Blueprint for building enterprise AI; Eternz’s fix for jewellery shopping
The Co-founder and CEO of Uniphore breaks down the playbook for building enterprise AI. Eternz wants to become the Nykaa of jewellery. Nuflower Foods is meeting rising global demand for therapeutic food from its base in India.
Hello,
After grounding thousands of flights last week, it’s time for IndiGo to cut a cheque.
The budget airline has estimated payouts of more than Rs 500 crore in total for passengers affected by its mass cancellations last week.
IndiGo is identifying flights where travellers were severely impacted and stranded at airports on December 3, 4, and 5. It will compensate customers whose flights were "cancelled within 24 hours of departure time and/or to those stranded at certain airports," according to its post on X.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing for a valuation as high as its ambitions. The company is preparing to go public next year and has opened a secondary share sale that would value the company at $800 billion, according to a letter to shareholders sent by the company's CFO Bret Johnsen, Reuters reported.
In other news, footballer Lionel Messi’s India tour kicked off chaotically as fans threw objects, ripped up seats, and invaded the pitch at Kolkata's Salt Lake stadium. Talk about the dark side of stardom!
Lastly, don’t forget to look up to the skies this weekend to catch the Geminid meteor shower. A celestial show consisting of over 100 shooting stars is set to light up the night skies in the Northern Hemisphere, peaking on December 13-14.
Happy viewing!
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- Blueprint for building enterprise AI
- Eternz’s fix for jewellery shopping
- Bolstering global nutrition systems
Here’s your trivia for today: Which element, previously used in the production of felt, led to the expression "mad as a hatter"?
Investor
Blueprint for building enterprise AI
Uniphore, “one of the world’s largest AI native enterprise SaaS companies,” was started in 2008, and today “powers multimodal AI across voice, video, and text for 2,000 plus global businesses.”
In a candid conversation, Umesh Sachdev, Co-founder and CEO of Uniphore, reached beyond the GenAI buzz and unpacked what it actually takes to build a durable enterprise AI business—what’s working now, and what founders often underestimate.
Key takeaways:
- Uniphore positions itself as “an end-to-end data and AI platform designed for large businesses.” Sachdev is clear that the firm is not a provider or builder of a foundational model; rather, Uniphore is open to any choice that the enterprise may make across those layers.
- Uniphore’s “business AI cloud” is built as a four-layer architecture from data agents that automate the task of discovering data and then preparing data for LLM usage to a model garden with “very stringent guardrails evaluations, observability and explainability frameworks.”
- When the conversation turns to Indian founders building in enterprise AI, Umesh cautions them against misusing AI where it doesn’t belong, and advises them to build customer intimacy, deeming it “worth its weight in gold”.
Startup
Eternz’s fix for jewellery shopping
India has beauty, fashion, and electronics marketplaces, but one category has remained fragmented: jewellery. With no consolidated platform, buyers are split between high-end brands with limited styles and unbranded retailers where authenticity, material safety, and durability are unclear.
This fragmented landscape caught the attention of Arthi Ramalingam, and in April 2024, she launched Eternz, a vertical marketplace that curates verified brands and integrates AI-driven discovery to help users find designs based on personal style, occasion, and price.
Streamlined shopping:
- Eternz offers jewellery across materials and categories: silver, fashion jewellery, lab-grown diamonds, gold, and lightweight diamond pieces. The startup currently features 250+ brands, including Giva, Caratlane, Fiona Diamonds, and international brands such as Guess, Daniel Wellington, and Ted Baker.
- The platform offers a virtual try-on tool designed to mimic the offline experience, helping shoppers see how a piece looks against their skin tone and face shape. It has also gamified discovery with its Vibe Game, a Tinder-style swipe interface where customers swipe right on styles they like and left on those they don't.
- Eternz offers quick commerce with same-day delivery for select fast-moving products in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, and Gurugram. Standard marketplace orders take three to four days, while made-to-order pieces are delivered within 14 days.
Arthi Ramalingam, an IIM Ahmedabad graduate and former Udaan marketing leader who ran her own bootstrapped jewellery brand, founded Eternz to consolidate India's fragmented jewellery market.
Social Impact
Bolstering global nutrition systems
Sudan’s civil war is driving a severe nutrition crisis, and humanitarian systems are struggling to respond. According to UNICEF’s latest humanitarian situation report, an estimated 30.4 million people (up from 24.8 million last year) in Sudan are urgently in need of life-saving assistance.
In 2025 alone, Nuflower Foods, a manufacturer of Ready-to-use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) in India, supplied over 60,000 cartons to Sudan through its partnerships with UNICEF, the World Food Programme and other agencies, as part of global efforts to treat severe and moderate acute malnutrition in crisis-hit regions.
News & updates
- AI squeeze: Broadcom shares fell more than 11% on Friday after the chipmaker warned growing sales of lower-margin custom AI processors were squeezing profitability, sparking worries that the business may be less lucrative.
- Deal: Intel Corp. is in advanced talks to acquire artificial intelligence (AI) chip startup SambaNova Systems Inc. for about $1.6 billion, including debt. A deal for Palo Alto, California-based SambaNova could come together as soon as next month.
- Increasing demand: Nvidia has told Chinese clients it is evaluating adding production capacity for its powerful H200 AI chips after orders exceeded its current output level.
Which element, previously used in the production of felt, led to the expression "mad as a hatter"?
Answer: Mercury.
We would love to hear from you! To let us know what you liked and disliked about our newsletter, please mail [email protected].
If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here. For past editions of the YourStory Buzz, you can check our Daily Capsule page here.