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Time of India
18-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Govt brings 9 karat gold under mandatory hallmarking
The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) on Friday announced the inclusion of 9 Karat gold under the list of mandatory hallmarking categories, effective July 2025. The standard defines specifications for fineness and marking of gold jewellery and artefacts. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Select a Course Category Cybersecurity Others Product Management Technology Project Management MCA Data Analytics Management Public Policy Artificial Intelligence MBA Degree Design Thinking CXO Leadership Finance Data Science Data Science others healthcare Healthcare PGDM Digital Marketing Operations Management Skills you'll gain: Duration: 10 Months MIT xPRO CERT-MIT xPRO PGC in Cybersecurity Starts on undefined Get Details With this inclusion, the list of hallmarking grades now comprises: 24KF, 24KS, 23K, 22K, 20K, 18K, 14K and now 9K (with minimum fineness of 375 parts per thousand). by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 5 Books Warren Buffett Wants You to Read In 2025 Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo Jewellers and hallmarking centres are required to comply with this addition under the BIS regulations, said All India Gem & Jewellery Domestic Council in a post on X. '9 Karat Gold (375 ppt) is now officially under mandatory hallmarking as per BIS Amendment No. 2 All jewellers & hallmarking centres must comply,' the council said. Live Events As per the amendment, 9 Karat gold, earlier not included in the mandatory hallmarking system, will now be brought under the same regulatory framework that ensures consumer transparency in purity standards. Welcoming the move, Suvankar Sen, MD & CEO, Senco Gold Ltd. called 9 kt hallmarking a great initiative by Govt. "9 kt hallmarking is a great initiative by Govt to make the diamond and gold jewellery more affordable and easier for the consumer to buy Jewleley in the high gold price. The modern Deisgns can come out smartly in the 9 kt and companies can continue to innovate with Deisgns and styles due to this imitative. It will also boost exports for future,' Sen said. The revised BIS standard also updates definitions and exclusions. Gold watches and pens have been excluded from the definition of artefacts. A gold coin under this specification is defined as a flat sheet of 24KF or 24KS gold produced only by mints or refineries and having no legal tender value. Hallmarking, governed by the BIS Act, 2016, certifies the proportionate content of precious metal in jewellery and artefacts. Hallmarking grades Sl No. Grade/Designations Declared Minimum Fineness in ppt Purity in Karat (K) ( Approximate ) (1) (2) (3) (4) i) 24 KF 999 — ii) 24 KS 995 — iii) 23 K 958 23 iv) 22 K 916 22 v) 20 K 833 20 vi) 18 K 750 18 vii) 14 K 585 14 viii) 9 K 375 9
Time of India
17-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
AI race: Zoho launches its own LLM, proprietary models for speech-to-text conversion
Bengaluru, Homegrown technology company Zoho on Thursday announced its proprietary large language (LLM) model designed for enterprises using its suite of products, the latest move reflecting bold ambitions of Indian firms to build and innovate on their own AI stacks in the global tech race. Zoho said it is also rolling out automatic speech recognition models for speech-to-text conversion in English and Hindi. The Chennai-headquartered company plans to further expand the available languages, beginning with other Indian and European languages. Zoho top management said it has not seen these AI advances impact jobs and hirings. The company further said it grew 32 per cent in 2024 in India, its second largest market globally after the US. The growth was driven by industries such as ITeS, banking financial services and insurance or BFSI, manufacturing, retail, and education. At the Zoholics India -- its annual user conference held this year in Bengaluru -- the company announced proprietary large language model Zia LLM , prebuild AI agents and 'no code' agent builder. Zoho CEO Mani Vembu said, "Our LLM model is trained specifically for business use cases, keeping privacy and governance at its core, which has resulted in lowering the inference cost, passing on that value to the customers, while also ensuring that they are able to utilise AI productively and efficiently." To a question on whether, the company would look to re-engineer or re-purpose its enterprise specific LLM for customers-centric GenAI model at some point in future, to rival, say a ChatGPT, especially given India's sovereign AI vision, Vembu said for the near future, the focus will be on enabling business customers, given vast opportunities and needs in this space. "Based on our experience and research, we will decide on next course of action," he said at a briefing. Zoho said its own large language model is built completely in-house by leveraging NVIDIA's AI accelerated computing platform. "Trained with Zoho product use cases in mind, ranging from structured data extraction, summarisation... and code generation, Zia LLM comprises three models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion, and 7 billion parameters, each separately trained and optimised for contextual applicability that benchmark competitively against comparable open source models in the market," the company said in a release. In the near term, Zoho will scale the LLM model sizes, starting with the first set of parameter increases by the end of 2025. "While Zoho supports many LLM integrations for users, including ChatGPT, Llama, and DeepSeek, Zia LLM continues Zoho's commitment to data privacy by allowing customers to keep their data on Zoho servers, leveraging the latest AI capabilities without sending their data to AI cloud providers," the company said. Zia LLM has been deployed across Zoho's data centres in the US, India, and Europe. The model is testing for internal use cases across Zoho's broad app