New York's BAT VC Taps into India's 'Golden Era' of AI with USD 100 Mn Investment Plan
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BAT VC, a New York-based early-stage venture capital firm, has announced plans to invest up to USD 100 million in Indian AI and deeptech startups through its second fund.
The fund will focus on sectors like fintech and B2B SaaS, aiming to back early-stage companies with global potential.
The India initiative will be led by three general partners—Manish Maheshwari, former India head of Twitter, along with Aditya Mishra and Ravi Metta. Maheshwari has relocated to Bengaluru to anchor the effort. "My move to Bengaluru underscores our conviction in India's potential to lead the next wave of AI-driven global growth," he said.
BAT VC believes India's AI sector is entering a "golden era," with the industry growing at 32% annually and expected to reach USD 23 billion by 2027. The enterprise SaaS market is also booming, currently valued at USD 8.7 billion and growing at 35% CAGR—twice the global average.
The firm highlighted the sharp rise in US-India cross-border AI investments, which surged 180% to USD 4.7 billion in 2023. BAT VC attributes this to the growing availability of talent, capital, and market access across both countries.
"We aim to back Indian founders building globally relevant AI products, supported by capital and perspective from both the US and India," said Aditya Mishra, Managing Director and General Partner at BAT VC.
BAT VC's portfolio includes companies like Wand AI, StockGro, Nickelytics, Accern, and Uptiq AI. The firm stated that it has received strong interest from institutional investors and family offices in both regions.
"Our technical depth enables us to identify high-impact AI startups early and guide them through global scale-up," added Ravi Metta, General Partner at BAT VC.
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Hamilton Spectator
29 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Amazon extends Prime Day discounts to 4 days as retailers weigh tariff-related price increases
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is extending its annual Prime Day sales and offering new membership perks to Generation Z shoppers amid tariff-related price worries and possibly some consumer boredom with an event marking its 11th year. The e-commerce giant's promised blitz of summer deals for Prime members starts at 3:01 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday. For the first time, Seattle-based Amazon is holding the now-misnamed Prime Day over four days; the company launched the event in 2015 and expanded it to two days in 2019. Before wrapping up Prime Day 2025 early Friday, Amazon said it would have deals dropping as often as every 5 minutes during certain periods. Prime members ages 18-24, who pay $7.49 per month instead of the $14.99 that older customers not eligible for discounted rates pay for free shipping and other benefits, will receive 5% cash back on their purchases for a limited time. Amazon executives declined to comment on the potential impact of tariffs on Prime Day deals. The event is taking place two and a half months after an online news report sparked speculation that Amazon planned to display added tariff costs next to product prices on its website. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denounced the purported change as a 'hostile and political act' before Amazon clarified the idea had been floated for its low-cost Haul storefront but never approved. Amazon's past success with using Prime Day to drive sales and attract new members spurred other major retail chains to schedule competing sales in July. Best Buy, Target and Walmart are repeating the practice this year. Like Amazon, Walmart is adding two more days to its promotional period, which starts Tuesday and runs through July 13. The nation's largest retailer is making its summer deals available in stores as well as online for the first time. Here's what to expect: Will a longer Prime event lessen the urgency? Amazon expanded Prime Day this year because shoppers 'wanted more time to shop and save,' Amazon Prime Vice President Jamil Ghani recently told The Associated Press. Analysts are unsure the extra days will translate into more purchases given that renewed inflation worries and potential price increases from tariffs may make consumers less willing to spend. Amazon doesn't disclose Prime Day sales figures but said last year that the event achieved record global sales . Adobe Digital Insights predicts that the sales event will drive $23.8 billion in overall online spending from July 8 to July 11, 28.4% more than the similar period last year. In 2024 and 2023, online sales increased 11% and 6.1% during the comparable four days of July. Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, noted that Amazon's move to stretch the sales event to four days is a big opportunity to 'really amplify and accelerate the spending velocity.' Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights and strategy at software company Salesforce, noted that July sales in general have lost some momentum in recent years. Amazon is not a Salesforce customer, so the business software company is not privy to Prime Day figures. 'What we saw last year was that (shoppers) bought and then they were done, ' Schwartz said. 'We know that the consumer is still really cautious. So it's likely we could see a similar pattern where they come out early, they're ready to buy and then they take a step back.' How will rising costs from tariffs affect discounts? Amazon executives reported in May that the company and many of its third-party sellers tried to beat big import tax bills by stocking up on foreign goods before President Donald Trump's tariffs took effect. And because of that move, a fair number of third-party sellers hadn't changed their pricing at that time, Amazon said. Adobe Digital Insights' Pandya expects discounts to remain on par with last year and for other U.S. retail companies to mark 10% to 24% off the manufacturers' suggested retail price between Tuesday and Friday. Salesforce's Schwartz said she's noticed retailers becoming more precise with their discounts, such as offering promotion codes that apply to selected products instead of their entire websites. Will shoppers stick to necessities or splurge? Amazon Prime and other July sales have historically helped jump-start back-to-school spending and encouraged advance planners to buy other seasonal merchandise earlier. Analysts said they expected U.S. consumers to make purchases this week out of fear that tariffs will make items more expensive later. Brett Rose, CEO of United National Consumer Supplies, a wholesale distributor of overstocked goods like toys and beauty products, thinks shoppers will go for items like beauty essentials. 'They're going to buy more everyday items,' he said. What are some of the deals? As in past years, Amazon offered early deals leading up to Prime Day. For the big event, Amazon said it would have special discounts on Alexa-enabled products like Echo, Fire TV and Fire tablets. Walmart said its July sale would include a 32-inch Samsung smart monitor priced at $199 instead of $299.99; and $50 off a 50-Inch Vizio Smart TV with a standard retail price of $298.00. Target said it was maintaining its 2024 prices on key back-to-school items, including a $5 backpack and a selection of 20 school supplies totaling less than $20. How will Amazon's third-party sellers fare? Independent businesses that sell goods through Amazon account for more than 60% of the company's retail sales. Some third-party sellers are expected to sit out Prime Day and not offer discounts to preserve their profit margins during the ongoing tariff uncertainty, analysts said. Rose, of United National Consumer Supplies, said he spoke with third-party sellers who said they would rather take a sales hit this week than use up a lot of their pre-tariffs inventory now and risk seeing their profit margins suffer later. However, some independent businesses that market their products on Amazon are looking to Prime Day to make a dent in the inventory they built up earlier in the year to avoid tariffs. Home fragrance company Outdoor Fellow, which makes about 30% of its sales through Amazon's marketplace, gets most of its candle lids, labels, jars, reed diffusers and other items from China, founder Patrick Jones said. Fearing high costs from tariffs, Jones stocked up at the beginning of the year, roughly doubling his inventory. For Prime Day, he plans to offer bigger discounts, such as 32% off the price of a candle normally priced at $34, Jones said. 'All the product that we have on Amazon right now is still from the inventory that we got before the tariffs went into effect,' he said. 'So we're still able to offer the discount that we're planning on doing.' Jones said he was waiting to find out if the order he placed in June will incur large customs duties when the goods arrive from China in a few weeks. ___ AP Business Writer Mae Anderson contributed to this report.
