Category Archives: Technology

VST Tillers Tractors Showcases Innovative Farm Mechanisation Solutions at FKCCI Global AgriTech Summit 2026

Bengaluru, Apr 27:  VST Tillers Tractors Ltd., a pioneer in compact agricultural machinery in India, showcased its latest portfolio of advanced farm mechanisation solutions at the FKCCI Global AgriTech Summit 2026. The company’s new product range reflects a significant step forward in fuel efficiency, performance, and versatility, tailored to meet the evolving needs of modern small and mid-sized farming operations. Shri Siddaramaiah, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka, visited the VST stall at the exhibition and reviewed the innovative products on display, after the inaugural session of the Summit. Agriculture Minister, Shri N Chaluvaraya Swamy also accompanied the Chief Minister to the VST stall.

At the summit, VST unveiled a series of innovations, including the FENTM Series Tractors, Electric Power Tiller, and Electric Power Weeder, each underscoring the company’s commitment to sustainable, technology-driven agriculture.

The FENTM Series features five high-performance, fuel-efficient models, 180 FENTM, 224 FENTM, 225 FENTM, 929 FENTM EX , and 929 FENTM VX , spanning a horsepower range of 19 HP to 30 HP. Available in both 2WD and 4WD configurations, these tractors are engineered to deliver enhanced productivity, superior operator comfort, and long-term reliability. Designed as compact yet powerful solutions, the FENTM Series offers exceptional versatility across diverse terrains and agricultural applications, striking an optimal balance between power, manoeuvrability, and fuel efficiency.

Further strengthening its sustainability focus, VST showcased its Electric Power Tiller and Electric Power Weeder. These electric solutions are designed to deliver high performance with minimal environmental impact, aligning with India’s clean energy and decarbonisation goals. The electric range enables farmers to benefit from eco-friendly operations, reduced running costs, and ease of use—marking a significant shift towards green farming practices.

Building on its strong legacy of engineering excellence and indigenous innovation, VST is leveraging global EV advancements to strengthen India’s small-farm mechanisation ecosystem. With a focus on future-ready, locally developed solutions, the company continues to drive productivity, sustainability, and affordability for the next generation of farmers.

OpenAI Launches GPT-5.5, Advances Toward Smarter End-to-End AI

New Delhi, Apr 24 (BNP): OpenAI has introduced its latest artificial intelligence model, GPT-5.5, positioning it as a significant upgrade designed to handle complex tasks more efficiently and with greater independence.

The company says the new model delivers improved performance in areas such as coding, research, analysis, and productivity tasks, while also generating faster and more structured responses. The focus, according to OpenAI, is on making AI systems more capable of completing multi-step work without continuous user guidance.

Unlike earlier versions that often required detailed prompting at each stage, GPT-5.5 is built to better manage full workflows. It can plan tasks, use tools, refine outputs, and continue working toward a final result, reflecting a shift toward more autonomous “agent-like” AI behaviour.

Early evaluations suggest stronger performance in technical and reasoning tasks, particularly in software development and problem-solving scenarios. The model is also said to be more efficient, aiming to reduce computing requirements for certain workloads while maintaining higher output quality.

The launch comes at a time of rising global competition in artificial intelligence, with major technology companies racing to develop systems that go beyond conversational abilities and move toward practical task execution.

Industry experts believe this latest release signals a broader transition in AI development—from simple assistants that respond to prompts, to systems capable of independently managing and completing real-world digital work.

Pemmasani Calls for Design Driven Growth and Higher R&D in Telecom Sector

Bhubaneswar, Apr 24 (BNP): Union Minister of State for Telecommunications, Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar, has urged stakeholders in India’s telecom industry to move beyond cost-driven models and embrace design-led innovation as a core growth strategy.

Addressing industry representatives at a recent forum, the minister emphasized that India must strengthen its capabilities in research and development (R&D) to remain competitive in the rapidly evolving global telecom landscape. He noted that while the country has made significant progress in expanding connectivity, the next phase of growth will depend on indigenous innovation and technological leadership.

