Author: Neel Achary

ACCENTUM Open Sakura Pink Edition: A Stylish Pick for Women’s Day

Bright, lightweight, and thoughtfully designed, the ACCENTUM Open Sakura Pink Edition is a perfect Women’s Day pick that celebrates individuality, confidence, and style. The soft Sakura Pink finish adds a subtle, elegant touch, making it a chic accessory for women who embrace both fashion and functionality in their everyday lives.

With its open-ear design and custom 11 mm dynamic transducers, ACCENTUM Open delivers clear, balanced audio while allowing her to stay aware of her surroundings. Whether she’s heading to work, going for a walk, or managing a busy day on the move, it keeps her connected without missing a beat. Featuring Bluetooth 5.3 multipoint connectivity, intuitive touch controls, and up to 28 hours of battery life with the case, it blends convenience with modern design.

This makes ACCENTUM Open Sakura Pink ideal for:

• Her: A stylish audio companion that celebrates everyday confidence
• Busy lifestyles such as work, commutes, workouts, or travel
• Women who value both fashion and function in their everyday tech

PhysicsWallah Alumna, Modge-by Land of Cakes Raises INR 1 Crore from Anupam Mittal on Shark Tank India Season 5

New Delhi, Mar 06: Alumna of PW School of Startups, the entrepreneurship arm of education company, PhysicsWallah (PW), Megha Sarayan, founder of Kolkata-based Modge – by Land of Cakes, has raised ₹1 crore in funding on Shark Tank India Season 5. The investment was made by Anupam Mittal, founder and CEO of People Group and angel investor, in exchange for 9% equity. Mittal backed the venture after recognising the founder’s determination and clarity of vision during the pitch.

Sarayan, a 26-year-old entrepreneur, has been building Modge as a mood-based cravings brand offering a range of vegetarian cakes, desserts, and savoury treats. Founded in 2017,  it operates across cloud kitchens and physical outlets in Kolkata and Hyderabad. The brand has built a strong affinity around handcrafted baked goods that combine creativity, indulgence, and innovation. Her journey reflects a shift from instinct-driven entrepreneurship to a process-led, scalable business model, a transition that gained national visibility with her appearance on the show.

Reflecting on her journey, Sarayan said, “Shark Tank was always a dream for me, and I knew that to stand on that stage, I couldn’t just have a good product; I needed a business that could speak for itself. I had been running Modge for years, but I realised I needed an organised system to scale ahead. I enrolled myself in the Aarambh, a 5-day residential startup immersion program by PW School of Startups. The mentorship changed my perception of numbers and scale. The programme helped me bring structure to what I had built. This further helped me build confidence to walk into Shark Tank and present my business.”

Megha is an alumna of Aarambh 6.0, a startup mentorship bootcamp under PW School of Startups, where early-stage and growth-stage founders are guided on business structuring, operational discipline, and investor readiness. The programme focuses on helping founders refine their ideas into organised ventures with long-term scalability.

Commenting on the development, Gopal Sharma, Chief Operating Officer, PhysicsWallah (PW) said, “Seeing Megha secure funding on a platform like Shark Tank India makes us immensely proud. These achievements bring forth the importance of mentorship that nurtures ideas and instils real-world business thinking. Our aim at PW SOS has been to support founders in building sustainable organisations and supporting them in structuring their ideas and nurturing them, so these young entrepreneurs can build lasting foundations.”

With the new funding, Sarayan plans to strengthen Modge’s offline presence while continuing to scale its cloud kitchen operations, further building the brand as a cravings-led consumer business.

XLRI Delhi-NCR Successfully Concludes MAXI Mela 2026 at DLF CyberHub: Where Market Research Meets Carnival

Delhi-NCR, Mar 06: XLRI Delhi-NCR, a premier management institution recognised for academic excellence, industry engagement, and policy-focused research, successfully concluded its flagship marketing initiative, MAXI Mela 2026, at DLF CyberHub. Organised by the Marketing Association of XLRI (MAXI), the two-day event brought together over 1.5 lakh attendees, establishing itself as one of the largest student-led marketing activities in the National Capital Region.

 MAXI Mela 2026 was conceptualised as a live marketing laboratory, carrying forward the four-decade legacy of “Disguised Market Research.” Centred around an Indie Pop Art theme, the event blended entertainment with academic rigour, enabling students to apply classroom marketing frameworks within a real-world consumer environment. Moving beyond conventional survey methods, the initiative employed immersive and gamified engagement formats to capture authentic consumer insights. A key highlight was student collaboration with leading organisations such as Mahindra Group, AB InBev, and Procter & Gamble, allowing brands to gather organic insights into evolving Gen Z preferences, lifestyle aspirations, and consumption behaviour in a naturalistic setting.

