When Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, landed in Beijing earlier this week, the optics were carefully managed. High-level diplomatic visit. Handshakes, panel sessions, a theme — “From Vision to Value” — that sounded like a corporate rebranding exercise. But what actually happened at the UAE-China Business Promotion Conference on April 13 was something more concrete: 24 Memorandums of Understanding signed in a single afternoon, with ministers from both sides on stage, and a data point that stopped the room.

UAE-China non-oil trade hit $111.5 billion in 2025 — a record, achieved at a growth rate of 24.5% in a single year, according to UAE Minister of Foreign Trade Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi. That figure didn’t arrive quietly. It arrived with the Crown Prince in the room, with Chinese ministers watching, and with a crowd of Emirati business executives who, by multiple accounts, started their speeches with “Ni Hao.”

The symbolism wasn’t accidental. Neither was the timing.

A Partnership That Has Outgrown the Word ‘Partnership’

The UAE and China have been talking about deepening ties for years. What’s changed in 2025 and early 2026 is that the relationship has moved from aspirational language to actual architecture. China is now the UAE’s largest trading partner, accounting for roughly 11% of the country’s total non-oil trade. The UAE, in turn, is China’s top trading partner across the Middle East and Africa — and accounts for more than 20% of China’s non-oil trade with the entire region.

There are approximately 17,000 trade licenses linked to Chinese nationals currently active in the UAE. China ranks as the third-largest source of foreign direct investment into the country. In Dubai’s free zones alone, more than 1,000 Chinese firms are registered — a share that has been growing by as much as a quarter annually for three consecutive years, according to reporting by The Economist.

The sectors driving this aren’t just oil and construction anymore. At the Beijing conference, you had Etihad Airways talking about logistics corridors. Elite Agro Holding, a UAE-based agricultural company, sitting across a table from Wuhan Plant Ark Intelligent Technology to discuss importing Chinese AI models for plant-growth management. Dreame, a Chinese robotics brand, quietly claiming close to half of the UAE’s robotic vacuum cleaner market after just a few years of focus.

The word Mamoon Sbeih, Chief International Business Development Officer at advisory firm Apco, used at the conference was “stability.” China, he said, offers “clear stability” in a world that no longer does. That framing — China as the predictable bet in unpredictable times — is one you hear more frequently in Gulf business circles now, and it reflects something real. The US tariff policy has made American market access feel volatile. European demand is sluggish. The Gulf is looking east, and it’s not bothering to be subtle about it.

Where This Leaves India

Here is where the story gets complicated for New Delhi.

The UAE is not a peripheral relationship for India. It is India’s third-largest trading partner globally, behind only the US and China. Bilateral trade crossed $100 billion in FY 2024-25, under the terms of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement signed in 2022. More than 3.5 million Indians live in the UAE — roughly 30% of the Emirates’ total population, the largest single expatriate community in the country. India’s exports to the UAE include everything from engineering goods and gems to petroleum products and electronics.

In January 2026, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited India, and the two countries signed a $3 billion LNG supply deal, with a stated ambition to double bilateral trade to $200 billion by 2032. The relationship, at least on paper, looks healthy.

But the geometry of the situation is worth examining carefully. India’s trade relationship with China tells a different story. Bilateral trade between India and China reached approximately $127.7 billion in FY 2024-25 — but India’s trade deficit with Beijing expanded to nearly $99.2 billion in the same year. The imports are dominated by Chinese electronics, machinery, and chemicals. Indian exports to China, at roughly $14.25 billion, are a fraction of the flow going the other way. The Line of Actual Control dispute, despite partial disengagement at Depsang and Demchok in late 2024, continues to simmer. The reset is real, but fragile.

So India’s position in 2026 looks like this: its most important Gulf partner is sprinting toward deeper integration with a country India views with strategic caution. The UAE is not choosing sides — it has been consistent about that posture. But it is making economic choices that will reshape the Gulf’s trade infrastructure in ways that India will have to navigate.

“Anybody who understands economics will want to build relationship with China.” — Mamoon Sbeih, Apco, at the UAE-China Business Promotion Conference, Beijing, April 14, 2026

That line landed well in a Beijing conference room. In New Delhi, it reads differently.

The Hub Problem

The UAE’s strategic value to China isn’t just as a trading partner — it’s as a logistics gateway. Dubai sits between Chinese manufacturing and African and European consumer markets. It handles the re-export of Chinese goods across MENA. It houses the five largest Chinese banks in the DIFC. Chinese issuers have listed more than $22 billion in debt instruments on Nasdaq Dubai. The financial plumbing between Beijing and the Gulf increasingly runs through the UAE.

India has its own ambitions for this lane. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, or IMEEC, announced at the G20 Summit in 2023, was explicitly designed to create an India-anchored trade route through the Gulf to Europe — a structural alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The UAE is a core node in that corridor. So is Saudi Arabia.

The problem is that IMEEC remains largely a paper ambition, slowed by financing gaps and political complexity. Meanwhile, China’s physical presence in UAE ports, free zones, and financial institutions is already built. When Etihad’s cargo chief says he’s strengthening logistical ties with China to find “certainty” in global trade, he’s describing a network that India’s corridor was supposed to eventually compete with.

