iWorld
Facebook & TLabs tie up to fortify mobile-based start-ups’ analytics & monetisation
MUMBAI: Facebook and TLabs accelerator have partnered to strengthen the mobile startup ecosystem in India. Both Facebook and TLabs have a strong focus and expertise on Internet and Mobile businesses, and will build on the knowledge and learnings of in-house senior mentors to engage and educate budding entrepreneurs.
As part of this partnership, they will co-host multiple events for solving startups’ issues around user experience, analytics, app installs, monetisation and more.
Facebook will also provide FbStart referral codes to TLabs for use by TLabs’s mobile portfolio companies. FbStart is a global program designed to help mobile startups build and grow their apps. Startups with a live mobile app on Google Play/iOS stores or a working Messenger bot can apply for the FbStart Program and membership is awarded to selected start-ups, post a review from the Facebook team.
These startups will receive ad credits from Facebook and benefits from more than 30 partners, including AWS, Dropbox, SalesForce and MailChimp. Along with these benefits, startups in the FbStart program will also get support and mentorship from Facebook’s product experts and join an exclusive community of global start-ups.
TLabs COO Abhishek Gupta said, “It’s an incredible step by Facebook for the mobile ecosystem, and start-ups would be highly benefited from being a part of the Facebook global community.”
Facebook India head – product partnerships Satyajeet Singh commented that partnering with TLabs was a progressive decision towards creating an empowered start-up ecosystem in the country.
eNews
OpenAI hires Arjun Gupta as its first solutions architect in India
Former startup CTO joins OpenAI to help Indian founders scale AI systems
BENGALURU: OpenAI has appointed Arjun Gupta as its first solutions architect in India, signalling a sharper on-ground push as the country’s startups and enterprises race from AI pilots to production.
Gupta announced the move on LinkedIn, saying he had joined OpenAI’s go-to-market team to work directly with founders building on GPT models, multimodal systems and agent-based AI. His mandate: help companies move beyond demos into live, scalable deployments.
The hire reflects a shift in India’s AI market. After a frenzy of experimentation, demand is rising for hands-on architectural support as firms attempt to operationalise AI across products, sales and customer support.
Before OpenAI, Gupta was co-founder and CTO at AuraML, a generative robotics simulation and synthetic data startup that raised $1.23 million. The company worked with technology heavyweights including Nvidia, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. His experience spans cloud-native infrastructure, machine-learning training and production-grade AI pipelines.
Writing about the move, Gupta said he had spent recent years building AI systems from the ground up, scaling infrastructure and delivering customer-facing solutions. He described India as being at an inflection point, citing deep technical talent, strong entrepreneurial momentum and rapidly improving AI tooling.
The appointment also dovetails with OpenAI’s expanding enterprise strategy. Earlier this week, the company unveiled the Frontier Alliance, a programme built around its Frontier platform and backed by consulting firms such as Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, Accenture and Capgemini.
Under the initiative, OpenAI’s forward-deployed engineers will work alongside consultants to embed AI agents into enterprise workflows, from software development to sales and support.
As competition intensifies, OpenAI finds itself jostling with rivals such as Anthropic and technology giants including Google, all courting large organisations eager for AI-driven transformation. OpenAI argues its approach allows firms to modernise without ripping out existing systems, while gaining closer access to its research and engineering teams.