Pemmasani highlighted the need for telecom companies to invest more in developing homegrown solutions, particularly in areas such as 5G, network infrastructure, and emerging digital technologies. He stressed that a shift toward design-centric approaches would not only improve product quality but also enable Indian firms to capture greater value in global markets.

The minister also pointed out that collaboration between industry, academia, and government institutions will be essential to build a strong innovation ecosystem. Encouraging startups and supporting local manufacturing were identified as key pillars in driving this transformation.

Industry experts at the event echoed the minister’s views, noting that increased R&D spending and a focus on original design could help India transition from being primarily a consumer of telecom technology to a global innovator.

The call aligns with the government’s broader vision of strengthening domestic capabilities and reducing dependence on imports in critical technology sectors.

Intertek opens its first EMC lab in India, expanding network across south of country

Hitachi Vantara Releases FY2025 Sustainability Report, Highlighting Leadership in Energy-Efficient Infrastructure for AI-Driven Workloads

April 23: Hitachi Vantara, the data storage, infrastructure and hybrid cloud management subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. (TSE: 6501), today announced the release of its FY2025 Sustainability Report, detailing measurable advancements across its environmental, social and governance priorities. The report highlights advancements in energy-efficient infrastructure, including innovations across Hitachi Vantara’s Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One) data platform, expanded lifecycle sustainability initiatives and strengthened governance practices to support customers navigating the growing demands of AI and data-intensive workloads.

As organizations accelerate digital transformation and AI adoption, the energy and efficiency demands of data infrastructure are rising sharply, creating new operational and sustainability challenges. According to the  International Energy Agency (IEA), global data center electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 terawatt-hours by 2026, roughly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of a major industrialized nation, driven in part by AI workloads. At the same time, organizations are under pressure to reduce costs, making it more difficult to balance performance with environmental impact. As electricity demand increases, so do the power and cooling requirements needed to support data infrastructure, making efficiency a critical factor in both cost and sustainability. Hitachi Vantara is addressing this challenge by embedding sustainability into its infrastructure, helping customers reduce energy consumption, optimize operations and improve return on investment.

“Sustainability is increasingly tied to operational performance and business outcomes,” said Akinobu Shimada, CEO of Hitachi Vantara. “In FY2025, we focused on helping customers manage the growth of AI and data while improving efficiency and reducing environmental impact. Our investments in infrastructure innovation, lifecycle design and governance are enabling customers to achieve powerful results.”

Key highlights from the report include:

• Infrastructure efficiency and performance: Hitachi Vantara introduced VSP One Block High End, designed to deliver scalable infrastructure that improves efficiency while maintaining high reliability and reducing power and cooling requirements for enterprise and AI-driven workloads, supported by integrated tools for energy monitoring, carbon reduction and sustainability reporting.
• Lifecycle sustainability advancements: The company expanded lifecycle assessment initiatives across its VSP One Block, File and Object portfolios, enabling more accurate measurement of environmental impact and improved Scope 3 emissions visibility. These efforts are complemented by tools such as the Clear Sight dashboard, which provides customers with visibility into energy consumption and carbon usage, along with actionable insights to optimize system efficiency and environmental impact.
• Circularity and materials sustainability: Hitachi Vantara increased the use of post-consumer recycled plastics across its storage systems, with up to 50% recycled content in key components. The company also reported that less than 0.3% of materials were sent to landfill, with the vast majority reused or recycled through optimized recovery and circularity programs.
• Governance and data quality improvements: Hitachi Vantara enhanced cross-functional governance and emissions tracking processes, strengthening audit readiness and improving data accuracy across Scope 1, Scope 2 and key Scope 3 categories, aligning with science-based emissions reduction targets and evolving ESG reporting standards.

