28, Apr 2026
India and New Zealand FTA to Boost Gems & Jewellery Exports, Industry Welcomes Move
New Delhi, Apr 28 (BNP): The gems and jewellery industry has welcomed the signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and New Zealand, calling it a major step toward expanding exports and strengthening India’s global position.
The Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) said the agreement will create new opportunities for exporters by providing zero-duty access to the New Zealand market.
Currently, India exports gems and jewellery worth around $16.61 million to New Zealand. With the FTA in place, exports are expected to grow significantly to nearly $50 million over the next three years.
Industry Perspective
Kirit Bhansali, Chairman of GJEPC, said the agreement comes at an important time when global markets are uncertain and businesses are looking to diversify.
He noted that India’s ongoing trade agreements are helping reduce reliance on traditional markets such as the US and the GCC region, while opening doors to newer regions like Oceania.
Key Benefits of the FTA
- Zero-duty access for Indian jewellery exports
- Improved competitiveness against countries like China and Thailand
- Higher export potential, especially in gold, silver, platinum, and fashion jewellery
- Increased investment opportunities in the sector
- Market diversification into Oceania, including Australia and Fiji
Growth Opportunities
New Zealand’s high per capita jewellery consumption makes it a promising market for Indian exporters. The FTA is expected not only to boost trade but also to strengthen long-term economic ties between the two countries.
Industry experts believe this agreement will support sustainable growth, improve market share, and make the sector more resilient in a changing global environment.
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- By Neel Achary
28, Apr 2026
How Indian Rug Brands Are Moving from OEM to Global Labels
Jaipur, Apr 28: There is a quiet shift underway in the way rugs are being chosen, placed, and understood within contemporary interiors.
Once considered a finishing layer, the rug is now part of the design conversation from the outset. It anchors proportion, softens architecture, and often determines how a space is experienced. In this evolving context, where every element is expected to carry both function and intent, the question of where a rug comes from has begun to matter in a more visible way.
For decades, India has been central to this story, though not always in plain sight.
Its weaving clusters have supported some of the most widely distributed rug collections in the world. The craftsmanship, the scale, and the technical fluency have long positioned the country as a preferred production base. Yet, much of this work entered global markets under different labels, becoming part of a larger design ecosystem without asserting its origin.
What is changing now is not the making, but the meaning attached to it.
A number of Indian brands have begun to shape their own presence with greater clarity. Jaipur Rugs has brought attention to the human narratives behind weaving, connecting artisans to a global audience in a way that feels both direct and considered. Obeetee Carpets continues to evolve its legacy through collaborations and a renewed engagement with design. The Rug Republic has expanded into international retail environments, presenting Indian rugs within a contemporary lifestyle framework.
Together, these shifts suggest a broader movement. The focus is no longer limited to production capability. It is moving towards authorship.
Within this landscape, a newer set of brands is approaching the category with a distinctly design-led lens. Man Made Rugs, founded by Nimrit Khanna, reflects this direction. The rugs are conceived less as standalone objects and more as elements that sit in dialogue with the space around them.
“A rug should not feel applied to a space,” Khanna notes. “It should feel like it belongs to it.”
The approach aligns with a wider shift in how interiors are being composed. There is a move towards restraint, towards material depth, and towards pieces that reveal themselves gradually rather than immediately. In such spaces, the rug is expected to support rather than dominate, to add texture without excess.
The brand works across residential and hospitality projects, with a focus on customisation and design adaptability
This kind of engagement reflects a more direct relationship between brand, designer, and space. It also signals a departure from the earlier model, where production and identity operated separately.
India’s advantage in this transition lies in its ability to bridge both worlds. The infrastructure that once enabled large-scale manufacturing is now supporting more nuanced, design-driven outputs. Craft remains central, but it is increasingly guided by a clearer point of view.
There is also a growing sensitivity among global buyers towards origin. Materials, processes, and provenance are being considered with greater care. In this context, visibility becomes important. Not as a marketing tool, but as a way of understanding the object itself.
The move from OEM to global label is, in many ways, a move towards recognition.
Not only of where a rug is made, but of how it is imagined, developed, and placed within a space.
India has long been part of the global rug vocabulary.What is emerging now is a more distinct voice within it.
28, Apr 2026
SBI General Insurance Registers Solid FY26 Growth, Expands Lead Over Industry
Mumbai, Apr 28 (BNP): SBI General Insurance has reported a robust financial performance for FY26, registering strong growth well above the industry average and further strengthening its position in India’s general insurance sector.
The company posted a Gross Direct Premium (GDP) of ₹15,904 crore, marking a year-on-year growth of 14.5%. This performance represents a key milestone, as the insurer surpassed the ₹15,000 crore premium mark since its inception.
