Brands
Emversity, Cambridge join hands to boost nursing employability
MUMBAI: Emversity has joined forces with Cambridge University Press and Assessment to give India’s aspiring nurses a decisive edge in the job market. The collaboration brings the Cambridge English for Healthcare Professionals programme to Emversity’s skilling centres and partner universities, offering structured and internationally benchmarked communication training for nursing learners across the country.
The move comes at a crucial time. India has only 17.2 nurses for every 10,000 people, contributing to a staggering 5.8-million shortage in the healthcare workforce. While capacity remains a major concern, employers repeatedly point to communication as one of the biggest barriers to employability. The Cambridge programme is designed to fill exactly this gap.
Built around the CEFR framework from A1 to B1, the training equips learners with practical English skills needed on the job. This includes clear communication with patients, documentation, teamwork, and precision during emergencies. It also supports learners preparing for assessments such as the occupational English test, making it relevant for both domestic and international pathways.
Emversity founder and CEO Vivek Sinha, said the world’s demand for skilled healthcare talent continues to climb, and India is well placed to help bridge the shortage. He added that Emversity aims to equip over one lakh nursing professionals with workplace communication competencies by 2030, calling the Cambridge collaboration a vital step towards that goal.
Emversity chief technology officer Manish Kumar, noted that hospitals consistently highlight three missing skill sets among healthcare graduates: communication, computing and critical thinking. The partnership directly addresses the first, giving learners confidence and clarity across clinical environments.
From the Cambridge side, regional director for English in South Asia, TK Arunachalam, emphasised that the programme blends learning and assessment in a healthcare context, ensuring learners are trained and tested to global standards.
For India’s healthcare ecosystem, the partnership adds rigour where it is most needed. By embedding global communication skills within allied health skilling, Emversity and Cambridge are strengthening the country’s talent pipeline while supporting learners who aspire to build careers at home or abroad.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
