Archives August 2023

New Delhi,1st August 2023 Aspire Impact, a leading ESG, Sustainability, and Impact Assessment initiative in India, took a significant stride in tackling environmental challenges during a recent Global Consultation today, alongside Aspire Circle and TERI, its co-hosts. The global consultation titled “Catalysing inclusive Climate Innovations for the Global Impact Economy”, witnessed massive participation from experts representing corporates, SMEs, banks, investors, policymakers, politics, think tanks, and climate organizations. The focus of the event was to seek feedback on two ground-breaking research publications from two Working Groups set up ahead of the meeting on “Unlocking Climate Technologies for Global South” and “Catalyzing Climate and ESG-led Finance for SMEs and Supply Chains”.

The two working groups, each with a 25-strong group of experts, including Chief Sustainability Officers, ESG & Impact Leaders, and SME Platforms, collaborated for two months to jointly publish these research publications. Aspire Impact and Aspire Circle partnered with TERI, Mahindra University, m1Xchange, Desai & Associates, Capgemini, Protean e-gov, and The Rockefeller Foundation to present these publications.

The first Working Group, “Catalysing Climate and ESG-led Finance for SMEs and Supply Chains” outlines a visionary idea to establish a correlation between Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors, sustainability practices, and their impact on cost-efficient climate finance for SMEs and Supply chains. This can be achieved by leveraging Open Digital Eco-Systems (ODEs) to facilitate the discovery of climate finance opportunities and enhance the capacity of SMEs and supply chains, ultimately leading to their integration into an impactful movement and accelerating the transition towards achieving Net Zero emissions. An ODE with a clear purpose has the potential to catalyze the adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and make SMEs future-ready.

The second Working Group, “Unlocking Climate Technologies for Global South” envisions the establishment of a Climate Technologies Clearing House (CTCH). This innovative hub will serve as a Trade Hub, facilitating the transfer of climate technologies to governments and corporations in Global South nations. It addresses their need for financial assistance, smooth and transparent buyer-supplier discovery, and capacity-building to meet their commitments under the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement.

Speaking about the impact of the event, Amit Bhatia, Founder & CEO of Aspire Impact and Aspire Circle, said, “The Global Consultation with over 200 practitioners for our two research publications, co-authored by 50 experts, has been a remarkable T20 achievement. The recommendations of (i) a dedicated private initiative to build a facility for climate technology transfer from Global North to Global South, and (ii) Linking supply-chain financing to Climate action and ESG ratings are both a first for G20, as is the participation from Chief Sustainability Officers, ESG & Impact Leaders, and SME Platforms. These two recommendations help global SMEs and Big Business alike, while accelerating our planet’s transition to Net Zero.”

The two working groups included CXOs and leaders from around the world.

“Catalyzing Climate and ESG-led Finance for SMEs and Supply Chains” was co-authored by Abhishake Kumar Karn, Head, PSL Wholesale & MSME – RBL Bank; Dr. Adriana Kocornik-Mina, Senior Manager of Metrics and Research – Global Alliance for Banking on Values; Amit Bhatia, Founder & CEO – Aspire Circle & Aspire Impact; Anna Bruni Sabhaney, Founder – The Confluencers; Aparna Soni Bhalla, Relationship Manager, Trade & Supply Chain Finance – Asian Development Bank; Bhavya Sharma, Director, Communications & ESG – Urban Company; Debaroti Sarkar, Assistant Director, Knowledge Development – Aspire Impact; Fernando Cortes McAllister, Executive Director – Fundación Bolivar Davivienda; Harpreet Kaur Ghai, Director, Knowledge Development – Aspire Impact; Jamuna Rao Verghese, Managing Partner – Dancing Rain Capital; Jinesh Shah, Managing Partner – Omnivore; Kartikeya Nitin Desai, Founder & CEO – Desai & Associates; K.S. Priyadarshini, Sustainable Finance Lead – HSBC Commercial Banking India; Manish Kumar, Head-ESG & CSR – ICICI Bank Limited; Dr. Manish Kumar Shrivastava, Senior Fellow – TERI; Manjari Atroley, Co-Founder and Director – 2nd October Inc.; Meeta Narsinghani, Associate Partner – Circulate Capital; Rekha Krishnan, Managing Partner – WEFT Research LLP and Strategic Advisor – CLEAN; Rohit Bhatia, Chief Product Officer – Aspire Impact; Saneesh Singh, Independent Director and Former MD & CEO – Día Vikas Capital; Sangeeta Robinson, CSO – PVR Cinemas; Sundeep Mohindru, Founder Director – M1xchange; Suresh Sethi, Managing Director & CEO – Protean e-Gov Technologies Ltd.

