Mindtree, a global technology services and digital transformation company, guiding its clients to achieve faster business outcomes, is using Artificial Intelligence [AI] and Machine Learning [ML] to help banks improve their ability to detect financial crimes and enhance reconciliation management. These service offerings are made possible through a partnership with Tookitaki’s machine-learning-powered platform.
Banks and other financial institutions are challenged by both the rising sophistication of financial crimes worldwide and increasingly complex regulations requiring strict operating and reporting standards. The ongoing efforts to manually detect money laundering, dealing with false alarms and fragmented reconciliation processes are costly and time consuming. There is an urgent need for these institutions to automate many of these processes, reducing errors and accelerating their response times to incidents.
To address these challenges, Mindtree and Tookitaki are now offering these services
Smart Alert Management
A completely automated, dynamically-adaptive model based on artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to detect suspicious cases more accurately. It reduces false alerts, increases true positives [suspicious cases missed by rules/legacy systems], lowers costs, and enhances the productivity of analysts. Banks can improve the anti-money laundering process using machine learning.
Smart Reconciliation Management
An end-to-end automated approach to reconciliation management across business functions. Using machine learning and analytics, it increases match rates, resolves exceptions, recommends adjustment amounts and generates an audit trail for thorough business understanding. This shifts reconciliation from being subjective and error-prone to objective and more accurate. Banks can automatically handle exceptions and correct source systems while staying compliant.
Kamran Ozair, EVP & Head of Banking, Financial Services and Insurance at Mindtree, said
There is a compelling need for banks today to automate many traditionally manual, intensive, error-prone tasks. This partnership combines Tookitaki’s predictive modeling capabilities and Mindtree’s deep expertise in helping enterprise clients capitalize on artificial intelligence and machine learning to help banks run their business more efficiently.
Rapid development in artificial intelligence and robotics technologies has brought in massive adoption of automated technologies across industries. For banks especially, who are dealing with strict regulations and little room for error, automation can drive quality, productivity and profitability. Our partnership with Mindtree has made it easier and more efficient for customers in the financial services industry to introduce artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities into the critical space of regulatory compliance.
About Mindtree
Mindtree is a global technology consulting and services company, helping Global 2000 corporations marry scale with agility to achieve competitive advantage. ‘Born digital’ in 1999, more than 340 enterprise clients rely on our deep domain knowledge to break down silos, make sense of digital complexity and bring new initiatives to market faster. Operating across 17 countries, Mindtree is consistently regarded as one of the best places to work, embodied every day by our winning culture made up of 19,000 entrepreneurial, collaborative and dedicated ‘Mindtree Minds’
It is a first- of- its kind research study that presents and analyses the trends in equity ownership by various classes of shareholders for 4,615 firms listed on the National Stock Exchange [NSE] and the Bombay Stock Exchange [BSE] of India, across different ownership categories, for the period 2001~2017.
The research study attempted to give a bird’s eye view of the shareholding pattern of listed Indian firms. Dr Nupur Bang saied
We found that promoters of family firms have increased their stake in their companies over the last decade, while State owned Enterprises [SOEs], Other Business Group Firms [OBGFs] and Standalone Non-family Firms [NFs] have witnessed a decline in promoter shareholding. This reinforces the preeminent role of family-controlled businesses in India. It seems to imply that the engine of growth of Indian businesses will not be dependent on overseas or other promoter categories. Instead, promoters of family firms will continue to play a major role.
Professor Kavil Ramachandran, Executive Director, Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise said
The ownership pattern of listed businesses in India is fairly concentrated, especially in the case of family firms, SOEs and MNCs. While this has significant positive effects, there is also a need to keep close vigil on their governance practices.
Key findings of the study
Rising Promoters’ stake – The research study finds that while the concentration of promoters’ shareholding is decreasing in non-family firms, it is increasing in the family firms. By steadily increasing their shareholding in the firm, the promoters of family firms, both family business group firms [FBGFs] and standalone family firms [SFFs], were signaling their growing confidence in the potential of their company, thereby instilling confidence among the investors. Promoters of MNCs have also increased their stake in their Indian subsidiary, probably indicating their belief in the ‘India story’.
The promoter stake in State Owned Enterprises [SOEs] has been steadily falling over the past decade. This is in line with the policies of the successive governments in India to divest their holding in the SOEs. Other business group firms [OBGFs] and standalone non-family firms [NFs] have also witnessed a decrease in promoter shareholding.