Hitachi Vantara’s commitment to sustainability extends beyond its own operations, focusing on helping customers achieve measurable improvements in efficiency, performance and environmental impact. Through its infrastructure and data platforms, the company enables organizations to reduce energy consumption, optimize resource utilization and support more sustainable operations at scale. Recent examples include:

• Aquiris (Belgium): Upgraded its storage platform with VSP One Block to improve operational efficiency, resilience and reliability for critical water treatment operations, processing more than 110 million cubic meters of wastewater annually and collecting over one million data points per day, while helping reduce power usage and lower its carbon footprint through more efficient data management and infrastructure.
• DestekBank (Turkey): Deployed VSP One Block to support rapid retail banking expansion, achieving a 25% reduction in data center energy consumption, a 35% increase in application performance and a 20% reduction in total cost of ownership.
• Malayala Manorama (India): Modernized its data infrastructure with Hitachi Vantara to support 24/7 media operations, achieving a 66% reduction in data center rack space and 70% savings in power and cooling costs, while improving availability and operational efficiency across its print, broadcast and digital platforms.

“Hitachi Vantara is helping us fulfill our goal of creating a sustainable process for safeguarding supplies of clean water and supporting the growth and development of Brussels,” said Juan Ochoa, managing plant director, Aquiris. “The performance gains with VSP One Block will be significant. We are constantly collecting data, tracking KPIs and monitoring our purification processes. The improvement in storage capabilities will help us respond quickly to issues and optimize our plant operations.”

While the FY2025 Sustainability Report reflects progress across the past year, it also reflects a broader shift in how Hitachi Vantara is approaching sustainability, embedding efficiency, transparency and lifecycle thinking directly into its infrastructure and operations. This approach helps organizations operationalize sustainability at scale, particularly as AI-driven workloads continue to increase infrastructure demands.

 

AAEON Releases the BOXER-6407-TWL, an Ultra-Slim PC Designed for Legacy System Modernization

35% slimmer than its predecessor and offering both VGA and HDMI display outputs, the BOXER-6407-TWL is positioned as a reliable, cost-efficient platform for retrofitting and upgrading existing setups.

(Taipei, Taiwan – April 23, 2026) Leading provider of industrial PC solutions AAEON (Stock Code: 6579) today announced the BOXER-6407-TWL, an ultra-slim compact embedded PC available with either the Intel Processor N250 or N150 CPU SKU from the Intel Processor N-series (formerly Twin Lake). 

Central to the product’s value proposition is its compact 153mm x 101mm x 30mm size, with its height being particularly notable, given it is 35% slimmer than previous models from AAEON’s Ultra-slim Box PC portfolio. AAEON has said this design decision was made to satisfy market demand for more advanced, fanless platforms that can be integrated into existing systems with minimal space, such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment and digital signage installations.

Highlighting its suitability for retrofitting and modernizing industrial setups, the BOXER-6407-TWL offers both VGA and HDMI display outputs to ensure compatibility with existing display panels. Meanwhile, the PC features a robust industrial I/O comprised of three USB ports (USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 1, USB 2.0 x 3), dual Gigabit Ethernet LAN, and two DB-9 ports for RS-232/422/485. This positioning of the product as one for industrial environments is consistent with the its mechanical specifications, which boast a fanless, ventless chassis with a single-mold top cover, allowing it to operate in temperatures as high as 60°C while preventing dust ingress.

For storage, the system sacrifices the SATA support seen in earlier models for an M.2 2280 M-Key slot, with additional expansion coming in the form of an M.2 2230 E-Key, an M.2 3052 B-Key, and a SIM card slot.

The system’s operating system support includes Windows 11 Pro, Windows 11 IoT, and Linux Ubuntu 24.04 and later.

Accenture and WaveMaker Announce Strategic Intent to Help Growth-Focused Organizations Scale with Agentic AI Platform

Wild Stone Partners with Fynd to Accelerate Offline Experience Centres Expansion, Driving 150 Percent Growth in Orders

Mumbai, April 22: Fynd, an AI-native retail technology company backed by Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, announced its partnership with Wild Stone to power the brand’s offline experience centre operations through an integrated retail technology stack. Through this collaboration, Fynd is enabling Wild Stone to build and scale its offline retail presence with a unified solution spanning POS, analytics and reporting, and inventory management, clienteling, and omnichannel retail operations.

