eNews
Climate-conscious marketing startup bags $2m to fix advertising’s waste problem
MUMBAI: Nearly two-fifths of the $1 trillion sloshed around global advertising each year vanishes into the ether—wasted on botched targeting, feeble creative and sheer duplication. Climaty AI reckons it can plug the leak.
The Dubai-based startup, which bills itself as the world’s first “CliMarTech” company, has secured $2m in early-stage funding led by Turbostart to build what it calls an agentic AI ecosystem—self-learning marketing infrastructure that optimises campaigns in real time whilst measuring their carbon footprint.
Founded by Neel Pandya, former chief executive of AI startup Pixis (which he helped scale to $225m in funding), Climaty AI deploys four AI-powered agents—Campaign Builder, Creator, Optimizer and Analytics—to automate the grunt work and free media planners to focus on strategy rather than spreadsheets.
The funding will bankroll expansion across Asia-Pacific, EMEA, Britain and north America, where demand for sustainable marketing is climbing. Climaty AI has already run pilots with Opella and tested its platform across edtech, consumer healthcare, automotive and consumer goods sectors.
“Marketing platforms of the future will combine performance with accountability. Climaty AI is shaping this new standard with CliMarTech and agentic AI,” said Bengaluru-based venture and accelerator fund Turbostart founder Ganesh Raju.
Pandya, who spent two decades at L’Oréal, Vodafone and GroupM before diving into AI, argued that the most successful brands will treat accountability as a performance driver rather than a cost centre. “Agentic AI and sustainability are at the core of everything we do,” he said.
The pitch: smarter campaigns, measurable results, and a smaller carbon footprint—performance and responsibility in one package. Whether agencies and brands buy it remains to be seen, but with $370 billion going up in smoke annually, there’s certainly room for improvement.
eNews
PNB partners Kiwi to launch credit-enabled UPI for users
Targets 180 million customers; RuPay card offers 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent cashback
MUMBAI: Swipe, tap, or scan credit is quietly slipping into the rhythm of everyday payments, and Punjab National Bank wants in on the action. The state-run lender has partnered with Kiwi to roll out credit-enabled UPI payments for its 180 million customers, marking a significant push to blend traditional banking with India’s fast-evolving digital payments ecosystem.
At the centre of the collaboration is the launch of the PNB Kiwi Credit Card on the RuPay network. The card is designed with a digital-first approach, offering fully online onboarding and seamless integration with UPI, allowing users to transact via scan-and-pay while accessing credit.
The offering also brings in a rewards layer, with cashback ranging from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent on online transactions, positioning the product as both a convenience play and a spending incentive.
The move comes as UPI continues to dominate India’s digital payments landscape, increasingly blurring the lines between debit-led transactions and credit access. For PNB, which operates over 10,000 branches around 60 per cent in semi-urban and rural areas, the partnership signals a targeted effort to extend formal credit to segments that have traditionally remained underserved.
The collaboration also reflects a broader industry shift, where banks and fintech platforms are converging to embed credit directly into payment flows, reducing friction while expanding access.
With RuPay credit cards gaining traction and UPI evolving beyond peer-to-peer transfers, the PNB–Kiwi tie-up positions both players at the intersection of scale, accessibility, and the next phase of digital finance in India.