Rising Trend of Holding Shares Through Companies – In FBGFs, the preferred mode to hold shares is through holding companies, while in SFFs the family members prefer to hold shares directly as individuals or Hindu Undivided Family [HUF]. In FBGFs, holding companies or trusts that hold shares of all companies on behalf of the family members enable better resource allocation, control, realisation of synergies and tax planning within all group level firms and better management of ownership, inheritance and payouts at the family level.
It also enables the family to professionalize each of the firm while the family maintains a bird’s eye view at the group level. SFFs are younger with less complex structures both at the family and the business front. As they grow the complexities of inheritance, succession and growth would force them too to adopt better structures of ownership. Entry of the next generation into the business and more interest in the business by the extended family with better performance and increased scale would point towards a need to streamline ownership and be prepared for future structure, governance and professionalization needs of the firm. Therefore, we see a gradual increase in shareholding through companies even in the case of SFFs.
Declining Institutional Shareholding in Family Firms – Non-promoter institutional shareholding is lower in family firms when compared with non-family firms and it has decreased further between 2007 to 2017. As a block holder, institutional shareholders influence the governance and strategy of the firm; if they refrain from investing in family firms, the pursuit of governance will take longer. Institutional investment is inversely proportional to promoter’s shareholding, especially in the case of family firms, higher preference is given to the firm where family ownership is lower.
Non-family firms in general have strong formal internal control mechanisms to keep the personal interests of managers out of the company’s functioning. Consequently, the probability of a strong and independent corporate governance mechanism is greater for a non-family firm. Institutional investors have a strong preference for firms with good governance. Thus, we see higher institutional shareholding in NFs and OBGFs.
Reluctant Non-Institutional Shareholders – Except NFs, our study shows a decline in the shareholding of non-promoter non-institutional shareholders. It suggests that investors’ preferences might have further shifted to alternative asset classes like real estate, gold, and fixed deposits or they might be investing through institutional investors like the mutual funds. Most of the decline is due to small investors with upto than Rs. 1 Lakh worth of shares. These small investors have reduced their holdings across all ownership categories. This may be due to the lack of disposable income in the hands of small investors.
Also, such investors are typically the last-in in a bull market and end up buying at a very high price and selling cheap when the market starts to stumble. Repeated such experiences make them wary of the market. FBGFs and SFFs have fairly large non-institutional shareholdings, even though it’s been on a decline. On deep diving, we find that the average shareholding may be skewed due to outliers. In the case of family firms, more so in SFFs, we find a large number of firms that report a very large percentage of shares being held by non-promoter non-institutional shareholders. On checking the websites of some of these companies, it is clear that these are family owned and controlled firms.
Moreover, for many of them, the number of such investors remains constant quarter after quarter. That is a very unlikely scenario in the case of small investors and leaves a lot to speculation. In a few cases, we find that the names of shareholders disclosed by the company under the category of non-institutional shareholders with shares in excess of Rs. 1 lakh, have the same surname as the promoters or surnames from the same community. This calls for the regulator to closely scrutinize the shareholders in this category to ensure that the law is obeyed in spirit and not just in letter.
About The Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise
The Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise was launched on February 7, 2015 with an aim to advance real-world and academic knowledge of family business. Since its inception, the Centre has been bringing together faculty and practitioners from India and abroad with the broad aim of combining theory and practice to enhance research and innovation in the field. Family businesses make a major contribution towards wealth creation, job generation, and increasing competitiveness in countries around the world. As such, the unique challenges and opportunities faced by them are rapidly becoming an important subject of management research.
Cognizant of these developments, a Chair was set up in 2006 at ISB, which later developed into a full-fledged Centre. It has been generously funded with support from Thomas Schmidheiny, Founder and Chairman of Spectrum Value Management, Ltd, Switzerland. The Centre has forged several collaborations with academic institutions and professional organizations at both the national as well as international level. These engagements have helped the Centre to contribute significantly to the growing body of research on various aspects of family business.
ACT Fibernet [Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd.] India’s largest fiber-focused wired broadband ISP* announced its partnership with Amazon Pay to create a quick and seamless bill payment channel for its customers. As part of the tie-up, ACT Fibernet will integrate Amazon Pay on its company website, portal and app, which will provide the users an additional channel to make online payments.
E-wallet has become ubiquitous owing to its benefits of being a convenient and secure mode of payment. With an aim to provide a holistic user experience with ACT Fibernet, this latest feature will help accelerate the transaction process and facilitate one tap bill payment. The e-wallet facility will be made available to all the 1.3 million registered customers across 14 cities where ACT Fibernet has presence.