Beyond its research focus, the Mela evolved into a vibrant cultural showcase. The event featured “Taal,” an inter-college dance competition with participation from institutions across Delhi University and the NCR region, alongside live musical performances by Aayushi Sharma, Rocknaama, and Project Dnox. A curated Commercial Bazaar further enriched the experience by bringing together local businesses, IEV startups, and lifestyle brands, collectively transforming the Amphitheatre into an energetic experiential space that seamlessly integrated large-scale public engagement with data-driven marketing insights.

Speaking on the successful conclusion of the event, Fr. Nelson A. D’Silva, S.J., Acting Director, XLRI Delhi-NCR said,

“MAXI Mela reflects XLRI’s commitment to experiential learning and industry collaboration. By enabling students to conceptualise and execute large-scale consumer research projects for leading organisations, we bridge the gap between academic theory and market realities. The overwhelming public participation demonstrates that research, when innovatively designed, can be both insightful and engaging.”

With the successful completion of its third Delhi-NCR edition, MAXI Mela 2026 reinforces XLRI Delhi-NCR’s growing regional footprint and sets a strong benchmark for student-driven industry engagement initiatives.

CheerioAI Raises Seed Funding Led by Artha Venture Fund II to Advance Enterprise Automation

Bengaluru, Mar 06: CheerioAI, an AI-powered all-in-one customer engagement platform focused on optimizing the CAC-to-LTV equation, has raised ₹8 crore in a Seed funding round led by Artha Venture Fund II (AVF II). The round also saw participation from Hyderabad Angels, TiE Angels, LetsVenture, VC Mint, Invention Engine, and notable angel investors, including Arjun Vaidya, Anand Shahni (WedMeGood), Vivek Mathur (ex-Elevation Capital), Ajeet Khurana, along with early customers such as Habuild and Nitin Verma (InstaAstro).

From left to right: Nishant Das co founder,Avinash Upadhyay -co founder,Priam Jain-Cto and co founder

 The funding will be used to develop multi-modal AI capabilities, including a proprietary small-model LLM for ad generation, expand CheerioAI’s platform from messaging into voice and video, scale AI-driven automation, and strengthen enterprise-grade capabilities to help businesses drive higher engagement, faster growth, and improved ROI while ensuring security and compliance.

CheerioAI’s revenue has grown 450% year-on-year over the past two years. Over the next six months, the company plans to expand its team across engineering, AI, enterprise sales, and customer success to support scaling and global expansion.

Speaking on the announcement, Nishant Das, Co-founder of CheerioAI, said:

“Avinash, Priam, and I are thrilled to partner with Artha and our co-investors. This investment strongly validates our vision and will help us deepen our AI-driven automation capabilities while accelerating expansion into the enterprise segment. At CheerioAI, we envision a future where businesses operate with just three employees — the business founder, the technology founder, and CheerioAI. This funding is a crucial step toward making that vision a reality.”

CheerioAI addresses a major challenge faced by modern enterprises — fragmented communication across multiple digital channels, which often leads to inconsistent customer experiences, higher churn, and operational inefficiencies. The platform unifies marketing, support, and sales workflows across WhatsApp, email, SMS, social messaging, and in-app communication, enabling businesses to automate customer engagement and improve lifetime value.

Commenting on the investment, Anirudh A. Damani, Managing Partner at Artha Venture Fund, said:

“Our decision to invest in CheerioAI is anchored in our strong conviction around the long-term opportunity this team is building. As enterprises operate across an increasingly complex set of digital channels, customer retention and lifetime value optimization have become mission critical. Cheerio’s AI-native approach to orchestrating customer engagement positions it to become a category-defining platform.”

He further added that the round received strong ecosystem validation, with the opportunity referred by one of Artha’s LPs and additional investments coming from founders within its portfolio.

Varun Aggarwal, Founder of Change Engine at Invention Engine, said:

“At Invention Engine, we stand behind exceptional founders taking bold product bets that reshape enterprise workflows. Cheerio’s team demonstrated both ambition and execution, and we believe their AI-led approach to customer engagement will redefine how enterprises drive retention and lifetime value.”

