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India’s AI ambitions hit the high note with Microsoft scholarship surge

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MUMBAI: India isn’t just coding the future, it’s rewriting it, line by line, in AI. The country has emerged as one of the top applicant nations for the 1 million dollars Microsoft AI Innovator Global Scholarships, a landmark initiative by Women in Cloud, launched alongside Opulis: Women Powering Microsoft’s Trillion-Dollar Shift.

The collector’s edition coffee table book endorsed by Microsoft and the Microsoft Alumni Network celebrates 50 women tech leaders who have helped steer the company through its transformation into the AI era. But this is more than just glossy pages and golden stories; Opulis doubles up as a career catalyst through its Book-to-Scholarship Model, where every purchase unlocks real AI learning opportunities for aspiring professionals.

Since its launch, the scholarship programme has drawn over 700 applications from 20-plus countries, including Brazil, the US, Nigeria, India, Australia, South Africa, Canada, Kenya, and Egypt. India’s strong showing underscores its growing momentum in AI skilling particularly among young professionals and women technologists eyeing the global digital workforce.

“We’re ensuring that access to AI careers and education isn’t limited to a few, it belongs to everyone, especially women ready to lead India’s digital future,” said Opulis president of women in cloud and executive producer Chaitra Vedullapalli. “Electricity unlocked the industrial revolution, and AI is unlocking quantum progress.”

Through 1,000 Opulis book pre-orders worldwide, Women in Cloud has already unlocked 100 Microsoft AI Certification Scholarships offering learners world-class credentials that can power careers worth Rs 55–60 lakh per annum. The move is projected to create over Rs 60 crore in new economic value annually, translating to about 7 million dollars in wages and an estimated 21 million dollars total economic impact.

The ultimate goal? To ignite 1,000 AI careers by 2030, powered by book sponsorships, corporate grants, and community support proof that storytelling and access can together spark large-scale economic mobility.

Marking Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, Opulis also spotlights five Indian-origin women leaders shaping the company’s AI journey: Chaitra Vedullapalli, Monika Mital Gupta, Aparana Gupta, Sharmila Rathinam, and Nitasha Chopra. Among them, Aparana Gupta, based in India, leads as Director of Engineering and Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft embodying the homegrown excellence the programme seeks to inspire.

Available in hardcover and digital editions across Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and over 4,000 global retailers, Opulis carries a unique promise: every 10 books sold funds one AI Innovator Scholarship, creating a virtuous loop of knowledge, opportunity, and empowerment.

In the end, Opulis isn’t just chronicling women who powered Microsoft’s trillion-dollar shift, it’s scripting a new chapter where Indian women and technologists worldwide can claim their seat at the AI table. And this time, they’re not just participating in the revolution, they’re training it.

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Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement

Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted

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MUMBAI: Nielsen is taking a fresh stab at one of television’s oldest blind spots: how many people are actually watching the same screen. The audience-measurement giant on February 4 unveiled a co-viewing pilot that uses wearable devices to better capture shared viewing, starting with America’s biggest broadcast stage.

The trial begins with Super Bowl LX on NBC on February 8, 2026, before extending to other high-profile live sports and entertainment events in the first half of the year. The goal is simple but commercially potent: count viewers more accurately, especially during live spectacles that pull families and friends to one screen.

The new approach leans on Nielsen’s proprietary wearable meters, wrist-worn devices that resemble smartwatches. These passively capture audio signatures from TV content, logging exposure to shows, films and live events without requiring viewers to sign in or self-report. In theory, fewer clicks, fewer lapses, better data.

Karthik Rao, Nielsen’s ceo, cast the move as part of a broader measurement push. He said the company’s task is to keep pushing accuracy as clients invest heavily in live programming that draws mass audiences. The co-viewing pilot, he added, builds on upgrades such as Big Data + Panel measurement, out-of-home expansion, live-streaming metrics and wearable-based tracking.

Co-viewing is not new territory for Nielsen, which has long tried to estimate how many people sit before a single set. What is new is the heavier integration of wearables and passive detection to reduce reliance on active inputs from panel homes.

