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Tripadvisor, Experience Abu Dhabi launch AI-powered destination showcase in Mumbai

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Tripadvisor has teamed up with Experience Abu Dhabi, the official destination brand of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), to launch their latest initiative. “Abu Dhabi Is Calling,” an immersive, multi-sensory experience, will transform Jio World Plaza in Mumbai from September 26–28, 2025.

Over the course of three days, Jio World Plaza will transform into a lively gateway to Abu Dhabi. Moreover, this innovative activation combines state-of-the-art technology with real-time AI interactions and leverages authentic insights from Tripadvisor travellers. The experience offers both Indian and international visitors a unique, multi-sensory journey, inviting them to explore Abu Dhabi in an entirely new way.

At the heart of the experience are two immersive domes—one measuring 6 meters and the other 8 meters. Specifically, the 6-meter dome features the ORA Sphere, an innovative spherical projection system. With this technology, visitors can seamlessly navigate their Abu Dhabi journey in real time, enhancing both engagement and interactivity.

With a simple touch, guests can explore 360° cinematic environments showcasing Abu Dhabi’s iconic landmarks, from the Louvre Abu Dhabi to the verdant Al Ain Oasis. As the dome reacts in perfect harmony, the ORA Sphere simultaneously displays live Tripadvisor reviews, insider tips, and curated travel data, creating a fully integrated digital-physical travel experience.

Tripadvisor crafted “A Doorway Into Abu Dhabi” using its proprietary traveller data, showcasing the most-loved destinations, must-do experiences, and authentic insights so guests experience Abu Dhabi as real travellers do.

Steve Paganelli, Acting Global Head, Media & Partnerships, Tripadvisor, said: “Tripadvisor’s Wanderlab has fused emotional storytelling, groundbreaking technology, and real traveller data to redefine how destinations are discovered from afar. Following the success of this project in London, Paris, and New York, we’re proud to continue our partnership with Experience Abu Dhabi to bring this visionary project to India.”

Georgios Kalliamvakos, Planning, Strategy, and Operations Department Director, DCT Abu Dhabi, said: “In partnership with Tripadvisor’s Wanderlab, we’re bringing a piece of Abu Dhabi to the heart of Mumbai through an immersive experience that truly captures the spirit of the emirate. Showcasing Abu Dhabi’s rich culture, scenic landscapes and unique attractions, this activation invites everyone to discover Abu Dhabi, a destination where unforgettable experiences are always within reach.”

Interact. Imagine. Win.

The “Abu Dhabi Is Calling” activation will also showcase a variety of futuristic and cultural experiences:

  • AI Pod – Interact with Tripadvisor’s conversational AI agent. This innovative, people-powered AI combines Tripadvisor’s extensive first-party data with authentic insights from millions of travellers, providing real-time, personalized Abu Dhabi itineraries.
  • Green Screen Photo Booth – Capture your dream Abu Dhabi moment, from desert dunes to the iconic Corniche skyline.
  • Goodie Bags – Guests receive a special event passport upon arrival, which they can use to collect exclusive Ollie the Owl Tripadvisor stamps. Guests can redeem completed passports for complimentary goodie bags.
  • Win a 5-Star Getaway – Visitors can enter a contest to win a luxury trip to Abu Dhabi, including round-trip flights from India and a stay at a five-star hotel.

“Abu Dhabi Is Calling,” brought to life by Tripadvisor in partnership with Experience Abu Dhabi, offers visitors an unparalleled, multi-sensory journey that blends cutting-edge technology, real-time AI interactions, and authentic Tripadvisor traveller insights.

From immersive domes and interactive AI pods to green screen photo booths and exciting giveaways, the activation invites both Indian and international audiences to explore Abu Dhabi like never before. By combining innovation with cultural authenticity, Tripadvisor sets a new benchmark for experiential travel activations, inspiring guests to plan their own Abu Dhabi adventures.

WaveX launches 7 new incubators to support gaming and XR startups across India

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The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting announced on Wednesday that the startup accelerator platform WaveX will set up seven new incubation centres across India.

These centres will support startups working in animation, visual effects, gaming, comics (AVGC), and extended reality (XR).

The new facilities will be located at Indian Institute of Mass Communication campuses in Delhi, Jammu, Dhenkanal (Odisha), Kottayam (Kerala), and Amravati (Maharashtra), as well as at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune and the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) in Kolkata. These complement the existing incubation centre at the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) in Mumbai.

Moreover, the centres will provide startups with access to advanced production, post-production, and game development tools through IICT, FTII, SRFTI, and other partner incubators. Additionally, each centre will select 15 startups for its inaugural cohort, ensuring focused support and mentorship for the chosen ventures.

Monthly fees are set at ₹8,500 plus GST, with priority given to ventures in media, entertainment, AVGC, and XR.