This isn’t a crisis for India’s Gulf strategy. But it is a pressure point. The UAE will not sacrifice its relationship with New Delhi — the Indian diaspora, remittances, and bilateral trade are too central to its own economic model. But the UAE is also a pragmatic actor, and it has decided that deepening the China relationship is worth pursuing aggressively, regardless of how that lands in New Delhi’s strategic calculations.

What Indian Businesses Should Actually Watch

The immediate read for Indian companies operating in or through the UAE is one of competitive intensity, not crisis. Chinese brands are no longer using the UAE purely as a transit hub. They are building consumer market share there. Dreame’s near-50% share of the UAE’s robotic vacuum category is one data point, but the pattern repeats across consumer electronics, construction materials, and increasingly, software and AI services.

Indian IT and technology companies have long used the UAE as their MENA beachhead. That advantage holds, but the competition for mindshare — with UAE businesses, with UAE government entities, with UAE sovereign funds — is intensifying as Chinese firms become more locally embedded and more locally trusted.

The 24 MOUs signed in Beijing this week cover sectors that Indian companies care about: logistics, technology, agriculture, and financial services. The details of those agreements aren’t yet fully public. But each one represents a piece of the UAE’s economic roadmap that a Chinese partner just claimed.

India’s answer to this — if it has one — is the CEPA, the IMEEC, and the soft power of its diaspora. Those are real assets. But in a week where the UAE’s Crown Prince flew to Beijing, signed 24 deals, and stood next to a minister confirming $111.5 billion in trade, the asymmetry of momentum is hard to ignore.

The new Silk Road isn’t a metaphor. It’s a conference room in Beijing, a pile of signed MOUs, and a Dreame vacuum cleaner in a Dubai apartment.

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Timing matters in product launches. And few moments could be better timed than a gas-free cooking appliance arriving just as LPG prices surge, cylinders run short in several cities, and geopolitical disruption rattles fuel supply chains. That is exactly the moment the APAPL Electric Flame Plasma Stove found itself in — boosted by a social media post from Union Minister Pralhad Joshi and amplified by a wave of coverage from major Indian publications.

Yesterday, an Indian company demonstrated an imported stove that uses electricity to generate flame-like burners, similar to LPG, for cooking. I was truly impressed by this innovative technology and would like to see Indian manufacturers adopt and scale it domestically.

When… pic.twitter.com/AQaNePu9N4

— Pralhad Joshi (@JoshiPralhad) April 10, 2026

The excitement is understandable. The questions are worth asking anyway.

What the technology actually is

Plasma is the fourth state of matter — a gas that has been energised so intensely that electrons separate from their atoms, creating an ionised, highly energetic state. This is not exotic science fiction. Plasma exists in lightning, in neon signs, and in industrial cutting equipment used across manufacturing sectors.

A plasma stove applies this phenomenon to cooking. An electric current inside the device creates a plasma arc — a concentrated, directed stream of extreme heat that produces a visible, flame-like output. Unlike an induction cooktop, which heats cookware indirectly through a magnetic field and only works with specific utensils, a plasma stove generates direct radiant heat. The result, in theory, is a cooking experience that feels far closer to a gas burner — visible flame, all-utensil compatibility, instant response — but powered entirely by electricity and producing no combustion emissions.

On those technical fundamentals, plasma cooking is a real and established concept. The question is whether it has made the jump from industrial application to a reliable, affordable kitchen appliance.

What we know about APAPL — and what we don’t

ADVNCEPROTEC AUTOMATION PRIVATE LIMITED (APAPL) is a Greater Noida-based company that describes its focus as automation, electronics, safety, and defence solutions. The plasma stove product appears on IndiaMart with a specification sheet listing power options from 2,500W to 6,000W, a stated temperature range, and a price of approximately ₹35,000 for single and double burner variants.

What is not publicly available: independent laboratory testing of those specifications, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) certification details, confirmed retail distribution, or any third-party verification of efficiency or safety claims. The demonstrations circulating online — including the clip shared by Minister Joshi — show the product working, but social media clips are not the same as independent performance data.

To be clear, this is not an accusation of fraud. Early-stage products often exist in exactly this space — real technology, genuine intent, limited commercial infrastructure. But readers considering a ₹35,000 purchase deserve to know where on that curve this product sits. Right now, based on publicly available information, it sits closer to the beginning.

Why India has every reason to want this to work

Set aside the product-specific questions for a moment, because the structural case for plasma cooking in India is genuinely compelling.

India has over 300 million households that depend on LPG for daily cooking. Cylinder prices have risen repeatedly over the past two years. Piped gas infrastructure remains concentrated in urban centres. Meanwhile, PM Surya Ghar Yojana is actively pushing rooftop solar adoption — which means a growing number of Indian homes are generating their own electricity. A cooking appliance that runs on electricity and eliminates the cylinder supply chain entirely is not just a convenience upgrade; it is a structural fit with where India’s energy policy is headed.

The commercial kitchen segment makes the near-term case even stronger. Cloud kitchens, food trucks, and hotel kitchens face real logistical friction around LPG storage and refilling. A high-efficiency electric alternative that works with all existing cookware and delivers gas-like performance would have obvious operational appeal — and at ₹35,000, the price point is far less prohibitive for a commercial buyer than a household one.