As part of the partnership, Fynd has deployed a fast and reliable POS system across Wild Stone experience centres, enabling seamless billing, rapid staff onboarding, and dependable transactions even in high-footfall mall environments. The brand also leverages a customized analytics dashboard that provides deep visibility into store performance, including total sales, average transaction value, SKU performance, customer mix, and low-stock alerts.

To further simplify store operations for Wild Stone, Fynd enabled a simplified, in-built WMS flow for experience centre-level inventory management. This empowers store teams to handle GRNs, update stock in real time, and maintain inventory accuracy without requiring a complex warehouse setup.

“Offline retail growth requires more than opening new stores. It requires technology that is intuitive for store teams, reliable in high-traffic environments, and scalable as operations expand,” said Ragini Varma, Chief Business Officer – India, Fynd. “With Wild Stone, our focus has been on building a strong unified operational backbone for experience centre -led retail, from fast billing and simple inventory workflows to centralized visibility across stores, clienteling, and omnichannel readiness. The speed at which the brand has expanded shows what is possible when the right retail infrastructure is in place.”

Wild Stone began its experience centre journey with an initial pilot in West Bengal and has since expanded to more than 20  experience centres across multiple regions within months. Throughout this rapid growth phase, Fynd’s centralized retail stack has helped standardize billing, reporting, and inventory workflows, enabling scale without proportional operational complexity.

By replacing manual processes around billing, inventory tracking, and performance monitoring with a centralized and easy-to-use system, Fynd has helped Wild Stone create a more structured and scalable offline retail model. Store teams can operate  experience centres efficiently with minimal technical training, while business teams gain real-time insight into store performance, SKU movement, and stock levels.

“As we expanded our offline footprint, it was important for us to work with a partner that could help us launch quickly, operate efficiently, and scale with confidence,” said Mohit Kiradoo, Senior Manager, Strategic Projects, McNROE Consumer Products Pvt. Ltd. “Fynd’s AI-enabled unified commerce platform has helped us simplify experience centre operations, improve visibility into sales and inventory, and create a more dependable retail experience on the ground. It has given us the operational control and agility needed to grow our offline business in a structured way.”

Through this partnership, Fynd continues to strengthen its role as the technology backbone for Wild Stone and any other brand looking to build scalable, unified offline and online retail operations in India and global markets.

AI Growth Increasingly Constrained by Computing Power, Says Goldman Sachs

Apr 22 (BNP): Global AI development is now being limited less by model capability and more by the availability of computing infrastructure, according to Goldman Sachs.

While AI models continue to improve rapidly in performance and efficiency, the key constraint has shifted toward computing resources required to train and deploy them at scale. This includes access to advanced semiconductors, large-scale data centers, and sufficient energy supply.

The report highlights a widening gap between fast-moving AI innovation and the physical infrastructure needed to support it. Rising demand for computing power is being driven by the expansion of generative AI, large language models, and enterprise-level automation systems.

Experts note that the next phase of AI growth will depend heavily on investments in chip manufacturing, cloud infrastructure, and energy-efficient computing systems. Without corresponding expansion in these areas, the pace of AI adoption could face structural limitations.

The findings underscore a broader shift in the AI ecosystem—from software-led progress to infrastructure-led scaling—where computing capacity is becoming a critical strategic asset in the global technology race.

Breakthrough Study Maps Postnatal Brain Blood Vessel Growth, Reveals Active Role in Neural Development

Apr 21 (BNP): Scientists have made a major advance in developmental neuroscience, creating the very first detailed atlas of how the vascular network of a mouse’s brain grows after birth. Their study is published in Cell.

Co-led by Alexandre Dubrac, a researcher at the Centre de recherche Azrieli du CHU Sainte‑Justine and professor at Université de Montréal, the study was carried out in close collaboration with the laboratory of Nicolas Renier at the Paris Brain Institute.

