Taking a step further in skilling the youth of Bihar, Bihar Skill Development Mission [BSDM] started a Recruit-Train and Deploy Model, which would further accentuate in skilling mission and effectively help in skill training of the youth. The event saw the participation of more major industries IT/ITES, Automotive, Manufacturing, Construction, Service, Textile, and major HR and placement agency.
Most of the Industries welcomed the RTD model especially the flexibility to industry partners in exercising the training and the modularity it provides in trained workers on the job. Industries pointed to the unique context of the domestic sector wherein the demand is there but the industry is finding it difficult to deploy people especially if migration is associated. There is a need to increase awareness to people aspiring to work in the sector; Industries appealed the BSDM their help in the mobilization of people from Bihar to undergo training.
Speaking at the event Dipak Kumar Singh, IAS, Principal Secretary, Labour Resources Department and CEO, Bihar Skill Development Mission highlighted the specific characteristics of RTD model that will give industry the flexibility in training candidates to their specific requirements. RTD is the first of its kind scheme modeled on providing flexibility to industry to train candidates from any location having no restriction pertaining to location specificity. He further stated that RTD model is a flagship and unique program of State Mission in which for merging of two different training into one, and while the training will be imparted by industries as per their norms, the cost of training will be borne by BSDM.
The willingness of our department in collaborating with industry and its consortium with placement agencies or training partner, Sector Skill Councils, and most importantly with training providers in addressing the concerns and developing BSDM as the best model for skilling. BSDM is successfully running this model with 15 industries and training partners and deployed about 600 Bihari Youth overseas and different parts of the country.
BSDM would ensure the quality of the industry partners entering the scheme and as the industry partner would be granting post training placements, therefore RTD is specifically designed to help industry train candidates’ specific to their requirements. This will be highly beneficial to industry partners as they would be saving critical costs and time in training candidate on firms’ specific skills.
Skilled people and industries are very much complement of each other. Industries can increase their productivity with the support of skilled workforce and skilled people can get the skill premium as a return.
Concentrix, Himalaya, Flipkart, Paytm, Reliance Jio showed their willingness to partner with BSDM for training candidates form Bihar both within an outside Bihar. This is the third Road Show organized in Bengaluru on 22nd June after Gurgaon and Mumbai. The focus of the Third Road Show was on major industries like IT/ITES, Manufacturing, Automotive and Service to explore a partnership for the flagship program.
Representatives from Reliance Jio, Concentirx, LM Wind, Himalaya, Flipkart, Cafe Coffee Day, Paytm, Rittelindia, Quitesindia, Silicon Micro System and other companies, Government Officials, attended the program. BSDM Team CEO Mr. Dipak Singh IAS, Mission Director Sanjay Kumar, Project Director Amit Pandey, Project management team Sanjay Singh, Shekhar Suman, and Surojeet Chandan, participated in this program.
About Bihar Skill Development Mission
Bihar Skill Development Mission [BSDM] was constituted in the year 2010 with the vision to increase the capacity and capability of the system to deliver quality skill training and professional knowledge to the youth to enhance their employability and bridge the skill deficit with a view to meet the growing demand for skilled manpower.
Sqrrl Fintech, an app based investment platform, has raised $1 million during its Pre-Series A round of funding from investment firm Equanimity Venture Fund. The founders of the innovative startup state that by 2019 they want to reach one million customers and already boast customers in more than 500 of India’s cities. Fintech startups in India are riding high at present and Sqrrl have worked hard to be the leader of the pack.
Sqrrl was founded in May 2016 by Samant Sikka, Dhananjay Singh and Sanjeev Sharma. The app was developed specifically for young Indians to increase their saving and investment opportunities by offering high performing mutual funds based on investment needs and risk horizons and goals. The venture proved successful as following the launch of the app in March 2017, the company have reached 150,000 users on Android and iOS devices. And in little more than two years of creation they hit the $1 million mark.
Securing customers
76% of Sqrrl’s current users are aged under 35. Meanwhile, 61% of their user base live outside of India’s top 15 cities. The company are also working tirelessly to ensure their product reaches as much as the Indian population as possible by offering users the option of 9 different Indian languages. To achieve such growth in such a short amount of time, fintech creators have to work hard by cementing their idea and putting together a strict business plan to ensure they get the appropriate financial backing to allow them to progress forward with their startup.
The funds will be used to pursue aggressive growth and add to product suite. In addition, we aim to invest in new age technologies, particularly machine learning and artificial intelligence, to sharpen its product recommendation and further smoothen its on-boarding process.
Following a successful funding round, the Managing Partner of Equanimity Investments, Rajesh Sehjal will now join the board of Sqrrl to help push them further towards hitting their next business aspirations.
Sqrrl have managed great success in such a short space of time, proving that hard work, dedication and an innovative product can go a long way in the fintech industry. The future looks bright for the Indian fintech market and Sqrrl are pushing themselves to ensure they stay at the top of their game.