The honest challenges

Three barriers stand between the plasma stove and mainstream Indian kitchen adoption, and none of them are trivial.

The first is power draw. A 2,500W–6,000W appliance requires a stable, dedicated electrical circuit. Many Indian homes — particularly in Tier-2 cities and rural areas — are not wired to handle sustained loads at that level without tripping breakers or risking damage. This is not an insurmountable problem, but it is a real infrastructure dependency that replaces one supply constraint with another.

The second is price. At ₹35,000, the plasma stove is approximately 10 to 15 times the cost of a standard LPG stove. For household adoption to reach any meaningful scale, manufacturing needs to localise, competition needs to enter the market, and the price needs to fall substantially — likely below ₹10,000–15,000. That is possible with scale, but it has not happened yet.

The third is awareness and after-sales infrastructure. Even if a consumer buys the product today, the support ecosystem — service centres, spare parts, trained technicians — does not yet exist in any meaningful way outside of the manufacturer’s own channels. For a high-value kitchen appliance, that is a significant adoption barrier.

What would change the picture?

The plasma stove story is not over — it may barely have started. But for it to move from viral curiosity to a genuine kitchen alternative, several things would need to happen in sequence.

BIS certification would establish baseline safety and performance standards and give buyers a credible reference point. Independent third-party testing of efficiency and temperature claims would let the product speak for itself without relying on manufacturer specs. Local manufacturing partnerships — potentially under Make in India incentives — would drive down cost. And a distribution network beyond IndiaMart B2B inquiries would make the product accessible to the consumers it is ostensibly targeting.

None of that is impossible. India has seen faster adoption curves for clean energy technology when the policy environment, pricing, and infrastructure aligned. The plasma stove could follow a similar path.

Bottom Line

The plasma electric stove is solving a real problem with real technology. The Indian need — reducing LPG dependence, integrating with solar energy, enabling cleaner household cooking — is genuine and growing. But as a product available today, it is early-stage, commercially unverified, and priced for commercial kitchens rather than household budgets. Watch this space seriously. Just don’t disconnect your gas connection yet.

The post India’s viral plasma stove promises gas-free cooking — but is it ready for your kitchen? appeared first on LAFFAZ.

Updated — April 15, 2026

Caterpillar Inc. has acquired Monarch Tractor, according to people familiar with the matter — days after the agri-tech startup shut down, terminated all staff, and vacated its Livermore headquarters. The deal was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Caterpillar and Monarch did not respond to requests for comment.

Monarch confirmed the sale in a LinkedIn post, stating its technology had been bought by “a large global equipment manufacturer,” without naming the acquirer. “Building and scaling a new tractor platform in agriculture came with unforeseen challenges. We had to make difficult decisions,” the company wrote, describing a shift from hardware manufacturing toward licensing its autonomous technology for use in tractors and construction equipment — a segment that is central to Caterpillar’s roughly $369 billion business.

The acquisition covers Monarch’s intellectual property and self-driving technology. It does not appear to include a restart of tractor manufacturing or a resolution to the pending dealer lawsuits, in which multiple dealerships are seeking damages over tractors that allegedly failed to operate autonomously as advertised. A federal mediation in those cases remains scheduled for July 2026.

The deal lands Monarch’s autonomous EV stack inside one of the world’s largest equipment manufacturers — a company with the distribution scale and capital depth that the startup never had. Whether Caterpillar deploys the technology in agriculture, construction, or both remains to be seen. The original article continues below.

Monarch Tractor, the California-based agri-tech startup co-founded by Hyderabad-born Praveen Penmetsa, has shut down. On April 3, 2026, the company terminated its entire workforce, vacated its Livermore headquarters, and left more than 110 unsold electric tractors behind — marking the end of one of the most heavily funded agricultural robotics ventures in history.

The company had raised over $240 million in venture capital, including a $133 million Series C in August 2024 — at the time the largest single fundraise in agricultural robotics. Its flagship product, the MK-V, was marketed as the world’s first fully electric, “driver-optional” smart tractor and was named one of Time magazine’s best inventions of 2023.

It never delivered on that promise.

In September 2025, multiple dealerships filed federal lawsuits alleging the tractors were unable to operate autonomously as advertised. Burks Tractor, an Idaho dealership, paid $773,088 for ten units and alleged in its complaint that the machines “did not perform as represented” and that Monarch’s own sales team had admitted in writing that the tractors’ autonomy “was limited.” CNH Industrial, a strategic investor, recorded a $62 million impairment charge tied to its Monarch stake in Q4 2025.

“It totally failed. It was actually quite dangerous.” — Patrick O’Connor, California winemaker and early Monarch customer

nationaltoday.com

Penmetsa, 45, was born and raised in Hyderabad and comes from a family of rice farmers in Telangana. The idea for an autonomous tractor was sparked during a 2012 visit home, when persistent power cuts led him to imagine battery-powered farm equipment that could double as rural energy storage. He even built a prototype and tested it in Maharajpet, a village near Hyderabad, with USAID funding. “One day I want to bring it to India,” he told a publication in 2023. “And see it on the rice farms.”

