Category: technology

Caspia Launches New RTL Security Analyzer Enabling Agentic Silicon Security Verification

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Feb. 25: Caspia Technologies announced broad availability of its flagship security verification product CODAx. New and unique capabilities delivered by the product were described, along with its impact on the customer base. The company also provided a preview of its plans to build agentic security verification workflows.

CODAx is Caspia’s security-aware auditing solution that analyzes early (RTL) code of IP/SoC designs to detect coding styles that can introduce security vulnerabilities. Over 150 insecure coding practices are recognized and suggested corrections are also provided.

CODAx security checks are informed by public vulnerability databases including CWE, CVE, and Trust-Hub, which catalog over 1,000 known hardware security weaknesses. Caspia applies GenAI techniques to systematically map these weaknesses to detectable RTL coding patterns.

The latest release of CODAx, V2026.1 provides deeper security checks that span across the design hierarchy, enabling identification of weaknesses that travel up and across design modules. The company reported that comprehensive stress testing was performed on this release with 10,000+ intentionally vulnerable designs.

Caspia also reported that a popular open-source root-of-trust design containing 400+ design files, approximately 3 million gates, and 500,000 lines of RTL code was analyzed by CODAx in about 45 minutes. Multiple security weaknesses were found during this analysis.

Caspia has been working with all the major EDA suppliers to ensure a smooth integration of its tools with existing design flows. The company also reported that major chip and system companies from around the world are successfully deploying CODAx for designs that support applications such as automotive, data center, communication, storage, multimedia, precision analog and embedded computing.

Caspia announced that Stuart Audley has joined the company as VP/GM of product management, with a focus on agentic security workflows. Audley brings decades of experience designing and deploying cryptographic hardware and security IP for top defense primes and leading semiconductor companies. He previously led advanced security platform development for FPGAs and ASICs at The Athena Group, Inc. and Mercury Systems.

“We are expanding our security verification footprint to include both advanced tools and enablement of agentic workflows,” said Rick Hegberg, CEO of Caspia. “I am delighted to add someone with Stuart’s experience and background to the team. This will ensure we can focus on delivering cutting-edge capabilities and AI-driven security automation.”

“Caspia is evolving from a provider of point security verification tools to an agentic platform supplier where AI orchestrates comprehensive hardware security workflows,” said Audley.

He went on to say, “the elements of our plan include unifying all our tools with AI-assisted workflows that span the entire hardware security lifecycle: analyzing RTL, identifying vulnerabilities, and verifying the results.

Traditional design flows remain fully supported, but we are creating a new category for agentic-enabled hardware security verification.”

Caspia will present its latest technology in booth 702 at DVCon on March 2-5, 2026, to be held at the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, CA. 

realme Boosts 16 Pro Series With 4 Years OS, 6 Years Security Updates

New Delhi, Feb 25 : realme, India’s most recommended youth smartphone brand, today announced an upgraded software support policy for the realme 16 Pro Series, further strengthening its long-term value proposition for users.

In line with the evolving product roadmap and overall value enhancements introduced for the series, realme will now offer 4 years of Android OS upgrades and 6 years of security updates, upgraded from the earlier 3+4 commitment. This step reflects the brand’s continued focus on delivering a more comprehensive ownership experience.

The enhanced 4+6 policy ensures users benefit from sustained performance improvements, stronger device security, and continued access to the latest Android features and AI-driven innovations over a longer lifecycle.

The updated software commitment will be enabled through an upcoming OTA rollout, ensuring all eligible realme 16 Pro Series users seamlessly receive the extended support.

With this move, realme continues to reinforce the 16 Pro Series as a future-ready smartphone lineup that combines powerful hardware, intelligent software, and long-term reliability.

General Magic Raises Oversubscribed US$7.2M to Cut Insurance Quote Time to 3 Minutes

Toronto, Canada – February 25, 2026; Insurance is complicated. Customers have questions before they quote, need guidance after, and expect clarity when they file a claim. But the work of answering those questions, collecting documents, and following up still runs on calls, emails, and portals stitched together by manual effort. For brokers and carriers, this coordination overhead is one of the most operationally expensive and taxing parts of the business.

