From Eternal Ltd, formerly Zomato, granting a total of 64.77 lakh stock options to eligible employees to the decline in VC funding for the first half of 2025, YourStory brings you today’s headlines with the latest developments across sectors.
Featured stories
How a Chennai-born researcher helped build ChatGPT—the AI transforming the world
While ChatGPT became a household name overnight, its foundation was years in the making. Arvind Neelakantan, the Chennai-born engineer who helped architect GPT-3, reveals how academic curiosity and small experiments laid the groundwork for its development, which led to the big break.
VC funding into Indian startups decline by 11% in H1 of 2025
Venture capital (VC) funding into Indian startups declined by 11% in the first half of 2025 primarily due to lower number of high value transactions and added to this the uncertain external macro economic environment was another important factor.
The total VC funding for the first half of 2025 stood at $5.7 billion as compared to $6.4 billion in the similar period of 2024, reflecting a 11% decline, according to YourStory Research. Compared to the second half of 2024 where the total funding was $7.2 billion, the fall was even steeper by 21%.
Terex Ventures, Tokyo AI to fuel $200M AI investment across India, Japan, UAE
Global investment and advisory firm Terex Ventures has collaborated with Tokyo AI, an AI community based in Japan, to fuel $200 million in cross-border investments in artificial intelligence across India, Japan, and the UAE.
The joint effort aims to connect prominent investors and AI-focused enterprises with growth-stage companies, strengthening market expansion in key global hubs, it said in a statement.
Boba Bhai is catering to young Indians’ craving for Korean street food and bubble tea
Founded in 2023, Bengaluru-based QSR brand Boba Bhai operates over 60 outlets across the country, serving bubble tea and Korean-style fast food.
Boba Bhai, which sells Korea-inspired fast food and bubble tea, was founded in 2023 by Dhruv Kohli. Its menu features bold, spicy, and cheesy flavours that echo Korean food trends, tailored to Indian tastes, paired with bubble tea, which is popular in modern Korean cafés and street food spots.
How DIKSHa is skilling rural India, one woman at a time
Backed by the Dalmia Bharat Foundation, the DIKSHa initiative is transforming the lives of thousands of women across rural and semi-urban India through job-ready training, confidence-building, and community support.
Although DIKSHa initially saw mostly male enrollments, the foundation quickly realized that its true impact lay in empowering women. New gender-sensitive courses like Sewing Machine Operator, Assistant Beauty Therapist, and Home Health Aide were introduced, leading to a dramatic rise in female participation.
Latest news
Eternal grants 64.77 lakh ESOPs worth Rs 168 crore
Eternal Ltd, formerly Zomato, has granted a total of 64.77 lakh stock options to eligible employees under Foodie Bay Employee Stock Option Plan 2014 and Zomato Employee Stock Option Plan 2021. According to the company’s regulatory filing on Tuesday, each stock option is convertible into one equity share at an exercise price of Rs 1.
The stock options will be exercisable within 10 years from the date of vesting or 12 years from the company’s listing date, whichever is later. All shares arising from the exercise of these options will rank pari-passu with existing shares and will not be subject to any lock-in.
Funding news
Bambrew raises Rs 90 Cr from Ashok Goel and Enrission India Capital
Bengaluru-headquartered sustainable packaging material startup Bambrew has raised Rs 90 crore ($10.3 million approx.) from Ashok Goel, former Managing Director of Essel Propack; along with Japanese venture capital firm Enrission India Capital.
Bambrew said it will use this capital towards R&D, expansion of its manufacturing capacity, and diversification of product product as it looks to enter markets of Middle East and North America.
Deeptech startup CIMware raises $2.3M to tackle data center scalability crisis
CIMware, a Bengaluru-based deep-tech infrastructure startup, has raised $2.3 million in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Transition VC.
<figure class="image embed" contenteditable="false" data-id="576054" data-url="https://images.yourstory.com/cs/2/e641e900925711e9926177f451727da9/RajivGanthFounderCEOCIMware-1751444805039.jpeg" data-alt="Rajiv Ganth, Founder & CEO, CIMware" data-caption="
Rajiv Ganth, Founder & CEO, CIMware
” style=”float: left; margin-right: 20px; width:50%; height:auto” align=”center”> Rajiv Ganth, Founder & CEO, CIMware
Founded by Rajiv Ganth, a veteran with over two decades in distributed systems and data center engineering, CIMware is reimagining how hyperscale compute, storage, and networking are deployed at the very top of the infrastructure stack.
Its flagship product, CIM—short for Composable Infrastructure Module—is the world’s first smart switch that converges compute, storage, and networking into a single, ultra-efficient, rack-level unit. Developed in India and backed by multiple patents, CIMware is purpose-built for the modern workloads—AI, ML, social media, video streaming—that are overwhelming traditional data centers.
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Other news
QNu Labs unveils QConnect and QVerse solutions
QNu Labs, a cybersecurity platform provider, has announced the launch of QConnect and QVerse, its new cybersecurity solutions.
Both these platforms have been fully conceptualized, designed, built, deployed and commercialized in India and globally. These platforms get deployed easily by integrating with existing infrastructure across defence, government, telecom, BFSI, healthcare, energy, automobile, PSU and critical enterprises. Also, these help in scaling seamlessly for both data in rest and data in transit.
(This article will be updated with the latest news throughout the day.)
Edited by Jyoti Narayan
