Archives April 2023

Gurugram: KIIT World School observed Earth Day to remind pupils of their responsibilities to ‘Mother Nature.’ The “Go-Green” initiative was implemented as part of environmental education to engage the entire school community in creating a better, greener, and sustainable future. The school also hosted a workshop on recycling newspapers organized by Hindustan Times.

On the occasion of Earth Day, a myriad of activities were conducted in the classes. Pre-primary students dressed as earth, trees, and natural resources, and gave useful messages to protect the planet whereas students from third to sixth participated in poster-making and pot-decorating activities. Students also created several useful items using discarded items and waste materials, such as handbags from jeans fabric. Along with this, they participated in activities such as litter picking, planting saplings, and creating bird feeders. At the workshop, students were taught how to manufacture paper envelopes and griddle bags from old newspapers during the session, as well as the significance of these items.

Neelima Kamrah, Principal of KIIT World School, advised the students to conserve trees, preserve them, plant numerous plants and trees, and safeguard our flora, fauna, and wildlife. Further, she said, “KIIT World School has long been an environmentally conscious school, and we have always sought to include sustainable practices into our curriculum and surroundings. As we mark Earth Day, each student has been enlightened to the importance of protecting the environment and becoming responsible and conscious global citizens through numerous activities.”

Hyderabad, April 24, 2023: The Telangana and Andhra Pradesh franchise Telugu Talons announced its entry into the Premier Handball League (PHL) on Saturday. The team, owned by Abhishek Reddy Kankanala, a prominent sports entrepreneur based out of Hyderabad known for his involvement in various sports leagues including volleyball, badminton, golf, and other sports teams will compete in the inaugural edition of the PHL.

The Talons will be looking to put together a robust team at the Premier Handball League Auction slated to be held at the Taj Lands End in Mumbai on April 23, 2023. Each team will select a squad consisting of 11 Indian players and 3 international players.

. By investing in the Telugu Talons team, Abhishek Reddy aims to promote the sport and provide a platform for talented athletes to showcase their skills on a larger stage, while also supporting the development of the sports ecosystem in India. Abhishek is dedicated to expanding his diverse sports portfolio and contributing to the growth of the handball community, particularly in India. With this, Abhishek is adding to his earlier sports investments in Volleyball, Badminton, and Golf sports leagues.

“I am thrilled to venture into the world of handball and support these incredible athletes,” said Abhishek Reddy Kankanala. “Handball is an exciting and engaging sport, and I believe it has immense potential to grow in popularity, especially in India. I am committed to developing the Telugu Talons to compete at the highest level within the Premier Handball League and to bring a new sense of pride and accomplishment to the handball community, both nationally and internationally.”

The inaugural season of the Premier Handball League is set to kick off on June 8 and run until June 25, 2023, and will be broadcast on the Viacom18 network on JioCinema, Sports 18-1 (HD & SD) and Sports 18 Khel.

Hyderabad, India, 24 April 2023 — Global technology experts have assembled for the newly launched World Citizen Development Week, ideated by Quixy, an Indian no-code technology company. The week-long knowledge convention was hosted in the presence of global brilliance in technology, to commemorate World Creativity & Innovation Day as designated by the United Nations. Citizen Development is a concept that empowers individuals who may not have a formal coding background to create custom applications, websites, and other digital solutions.

24 speakers from 20 companies and 10+ countries have partaken in the India-originated knowledge summit to bring forth their conviction in Low-code and No-code technology as the future of application and software development.

In a panel titled Citizen Development: Empowering Employees to Drive Innovation and Digital Transformation, Mr. Vivek Goel, Vice President – Marketing & Evangelism at Quixy explained the need for citizen development today. He said, “Currently only 0.2 – 0.5% of the population can build solutions. With such a scarcity of professional developers, coupled with the cost and availability challenges, there is an urgent need to meet this huge demand. That’s where citizen development comes in. The idea is to democratize and move the power of building solutions to business users, our ‘citizens’ and to empower them in addressing small scale challenges. This Citizen Development Week, in fact, is a celebration of the trailblazers who are employing citizen development to drive innovation and business transformation”.

A week that progressed from a panel on an introduction to Citizen Development, the sessions witnessed expert deliberations on various topics including the demystification of citizen development, Artificial Intelligence in citizen development, safety and sustainability aspects and measuring the ROI of citizen development projects.