“Unlocking Climate Technologies for Global South” was co-authored by Alok Jagdhari, Managing Partner – 92 Angels; Alka Talwar, Ex-Chief CSR & Sustainability Officer – Tata Chemical Limited; Founder & CEO – Aspire Circle & Aspire Impact; Dr. Amrita Goldar Senior Fellow and Thematic Lead – Climate Change Urbanization and Sustainability, ICRIER; Anirban Ghosh, Head, Centre for Sustainability – Mahindra University and Former Group CSO – Mahindra Group; Anurag Pratap, Vice President & CSR Leader – Capgemini; Ashish Mehta, Founder & Managing Partner – Second Nature Sustainable Solutions; Corey Glickman, VP, Global Head Sustainability and Design Consulting Services – Infosys; Girish Sethi, Senior Director, Energy Program -TERI, New Delhi; Harpreet Kaur Ghai, Director, Knowledge Development – Aspire Impact; Kartikeya Nitin Desai, Founder & CEO – Desai & Associates; Kavita Jadeja, Sustainability Professional; Kiran Sarkar, Head Sustainability (Automation & Farm Equipment Sector) – Mahindra & Mahindra Limited; Masood Mallick, CEO – Re Sustainability Limited; Rahul Singh Tomar, Associate, Chief of Staff to the CEO – Ather Energy; Rajeev Kumar, Vice President, Business Development and Integration – bp India; Rohit Bhatia, Chief Product Officer – Aspire Impact; Ruhana Zariwala, Global Head – Sustainability – Cipla Ltd; Sabina Curatolo, Impact Consultant; Dr. Sunita Purushottam, Board Chairman Global Building performanceNetwork and Head sustainability and CSR – Mahindra Lifespaces Developer Ltd.; Suruchi Bhadwal, Senior Fellow and Program Director, Climate and Air – TERI; Swapnil Joshi, Director, Sustainability & Design – Infosys Ltd.; Tanya Singhal, Founder – Mynzo Carbon (MyNetZero); Zarmeen Pavri, Co-Founder and Partner – SDGx

To foster overall sustainable growth through not just technological advancements but also societal upliftment, one of the leading players in solar energy, Gautam Solar, has conducted a host of CSR activities, and the most recent one is the installation of solar street lights to illuminate Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a prominent shrine where people visit to seek spirituality and attain inner peace. Apart from the campus of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Delhi Branch, the street lights were installed at Van Niwas, an Ashram retreat in Nainital and Madhuban Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Ramgarh.

Sri Aurobindo Ashram’s Tara Jauhar (also known as Tara Didi), a notable writer and educationist and Padma Shri Recipient expressed her appreciation for Gautam Solar’s support, stating “We are grateful to Gautam Solar for their continued support to Sri Aurobindo Ashram. These Solar Street Lights align perfectly with our principles of responsible living and spiritual growth. Our mission of creating a new common life superior to the present individual and common existence matches Gautam Solar’s mission of achieving sustainability through a paradigm shift to clean energy sources. By embracing renewable energy, we hope to inspire our community and the wider society to take steps towards a cleaner and brighter future.”

“Our aim is to make the magical environment at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, keep shining with technologically-advanced, natural solar lights. Our primary endeavor has always been to be a major part of the country’s energy transition by providing clean energy to meet the country’s rising energy demands. Our CSR activity of providing solar lights at a serene place like the Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a small step in that direction,” noted Mr. Gautam Mohanka, Chief Executive Officer of Gautam Solar Private Limited.

In addition to the solar light installation at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Gautam Solar made a generous financial contribution to the Kutumb Foundation for Qissagadh Active Library Program (which caters to the empowerment of lesser privileged youth of all ages through independent research, reading and collaborative learning), conducted a free preventive health check-up camp (with Dr. Chopra’s Path Clinic) catering to people of low socio-economic strata at Shiv Mandir in Daulatpura, Ghaziabad and launched an auto rickshaw awareness and outreach campaign in New Delhi with the hashtag #FightPollutionWithGautam.

Orion Malls, in collaboration with Karnataka School of Chess, recently hosted a captivating Chess event at the Orion Avenue Mall atrium. The event witnessed enthusiastic participation from 320 participants, making it a resounding success.

The full-day event provided a platform for young chess enthusiasts to showcase their strategic skills and passion for the game. Participants engaged in exciting matches, fostering a spirit of healthy competition and camaraderie.

