Archives May 2023

New Delhi,01 May 2023 On the occasion of the ninth birthday of Wishes and Blessings, the Delhi-based NGO is taking its birthday celebrations to new heights by launching a Skill Development Project- Sahas for underprivileged and abused women. As part of the celebrations, the NGO is organising a fundraising concert with the renowned “Nizami Bandhu”(Chand Nizami of Rockstar fame) from Delhi’s Nizamuddin Dargah. The two-and-a-half-hour concert will be held on the 30th of April at Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi from 6:30 p.m.

The NGO aims to provide training to underprivileged women to empower them with the necessary skills and resources they need to build a better future. The Skill Development Centre will provide vocational training and education, equipping them with valuable skills to improve their livelihoods.

We are pleased to announce that Smt. Meenakshi Lekhi will grace the occasion as the Chief Guest of our event. Additionally, we are honored to have Shree Shardul Shroff, Miss Dolly Singh, Mr Arjun Chopra, and several other esteemed guests joining us as Guests of Honour.

Speaking on the occasion, Founder and President of Wishes and Blessings, Dr Geetanjali Chopra commented, “It has been a long rewarding journey and as we celebrate our 9th birthday, we are also happy to announce the launch of our skill development initiative- Sahas. This initiative marks a crucial milestone in the direction of our objective to empower disadvantaged people through providing them the tools they require to improve their quality of lives. We hope that the Jashn-e-Qawwaliconcert will serve as an opportunity for people to come together and celebrate our commitment to making a difference in the lives of those in need .”

Our ticketing partner for this event is Book My Show. The admission tickets are priced at Rs 1500 and Rs 1000 plus GST. The NGO’s birthday celebrations and fundraising musical concert, are open to the public, and tickets can be purchased through the link https://in.bookmyshow.com/events/jashn-e-qawwali/ET00356539

New Delhi,01 May 2023: With the Government’s sharp focus on the prevention of disabilities like thalassemia, and sickle cell disease, and in the background of the Hon’ble Finance Minister’s recent announcement on eradication of sickle cell disease by 2047. The Thalassemia Patients Advocacy Group (TPAG), in association with The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), today hosted a roundtable on the prevention of Hemoglobinopathies – Sickle Cell Disease and Thalassemia at Le Meridien, New Delhi. The event, which saw the participation of eminent policymakers, doctors, and patient bodies, discussed the current practices, challenges, and way forward for the prevention of hemoglobinopathies like thalassemia and sickle cell disease. TPAG, which is a patient body of Thalassemics India, would work with ASSOCHAM to develop a position paper on the topic.

Delivering his inaugural address, Dr. Anil Kumar, Additional Dy. Director General, Directorate General of Health Service, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India said, “Hemoglobinopathies continue to pose a significant burden on our healthcare system, with limited resources available to address the challenges they present. While DGHS is working on a National level thalassemia control programme, we are equally focused on the management of thalassemia and commit to blood safety through Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT), voluntary blood donation, etc in a phased manner. We aim to release a manual on blood transfusion services and voluntary blood donation guidelines by 14th June which is World Blood Donor Day.”

Welcoming the announcement of Dr. Kumar, Ms. Anubha Taneja-Mukherjee, Member Secretary, Thalassemia Patients Advocacy Group, said, “TPAG has been working for the case of thalassemia since 2017 and would continue to work with the policymakers and bodies like ASSOCHAM to ensure proper awareness about the disorders so prevention can be a reality. We must recognize the significant burden of haemoglobin disorders, including Thalassemia and Sickle Cell Disease, and work towards finding innovative solutions to combat them.”

The special focus of the event was the representation of States by prominent doctors like Dr. Mamta Manglani, Director (Academic & Research), MCGM – Comprehensive Thalassemia Care, Pediatric, Hematology- Oncology & BMT Centre, Mumbai, Dr. Seema Kapoor, Director & Professor, Division of Genetics, Genetic & Metabolic Lab, Lok Nayak Hospital & Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, Dr. Maitreyee Bhattacharyya, DM, Clinical Hematology (AIIMS) and Director, Institute of Haematology & Transfusion Medicine, West Bengal. The session was followed by a panel discussion on the current practices, challenges, and the need of the hour for the screening of Hemoglobinopathies in public and private settings. In the discussion, eminent doctors and healthcare experts like Dr. Ritika Sud, Prof of Medicine, LHMC & SSK Hospital, Delhi, Dr. K Madan Gopal, Sr. Consultant, Niti Aayog, Dr. Hrishikesh D. Pai, President, FOGSI, Dr. Anil Handoo, Lab Director, BLK Hospital, New Delhi, among others, shared their thoughts.