Currently, CheerioAI works with 150+ enterprise customers across six industries and has generated over ₹500 crore in additional revenue for its clients through intelligent retention automation. With growing demand for scalable AI-driven engagement solutions, the company aims to become the default platform for customer lifecycle orchestration, enabling businesses to transform fragmented interactions into seamless, outcome-driven engagements.

Looking ahead, CheerioAI plans to expand its AI capabilities across automation, agentic workflows, and performance optimization, while maintaining a modular architecture that can integrate with evolving AI models. The company aims to empower enterprises globally by automating the majority of customer touchpoints, improving retention, and maximizing lifetime value.

Decline of Populations of Migratory Species of Animals Covered by UN Treaty Worsens from 44% to 49% in 2 Years

Mar 6, Bonn / Campo Grande – An interim report which provides an update to the landmark State of the World’s Migratory Species (2024) warns that 49% of migratory species populations conserved by the global UN treaty are declining, (5% more in just two years), and 24% of species face extinction (2% more).

The new warnings are set to be presented to the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS COP15), a legally binding treaty of the United Nations, in Campo Grande Brazil 23-29 March.

The week-long COP is one of the most important global meetings for wildlife conservation. With high-level political attention from host-country Brazil, the meeting is set to tackle an ambitious set of actions addressing a vital aspect of the global biodiversity crisis.

Billions of individual aquatic, avian, and terrestrial wild animals migrate across lands, rivers, oceans and skies. They are essential to the well-functioning of nature and to human well-being, pollinating plants, transporting nutrients, regulating ecosystems, controlling pests, storing carbon and sustaining livelihoods and cultures worldwide.

Their survival depends on coordinated action across the full length of their migratory routes, which can cross multiple national borders and even continents.

Developed for CMS by the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and other contributors, the interim report tracks significant changes in the conservation status of migratory species and highlights emerging trends to provide new information focusing on:

• Recent significant changes in the conservation status of species listed under the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS-listed) since the 2024 baseline, based on data from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
• Newly reported population trends and changes in extinction risk documented in the scientific literature.

The report also underlines encouraging developments:

• Advances in mapping of migratory pathways to inform decision-making. Initiatives to map migrations are gathering momentum. This includes those spotlighted in the report – the Global Initiative on Ungulate Migration (GIUM), the Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean (MiCO) system, and BirdLife International’s work to identify and map six major marine flyways.
• Progress in identifying and safeguarding important habitats and migratory corridors.
• Recovery of some species through coordinated action.

Other key findings:

• 26 CMS-listed species, including 18 migratory shorebirds, have moved to higher extinction risk categories.
• 7 CMS-listed species have improved, including the saiga antelope, scimitar-horned oryx, and Mediterranean monk seal.
• 9,372 Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) important for CMS-listed species have been identified.
• 47% of the area covered by KBAs is not covered by protected and conserved areas.
• Progress has been made on filling gaps in knowledge on important habitats and migratory routes for sharks/rays and marine mammals, and new initiatives will identify areas for marine turtles.
• Despite some important successes, key indicators – such as the overall proportion of CMS-listed species with decreasing populations – are heading in the wrong direction.

The new report is based on the latest available data, including significant changes in conservation status, newly reported population trends, and recent progress in identifying and protecting critical habitats and migratory pathways.

This focused update provides Parties with the latest available evidence ahead of COP15 deliberations, helping to identify priority areas for action in advance of the next full report in 2029 at COP16.

Overexploitation, and habitat loss and fragmentation, are the two greatest threats to migratory species worldwide, notes CMS Executive Secretary Amy Fraenkel.

“The first global report was a wake-up call,” she said. “This interim update shows that the alarm is still sounding. Some species are responding to concerted conservation action, but too many continue to face mounting pressures across their migratory routes. We must respond to this evidence with coordinated and effective international action.”

The report underscores the need for action to improve the status of all migratory species listed on the Convention, but most urgently for the species listed on CMS Appendix I, where migratory species in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of their range, are listed.

These 188 Appendix I species include terrestrial mammals (28), aquatic mammals (23), birds (103), reptiles (8), and fish (26).

Parties that are Range States to Appendix I-listed species are required to provide strict protection, including the prohibition of taking (such as hunting or capturing), protecting and restoring important habitats, and addressing obstacles that impede the species’ migration. Among other measures, a Global Initiative on Taking of Migratory Species (GTI) is expected to be launched at COP15. The new CMS-initiated initiative is designed to help governments, experts and local communities to ensure that any taking of migratory species is legal, sustainable and safe. It focuses on new findings that the threat of taking for domestic use is far greater than international trade.

