PUNE: Airtel has appointed Rabi Shankar Mishra as chief executive officer, based in Pune, marking a sharp leadership shift as the telco sharpens its focus on growth, execution and market momentum.

Mishra moves into the role after leading Airtel’s Guwahati operations, where he built a reputation for tight execution and cross-functional leadership. In Pune, he will drive business strategy, operational excellence and expansion, drawing on deep expertise across sales, scale and complex, multi-market operations.

Before joining Airtel, Mishra held senior leadership roles across global consumer giants. He served as sales director at the Hershey company, vice president at Diageo, and held multiple associate vice president and associate director roles at Mondelēz International and Cadbury India Ltd, overseeing large, high-value businesses and teams across regions.

His earlier career at Pepsico India and Cavinkare laid a strong foundation in sales, customer development and route-to-market strategy across fast-moving consumer businesses.

With a rare blend of FMCG rigour and telecom scale, Mishra arrives in Pune to push Airtel harder, faster and deeper into its next phase of growth.

MUMBAI: Act Fibernet has struck a streaming sweet spot. The wired internet major has teamed up with Amazon Prime to offer its users a fresh set of broadband plans bundled with Prime Lite — a compact yet power-packed version of Amazon’s popular subscription service.

Designed for digital-first consumers who want speed and spectacle in equal measure, the new ACT plans include high-speed fibre connectivity along with Prime Lite benefits: HD access to Prime Video’s catalogue of originals, films, and TV shows on one device, unlimited Same-Day/Next-Day deliveries, early bird access to marquee sales like Prime Day, and exclusive shopping deals.

Act’s subscribers, both new and existing, can access the bundle by signing up for six-month (or longer) plans. Once onboard, Prime Lite perks remain active for as long as the eligible Act subscription is live.

Act VP, head of brands, content and partnerships, Naveen Nahar, said, “At Act Fibernet, our brand promise is simple — Feel the Advantage. It’s about going beyond the fast internet to deliver real, everyday value to our customers. With the launch of Amazon Prime Lite on our platform, we’re giving our users the best of entertainment, shopping, and convenience — all in one seamless experience. Whether its world class shows, free express deliveries, or early access to deals, this partnership ensures our customers don’t just stay connected, they stay ahead.”

“At Prime Video, we remain committed to offering easy and convenient access to our much-loved Originals, movies, series, and more to customers across India,” said Prime Video India director & head, SVOD Business, Shilangi Mukherji said, “This strategic collaboration with Act Fibernet not only simplifies access to Prime Video’s extensive content selection but also delivers other shopping & shipping benefits of Prime Lite, like unlimited free ‘Same-day/Next-Day’ delivery across millions of products, early access to exclusive deals, and much more.”

With this move, Act is no longer just a broadband provider — it’s a bundled convenience powerhouse. For subscribers, it’s all the streaming, scrolling, and shopping — at the speed of light.

Below is a list of cities and their corresponding starting rates for Prime Lite with ACT Plans:

MUMBAI: Forget slow-burn product cycles and hush-hush unveilings. At Google I/O 2025, Google parent Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai made one thing very clear: in the Gemini era, Google isn’t waiting for the stage — it’s shipping on Tuesdays.

“We’re moving faster than ever,” Pichai told the crowd, revealing a dizzying array of AI-powered updates, model breakthroughs, and bleeding-edge products — all underpinned by Google’s latest powerhouse: Gemini 2.5 Pro. The model has surged 300 Elo points since its first generation and now sweeps the LMArena leaderboard. The driving force? Ironwood, Google’s seventh-gen TPU, serving up a brain-melting 42.5 exaflops per pod.

The pace of adoption is just as staggering. Over the past year, Pichai explained that:

* Token usage exploded from 9.7 trillion to 480 trillion a month.

* More than seven million developers are building with Gemini — up five times.

* The Gemini app has clocked 400 million monthly users, with a 45 per cent spike among 2.5 Pro users.

With scale like that, Pichai says, “we’re in a new phase of the AI platform shift — turning decades of research into daily reality.”

Say hello to Google Beam — the spiritual sequel to Project Starline. The new AI-first video chat platform uses six cameras, advanced head-tracking and 3D lightfield displays to create a shockingly lifelike experience. In short: Zoom calls, eat your heart out. With HP on board, Beam hardware hits early testers later this year.

Also in the mix: real-time speech translation for Google Meet, matching tone, voice and facial expressions. English and Spanish are live in beta now; more tongues to come.

Google’s AI assistant ambitions are now tangible. Agent Mode, based on Project Mariner, is headed to the Gemini app. Think digital butler with brains: it browses listings, tweaks filters, and can even schedule a house tour — all while chatting like a pro.

Expect agents to be everywhere soon: Search, Chrome, Workspace — even chatting with each other using the new Agent2Agent protocol. Google also confirmed Gemini API and SDK support for Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol.

On the personalisation front, Smart Replies in Gmail are getting a glow-up. With permission, Gemini will mine your emails and files to craft eerily you-like responses, complete with tone and pet phrases. Yes, your AI is about to start writing better emails than you.

AI is now baked right into Google Search. The newly announced AI Mode allows for longer, more complex queries and natural follow-ups — already available in the US. With Gemini 2.5 Pro now powering it, Search just got a serious IQ boost. AI Overviews are already live in 200 countries and growing fast, especially in the US and India., revealed Pichai. 

Developers, meet your new best friend: Gemini 2.5 Flash, a lightning-fast, low-cost version built for speed and scale. But the headline act is Deep Think, a new reasoning mode for Pro users that layers in parallel thinking and long-context analysis. Consider it AI with a PhD.

Creatives, your time has come. Google dropped Veo 3, its most advanced video model yet — now with native audio generation. It also rolled out Imagen 4 for image generation, and Flow, a slick tool for building cinematic clips on the fly.

Throw in Canvas integration, support for quizzes, infographics and multilingual podcasts, and the Gemini app is shaping up to be a Swiss Army knife for creators.

Pichai closed with a personal anecdote: a Waymo ride in San Francisco with his 80-something father. “He was amazed,” Pichai said. “It reminded me just how powerful technology can be — not just to dazzle, but to bring people along.”

The message was clear: AI at Google is no longer a moonshot — it’s now a movement.