Demonstrating sustained momentum, SBI General Insurance grew at 1.6 times the industry rate, reflecting its focused strategy, diversified product portfolio, and expanding customer base across retail and corporate segments.
The company’s growth was supported by strong distribution capabilities, digital innovation, and continued emphasis on customer-centric solutions. Its performance also highlights increasing insurance penetration and rising awareness among customers in both urban and emerging markets.
Industry observers note that the company’s ability to consistently outperform peers underscores its operational efficiency and strategic execution in a competitive landscape.
Going forward, SBI General Insurance aims to build on this momentum by enhancing its digital ecosystem, expanding distribution networks, and introducing innovative insurance solutions tailored to evolving customer needs.
28, Apr 2026
Unlimit fuels Brevistay’s expansion with next-generation payment infrastructure in India
GURUGRAM, INDIA| Apr 28 — Unlimit, the global financial infrastructure for the borderless economy, has partnered with Brevistay to rebuild the financial nervous system for India’s high-velocity travel market. By plugging into Unlimit’s unified programmable layer, Brevistay is eliminating the structural friction of India’s fragmented payment landscape, gaining instant, frictionless access to UPI and global card networks through a singular infrastructure integration.
In a unique global paradox, financial infrastructure is rapidly consolidating into primary layers, yet consumer payment methods are becoming more hyper-localised and fragmented than ever. For a high-frequency platform like Brevistay, where micro-stays demand micro-precision, the challenge is maintaining global-standard reliability across these fragmented local rails. Unlimit solves this by abstracting the complexity of the Indian ecosystem into a high-octane operating layer, turning geographical and technical barriers into a seamless stream of value.
“For Brevistay, payments are not a service; they are the critical circulatory system of their business,” said Irene Skrynova, CEO, Global Payments at Unlimit. “By providing Brevistay access to our primary financial infrastructure, we are enabling scale across borders without the operational debt of fragmented systems.”
Brevistay’s model, offering flexible, on-demand room bookings, requires a payment experience that matches the speed of the modern traveller. Unlimit’s architecture ensures that time-to-market collapses from months to configuration time, allowing Brevistay to operate with the precision of a global leader while mastering the local friction of the Indian market.
“Payments must move at the speed of the booking journey itself,” said Nikhil Kumar Pathak, CTO & Co-Founder at Brevistay. “Unlimit provides the powerful infrastructure rails we need to simplify India’s payment complexity. They have given us the architectural freedom to scale without being held back by the limitations of legacy financial stacks.”
As Brevistay prepares for its next phase of expansion, Unlimit’s hard-won regulatory depth and global license portfolio ensure that international growth is no longer a matter of geography, but a matter of code.
28, Apr 2026
Gold Investment Demand Strengthens in India; Share Climbs to 42 pc in CY25
New Delhi, Apr 28 (BNP): Investment demand for gold in India rose sharply, accounting for 42 per cent of total consumption in CY25 compared to 29 per cent in CY24, according to CareEdge Ratings.
The increase was driven by strong inflows into gold ETFs and higher demand for bars and coins, reflecting investor preference for safe-haven assets amid global uncertainty.
Globally, gold investment demand surged to a record 2,175 metric tonnes in CY25, surpassing the previous peak of 1,805 metric tonnes in CY20. ETF investments contributed over 800 metric tonnes to the total.
The report attributed the trend to diversification needs, volatile market conditions, and rising geopolitical risks, which have boosted gold’s appeal among investors.
28, Apr 2026
Indian Markets Edge Lower on FII Outflows and Global Uncertainty
New Delhi, Apr 28 (BNP): Indian equity markets began Tuesday’s session on a cautious note, with benchmark indices slipping in early trade amid continued foreign institutional investor (FII) outflows, firm crude oil prices, and lingering geopolitical tensions in West Asia.
The Nifty 50 opened lower at 24,049.90, down 42.80 points (0.18%), while the BSE Sensex declined 208.84 points (0.27%) to start at 77,094.79.
Market participants pointed to a mix of global and domestic pressures influencing investor sentiment. Persistent FII selling has remained a key drag, as global capital continues to shift toward markets benefiting from strong momentum, particularly those driven by advances in Artificial Intelligence.
Analysts note that global equity trends—especially record highs in major U.S. indices and strong gains in Asian markets like South Korea—have diverted portfolio flows away from India. However, they caution that such momentum-driven trends may not be permanent, with the possibility of a correction in overheated sectors potentially redirecting investments back to Indian equities.
