Applications
Triumphant I&B sec Varma says Phase II digitisation 99% complete
NEW DELHI: Information & braodcasting ministry secretary Uday Kumar Varma – along with his ministerial team – has almost singlehandedly been working on aggregating and consolidating India‘s fragmented cable TV sector by pressing the digitisation accelerator and pushing the members of the ecosystem to forge ahead no matter what.
His touch stance seems to be working if one goes by the numbers that he announced today. Speaking to indiantelevision.com, Varma stated that almost 99 per cent digitisation had been achieved in the 38 cities that were part of Phase II of Digital Addressable System (DAS) for cable television.
Addressing a meeting of nodal officers from different states yesterday, Varma expressed satisfaction at the work being done by the additional secretary C Viswanath, joint secretary (broadcasting) Supriya Sahu and other senior officials.
Varma also asked the nodal officers to send show cause notices to all MSOs who had still not switched off analogue signals.
The nodal officers generally expressed satisfaction with the cooperation they received from stakeholders.
Applications
Canva acquires animation and AI startups Cavalry and MangoAI
The deals strengthen Canva’s push into enterprise and AI-led design workflows
AUSTRALIA: Global visual communication platform Canva has stepped up its acquisition drive, buying UK-based 2D animation platform Cavalry and US-based AI startup MangoAI to deepen its AI-powered creative stack.
Cavalry, whose tools are used by brands including Amazon, Meta, Google and Netflix, will strengthen Canva’s motion design capabilities. The deal builds on Canva’s 2024 acquisition of Affinity, which has crossed four million downloads since launch. With Cavalry, Canva now counts seven Europe-based acquisitions, underscoring its global expansion strategy.
MangoAI, an early-stage startup focused on video advertising optimisation, will integrate its reinforcement learning systems into Canva AI. The move aims to enable brands to generate personalised marketing content in real time, cutting production cycles while improving campaign performance. MangoAI co-founder Vinith Misra will join Canva as reinforcement learning lead in its research lab.
Canva co-founder and chief operating officer Cliff Obrecht said the acquisitions reflect the company’s ambition to make professional-grade creative tools more accessible without sidelining human creativity. The goal, he said, is to bring everything from vector to motion design into a single, integrated suite.
The company now reports 265 million active users, including 31 million paid subscribers, and $4 billion in annualised revenue, up 36 per cent year on year. The latest buys further position Canva against rivals such as Adobe and Apple’s Creator Studio as it pushes deeper into enterprise workflows.
Canva head of pro design marketing Liam Fisher, said AI is intended to act as a creative assistant rather than a replacement, reinforcing the primacy of craft and individual design judgement.
