Author: Neel Achary

Quick Commerce Surge in India Seen Driving Market to Dollar 70 Billion by 2030

New Delhi, Apr 24 (BNP): India’s quick commerce sector is gaining remarkable momentum, with rapid expansion over the past two years positioning it as one of the fastest-growing segments in the country’s digital economy. A recent report suggests the market could reach as much as $65–70 billion by 2030 if current trends continue.

The segment, built around delivering groceries and daily essentials within minutes, has moved well beyond its early-stage appeal in metro cities. It is now steadily expanding into tier-2 and tier-3 markets, supported by wider internet access, improved logistics networks, and evolving consumer expectations.

Industry observers say convenience is now a key driver of growth. More consumers are choosing speed and reliability over heavy discounts, leading to frequent orders and stronger platform loyalty. This shift is encouraging companies to invest further in supply chain efficiency and last-mile delivery capabilities.

At the same time, quick commerce platforms are diversifying their offerings. Beyond groceries, many are adding categories such as personal care, electronics, and household items, aiming to increase order value and customer retention.

While the growth outlook remains strong, profitability continues to be a challenge. High operational costs, especially in maintaining dense delivery networks and dark stores, are pushing companies to refine their business models and focus on sustainable scaling.

Despite these concerns, the sector is expected to play a transformative role in India’s retail landscape over the coming years, reshaping how consumers shop and how brands reach their customers.

AU Small Finance Bank raises rates on Savings Accounts, FDs and RDs

India, April 24: AU Small Finance Bank  India’s largest Small Finance Bank, today announced an upward revision in interest rates across Savings Accounts, Fixed Deposits  and Recurring Deposits Senior citizens will now earn up to 7.75% p.a. on term deposits, while Savings Account rates have been revised to a peak of 6.75% p.a. The revised rates are effective April 23, 2026.

For regular customers, FD and RD rates have been raised to a peak of 7.25% p.a. The revisions cover popular medium-term FD tenures between 12 and 36 months, and RD tenures up to 36 months. A detailed, tenure-wise rate card is enclosed with this release and is also available on the Bank’s website and at all AU SFB branches.

The revisions apply across AU SFB’s three core deposit products: Savings Accounts, which offer customers liquidity on everyday balances; Recurring Deposits, which support systematic monthly savings to build a long-term corpus; and Fixed Deposits, which offer assured returns on a lump-sum investment locked in for a chosen tenure. Together, they cover customer needs across short-to-medium-term liquidity and longer-term, assured-return savings.

The revised rates are available to new and existing customers across AU SFB’s 2,726+ banking touchpoints spread over 21 States and 4 Union Territories, and through the Bank’s digital channels including the AU 0101 app, WhatsApp Banking, and 24×7 video banking.

Detailed tenure-wise rates and applicable terms are also available on the Bank’s website. 

Aurafest Launches Pranom and SOAM in Mumbai: Premium Incense Collections Now Available Nationwide

Mumbai, Apr 24: Aurafest, the premium Indian lifestyle company founded by serial entrepreneur Sumit Govind Sharma and home décor specialist Manojkumar Sharma, held a formal launch event at Eve, Santacruz, Mumbai, to celebrate the debut of its two brands — Pranom and SOAM — and the wider availability of its prized incense stick collection across India.

The evening brought together media, lifestyle tastemakers, and creative community members in an immersive brand experience that placed Indian artisanship, fragrance, and heritage at its centre. The launch marks a significant milestone for Aurafest, which has already established a strong retail presence at ArtPort stores operated by India Retails & Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. (IRHPL) at major airports, including Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, and Cochin.

A Brand Built from Loss, Rooted in Beauty

Pranom, Aurafest’s flagship luxury brand, carries a deeply personal story. It is named in memory of two people — Prachi, daughter of Sumit Govind Sharma, and Mona, wife of Manojkumar Sharma. What began as a tribute has grown into a distinguished label offering premium handcrafted artefacts, luxury butterfly-inspired serveware, artisanal soaps, traditional collectables, and incense and wellness products — each piece a quiet nod to India’s finest craftsmanship.

The launch evening also featured the heartfelt unveiling of a curated art book comprising over 200 original artworks by Prachi — a celebration of a young life that left behind a remarkable creative legacy, and a father’s way of making sure the world remembers his daughter.

SOAM — Authentic Indian Wellness, Made Accessible

Buoyed by Pranom’s strong reception in the luxury segment, Aurafest has also launched SOAM — an accessible premium wellness and lifestyle brand that brings India’s spiritual and cultural heritage to contemporary homes at competitive price points. Derived from the Sanskrit word for ‘nectar’ or ‘divine essence,’ SOAM is designed for the modern Indian consumer seeking mindful, quality products rooted in authentic tradition.

Together, Pranom and SOAM anchor Aurafest’s dual-brand strategy — serving both the premium luxury market through exclusive airport retail, and the wider domestic audience through speciality stores, wellness boutiques, and e-commerce platforms.