Some of the key speakers across panels included Mr. Matt Hubbard, Head of Operational Excellence, Trackvia, Mr. Jesse Shiah, CEO and Co-Founder, Agilepoint, Mr. Noel Carroll, Founder of the Citizen Development Lab, University of Galway, Mr. Jesse Fu, Senior Director, Automation & Business Transformation, SiriusXM, Mr. Michael McCullough, Citizen Development Business Architect, Amtrak, Mr. Steve Higgon, CEO, TAAP, Ms. May Linn Liao Amorelli, IT Business Analyst, Shell, and Mr. Vivek Goel, Vice President – Marketing & Evangelism, Quixy among others.

The World Citizen Development Week concludes on a grand note with the promise of a bigger comeback next year.

New Delhi, 22 April 2023: Furnish Your Dream, a leading name in the Indian interior design industry has won prestigious India’s Best Kitchen Designer Award at the India Kitchen Congress held at Le Meridien, New Delhi. The award was given by Andre Eckholt, Managing Director of Hettich. The India Kitchen Congress is an annual event that recognizes and felicitates the outstanding contributions of professionals and organizations in the Indian kitchen industry. The awards are highly coveted and sought-after, and winning one is considered a mark of excellence.

Furnish Your Dream was honored with the Best Designer Award for its exceptional work in the Best Design. The company has a reputation for delivering world-class interior design solutions to clients across the country. Their work is known for its attention to detail, innovative use of materials, and aesthetic appeal.

“We are grateful to have won India’s Best Kitchen Designer Award,” said Kushagra Awasthi, Founder, Furnish Your Dream. “This award is a testament to our commitment to delivering exceptional interior design solutions to our clients. We would like to thank the India Kitchen Congress for recognizing our efforts and honoring us with this prestigious award.”

Furnish Your Dream has been in the interior design industry for over a decade and has completed several prestigious projects across the country. They have a team of highly skilled designers and craftsmen who work together to create stunning interior spaces that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

India’s Best Kitchen Designer Award is the latest addition to Furnish Your Dream’s long list of accolades. The company has previously won several other awards for its exceptional work in the interior design industry.

Mumbai, 22 April 2023: WinZO, India’s largest social gaming and interactive entertainment technology platform, has announced the launch of its new cyber security challenge program, Code Health and Security Evaluation (CHASE) – (WinZO CHASE) in partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D), Delhi Technological University (DTU), Netaji Subhash University of Technology (NSUT), and IIID. The program aims to invest in and develop open-source technology and best practices that can be used by businesses, government agencies, and other organizations to protect against cyber actors who exploit vulnerabilities to steal information, and money, and are developing capabilities to disrupt, destroy, or threaten the delivery of essential services. As most solutions are now delivered in a digital environment, it becomes the most important vulnerability and National Security threat.

Through this program, WinZO along with the partnered institutes aims to develop open-source technologies for cyber security: information and event management, endpoint detection & response protocols, security orchestration, encryption, and penetration testing and detection technology. The first phase of the program would also be extending a scholarship of Rs.5 lacs to the winners. Top-performing participants are also eligible for internships and pre-placement interviews at WinZO.

WinZO has a 100 million registered user base and facilitates over four billion micro-transactions per month. In this biggest micro-transaction economy of the country, the safety of transacting users and the integrity of data is most important. Since its launch on 7th April, WinZO has seen over 1000 registrations for the challenge and has already started receiving submissions.

Paavan Nanda, Co-founder of WinZO said: “We aspire to build world-class technology and solutions out of India and extend our solutions to the entire ecosystem to scale the impact, that is the role of any platform business. Preventing attacks or mitigating the spread of an attack as quickly as possible is of utmost importance for a platform that scales across over 100 million users, 20% of which are making their first digital payments. Any cyber-attack, no matter how small, is a threat to our national security and must be identified, managed, and shut down. Young engineers need to develop an early outlook for security threats and solutions that can help organizations stay ahead of emerging threats.”

Launched in early 2018, WinZO hosts over 100 skill-based games in 12 vernacular languages. It has a registered user base of over 100 million, of which around 90% hail from tier II and beyond. The company facilitates over four billion microtransactions and gameplays per month. In addition to the CHASE program, WinZO actively engages the student community across various streams be it technology, business, design, or security. Recently, the company wrapped up the second season of Battle of Super Scholars (BOSS) in IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, and IIM Lucknow which saw participation from more than 1,000 students across campuses. WinZO also conducts a yearly hackathon across college campuses with the most relevant and modern problem statements to encourage the next generation of talent to build large scalable consumer technology companies made in India to solve for the world.