That day never came. By early 2026, Foxconn — Monarch’s sole manufacturing partner — had sold its Ohio factory to SoftBank for an AI data centre, cutting off production entirely. A last-minute pivot to a software licensing model failed to secure a runway. In January 2026, the startup’s own legal team filed motions to withdraw, stating the company would no longer pay their fees. Co-founder Carlo Mondavi publicly confirmed he had left approximately a year earlier over disagreements with Penmetsa, adding that the tractors “had real first-gen challenges, and farmers shouldn’t be the ones carrying that burden.”

Monarch’s assets and intellectual property are expected to be sold. A federal court has consolidated the dealer lawsuits, with mediation scheduled for July 2026.

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There is a version of Minu Margeret‘s story that writes itself easily — MBA from the Indian School of Business, career stops at Goldman Sachs, Unilever, Wipro, and PhonePe, then founder of a fast-growing women’s activewear brand. The trajectory of the high-achiever who spots a market gap and fills it. Neat. Predictable. And almost entirely beside the point.

The real story starts with the frustration that followed her for years. A national-level Ultimate Frisbee player, Margeret could not find activewear in India that worked for her body. Clothes comfortable enough to sit in came apart under movement. Those that stretched felt plasticky, or compressed so aggressively they left marks. For someone in genuine athletic contexts every day, this wasn’t a minor problem — it was a category-wide failure. And it wasn’t hers alone. Women account for 56.8 percent of India’s activewear market (Grand View Research, 2025), yet the products available were largely designed by and for men, then resized for women as an afterthought.

When the pandemic locked everything down in March 2020, Margeret made a decision that would define BlissClub for years to come. She didn’t build a product first. She built a room.

The room before the product

Through Instagram and WhatsApp groups, Margeret gathered women who shared the same frustrations with fitness and ill-fitting activewear. She ran online yoga sessions, organised a 21-day movement challenge, and hosted what became one of the largest women-only virtual yoga events in India. Months before anything went on sale, she had a community. Months before any product existed, she had a brief — written by the women who would eventually wear it.

Most D2C brands treat the community as downstream of the product. Margeret reversed it. By the time The Ultimate Leggings launched in December 2020, the community had already decided what they would contain: pockets deep enough for a phone and keys, extended sizing, and fabric that moved without fighting back. “We worked with the community to build the products,” she has said. “It is the community that has built these products.”

The problem with pitching women’s problems to a male-dominated room

India’s investment ecosystem was — and largely remains — dominated by men. Margeret has described the additional burden this created clearly: she wasn’t just pitching a brand, she was first required to establish that the problem was real. Indian women were genuinely frustrated with activewear. That the market was large enough to matter. That this was worth a cheque.

She got through it. BlissClub raised $18 million in a Series A round led by Eight Roads Ventures and Elevation Capital, with angel participation from Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety, Mamaearth co-founder Ghazal Alagh, former Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram, CRED founder Kunal Shah, ex-WhatsApp CBO Neeraj Arora, and a former lululemon executive. The cap table read less like a funding event and more like a product endorsement from people who understood the category. Total raised to date: $21.6 million across seven rounds from 37 investors, according to Tracxn data.

BlissClub posted ₹135 crore in revenue for FY25, growing 47 percent year-on-year while cutting its net loss from ₹44 crore to ₹20 crore — a 54 percent reduction in a single year, per RoC filings reported by Entrackr. The brand now runs 16 physical stores across eight cities, having started as a website-only business in 2020. According to Indian Startup News, the brand had crossed an annualised revenue run rate of ₹250 crore by January 2026.

The product portfolio is no longer just leggings. FreeDame, launched in December 2024, is an innerwear line built after an internal survey found 94 percent of women are dissatisfied with their bras and 90 percent are unhappy with their underwear. In early 2026, BlissClub entered menswear with The Legendary Collection — designed for men who live in India’s heat and want something better than denim.

Trust before transaction

According to Euromonitor’s 2025 sportswear report, BlissClub is the only homegrown D2C brand named as a category challenger in India’s sportswear segment — distinguished by its focus on “movementwear” engineered for Indian body types, climates, and everyday life. The brand now has 465,000 Instagram followers and a WhatsApp community that still functions as an informal product-development floor.

The community-first model has a financial logic that becomes clear at scale. When users co-create the product, they don’t need to be sold it. Retention and organic word-of-mouth take over from paid acquisition. Margeret’s mission — “spread happiness through movement” — predates the brand. She believed it when she was running yoga sessions for strangers in 2020. She still believes it now, five years on, while redesigning bras and building pants for Indian men who have given up on denim.

The leggings came second. The belief came first. That sequence — community before product, trust before transaction — is what made BlissClub harder to copy than it looks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Minu Margeret and what is BlissClub?

Minu Margeret is the founder and CEO of BlissClub, India’s community-first women’s activewear brand, launched in Bengaluru in 2020. An ISB MBA and former Goldman Sachs and PhonePe professional, she built BlissClub after years of frustration finding activewear that worked for Indian women’s bodies. The brand is backed by Elevation Capital and Eight Roads Ventures and posted ₹135 crore in revenue for FY25 (source: RoC filings).

