Latest news with #Shiprocket
Hans India
12-07-2025
- Business
- Hans India
Paytm to Go ‘AI-First', Says Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma has expressed confidence that artificial intelligence (AI) will transform not just businesses, but the very nature of work itself. Speaking at Shiprocket's Shivir: AI Commerce Edition, Sharma emphasized that AI is set to become deeply integrated into daily operations, even taking on leadership roles like Chief Financial Officer (CFO). "We must learn to use AI not just as a tool, but as a co-worker, or even an executive," Sharma said, according to a report by the Economic Times. He believes that while AI will automate many routine human tasks, it will also unlock new career paths in emerging technology fields. Sharma also revealed that Paytm is undergoing a strategic transformation to become an "AI-first" organization, embedding machine intelligence across its core operations. As part of this effort, the company is currently piloting an innovative AI-powered passbook that turns monthly spending data into personalized rap tracks — a unique blend of financial insight and creativity. Though there's no confirmed launch date yet, Sharma noted that the feature is in development and will be available to users soon. Despite the growing role of AI, Sharma clarified that recent workforce reductions at Paytm were driven largely by external regulatory factors. During the March 2024 quarter, Paytm's sales team shrank by around 3,500 employees — a consequence of restrictions imposed by the Reserve Bank of India on Paytm Payments Bank. This brought the company's total headcount down to 36,521. In its continued push into AI, Paytm had earlier partnered with Perplexity, an AI-driven search engine startup, to integrate conversational search capabilities within its app. These moves mark a larger strategy to enrich user experience with intelligent technologies. Across the tech sector, 2025 has already seen over 100,000 job cuts worldwide. Companies like Meta, Google, and Intel are reducing their workforce as they restructure around AI-led operations and grapple with economic challenges such as inflation, rising interest rates, and tighter corporate budgets. Yet, this isn't simply about cost-cutting. Businesses are fundamentally reorganizing their teams — phasing out traditional roles while hiring specialists in AI, machine learning, and data science. AI is now central to business innovation, redefining how companies operate and scale in an evolving digital ecosystem. As Sharma puts it, embracing AI is no longer optional — it's the next step for companies looking to stay competitive and forward-thinking.
Time of India
11-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
AI vision: Founder Peyush Bansal bets on ‘small, beautiful' deals to bolster Lenskart's tech capabilities
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills Eyewear retail chain Lenskart is continuing to invest in and acquire artificial intelligence (AI) companies to strengthen its technological capabilities, founder Peyush Bansal said on Friday.'We are definitely investing and acquiring a lot of AI companies right now. I always thought acquisition was a good way to speed up technology. It's not the first time. I like small, beautiful deals, which are building tech, and that has always enhanced the tech capabilities,' Bansal said at Shiprocket's Shivir, AI Commerce Edition: Made for this month, Lenskart invested in Ajna Lens, a Mumbai-based deeptech company building AI-powered XR company is reported to be planning to acquire location AI startup GeoIQ. Earlier in 2023, Lenskart had acquired Tango Eye, an AI-based computer vision startup.'We think technology first for problem solving, and AI makes it a lot more exciting for us, because for us, that journey is that the base is built, and we feed each other now. We have the super power to do things which we could not have imagined earlier,' he according to Bansal, while the company adopted AI quite early on, it is much simpler for newer firms to build with AI from the ground up than it is for large companies, which have to transform their existing plans to file papers for its draft initial public offering (IPO) this year, targeting a potential $10 billion valuation for a $1 billion public issue, ET had reported July 10, ET reported that the Gurugram-based company is likely to issue additional shares to Bansal through a structured payout arrangement, which could increase his stake in the company by 1.5-2%.The SoftBank-backed company closed a $200 million secondary round in June last year at a $5 billion valuation, with investments from Singapore sovereign fund Temasek and US financial services giant Fidelity. A month later, founders Bansal, Neha Bansal, Amit Choudhary, and Sumeet Kapahi invested almost $20 million in the company produces 25 million frames and 30-40 million lenses annually. It operates more than 2,500 stores in India and Southeast Asia and has a strong online presence.