Mumbai, April 22, 2023: There is new evidence that upskilling courses lend learners an upper hand in their careers, as the Emeritus India Impact Survey reveals that an overwhelming majority of 96 per cent of professionals surveyed witnessed the positive impact of Leadership Programmes on their jobs within a year of undertaking them. The survey was conducted by Emeritus, a global leader in world-class professional education, to understand how professionals stay future-ready with the help of professional programmes from Emeritus.

Interestingly, the number of professionals who undertook programmes on leadership belonged primarily to the software and IT services, as well as, manufacturing sectors in the job roles of human resources and talent, as well as, operations. Leadership programmes also enabled 63% of the surveyed learners to advance in their careers and leapfrog others in the profession.

As per McKinsey & Company’s report in 2021, most companies worldwide – at least 87 per cent – are “aware that they either already have a skill gap among their workforce or will have one within a few years”. In this backdrop, the Emeritus India Impact Survey revealed that professionals also felt confident of contributing to team improvement and technical improvement organisationally as a result of professional upskilling programmes in leadership. While every 2 out of 3 participants admitted that the programmes provided them with necessary skills and training needed to advance in their career, about 63% said they saw a team improvement owing to the leadership programmes they were a part of.

Upskilling programmes were particularly valuable in imparting the much-needed tools and strategies which could be immediately applied to their work, reported 71% of the professionals who took up such leadership programmes. Nearly 68% of them also said the programmes helped them be more efficient and effective in their jobs. In addition, about 72% agreed that professional leadership programmes empowered them with access to the latest thinking from world-renowned experts and thought leaders, and thereby be able to compete with their peers.

Showcasing the long-term impact of upskilling courses, about 71% of the professionals also said they could inculcate a lifelong learning mentality within themselves and being inspired to pursue career-related dreams, drawing from the leadership programmes they attended.

Commenting on the Emeritus India Impact Survey findings, Mr. Mohan Kannegal, CEO, India and APAC, Emeritus, said, “In the fast-changing job landscape, it is important for organisations and individuals to be conscious of the skill gaps that exist among professionals and actively address them through upskilling. At Emeritus, we are driven to bridge this skill gap through high-quality, life-changing and accessible education, curated in partnership with some of the world’s leading educational institutions which help us deliver impact for learners. Through programmes with top B-Schools in India and globally, we are offering programmes for CXOs to upskill in growing niches such as CDO, CTO and COO. It is extremely heartening to see the findings from the Emeritus India Impact Survey 2022 point not only to short-term results of our programmes, such as being more efficient at jobs with the knowledge of latest world-class tools, strategies and thinking, but also empowering the workforce with a lifelong learning mentality. We are glad to inspire the next-generation of leaders through our programmes, who are taking shape by learning from world-renowned experts.”

This recently released India Impact Survey was conducted in September 2022, with learners who completed Emeritus professional education programmes through its partner schools before June 2022.

Emeritus connects learners through global virtual classrooms, partnering with over 60 top universities to offer online and app-based learning in formats including courses, certificates, online degrees, boot camps, etc. The company has a truly global reach – serving more than 250,000 learners across 160 countries, with programmes offered in a variety of languages.

India, 22 April 2023- ASUS India has launched its latest campaign “ incredible” – Crafted for the Incredible to announce its new ZenBook Vivobook series0020laptops in India.

The “ incredible” campaign emerges from ASUS brand tagline – In Search of Incredible, here the brand is communicating its engineering design prowess, enabling a 1cm & 1Kg notebook calling the effort as “Thincredible”

The slimmest Zenbook from ASUS is termed “Thincredible” as ASUS has added an OLED Display, a larger battery & all essential ports including an HDMI in Just 1 cm & Kg, which is an “Incredible” feat to achieve making it an world’s slimmest OLED ultraportable laptop.

The latest ZenBook and Vivo book lineups are equipped with stunning new ASUS Lumina OLED displays, ASUS Ice Cool technology, and unique and durable designs, empowering users with outstanding sustainable performance and purposeful innovations.

The campaign will be showcased on Connected TV, Digital media, Print as well as on its social media platforms. ASUS claims to emphasize the fact that every product by the brand is an outcome built on thoughtful innovations that are more portable, more powerful, more sustainable, and more colorful.

ASUS is driven by innovation that resonates with the changing needs of content creators, Paramjeet Singh, Head of Marketing, Consumer PC- Systems Group ASUS India, said. “Through this campaign, we want to further fortify the brand ASUS as the enabler of delivering a 1cm Thincredible experience to our consumers. Thus, keeping up to the brand promise, we will keep pursuing our search of the incredible ideas and experiences.

