Business
Inside Serendipity’s store-level approach to itsu’s UK retail growth
Bridging digital visibility and in-store performance across multi-site retail estates is one of the central challenges facing UK retailers seeking sustainable growth.
With footfall and shopper traffic declining (down 2.9% year-on-year in December), a critical challenge for multi-site operators is how to accurately measure and optimise digital performance at the level of an individual store, rather than just the brand as a whole.
With a retail portfolio of 77 stores nationwide, itsu, like other UK market leaders, has turned to external experts to address that question. Founded by Julian Metcalfe, itsu has built a reputation and a market-leading business on a simple belief: that people deserve convenient food that’s also high-quality and nutritious. Backing its ambition to help the UK “eat beautiful”, itsu shared plans to expand its restaurant and retail estate, targeting approximately 100 new outlets following investment by Bridgepoint Capital in 2021.
To support its commercial ambitions, itsu has appointed London-based retail growth specialist and digital marketing agency Serendipity. The partnership is designed to reach more customers through search-based discovery, while holding itsu’s long-standing position against fried-by-default convenience food; a stance the brand has built on since the late 1990s.
Across a complex physical retail estate where commercial outcomes vary by location, footfall, and live trading conditions, no amount of category-level visibility will move the needle on its own. Instead, this data-led, performance-driven digital strategy will focus on strengthening brand presence, driving retail and online sales, and creating clearer connections between digital engagement and real-world commercial performance.
The work spans SEO, content, paid media and advanced measurement, beginning with foundational technical SEO audits and the development of a content and search strategy to surface where visibility can be improved. From there, Serendipity will use itsu’s search infrastructure – keyword authority, audience data and content positioning – as the upstream signal, applying store-level measurement to convert that signal into till receipts.
Launching the work as a test-and-learn programme across local search, paid and organic channels, Serendipity will establish performance benchmarks across the full estate and build a data driven approach to identify growth opportunities and align with location specific user demand. Supporting this analysis is a measurement framework designed to clearly link online activity to real in-store behaviour at each site, rather than at brand level. The result will be a clearer view of how customers move between digital, physical retail and grocery channels. For itsu, that means a measurable line from digital spend back to commercial outcomes.
Rukshan Warnacula, founder of Serendipity, said: “At a time when eating well and sustainably matters more than ever for our communities and our planet, itsu continues to lead the way with Asian-inspired, healthier menus that support health and wellbeing. We’re proud to play a part in connecting people with food that is fresh, convenient and healthy.”
The methodology is built on a longer track record. Serendipity has worked with itsu’s grocery business for five years, a partnership that has delivered 60% UK gyoza category visibility, more than 900 top-three keyword positions across core category terms, and 23% of gyoza-related AI responses now referencing the itsu brand. The agency’s case study on the itsu grocery partnership lays out the category-level mechanics.
Rukshan Warnacula added: “Using our data-driven approach at a store level, this framework will equip itsu with insights into both store performance and growth opportunities across all locations.”
The appointment builds on Serendipity’s existing five-year partnership with itsu’s grocery business. The retail growth specialist has delivered 60% UK gyoza category visibility and more than 900 top-three keyword positions across core category terms for the brand.
Business
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Accenture plc (ACN) Rethinking and Maturing AI Adoption Transcript
Ipek Ozkaya
Hello, and welcome to today’s Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute’s webcast, Rethinking and Maturing AI Adoption. My name is Ipek Ozkaya, and I’m the Technical Director of AI Native Software Engineering at the SEI. And I’ve had the incredible pleasure of leading this project focused on AI adoption maturity with our team at the SEI and the incredible team at Accenture.
We want to make today’s conversation as interactive as possible. So please feel free to put your questions into the YouTube chat area. And we’ve already received close to 200 questions. There is no way we’ll be able to get through any of them in completeness, but we’ll try to get to them as much as possible afterwards.
It is no surprise today that businesses are — across all sectors are redefining themselves and going through a structural shift through AI solutions. And they are trying to redefine their operational relevance, their operational workflows as well as get ahead of the businesses through ROI. Software-driven organizations are also going through the same challenge. In fact, the software as a discipline is being redefined through AI, looking into efficiency, productivity and of course, some of the risks that come with it.