Singapore, 1st August 2023 PingCAP APAC today announced the general availability (GA) of TiDB Serverless, its newest offering of TiDB, the company’s open-source, distributed SQL database. As a fully-managed, autonomous database-as-a-service (DBaaS), TiDB Serverless delivers reliable scalability for developers who want to free themselves from manual database tasks, such as sharding. The GA release of TiDB Serverless offers key advancements to PingCAP’s leading database architecture and provides developers with time-saving features, including

• Auto Elasticity – TiDB Serverless automatically scales hundreds of nodes up and down to meet critical workloads in real time. It enables separate scaling for storage and compute, allowing autonomous scalability of nodes without manual sharding—so development teams can focus on what’s next. TiDBServeless maintains the ACID properties of data transactions.
• Fully-Managed Operations – With built-in auto failover and self-healing to ensure continuous operations, multiple availability zones (AZs) are used to duplicate data, increasing overall resilience and prevention of failures. TiDB Serverless performs daily data backups, increasing safety measures and facilitating data recovery if necessary. TiDB Serverless also ensures auto-failover, minimizing downtime and guaranteeing business continuity.
• Usage-Based Pricing – Lower overall infrastructure costs by only paying for the data processing and storage you use. TiDB Serverless eliminates the need for manual intervention by abstracting the underlying infrastructure and automatically adjusts to changing workloads. TiDB Serverless guarantees that developers only pay for the resources they actually need.
• AI-Assisted Enhancements – New features such as Chat2Query, powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT3, allow developers to generate SQL queries on the fly, increasing overall developer productivity. The service provides real-time insights into dynamic datasets, allowing developers to analyze and explore more data at a faster rate. The service ensures developers make smarter business decisions by providing timely and relevant information.

“Enter a new era of seamless scalability with our revolutionary TiDB Serverless,” stated Max Liu, CEO of PingCAP. “This innovative product represents a significant milestone for PingCAP, offering developers exceptional flexibility and scalability. TiDB Serverless will drive growth and empower organizations to achieve significant improvements in database management. We are excited for developers to explore its endless opportunities while benefiting from unmatched efficiency.”

Bangalore, 1st August 2023 – Tata Power, one of India’s largest and fastest-growing EV charging solutions providers, has unveiled the EZ CHARGE card today, an advanced RFID (Radio-frequency identification) card that promises to redefine the EV charging experience for lakhs of electric vehicle (EV) owners across the country.

The EZ CHARGE card, was launched at the Bombay House by Dr. Praveer Sinha, CEO & MD, Tata Power, and Mr. Shailesh Chandra, MD of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility. The card offers unparalleled convenience with its Tap, Charge, and Go functionality. The RFID card features a built-in chip that enables efficient, secure, and seamless initiation of charging sessions and payment for same.

Based on their pre-set recharge value, users can automatically begin the charging process by simply tapping the EZ CHARGE RFID card on the Tata Power EZ charger. Once the vehicle is charged, EV owners can embark on their journeys with ease and confidence.

Tata Power’s extensive EV charging infrastructure, which includes over 40,000 home chargers, 4000+ public and semi-public charging points, and 250 bus-charging points, spans 350 cities with a presence in 550 cities. The company plans to set up 25,000 charging points in the next five years, further supporting the growth of the EV ecosystem in the country.

“As the largest and fastest-growing EV Charging player in India, we are delighted to bring another innovative offering to further enhance customer experience. The Tata Power EZ CHARGE card is a new frontier integrating RFID technology with our Charge Point network to offer a quick, simple and easy charging solution to EV owners. We continue to collaborate with Tata Motors to accelerate EV adoption and enable sustainable mobility for all Indians.” said Dr. Praveer Sinha, CEO & MD, of Tata Power.

Mr. Shailesh Chandra, MD of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility said “We have been continuously improving the ownership experience for our EV customers through thoughtful interventions and initiatives. To further improve the charging process for our customers, today, we are launching the EZ Charge Card offered by Tata Power. This solution is easy to use, intuitive and also helps overcome infrastructural challenges such as mobile network availability, while ensuring privacy for all users. It significantly simplifies the charging process at public or community chargers, especially for those who would prefer a physical device to an app-based experience and for chauffeur-driven vehicles. Creating accessible charging infrastructure is key to driving faster EV adoption.”

The EZ CHARGE Card offers added benefits, especially for areas with limited mobile network coverage, ensuring EV owners can charge their vehicles and pay without any hindrance. The RFID card can be linked with the EZ Charge account, allowing users to share access without sharing sensitive app information, thus ensuring privacy and security. The card streamlines the charging and payment process, making transactions quicker and more efficient.

To obtain the EZ CHARGE Card, customers can purchase it through the EZ Charge Self Care Portal (https://ezcharge.tatapower.com/evselfcare) for doorstep delivery or visit Tata Motors EV Dealerships (https://nexonev.tatamotors.com/find-dealer/).

Priced affordably, the EZ CHARGE Card is an essential and accessible tool for every EV owner, regardless of their vehicle brand.

