How UP is redefining India’s export story; How Amrut became flagbearer of Indian whisky

Hello,

Big moves are shaking up India’s financial landscape.

India’s central bank is widening the scope of its digital currency and laying the groundwork for tokenised asset markets. 

According to RBI chief Sanjay Malhotra, the retail pilot of the central bank digital currency, known as the e-rupee, now includes 19 banks and 7 million users. That makes it one of the largest sovereign digital currency pilots in the world!

SEBI is also looking at making changes to India’s block deal framework, including increasing the minimum block deal size to Rs 25 crore from Rs 10 crore. 

Largely, the markets regulator is looking at leveraging AI and other technologies to build a more resilient, inclusive, and transparent capital market. 

Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest 2025, SEBI Chairperson Tuhin Kanta Pandey outlined technology’s key role in the market regulator’s three broad priorities—investor protection, market development, and effective regulation—and how market resilience is a shared industry responsibility.

RBI Innovation Hub chief P Vasudevan, on the other hand, pointed out a general wariness among fintech firms in engaging with the central bank and called on the industry to share responsibility in ensuring fraud prevention. 

Regulation and innovation don’t always have to be at odds, after all. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• How UP is redefining India’s export story
• How Amrut became the flagbearer of Indian whisky
• No-code automation for enterprises

Here’s your trivia for today: What popular candy bar is named after its maker’s favourite horse?

Interview

How UP is redefining India’s export story

Uttar Pradesh is steadily emerging as a manufacturing powerhouse, with entrepreneurs taking their crafts from village workshops to global markets. 

At the UP International Trade Show 2025, a flagship B2B and B2C initiative of the Uttar Pradesh government, homegrown startup founders, exporters, and business leaders tell Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO, YourStory, how their companies are catering to changing consumer preferences, both domestically and internationally.

Making for the world:

• According to Alok Kumar, Additional Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh, the state’s industrial growth story is built on four pillars: security, law and order improvements; attractive industrial policies; infrastructure development; and governance reforms focusing on ease of doing business.
• Saurabh Kanodia, the founder of Akriti Jewelcraftz Private Limited, based in Baghpat, has emerged as a leader in stone fabrication and installation, a business segment that was virtually unknown in UP and limited to Rajasthan.
• Chetan Khandelwal’s Divine Copper produces high-quality, heavyweight copper products with trendy designs that can be customised with prints. This transformation in product quality and durability has enabled Divine Copper to access international markets.

Funding Alert

Startup: Membrane Group India

Amount: $50M

Round: Equity

Startup: Meolaa

Amount: $6M

Round: Pre-Series A

Startup: Affluence AI

Amount: Rs 3 Cr

Round: Pre-seed

Alco-bev

How Amrut became the flagbearer of Indian whisky

In 1948, Amrut Distilleries made Bengaluru its home as a family-run venture that eventually became the pioneer of India’s single malt whisky. What started as a bottling and blending unit for IMFL has developed into a globally recognised whisky brand, particularly famous for its use of Indian barley and climate for single malt production. 

India on the map:

• Amrut’s portfolio spans mass-market whiskies, single malts, rum, brandy, and gin. It has close to 50 variants of single malt whisky being sold across 58 countries, with India being a strong market, followed by the US and Europe.
• Amrut has also introduced the Two Indies Rum, a blend of Indian and Caribbean rums—a world-first concept. Its Bella Rum, made from jaggery, was launched after Amrut lobbied the Karnataka government to license jaggery-based distillation. 
• Revenue-wise, 65% of Amrut’s topline comes from mass and deluxe categories, while 35% is contributed by premium and luxury products. Within the luxury and premium portfolio, Amrut Fusion remains the flagship.

Startup

No-code automation for enterprises

Automation in large organisations is often slow and expensive, needing complex coding along with coordination between IT teams and software vendors. Bengaluru-based Expressonic Global Solutions, with its platform Kraft-a-Bot, aims to solve this problem by letting domain experts automate processes themselves, without writing any code.

The software has three parts: Design Studio for creating jobs, Real Bot for running them on schedule, and Enterprise Manager for monitoring and managing bots across locations. 

News & updates

• Case by case: OpenAI and Anthropic are exploring the use of investor funds to settle potential multibillion-dollar lawsuits. Copyright owners have launched a series of high-stakes lawsuits against tech firms, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms, alleging unauthorised use of their material to train AI systems.
• AI push: SoftBank Group has agreed to buy the robotics business of Swiss engineering group ABB in a $5.4 billion deal, as the Japanese investor forges ahead with a strategy to fuse robotics and artificial intelligence.
• Golden boot: Cristiano Ronaldo has become football’s first billionaire player. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he earned more than $550 million in salary between 2002 and 2023, and through sponsorships, including a decade-long deal with Nike worth almost $18 million a year.

What popular candy bar is named after its maker’s favourite horse?

Answer: Snickers. 

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