Speaking on the partnership, Ravi Karthik, Head of Marketing, Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd said
Digital wallet payment has phenomenally transformed the way we make monetary transactions today. It is fast, secure and highly convenient. We are extremely happy to extend the e-wallet service to our customers via Amazon Pay – one of the most trusted consumer brands. We believe this easy payment option will amplify our users experience and add value to their lives.
Commenting on the partnership, Manesh Mahatme, Director – Acceptance and Merchant Payments, said
We are happy to partner with ACT Fibernet to extend the trusted and convenient Amazon Pay experience for customers. We understand our customers’ needs and continuously seek to enhance their payment experience across platforms they frequently use. Our primary tenet of any partnership is to make digital payments the most trusted, convenient and rewarding choice for customers.
In addition to this, Amazon Pay will run exciting cashback offers for ACT Fibernet customers. Users making bill payment or applying for new connections through Amazon Pay on ACT Fibernet website portal or App in the month of August will be rewarded with exciting cashback offers – which could be used to purchase any product or service within the wallet.
About ACT Fibernet*
ACT Fibernet, India’s largest fiber-focused wired broadband ISP as on September 30, 2017 [in terms of number of fiber broadband internet subscribers from residential homes] [India Broadband Market Overview – 2017 dated February 19, 2018, prepared by Media Partners Asia]. Headquartered in Bengaluru, ACT Fibernet has operations in 14 Indian cities as on December 31, 2017 with approximately 1.3 million customers.
As part of its efforts to make technology accessible and productive for all, Microsoft has announced the addition of Tamil 99 – the popular Tamil language virtual keyboard – to Windows 10 PCs as part of the latest Windows update made available in April 2018. The new feature works with both hardware as well as touch keyboards providing another convenient option for Tamil text input.
While the Tamil keyboard based on InScript standard has been available on various Windows since 2010, the Tamil 99 keyboard adds to the number of choices available to Windows 10 users. Standardized and approved by the Tamil Nadu government in 1999, the Tamil 99 keyboard layout was created to help Tamil users type in a faster and simpler manner. It is now available on Windows 10 to users of both Tamil [India] and Tamil [Sri Lanka] languages, thereby assisting the wide base of Tamil users in India and other countries such as Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and Mauritius.
Speaking on this, Meetul Patel, COO, Microsoft India, said
Microsoft is focused on empowering everyone by breaking down all language related barriers in technology. It has always been our endeavor to provide users computing in local languages and enable them to be more productive. We are committed to supporting the national standards for Indian language technologies including the InScript keyboard layouts and adding the Tamil 99 keyboard is another significant step to making computing more accessible to a large number of users.
Tamil computing is an important focus area for Microsoft Bhasha, an initiative started in year 1998 to accelerate and simplify computing in Indian languages. Apart from the two keyboard options, Input Method Editors [IMEs] for Tamil – including the popular Indic Language Input Tool [ILIT] are also available on Indic language community website bhashaindia. Microsoft has been closely working with the Kani Tamizh Parvai [Tamil Virtual Academy], a state government body, to understand the needs of common Tamil language users and strengthen its efforts to provide them a quality computing experience.
Keyboard standards
InScript [Indian Script] is the official Indian keyboard standard approved by the Government of India in 1986. It provides a near identical text input experience on digital devices, across 12 Indian scripts including Tamil. The Tamil 99 Keyboard layout was standardized in 1999 and approved by Tamil Nadu government. Designed for use with a normal QWERTY keyboard, it follows a consonant-vowel pattern. The arrangement of the characters allows for fast and simple typing.
As the earning member of your family, you understand the importance of having an insurance coverage. There are several types of life insurance policies, such as endowment plans, term plans, and money back plans. Term plans are pure life covers and are available for affordable premiums.
An important question is how much insurance coverage is needed to ensure the financial protection of your family in your absence. Here are seven factors you must consider while determining the insurance coverage.
Your age
If you are young and do not have too many responsibilities, minimum coverage may be adequate. However, if you are married with children, you need higher coverage to provide financial security to your family in the case of your untimely demise. However, it is recommended you purchase term insurance plans when you are young to get the benefit of low premium cost.
Current lifestyle
Your lifestyle depends on your income. As your income rises, your lifestyle is also enhanced. Therefore, your family is habituated to a certain lifestyle. In your absence, your family must be able to sustain their current lifestyles because downgrading is a difficult process. Consider your standard of living while determining the insurance coverage.