“If we intervene only at the point of crisis, we risk acting too late,” said Fraenkel. “By strengthening governance, monitoring, legislation and community engagement upstream, we can reduce pressure on these remarkable animals and put them on the path to lasting recovery.”

Building on a landmark baseline

The 2024 State of the World’s Migratory Species report marked the first comprehensive global assessment of migratory animals, covering the 1,189 species listed at that time in CMS Appendices I and II and its analysis is linked to over 3,000 additional migratory species. It found that:

• 70 CMS-listed species had become more endangered over the previous three decades, compared to just 14 that improved in status.
• Migratory fish populations had declined by 90% on average since the 1970s and 97% of CMS-listed migratory fish species face extinction.
• More than half of Key Biodiversity Areas important for CMS-listed species lacked protected status.

The interim report update ensures that governments at CMS COP15 have the most current scientific picture before them.

“We have a baseline. We have better tools. And we have growing public awareness,” Fraenkel said. “The question before governments at COP15 is straightforward: will we match this knowledge with the political will and investment needed to secure the future of the world’s migratory species?”

Other key reports presented at COP15:

• Impacts of Deep-Sea Mining on Migratory Species: Review and Knowledge Gap

The study offers a thorough assessment of how deep-sea mining (1,000–6,000 meters) may impact key ocean species. Its findings reveal that sediment plumes and wastewater from mining can disrupt animal navigation, feeding, and prey availability, as well as introduce metal-contaminated particles into food webs. Other risks include habitat damage, more ship strikes, and persistent noise in sensitive marine environments.

Almost half of marine mammals covered by the Convention would be impacted. Other affected groups include sharks and rays, marine reptiles, seabirds and bony fish.

• Global Assessment of Migratory Freshwater Fishes

Some of the longest, most important migrations of species on Earth are happening beneath the surface of the world’s rivers, and they face significant threats from overuse, fragmentation, and pollution. This report identifies 325 new candidate species that could benefit from being added to CMS Appendices.

◾ Pre-COP15 media briefing (Zoom)

Thursday 5 March | 10 am EST / 11 am AMT / 3 pm GMT / 4 pm CET

Registration required: https://bit.ly/cmscop15-media-briefing

An interactive media briefing on COP15 to elaborate on the scope, structure, objectives, and what to expect in terms of resources, events, interview opportunities and logistics.

• Amy Fraenkel, Executive Secretary, CMS
• Kelly Malsch, Head of Nature Conserved, UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), and lead author, State of the World’s Migratory Species: Interim Report (2026)
• Zeb Hogan, CMS Scientific Councillor, and lead author, Global Assessment of Migratory Freshwater Fishes

◾ At a Glance: CMS and COP15

With some 100 agenda items, issues on the table at COP15 span a vast range and include deep-sea mining impacts, illegal and unsustainable take, bycatch, habitat loss and fragmentation, light, noise and other forms of marine pollution, vessel strikes, priority areas for conserving marine migratory species, safeguarding ecological connectivity and migratory corridors, infrastructure and renewable energy impacts, as well as insect decline, climate change and other cross-cutting risks.

The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals is a legally binding international treaty under the United Nations. CMS is one of the most important global frameworks for wildlife conservation and plays a vital role in addressing the global biodiversity crisis.

By fostering international collaboration, supporting research, and developing conservation agreements and actions among the Range States in which these species are found, CMS ensures the long-term survival of migratory species of wild animals and their habitats, and the vital benefits they provide.

132 countries plus the European Union are Parties to CMS. In addition, several non-Party countries have signed one or more binding CMS Agreements to protect migratory species.

The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the governing body of CMS, which meets every 3 years to review progress, add new species under the Treaty, and strengthen actions to address conservation needs as well as continuing or emerging threats.

At COP15, governments, scientists, conservationists, indigenous peoples and local communities, environmental leaders, and civil society from around the world will address urgent conservation challenges facing migratory species that cross international boundaries.

Venue: Bosque Expo, Campo Grande, Brazil (bosquedosipes.com/bosque-expo) Dates: Monday 23 March to Sunday 29 March 2026 (Time zone: AMT – Amazon Standard Time UTC/GMT -4 hours) COP15 accreditation: https://bit.ly/cms-cop15-media-registration