WaveX incubation centres aim to enable startups to design, develop, and test content in film, gaming, and immersive media to global standards. The flagship IICT Incubator in Mumbai boasts world-class infrastructure, including an 8K Red Raptor Vista Vision camera, a 4K HDR preview theatre with Dolby Atmos, high-performance Alienware workstations, a virtual production stage with LED walls, photogrammetry systems, professional sound and color-mix theatres, 4K HDR edit suites, VR testing kits, and the latest gaming consoles.

Startups can access resources both on-site and digitally. Selected startups will also benefit from incubation facilities, industry and government connections, funding support, and guidance in sales and marketing.

Kitchenware brand P-Tal raises $3 Mn in funding round

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L-R: Aditya Agrawal, Kirti Goel, and Gaurav Garg, co-founders, P-Tal

P-Tal (Punjab Thathera Art Legacy), a premium kitchenware brand specializing in handcrafted copper, brass, and bronze products, has raised $3 million in a funding round led by VC Grid and Nithin Kamath’s Rainmatter.

The round also saw contributions from Connecticut Innovations, Anicut Capital, Zeropearl VC, and several angel investors.

The funds will be used to scale P-Tal’s international operations—which already make up nearly 60% of its revenue—strengthen its presence in the US, and expand into Europe, the UK, and the Middle East. Additionally, the investment will support R&D efforts to create region-specific products for new markets.

Founded by CEO Aditya Agrawal, Kirti Goel, and Gaurav Garg, P-Tal modernizes traditional Indian kitchenware, offering a wide range of items including cooking utensils, tableware, dinnerware, and everyday essentials starting at ₹1,500. These products are handcrafted by 110+ artisan families across Jandiala Guru, Amritsar and Jagadhri, Harayana.

P-Tal sells its products via its direct-to-consumer website, ecommerce and quick-commerce platforms, as well as two offline stores in India.

Previously, the company had raised approximately $550,000 in 2023 in a round led by Titan Capital, bringing its total funding to around $3.6 million. It also gained recognition in Season 3 of Shark Tank India, securing ₹1 crore in investment from Aman Gupta, Anupam Mittal, Amit Jain, Namita Thapar, and Vineeta Singh.

Samav Hospitality strengthens boutique luxury stays across Rajasthan

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Samav Hospitality, a leading third-party hotel operator, is poised to transform boutique and luxury stays in India with the addition of four premium properties across Rajasthan. The first, Vanvasa Ranakpur, offers a distinctive mix of heritage charm, tranquil surroundings, and modern hospitality.

Vanvasa Ranakpur, located in the serene Aravalli ranges, offers guests an immersive escape into nature while celebrating the richness of local culture. In Kumbhalgarh, Samav Hospitality introduces a property that combines luxury and comfort in close proximity to the iconic Kumbhalgarh Fort. Samav Hospitality has designed the two upcoming properties in Jaisalmer to immerse guests in the city’s enchanting desert landscapes while offering a full range of contemporary amenities, ensuring that every visitor enjoys a truly memorable boutique luxury experience.

Driven by its expansion vision, the hotel operator is targeting the operation of 10 properties across Rajasthan by March 2026, followed by a wider pan-India presence. The company seeks to collaborate with independent hotels and resorts, drawing on its strengths in hotel management, guest engagement, and digital marketing to enhance operational efficiency and deliver exceptional guest experiences.

“Our mission is to provide personalized, memorable stays that reflect the soul of the destination,” said Vaibhav Singhvi, Founder of Samav Hospitality. “Each property under Samav Hospitality will showcase the unique culture and heritage of its location, while delivering modern comfort and exceptional service.”

Samav Hospitality thoughtfully crafts its properties to engage leisure seekers, cultural explorers, and boutique stay enthusiasts, providing an experience that actively blends authentic local charm with modern comfort and sophistication.

Suba Group strengthens hospitality portfolio with Quality Inn Rama in Ayodhya

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Suba Group of Hotels, in collaboration with Choice Hotels, has officially opened Quality Inn Rama, marking its second property in the sacred city of Ayodhya. This expansion underscores the group’s commitment to delivering exceptional hospitality in one of India’s most revered spiritual destinations.

Designed with an emphasis on luxury and comfort, the property offers guests a premium and memorable stay experience. One of the hotel’s standout features is the Ram Darbar in the lobby, which creates a devotional ambiance and warmly welcomes all visitors.

Located just 2.5 km from Shri Ram Janmabhoomi, Quality Inn Rama combines modern hospitality with the spiritual essence of Ayodhya, making it a perfect stay for pilgrims, tourists, and business travelers alike.

With its carefully crafted design and strategic location, Quality Inn Rama aims to enhance Ayodhya’s hospitality scene, providing guests with modern comfort while staying connected to the city’s sacred heritage.