Debt obligations
You may have a home loan and other credit facilities, such as a car or personal loans. These are repaid in Equated Monthly Installments [EMIs] over a certain period of time. In case of your demise, you do not want your family to bear the burden of the outstanding EMIs. It is recommended you consider your total debt obligations while looking for term insurance plans.
Financial situation
When you purchase an insurance policy, you need to pay the premiums regularly to avoid discontinuation of the benefits. Although procuring high coverage is a good option, you need to ensure you have no difficulties in paying the premiums in a timely manner. It is advisable to use a term insurance calculator to know the approximate premium for a certain sum assured.
Financial goals
At different stages in your life, you will have various financial goals. When you get married, you may need to buy a home. When you have children, you need to plan for their education and marriage. Another important life goal is financial independence after your retirement. Insurance coverage is an excellent way to plan for these various financial goals where even in your absence, your family will not have to face any financial crunches.
Accumulated assets
Over the years, you build various assets that may be used to meet your financial needs. You must consider your accumulated assets while calculating the insurance coverage that is needed.
Term insurance riders
You may include a number of riders with your term plan. Some of these include premium waiver, accidental death, permanent disability, and much more. It is recommended you include relevant riders to your term policy to enhance the total coverage. However, you need to keep in mind that such riders come at an additional cost. Consider your specific requirements to decide on which riders you must include in your insurance plan.
Some individuals procure life insurance coverage to take advantage of the tax benefits. However, you must remember that insurance is not simply investment tool but is important for the financial protection of your family in case of your untimely demise. The returns, if any on your life insurance plans will be minimal. Nonetheless, including adequate coverage calculated with a term insurance calculator is crucial. Moreover, you must regularly reassess your life stage and increase coverage as and when required.
Compared to different common law jurisdictions, India has comparatively fewer hurdles in its way to Litigation finance. Judicial precedence since 1876 has held that the common law doctrines of champerty and maintenance are not applicable to India in stricto sensu. Therefore, litigation funding has not been held, per se, ineligible and hence, enforceable in most cases. This progressive outlook, therefore, provides fertile ground for the event of third-party funding in India.
Advok8.in help litigants raise funds for their lawsuit, proving them capital when they need it the most. Advok8.in is single-handedly dominating the litigation funding market in India. The company came into existence in 2016 and offers a host of services from litigation funding, case tracking, and digital appointment. Advok8.in sees a significant number of daily visits from its mobile app with 10000+ lawyers reading legal articles and the latest legal news on its Legisl8 platform. The Advok8.in mobile app also enables lawyers to see the latest developments in their case anywhere they wish to. Apart from it, a bulk of litigation funding requests also comes from the mobile app.
Advok8.in has received more than 350 requests for litigation funding till date. These cases were submitted by lawyers, law firms, individual litigants and business houses. After a careful evaluation,Advok8.in has finalized four cases for funding and two out of four have been successfully funded. The cases that were shortlisted are commercial disputes in nature namely, Breach of Contract, Trademark infringement, Medical Negligence and Patent infringement.
The process includes inviting individual investors to invest in verified legal claim, with moderate investment cycle which typically matures within 2~4 years, shorter than any other asset class. The average funding size of a case is approx. 5 Lakhs. The value of the claims varies from 1 crore to 4 crores. Advok8.in has opened a different asset class for investment in India. The return on this investment is in an average of 150% to 200%. These Legal claims are uncorrelated to broader capital markets and macroeconomic factors.
As in-house counsel people are constantly trying to find ways to turn the cost center into a revenue center. By making use of advok8.in third-party funding, what was once a costly burden, now can transform into a functioning profit center.
Advok8 carefully vets every case listed on its portal through their expert case selection team, thereby mitigating any risk. The success ratio of cases on Advok8.in portal is very high. Thus, an investor just has to invest in a legal claim and track the progress of the case through Proprietary of advok8.in in case tracking system. Once the case is finalized Investors get the return from the recovery amount as decided in their contract. The entire process is very simple and transparent and advok8.in takes all endeavors to ensure the interest of the case investors are protected throughout the process.
About Advok8
Started in 2016, advok8.in is a legal tech company aiming to simplify a litigants journey in the litigation system of India. It is a one stop solution to a litigants and provide quality lawyer and also help litigants raise funds for their law suit, proving them capital when they need it the most. For more information, please visit advok8.in
CoinSwitch.co, one of world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange aggregator platform announced the launch of CoinSwitch Custom Instant Exchange. In its latest offering, CoinSwitch.co is empowering crypto enthusiasts – influencers, bloggers, opinion leaders and others, to transform their website into a niche crypto exchange. In doing so, they will earn 50% of the transaction fees, thus successfully monetizing their crypto and blockchain thought-leadership.