India’s Finest Fragrances, Now in Your Home

The centrepiece of Aurafest’s consumer launch a premium line of incense sticks now available across India. Rooted in the country’s extraordinary fragrance geography, this collection moves from the sandalwood forests of Karnataka to the jasmine fields of Madurai, from the sage-covered ridgelines of Uttarakhand to the lavender highlands of Kashmir.

Each incense in the range is hand-crafted using natural ingredients sourced from the regions that have long been home to these fragrances. The current collection includes six signature varieties:

Sandalwood — Sourced from the celebrated forests of Karnataka, this is India’s most storied fragrance — smooth, warm, and grounding.

Jasmine — Drawn from the jasmine fields of Madurai, Tamil Nadu, this fragrance captures the fullness of India’s most beloved bloom at its evening peak.

White Sage — Inspired by wild sage from the cool, mist-covered slopes of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh — crisp, earthy, and quietly purifying.

Champa – Rajnigandha — A deeply Indian confluence of champa and tuberose, evoking festival evenings, temple courtyards, and the richness of Bengal and Uttar Pradesh’s fragrant gardens.

Tulsi – Camphor — The fragrance of every Indian morning — herbaceous, clarifying, and rooted in centuries of domestic ritual across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Lavender – Cedarwood — A meeting of Kashmir lavender and Himalayan deodar cedar — soft, floral, and deeply grounding; crafted for the wind-down hours of the evening.

All incense sticks are handcrafted from natural ingredients, with each fragrance tracing its origin to a specific Indian region and its centuries-old traditions.

— Sumit Govind Sharma, Founder Director, Aurafest

— Manojkumar Sharma, Founder Director, Aurafest

Availability

The incense collection is now available across India. The full Aurafest portfolio — including Pranom’s luxury artefacts and SOAM’s wellness range — is available at ArtPort stores at Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, and Cochin airports. For retail partnerships and bulk gifting enquiries, please contact the Aurafest team directly.

Kerala Grameena Bank sets its sights on a INR 1 lakh crore milestone for FY26-27, charting a bold path for growth, innovation and inclusive rural banking

McMaster-Built AI Speeds Up Drug Discovery, Designs New Antibiotic in Early Tests

Researchers at McMaster University have developed a new generative artificial intelligence (AI) model capable of drastically speeding up drug discovery and, in early tests, it has already designed a brand-new antibiotic.

The discovery is a demonstration of how AI could dramatically improve the slow and costly search for new antimicrobial medicines, as bacteria and other microbes continue to evolve resistance to our current suite of drugs.

The new model, called SyntheMol-RL, is trained to explore a vast chemical space of up to 46 billion possible compounds  far beyond what could realistically be tested in the lab, where even large-scale screens top out at around a million molecules. Drawing on roughly 150,000 molecular ‘building blocks’ and a set of 50 chemical synthesis reactions, the AI model is designed to generate structurally novel antibiotic candidates.

“In the lab, we can build chemical compounds using a set of smaller chemical fragments, which can be stuck together like molecular Lego blocks,” says Assistant Professor Jon Stokes, whose laboratory developed the new model. “SyntheMol-RL configures those fragments in different ways, faster than humans ever could, to create new, larger chemical compounds that should  based on its knowledge  be antibacterial.”

Stokes, a member of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, says that while generative AI is becoming increasingly effective at designing novel antibiotic candidates, key properties that determine a potential drug’s clinical viability remain difficult to assess without extensive  and expensive — laboratory testing.

“It doesn’t matter if you find a new chemical that’s antibacterial in the lab if it can’t dissolve inside the body, if it’s toxic to human cells, or if it can’t be metabolized and expelled after it has done its job,” he explains. “Bleach is antibacterial  so is fire. But they obviously don’t tick those other boxes. Good drug candidates must meet several different criteria, otherwise they’ll never become actual medicine.”

Past iterations of SyntheMol exclusively designed molecules with antibacterial activity, without consideration for these other critical properties. But, over the past two years, Stokes’ team  with collaborators at Stanford University  has refined the model so it only generates antibacterial compounds that are easy to develop in the lab and likely to be soluble in the body.

“There is a lot of conflict between compounds that are antibacterial and compounds that are water soluble,” says Gary Liu, a graduate student in Stokes’ lab and lead developer of the new model. “In previous studies, filtering for compounds that were both antibacterial and soluble after our prompt often left us with significantly fewer viable drug candidates, so we built solubility right into the generation process and now the model can efficiently design antibiotic candidates with greater clinical promise.”

In a new study, published April 23 and selected for the cover of the June issue of Molecular Systems Biology, Stokes’ team put their enhanced model to the test. They tasked it with generating water-soluble antibiotics that could treat infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus  colloquially known as “staph infections”  and quickly got several hits.

From a batch of 79 model-proposed antibacterials, Stokes’ group homed in on one particularly interesting compound  a novel, water-soluble compound that seemed likely to have antibiotic activity against S. aureus.

The new computer-designed drug candidate, which they called synthecin, was then formulated as a topical cream in the lab and tested on an otherwise drug-resistant wound infection in mouse models.

“Synthecin was highly effective at controlling the infection,” says Denise Catacutan, a grad student in Stokes’ lab who led the wet lab portions of the study. “It worked extremely well as a topical drug, and also shows early promise as something that could be applied or optimized for systemic use in the future.” 