For now, the pilot comes with caveats. Co-viewing estimates from the trial will not be folded into Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel ratings, which remain the industry’s trading currency. Instead, pilot findings will be shared with clients a few weeks after final Big Data + Panel ratings are delivered. Clients may disclose those findings publicly.

More impact data will follow later this year. Full integration into Nielsen’s marketing-intelligence suite is slated as a longer-term play, with a target of bringing co-viewing into currency measurement for the 2026–2027 season. This is only phase one, with further co-viewing enhancements planned beyond 2026 and additional timelines to be announced.

The push fits a wider pattern. Nielsen has in recent years expanded big-data integration, adopted first-party data for live-streaming measurement and broadened out-of-home tracking. It also positions itself as the reference point for streaming metrics through products such as The Gauge and the Nielsen Streaming Top 10.

In a market where billions of ad dollars hinge on decimal points, counting who is in the room matters. If Nielsen can pin down shared viewing, the humble sofa could become prime measurement real estate. The race to count every eyeball just found a new wrist to watch.

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Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board

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Gurugram: Delhivery’s boardroom is being reset. Deepak Kapoor, chairman and independent director, has resigned with effect from April 1 as part of a planned board reconstitution, the logistics company said in an exchange filing. Saugata Gupta, managing director and chief executive of FMCG major Marico and an independent director on Delhivery’s board, has also stepped down.

Kapoor exits after an eight-year stint that included steering the company through its 2022 stock-market debut, a period that saw Delhivery transform from a venture-backed upstart into one of India’s most visible logistics platforms. Gupta, who joined the board in 2021, departs alongside him, marking a simultaneous clearing of two senior independent seats.

“Deepak and Saugata have been instrumental in our process of recognising the need for and enabling the reconstitution of the board of directors in line with our ambitious next phase of growth,” said Sahil Barua, managing director and chief executive, Delhivery. The statement frames the exits less as departures and more as deliberate succession, a boardroom shuffle timed to the company’s evolving scale and strategy.

The resignations arrive amid broader governance recalibration. In 2025, Delhivery appointed Emcure Pharmaceuticals whole-time director Namita Thapar, PB Fintech founder and chairman Yashish Dahiya, and IIM Bangalore faculty member Padmini Srinivasan as independent directors, signalling a tilt towards consumer, fintech and academic expertise at the board level.

Kapoor’s tenure spanned Delhivery’s most defining years, rapid network expansion, public listing and the push towards profitability in a bruising logistics market. Gupta’s presence brought FMCG and brand-scale perspective during a period when ecommerce volumes and last-mile delivery economics were being rewritten.

The twin exits, effective from the new financial year, underscore a familiar corporate rhythm: founders consolidate, veterans rotate out, and fresh voices are ushered in to script the next chapter. In India’s hyper-competitive logistics race, even the boardroom does not stand still.

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Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships

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SINGAPORE: Anuvrat Rao has taken charge as APAC  head of commerce and signals partnerships at Meta, steering monetisation deals across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp from Singapore. The former Google executive, known for launching Google Assistant, PWAs, AMP and Firebase across Asia-Pacific, steps into the role after a high-growth stint as chief business officer at Locofy.ai.

At Locofy.ai, Rao helped convert a three-year free beta into a paid engine, clocking 1,000 subscribers and 15 enterprise clients within ten days of launch in September 2024. The low-code startup, backed by Accel and top tech founders, is famed for turning designs into production-ready code using proprietary large design models.

Before that, Rao founded generative AI venture 1Bstories, which was acquired by creative AI platform Laetro in mid-2024, where he briefly served as managing director for APAC. Alongside operating roles, he has been an active investor and advisor since 2020, backing startups such as BotMD, Muxy, Creator plus, Intellect, Sealed and CricFlex through a creator-economy-led thesis.

Rao spent over eight years at Google, holding senior partnership roles across search, assistant, chrome, web and YouTube in APAC, and earlier cut his teeth in strategy consulting at OC&C in London and investment finance at W. P. Carey in Europe and the US.

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