Image Source – Coin Switch
CoinSwitch Custom Instant exchange is quintessentially a white label solution which a website can use to set up an exchange on their website. The solution requires no coding knowledge, allowing the exchange to be set up in under two minutes. Furthermore, the integration doesn’t come at the cost of the aesthetics of the website and can be best customized to accommodate the logo and colour scheme of the host’s website. Hosts also get to have the final call on the coins that they will allow on their instant exchange.
Commenting on the latest development, Ashish Singhal, Co-Founder & CEO of CoinSwitch.co said
CoinSwitch Custom Instant Exchange enables website owners to create a customized exchange on their website. This empowers them to provide their website visitors with an enhanced functionality of exchanging cryptocurrencies right from their website. And by doing so, they will be able to monetize it as well.
Any website integrating the CoinSwitch Custom Instant Exchange will be able to provide its users or visitors a robust way to invest in cryptocurrencies, right from its website. This is ensured without any redirects, and hence, the hosts don’t have to compromise on their traffic. Additionally, the hosts will receive a revenue split of 50% per transaction, thus monetizing their digital media influence.
About CoinSwitch.co
Headquartered in Bengaluru, CoinSwitch.co is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency exchange aggregator platform that supports transactions in over 100 cryptocurrencies in India and 300 across the globe like altcoins, tokens like Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH], Ripple [XRP], Litecoin [LTC], etc. CoinSwitch.co aggregates multiple exchanges, facilitating transactions in all coins that are available with partner exchanges. Users can easily compare the price across multiple exchanges and opt for the best bargain. CoinSwitch.co further allows users to convert their existing crypto-assets into other pairs, supporting over 7,000 currency pairs in India and over 45,000 across the globe. CoinSwitch.co has raised USD 1.5 million from Sequoia Capital and Angel Investors. For more information, please visit CoinSwitch.co
When Verify.Wiki LLC – a start-up that fights False News through a methodology called reverse virality by combining crowdsourcing with social networking saw the recent lynching incidents in India due to False WhatsApp messages, it immediately sprang into action. The company picked Chennai as a pilot city to test if it could prevent another tragedy.
On July 13th, 2018, the company noticed two suspected False News stories propagating via WhatsApp, one asking people to punish a school teacher in Perambur, Chennai for hitting and kicking little children, and another circulating a young female doctor’s photo, claiming she was treating patients for free in Chennai. Both these posts went viral on WhatsApp and Facebook in Chennai.
Siva Nadarajah, an adviser and investor at Verify.Wiki who recently requested the company to help with the deadly False News crisis in India, said
The team immediately kicked off the pilot. They first learnt that the video that was circulated was from a school in Egypt, recorded in 2014, not from Perambur, Chennai. They also quickly uncovered the other story about the doctor was also false, propagated by a person who steals profile photos of young women from Facebook.
We were able to stop both the False News stories within a few hours. We also noticed the propagation of thosetwo false stories completely stopping within 24 hours. Imagine if Wikipedia and Facebook had a baby. You combine crowdsourcing with social networking. It’s so powerful when it comes to transparency and credibility in fighting False News. We stopped seven False News stories just within two weeks of our pilot in Chennai. Some are harmless and some are deadly. The nice thing is anyone can anonymously submit a suspected False News and everyone can participate in the verification activities. It’s a democratic process to fight False News
Once the stories were verified to be false through crowdsourced research, Verify.Wiki said its reverse virality approach ensured the propagation of the False News was stopped within hours. With reverse virality, the corrected version of the False News, was propagated back through the same path the story originated, via WhatsApp and Facebook,targeting those who might have consumed the False News.
Facebook, the parent company of WhatsApp recently took full page newspaper advertisements to warn people of False News propagating via WhatsApp, afterlynching incidents killed dozens of people across India.
About Verify.Wiki LLC
Verify.Wiki uses the power of collaboration and crowd-sourcing to fight unverified content shared across WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube and other online sources. Every contribution goes through a crowd-sourced verification process to ensure further accuracy and transparency. Users receive badges and industry certifications for contributing and verifying content. For more information, please visit Verify.Wiki
While the Tamil keyboard based on 