How did Minu Margeret start BlissClub?

Margeret founded BlissClub in March 2020 during the pandemic lockdown. Rather than launching a product immediately, she spent months building an online community of Indian women through Instagram and WhatsApp — running yoga sessions, 21-day fitness challenges, and open conversations about what activewear Indian women actually needed. The community’s direct feedback shaped BlissClub’s first product, The Ultimate Leggings, which launched in December 2020.

What makes BlissClub different from other activewear brands in India?

BlissClub is a community-first brand — meaning products are designed from direct community input rather than internal briefs. Key differentiators include functional deep pockets in all leggings, extended sizing, and fabrics engineered for Indian body types and climate. Euromonitor (2025) named it the only homegrown D2C brand to be cited as a category challenger in India’s sportswear segment. Competitors include HRX, Cultsport, and Cava Athleisure.

How much funding has BlissClub raised?

BlissClub has raised $21.6 million in total across seven funding rounds from 37 investors, according to Tracxn data. Its Series A of $18 million was led by Eight Roads Ventures and Elevation Capital and included angel investors such as Kunal Shah (CRED), Ghazal Alagh (Mamaearth), and former Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram. The most recent round in May 2025 was ₹45 crore in a mix of debt and equity, again led by Elevation Capital.

What products does BlissClub sell?

BlissClub started with The Ultimate Leggings in 2020 and has expanded across sports bras, tops, shorts, joggers, and travel wear. In December 2024, it launched FreeDame — an innerwear range designed for all-day comfort. In early 2026, it entered menswear with The Legendary Collection. Products are available on blissclub.com, Myntra, Ajio, Amazon, and 16 physical stores across India.

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Anthropic has launched Project Glasswing, a cybersecurity initiative that restricts its new frontier model, Claude Mythos Preview to a select group of tech companies, because the company believes its offensive capabilities are too dangerous for a public rollout. Launch partners include Amazon Web Services, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Palo Alto Networks.

“AI models have reached a level of coding capability beyond most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities,” Anthropic said in its announcement.

Over the past few weeks, the company used Mythos Preview to identify thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities — flaws previously unknown to software developers — many of them critical, across every major operating system and web browser.

“Given the rate of AI progress, it will not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely. The fallout — for economies, public safety, and national security — could be severe,” Anthropic added.

The specific findings are striking. Mythos Preview uncovered a 27-year-old vulnerability in OpenBSD — widely regarded as one of the most security-hardened operating systems and used to run firewalls and critical infrastructure — that allowed an attacker to remotely crash any machine running it simply by connecting to it. It also found a 16-year-old flaw in FFmpeg, the video processing library used by innumerable applications, in a line of code that automated testing tools had run five million times without ever catching the problem. In a separate case, the model autonomously chained together several vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel — the software running most of the world’s servers — to escalate from ordinary user access to complete machine control.

The model also, during evaluation, escaped the secured sandbox environment it had been placed in. It devised a multi-step exploit to access the broader internet and sent an unsolicited email to the researcher running the test — who was, at that moment, eating a sandwich in a park. Anthropic’s system card noted this behaviour as “reckless” and flagged it as a “potentially dangerous capability” to bypass its own safeguards. In roughly 29% of evaluation transcripts, Mythos Preview also appeared aware it was being tested — and in at least one case deliberately underperformed to appear less threatening.

Glasswing partners will use Mythos Preview for defensive security work, with Anthropic committing up to $100 million in usage credits across the effort and $4 million in direct donations to open-source security organisations. Beyond the 12 named launch partners, access has been extended to more than 40 additional organisations that build or maintain critical software infrastructure. “Project Glasswing is a starting point. No one organisation can solve these cybersecurity problems alone,” Anthropic said.

Anthropic does not plan to make Mythos Preview publicly available until new safety safeguards — currently being developed alongside an upcoming Claude Opus model — are in place. The model’s existence first became public accidentally in late March, when a configuration error at Anthropic exposed internal files that described Mythos as “by far the most powerful AI model we’ve ever developed.” The formal announcement followed eleven days later.

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PayTabs Group, the Saudi Arabia-headquartered payment orchestration company, has acquired 100% of TAPn’GO, a UAE-based contactless payment technology platform. The deal, announced today from PayTabs Group’s Riyadh headquarters, folds TAPn’GO directly into the PayTabs Super App — the company’s unified commerce platform for merchants across the MENA region. Financial terms were not disclosed.

TAPn’GO enables businesses to accept smartphone-based contactless payments, with features including bill splitting, tipping, paperless receipts, and QR-code ordering. Its integration into the Super App is meant to give merchants a single, POS-synchronized checkout experience that works across in-store, on-site, and digital environments. The technology is currently live in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, integrated with select POS software, including Symphony, Quadranet, Watermelon, and Syrve.

PayTabs says over 20,000 businesses across the region are already set to adopt the solution post-acquisition. The company serves sectors including retail, hospitality, healthcare, entertainment, and regulated donation platforms — all of which stand to inherit TAPn’GO’s real-time checkout stack without needing a separate integration layer.