Sectorally, the market showed a mixed trend in early trade. Defensive segments such as FMCG and IT stocks posted modest gains, while pharma and PSU banking stocks remained under pressure. Metal and media stocks also saw selective buying interest.
Investor attention is also focused on ongoing corporate earnings announcements, with several major companies set to report their quarterly results. These earnings are expected to provide further cues on market direction in the near term.
Meanwhile, elevated crude oil prices continue to pose a concern for the domestic economy. Brent crude hovered around $109 per barrel, raising fears of inflationary pressures and potential impacts on economic growth.
Global cues remained mixed, with uncertainty surrounding developments in West Asia—including tensions linked to the Strait of Hormuz—keeping markets on edge. Asian equities reflected this caution, with some indices trading lower while others posted marginal gains.
Overall, analysts expect Indian markets to remain volatile in the near term, driven by geopolitical developments, commodity price movements, and the trajectory of foreign capital flows.
28, Apr 2026
Altair Semiconductor completes spinoff from Sony Semiconductor Solutions, closing initial funding of $50 million led by Pitango Group
Hod Hasharon, Israel — Apr 28— Altair Semiconductor announced the successful completion of its transition to an independent company, following a strategic spinoff from Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation. The transaction, led by Pitango Group, secured $50 million in initial funding. Sony will remain a shareholder, demonstrating continued confidence in Altair’s market leadership and long-term vision for connectivity powering the Physical AI transformation.
The transition will enable Altair to operate with greater agility and focus on IoT and Physical AI, while maintaining technological superiority and customer commitments. Altair’s chipsets power the largest share of the world’s cellular smart meters and are leading the LTE-M market in smart cities, energy grids, logistics, vehicle asset trackers, and sports wearables. Altair’s technology is essential to the Physical AI revolution, seamlessly connecting the physical world: machines and robots to the cloud and between themselves anywhere across the globe, and connecting AI-powered wearables and next-generation consumer devices that require ultra-low power, continuous connectivity.
“This is an exciting new chapter for Altair. As an independent company, we can move faster and respond more flexibly to rapidly changing market dynamics. We are fully committed to leading the industry’s transition from 4G to 5G IoT.” said Nohik Semel, CEO of Altair Semiconductor.
Altair recently outlined its vision for 5G eRedCap as the foundation for next-generation IoT, with the ALT1550 modem currently in advanced silicon testing. The company’s roadmap reflects its commitment to delivering cost-efficient, power-efficient solutions built for a 20-year device lifespan.
“Sony believes in Altair’s technology leadership and its critical role in the IoT ecosystem. Our continued support reflects our confidence in the team and their ability to deliver innovative connectivity solutions for the global market. Operating as a standalone company will drive innovation and enable faster execution.” said Antonio Avitabile, Managing Director, Corporate Alliances, Sony Semiconductor Solutions Europe, at Sony Group.
“We have known the Altair team for many years and are excited to partner with them at this pivotal moment where every physical device needs to be connected to enable the Physical AI transformation. The current financing round will solidify Altair’s leadership position in IoT and accelerate even further the transition towards 5G eRedCap, riding the wave of Physical AI.” said Eyal Niv, Managing Partner at Pitango.
Altair Semiconductor will continue to support and expand its existing customer base, ensuring a seamless transition for partners worldwide.
28, Apr 2026
TriFetch comes out of stealth to automate the administrative work that slows specialty clinics
TriFetch is building an end-to-end automation layer for independent specialty clinics, covering patient calls and scheduling, referral processing, and prior authorizations. The company is running active pilots across California and aims to help clinics reduce administrative burden so staff can spend more time on care.
San Francisco, CA – Apr 28; In a specialty clinic, the phone rarely stops ringing. Referrals arrive in bursts, prior authorizations stall in payer portals and staff juggle paperwork while patients sit on hold. Independent clinics have been patching these problems with more headcount for decades, even as labor costs rise due to a shortage of highly specialised workers and burnout deepens. TriFetch was built to take that administrative weight off the clinic. By automating the three workflows that dominate clinic operating costs: patient calls, referral processing, and prior authorization, TriFetch helps clinics save on 50%+ of administrative costs while also increasing revenue. This can translate into 1m+ savings for a mid-size practice.
TriFetch announced a $1.9 million pre-seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners with participation from angels from Google, Hipprocratic, Mercor, MIT to scale its automation platform for the front, mid, and back office of specialty care.
The pressure TriFetch is targeting is structural. Independent clinics face the same administrative load as large health systems with a fraction of the staff. A single prior authorization can take 45 minutes and referral coordination often means hours on hold. Patient calls pile up while the front desk triages between the waiting room and the phone line and those left unanswered go to an inbox with hundreds of unread messages.