We are now faced with an urgent need to launch a national-level thalassemia programme on the lines of sickle cell disease but with a stricter timeline. In this regard, 2016 guidelines on hemoglobinopathies may need a revision to include novel technologies and unique methods of awareness.

About 10,000 babies with thalassemia major are born every year and over 1.5 lakh people are currently living with the disease in India. Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a genetic disorder that is prevalent among the tribal population in India. It has been observed that approximately 1 in 86 births among STs are affected by SCD. In this region where resources are scarce, it is crucial to prioritize disease prevention. The National Health Mission has introduced programs for controlling thalassemia and sickle cell disease, but they have not yet been fully implemented at the grassroots level.

Bangalore, 01 May 2023: Godrej Agrovet Limited (GAVL), one of India’s largest diversified agribusiness company, has been recognized as the winner at the India Risk Management Awards 2022-23, presented by CNBC-TV18 and ICICI Lombard. Received on behalf of the company by S Varadaraj, Chief Financial Officer and Head – Legal & IT, this accolade acknowledges GAVL’s unwavering commitment to excellence in risk management amid the challenges posed by a rapidly evolving global economy, geopolitical conflicts, technology acceleration, and shifting global value chains.

GAVL has established a comprehensive risk management program comprising of well-defined procedures, structures, and guidelines to identify, evaluate, monitor, and address business risks including any material changes to its risk profile. To achieve this, the organization has clearly defined and ensures proper risk management through a system-based approach, which is supported by solid internal control systems and processes. This strategy combines divisionally developed procedures with centrally issued policies to guarantee the creation of appropriate risk management policies and processes.

Balram Singh Yadav, Managing Director, GAVL said, “Effective risk management is paramount to the success and longevity of any business. With today’s business environment making it imperative for businesses to have updated strategies and cooperative efforts amongst the teams, we are honored and humbled to receive this recognition for our dedicated efforts in this area. We are proud of our team’s commitment to innovative thinking and proactive risk mitigation and thank India’s Premier Risk Management Awards for acknowledging the role of this vital business practice.”

Expressing his gratitude upon receiving the award, V Swaminathan, Head – Corporate Audit & Assurance, Godrej Industries Limited said, “Risk management is a very critical and intense process of how we run our business in Godrej. Each and every initiative of ours is well researched and discussed so as to ensure proper risk mitigation without impediments to our growth and meeting stakeholder expectations. Considering the volatility in our operating environment wherein climatic factors, government policies and business environment play a major role, it is herein that our strong risk management strategies help us provide farm to fork products at optimal price, consistent quality and timely deliveries to farmers or consumers. As we stay committed to superior standard of risk mitigation strategies to further our growth and meet our business targets, we are delighted to receive this award which reaffirms Godrej Groups’ commitment to implement Best Risk Management practices across all our businesses.”

Receiving the award on behalf of the company, S Varadaraj, Chief Financial Officer and Head – Legal & IT said, “We strongly believe that a robust and efficient risk management strategy is essential for any company’s growth and prosperity. As a leading diversified agribusiness, risk management is essential to our success and sustainability in the rapidly changing business landscape. On behalf of our entire team, I extend our sincere gratitude to the esteemed panel of judges for acknowledging our contributions and remain steadfast in our pursuit of excellence in risk management. We believe that our accomplishments will continue to pave the way for fresh ideas and solutions in the future, and we are thrilled to be a part of the journey towards a brighter tomorrow.”

The esteemed jury for the India Risk Management Awards comprised of Ashish Vora, President and Business Head of CRISIL Market Intelligence and Analytics, Dr Glory Swarupa, Director General of NIMSME under the Ministry of MSME, Dhanpal Jhaveri, CEO of Eversource Capital and Vice Chairman of Everstone Group, Hersh Shah, Chief Executive Officer of IRM India Affiliate, Dr CKG Nair, Director of the National Institute of Securities Markets (SEBI’s Educational Arm), and Saurabh Chakravarty, Head of Treasury at UltraTech Cement.

Bengaluru, IndiaMay 01 2023: eMudhra Limited (BSE: 543533, NSE: EMUDHRA), a digital trust, digital security and paperless transformation solution provider, today announced its financial results for Q4 FY23 and full Year FY23 ended on March 31, 2023, as approved by its Board of Directors.

Key Financial Highlights (Consolidated)

(All amounts are in INR million, unless otherwise specified)

Commenting on the full year results, V. Srinivasan, Executive Chairman, eMudhra Limited said, “We are pleased to report another quarter of consistent performance and a strong full year result with revenue growth of 38.3% y‐o‐y, EBITDA growth of 34.6 % y‐o‐y and PAT growth of 48.8% y‐o‐y.

