Episode 19 of The Offline Network — hosted by Utsav and Dhruv — dives into India’s festive-season consumption spree, AI’s dominance in venture capital, browser wars shaping the internet, and two founders rewriting playbooks in education and personal finance.
📰 This Week’s News Rundown
1/ India’s Festive Spend Surges: ₹5.4 lakh cr in goods + ₹65,000 cr in services; UPI touches ₹1 L cr/day as GST cuts spur consumption.
2/ AI Dominates Global VC: 53 % of all 2025 funding flows to AI; India sees $5.7 B across 470 deals (H1). ROIC set to flip from -3 % to +20 % by 2030.
3/ OpenAI Launches Atlas: macOS-first agentic browser with on-page automation and memory controls; Atlassian buys The Browser Company for $610 M.
4/ Chakr Innovation Raises $23 M: bets on aluminium-air batteries and clean-tech exports.
5/ Uniphore Secures $260 M: valued at $2.5 B to scale Business AI Cloud with NVIDIA and AMD.
6/ WazirX Returns Post-Hack: relaunch after $235 M settlement marks crypto’s mainstream moment in India.
🎙 Deep-Dive Conversations
Akshay Chaturvedi (Leverage) on the evolving study-abroad economy, full-stack education platforms, and how AI and trust shape student choices in 2025.
Ravi Handa (Handa Uncle) on building trustworthy AI for personal finance, creator-led learning, and India’s next 100 M learners.
This episode was made possible by Smartworks — India’s largest managed office platform.
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