“Clinics are doing everything they can to keep up, but the administrative workload keeps expanding,” said Varuni Sarwal, CEO and co-founder of TriFetch. “We built TriFetch to plug into how clinics already run and take the tasks staff dread the most off their plate, calls, referrals, and prior auth, so teams can focus on the parts of care that require the human touch.”
TriFetch automates the three workflows that eat the most staff time. Its multilingual voice agent handles patient calls end to end – inbound inquiries, outbound scheduling, and follow-ups. Its referral engine routes and processes referrals, verifies eligibility, and books patients with humans in the loop. And its prior auth automation submits and tracks requests so paperwork delays never push costs onto patients. The platform plugs directly into how a clinic already runs, with no EHR migration or retraining required. “Clinics don’t need more software where every new tool adds another tab, another login, another thing to learn; they need less friction. TriFetch integrates as the connective tissue of a clinic’s existing operations, adapting to the clinic’s ecosystem and not the other way around,” says co-founder and COO Rosemary He, who is leading the product team.
Cofounders Varuni Sarwal and Rosemary He met at UCLA while completing their PhDs in Computer Science, where they worked at the intersection of AI and healthcare. Varuni’s research applied machine learning to tabular EHR to predict depression and sepsis while Rosemary built computer vision models to predict Alzheimer’s progression in longitudinal 3D medical images. After publishing in top venues like Nature and ICML, the contrast they saw from the inside was hard to ignore: while AI was compounding at the frontier, most specialty clinics still ran on fax, phone trees, and manual paperwork. They built TriFetch to bring that capability into specialty care, and have taken a forward-deployed approach, embedding alongside clinic teams until the system runs end-to-end.
TriFetch is currently running multiple active pilots with specialty clinics across California. In an ophthalmology clinic, the doctor and his staff are being overtaken by phone calls and prior authorizations while trying to deliver the highest quality of care to his patients. In a cardiology clinic, staff have been overwhelmed by patient inquiries and internal routing needs.
In a GI practice, two staff members work full-time processing up to 100 referrals a day and calling patients to schedule them. TriFetch handles that workflow end-to-end, freeing roughly 16 hours of staff time a day and returning more than $200,000 a year to the clinic. For a mid-size specialty practice, that range of recovered costs and captured revenue can run anywhere from $500,000 to $1.4 million a year.
Dr. Shashi Ganti, Ophthalmologist, Cal Retina MD added: “Clinics up and down the US are facing the same administrative headache. Working with TriFetch, we’ve been able to relieve our staff from managing patient calls and scheduling: freeing them up from hundreds of voicemails and phone calls to focus on the patients in front of them. AI can be incredibly powerful when adopted safely, and I can’t think of a better team to trust with that in my clinic.”
As AI adoption accelerates in healthcare, most tools either target large health systems, solve a single narrow workflow, or are EMR-specific. TriFetch is the first unified, EMR-agnostic automation layer purpose-built for independent clinics that can be customized across specialties and locations, deploying alongside existing systems (NextGen, eCW, Athena, and others) in weeks, not quarters, reducing the need for clinics to stitch together multiple vendors to keep their operations running.
Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Partner at Nexus, commented: “Varuni and Rose are deep domain experts in healthcare AI. Healthcare administrative workflows represent one of the largest untapped opportunities for AI, and the Trifetch team is uniquely positioned to unlock it. They combine deep AI capabilities with real-world clinical understanding to build what we believe can become a category-defining company in healthcare AI. We are excited to partner with Trifetch and support them on this journey”, said
Calls, referrals, and prior authorization for specialty clinics are the starting point. Over time, TriFetch plans to build the first AI-native operating layer for healthcare systems, expanding nationwide from independent specialty clinics into multi-specialty groups, primary care, and hospital-owned networks, deepening EHR integrations, and connecting the tools clinics already use to the workflows that keep care moving. The goal: less time on paperwork, more time with patients.
TriFetch is guided by a founding cohort of 10+ strategic advisors drawn from operators inside the country’s leading health systems, including former NextGen co-founder Tim Eggena, senior leaders from Sutter Health, Johns Hopkins, Mayo, UW Health, Revere Health, Springfield Clinic, and UChicago Medicine. The cohort reflects TriFetch’s operator-first approach: the people who have run the workflows TriFetch automates are the same people helping shape the product.
28, Apr 2026
Umiya Buildcon Consolidated Reports Strong Q4 FY26; Products Segment Hits Decade-High Sales, Real Estate Portfolio Gains Traction
Bengaluru, Apr 28: Umiya Buildcon Limited a publicly listed dual-sector enterprise announced its financial results for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2026, reporting robust growth led by its Products segment, alongside steady execution in Solutions and continued traction in its Real Estate business.