San Francisco Chronicle
30 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Amazon extends Prime Day discounts to 4 days as retailers weigh tariff-related price increases
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is extending its annual Prime Day sales and offering new membership perks to Generation Z shoppers amid tariff-related price worries and possibly some consumer boredom with an event marking its 11th year. The e-commerce giant's promised blitz of summer deals for Prime members starts at 3:01 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday. For the first time, Seattle-based Amazon is holding the now-misnamed Prime Day over four days; the company launched the event in 2015 and expanded it to two days in 2019. Before wrapping up Prime Day 2025 early Friday, Amazon said it would have deals dropping as often as every 5 minutes during certain periods. Prime members ages 18-24, who pay $7.49 per month instead of the $14.99 that older customers not eligible for discounted rates pay for free shipping and other benefits, will receive 5% cash back on their purchases for a limited time. Amazon executives declined to comment on the potential impact of tariffs on Prime Day deals. The event is taking place two and a half months after an online news report sparked speculation that Amazon planned to display added tariff costs next to product prices on its website. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denounced the purported change as a 'hostile and political act' before Amazon clarified the idea had been floated for its low-cost Haul storefront but never approved. Amazon's past success with using Prime Day to drive sales and attract new members spurred other major retail chains to schedule competing sales in July. Best Buy, Target and Walmart are repeating the practice this year. Like Amazon, Walmart is adding two more days to its promotional period, which starts Tuesday and runs through July 13. The nation's largest retailer is making its summer deals available in stores as well as online for the first time. Will a longer Prime event lessen the urgency? Amazon expanded Prime Day this year because shoppers 'wanted more time to shop and save,' Amazon Prime Vice President Jamil Ghani recently told The Associated Press. Analysts are unsure the extra days will translate into more purchases given that renewed inflation worries and potential price increases from tariffs may make consumers less willing to spend. Amazon doesn't disclose Prime Day sales figures but said last year that the event achieved record global sales. Adobe Digital Insights predicts that the sales event will drive $23.8 billion in overall online spending from July 8 to July 11, 28.4% more than the similar period last year. In 2024 and 2023, online sales increased 11% and 6.1% during the comparable four days of July. Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, noted that Amazon's move to stretch the sales event to four days is a big opportunity to 'really amplify and accelerate the spending velocity.' Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights and strategy at software company Salesforce, noted that July sales in general have lost some momentum in recent years. Amazon is not a Salesforce customer, so the business software company is not privy to Prime Day figures. 'What we saw last year was that (shoppers) bought and then they were done, ' Schwartz said. 'We know that the consumer is still really cautious. So it's likely we could see a similar pattern where they come out early, they're ready to buy and then they take a step back.' How will rising costs from tariffs affect discounts? Amazon executives reported in May that the company and many of its third-party sellers tried to beat big import tax bills by stocking up on foreign goods before President Donald Trump's tariffs took effect. And because of that move, a fair number of third-party sellers hadn't changed their pricing at that time, Amazon said. Adobe Digital Insights' Pandya expects discounts to remain on par with last year and for other U.S. retail companies to mark 10% to 24% off the manufacturers' suggested retail price between Tuesday and Friday. Salesforce's Schwartz said she's noticed retailers becoming more precise with their discounts, such as offering promotion codes that apply to selected products instead of their entire websites. Will shoppers stick to necessities or splurge? Amazon Prime and other July sales have historically helped jump-start back-to-school spending and encouraged advance planners to buy other seasonal merchandise earlier. Analysts said they expected U.S. consumers to make purchases this week out of fear that tariffs will make items more expensive later. Brett Rose, CEO of United National Consumer Supplies, a wholesale distributor of overstocked goods like toys and beauty products, thinks shoppers will go for items like beauty essentials. 'They're going to buy more everyday items,' he said. What are some of the deals? As in past years, Amazon offered early deals leading up to Prime Day. For the big event, Amazon said it would have special discounts on Alexa-enabled products like Echo, Fire TV and Fire tablets. Walmart said its July sale would include a 32-inch Samsung smart monitor priced at $199 instead of $299.99; and $50 off a 50-Inch Vizio Smart TV with a standard retail price of $298.00. Target said it was maintaining its 2024 prices on key back-to-school items, including a $5 backpack and a selection of 20 school supplies totaling less than $20. How will Amazon's third-party sellers fare? Independent businesses that sell goods through Amazon account for more than 60% of the company's retail sales. Some third-party sellers are expected to sit out Prime Day and not offer discounts to preserve their profit margins during the ongoing tariff uncertainty, analysts said. Rose, of United National Consumer Supplies, said he spoke with third-party sellers who said they would rather take a sales hit this week than use up a lot of their pre-tariffs inventory now and risk seeing their profit margins suffer later. However, some independent businesses that market their products on Amazon are looking to Prime Day to make a dent in the inventory they built up earlier in the year to avoid tariffs. Home fragrance company Outdoor Fellow, which makes about 30% of its sales through Amazon's marketplace, gets most of its candle lids, labels, jars, reed diffusers and other items from China, founder Patrick Jones said. Fearing high costs from tariffs, Jones stocked up at the beginning of the year, roughly doubling his inventory. For Prime Day, he plans to offer bigger discounts, such as 32% off the price of a candle normally priced at $34, Jones said. 'All the product that we have on Amazon right now is still from the inventory that we got before the tariffs went into effect,' he said. 'So we're still able to offer the discount that we're planning on doing.'
