Author: Arabian Media staff

India has set an ambitious goal of electrifying 40% of all new buses by 2030, but the roads tell a different story. According to Vahan data, only 3,066 e-buses have been registered year-to-date, still short of the 2024 peak of 3,611. This gap indicates that much of the action this year has been happening at the order and production stages, forecasting a gradual pick up in registrations late this year and beginning next year as most e-bus manufacturers take between 3-12 months to fulfil orders. A recent report by CareEdge reinforces this indication. The report notes that annual sales volume of e-buses…

These days, people typically skip, mute, or block ads, and instead choose to engage with short, sharp content on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Netflix. The Salt Inc was founded in early 2022 to address the need for engaging content. It is a ‘conversation agency’ focused on helping brands create meaningful conversations with their consumers through content and strategy.“Advertising is not working anymore. People now consume only content, yet there’s no agency focused on content strategy at scale,” says Neena DasGupta, who drives business and strategy at the firm.Her career spans nearly three decades in media and content. An economics…

SoftBank’s Vision Fund is mulling laying off 20% of its workforce, Reuters reported citing a person familiar with the matter. Vision Fund is one of the largest technology-focused investment funds in the world and has invested in a number of Indian companies including EV-maker Ola Electric and food-tech major Swiggy. According to the report, SoftBank, which employed about 282 people as of March-end, is looking to let go of more than 50 roles. The proposed layoffs come in the backdrop of the firm’s shift in strategy to write large cheques to back innovation in artificial intelligence. This includes its plan…

Formula One’s surge in popularity, along with shows like Drive to Survive, has fueled curiosity about racing. But motorsports is an expensive hobby and comes with safety regulations that keep many from experiencing the thrill. That’s where simulation games come in. They close the gap between dreams and reality, letting people try activities that are normally expensive or risky.They also serve as a tool for entertainment, education, and skill-building with the freedom to explore without real-world limits. The market, worth $1.8 billion in 2023, is expected to grow at over 3% annually through 2032. The beginning of Virtual Racing HubIn 2020, Akshat…

In India, health insurance has long been designed to step in only after a medical crisis, much like a seatbelt that activates post-impact. This reactive model, focused largely on hospitalisation costs, is becoming increasingly unsustainable in the face of rising chronic diseases, higher claims, and growing expectations from policyholders.The healthcare sector is now at a turning point. For the system to remain both affordable and effective, prevention must move from the margins to the centre. And it is health insurers, more than hospitals or doctors, who are best placed to lead this change. With access to patient data, touchpoints across…

Hello,What happens when two tech titans shake hands?In an unprecedented alliance, Nvidia said it would invest $5 billion in Intel. This comes weeks after the White House engineered an extraordinary deal for the US government to take a massive stake in the struggling chipmaker.The stake will instantly make Nvidia one of Intel’s largest shareholders, giving it roughly 4% of the company. A timely save for Intel, which has had several turnaround efforts fall flat in recent years. But wait, there’s a challenger to Nvidia’s throne: Huawei detailed timelines for its Ascend AI chips and Kunpeng server chips, and said it was…

“It’s always been my dream to be a CEO of a fashion brand,” Ginny Seymour, CEO of contemporary women’s fashion brand Aligne, tells Entrepreneur.Image Credit: Courtesy of Aligne. CEO Ginny Seymour.A fashion industry veteran who started her career as a contemporary buyer at Saks Fifth Avenue, Seymour had an opportunity to realize that goal with Aligne, originally founded by Dalbir Bains as a wholesale women’s fashion brand in London in 2020. Seymour envisioned a new era for Aligne — the brand could fill a white space she saw in modern women’s clothing: the need for design-led, wearable pieces at an…

A major U.S. bank, with over $2.6 billion in assets, just raised its minimum wage.Bank of America announced on Wednesday that it would raise its minimum pay for its full- and part-time U.S. hourly workers to $25 an hour. The change will take effect next month, pushing the minimum salary for full-time U.S. employees to over $50,000 annually.This pay increase is the final phase of a plan announced in 2017 to boost the bank’s base pay from $15 an hour to $25 an hour by 2025. (Employees have been making $24 an hour since October 2024.) With the raise to…

The growing demand for AI-led services has put India on the path to becoming a key global hub for AI-powered data centres.AI data centres are specialised facilities that support the intense computational and data demands of artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads. In the run-up to TechSparks 2025, where AI takes centre-stage, we explore the elements that put India in a pre-eminent position in this ecosystem. First, the country is said to have over 900 million internet subscribers by 2025, who provide a great platform for massive consumption of data. Second, the $280-billion technology industry in the country has a…

In late 2022, when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introduced its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot, or the digital rupee or e₹, it was a cautiously optimistic step towards the future of money. For a country that sees billions of UPI transactions on a monthly basis, bringing a new currency into existence wasn’t about revolutionising the wheel—it was about creating a wiser one.But the reality is this: a government cannot by itself popularise a digital currency. Not in a nation so large, so heterogeneous, and so digitally advanced as India. To really take root outside of pilot projects…