 General Magic is building AI agents to solve this problem.

 The company announced a US$7.2M seed funding round led by Radical Ventures, with significant participation from a16z Speedrun and new investment from Figma VP of Product Brendan O’Driscoll and Larry James Erwin from OpenAI. The company has raised $8.4M to date, backed by Radical Ventures, a16z Speedrun, and Comma Capital, along with operators who have built foundational AI and product platforms, including Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere, as well as the executive team at Braze, including Kevin Wang, Chief Product Officer, and Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth.

 General Magic builds AI agents that take over the work insurance teams spend the most time on: answering routine questions, collecting documents, and following up with customers when clarity matters. These agents work across the full insurance lifecycle, covering pre-quote eligibility, post quote engagement, and claims coordination. They do all of this while connecting directly to broker management systems, quoting platforms, and CRMs. 

 Early deployments show what’s possible. Working with one of the world’s largest general insurers, General Magic has reduced time-to-quote from roughly 30 minutes down to under 3 minutes via its SMS-based agent. 

 “Too much of insurance still relies on manual follow through across calls, inboxes, and scattered systems,” said Jai Mansukhani, Co Founder and President of General Magic. “We focus on keeping customers engaged at every stage of the lifecycle, not just at quote or claim. Our agents handle the routine work that slows teams down, while giving insurance leaders real visibility into what customers are asking, where they are getting stuck, and how they are feeling. When that engagement and data flow directly into core systems, teams move faster and customers feel genuinely supported.”

 The company’s agentic offerings are centered around a product called Cell, a proactive AI agent that connects directly to the systems insurance teams already use. Cell integrates with broker management systems, quoting and rating platforms and CRMs to support teams. It can be deployed across SMS, iMessage and RCS, and can extend into policy, billing and claims workflows as needed.

When a customer has a question, they can text Cell over SMS, or the insurance team can proactively deploy it to the customer. The agent responds using real system data, asks for missing information, follows up automatically, and updates records as workflows progress. Conversations stay in one thread, context is preserved, and customers move forward at their own pace without being chased or dropped.

 Early deployments point to the scale of the opportunity. In early rollouts with large personal lines insurers, General Magic is reducing the time required to generate and finalize quotes from roughly 30 minutes to about 3 minutes by automating routine clarification and follow-ups over SMS across auto and life insurance workflows. This increase in speed expands effective quoting capacity while keeping customers engaged through the most failure prone part of the journey after a quote is issued. By handling frequent questions and coordination over text, the agent reduces delays and prevents conversations from stalling. General Magic is currently supporting deployments with carriers across auto and life insurance, where post-quote and customer coordination are most critical.

 In parallel, the team is focused on building agents that understand the realities of insurance distribution, including licensing and regulatory frameworks such as RIBO, OTL, and other broker and advisor exams. By specializing agents around how licensed professionals are trained to communicate, General Magic aims to ensure conversations feel accurate, compliant, and aligned with how insurance teams actually explain coverage to customers.

 General Magic was founded by Anthony Azrak and Jai Mansukhani, second-time founders who previously sold AI products into legacy industries. The company’s move into insurance came from firsthand frustration. After a water leak spiraled into weeks of calls, delays, and higher premiums, the founders began exploring how common this experience really was. What they found was an industry that technically works, but often fails customers and intermediaries in the moments that matter most. That insight shaped General Magic’s decision to go deep into insurance rather than remain a horizontal AI platform.

 The broader industry context underscores the urgency. Retention rates in insurance lag behind other sectors, and acquiring new customers costs significantly more than keeping existing ones. As digital distribution accelerates and customers shop more aggressively at renewal, both carriers and brokers that fail to improve post-quote engagement risk losing revenue they already worked to win.

Looking ahead, General Magic plans to expand across insurance lines and workflows, staying focused on moments where customer intent is high and coordination most often breaks down. The platform is being built to support high impact workflows across the insurance stack, prioritising areas where follow-through fails today and where fixing it creates meaningful value for customers, brokers, and carriers.