portfolio, and will be available for customer use in coming months. To enable immediate adoption of agentic technology, Zoho has developed a roster of AI agents contextually infused right into its products. These agents can be used across various business activities, handling relevant actions based on the role of the user. These include customer service agent for Zoho Desk that can process incoming customer requests, understand the context, and either answer directly or triage them to a human representative, acting as an efficient first line of assistance. Zoho's platform-wide conversational AI assistant, Ask Zia, is bolstered with additional skills, tailored to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists, while supporting all users within an organisation. At the time of deployment, an "agent" can be provisioned as a digital employee, maintaining the user access permission structure defined within the organisation. Admins can perform behavioural audits as well as performance and impact analyses on "digital employees", ensuring that every agent is working as effectively as possible and within clear guardrails. Citing examples of use cases, it said, several pre-built agents are available for users, such as candidate screener, which identifies and ranks the most suitable candidates for a specific job opening based on role requirements, skills, experience, and other key attributes; deal analyser, which can analyse deals and provide insights such as win probability, next best action, and follow-up suggestions, and revenue growth specialist, which suggests opportunities for upsell and cross-sell for existing customers. The company has also launched AI agents specifically for Indian businesses for verification of PAN card, Voter ID, Udyog Aadhaar, GSTIN, driving licence, LPG connection and electricity bill. These can be utilised for a variety of use cases, such as employee background verification by HR teams or for document verification in financial services organisations.
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Business Standard
17-07-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Zoho enters AI race with its own LLM, proprietary speech-to-text models
Homegrown technology company Zoho on Thursday announced its proprietary large language (LLM) model designed for enterprises using its suite of products, the latest move reflecting bold ambitions of Indian firms to build and innovate on their own AI stacks in the global tech race. Zoho said it is also rolling out automatic speech recognition models for speech-to-text conversion in English and Hindi. The Chennai-headquartered company plans to further expand the available languages, beginning with other Indian and European languages. Zoho top management said it has not seen these AI advances impact jobs and hirings. The company further said it grew 32 per cent in 2024 in India, its second largest market globally after the US. The growth was driven by industries such as ITeS, banking financial services and insurance or BFSI, manufacturing, retail, and education. At the Zoholics India -- its annual user conference held this year in Bengaluru -- the company announced proprietary large language model Zia LLM, prebuild AI agents and 'no code' agent builder. Zoho CEO Mani Vembu said, "Our LLM model is trained specifically for business use cases, keeping privacy and governance at its core, which has resulted in lowering the inference cost, passing on that value to the customers, while also ensuring that they are able to utilise AI productively and efficiently." To a question on whether, the company would look to re-engineer or re-purpose its enterprise specific LLM for customers-centric GenAI model at some point in future, to rival, say a ChatGPT, especially given India's sovereign AI vision, Vembu said for the near future, the focus will be on enabling business customers, given vast opportunities and needs in this space. "Based on our experience and research, we will decide on next course of action," he said at a briefing. Zoho said its own large language model is built completely in-house by leveraging Nvidia's AI accelerated computing platform. "Trained with Zoho product use cases in mind, ranging from structured data extraction, summarisation... and code generation, Zia LLM comprises three models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion, and 7 billion parameters, each separately trained and optimised for contextual applicability that benchmark competitively against comparable open source models in the market," the company said in a release. In the near term, Zoho will scale the LLM model sizes, starting with the first set of parameter increases by the end of 2025. "While Zoho supports many LLM integrations for users, including ChatGPT, Llama, and DeepSeek, Zia LLM continues Zoho's commitment to data privacy by allowing customers to keep their data on Zoho servers, leveraging the latest AI capabilities without sending their data to AI cloud providers," the company said. Zia LLM has been deployed across Zoho's data centres in the US, India, and Europe. The model is testing for internal use cases across Zoho's broad app portfolio, and will be available for customer use in coming months. To enable immediate adoption of agentic technology, Zoho has developed a roster of AI agents contextually infused right into its products. These agents can be used across various business activities, handling relevant actions based on the role of the user. These include customer service agent for Zoho Desk that can process incoming customer requests, understand the context, and either answer directly or triage them to a human representative, acting as an efficient first line of assistance. Zoho's platform-wide conversational AI assistant, Ask Zia, is bolstered with additional skills, tailored to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists, while supporting all users within an organisation. At the time of deployment, an "agent" can be provisioned as a digital employee, maintaining the user access permission structure defined