CNN
40 minutes ago
- CNN
Today's trade deadline was no such thing
Three months later, President Donald Trump's endgame for his once market-rattling tariffs was supposed to arrive tonight at midnight. But it won't. As the clock rapidly ticked toward the long-standing July 9 end of Trump's 90-day pause on soaring 'reciprocal' tariff rates on more than 60 countries, Trump on Monday signed an executive action extending that reprieve until August 1. Despite significant progress with several trading partners, including India, Brazil, the European Union and several Asian countries, according to US officials, the global financial system has started to grapple with the reality that the deals, the details and even the deadline sit in a state of limbo. Trump's top trade and economic advisors insisted, as they have for the better part of the last two months, that deals will be announced in rapid succession this week. They also spent Sunday telling the world tariff rates wouldn't snap back into place until August 1, in an implicit hedge if those deal predictions once again proved hollow. It has been a whirlwind since then: Trump then announced on social media late Sunday night that he'd begin sending letters outlining the tariff rates or terms of bilateral agreements to trading partners. Then he announced a 25% tariff on Japan and South Korea and higher tariffs on a number of smaller trading partners Monday, with more letters expected to come in the days ahead. He also launched a new tariff threat at the 10-nation bloc known as BRICS, which he's long viewed as a direct and acute threat to US dominance in the global financial system. Trump didn't mention that several BRICS countries are top US trade partners and currently engaged in intensive bilateral trade talks with Trump's lead negotiators. The actual deadline – whether August 1 or some future date Trump announces on social media – is a lot like the months-long bilateral talks launched in early April: fuzzy on actual details, light on actual outcomes, ambiguous on actual goals, all while projecting unflinchingly bold predictions of success. All of it, most critically, contingent on the whims of the current inhabitant of the Oval Office. 'When you think about it, it's kind of the perfect window into the whole second term approach,' a trade lawyer who worked in Trump's first term told CNN. 'Everything revolves around the president, and you can safely assume he rather enjoys everything that entails.' Trump has spent the last 80-plus days fielding a steady stream of offers with concessions on market access for US products, reduced tariff rates, delayed tax and regulatory enforcement for US-based companies and a veritable potpourri of offers on unrelated policy matters thought to be important to his domestic agenda, according to multiple people involved in the process. Trump views the deadline – or deadlines – as the most critical leverage to squeeze trading partners for a few more concessions or to drop their own red lines in the ongoing bilateral talks, officials said. In other words, the pervasive uncertainty and ambiguity are kind of the point. 'I think what President Trump is concerned about is the quality of the deals, not the quantity,' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday on CNBC. The US economy has held up and overcome the dire predictions of catastrophe that sent the stock and bond markets into a sustained period of tumult through the spring. Wall Street has settled into a general state of Zen about Trump's actual tariff intentions after a series of pauses and de-escalations. The general exhaustion consuming investors after months on a hair trigger isn't an insignificant factor driving that view, according to several market participants, who nonetheless expressed little anxiety about the optimism that has driven stocks to record highs. Trump just signed the cornerstone of his legislative agenda into law, a major win. At the same time, the US has collected $81.5 billion in tariff revenue through June, according to the US Customs and Border Protection, only serving to bolster Trump's position, officials say. 'In his mind, he's in a no-lose situation,' the former official said. 