It reveals that blood vessels in the brain don’t simply develop in parallel with neurons.

Instead, their growth follows a dynamic, multi‑phase trajectory that varies across brain regions and is tightly linked to the maturation of neural circuits—granting blood vessels an active role in brain construction after birth.

“We knew that neurons undergo extensive changes after birth, but we understood far less about how blood vessels adapt to these transformations,” said the study’s co-first author Mathilde Bizou, a PhD student in Dubrac’s lab.

“This atlas finally provides a comprehensive view of this essential dynamic.”

A vital yet still mysterious network

Although it represents only a small fraction of body weight, the brain alone consumes about 20 per cent of the body’s available oxygen and energy. Meeting this high demand depends on a dense and finely organized network of blood vessels responsible for delivering oxygen and nutrients to neurons.

At birth, this vascular network is still immature. Yet it is precisely after birth that the brain undergoes major transformations: it grows rapidly, neural circuits are refined, and certain regions specialize based on sensory experience and environmental input.

Until now, researchers had very limited tools to track—over time and across the entire brain—how blood vessels adapt to these changes.

“We had very detailed maps of the adult brain, but far less information on how the vascular network is established after birth,” said Dubrac. “It was a bit like trying to understand how a city functions without access to its road map.”

To address this gap, Renier’s team developed a three‑dimensional atlas based on a mouse model, enabling them to track—with unprecedented spatiotemporal precision—the development of the vascular network from birth to adulthood.

For their part, Dubrac’s team generated and integrated spatiotemporal transcriptomic data, making it possible to link vascular architecture to dynamic molecular programs.

By combining these complementary areas of expertise, the study reconstructs the brain’s entire vascular network and analyzes its evolution over time, both structurally and molecularly.

Three major phases of development

One of the study’s main contributions is the identification of three successive phases in postnatal blood vessel development.

The first phase corresponds to coordinated growth, during which the vascular network and the brain increase in size in a relatively proportional manner. This stage ensures adequate baseline perfusion during the first days of life, comparable to the final months of human fetal development.

The second phase marks a major shift. During this period, blood vessels grow faster than the brain itself, leading to a marked densification of the vascular network. This stage, which may correspond to early childhood and school age in humans, coincides with so‑called “critical periods” of brain development, when neural circuits are formed, refined, and specialized, particularly in response to sensory activity.

Finally, a third phase corresponds to a period of stabilization and refinement of the vascular network, which could be associated with adolescence. During this stage, vascular architecture reaches a more mature organization while retaining some capacity for remodeling.

Vascularization not uniform

The study shows that vascular network development is not uniform throughout the brain.

These differences are not explained solely by a general increase in neuronal activity, but rather by the fact that certain brain regions emit specific signals that directly influence whether blood vessel growth continues or stops.

By cross‑referencing vascular density maps with gene expression profiles, the researchers discovered that these signals act as genuine guidance cues for the vascular network, indicating where—and to what extent—it should continue to develop.

When these signaling pathways are disrupted, blood vessels lose their guidance, become disorganized, and grow aberrantly.

These findings demonstrate that the vascular network does not merely passively accompany brain development; it depends closely on communication with neuron, the scientists say.

This interaction is particularly critical during the second phase of postnatal development, a period when neuronal activity intensifies and tight coordination between the two systems becomes decisive for the brain’s fine‑scale organization.

Probing childhood disorders and diseases

Beyond its fundamental contribution, the atlas provides an essential starting point for studying various disorders—including autism—as well as certain cerebrovascular diseases that emerge or originate during childhood, the researchers believe.

“Having a reference map of normal development will now allow us to compare what happens when this process is disrupted,” said Dubrac.

“We will be able to better understand whether—and how—a mismatch between neuronal development and vascularization contributes to the vulnerability of specific brain regions.”

He argued that the developing brain should now be thought of as a deeply neurovascular system, in which blood vessels play an active role in brain health, on a par with neurons themselves.