As a solution provider focussed on securing enterprise transition to zero trust and going paperless, the importance of cryptographic identities cannot be overstated. These identities provide a secure and tamper‐proof method of verifying the identity of users and devices as part of digital data and document exchange, allowing for greater control and traceability within an organization’s security architecture.

Both the cybersecurity and paperless office segments of our solutions business over time will represent large addressable markets globally as they are sector agnostic. Given the relatively early stage at which the industry is, we anticipate demand for these lines of business to continue, driven by levers such as strong customer experience, cost savings and enabling stronger cyber security posture for enterprises.

Our Enterprise solutions saw healthy growth both in India and International markets driven by adoption of both our eSignature workflow platform for “Paperless Office” and our cybersecurity suite of offerings including emCA and emAS. Over the past year, our solutions have been deployed across a range of mission critical use cases from paperless transformation of various industries such as BFSI, Pharma, Manufacturing, eGovernment, etc. to enhancing cybersecurity for use cases in Government and Defence, Card Payments, ePassport implementation, and for securing Connected Vehicles, Smart Grids and Blockchains.

Our products have matured over the last several years as a result of significant R&D and implementations for several large‐scale marquee customers, positioning eMudhra as a one stop shop in the Identity, Authentication and eSignature space; providing us an edge when we go to global markets. As we continue to make investments into expanding the range of our solutions and the depth for specific industries such as BFSI and Pharma, we also continue to hire leaders and work with global IT research companies to expand our reach and coverage to address growth opportunities in key markets such as North America,  Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific.

On trust services, we enjoy a strong brand in India resulting in healthy growth and stickiness for our retail and direct to consumer sale of digital signature certificates. During Q4 FY23, to address the pricing pressure from master partners, we also broad based our sale of digital signature certificates to a much larger set of sub partners thereby broad basing our revenue and also improving its quality.

We also saw significant uptick in revenue for our new products such as eSign and SSL/TLS certificates which present significant growth opportunities going forward. As many emerging markets continue to look at the model built as part of Digital India to drive digital transformation, we continue to evaluate setting up trust services in other geographies to offer models similar to eSign which can be plugged into a digital identity framework for signing.

To summarize, we feel confident that our mature products, marquee reference customers and focus on R&D and strong leadership team has helped build a unique positioning in this space to tap opportunities as enterprises and governments embark on their transition to zero trust”.

Financial Highlights

•  Revenue for the year was INR 2,540.54 million, an increase of 38.3% from the previous year.
•  Gross profit for the year was INR 1,941.35 million, representing a gross margin of 76.4%.
•  EBITDA for the year was INR 926.09 million, with an EBITDA margin of 36.5%.
•  EBIT for the year was INR 767.64million, with an EBIT margin of 30.2%.
•  PAT for the year was INR 611.98 million, with a net margin of 24.1%.
•  Adjusted PAT (adjusted for ESOP benefit expenses) for the year was INR 643.62 million
•  Earnings per equity share (of face value Rs. 5) for the year was INR 8.35, an increase of 41.5% from the previous year.
•  The company had cash and cash equivalents (including deposit and liquid investments) of INR 1,193.25 million at the end of the year and is debt free.
•  Dividend recommended by the Board, 25% of face value.

Key Metrics

•  Enterprise Revenue split between India and International is 48.6% and 51.4% respectively.
•  Enterprise Revenue split between Partner and Direct is 25% and 75% respectively.
•  Enterprise Revenue split between Cyber Security and Paperless segments is 62% and 38%    respectively.
•  Trust Service Revenue split between Retail, Channel and New Products (eSign/SSL) is 35.3%, 48.2% and 16.5% respectively.
•  # of DSCs issued in FY 2023 is 2.9 million, representing a growth of 21.0%
•  # of Retail Customers in FY 2023 is 249,000, representing a growth of 30.4%
•  Employee headcount at 763, with a total R&D staff of 271
•  Operating Cash Flow at 67.9% of PBT.