1st Aug 2023 The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts announced the opening of its second hotel in God’s Own Country, The Leela Ashtamudi, A Raviz Hotel, further consolidating its presence in Kerala and fortifying its resort portfolio. The Leela Ashtamudi, A Raviz Hotel perfectly complements The Leela Kovalam, A Raviz Hotel, and builds on the brand’s presence in the coastal state with the two resorts offering very distinctive and unique backwater and beach experiences, completing the much sought-after and serenely beautiful Kerala itinerary.

A two-hour drive from Thiruvananthapuram airport, this picturesque resort is a tiny hamlet perched on the banks of the shimmering Ashtamudi Lake, formed by the confluence of the 8 lakes, offering a magical backwater experience that flawlessly balances barefoot luxury with rustic charm. Placid, serene waters, surrounded by lush greenery and swaying coconut trees create a tranquil atmosphere perfect for relaxation and rejuvenation. Thoughtfully curated experiences unlock the magic and mystery of the locale and offer an enriching cultural immersion into the destination amidst an awe-inspiring setting.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Anuraag Bhatnagar, Chief Executive Officer, The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, said, “We are delighted to welcome The Leela Ashtamudi, A Raviz Hotel, an exciting new addition to our brand portfolio. Kerala has historically been one of our key markets and strategically significant to our growth in the region. The resort marks another milestone in our journey as we continue to grow in the most alluring leisure destinations across the country. This expansion is in lockstep with the growing demand from the discerning global leisure traveller to experience meaningful and transformative journeys that are an authentic expression of a region’s beauty, heritage and culture.”

Commenting on the opening, Dr Ravi Pillai, Chairman RP Group said,” I am excited to see our partnership with The Leela brand evolve and I am confident that together we can play a key role in transforming the tourism sector in the region. The coming together of Raviz and The Leela provides the unique opportunity to place Kerala at the heart of global leisure and wellness travel and further reimagine and elevate the high standards of hospitality that exist in the region with unparalleled levels of luxury and warm and gracious service – both of which The Leela brand is known for.”

Integrating the foundational principles of environment and sustainability, the resort is elegantly poised in harmony with local history, evidently enchanting and magnifying the culture and heritage of the destination through inspired design narratives that reference Kerala’s rich architectural heritage.

With 93 tastefully appointed rooms that reflect the traditional Nalukettu aesthetic of Kerala, the resort is home to a bevy of accommodations including rooms, suites and experiential houses, embodying historic charm that seamlessly blend the old and the new and serve as a window to the resort’s breath-taking natural settings. A charming décor permeates each room and traditional artefacts and furnishings steeped in culture, pay homage to the history and culture of the locale. Guests can choose between the Tower Wing or the Heritage Wing or elevate their experience by upgrading to one of the two available private plunge pool villas. The resort also features two unique traditional experiential houses offering the THARAVADU Experience – namely Erattupetta and Anchal which have a rich history of more than 200 years. Those seeking ultimate luxury can reserve a private getaway with a tranquil backwater cruise on Mahayana – the quaint houseboat that comes with all the comforts of a hotel and is evocative of everything that is quintessentially Kerala.

The resort houses four unique dining venues – Keraleeyam the multi-cuisine restaurant, Portico Café, serving comfort food, Raanthal – the floating dining experience and Zirkon, the aqua-themed bar. Each venue presents mesmerizing views of the tranquil Ashtamudi Lake and the abundance of nature surrounding it. The fresh produce sourced locally imbues the cuisine with regional flavors, while simple aromas infused with delicate spices create an epicurean delight of incredible sights, flavors, and tastes in everything ranging from delectable authentic Kerala Sadhyas to grand feasts. The highlight on the menu is Fish Nirvana, the resort’s very own curated signature recipe, which also has a vegetarian version in Paneer Nirvana.

The resort’s Favourite Kerala Ayurveda and Spa interweaves authentic Ayurvedic healing traditions with therapeutic and relaxation treatments that use specially formulated organic blends that soothe the mind, body, and soul. An extensive menu of rejuvenating massages, Ayurveda therapies, and detoxification programs inspired by traditional techniques ensure an authentic and immersive wellness experience.

Leisure facilities at the resort also include an outdoor swimming pool flanked by azure waters and tropical foliage for the ultimate lakeside getaway and a fitness center equipped with state-of-the-art equipment surrounded by panoramic views.

Whether it is an intimate soiree or a grand celebration, the resort offers a selection of inviting spaces for events and meetings of various sizes and types. From traditionally inspired architecture that provides a charming, yet elegant setting to tranquil gardens and picturesque lake vistas that offer an enchanting backdrop, every event is infused with local traditions and bespoke services that add a touch of culture, authenticity, and personalization.

Whether you seek solace in tranquility, rejuvenation in wellness journeys, indulgence in distinctive culinary encounters, or exploration in the destination, this hidden paradise invites travelers to truly disconnect and soak in all that is quintessentially Kerala.