'He's going to keep amping up the pressure.' That's the backdrop to keep in mind throughout the critical week ahead. The Trump administration has announced two bilateral agreements and a third with China that is better described as a de-escalation than a deal. That's not to dismiss the China détente, as the de facto trade embargo between the world's two largest economies that existed in April carried with it the potential to fracture the backbone of global commerce. Trump has inked a trade framework with the UK (which wasn't actually subject to the stratospheric 'reciprocal' rates announced on April 2 in the Rose Garden). The granular details of that agreement are still in process, officials said. Trump announced on social media last week that he'd signed off on a deal with Vietnam, which was facing a catastrophic 46% 'reciprocal' rate at the end of the 90-day pause. The agreement would implement a 20% tariff on the country and a more draconian penalty on goods deemed by the US to be of Chinese origin but passed through Vietnam to avoid harsher tariffs. The details remain opaque on how exactly that would be applied – or defined – and Vietnamese officials have been more cautious about declaring the agreement final. We got our first glimpse Monday of Trump's regularly promised trade letters, with missives sent to the leaders of South Korea, Japan, South Africa, Malaysia and several others that the president posted to Truth Social. He decried America's imbalance of trade with those countries, as well as tariffs and other non-tariff barriers they place on US goods. Trump said the door was open to negotiation, but he threatened the countries with higher tariffs if they retaliate. Is this how trade talks actually work? Not normally. Bessent during his CNBC interview described the contents like this: 'Thank you for wanting to trade with the United States of America. We welcome you as a trading partner, and here's the rate unless you want to come back and try to negotiate.' The administration is not seeking or planning to secure 'trade deals' in the historical sense. Those pacts, which take years to negotiate and even longer to implement, have never really been the goal. Instead, the White House is seeking frameworks with a heavy focus on market access for US industries and products, while at the same time including commitments to reduce or remove entirely regulatory and legislative barriers to US exports. So where do the crush of bilateral talks actually stand? India has long been viewed as the most likely major partner to sign onto a framework with the US and may still do so this week, though Indian officials have hardened their positions in recent days, according to US officials. India is also a member of the BRICS group, so it's unclear what Trump's tariff threat Sunday means for trade negotiations. South Korea had also been viewed for weeks as likely to reach an agreement, though Trump's auto tariffs remain a key sticking point in those talks, and Trump's letter Monday may have thrown a wrench in those gears. Japan steadily moved further away from an outcome in recent weeks, and Trump cast significant doubt on talks that once seemed on a path to a certain agreement. Japanese officials, who just weeks ago were scrambling to lay the groundwork for an announcement by last month's Group of Seven summit, have delivered far more pessimistic messages in their public statements in recent days. EU officials have signaled more optimism in the last few days about clinching a framework with Trump's trade negotiators after an intensive series of meetings and technical discussions in the last two weeks. Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand have all delivered substantial offers to their US counterparts in the last 10 days in an effort to move to the front of the line for an agreement and are likely candidates for any near-term deal in the next few days, officials said. Brazil has ramped up its efforts to secure an agreement, including bilateral talks at the end of last week designed to expand on an earlier offer to sharply reduce tariffs on certain US products, officials said. The most prevalent point of contention among foreign trade teams has been a lack of clarity on what their US counterparts envision for any final agreement. But the most biggest roadblock in the more expansive negotiations has been the existence – or promised imposition - of Trump's sectoral tariffs on autos, steel and pharmaceuticals, officials said.
