MAM
Uber appoints Arnab Kumar as director of business development for India and South Asia
Mumbai: Uber, India’s leading ridesharing app, has onboarded Arnab Kumar as director of business development for India and South Asia.
Kumar joins Uber with over 17 years of experience across technology and financial services sectors. Kumar’s professional journey includes building the India operations for Coinbase and leading India fintech investments and strategic initiatives for Prosus (formerly known as Naspers). Kumar has previously served as program director at NITI Aayog where he contributed to the development of emerging technology initiatives including Aarogya Setu, India’s COVID contact tracing app. Kumar has also worked as an investment banker for Deutsche Bank in Singapore and New York. He is an alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology Mesra and Indian School of Business Hyderabad and is a CFA charterholder.
Commenting on the appointment, Uber India and South Asia president Prabhjeet Singh said, “We are delighted to have Arnab join our leadership team to strengthen Uber’s presence and ensure Uber’s ongoing success in India and South Asia. He has a strong track record of working across financial services and technology sectors. During his work at NITI Aayog he delivered impact and change at scale. Under his leadership, our business development team will continue to be a key accelerant for our partnerships and new growth opportunities.”
“I am excited to join Uber, which has transformed the way people move while creating earning opportunities for millions of people in India and across the region. India and South Asia present tremendous growth potential and I look forward to joining forces with the incredibly talented team at Uber and supporting the company’s growth ambitions in this important region,” said Kumar.
Kumar’s appointment comes as the company completes a decade of operations in India and is focused on growing sustainable mobility options. With a partnership approach to different stakeholders in the value chain like EV fleets, financiers, EV infrastructure providers and government bodies, Uber has been at the forefront of EV transition in India. Earlier this year, in the largest EV commitment yet between an automaker and a ridesharing platform in India, Tata Motors agreed to supply 25,000 EVs to fleets on the Uber platform.
Brands
IICT partners with Gativedhi to bring studio production tools to students
New MoU lets students explore AI-driven production pipelines for AVGC-XR
MUMBAI: The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) has teamed up with Gativedhi Technologies to give students a front-row seat to modern studio production. The collaboration will integrate Gativedhi’s AI-powered production intelligence platform, Shotrack, into academic programmes, letting students experience the workflow systems used by animation, VFX and gaming studios.
Under the MoU, faculty, students and researchers will get hands-on access to Shotrack through beta programmes, pilot deployments and academic evaluations. This will allow them to explore simulated production pipelines, understand asset management, track tasks and monitor schedules, essentially seeing how complex projects come together behind the scenes.
Shotrack is designed to tackle a key industry challenge: when multiple studios work on the same project, differing internal systems often create bottlenecks, slow approvals and complicate version control. The platform provides a unified production environment, enabling smoother collaboration across distributed teams while generating operational insights and predictive analytics to optimise crew allocation, forecast schedule risks and manage costs.
The collaboration also opens doors to Gativedhi’s wider ecosystem. Upcoming tools include StudioTrack, for studio operations management covering budgeting, recruitment and IT infrastructure, and WorkTrack, which measures workflow efficiency and team productivity across industries.
IICT plans to embed these tools into programmes covering animation pipelines, VFX workflows, gaming production and media project management. Students will also benefit from guest lectures, masterclasses, workshops, internships and research projects that connect academic learning with real-world studio practices.
IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar, said the partnership provides “An environment where production pipeline tools can be explored, tested and refined while students gain insight into how large-scale productions are organised.”
Gativedhi Technologies founder & CEO Senthil Kumar added, “This collaboration introduces students to real-world studio management tools and helps us improve our platform with academic feedback.”
With Shotrack in classrooms, India’s future animators, VFX artists and gaming producers will get a taste of studio life long before they step into one.
