds up the dull, repetitive work and helps teams to move from idea to usable result much faster. Crucially, AI does not replace human judgment.

According to Dinesh Varadharajan, Chief Product Officer of Kissflow, AI is merely a translator, not a creator. During a session at DevSparks Chennai 2025, Varadharajan detailed how teams can utilise AI in the product development process.

New way of development:

• In the old model of product development, a product manager writes a specification, designers produce mockups, front-end developers convert those mockups into code and backend developers link up the logic and data. According to Varadharajan, the problem is in the process itself, which can add delays.
• Rapid prototyping and early releases let teams test ideas with real users sooner. Instead of waiting months to get a feature into customers’ hands, teams can show a simple, working version within days. 
• Varadharajan stressed a pragmatic view of the future, urged teams to use AI to accelerate routine work while spending more time on problem definition and system design, and asked organisations to remove needless processes.

Social Impact

Kerala’s largest youth maker movement

In 2014, three engineering students from Cochin Institute of Science and Technology (CUSAT) and a BA English student from Kozhikode, bonded over a shared desire for accessible tech learning at a Mozilla Maker party in Kochi. 

What started as a student-led tech community at CUSAT has now grown into one of Kerala’s most vibrant youth-led collectives, with over 100,000 young makers impacted in the last decade. Last year, TinkerHub Foundation was present in 36 universities, the year before in 80-85 universities, and this year, 66 institutions will tinker to bring the best ideas in technology.

News & updates

• Rejig: Tata Motors named insiders Shailesh Chandra as MD and CEO and Dhiman Gupta as CFO, as the carmaker reshapes its top team amid disruption at Jaguar Land Rover. Chandra is the Joint MD for its passenger vehicles and passenger electric mobility businesses and will continue to lead the electric mobility segment.
• Aircrafts: Boeing can sign off on some of its 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner planes before they’re handed over to customers, the US FAA said. It stopped allowing Boeing to issue its own airworthiness certificates for 737 Max airplanes in 2019 after two fatal crashes and for 787s in 2022 because of production defects.
• Overhaul: Volkswagen Group is restructuring its business in India, where it wants to invest more but is grappling with policy changes and growing competition. The company faces India's biggest-ever import tax demand of $1.4 billion for evading levies.

What constant is referred to as "The Universe's Clock"?

Answer: The Speed of Light.

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