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Business Standard
11-07-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Shiprocket launches multimodal AI model for MSMEs and D2C businesses
E-commerce enablement platform Shiprocket on Friday launched a multimodal AI engine, for MSMEs and D2C businesses. The AI stack is developed to support multilingual commerce, regional customer experiences, and scalable automation, the company said in a statement. "Developed in partnership with Ultrasafe Inc. through a joint venture, brings together voice, text, and image intelligence in 9-plus Indian languages, built, trained, and hosted entirely within India. The platform is set to reach over 1 lakh MSMEs within the first year, driving time and cost savings across cataloguing, marketing, fulfilment, and customer engagement workflows," it said. With this launch, Shiprocket looks to tap into India's $ 1 trillion MSME economy and growing digital commerce opportunity, projected to reach $ 350 billion by 2030. MSMEs account for over 30 per cent of the country's Gross Value Added (GVA). trained on Indian commerce data, is hosted entirely within the country, and purpose-built for domestic law and use cases. It leverages Larsen & Toubro's GPU-powered infrastructure Cloudfiniti to manage its AI workload and ensure data sovereignty. will be directly embedded into Shiprocket's seller panel, featuring bilingual product listings, ad creatives, GST-compliant invoices, WhatsApp voice-to-order automation, Image-to-alt-text SEO optimisation, and sale recommendations. An early pilot of the LLM has shown about 30-40 per cent time saving in catalogue and content creation, thus improving speed-to-market for MSMEs, the company said. "We've adapted from the ground up for Indian languages, commerce workflows, and MSME needs. By embedding it directly into our platform, we're giving over 1.5 lakh sellers instant access to tools that are intelligent, local, and scalable, levelling the playing field for businesses across Bharat," Shiprocket MD and CEO Saahil Goel said. According to a report launched on Friday by Shiprocket and KPMG, India's D2C market, with over 11,000 brands, is projected to hit $ 100 billion in 2025. The e-retail market size is estimated at $ 125 billion in 2025, with 220 million online shoppers, the report said.
Time of India
11-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Brands look to quick commerce for fast growth, but costs remain a concern
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills The operating cost on quick commerce is significantly high for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands in India, said Simran Khara, founder and CEO of Koparo, which sells sustainable home care products."The cost to serve on quick commerce is fairly high for brands," Khara noted, especially in categories where margins are already to Khara, 33% of the startup's revenue comes from quick commerce channels."Quick commerce isn't just fast — it's meaningful. It's become a major pillar of our fulfilment model," Khara was speaking at a panel discussion at Shiprocket's Shivir, AI Commerce Edition: Made for Bharat, on India's D2C boom converges with the rise of quick commerce, brands are being forced to rethink not just how they fulfil demand, but also how they create responding within five minutes to a customer query have a high conversion rate, and a delay of even a second in response time implies profits drop by 7%, Meta's director of agencies and VC partnerships, Gaurav Jeet Singh, further added that Meta platforms like WhatsApp can be used by quick commerce platforms for customer retention ET reported on Friday that India's quick commerce market is estimated to have reached around Rs 64,000 crore in FY25, growing at a staggering compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 142% during May ET reported, about 300 regional and small brands had signed up with quick commerce and food delivery platforms in the past month to take advantage of the Indian Premier League (IPL) to a recent report by ICICI Securities , the performance marketing spends of both Blinkit and Instamart have remained muted in the first quarter of FY26. This expense represents the spending on customer acquisition and promoting offerings such as 10-minute food delivery.
Deccan Herald
11-07-2025
- Business
- Deccan Herald
Shiprocket launches multimodal AI model Shunya.ai
New Delhi, E-commerce enablement platform Shiprocket on Friday launched a multimodal AI engine, for MSMEs and D2C AI stack is developed to support multilingual commerce, regional customer experiences, and scalable automation, the company said in a statement.."Developed in partnership with Ultrasafe Inc. through a joint venture, brings together voice, text, and image intelligence in 9-plus Indian languages, built, trained, and hosted entirely within India. The platform is set to reach over 1 lakh MSMEs within the first year, driving time and cost savings across cataloguing, marketing, fulfilment, and customer engagement workflows," it this launch, Shiprocket looks to tap into India's USD 1 trillion MSME economy and growing digital commerce opportunity, projected to reach USD 350 billion by 2030. MSMEs account for over 30 per cent of the country's Gross Value Added (GVA).. trained on Indian commerce data, is hosted entirely within the country, and purpose-built for domestic law and use leverages Larsen & Toubro's GPU-powered infrastructure Cloudfiniti to manage its AI workload and ensure data will be directly embedded into Shiprocket's seller panel, featuring bilingual product listings, ad creatives, GST-compliant invoices, WhatsApp voice-to-order automation, Image-to-alt-text SEO optimisation, and sale early pilot of the LLM has shown about 30-40 per cent time saving in catalogue and content creation, thus improving speed-to-market for MSMEs, the company said.."We've adapted from the ground up for Indian languages, commerce workflows, and MSME needs. By embedding it directly into our platform, we're giving over 1.5 lakh sellers instant access to tools that are intelligent, local, and scalable, levelling the playing field for businesses across Bharat," Shiprocket MD and CEO Saahil Goel to a report launched on Friday by Shiprocket and KPMG, India's D2C market, with over 11,000 brands, is projected to hit USD 100 billion in 2025. The e-retail market size is estimated at USD 125 billion in 2025, with 220 million online shoppers, the report commerce is expanding rapidly and reaching remote areas, opening up new growth avenues for MSMEs and enabling small businesses across India to meet rising consumer demand for instant delivery. Quick commerce is expected to reach USD 5 billion GMV in 2025, it added.