With our New Thincredible – Crafted for the Incredible campaign we want to highlight and showcase that these thin credible laptops are built on meaningful innovations that has incredible design incredible visual experience, incredible performance helping for sustaining a better future, he also added

New Delhi, 22 April, 2023: Square Yards, India’s largest integrated real estate platform, announced today that it has clocked a GAAP revenue of Rs 670cr in FY23 with 70% Y-o-Y growth over the last financial year. The Gross Transaction Value (GTV) stood at INR 22,870 Cr, up 67% Y-o-Y while the number of transactions doubled during the year.

The company outperformed its FY23 forecast by 11%, achieving its fastest growth year and most profitable quarter ever. Q4, FY23 revenue stood at Rs 236.6cr, up 58% Y-o-Y as it marked the 6th consecutive 50%+ Y-o-Y growth quarter for the company. Annualized revenues (annualizing Q4), stood just under Rs 1000 Cr, a significant milestone for the company which has grown 2.6 times in revenue in 2 years from Rs 255 Cr in FY21.

“We had a sensational finish to the year with aggressive growth & strong profitability. Our focus on providing integrated solutions across the real estate ecosystem and our investments in expanding our capacity should continue to drive operating leverage over the next couple of years. As we rejoice a phenomenal year, we are buckling up for an ambitious target of INR1000+ Cr revenue and full FY profitability in FY24”, said Tanuj Shori, Founder and CEO, Square Yards.

Real estate services and financial services remain the largest contributors to the overall revenue, with approximately 87% of the overall revenue. Both segments combined delivered a contribution margin of 11% and were profitable at the EBITDA level. New businesses like Home renovations, Property management, Fractional real estate & Metaverse solutions also witnessed strong growth and are poised to evolve into very large businesses in FY24. Square Yards’ search and discovery portal squareyards.com continued to gain market share with 8mn visitors/month.

Square Yards’ impressive results in FY23 are a testament to its leadership, innovation, and focus on customer satisfaction. With a strong track record of growth, the company is well-positioned to change the behavior and economics of the largest fragmented and unorganized sector opportunity in the world.

Bengaluru, 22 April 2023: Adding another feather to the road safety initiative, Rapido – India’s leading auto-tech aggregator – is introducing a nationwide safety campaign, #RapidoSafetyFirst. The campaign aims to raise awareness about road safety, promoting Rapido’s daily ride safety features nationwide.

As part of its campaign, Rapido is equipping auto-rickshaws in Bengaluru with seatbelts to reduce the risk of accidents, fatalities and injuries during sudden stops or collisions. The company has also ensured rider safety by implementing a four-step background verification process for its captains. Additionally, it uses a unique information-masking feature to protect the privacy and identity of female riders. Rapido also offers live ride tracking with access to granular latitudinal and longitudinal data and 24/7 on-ground support for shared rides.

Speaking at the launch, Pavan Guntupalli, Co-founder of Rapido Auto, emphasized the importance of road safety and Rapido’s commitment to promoting awareness and minimizing accidents and fatalities. “Being a responsible service provider, we truly believe that road safety is an important concern today, so running an awareness campaign to taking strict training sessions for captains is part of our policy from day one. The #RapidoSafetyFirst campaign covers seatbelts and 360-degree solutions for customer data and safety. The Rapido app’s safety features ensure passengers feel safe, secure and well-protected throughout their ride. Since road accidents in India have startling statistics, Rapido’s initiative seeks to reduce fatalities and injuries,” said Guntupalli.

Rapido Auto has also implemented several safety measures to facilitate safe travel for riders and passengers. These include mandatory safety training for riders, regular vehicle maintenance checks, and real-time tracking of rides to monitor safety compliance. Furthermore, all Rapido Captains must complete a Learning Module System and Training Exercise learning customer-appropriate behavior, road safety training, and operational training.

Moreover, Rapido Auto has conducted safety awareness programs in collaboration with city traffic police departments across India. These initiatives involved CPR and basic life support training for their captains and a mime program to demonstrate the criticality of road safety at heavy traffic junctions in cities such as Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Vijayawada, and Madurai. Rapido will continue collaborating with the police and allied stakeholders to develop a comprehensive road safety program that transforms road safety norms.

As road safety remains a monumental challenge pan-India, initiatives such as these are the need of the hour for minimizing accidents and fatalities. The #RapidoSafetyFirst campaign intends to boost Rapido’s Safety-First approach nationwide with multiple initiatives.