The Andhra Pradesh government launched an AI-driven platform, "City Flood Alert", to predict urban flooding, starting in Vijayawada. Developed by RTGS, APSDMA and IIT Gandhinagar, the tool combines terrain mapping, hydrological modelling and 30 years of flood data. As per officials, the tool will provide rainfall forecasts 48 hours ahead and flash flood alerts six hours before to avert disasters.

Canva co-founders and billionaire couple Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht have launched the world's largest unconditional cash transfer programme, pledging ₹1,440 crore ($150 million) to poor households in Malawi. The initiative will provide around $550 to each adult. It began as a $10-million pilot project in 2021 to examine whether direct cash transfers could help eradicate poverty.

WhatsApp overtook CRED in UPI transaction volume in June, with the former recording 15.048 crore transactions compared with the latter's 14.178 crore transactions, as per NPCI data. The data was released nearly a month after CRED Founder Kunal Shah left the fintech startup to join WhatsApp as CEO. In May, CRED had recorded 67.6 lakh more UPI transactions than WhatsApp.

On the mainboard, Manipal Health Enterprises' ₹9,275.22-crore IPO opens for subscription on July 29, followed by Juniper Green Energy and MV Electrosystems on July 30. In the SME segment, Propshop Events & Exhibitions and Advance Technoforge open on July 27. Poojaa Precision and HR Hygiene Products will open for bidding on July 28 and July 29, respectively.

Big Tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, Nvidia and OpenAI have urged President Donald Trump-led government to allow the free development of open-weight AI models. They are joined by AMD, Cisco, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, Dell, DoorDash, Hugging Face, IBM, Mistral, Mozilla, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks, Perplexity, Reflection, Replit, Black Forest Labs and OpenClaw in backing the demand.

Gurugram's CGST Commissionerate has arrested two startup founders and two chartered accountants (CAs), all in their mid-30s, for defrauding the government of ₹200 crore. The accused used a network of nearly 30 shell companies to generate fake invoices without any actual goods or payments and claim input tax credit. "All the four accused are highly qualified," an official said.

Tarun Mehta, CEO of EV two-wheeler maker Ather Energy, said the company has no immediate plans to enter India's electric passenger vehicle market. "It's a very hard business with not much of a margin," he said. "We'll only build a car if we've something new to build...We don't want to be the 11th player manufacturing electric cars," Mehta added.

Eight Roads Investments and Flipkart sold shares worth over ₹1,654 crore in logistics firm Shadowfax through open market transactions on July 24. Eight Roads divested an 8.04% stake for ₹964.37 crore, while Flipkart sold a 5.76% stake valued at ₹689.79 crore. Together, the two investors sold a combined 13.8% stake in Shadowfax.

Sam Altman claimed on Relentless podcast that OpenAI is close to creating a genie that can grant any wish. "We're going to make sure that our first wishes broadly benefit humanity and...a lot more people get to have a lot more wishes," he said. "The space of what you can wish for is incredibly big and creative," Altman added.

US imposed a 10% tariff on Indian imports, compared with 12.5% on goods from China and Vietnam, giving India a 2.5-percentage-point headline edge. However, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka also face 10% tariffs, limiting India's advantage in labour-intensive exports. EU and Taiwan's combined most-favored-nation and Section 301 tariffs are capped at 10%, unlike India's additive structure.