While the new study highlights synthecin’s promise, the team has yet to uncover how the drug inhibits bacteria  a key step, Stokes says, in determining its safety profile and therefore its likelihood of someday landing in clinics. His group is now actively engaged in these critical “mechanism-of-action” studies.

Regardless of how those studies play out, though, the group sees the discovery of synthecin as validation that their AI model can rapidly generate high-potential drug candidates, shifting the burden of drug discovery from finding viable compounds to designing and optimizing them.

That shift, Stokes says, is significant not only for antibiotic discovery, but also for all areas of biochemistry.

“We used our model to design new antibiotics, but it’s capable of so much more,” says Stokes, a faculty member at the Marnix E. Heersink School of Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship and an executive member of NexusHealth. “We built it to be disease agnostic, meaning it could just as easily generate novel drug candidates for diabetes or cancer or other indications.”

Stokes’ lab continues to enhance SyntheMol and anticipates that an even more robust version will be available later this year.  

Curtain call for paper: PPDS delivers crystal clear DooH advertising to historic German theatre with a scene-stealing 12m2 Philips Urban LED 7000 Series installation

Multitalented solution: Spectacular new 6×2 metre high brightness Philips Urban LED 7000 Series display transforms communication capabilities, helping to eliminate paper waste, boost workplace efficiencies, and drive ticket sales at the acclaimed Saarländisches Staatstheater venue.

 Amsterdam, Apr 24: PPDS, the exclusive global provider of Philips Professional Displays and complementary solutions, is proud to announce the latest results of its rapidly accelerating DooH strategy, with the installation of a new 6 x 2m LED advertising wall at the historic Saarländisches Staatstheater in Southwest Germany. Delivering instant results, this transformative project has helped eliminate paper wastage, boost workplace efficiencies, and increase ticket sales.

 Opened in 1938, the Saarländisches Staatstheater (Saarland State Theatre) is a cultural landmark in Saarbrücken – the largest city in Saarland, bordered by France and Luxembourg – renowned for its diverse entertainment offerings, including opera, drama, ballet, standup comedy, concerts, and movies.

 Hosting around 30 new productions annually, amounting to some 700 events – including outside events – advertising and information are critical to ensuring ticket sales and the theatre’s ongoing success. Previously, all promotional banners and posters had to be created, printed and changed manually by staff daily, which was deemed impractical, unsustainable, and visually limited.

 The stage is set

Seeking a modern, digitised solution, the theatre teamed up with local AV/IT integration and event technology specialists, DooH Concept and LE-Eventtechnik GbR, with framework from Metallbau Patric Schmidt GmbH, to transform its communications with a fully digital, centrally managed LED solution, enabling fast, simple, and unlimited content creation and updates.

 With PPDS continuing to make significant waves in the outdoor LED market, which has already seen installations and exclusive partnerships with the likes of FC Barcelona, PSV Eindhoven and Oracle Red Bull Racing, the Philips Urban LED 7000 Series was the standout choice for this challenging project, with a stunning 2 x 6 metre wall installed on the front of the iconic building, as well as with.

 To ensure crystal clear advertising, whether viewed up close or from a distance, the 3.9 pixel pitch, high brightness Philips Urban LED 7000 Series was selected, delivering high contrast ratio and refresh rates for smooth broadcasting and more colour subtlety, shading, and saturation.

 Designed for the full range of weather conditions, from bright sunshine to inclement sleet and snow, the Philips Urban LED 7000 Series has been built to perform and last. Thanks to the display’s ambient light adjusted brightness, content remains clear and visible in all conditions, while its IP66 certification (dustproof, waterproof, and salt spray resistant) and level 6 ingress protection ensure product longevity and peace of mind.

 Crowd pleaser

Completed within a strict 10 day window, the new Philips Urban LED wall has exceeded all expectations, providing a striking and highly effective communication platform. Using a mix of static imagery, animated previews, and video content, the new display has already proven to capture the attention of pedestrians in a way simply unachievable before, while also improving its staffing and sustainability efficiencies.

 The theatre’s marketing department now manages the display centrally and independently. With easy to use, dynamic multimedia templates in place, staff can quickly update content and engage audiences directly, eliminating reliance on paper posters and supporting traditional media channels and social media campaigns.

 Konstantin Flabouriaris, PPDS Sales Director for the DACH region, commented: “Installing the display on a listed building presented several challenges. A key requirement was designing a self supporting substructure that could be securely mounted to the theatre’s façade without causing any damage. The substructure was installed using a mobile crane on day one, with the LED wall fully completed by day ten, just in time for the theatre’s new season the following day. Working closely with the theatre’s team and its partners, it was a challenge we embraced, and the results speak for themselves.”

 Prof. Michael Schulz, General Artistic Director, Saarländisches Staatstheater, added: “The new digital daily advertising board from Philips enables us to make the wide ranging program of the Saarländisches Staatstheater even more visible, reaching out directly to visitors. There has been a significant increase in theatre attendance since installing our new LED wall.”