And clearly, all the organizations that deliver us the frontier models, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic are developing improved capabilities around the clock, and we’re receiving these capabilities around a lot faster. If we look into 2 years ago, the early generative AI models could barely solve some of the cybersecurity tasks. But today, we know the Mythos and GPT 5.5 could actually
Business
Bank stocks rally as RBI steps lift mood, trigger short covering
Bank Nifty rose 2.1% to 55,194.50; and closed above 55,000 levels after two weeks while benchmark Nifty moved 0.5% higher on Tuesday. All 14 constituents of Bank Nifty moved higher on Tuesday. .
Bank of Baroda jumped 5.5% while Canara Bank climbed 4.5%. Punjab National Bank and Federal Bank advanced around 3.5%.
“The measures by RBI are likely to drive a healthy deposit base for banks and lead to cheaper cost of funds since the hedging cost on FCNRB is borne by the Central Bank while the hedging costs on ECB’s is subsidised,” said Dharmesh Kant, head of research, Cholamandalam Securities.
ET BureauLast week, the RBI announced measures to boost foreign currency inflows and to support the rupee. The Central Bank offered concessional dollar-rupee swap facility to absorb the entire forex hedging costs for three-to-five-year Foreign Currency Non-Resident (FCNR[B]) deposits until October 16, 2026. In addition, it offered a concessional swap facility for eligible External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs) raised by public sector entities, fixing the hedging cost at 1.5% per annum.
This policy allows Indian banks to access low-cost global capital and alleviate domestic deposit crunches without bearing currency risk, said analysts. “The sudden fundamental clarity triggered massive technical short covering, catching derivative traders by surprise and sparking a rapid short squeeze since the Put-Call Ratio (PCR) had dropped into an oversold zone below 0.80 ahead of the news,” said Nishchal Jain, Quant Researcher, Share. Market by Phone Pe.
The high-volume breakout past 55,100 and decisive price action, shifts the market regime from “sell on rallies” to “buy on dips”, establishing 55,000 as a strong psychological support base- forming a high-conviction bullish view, he said.
Business
IGO shares slide after fire at processing plant
IGO says spodumene production remains on track after reporting that a fire broke out at its new chemical-grade processing plant at the Greenbushes lithium operation.
Shares in the critical minerals miner slid in morning trade after reporting a fire had occurred at its $880 million Chemical Grade Plant 3 (CGP3) plant at the Greenbushes mine site yesterday.
IGO said the fire was extinguished and no injuries were sustained, and that its first and second chemical crushing and processing plants on site were unaffected by the blaze.
The third chemical plant at the hard-rock lithium operation in the state’s South West falls under the ownership of Talison Lithium, in which IGO owns an indirect 25 per cent stake, alongside China’s Tianqi Lithium (26 per cent) and US major Albemarle Corporation (49 per cent).
CGP3 is the third chemical grade plant built at the Greenbushes operation, which is still ramping up after processing first ore in December last year.
It has a processing capacity of 2.4 million tonnes per annum to produce up to 500,000 tonnes per annum of lithium mineral concentrate.
The market was told Talison Lithium had commenced a full investigation into the cause and damage from the incident on Tuesday.
IGO said Greenbushes production remained on track to meet its FY26 guidance of between 1,375 million and 1,425 million tonnes of spodumene concentrate.
The fire at the new plant represents another setback for the critical minerals miner, which has been grappling with challenges at its co-owned Kwinana lithium hydroxide plant.
That downstream processing plant is operating at about 50 per cent nameplate capacity, which was an improvement when reported in the March quarter.
IGO and joint venture partner in the plant, Tianqi Lithium, have been increasingly at odds over the future of the plant, after the ASX-listed miner wrote down its value to zero.
Shares in IGO are trading down 6 per cent to $8.48 apiece at 11AM AWST.
Business
Prop traders seek relief on margin funding as global rivals up game
The Commodity and Capital Market Participants Association of India (CPAI) is working with the Industry Standards Forum (ISF), a body comprising members of various industry associations, to create a separate framework that would distinguish between liquidity providers and speculators. That they believe would help them to convince the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to permit lower margin for the bank guarantees and enable them to trade higher volumes.
The RBI has mandated that banks lending to capital market intermediaries (CMIs) extend guarantees for proprietary trading subject to the facility being fully secured. The proposal says that banks can extend guarantee only to the amount equal to the value of the collateral provided by the proprietary trading firm.
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SailPoint: Weaker Net-New ARR Amid Lofty Valuation (Rating Downgrade)
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Trump administration urges judge to reject bid to block White House UFC event

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World's largest chipmaker does not rule out price rises as costs increase
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After issues with insider trading, the prediction betting platform is adding new rules.
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