Amwoodo raises $4M pre-Series A to promote plastic-free living

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Mr Agni Mitra, Founder and CEO, Amwoodo

Amwoodo, a pioneer in bamboo-based sustainable solutions, has successfully raised $4 million in pre-Series A funding from a group of prominent investors. Specifically, the round was led by Rainmatter, with additional participation from Adventz Group, Thinkuvate, and Caspian.

Furthermore, this investment represents a key step in Amwoodo’s mission to promote eco-friendly living by developing high-quality alternatives to harmful disposable products.

Founded in 2019, the startup has been a leader in replacing single-use plastics with bamboo-first products that blend sustainability with everyday convenience. The company has established strong B2B partnerships with brands like Himalaya Wellness Company, Bombay Shaving Company, and ITC Hotels, while also expanding into the Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) market via its marketplace, Ecoconsious.

With the new funding, Amwoodo plans to:

  • Scale production capacity to meet rising domestic and international demand
  • Expand its D2C presence through Ecoconsious and launch additional plastic-alternative brands under the House of Amwoodo
  • Enhance community engagement and create more livelihood opportunities in bamboo-growing regions

“It is a shared commitment to rewriting the story of sustainability—where innovation replaces waste, communities thrive, and every product leaves the planet better than we found it. With this support, we are not just scaling a business; we are fueling a movement to make eco-conscious living the norm, not the exception. We’re leading from the ground up—listening, learning, and building with the community. Because change starts where the roots are,” said Mr. Agni Mitra, Founder & CEO of Amwoodo.

“At Amwoodo, we have always believed that sustainability is not a trend—it’s a responsibility. This funding is a testament to the collective effort of our passionate team, the trust of our partners, and the unwavering support of our customers. Together, we are proving that businesses can drive both profit and purpose, and we are ready to take the next big leap toward making eco-conscious living the global standard,” said Mr. Subhrakanti Das, Chief of Staff at Amwoodo.

Amwoodo’s expansion is further bolstered by its recognition as a Great Place to Work® (India) and multiple accolades from prominent media outlets, strengthening its reputation as a leader in innovation and sustainability.

Rocket raises $15 Mn in funding round

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L-R: Deepak Dhanak, Vishal Virani & Rahul Shingala, co-founders, Rocket

Rocket, a Surat-based AI-powered app development platform, has secured $15 million in seed funding in a round led by Salesforce Ventures and Accel, with additional backing from Together Fund.

Founded by Vishal Virani, Rahul Shingala, and Deepak Dhanak, the startup enables users to build production-ready applications directly from natural language prompts. Additionally, it simplifies the app development process for users with little to no coding experience.

Moreover, the newly raised capital will be directed toward scaling R&D efforts, accelerating product development, and expanding global operations. In particular, the company plans to establish a North American headquarters in Palo Alto.

Rocket aims to make it easier and faster to transform ideas into fully functional software. Just four months after launch, 400,000 users across 180 countries have collectively built more than 500,000 production-ready applications on the platform, the company said.

Currently, the startup employs 60 people across Surat and Palo Alto, and looking ahead, it plans to double its India team within the next year.

“At Rocket, it’s not about coding faster. It’s about solving smarter. Our belief is simple—building applications should be as natural as thinking. Rocket turns imagination into production-ready apps and websites that launch and scale from day one,” said cofounder and CEO Vishal Virani in a statement.

Swiss AI startup Giotto.ai seeks funding at over $1 Bn valuation, sources say

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Swiss AI startup Giotto.ai is looking to raise funds at a valuation exceeding $1 billion, positioning itself as one of Europe’s emerging players in the race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), according to sources.

Based in Lausanne, the company has engaged Lazard to manage a funding round of more than $200 million, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

Giotto.ai has told potential backers that the fresh capital will go toward advancing its AI research, developing initial commercial prototypes for enterprise and government clients, and releasing parts of its core technology as open source, the people added.

The funding round will gauge whether investors are willing to back a newcomer from outside Silicon Valley in an increasingly competitive race to build frontier AI models. U.S.-based labs like OpenAI and Anthropic have already secured billions in capital.

Meanwhile, AI investment in Europe has been accelerating as the region works to nurture its own champions, seeking to establish digital sovereignty and carve out a position beyond the U.S.–China rivalry.

Giotto.ai, founded in 2017 by CEO Aldo Podesta, has raised around CHF 15 million ($19 million) to date. In 2022, it sold its medical device compliance platform to RQM+, and has since shifted its focus to fundamental research on reasoning models.

Before starting Giotto, Podesta worked in sales strategy at Philip Morris, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The Swiss AI startup highlights its research strength through its top ranking on the Kaggle ARC-AGI-2 leaderboard, where it achieved a 25% score. Giotto also claims to operate at a significantly lower cost per task compared to larger AI labs.