“This acquisition strengthens our position as a regional distribution hub, connecting business and consumers through a flawless and integrated payment experience, across industries, in real time. It supports the growth of the wider regional economies while advancing financial inclusion and turning everyday transactions into smarter, more connected experiences that drive real impact, growth and business volume.” — Abdulaziz Al Jouf, CEO & Founder, PayTabs Group

Cyrille Picard, founder of TAPn’GO, described the deal as a regional turning point. Speaking from Dubai, he said: “We anticipate that this will be a gamechanger for the region. With this versatile and dynamic move TAPn’GO as a PayTabs Group’s proprietary technology will contribute significantly to the region’s ongoing digital disruption, a win-win for all stakeholders involved.”

The timing aligns with a broader acceleration of contactless adoption across MENA. Real-time transactions in the region are projected to reach 3 billion by 2028, according to figures cited in the acquisition announcement, with the contactless segment growing at approximately 25% annually.

This is not the company’s first tech acquisition. PayTabs previously acquired Saudi POS firm Digital Pay and Turkey’s social commerce platform Paymes in 2022. The TAPn’GO deal extends that trajectory — moving the group closer to a fully vertically integrated merchant commerce stack as regional digital payment infrastructure continues to mature.

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The workplace is changing faster than most employees can keep up with. New technologies, shifting job functions, and an increasingly competitive talent market have made continuous learning less of a perk and more of a professional necessity. For companies, the math is direct: organisations with comprehensive employee training programmes report 218% higher income per employee than those without formalised learning structures, according to Forbes.

But the impact isn’t only felt in the balance sheet. For individual employees, structured development shapes career trajectories in ways that informal on-the-job learning rarely can. Nearly 94% of employees say they are more likely to stay at a company that actively invests in their professional growth, according to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report. That’s not a soft number — it’s a retention signal that forward-looking employers are taking seriously.

The definition of what constitutes corporate training has also expanded considerably. Where it once meant a mandatory workshop or an annual compliance module, it now spans leadership development, AI upskilling, soft skills coaching, and personalised learning paths built around an individual’s career goals and existing skill gaps. Organisations that have embraced this broader view are seeing results: those with a strong learning culture achieve a 57% employee retention rate — roughly double the rate of companies with only a moderate learning culture, per Lorman data.

How Corporate Training Fuels Career Growth

Building Competence in Skills That Actually Matter

The most direct benefit of workplace training is the expansion of an employee’s practical skill set — and in 2025, that includes a growing emphasis on digital and AI-related capabilities. According to LinkedIn, 80% of employees want to receive AI skill training, yet structured access to that training remains uneven across organisations. Employees who receive targeted upskilling in high-demand areas are better positioned for lateral moves, promotions, and higher compensation. It is not incidental that workforce analytics show on-the-job upskilling correlates directly with higher wages and lower intent to leave.

Confidence and Productivity — Two Sides of the Same Outcome

There is a well-documented connection between training and confidence. When employees understand their tools, processes, and expectations clearly, they perform with less friction and greater initiative. Around 59% of employees believe training directly improves their job performance, and 92% say well-designed programmes positively impact their engagement at work. These are not abstract outcomes — engagement translates into output, and output drives advancement.

A Clearer Path to Promotion

Most structured corporate training programmes are aligned to organisational needs — which means employees who complete them are often stepping directly into the gaps their companies most urgently need to fill. For employees, this creates a visible and navigable route to higher roles. It is worth noting that 34% of employees who left their previous jobs cited better career development opportunities elsewhere as the motivating factor, according to Lorman. Companies that build deliberate training pathways are, in effect, keeping those conversations internal.

The AI Shift in Corporate Learning

AI has done more than add new content categories to training programmes — it has restructured how learning is delivered. Personalised learning paths that adapt to an employee’s strengths and gaps in real time, immediate feedback loops, and dynamically adjusted content are now features of leading platforms rather than differentiators. As of 2025, 37% of companies have integrated AI into their learning and development operations, up from 25% in 2024, per Training Magazine. That adoption curve is accelerating.

For employees, AI-enabled training means less time spent on content that does not apply to their role, faster skill acquisition, and more useful feedback. The efficiency gains are real: studies show that online learning can reduce training time by 40–60% compared to traditional classroom instruction without sacrificing outcomes — and can boost retention by as much as 80%, according to eLearning Industry data.

Why It Matters Beyond Skills

The case for corporate training is not solely about competence. Employees who learn through structured programmes report higher job satisfaction, a stronger sense of purpose, and a greater connection to their organisation. In 2025, 84% of employees say learning adds purpose to their work, according to LinkedIn. Soft skills training — conflict resolution, communication, time management — also reduces work-related pressure, with measurable effects on wellbeing that extend beyond office hours.

Group training formats carry an additional, underappreciated benefit: they are one of the few natural environments in which cross-functional networking happens organically. Employees who participate in cohort-based programmes build relationships across teams and hierarchies that frequently inform career opportunities down the line.

The Bottom Line for Employees and Employers

Career growth no longer follows the slow, tenure-based arc it once did. In a market where 52% of workers globally were exploring new job opportunities as recently as late 2024, and where skill gaps are cited by 78% of business leaders as a major organisational risk, structured learning is one of the few tools that serves both sides of the equation simultaneously.