within the organisation. Admins can perform behavioural audits as well as performance and impact analyses on "digital employees", ensuring that every agent is working as effectively as possible and within clear guardrails. Citing examples of use cases, it said, several pre-built agents are available for users, such as candidate screener, which identifies and ranks the most suitable candidates for a specific job opening based on role requirements, skills, experience, and other key attributes; deal analyser, which can analyse deals and provide insights such as win probability, next best action, and follow-up suggestions, and revenue growth specialist, which suggests opportunities for upsell and cross-sell for existing customers. The company has also launched AI agents specifically for Indian businesses for verification of PAN card, Voter ID, Udyog Aadhaar, GSTIN, driving licence, LPG connection and electricity bill. These can be utilised for a variety of use cases, such as employee background verification by HR teams or for document verification in financial services organisations. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Time of India
17-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
AI race: Zoho launches its own LLM, proprietary models for speech-to-text conversion
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills Homegrown technology company Zoho on Thursday announced its proprietary large language (LLM) model designed for enterprises using its suite of products, the latest move reflecting bold ambitions of Indian firms to build and innovate on their own AI stacks in the global tech said it is also rolling out automatic speech recognition models for speech-to-text conversion in English and Hindi. The Chennai-headquartered company plans to further expand the available languages, beginning with other Indian and European top management said it has not seen these AI advances impact jobs and company further said it grew 32 per cent in 2024 in India, its second largest market globally after the US. The growth was driven by industries such as ITeS, banking financial services and insurance or BFSI, manufacturing, retail, and the Zoholics India -- its annual user conference held this year in Bengaluru -- the company announced proprietary large language model Zia LLM , prebuild AI agents and 'no code' agent CEO Mani Vembu said, "Our LLM model is trained specifically for business use cases, keeping privacy and governance at its core, which has resulted in lowering the inference cost, passing on that value to the customers, while also ensuring that they are able to utilise AI productively and efficiently."To a question on whether, the company would look to re-engineer or re-purpose its enterprise specific LLM for customers-centric GenAI model at some point in future, to rival, say a ChatGPT, especially given India's sovereign AI vision, Vembu said for the near future, the focus will be on enabling business customers, given vast opportunities and needs in this space."Based on our experience and research, we will decide on next course of action," he said at a said its own large language model is built completely in-house by leveraging NVIDIA's AI accelerated computing platform."Trained with Zoho product use cases in mind, ranging from structured data extraction, summarisation... and code generation, Zia LLM comprises three models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion, and 7 billion parameters, each separately trained and optimised for contextual applicability that benchmark competitively against comparable open source models in the market," the company said in a the near term, Zoho will scale the LLM model sizes, starting with the first set of parameter increases by the end of 2025."While Zoho supports many LLM integrations for users, including ChatGPT, Llama, and DeepSeek, Zia LLM continues Zoho's commitment to data privacy by allowing customers to keep their data on Zoho servers, leveraging the latest AI capabilities without sending their data to AI cloud providers," the company LLM has been deployed across Zoho's data centres in the US, India, and Europe. The model is testing for internal use cases across Zoho's broad app portfolio, and will be available for customer use in coming enable immediate adoption of agentic technology, Zoho has developed a roster of AI agents contextually infused right into its agents can be used across various business activities, handling relevant actions based on the role of the include customer service agent for Zoho Desk that can process incoming customer requests, understand the context, and either answer directly or triage them to a human representative, acting as an efficient first line of platform-wide conversational AI assistant, Ask Zia, is bolstered with additional skills, tailored to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists, while supporting all users within an the time of deployment, an "agent" can be provisioned as a digital employee, maintaining the user access permission structure defined within the can perform behavioural audits as well as performance and impact analyses on "digital employees", ensuring that every agent is working as effectively as possible and within clear examples of use cases, it said, several pre-built agents are available for users, such as candidate screener, which identifies and ranks the most suitable candidates for a specific job opening based on role requirements, skills, experience, and other key attributes; deal analyser, which can analyse deals and provide insights such as win probability, next best action, and follow-up suggestions, and revenue growth specialist, which suggests opportunities for upsell and cross-sell for existing company has also launched AI agents specifically for Indian businesses for verification of PAN card, Voter ID, Udyog Aadhaar, GSTIN, driving licence, LPG connection and electricity can be utilised for a variety of use cases, such as employee background verification by HR teams or for document verification in financial services organisations.