The ARC-AGI-2 benchmark measures how well models can deduce rules from limited examples—an ability regarded as an early indicator of general reasoning. Higher performance suggests stronger generalisation to new problems, which is considered a proxy for progress toward more capable and dependable AI systems.

Giotto participates in Kaggle’s fixed-resource track, where all competitors face identical constraints: no internet access, a 12-hour runtime cap, and a standardised hardware budget. This setup contrasts with the unconstrained ARC Prize platform, used by major players like OpenAI and xAI, where teams can deploy larger models and tap into significantly greater compute resources to maximise accuracy.

Healthtech startup Ultrahuman turns profitable with ₹565-Cr revenue in FY25

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Mohit Kumar (L) and Vatsal Singhal (R), co-founders, Ultrahuman

Wearable technology startup Ultrahuman reported operating revenue of ₹565 crore in FY25, marking a fivefold surge from ₹105 crore in FY24, as per its consolidated financial statements. The Bengaluru-based company also turned profitable, recording a net profit of ₹73 crore compared to a ₹38 crore loss in FY24.

Positioned as a self-quantification platform, the startup offers products such as the Ring Air smart ring, the M1 Live continuous glucose monitoring wearable, and its Blood Vision testing solution. Smart rings emerged as the key growth driver, generating 91.3% of revenues, or ₹516 crore, in FY25. Subscription income grew to ₹29 crore, while other operating revenue contributed ₹20 crore. Including interest and mutual fund gains, Ultrahuman’s total income touched ₹581 crore, a 5.4x jump year-on-year.

Structurally, Ultrahuman operates through a parent entity in India and four wholly owned subsidiaries in the US, UK, and the Middle East. The US market contributed 61.4% of revenue, followed by the Middle East (5.9%), the UK (4.5%), and India (2.7%).

On the cost side, procurement stood at ₹95 crore, employee benefits at ₹52 crore, and advertising, selling, and distribution expenses at ₹142 crore, bringing total expenditure to ₹535 crore. Strong revenue growth and cost control enabled the company to achieve an EBITDA margin of 8.76% and ROCE of 12.9%, spending just ₹0.95 to earn ₹1.

As of March 2024, Ultrahuman held current assets worth ₹544 crore, including ₹80 crore in cash and bank balances. Further, on August 22, 2025, its subsidiary Ultrahuman Healthcare signed a share purchase agreement to fully acquire viO HealthTech, enhancing its women’s cycle and ovulation tracking capabilities for its smart rings.

Since its inception, Ultrahuman has raised over USD 60 million, including a USD 35 million Series B led by Zomato founder & CEO Deepinder Goyal, alongside existing investors. Nexus Ventures remains the largest external stakeholder with 17.26%, followed by Blume Ventures, while co-founders Mohit Kumar and Vatsal Singhal collectively own 28.9%.

The Fern Hotels & Resorts strengthens presence in Maharashtra with 40th property

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Suhail Kannampilly, Managing Director, The Fern Hotels & Resorts

The Fern Hotels & Resorts has announced the opening of its newest property in Maharashtra – The Fern Residency, Solapur. Conveniently located near Solapur Airport, the 54-room hotel features modern accommodations, elegant dining options, and a full range of business facilities, catering to both business and leisure travellers.

With this launch, the brand strengthens its presence in Maharashtra to 40 properties and further expands its national footprint, with 132 properties currently operational or set to open across India.

Suhail Kannampilly, Managing Director, The Fern Hotels & Resorts, remarked, “The Fern Residency, Solapur represents our commitment to enhancing access to quality hospitality in important tier-two and tier-three cities. Solapur’s rising prominence as a commercial and industrial centre makes it a natural choice for expansion. This hotel is designed to provide a seamless blend of modern functionality and guest comfort, aligning with our standards of sustainable and efficient hospitality.”

The hotel offers 54 elegantly designed rooms and suites, equipped with modern amenities to provide a balanced and comfortable stay for today’s discerning travellers. Its all-day dining restaurant, Mosaico, presents a curated selection of global and regional cuisines.

Designed with flexibility in mind, the restaurant features three distinct sections – an air-conditioned indoor area, an alfresco space, and a private dining section – making it a perfect choice for business meetings, family gatherings, or casual meals. For added convenience, guests can also enjoy 24/7 in-room dining, including a dedicated night menu to cater to late-hour requests.

The hotel also provides versatile event and meeting spaces, including Elysian (3,000 sq. ft.) and Zoom (950 sq. ft.), designed to host conferences, corporate workshops, and social gatherings. Both venues feature modern infrastructure and adaptable seating arrangements to meet diverse event needs. In addition, guests can enjoy access to a fully equipped gymnasium.

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