Tejaswini Hebalkar on breaking barriers; How Milkvilla is building a 12-hour supply chain for fresh milk

Dear Reader,

India now has an AI foundation model built specifically for payments. 

The country’s payments ecosystem is growing at an extraordinary scale, but this has created a complex environment. Fintech firm Razorpay hopes to address this with Vulcan, an AI model that promises to make online payments more reliable, secure, and successful. 

Developed with NVIDIA and AWS, Vulcan has been trained on nearly 3 trillion data points across 4 billion payments. It aims to improve payment routing, fraud detection, and checkout experiences through a single AI system. 

In other news, US-based startup Wispr has raised $280 million in a Series B funding round at a $2 billion valuation. 

Wispr’s AI tools convert spoken language into written text, including emails, messages and documents. The newly-raised capital will be used to improve speech recognition accuracy, which Co-founder Tanay Kothari says, will determine whether voice tech becomes a genuine substitute for typing rather than remaining a novelty.

Meanwhile, Dharwad pedha is having its moment under the sun. 

Dharwad Big Mishra Pedha, a 93-year-old confectionery maker from Karnataka, has raised Rs 300 crore from Bharat Value Fund of The Wealth Company to expand its network. Founded in 1933, the company has 200 outlets across North Karnataka, Goa, and Southern Maharashtra, selling GI-tagged Dharwad pedha and other sweets and snacks. The investment underscores the big opportunity in branded regional foods.

From sweet, steady success to rapid growth… 

Ahead of its potential market listing later this year, Anthropic is in peak form. According to a source, the AI startup’s annual revenue run rate topped $65 billion by the end of July, soaring from $47 billion in May and $9 billion at the end of 2025. Anthropic is projecting a revenue of $190 billion to $200 billion in 2028. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Tejaswini Hebalkar on breaking barriers, embracing AI
• How Milkvilla is building a 12-hour supply chain for fresh milk

Here’s your trivia for today: Which pasta is shaped like a bicycle? (Scroll down for the answer)

Women in Tech

Tejaswini Hebalkar on breaking barriers, embracing AI

From engineering and consulting to leading digital transformation at Allstate, Tejaswini Hebalkar’s career has spanned technology, operations, and business. Now, as the SVP of Operations, she is focused on building a “human plus AI” workplace while championing women through the often-overlooked mid-career phase.

Key takeaways: 

• Tejaswini’s career moved from engineering at Lucent Technologies to consulting and eventually digital transformation, where she built tech-enabled repair and supply-chain operations at SquareTrade before its acquisition by Allstate. 
• She highlights the disproportionate drop-off of women at the mid-career stage and advocates for mentorship, sponsorship, and strong support networks to help women navigate career crossroads. 
• As AI takes on more transactional and analytical work, Tejaswini believes empathy, relationships, and leadership will become even more important, and sees AI as an opportunity to democratise technical skills.

Funding Alert

Startup: NeoGeoInfo Technologies

Amount: $20M

Round: Series A

Startup: Rezolv

Amount: $12.5M 

Round: Series A

In-focus

How Milkvilla is building a 12-hour supply chain for fresh milk

Bengaluru-based dairytech startup Milkvilla operates a hyperlocal model that takes milk from farmer to customer in 12 hours, while keeping 60-70% of revenue with its network of dairy farmers. The company has also expanded beyond milk and delivers products such as paneer, ghee and peda. These products follow the same supply chain, which Milkvilla had recently patented.

The logistics of it all: 

• The company follows a hyperlocal procurement model, sourcing milk close to the cities where it operates. In Muzaffarpur, in Bihar, where founders Mannu Jee and Aman Jee come from, Milkvilla works with farmers in the neighbouring villages. In Bengaluru, the milk comes from dairy farmers in Ramanagara district, about 50 km southwest of the city.
• Milkvilla’s special milk collection vehicle is equipped with a cooling and a testing infrastructure. The vehicle goes to the farmer’s doorstep, and then the milk is turbo-cooled down to four degree Celsius. This increases the milk’s shelf life to 24 hours without the need for any chemicals. 
• The milk is then taken to a delivery hub, where it undergoes quality assessment tests. Once it passes the required metrics, it is loaded into a refrigerated van for delivery to customers.

News & updates

• Acquisition: Wipro Consumer Care is on a shopping spree. After buying the Good Home and Eva brands from TTK Healthcare, and S Brands in the Philippines recently, the company has now acquired Ahmedabad-based premium beauty and skincare brand Dermatouch for Rs 387.5 crore. 
• ChatGPT for Teens: OpenAI has launched a specialised version of its AI platform called ChatGPT for Teens. This initiative aims to provide younger users with a tool for critical thinking and learning while embedding significant safety measures to protect them from harmful content.
• Meta trial: US states have called for big changes to Instagram and Facebook as Meta child privacy trial begins. Not only are the states seeking upwards of $1 trillion from Meta, they are also demanding changes including ending ‘like’ counts and infinite scroll.

Which pasta is shaped like a bicycle?

Answer: Biciclette

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