Being a senior woman leader in India; Addressing developer anxieties

Hello,

Insurtech is attracting investor attention. 

Bengaluru-based Plum Insurance—whose clients include CRED, Meesho, and Swiggy—has raised Rs 193 crore in a Series B funding round led by Peak XV Partners. 

The startup offers comprehensive employee benefits, focusing on health insurance, healthcare, and wellbeing. Providing a smooth claims experience is its North Star metric, and it believes “everything else would follow from getting that right.” And investors are taking note. 

Moving on, Moving Tech Innovations, the company behind ride-hailing platform Namma Yatri, has acquired Netherlands-based Automicle Holding BV, marking its entry into the European market. The  development gains significance amid growing alignment between India and the European Union on digital public infrastructure and sustainable urban mobility. 

Meanwhile, the surge in petrol prices due to the West Asia conflict is driving up sales of used electric vehicles across Europe. Customer interest in EVs is growing, and social media campaigns are also upping the ante. 

ICYMI: Lastly, if you are a woman with solo travel on your agenda this year, this list of best countries might come in handy. From the social surf towns of Costa Rica to the remote Arctic landscapes of Norway, the compilation captures new travel trends and traveller insights into places where solo women travellers feel safe. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Being a senior woman leader in India
• Addressing developer anxieties

Here’s your trivia for today: “Greed, for a lack of better word, is good.” In which movie would you hear this famous line?

Leadership 

Being a senior woman leader in India

In our Women in Tech series, we profile Ipsita Dasgupta, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, HP India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, who talks about navigating diverse roles and why advocacy is more important than mentorship.

In an enviable career trajectory across geographies, Dasgupta reveals that she has never pursued a role in her life, not looked at a company, but largely bet on and followed people.

Leadership lessons:

• “If you look at the US and China, there are many more women in senior-level positions, but India has a longer path to go. It’s much harder being a senior woman leader in India,” says Dasgupta. 
• She attributes the “missing middle”—Indian women dropping out of the workforce mid-career—to having the largest number of stakeholders in their lives—in-laws, uncles and aunts, cousins, and neighbours, all with opinions on their choices.
• She tells women that if they want their personal lives to make space for their careers, they must also allow their careers to shape their personal lives. “In a world where representation is still largely male, it becomes harder for women to be able to make tradeoffs and decisions about what they want to do and how they want to do it,” she says. 

Devsparks

Addressing developer anxieties

Will AI replace human developers? At DevSparks Pune 2026, this question was central for many attendees who had gathered for a lightning talk by AI and engineering influencer Arsh Goyal. His session tackled developer anxieties head-on, exploring how AI is evolving and what engineers must do to remain relevant in an increasingly automated world.

Goyal’s message was clear: while AI may commoditise certain parts of coding, the deeper craft of engineering— thinking through systems, architecture, and real-world complexity—remains firmly human.

Key takeaways: 

• “The change that AI has produced did not happen within a decade or a year, but within weeks. We see a development today, and then that same development gets killed by something else a few weeks later,” said Goyal. 
• The rise of more autonomous AI systems is changing how developers think about their own value. While some workers fear automation, others are finding their expertise becoming more valuable. “There’s someone whose job is getting eaten and also someone whose job is getting 10x more valuable,” he said.
• The AI revolution is also creating entirely new roles. AI engineers are the next big thing. The forward-deployed engineer is a new role, and MLOps engineer is another one, said Goyal. 

News & updates

• Market impact: Major stock indexes eased and oil prices rose, with dimming hopes of a quick resolution to the war in West Asia, which has rattled the global markets.
• Social media: Meta and YouTube have been found liable by a jury in Los Angeles in a trial pertaining to social media addiction. A young woman who had sued the companies over her childhood addiction has been awarded $6 million in damages. Meta and Google, which owns YouTube, have said they would appeal.
• Inflation forecast: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has forecast all-items inflation in the US to be at 4.2% for 2026, a sharp rise from the prior projection of 2.8%, and much higher than the 2.7% estimated by Fed officials. 

“Greed, for a lack of better word, is good.” In which movie would you hear this famous line?

Answer: Wall Street

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