💪🏽 Bihar’s women powering the economy

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08 July 2025 View in Browser

Hello,   Amazon Now is expanding its footprint.   After going live in Bengaluru in June, the ecommerce giant’s quick service arm is now offering its services to a few pin codes in Delhi.    Moving on, beauty is big business for Nykaa.    FSN E-Commerce Ventures Ltd, the parent of beauty and fashion retailer Nykaa, expects consolidated net revenue for the first quarter of FY26 to grow in the mid-20% range, according to a regulatory filing.    The uptick is powered by continued strength in its beauty segment, even as its fashion business shows early signs of a turnaround.   Meanwhile, Go Digit General Insurance has received a significant reprieve in a tax dispute worth over Rs 170 crore after the Bombay High Court overturned a previous demand raised by tax authorities and ordered a fresh review.   ICYMI: Mysterious Bitcoin whales—aka people with large cryptocurrency holdings—have woken up after waiting for 14 years.    Elsewhere, Alphabet’s AI drug development subsidiary, Isomorphic Labs, plans to start its AI-developed cancer drugs on humans.   Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs president and Google DeepMind’s chief business officer, believes using cutting-edge AI in pharma could not only accelerate drug development but also cut costs, Fortune reported.   In today’s newsletter, we will talk about  Bihar’s women powering the state’s economy Learn spoken English, but with AI Finding freedom in one’s skin   Here’s your trivia for today: Which is Steven Spielberg’s only musical film?

Inspiration Bihar’s women powering the state’s economyA quiet revolution in Bihar is turning into one of India’s most successful grassroots development models. Led by 1.3 crore women, many of them never formally employed, this transformation is driven from Bihar’s smallest panchayats through the state’s flagship rural livelihoods programme: JEEViKA.   The architect of the programme, Himanshu Sharma, IAS, CEO of the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (BRLPS), outlines its growth.   Empowerment: So far, in 2025, JEEViKA has created over 10.6 lakh SHGs and reached more than 1.35 crore women, with total credit flows exceeding Rs 78,000 crore. One of JEEViKA’s most radical features is its trust-based lending architecture built entirely without paperwork, collateral, or credit scores. Unlike conventional banks or even microfinance institutions, SHG loans aren’t delayed by documentation or bureaucracy. Know More

Funding Alert Khetika: $18M| Series B nPrime Finserv: $6M| Series A1 Yulu: Rs 25.7 Cr | Series B

Startup Learn spoken English, but with AI The inability to speak fluent English despite being highly educated is a common frustration shared by many students, job seekers, and professionals alike in India. While most edtech tools focus on teaching the language, four students from IIT-BHU spotted a deeper problem—fluency, not literacy, which was holding people back.    Determined to change that, Akshay Akash and his college mates Anesh Srivastav, Ankit Kumar Pandey, and Akshat Baranwal founded Stimuler in 2022. Stimuler is a voice-first app that helps users improve spoken English through AI-powered phone call simulations followed by detailed feedback and personalised practice exercises.   Key takeaways: Unlike typical chatbot-based apps, Stimuler mimics a real phone conversation. Users can select topics such as hobbies, workplace small talk, or job interviews, and engage in a voice-only exchange with an AI bot.  After the call ends, the app generates a “speech report card” instantly that highlights areas for improvement. The app also recommends personalised practice exercises to help users improve specific weaknesses.  Stimuler operates on a freemium model. Free users get limited daily practice; premium plans start at $3/month depending on region, with annual options available. The app is used by over 4 million people, with paying customers mainly in India, Latin America, and Indonesia. Know More

Social Impact Finding freedom in one’s skinFor many queer individuals, the body holds memories of violence—both overt and subtle. It isn’t just gender dysphoria they battle, but also the slow erosion of self that comes from bullying, childhood trauma, stigma, and being made to feel different long before they had the words for it.    As puberty hits, bodies change, often deepening the disconnect. And yet, through community, therapy, literature, gender-affirming care, and personal rituals—queer people across the spectrum are reclaiming their bodies as sites of agency and pride. In these voices, we hear of healing as nonlinear, messy, and powerful; and of bodies once burdened with shame now becoming canvases of pride, resilience, and radical self-definition.    Know More

From the CapTable Naveen Tewari’s boldest bet yet: How Glance AI is turning selfies into style statementsAfter InMobi’s globally successful B2B adtech platform and Glance’s innovative lock screen content discovery tool, the serial entrepreneur’s third ambitious bet is Glance AI—a cutting-edge AI commerce solution that aspires to redefine the retail shopping experience across the world.    Fresh from the grand launch of Glance AI in the United States, Tewari unabashedly declares this endeavour to be his “biggest, boldest bet” in 18 years, since he established InMobi—which became India’s first ever unicorn in 2011. “I see this as the ChatGPT moment for shopping,” he tells The CapTable in an exclusive chat on the heels of Glance AI’s rollout in 140 countries.    “Just as we hailed cabs before and after Uber, how we searched online before and after ChatGPT, how we made payments before and after UPI... similarly, how we shopped before Glance AI and after Glance AI will fundamentally change,” he explains.    It’s a ‘big, bold’ declaration indeed, especially considering that Glance AI is entirely crafted in India by a dedicated team of 250 AI engineers who are focused on developing a truly innovative Gen AI product. With Glance’s parent company investing nearly $200 million in the agentic AI platform—which had been operating in a closed beta for three months before its expansive launch six weeks ago—it is already seeing impressive traction in the West.    Currently, the platform boasts 1.5 million weekly users, each generating 18 personalized AI looks and styles daily; Glance AI has accumulated close to 40 million style requests with a resoundingly positive and “emotional” consumer response, Tewari claims.    But what really sets Glance AI apart at a time when the buzz around AI-driven experiential commerce is louder than ever? And why is the InMobi Group committing significant resources to this product—which it believes will touch 100 million users in six months—which not only requires substantial investment in building core tech models, but also faces mounting competition from Big Tech?    In the latest edition of CapTable Conversations, Naveen Tewari, Founder & CEO of Glance, breaks all this down and more.   Continue Reading

News & Updates

Big Tech: Apple took a challenge against EU regulators to Europe’s second-highest court on Monday after they fined it 500 million euros ($587 million) earlier this year for breaching landmark rules aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech. Acquisition: CoreWeave will buy crypto miner Core Scientific in an all-stock deal valued at about $9 billion, the company said on Monday, as AI infrastructure firms race to secure power supply to support their surging workloads. Tariffs: President Donald Trump said the US will impose an additional 10% tariff on any country aligning with the “anti-American policies” of the BRICS group of developing nations, whose leaders kicked off a summit in Brazil on Sunday.

Did you know?

What is Steven Spielberg’s only musical film? Answer: West Side Story.

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