Zivame Launches First Franchise Store in Madurai and Announces Pan-India Expansion
Marking a key milestone in its growth journey, Zivame inaugurated its first-ever franchise store at Vishal De Mall, Madurai, Tamil Nadu , on 11th June 2025 — a strategic entry into one of the brand's fastest-growing southern markets.
The grand launch event was inaugurated by the Chief guest – Rajarathinam Ilakovan, Director of Vishal De Mall, and witnessed the presence of Zivame CEO Lavanya Pachisia, Retail Head Jayendre Nath, and Brand Marketing Head Daman Bali, and an enthusiastic welcome from the local community. The store's vibrant debut not only highlights Zivame's strong foothold in South India but also signals the beginning of its next big leap.
At the launch of Zivame's first-ever franchise store, CEO Lavanya Pachisia shared key insights into the brand's growth journey and vision ahead. – ' Since Zivame originated in Bengaluru, South India has always been a key market for us. Expanding through local franchise partners allows us to not only deepen our presence in the region but also better understand and cater to local preferences. It's an important step in making the 'Zivame experience' more accessible and relevant to women across diverse communities.'
With a strong Pan-India retail presence already in place, Zivame is now scaling up its reach by deepening access to other emerging markets across the country. This strategic expansion brings the brand even closer to customers across metros, Tier 2, and Tier 3 cities, complementing its robust online presence with an even more expansive offline footprint.
For potential franchisors and seasoned investors, Zivame's franchise program offers a compelling business opportunity with strong brand equity, proven business model, and built-in operational support.
For franchise enquiries or if you're an interested franchisor, write to Zivame at: [email protected]
Founded in 2011, Zivame has redefined the intimatewear category with deep consumer insight, innovation, technology, and trend-forward design — all anchored in women's comfort. As of 2025, with a portfolio of 50,000+ styles across lingerie, sleepwear, shapewear, and activewear in over 100 sizes, Zivame has evolved beyond retail into a trusted destination for women across ages and geographies.
From launching India's first online Fitcode to breakthrough campaigns like Museum of Boobs , Zivame has consistently stayed ahead of the curve. By combining tech-enabled solutions with deep consumer understanding, the brand has redefined how women experience intimate wear in India, creating one of the most influential fashion-retail ecosystems in the country.
Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with a PR agency. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same.
Ahmedabad Plane Crash
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
3 hours ago
- CNBC
What analysts say it will take for the Israel-Iran conflict to rattle the markets
The Israel-Iran conflict escalated over the weekend — not that you could tell by looking at the financial markets on Monday. The major U.S. stock benchmarks opened higher. Oil prices fell. Gold, the ultimate safe-haven asset, also edged lower. Abroad, the pan-European Stoxx 600 was slightly higher and stock indexes in the Asia-Pacific region climbed, too. It is basically the mirror opposite to Friday's action, as Israel's first round of strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities coursed through global markets, sending equities lower, oil surging and gold gaining. Investors following the news over the weekend might've expected more of the same Monday, especially after learning that Israel attacked Iranian energy infrastructure. Iran's missile strikes also damaged an oil refinery in Haifa, the Times of Israel reported . So why is the market on Monday so far shrugging it all off? In simple terms, traders and investors are betting that the attacks between the two longtime adversaries will not spillover into a broader regional conflict that disrupts the global economy. Whether that's the right bet remains to be seen. As CNBC reported Monday , some market watchers say investors are underpricing "the risk of a major conflagration in the Middle East." However, not long after Monday's opening bell, The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran is signaling to other countries that it wants to end the fighting with Israel — evidence in support of the bet traders were already making. Deutsche Bank macro strategist Henry Allen weighed in on the subdued market reaction earlier Monday in a note to clients titled, "Will geopolitics actually have a market impact this time?" "Historically, it's only been when it's affected macro variables like growth and inflation," Allen wrote. "So for markets, the geopolitical events that mattered were the stagflation shocks, like the 1970s oil crises, the Gulf War in 1990, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022." Allen pointed out that while Brent crude prices jumped around 7% on Friday to roughly $74 a barrel, the international oil benchmark is still below its 2024 average of roughly $80. "So this isn't causing wider inflationary problems yet. Clearly, a larger price spike would evoke the 2022 scenario where central banks hiked rates to clamp down on inflation," Allen wrote. "But so far at least, we've yet to see that. If anything, the extent of the market's resilience to repeated shocks this year has been a significant story in itself." Our main takeaway from Deutsche Bank's note: where the price of oil goes in response to the Israel-Iran conflict matters the most for the global economy — and therefore the stock market. As CNBC's senior markets commentator Michael Santoli put it Monday: "Equites aren't going to overthink it if oil is not going to add in any more risk premium in response to anything like a conflict we're seeing right now." The biggest risk to oil prices is that Iran shuts down the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway situated between Iran and Oman that is "the world's most important oil chokepoint," according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration . Extended disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz could result in oil prices spiking above $100 a barrel, Goldman Sachs estimated on Friday. About 20% of global oil production flows through the Strait of Hormuz, the firm said. To be sure, Goldman analysts said they did not believe trade disruptions had a high probability. Citigroup's global head of commodities research, Max Layton, said he would've expected to see stronger oil prices again on Monday. "Clearly, there was a lot of short-covering, a lot of call-buying on Friday and no follow-through with actual long positions today," Layton said on CNBC. Still, Layton said the market isn't ignoring the Israel-Iran situation. "There's already a very big geopolitical risk premium in the market. We estimate it's around $10 to $12 at the moment, and that risk premium is there for a reason," he said. "There's been no real oil export or oil production disruption in Iran, and yet the market is trading $10 to $12 higher. That obviously reflects the potential for a significant, if temporary, disruption to the Strait of Hormuz supply." An important counterbalance for crude prices right now is that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is in the process of increasing oil production, Layton noted. That is "really important to help explain why there hasn't been any follow-through in terms of fresh long positions in the market today," he said. "Often investors, when they're thinking about a trade, they need not just the short-term [outlook] to be bullish. And there's obviously catalysts for higher prices in the very term. But they also need the medium-to-long-run outlook to be bullish. ... Our 12-month forecast remains $65 Brent and we haven't seen anything that would change that medium-to-long-term outlook, which is still bearish from these prices." (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Forbes
3 hours ago
- Forbes
Agentic AI In Enterprise QA: Powering Intelligent, Autonomous Testing At Scale
Pradeep Govindasamy is the Co-Founder, President and CEO of QualiZeal. We're at the beginning of a new era in quality engineering, one shaped by agentic AI. While generative AI has captured global attention, the real transformation in software testing is only just beginning. I believe we're now entering a phase where AI isn't just assisting people in testing tasks. It's becoming autonomous, goal-driven and capable of acting with intelligence across the lifecycle. At QualiZeal, we're witnessing this shift firsthand. As someone who has spent years in the testing space, I can confidently say that AI is not a far-off future. It's here, being built into our processes today, and it's already beginning to disrupt how we think about quality at scale. Software development and testing are the two most critical pillars in any IT application lifecycle. To get a product into the hands of customers, you first build it, then test it and only then can you ship it. We've seen how tools like GitHub Copilot have revolutionized development. Now, that same level of AI adoption is happening in software testing. This is no small market—it's a $100 billion global industry. And just as smartphones once disrupted legacy devices like BlackBerry, AI is poised to transform testing in a similar way. Every phase of the software testing lifecycle—test case preparation, test design, test data management, performance testing, site reliability engineering—is now being infused with AI to increase efficiency, productivity, and ultimately software quality. Before we talk about agentic AI, we need to understand the evolution. The first step in embracing AI is automating repetitive, rule-based tasks. Once you have robust automation in place, AI capabilities can be layered on top to improve every phase of testing. But agentic AI goes one step further. With standard AI, we build prompts, define logic and teach the models how to behave. With agentic AI, we create systems that learn, adapt and act autonomously. These agents follow instructions and understand intent. They can analyze changes in the system, adjust automation scripts accordingly and execute tests without human intervention. For example, imagine a scenario where a company updates its checkout process, maybe tariffs or payment options change. In the past, a QA team would have to manually identify changes, rewrite test scripts and rerun tests. With agentic AI, the system learns what's changed, modifies the scripts, self-heals when errors occur and continues testing. It even generates a report outlining what it changed and why. This self-healing, self-optimizing capability sets agentic AI apart from traditional automation. And it's a game-changer. We're seeing both technical benefits and measurable business outcomes. With agentic AI, the cost of quality is decreasing. From my observation, the industry average today is about 18%, but with AI-infused testing, we anticipate a 5% drop, driven by reduced manual effort and increased efficiency. In maintenance alone, we've seen a reduction from 20% of team capacity to less than 5%. Even more importantly, release cycles are accelerating. Time to market (TTM) has gone from quarterly to weekly, and now, with agentic AI and DevOps practices, to daily releases. The entire production throughput is becoming faster and more reliable. And decision-making is more seamless because agentic systems provide full transparency through real-time reporting, eliminating the need to compile data across disparate systems. Organizations looking to lead in this space must prepare now. I always say this moment is not just about catching up—it's about disrupting yourself before you get disrupted. Companies that wait too long will miss the opportunity to lead. Those who invest now will be in a position to capture market share and build the next generation of testing capabilities. This preparation requires both a top-down and bottom-up approach. Leadership must allocate budgets, not just wait for client-driven funding, and teams must be empowered to get trained, certified, and exposed to different AI models. AI isn't just a CIO or CTO conversation anymore. It's happening at the board level, and for good reason: this is the foundation for long-term competitiveness. I recommend organizations push their teams to reach at least level three in AI readiness: basic execution. Core functions like engineering and QA need to go further, while ancillary teams like finance and marketing should also gain exposure. Of course, with great power comes responsibility. We need to ensure agentic systems operate ethically, transparently and securely. Especially in regulated industries like healthcare, insurance or banking, any AI-driven decision, no matter how small, can have massive consequences. That's why testing the AI itself is just as important as using AI for testing. There's a growing demand for AI-specific test engineers who can validate agentic systems through high-end exploratory techniques. Traditional testing models like equivalence partitioning or boundary analysis must now be complemented with new approaches tailored to AI behavior. In the near future, eight to 10 new job roles will emerge specifically to test and validate agentic AI systems. These won't be optional. They'll be mission-critical. We estimate that full-scale AI maturity across the testing lifecycle will arrive around 2027. Between now and then, we're in the planning and education phase, training models, customizing LLMs and building the necessary infrastructure. Implementation will accelerate in 2026, and by mid-2027, I expect the majority of enterprise QA environments to be agentic by design. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for testers, developers and technology leaders. Gen Z professionals, especially those raised in a digital-native world, will have an edge. They can adopt these tools faster, and many will find themselves building careers in entirely new domains. We're not just building testing systems anymore. We're building trusting systems. Platforms that learn, adapt and support business continuity without human babysitting. That's the future of QA. That's where agentic AI takes us. And the companies that embrace it today? They'll be the ones defining quality tomorrow. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Forbes
3 hours ago
- Forbes
U.S. Lawmakers Ponder A Remittance Tax
Nestled in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) winding its way through the U.S. Congress is a tax provision that could have ripple effects around the world: an excise tax on international remittances sent by individuals who live in the United States but are not U.S. citizens or nationals. The United States is by far the largest source of international remittances to lower-income countries. In 2022 U.S. remittances exceeded $79 billion. Compare that with the second largest remitter — Saudi Arabia — which sent a much smaller $39.3 billion. Rounding out the top four countries are Switzerland and Germany, which respectively sent roughly $32 billion and $25.6 billion that year, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration (International Organization for Migration, 'Migration and Migrants: A Global Overview,' 2 (2024)). It's not surprising that the United States is the top remitter given that it has the largest immigrant population in the world. But which countries largely benefit from these cash outflows? It turns out that India receives the lion's share of international remittances. In 2022 it received over $111 billion. Mexico is in second place with over $61 billion in remittances. Rounding out the top five countries were China, the Philippines, and France, which received $51 billion, $38 billion, and $31 billion, respectively. Not only is India the top recipient, but it receives a sizable portion of its total remittances from the United States — nearly 28 percent, according to the Financial Times. Having passed the House, the OBBBA has been taken up by the Senate. If the Senate keeps the remittance measure, it will mark the first time that the federal government has implemented a remittance tax on international transfers sent by individuals. While the remittance tax is attracting a lot of scrutiny, this is not the first time that congressional lawmakers have considered implementing one. Over the past decade, several bills have been introduced to tax international remittances, but the current measure has advanced the furthest. The United States is also not alone in considering — or implementing — a remittance tax. This kind of measure has been considered in Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain (see Dilip Ratha, Supriyo De, and Kirsten Scheuttler, 'Why Taxing Remittances Is a Bad Idea,' World Bank People Move blog, Mar. 24, 2017). But remittance taxes historically have had little lasting power, raising questions about their short- and long-term feasibility. However, the sheer size of global remittances, coupled with the fact that legislators do occasionally consider taxing them, indicates there's a need for more research on remittance inflows and outflows and the benefits and drawbacks of these taxes. The budget bill seeks to implement a 3.5 percent excise tax on personal remittance transfers sent by non-U.S. individuals. The sender — not the recipient — would bear the tax. However, the responsibility for collecting the tax would fall on remittance transfer providers, which would be responsible for paying the tax quarterly to the government. The excise tax would not apply to any individual who is a U.S. citizen or U.S. national and sends remittances through so-called qualified remittance transfer providers. If those individuals, for whatever reason, do wind up paying some excise tax, they would receive a refundable tax credit. However, to receive a credit, the individual must provide a U.S. Social Security number. Lawmakers want remittance transfer providers to have skin in the game as well. Under the bill, a qualified provider must agree in writing to verify whether customers are U.S. citizens or nationals. This is important for remittance transfer providers because they have secondary liability for any unpaid or uncollected tax under the bill. If implemented, the measure would apply to remittances made on January 1, 2026, and onward. The remittance proposal is not the first one that federal lawmakers have considered. In 2022 a proposed bill (H.R. 8566) sought to apply a 5 percent remittance fee on all money transfers sent out of the United States. However, U.S. citizens could claim a refundable tax credit. A year later, the measure was reintroduced, but the fee doubled to 10 percent (see Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., release, 'Hern, Vance Introduce Bill to Tax Cartel's International Money Transfers,' Dec. 14, 2023). In 2017 a proposed bill (H.R. 1813) sought to apply a 2 percent remittance fee on money transfers sent to individuals in 42 Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, the Cayman Islands, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. That proposal applied to all remittances, regardless of the sender's U.S. citizenship or national status. In 2015 a proposed bill (S. 79) sought to apply a 7 percent fine on international remittance transfers sent by individuals who could not confirm their legal status within the United States. That measure also required remittance transfer providers to verify the sender's status, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be responsible for enforcing the measure. The bill generated some questions about how much revenue the federal government might raise. The bill's sponsor, then-Sen. David Vitter, asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate how the bill might affect both remitters and remittance transfer providers and forecast any potential revenue. In a 2016 report, the GAO conducted a scenario analysis and found that net revenue from a remittance fine could vary significantly, ranging from $10 million to $1.29 billion (see GAO, 'International Remittances Actions Needed to Address Unreliable Official U.S. Estimate,' Feb. 2016). The agency said the yield would rely on factors like 'the dollar amount of remittances sent by those without legal immigration status, changes in remitter behavior because of the fine, including a potential reduction in remittances through regulated providers, and the cost of enforcement.' Chiefly, the fine could drive senders from regulated markets to black markets or induce them to rely on relatives and friends who have legal status to send money on their behalf. As for enforcement costs, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau flagged that costs would include things like developing rules, examining providers, and coordinating enforcement actions with other federal agencies. Remittance transfer providers also told the GAO they were concerned about negative impacts on their businesses and negative impacts to smaller providers. Some of that concern was based on outcomes from Oklahoma's remittance tax. In 2009 Oklahoma became the first U.S. state to enact a fee on remittance transfers out of the state. Under Oklahoma's law, a $5 fee applies to the first $500, and any subsequent amount is taxed at a 1 percent fee (63 Okla. Stat. section 2-503.1j). The law applies to every transaction that meets the monetary threshold. However, individuals who have a valid SSN or taxpayer identification number are allowed to claim an income tax credit that equals the amount of the remittance fee paid. For its 2016 report, the GAO interviewed some remittance transfer providers who did business in Oklahoma. Those providers generally said that transaction activity and revenues had dropped in the wake of the law. One provider told the GAO that business had shifted to out-of-state transfer providers and informal channels. However, a state audit official told the GAO that the state's revenues from the fee had increased. Oklahoma's annual revenue and apportionment reports contain data about the transmitter fee, and it is true that the fee's revenues have significantly increased over time. According to the 2010 report, the fee generated about $5.7 million in revenue that year. By 2018 that number jumped to nearly $13.2 million and has hovered around that level over the past few years, with some declines during the COVID-19 pandemic (see 'Oklahoma Tax Commission Annual Report,' June 30, 2018). As for the federal proposal before the Senate, the remittance industry is unenthusiastic, and several trade associations have issued letters and statements asking lawmakers to remove it. The American Fintech Council, a trade association of fintech companies and innovative banks, is one of them. CEO Phil Goldfeder said in a May 27 release: 'This tax would put pressure on grocers, pharmacies, and other small businesses that provide remittance services, threatening to raise costs for consumers well beyond those who send money abroad. Rather than imposing new burdens, Congress should work with responsible financial innovators, regulators, and consumer advocates to modernize payment systems in ways that are fair, efficient, and inclusive.' The American Fintech Council is concerned that the remittance tax could drive consumers into black markets, citing as examples the 2016 GAO report and Oklahoma's experience. The statement doesn't mention digital currency, but it's not a stretch to imagine that the remittance proposal could push remitters to use virtual assets as a workaround. That could create unwanted ripple effects for governments trying to discourage the use of money transfer back channels. The organization is also worried about regulatory overload, particularly because states across the country are standardizing their remittance regulations. In 2021 the Conference of State Bank Supervisors — a national association of state banking regulators — published the Money Transmission Modernization Act, which offers a streamlined set of standards. According to the association, 30 states have adopted the law either in whole or in part. The American Fintech Council, which supports the model law, thinks the federal government should let state-level regulators handle this domain. 'Layering federal taxes on top of state regulations would raise compliance costs for remittance providers, leading to higher fees for consumers or fewer options in the market,' the release added. The organization also signed onto a joint letter sent by seven trade associations to Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore. In that letter, the group highlighted several concerns about the proposal, including concerns about privacy and operational complexity. The organizations worry that the remittance tax will require providers to collect significant amounts of personal data on a large volume of transactions. Although the legislation does not describe how providers should verify a sender's U.S. status, the organizations say in the letter that 'it appears inevitable that it would require the collection and verification of sensitive personal information such as Passport or social security number — which presents a very serious privacy concern.' On the operational side, the organizations are concerned that the volume of information to be collected will overwhelm remittance providers. The measure does not mention anything about a minimum value threshold for remittance amounts, which means transfer providers would have to keep track of everything. In 2017 a strongly worded World Bank blog post offered nine reasons why governments should avoid taxing remittances. At the time of publication, a small handful of governments, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, were considering these measures. The post, 'Why Taxing Remittances Is a Bad Idea,' said the effort may not be worth the cost. Citing the 2016 GAO report along with IMF estimates, the blog post said the resulting revenue would likely account for a meager portion of GDP. For example, the IMF estimated that a 5 percent remittance tax in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE would have raised about $4 billion among the six countries in 2015 (see 'Diversifying Government Revenue in the GCC: Next Steps,' IMF (Oct. 26, 2016)). In the United States, a 7 percent remittance tax would likely raise less than $1 billion (as noted above). The blog post pointed out that some countries that implemented remittance taxes — whether on outward or inward remittance flows — later removed them. They included Vietnam, Tajikistan, Gabon, and Palau. But a few countries have found ways to maintain some level of taxation. The Philippines applies a document stamp tax on remittances but exempts remittances made by Filipino individuals residing overseas, provided they can show proper documentation of their Philippine status. While the blog post discouraged remittance taxes, it called for a systematic study on the feasibility of these taxes and their implications, given that literature at the time did not seriously discuss them. Several years later, there is still a lack of literature on the taxation of remittances, and it appears it's time for more research. Given that the U.S. GAO report is nearly a decade old, and given that remittance tax proposals continue to appear, new U.S. research into this topic may be warranted. That research could be bolstered by examples from other countries. Ecuador notably implements a tax on international remittances. (Prior analysis: Tax Notes Int'l, May 18, 2020, p. 803.) Money sent outside the country is subject to a 5 percent fee, and banks are required to withhold the fee. However, taxpayers are allowed to deduct the fee from their local income taxes. India applies a withholding tax to some overseas remittances. Under the country's Liberalized Remittance Scheme, individuals can send up to $250,000 abroad annually. The withholding tax, whose rate varies from 0.5 to 20 percent based on the kind of remittance, generally kicks in after remittances exceed INR 10 lakh (about $11,600), and individuals can claim the withheld tax as a refund. Bahrain does not have a remittance transfer tax, but it has seriously considered one. In January 2024 the lower house of Bahrain's National Assembly approved a 2 percent tax on remittances sent overseas, but it failed in the upper house. But the measure reappeared this year. In January Bahrain's lower house again approved a 2 percent tax on remittances sent overseas, and again the upper house rejected it, according to local reports. Some lawmakers reportedly were concerned that the fee could lead to an increase in money laundering, an issue that has yet to be explored in the United States (see 'Bahrain: 2% Tax on Remittances Is Rejected,' Gulf Daily News (Mar. 4, 2025)).