Key Project Wins

•  Rollout of eSignature workflow (emSigner) along with document vault capabilities for a mid‐ market electronic/appliance retailer in US as a replacement to their existing eSignature platform. emSigner will be used as an integrated offering to manage both document signature and document movement for securitization journey resulting in improved customer experience as well as operational efficiency.
•  Rollout of our Certificate Discovery product for a very large public sector Bank in India that will enable key and certificate lifecycle management across users, devices, etc. allowing the bank to secure their infrastructure using PKI technology.
•  Rollout of emAS identity and access management solution along with MFA and SSO for the defence forces. They are using the SSO and MFA capability to securely login into more than 300+ internal applications. PKI infrastructure is being leveraged to validate user credentials at scale.
•  Defence forces provided with end‐to‐end encryption of large data loads being communicated between the stations. Provided hybrid encryption approach of generating keys centrally in the HSM and made the same available for users through secure key exchange protocols.
•  emSigner workflow platform deployed for a large customer that is the primary electricity generation, transmission, and distribution company in one of the biggest kingdoms in the middle East. Integrated with ERP system, they are leveraging the solution to digitally sign invoices at scale among other workflows that have been digitized using emSigner.
•  Acquisition of a significant customer (a large State‐owned entity that is a Trust Service and eStamping provider) in the Indonesian market for driving eSignature and eStamping use cases with introduction of Mobile based digital signatures in the Indonesian market.
•  Deployed emSigner banking instance for a large bank in the middle east to drive paperless operations in both customer facing and internal banking workflows. Solution integrated with core banking application to digitize many departments including retail banking, loans, credit card,  corporate and investment banking, etc. Issuing organization certificates to digitally sign documents across the workflows for compliance and legal non‐repudiation.
•  Issuing Digital Certificates using emCA for Smart meters deployment in the Eastern Europe for a gas distribution company. This deployment showcases eMudhra’s reach and presence in the European market and demonstrates its capability to deploy PKI for high volume connected devices.
•  Expansion into the African market by setting up a root Certificate Authority (CA) in Kenya. This strategic move aims to bolster the digital landscape of the region by providing reliable, secure, and compliant digital identity solutions.
•  Implementation of CA solution (emCA) for payments and security for a Central Bank in the Middle East. This is helping the Central Bank establish a secure card payment infrastructure using PKI as the backbone and be compliant with global payment security standards.

Research and Innovation

•  Launched emDiscovery  ‐  a Certificate Lifecycle Management Platform providing a centralized dashboard for discovering, renewing and provisioning different types of digital certificates that organizations use. This product effectively strengthens eMudhra’s positioning as a one stop shop player in the space.
•  Continued focus on R&D of products across IoT certificate management as the awareness and need for cybersecurity increases in the context of identifying and securing devices, which are extensively used in Smart Cities, Smart Electric Vehicles, etc.
•  Launch of several new features in emSigner including unique capabilities for the Banking industry to manage complex eSignature workflows for corporate banking and integrations into systems such as Core Banking, Trade Finance, etc.
•  Integrations with leading ERP, CRM and HRMS systems allowing enterprises to quickly kickstart their journey of paperless transformation using digital signatures for cost reduction.
•  emAS has been significantly strengthened to offer strong user provisioning, and identity and access management capabilities allowing acquisition of customers in Defence, Smart Cities, Banking and eGovernance.
•  emCA’s capabilities have been enhanced to allow issuance of certificates to credit/debit cards for securing payments as part of POS terminal authentication and ePassports including modules for enhanced identity management with demographics, terminal authentication and acceptance of other country passports.

Other Business Highlights and Recognitions

•  IDC ranks eMudhra #1 in Digital Identity and Trust category ‐ India in 2022
•  Recognized as a vendor for eSignatures in the Gartner ‘Market Guide for Electronic Signature’.
• Also recognized as a vendor for PKI and Certificate Management in the Gartner Report Titled ‘How to Select DevSecOps Tools for Secure Software Delivery’ & mentioned as a Strong Performer in Gartner® Peer Insights™/Voice of Customer: Electronic Signature Report for the Asia/Pacific Region.
•  eMudhra Certified as a ‘Great Place to Work’ for FY 2023
•  Launch of trust services in Kenya and UAE with focus on driving adoption of digital signatures in initial set of use cases in eGovernance and BFSI
•  Expansion of Sales teams including leadership hires in North American market and on‐ground teams in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kenya and Indonesia.
•  eMudhra continues the Chairmanship of Asia PKI Consortium and actively engages in the advancements of PKI adoption and awareness. During the year, various MoUs have been signed with global organizations including African Alliance for e‐Commerce (Africa), Arab Information and Technologies Organization (AICTO, The League of Arab States) and European Telecommunication Standards institute (ETSI, Europe).
•  eMudhra continues its Board Member position in the European Cloud Signature Consortium. In March 2023, our nomination to the CSC Technical Committee was approved. The committee is in charge of taking strategic decisions for the technical work and takes the lead for specific topics aimed towards the advancement of Online Signature Specifications through CSC APIs.
•  eMudhra was elected to chair and convene the panel on Digital Signature Certificates in the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), in Oct 2022.