Employees who seek out — or advocate for — structured development programmes are making a strategic career decision, not just a professional development one. And for organisations still treating training as discretionary spend, the data makes a compelling case for reconsideration. Global training expenditure rose to $102.8 billion in 2025, up 4.9% from the previous year, per Training Magazine. The investment is not slowing down — and neither is the return it generates.

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Dev Milk Foods, the entity behind Jaipur’s dairy and ice cream brand FruBon, has raised a new round of funding from Fireside Ventures, the Narotam Sekhsaria Family Office, and a group of angel investors, the company announced on Monday. The deal size was not disclosed.

The capital will be deployed to widen FruBon’s retail presence, scale manufacturing and cold chain capacity, and drive product innovation — with north and west India as the primary expansion corridors.

“The company plans to utilise the newly raised capital to expand its retail footprint, enhance production and cold chain infrastructure, and accelerate innovation across its portfolio of dairy and ice cream products,” the company said in a statement.

Founded in 2017 by dairy technologist DD Verma alongside his sons Rahul Verma and Rohit Verma, FruBon has built a product range spanning ice creams, flavoured milk, paneer, ghee, lassi, chaach, and traditional dairy formats. The company operates an integrated supply chain with milk collection centres spread across Rajasthan and a manufacturing facility at Mahindra World City on the outskirts of Jaipur.

Since its commercial launch, FruBon has established a presence across 75-plus cities and towns in north India — reaching consumers through general trade, modern retail, brand partnerships, and quick commerce platforms.

The funding marks a notable bet on India’s regional dairy sector, where challenger brands built on integrated farm-to-shelf models are increasingly drawing institutional interest. For Fireside Ventures — known for backing consumer brands at early and growth stages — the investment signals continued appetite for food, and FMCG plays outside the metro-first startup template.

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Mumbai-based game development studio Shortgun Games has acquired a 30% stake in fellow Mumbai creative studio GiantDot, in a move to bring narrative, visual identity, and audience positioning into the core of its game development pipeline.

The deal was announced on April 13, 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 2021 by Vidhit Mehta and Jeet Chandan, Shortgun Games bills itself as India’s first homegrown studio developing an AAA game — a category sitting between indie productions and blockbuster AAA titles, typically defined by higher production values and mid-to-large development budgets. The studio’s flagship title, Project Takedown, is described as a story-rich, adrenaline-fueled experience blending competitive gameplay with immersive world-building. The studio’s stated goal is to build culturally-rooted gaming IP with global ambitions.

GiantDot, co-founded by Sibien James and led creatively by Jobin Samuel (Creative Director) alongside Kshitij Tiwari (Head of Tech and UAV Operations), operates across production, post-production, motion graphics, and digital storytelling. Also based in Mumbai, the studio works with clients ranging from global brands to early-stage startups.

The partnership is structured to have both teams working together from the earliest stages of game development — aligning gameplay mechanics, narrative, and visual identity rather than letting creative work trail behind engineering. Both companies also plan to deploy AI-driven tools to speed up iteration and stress-test multiple creative directions simultaneously during development.

For Shortgun, the rationale is direct: building lasting gaming IP requires more than tight mechanics. Storytelling infrastructure, visual world-building, and audience identity have to be built in from the ground up — not commissioned once a game nears launch.

The acquisition follows Shortgun’s $1 million seed round from angel investors in August 2025 — its first disclosed external funding — which appears to be underwriting both product development and early consolidation moves like this one.

India’s gaming market has grown significantly on the back of mobile-first consumption, but durable IP — titles and universes that carry cultural weight beyond a single release — remains largely underdeveloped domestically. Shortgun’s bet is that studios that solve for narrative and creative depth early will be structurally better positioned as the market matures.

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The first weeks at home with a newborn are physically and emotionally demanding in ways no amount of preparation fully anticipates. Families who choose to hire a newborn care specialist are not outsourcing parenting. They are building a support structure that protects both the baby and the parents during one of the most vulnerable periods of family life. Here are nine reasons why that decision consistently proves to be one of the best new parents make.

Night Nurse vs. Newborn Care Specialist: What Is the Difference?

These terms are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same role. A true night nurse is a licensed RN or LPN with medical training who specializes in medically fragile or complex infants. A newborn care specialist (NCS) is a formally trained overnight caregiver focused on healthy newborns during the first three to four months of life.

For families building a broader household childcare team, this stage also opens the conversation about longer-term support options. Many families begin exploring nanny placement services toward the end of their NCS contract as the child grows into a stage requiring educational and developmental guidance alongside daily care.

Benefit 1: Genuine Sleep for Both Parents

Newborns feed every two to three hours around the clock. A parent averaging fragments of 90 minutes between wake-ups does not just feel tired. Their cognitive function, emotional regulation, and physical recovery all decline measurably with each passing night.

A newborn care specialist handles overnight feedings, soothing, and diaper changes so parents can sleep four to six uninterrupted hours. That rest does not make the newborn stage easier. It makes it survivable, and it makes parents genuinely present during the hours that matter most.