Financial Highlights
Consolidated Performance
- Strong year-on-year growth driven by improved operational performance
- Earnings per share (EPS) recorded significant growth during the financial year
Segment Performance
Products Segment (Strongest Performer)
- Delivered its highest quarterly sales in the last decade
- Achieved strong year-on-year growth, driven by demand for indigenous networking solutions
Solutions Segment
- Maintained stable execution across projects
- Continued contribution to overall business performance
Real Estate Segment
- Recorded strong growth supported by project traction and customer engagement
- Continued expansion across key markets
Leadership Commentary
Aniruddha Mehta, Chairman & Managing Director, said:
“We are extremely pleased with our performance this quarter, with the Products segment delivering its strongest results in the last decade. This reflects our continued focus on indigenous innovation, disciplined execution, and alignment with India’s digital infrastructure priorities. Our real estate business has also gained traction with key developments in Goa and Bengaluru, and we remain focused on scaling this portfolio in a calibrated manner.”
C S Krishnadas, Chief Executive Officer, added:
“Our performance reflects steady progress across all three business segments. The Products business continues to benefit from increasing adoption of our indigenous solutions, while the Solutions segment has maintained consistent execution. The traction in our real estate vertical reinforces our hybrid business model, where technology and infrastructure work together to drive sustainable growth.”
Operational Highlights
Telecom & Networking
The Products segment witnessed strong demand across:
- High-capacity switches
- Data centre networking solutions
- Indigenous networking technologies
The company continues to invest in research and development, including its proprietary Network Operating System (NOS), while maintaining a strong pipeline of government and public sector digital infrastructure projects.
Real Estate
- Umiya Bricklane, Candolim (Goa): Received encouraging customer response and regulatory approvals
- Umiya Prism, Cunningham Road (Bengaluru): Ultra-luxury boutique residential project launched with initial development underway
The company remains focused on expanding its premium real estate portfolio through strategic developments.
Outlook
Umiya Buildcon Limited remains optimistic about its growth trajectory, supported by:
- A resilient hybrid business model
- Strong order pipeline in the Products segment
- Continued investments in innovation and R&D
- Expansion across telecom, networking, and real estate
The company aims to sustain its growth momentum in the coming financial year through disciplined execution and alignment with India’s infrastructure and manufacturing priorities.
28, Apr 2026
SK Telecom Presents AI Reasoning Model at ICLR 2026 to Identify Customers’ True Preferences
Seoul, Korea, Apr 28 – SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM, hereinafter referred to as “SKT”) announced today that its new AI recommendation model, which more accurately identifies customers’ true preferences, was presented at a leading AI conference, the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2026.
ICLR, along with the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) and the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), is regarded as one of the world’s top three AI conferences. Technologies presented at these events see industrial application within a few years or become benchmarks for academic research and product development, making them key indicators of the future direction of AI.
The research paper, titled “More Than What Was Chosen: LLM-Based Explainable Recommendation Beyond Noisy User Preferences,” centers on SKT’s proprietary Conflict-Aware Direct Preference Optimization (C-APO) technology. The technology filters out conflicting preference signals, enabling more accurate recommendations of products that customers genuinely desire.
To achieve this, SKT introduced the concept of “coherent preference” — reflecting recurring patterns and contextual coherence across a customer’s overall behavior. Through this approach, the model distinguishes coherent preferences from revealed preferences derived from single actions, such as accidental clicks or one-time, unintentional choices.
This approach increases the learning weight when the two preference signals align, reinforcing the recommendation. When the signals conflict, the model treats the discrepancy as noise and lowers the learning weight, enabling it to identify the most appropriate recommendations.
Conventional AI recommendation systems have struggled to interpret conflicting preference signals — for example, a customer who typically watches romance films may receive only action recommendations after watching even a single action movie based on a friend’s suggestion. SKT’s new recommendation model, however, filters out such inconsistencies to identify the customer’s true preferences.
SKT plans to apply this research to future agent-based customer recommendation systems that integrate AI for interpreting usage context, generating recommendation candidates, and refining results through an orchestration layer. The company aims to deliver more advanced and personalized recommendations tailored to each customer’s needs and behavior.
“The technology lays the foundation for delivering personalized recommendations by better understanding customers’ true preferences,” said Seok Ji-hwan, Head of AI/DT Data Office at SK Telecom. “The presentation at ICLR 2026 marks a milestone in SKT’s AI transformation to enhance customer experience, and we will continue to advance AI technologies that customers can benefit from.”