 The long term vision is simple but ambitious: make follow through automatic, reliable, and invisible. By removing the need for manual chasing and fragmented handoffs, teams can spend less time managing processes and more time serving end customers. The team is motivated by solving complex, real world problems that sit at the center of insurance operations, with the goal of delivering tangible improvements to how people experience insurance when it matters most.

 Sanjana Basu, partner at Radical Ventures, commented: “Most of the world’s financial and insurance data is locked inside rigid, legacy systems that were never designed for the AI era. General Magic isn’t trying to convince enterprises to throw away that infrastructure. Instead, they are giving them a way to finally talk to it. By building a reasoning layer that sits on top of existing systems of record, the General Magic team are unlocking a massive amount of trapped value. This is how the Fortune 500 becomes AI-native. Not by rebuilding from scratch, but by bridging the gap between old data and new intelligence.” 

Troy Kirwin, investment partner at a16z Speedrun, added: “We’ve watched Anthony and Jai grow exponentially both during their speedrun cohort and in the months after. They are building a truly compelling product that we believe will revolutionize workflows across insurance carriers and brokerages globally. I have a personal thesis that outsiders will disrupt legacy industries, and General Magic has helped buttress this thesis with the immense progress they’ve made. We are excited to deepen our partnership through supporting their seed round.” 

Pete Tessier, BFA, CAIB, President at insurance MGA Taycon Risk, added: “What I have seen with General Magic and their approach to AI was a willingness to adapt to the insurance industry’s needs. This is significant because of the varied nuances of the insurance industry and how its products are distributed, and why internal and external customer journeys are different. The challenge will be making it scale across all channels of insurance product distribution. This might be the first true ‘game changer’ for the industry and deliver on customer experience and expectations” 

The Hashgraph Group launches TrackTrace ahead of EU Digital Product Passport rules

Switzerland, Feb 24 — The Hashgraph Group (THG), the Swiss-based Web3 and AI technology engineering company operating within the Hedera ecosystem, has today announced the launch of TrackTrace, deployed as a fully managed enterprise-grade solution that transforms and enhances global supply chain transparency through real-time tracking of products from origin, ethical sourcing, and carbon emissions data.

TrackTrace enables the certification of product authenticity and immutable data audit trails, while providing end-to-end transparency and traceability through cryptographically verified decentralized identifiers (DIDs). The platform creates verifiable audit trails of product-specific data, sustainability credentials, durability, reparability, and various other product data, while applying Agentic AI for workflow automation and compliant DPP reporting.

TrackTrace enables the linkage between physical events and digital records in a tamper-proof environment by integrating THG’s existing product IDTrust to provide decentralized identity and verifiable credentials, with digital executable business processes and immutable data audit trails anchored on Hedera – the world’s leading and most energy-efficient distributed ledger technology (DLT) that is governed by a council of leading global organisations such as Dell, Deutsche Telecom, EDF, FedEx, Google, Hitachi, IBM, Mondelēz, and Standard Bank, just to name a few of the over 30 Hedera Council members.

Built for enterprises, TrackTrace supports compliance with the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which introduces mandatory sustainability and circularity norms across various regulated product categories. The requirement for a digital product passport applies to all products, including all components and intermediate products manufactured or put into operation in the EU. Under the ESPR framework, all products will require a digital record, typically accessed via QR code, containing data on a product’s origin, composition, sustainability credentials, and lifecycle.

The Hashgraph Group’s efforts to evolve in accordance with regulatory changes are echoed across the Hedera ecosystem, with the recent announcement by FedEx that it has joined the Hedera Council to advance trusted digital infrastructure for global shipments and the future of digital global supply chains. TrackTrace is designed and built to enable the digital evolution of global supply chains by leveraging the convergence of agentic intelligence and workflow automation with decentralization and trusted data infrastructure, offering enhanced digital visibility, governance, and compliance across entire product lifecycles and environments.

“The European Green Deal strives to establish the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 and needs infrastructure it can trust to transform Europe into a modern, efficient, and sustainable, economy,” said Stefan Deiss, Co-Founder & CEO at The Hashgraph Group. “With TrackTrace built on Hedera, we deliver that critical trust data infrastructure layer that enables companies to comply with DPP regulation, while strengthening global supply chain integrity and fostering the transition to a sustainable, transparent, and circular economy.”

Set to come into force in 2027, the DPP regulation will apply to categories including textiles, construction materials, batteries and electronics, fundamentally reshaping how products are designed, tracked, and reported across the European market. For businesses targeting the EU market, DPP becomes a strategic priority that requires urgent focus to ensure compliance with the ESPR. According to PwC, the DPP initiative will redefine how products are designed, produced, recycled, and managed across the EU. THG and PwC are already collaborating with enterprises that need to implement DPP in compliance with ESPR, leveraging TrackTrace to provide transparency, traceability, and auditability across the entire lifecycle of a product.

Micha Roon, Head of Engineering at The Hashgraph Group said, “In designing TrackTrace, we prioritized interoperability to ensure it communicates seamlessly with existing enterprise ERPs and diverse supply chain standards. We have embedded GDPR compliance by design, allowing businesses to share mandatory compliance data without exposing any sensitive intellectual property or personal information. Ultimately, our architecture leverages Hedera’s consensus algorithm to deliver quantum-resistant data security, ensuring that every digital product passport is both immutable and verifiable across global supply chain borders.”

The digital product passport also has implications for global trade since it does not only affect companies based in the EU. For instance, all products exported into the EU market, regardless of the country of manufacture, must have a corresponding DPP. For companies seeking to maintain market access, export products, and remain competitive within the EU market, time is of the essence to integrate DPP now into their product strategy, design, and operations.

AAEON Announces the de next-RAP8-EZBOX, the World’s Smallest, Lightest 13th Gen Intel Core-powered Embedded System

Designed for deployment in space-constrained industrial robotic solutions, the de next-RAP8-EZBOX packs 13th Gen Intel Core processing into a system measuring just 95.5mm x 69.5mm x 42.5mm.

(Taipei, Taiwan – Feb 24) Edge computing leader AAEON (Stock Code: 6579) announced another breakthrough with the release of the de next-RAP8-EZBOX, the world’s smallest embedded PC powered by 13^th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors.

Measuring just 95.5mm x 69.5mm x 42.5mm with a heatsink, and 95.5mm x 69.5mm x 45.4mm with an active cooler, the de next-RAP8-EZBOX is designed for deployment in space-constrained autonomous systems or as the central controller within industrial robots.

The system comes with the 10-core, 12-thread Intel® Core™ i7-1365UE processor (formerly Raptor Lake), Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics, and 16GB of soldered LPDDR5x system memory. Despite its small size and relatively high processing capabilities, the de next-RAP8-EZBOX provides a range of I/Os designed to connect and coordinate with various robotics subsystems. For example, the system comes with two LAN ports, one for GbE and one for 2.5GbE speed, joined by two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. Rounding off its physical interfaces is an HDMI 1.2a port. Meanwhile, the de next-RAP8-EZBOX’s storage comes via an M.2 2280 M-Key slot.

The de next-RAP8-EZBOX is available with both fan-assisted and passive heatsink cooling options, making it possible to integrate the system into fully sealed enclosures without the risk of overheating. Moreover, the system’s 15W performance hybrid architecture CPU and LPDDR5x system memory both minimize heat output and energy draw, preventing excessive thermal buildup during extended periods of operation.

Despite it being a new release, the product has already seen a great deal of attention, winning a Taiwan Excellence Award for its innovative design and market potential, particularly with respect to its potential use in space-constrained autonomous systems or as a central controller within industrial robots.

The system offers broad compatibility with operating systems, including Windows® 10 and Ubuntu 22.04.3 (Kernel 6.2).

Institut Pasteur injects new sustainable display capabilities inside Paris HQ with a network of Philips ePaper and EcoDesign digital signage

PPDS, together with integration specialist Exaprobe and digital signage software partner, Telelogos, have combined their expertise to deliver unrivalled high quality, low energy visual performance and remote management capabilities to the Institut’s 3,000 plus staff, with a fleet of 20x sustainability conscious Philips Professional Displays.

 Amsterdam, Feb 20: PPDS, the exclusive global provider of Philips Professional Displays, is excited to announce that its Tableaux ePaper and 3000 Series EcoDesign digital signage displays have been selected to deliver a perfect tonic of high performance, low energy visual capabilities to Institut Pasteur’s 538,000 ft² biomedical research campus in Paris.

 Founded by Louis Pasteur in 1887, the Institut Pasteur is an internationally acclaimed not for profit research and education institute committed to the fight against infectious diseases in France and around the world. A recipient of 10 Nobel Prizes and employing over 3,000 staff, the Institut’s colossal five hectare campus features 39 separate buildings, including a conference centre, and a total of 48,000 m² of laboratory space.

 Future proofed planning

With such a vast campus and visual technology playing an increasingly important role in its day to day activities and communications, Institut Pasteur’s AV/IT management team sought to modernise its ageing display infrastructure. Concluding an extensive site review, the project would include a fleet of 20x dynamic displays, strategically placed to support a variety of needs, settings, and light environments, including reception halls, meeting rooms, laboratories, and more.

 The project presented a number unique challenges. As a site of historical significance – containing several listed buildings – retaining the aesthetics during any modernisation, while ensuring minimal disruptions to staff, was imperative. Furthermore, displays would need to meet the Institut Pasteur’s strict standards for electrical safety and durability, while providing greater energy efficiency to reduce its carbon footprint.

 Romain Gentile, Key Account Manager at PPDS, commented: “Performance, readability, and energy efficiency were all key, with the displays disseminating scientific, institutional, and logistical information. For Institut Pasteur, and the invaluable work they do, there can be absolutely no compromise.”

 Effective communication

Working with AV/IT integration specialists, Exaprobe, PPDS’ multi award winning ‘zero power’ 32” Philips Tableaux ePaper and 55” Philips Signage 3000 Series EcoDesign displays were immediately identified as the only solutions capable of meeting – and ultimately surpassing – the Institut’s high expectations.

 Signalling a new era of visual communications and sustainability, the introduction of Philips Tableaux ePaper displays was selected primarily – but not exclusively – to provide wayfinding information, such as mapping, campus information, and other instructions, to help visitors navigate around the site.

 Fully portable and able to be used entirely unplugged – ideal for use in Institut’s older buildings and in spaces with limited power sources – each Philips Tableaux is capable of displaying full colour, static imagery for days, weeks, months, or even years without using a single kilowatt of energy. The only time Philips Tableaux displays require power is during content updates, with one image change using just 0.0025 kWh.

 The Gold standard

For the institute’s more advanced and detailed visual needs on a grander scale, including for presentations, corporate videos, and other internal communications, the future proof Philips Signage 3000 Series EcoDesign was the standout choice, ticking all boxes for both performance and sustainability.

 In addition to delivering high impact 4K Ultra HD visual quality, with picture perfect performance down to the smallest detail – be that videos, pictures or numbers – the Philips Signage 3000 Series EcoDesign enables the screens to use less than 50 per cent of the power compared to other digital signage models in the market, without compromising on performance.   

 The Philips Signage 3000 Series EcoDesign display is also the industry’s first EPEAT Climate+ Gold certified display of its kind, which measures the social and environmental impacts of products from extraction to end of life. The Philips Signage 3000 EcoDesign meets the most demanding set of criteria for sustainability leadership in electronics.

 24/7 management

Both the Philips Tableaux and Philips Signage 3000 Series EcoDesign are also members of PPDS’ growing portfolio of integrated Android SoC displays, offering a vast range of features and benefits, including secure and seamless remote management capabilities with trusted partners.

 Enabling centralised management of the new fleet, PPDS partner, Telelogos’ Media4Display solution was selected and integrated, providing round-the-clock monitoring and management. This also allows the Pasteur technical team to schedule content in real time without having to travel or manually update, further reducing their carbon footprint and costs. 

 The full integration proceeded successfully and without disrupting research activities. Connectivity and content management tests were carried out on site, ensuring a seamless transition.

 Franck Fromet, AV Manager, Institut Pasteur, commented: “The integration of our new Philips Professional Displays has enabled us to modernise our communication while respecting our environmental commitment. The PPDS teams understood our constraints and proposed a solution that is understated, elegant, and effective.”

 Romain Gentile concluded: “The Institut Pasteur now benefits from a modern, sustainable display system that is fully adapted to its scientific environment. Information is disseminated more effectively, content is updated instantly, and energy consumption has been significantly reduced.”

Liquibase Secure 5.1 Extends Modeled Change Control to Snowflake

New release makes Snowflake control plane changes governable and auditable across access, data movement, and execution, and adds support for Couchbase, AWS Keyspaces, DataStax Enterprise, and AlloyDB.

Austin, TX — Feb 20— Liquibase, the leader in Database Change Governance, today announced the release of Liquibase Secure 5.1, extending modeled Change Control to Snowflake. With 5.1, enterprises can govern Snowflake control plane changes with the same rigor and automation they already apply to schema evolution, closing a critical gap in data platform security, compliance, and AI readiness. Liquibase Secure 5.1 also expands database platform coverage, including new support for additional cloud and enterprise data stores.

Snowflake has become mission-critical infrastructure for analytics, data products, and AI initiatives. As organizations scale DataOps and internal developer platforms, Snowflake changes are no longer isolated technical updates. They are platform-level changes that impact trust, availability, and every downstream consumer. Yet many of the most consequential changes still happen outside standardized governance, often delivered as scripts with limited visibility, weak enforcement, and evidence that is difficult to assemble when it matters most.

“As enterprises modernize their developer platforms for AI-driven delivery, change control at the database layer has become a prerequisite, not a nice-to-have,” said Mirek Novotny, Sr. Director of Product at Liquibase. “If Snowflake control plane changes aren’t governed and observable, you can’t prove control. Liquibase Secure 5.1 brings predictability and evidence to the changes that matter most, without slowing teams down.”

Modeled Change Control for Snowflake

Liquibase Secure 5.1 treats key Snowflake control plane changes as first-class, modeled change types, rather than opaque scripts. That modeling enables precise policy enforcement, object-aware drift detection, and audit-ready evidence at the level where access, movement, and execution are defined.

With Liquibase Secure 5.1, data platform teams can govern Snowflake changes across access and security configuration, data sharing and movement, platform and cost controls, and automated execution, using standardized workflows across environments and teams.

Key outcomes include:

• Stop risky Snowflake control plane changes before they reach production
• Standardize how Snowflake changes are delivered across environments and teams
• Automatically generate audit-ready evidence for every change
• Detect drift and out-of-band updates to governed Snowflake objects
• Recover faster with traceable, reversible changes and tested rollback procedures

This closes a long-standing gap for organizations that govern schema evolution, yet still struggle with over-permission creep, ungoverned data movement, and control plane drift that can undermine security posture and AI initiatives.

Built for DataOps, data products, and AI readiness

As Snowflake increasingly powers feature engineering, model training, and AI-driven decisioning, the blast radius of ungoverned change grows. A single access change can expose sensitive training data. An unreviewed sharing update can expand compliance scope. An execution change can silently alter business-critical logic. Liquibase Secure 5.1 helps data platform teams keep Snowflake predictable, auditable, and reliable as usage scales, without turning governance into a bottleneck.

Expanding database support across Liquibase’s industry-leading coverage

Liquibase Secure continues to deliver broad database coverage across 60+ platforms, from mainframe DB2 to cloud-native data stores. Liquibase Secure 5.1 expands support for Snowflake, Databricks, and MongoDB, and adds new platform support for Couchbase, AWS Keyspaces, DataStax Enterprise, and AlloyDB for Google Cloud. This breadth helps enterprises standardize change governance across heterogeneous environments using a single platform instead of stitching together siloed tools and processes. Teams can apply consistent workflows and generate unified, audit-ready evidence across their database estate, reducing operational overhead while preserving the flexibility to adopt new technologies without rebuilding governance each time.

Enterprise partnership, not just tooling

Liquibase brings more than a decade of frontline experience helping enterprises govern database change at scale. In addition to the platform, Liquibase provides hands-on professional services, a dedicated customer success organization, and ongoing advisory support to help teams operationalize Change Control across their delivery model.

realme Launches Special Narzo Series Sale with Performance-Packed Smartphones

New Delhi, Feb 19: realme, the most popular smartphone brand among Indian youth, today announced exciting limited-period offers on its performance-driven realme Narzo Series, available from 19th February to 22nd February 2026 on Amazon and realme.com.

With attractive bank offers and platform-exclusive coupons, customers can upgrade to powerful Narzo smartphones at compelling effective prices during the offer period.

Performance-First Smartphones for Young Users: realme Narzo Series

The realme Narzo Series continues to be a favourite among young consumers for its performance-focused approach.

The realme Narzo 90 delivers smooth day-to-day performance, dependable battery life and a refined design. Meanwhile, the realme Narzo 90X has witnessed exceptional demand, with over 1 lakh units sold on the first day of sale, emerging as the top-selling smartphone by volume on its first sale day in 2025 in the INR 10,000–INR 20,000 price segment on Amazon.

Alongside the realme 90X, the series offers reliable performance and efficient power usage for young users seeking accessible and future-ready upgrades.

Models such as realme Narzo 80 Pro, realme Narzo 80 Lite 5G, and realme Narzo 80 Lite 4G further strengthen the portfolio by delivering efficient performance, dependable battery life and a smooth user experience across price segments.

Škoda Auto Volkswagen India Appoints Nitin Selot as Executive Director Finance, IT & Legal

India, Feb 19 : Škoda Auto Volkswagen India Private Limited has announced the appointment of Nitin Selot as its new Executive Director Finance, IT and Legal Affairs, effective 19 February 2026. In this role, he will lead the financial strategy and IT transformation of the Group in India, steering its next phase of growth. SAVWIPL manages the India operations of six prestigious brands Škoda, Volkswagen, Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, and Porsche and operates two state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Pune and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.

Holger Peters, Board Member for Finance, IT and Legal Affairs, Škoda Auto a.s. said,

“We welcome Nitin Selot to Škoda Auto Volkswagen India at a pivotal moment where India is the most important market for Škoda Auto a.s. outside Europe. His appointment comes at a crucial time as we continue to strengthen our financial discipline, enhance governance, and build resilience across our operations in India. Nitin’s vast experience across multiple industries and his proven ability to lead complex financial and IT transformations will be invaluable as we align our long‑term strategy with the evolving needs of the Indian market. I am confident that his leadership will reinforce our financial foundation, support innovation, and drive sustainable growth for all our brands in India.”

Piyush Arora, Managing Director and CEO, Škoda Auto Volkswagen India Private Limited, said,

“I am pleased to welcome Nitin Selot as Škoda Auto Volkswagen India enters an exciting new chapter of transformation driven by the collective momentum of our six aspiration brands. We continue to redefine our processes, improving productivity, and advancing our local-for-local approach, strengthening the foundation of our India operations. Looking ahead, the robustness of our financial strategy and the agility of our IT systems will be central to sustaining this progress. With his extensive experience across industries and geographies, Nitin Selot is well‑placed to further sharpen our investment approach, driving efficiency, and ensuring that SAVWIPL is future‑ready.”

With 35 years of leadership experience across diverse industries, Nitin Selot brings deep expertise in strategic financial planning, regulatory governance, and end-to-end financial management. Prior to joining SAVWIPL, he held senior leadership positions at JCB India, Compass Group India, Shell and Mars Wrigley. He holds Finance and Accounting degrees – including an A.C.M.A. from the Institute of Cost & Management Accountants of India, an MBA in Finance from the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, and an ACS from the Institute of Company Secretaries of India.