TCS' 37 acre campus in Kochi🏙️
Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 pips DeepSeek in model battle, Mumbai, Hyderabad lead the charge for data centre, Funding Deals and more.
Good morning and welcome to Thursday’s edition of Rise & Shine!
"Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results—the only thing it craves is the process."
— Elizabeth Gilbert
Today, Elizabeth Gilbert’s insightful words remind us that creativity isn’t about chasing perfection or results—it’s about immersing ourselves in the joy of the process.
Whether writing, painting, problem-solving, or innovating, the magic happens when we enjoy the process without fear of judgment or failure.
Tech Updates
TCS setting up 37-acre campus in Kochi
Country's largest software services giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is setting up a 37-acre campus at Kinfra electronics manufacturing cluster in Kochi that is likely to add around 10,000 jobs.
AI meets jugaad as Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 pips DeepSeek in model battle
As the world adjusted to Chinese upstart DeepSeek’s low-cost artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs), the country’s technology flagbearer Alibaba dropped one of its own: Qwen 2.5-Max. The Max is an upgrade on the Qwen 2.5 open-source AI model it released last year. Alibaba claims it outperforms rival models, including OpenAI’s GPT-4o, DeepSeek’s V3, and Meta’s Llama 3.1-405B “almost across the board.” This is Alibaba’s second Qwen model launch this week. On Monday, it introduced the Qwen 2.5-VL, a family of AI models that performs a range of text and video analysis tasks.
Mumbai, Hyderabad lead the charge for data centre investments: Analysts
Mumbai and Hyderabad are emerging as leading data centre investment hubs in India, fueled by the country’s AI-driven expansion. Chennai and Delhi-NCR continue to be vital markets. Analysts cited infrastructure, connectivity, power, talent, and government support as factors favouring Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Funding Deals
Impact investors Lok Capital and UC Impower have together put in Rs 50 crore equity in non-bank startup GrowXCD Finance, which provides loans to small businesses in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
Healthy food brand Salad Days has secured Rs 30 crore ($3.6 million) in Series A funding round co-led by V3 Ventures and Client Associates Alternate Fund (CAAF).
DealShare cofounder Sankar Bora’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) footwear startup CHK has raised $2.5 million from investment firm Accel, jewellery retailer Bluestone, and some individual investors.
Fashion search engine platform Shoppin has raised $1 million in a funding round led by InfoEdge Ventures.
🎶 Short Story: The Fearless Musician
Aanya, an aspiring pianist, used to hesitate before playing because she feared making mistakes. One day, her mentor told her, “Play for the love of the music, not the applause.” She took the advice to heart and began playing freely, enjoying every note.
Over time, her confidence and skills grew. Because she embraced the process, the results followed naturally.
Tweet of the day🐥
Today, let go of the pressure for perfect results and simply enjoy creating, learning, and experimenting.
Rise & Shine reminds you that real joy lies in the journey.
Have a creative and process-driven Thursday!
Thanks for reading till the end!