Business Standard
17-07-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
SBI Life Insurance launches IdeationX 2.0 to engage top 100 B-schools across India
PRNewswire Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], July 17: SBI Life Insurance, one of India's most trusted life insurance companies, has launched the second edition of its flagship innovation initiative 'IdeationX 2.0'. SBI Life's IdeationX is a platform that empowers young talent to innovate and co-create solutions for real-world challenges in the life insurance industry. Now in its second edition, IdeationX 2.0 is encouraging promising talent from India's top 100 B-schools to contribute meaningfully to the nation's mission of 'Insurance for All by 2047.' IdeationX was launched as an exclusive initiative for B-Schools with the goal of fostering collaboration between the industry and the nation's future business leaders. The second edition promises to be significantly bigger, reaching out to top 100 B-schools across India and engaging over 25,000 students. This initiative not only encourages the country's innovative young minds but also provides exposure to a larger opportunity of contributing towards the growth of the life insurance sector in the country. As a part of this initiative, SBI Life launched its campus engagement drive on 15th July 2025. The engagement drive will cover leading B-schools across the country including NIMNS, IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode, Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneshwar, among others, through a mix of on-ground activations and virtual engagements. The registration window of the microsite is LIVE for the top 100 B-Schools and select undergraduate colleges of India. During this drive, the senior leadership of SBI Life Insurance including Mr. Ravindra Sharma, Chief of Brand, Corporate Communications and CSR will be interacting directly with the students to exchange ideas and encourage participation. Through this engagement, the company aims to promote innovation at the college level, encouraging the development of ideas that could potentially shape the future of the insurance industry and support the nation's broader financial inclusion goals. Sharing his thoughts on the initiative, Mr. Ravindra Sharma, Chief of Brand, Corporate Communications and CSR, SBI Life Insurance, said, "Despite the growth in business numbers year-on-year, India's overall insurance penetration remains less than 4%. As we move forward in our attempts to increase insurance penetration in the country, SBI Life believes that while technology, AI and innovation will be the key factors for growth, our focus through the IdeationX initiative is about generating scalable solutions created by young minds who are future leaders of the country." He further added, "With the theme of 'Insurance for All', IdeationX 2.0 is in effect liberating the ingenuity of India's brightest minds, to ideate, innovate and co-create solutions for the nation's aspiration of 'Insurance for all by 2047'. As we tap into 25,000 students from the country's top 100 B-schools, we sincerely hope this opportunity to solve real-world challenges excites the young minds to participate wholeheartedly, unfettered by any real-world constraints." By creating opportunities for young professionals to engage with real-world challenges and contribute directly to the category's growth, SBI Life is driving awareness, consideration, and future brand affinity among an influential demographic. The initiative is also a strategic step toward building deeper relevance and long-term trust with the younger customer base, who are beginning their financial journeys and shaping the economic future of the country. About SBI Life Insurance: SBI Life Insurance ('SBI Life' / 'The Company'), one of the most trusted life insurance companies in India, was incorporated in October 2000 and is registered with the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) in March 2001. Serving millions of families across India, SBI Life's diverse range of products caters to individuals as well as group customers through Protection, Pension, Savings and Health solutions. Driven by 'Customer-First' approach, SBI Life places great emphasis on maintaining world class operating efficiency and providing hassle-free claim settlement experience to its customers by following high ethical standards of service. Additionally, SBI Life is committed to enhance digital experiences for its customers, distributors and employees alike. SBI Life strives to make insurance accessible to all, with its extensive presence across the country through its 1,110 offices, 26,355 employees, a large and productive network of about 240,304 agents, 60 corporate agents and 13 bancassurance partners with more than 41,000 partner branches, 141 brokers and other insurance marketing firms. In addition to doing what's right for the customers, the company is also committed to provide a healthy and flexible work environment for its employees to excel personally and professionally. SBI Life strongly encourages a culture of giving back to the society and has made substantial contribution in the areas of child education, healthcare, disaster relief and environmental upgrade. In 2024-25, the Company touched over 50,000 direct beneficiaries through various CSR interventions. Listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange ('BSE') and the National Stock Exchange ('NSE'), the company has an authorized capital of Rs. 20.0 billion and a paid-up capital of Rs. 10.0 billion. The AuM is Rs.4,480.4 billion. For more information, please visit our website- and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. (Numbers & data mentioned above are for the year ended March 31, 2025) Photo: Photo:
