Jane Seidel

1 month ago | restofworld.org | Amar Diwakar |Jane Seidel

Ameca, a humanoid robot, smiled and blinked at the crowd at Dubai AI Week 2025, a celebration of all things artificial intelligence. Landmark announcements marked the event, including a $545 million hyperscale data center to supply Microsoft and Dubai’s first PhD program in AI. AI engineer Nair, 29, felt inspired. Since moving to the United Arab Emirates last October from Kerala, India, she had applied to hundreds of entry-level jobs and faced rejections, scams and exploitative offers.

1 month ago | restofworld.org | Yudhijit Bhattacharjee |Jane Seidel

One morning in January, Byju Raveendran sat in the back seat of his shiny black Cadillac as it sped through Dubai. Just three years prior, the schoolteachers’ son had appeared on the Forbes list of richest Indians as founder and CEO of Byju’s, then one of the world’s most valuable education technology companies. He was dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, while his driver, Hashim, was more formally attired in a collared shirt.

1 month ago | restofworld.org | Bhavish Aggarwal |Jane Seidel

This article is adapted from Rest of World’s recent feature: Inside the spectacular rise and crash of India’s largest EV companyBhavish Aggarwal is the CEO of Ola Electric, India’s largest electric vehicle company. Aggarwal’s path to EV success began with gas-powered taxis. In 2010, he was a recent graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay when he quit his job at Microsoft to launch Ola Cabs. The company quickly became seen as India’s answer to Uber.

1 month ago | restofworld.org | Atul Dev |Bhavish Aggarwal |Jane Seidel

One evening last September, Pitambar Panda, a 24-year-old product designer in the Indian city of Pune, mounted his pearly white electric Ola scooter. He accelerated noiselessly through the city’s busy avenues on his way home from work. When he was shopping for a scooter a few months earlier, Panda, short on funds, chose to go electric to save on gas. He was one of the founders of a small food-delivery app, for which he sometimes made deliveries.

2 months ago | restofworld.org | Lam Le |Jane Seidel

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ongoing tour of Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia has drawn U.S. ire as he promotes free trade in a region facing some of the stiffest American tariffs. During Xi’s stop in Vietnam, the two countries signed agreements on supply chains and a joint railway.