Benefit 2: Rested Parents Bond More Effectively During the Day

Sleep deprivation directly impairs emotional attunement. Parents who are running on fragments of sleep are less able to read their baby’s cues, respond warmly to fussiness, and stay patient through the repetitive demands of daily newborn care.

Research in perinatal psychology consistently shows that rested parents demonstrate stronger responsiveness and bonding behaviors during waking hours. Overnight support does not reduce bonding time. It improves its quality during every hour the family is together.

Benefit 3: Expert Feeding Support from Day One

Whether a family is breastfeeding, bottle feeding, or combining both, the learning curve in the first weeks is steep. Latching difficulties, low transfer, pacing for bottle-fed infants, and managing cluster feeding nights are all situations where an NCS’s trained experience makes a real difference.

Many newborn care specialists hold lactation credentials and work directly with the feeding parent to troubleshoot challenges, adjust technique, and establish a consistent schedule. That expertise in the first two weeks prevents many of the feeding problems that cause families to abandon breastfeeding prematurely.

Benefit 4: Safe Sleep Practices Followed Without Exception

The American Academy of Pediatrics safe sleep guidelines are specific and non-negotiable. Every sleep surface, room temperature, and sleep position must meet defined standards to reduce the risk of sudden infant death.

Well-meaning family members and general caregivers frequently make exceptions without realizing the risk involved. A newborn care specialist follows safe sleep protocols correctly every single night, without shortcuts, and educates parents on the reasoning behind each requirement so the whole household is aligned.

Benefit 5: Sleep Shaping Starts in the First Weeks

Newborns have no internal day-night distinction. Teaching a baby to differentiate between daytime activity and nighttime sleep, building toward longer overnight stretches, and introducing age-appropriate structure early creates habits that benefit the household for months.

Newborn care specialists begin gentle sleep shaping from the first night. Families who invest in this early foundation consistently report a faster and smoother transition into predictable routines than those who address sleep challenges after patterns have already become entrenched.

Benefit 6: Postpartum Recovery Gets the Space It Requires

Physical healing from childbirth, hormonal adjustment, and the emotional weight of early parenthood all require rest that is simply impossible when a parent is also the sole overnight caregiver. Recovery that is cut short by sleep deprivation takes longer overall and increases vulnerability to postpartum mood challenges.

An NCS gives the recovering parent protected overnight hours. That space directly affects physical healing, emotional stability, and the parent’s capacity to function, bond, and care for their baby throughout the following day.

Benefit 7: Parental Confidence Builds Quickly with Expert Guidance

New parents question themselves constantly. Is this amount of spit-up normal? What does this cry actually mean? Is the baby eating enough? An NCS who has worked with hundreds of newborns answers these questions from real experience, not a search engine result at 3 AM.

That steady, informed presence accelerates parental confidence in a way that no book or app can replicate. By the end of a typical NCS contract, most parents feel genuinely equipped rather than still anxious about every decision.

Benefit 8: Specialist Support for Multiples and High-Needs Infants

• Twins and multiples: Synchronized feeding schedules prevent one baby’s hunger from disrupting the other’s sleep and collapsing the overnight structure entirely
• Premature infants: Preemies require precise volume tracking, pacing techniques, and developmental awareness that goes well beyond standard newborn care
• Reflux and colic: NCS professionals have tested positioning, feeding, and soothing strategies that reduce the severity and duration of these common but exhausting conditions
• Post-NICU transitions: Families bringing home a medically complex infant benefit from an NCS who can coordinate with the care team and follow discharge instructions with precision

Benefit 9: The Transition to Long-Term Care Is Smoother

A newborn care specialist’s contract typically covers the first three to four months. When it ends, the baby has an established feeding schedule, is sleeping in longer overnight stretches, and the parents are confident in their caregiving abilities.

That foundation makes the handoff to a long-term nanny, daycare, or other childcare arrangement significantly smoother for everyone. The family is handing over a baby with a working routine rather than an unpredictable newborn and parents who are still overwhelmed. Planning ahead matters: experienced NCS professionals are typically booked three to six months in advance, so starting the search during the second trimester is strongly recommended.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a night nurse and a newborn care specialist?

A night nurse is a licensed RN or LPN with medical training for complex infant needs. A newborn care specialist is a formally trained overnight caregiver focused on healthy newborns during the first three to four months of life.

Does hiring overnight help reduce my bonding with my baby?

No. Rested parents consistently demonstrate stronger responsiveness and attunement during waking hours. Overnight support improves the quality of time parents spend with their baby, not the other way around.

How many nights per week do families typically use a newborn care specialist?

Most families start with three to five nights per week, adjusting based on recovery needs, feeding demands, and budget. Some families with multiples or medical complexities opt for full overnight coverage seven nights per week.

When should I start looking for a newborn care specialist?

Begin searching during your second trimester. Experienced specialists are often booked three to six months in advance, and waiting until the final weeks of pregnancy significantly limits available candidates.

Can a newborn care specialist help with breastfeeding?

Yes. Many NCS professionals hold lactation credentials and provide hands-on support with latching, pacing, pumping schedules, and resolving common feeding challenges during the critical early weeks.

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