The Indian Government has been pushing UPI globally for faster digital payments. Now, UPI will be available in the Middle East country UAE as well.

NPCI International Payments Limited has partnered with Network International, a large digital commerce company in the Middle East and Africa for this.

Now Indian travelers or NRIs in UAE will make Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments through QR code through Point of Sale machines.

About 95 per cent of India’s IT leaders with experience in data streaming reported a remarkable 2 to 10 times return on investment (ROI) from their data streaming initiatives, underscoring the critical role of real-time data in the country's digital economy, a new report showed on Thursday.

According to the data streaming company Confluent, 94 per cent prioritise data streaming as a key IT investment in 2024, surpassing global figures and ranking highest among the surveyed countries.

As the government doubles down on electronics manufacturing, including semiconductors, to make the country a global supply chain hub, a task force set by the IT Ministry is near finalising its report, suggesting a massive Rs 44,000 crore push for domestic companies till 2030.

Established in January this year, the MeitY task force, led by Ajay K Sood, the principal scientific advisor to the government, has key industry figures like Ajai Chowdhry, Founder of HCL and Chairman of EPIC Foundation and Sunil Vachani, MD of Dixon Technologies.

Full-fledged production of Casper Electric, Hyundai Motor’s highly anticipated all-electric mini SUV, will begin in South Korea's southwestern city of Gwangju later this month, according to industry officials, with a target output of 21,400 units by the end of the year.

The EV will be sold under the name Inster in overseas markets. It will launch first in South Korea this summer, followed by Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

Gwangju Global Motors (GGM), a Hyundai Motor contract manufacturer based in the namesake city, located some 270 km southwest of Seoul, announced it will begin full-fledged production of the Casper Electric from July 15.

Homegrown micro-blogging platform Koo on Wednesday announced to discontinue its services to the public after partnership talks fell through.

"We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates and media houses but these talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted," Koo founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka wrote in a LinkedIn post.

“Most of them didn’t want to deal with user-generated content and the wild nature of a social media company. A couple of them changed priority almost close to signing," they added.

After a steady start in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024, Indian real estate saw accelerated momentum in the second quarter (Q2), registering $2.5 billion of inflows -- the highest in any quarter since 2021, a new report showed on Wednesday.

According to the professional services and investment management company Colliers, the industrial & warehousing segment accounted for the highest share of 61 per cent of total investments, at $1.5 billion, led by select large deals.

Digital engineering and enterprise modernisation company Persistent Systems on Wednesday said it had acquired New Jersey-based Starfish Associates for an undisclosed sum.

Known for its enterprise communications automation platform, Starfish Associates caters to the world’s largest enterprises including many Fortune 500 companies.

“The integration of Starfish Associates’ platform greatly enhances our unified communications and contact centre management offerings as this industry undergoes significant disruption on the back of AI-led innovations,” said Sandeep Kalra, CEO and Executive Director, Persistent Systems.

Hyundai Motor Group said on Wednesday it has completed construction of an electric vehicle (EV) battery plant built jointly with LG Energy Solution Ltd. in Indonesia, allowing the South Korean automotive giant a fully-integrated EV production system in the Southeast Asian nation.

Hyundai Motor Group said it held a completion ceremony for the Hyundai LG Indonesia Green Power (HLI Green Power) battery plant in Karawang New Industry City, a manufacturing hub located in East Jakarta of the Southeast Asian country, reports news agency.

To woo users in India, Apple has brought additional features via its iOS update to improve the experience across phone and communication with support for new Indian fronts and numerals, language and input with multilingual keyboard, enhanced language search and multilingual Siri support, the company said on Tuesday.

"iOS 18 makes iPhone more personal, capable, and intelligent than ever. It's a major release that features more customisation options, the biggest redesign ever of the Photos app, new ways for users to manage their inbox in Mail, and so much more," Apple said in a statement.

In the latest update, users can now customise the time on the lock screen with Indian numerals from 12 languages -- Arabic, Arabic Indic, Bangla, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Meitei, Odia, Ol Chiki, Telugu, and adjust the font colour and weight to create exactly the look they want for their Contact Posters.