Technology has become an integral part of our every-day lives and it has helped to a huge extent in making our lives organized as well as simpler. In fact, it has reached to such a peak that we no longer have to step out to do shopping or for paying our bills or even for furniture shopping. Wearable’s, especially smart-watches or fitness bands are being increasingly used by many health-conscious Indians for monitoring their food intake, water intake, tracking calories burnt during a workout, etc.
However, monitoring the statistics but performing relevant actions based on those inputs would add more value to that data. Even though some wearables give data about the amount of water intake, still many of us [due to some reasons] take less water and even if we have water, we have no idea about the quality of water. This is where water purifier can play a vital role since it removes the impurities from water and makes sure that the water being consumed is pure, germs free and safe for consumption.
Let’s look into the technology being used by water purifiers and what exactly is an RO water purifier. Water Purifiers use a technology called Reverse Osmosis [RO] that is used to remove a majority of contaminants from water by pushing the water under pressure through a semi-permeable membrane while Ultraviolet [UV] water purification penetrates through harmful pathogens in your home’s water and eliminates their ability to reproduce. Drinking purified water is one of most essential things that keep us healthy and Livpure is playing a pivotal role in bringing safe, consumable and healthy water in consumer’s homes. As a matter of fact, Livpure has been game-changer in that industry with India’s first smart-touch RO, UV and UF Taste Enhancer and guess what, customers need not walk-in to their stores, they can order for a demo over an email or a phone call.
Drinking germ-free water and taking timely intake is one of the first measurements for living a healthy life since keeps you hydrated all the time and you can stay away from water-borne diseases like Dysentery, Cholera, Diarrhea, Typhoid, Trachoma [Eye Infection], etc. Many of these diseases are life-threatening and consuming germ-free water is the only solution to keep them away. As per a report, more than 80% of country’s surface water is polluted and hence every measure that to be taken in order to keep yourself [and your loved ones] hale and hearty.
Though there are many more brands in the market that sell water purifier and RO water purifier, you have to make the right decision in choosing the best one in the market. Unlike other electronic items like mobile phones, laptops, etc. that require service only when they go bad, after-sales-service is very important in case of water purifiers since they require proper maintenance so that you get pure water when required. Livpure is a well-known brand that has been in the market for many years and has a good after-sales support and their purifiers are available for personal & commercial use.
To summarize, always stay hydrated and consume pure water in order to keep yourself away from diseases. What purifier do you use, do leave your experience in the comments section…
Bahrain Development Bank [BDB] announced that the Al Waha Fund of Funds has successfully closed its $100 million fundraising round, making it the first active venture capital fund of funds in the region. The announcement marks an important milestone for the region’s growing startup ecosystem. It will provide additional capital to innovative and technology-driven startups in Bahrain and across the Middle East through venture capital funds currently established in Bahrain, and by attracting new funds to the region.
The Limited Partners [LP] Advisory Committee met for the first time last week to close the US $100 million, setting the strategic direction of the fund, and approved the allocation of $35 million into a series of venture funds. The LPs include Mumtalakat, National Bank of Bahrain, Batelco Group, Tamkeen and Bahrain Development Bank, amongst others and where BDB is the GP managing the fund.
We are very pleased to announce the successful closure of the fund and we have already made encouraging progress in allocating the capital raised. One of the key constraints on the development of the startup and technology ecosystem in the region is lack of access to capital – this fund can help to make a significant difference to that challenge, enabling entrepreneurs to realize the potential of their ideas.
The announcement follows the launch of the Al Waha Fund of Funds at Gateway Gulf Forum last month. Gateway Gulf Forum, brought together more than five hundred global investors and business leaders to explore how to unlock the opportunities being created by the economic transformation in the GCC.
Bahrain’s startup ecosystem has benefitted from a number of significant initiatives and reforms in recent years, as part of the Economic Vision 2030, delivered under the leadership of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and Chairman of the Bahrain Economic Development Board [EDB]. These include a reduction in the minimum capital required for starting a business, measures to enable onshore crowdfunding in conventional and shari’a-compliant finance and the introduction of a regulatory sandbox.
The fifth India International MSME Start Up Expo witnessed encouraging sessions for the young innovators by experts focusing on innovation, reformation and transformation at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. The key speakers at the event included Minister of State, Department of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution Shri CR Chaudhary, Chairman ITDC, UAE Shri SK Aggarwal, Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Chairman Stic Travels Shri Subhash Goyal and many others.
The three-day event starting June 22-24, 2018 was spearhead by the MSME Development Forum, a not for profit organization, which has been at the forefront of growth and promotion of small businesses with a thrust on start-ups towards building entrepreneurs in India. The Forum works as a catalyst for interface between government and entrepreneurial activities and has been relentlessly working towards developing an entrepreneurial culture in the country.
Addressing the event, Minister of State, Department of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution – Shri CR Chaudhary, emphasised on encouraging young entrepreneurs, said
There is a need of more employment and export in the country. Employment is generated by new setups. Young people have new innovative ideas. In fact, more than 60% of stalls have been taken by young innovators country need. Even as per our Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, youth should be encouraged to an entrepreneur. One must become service provider not service seeker. Thus, SMEs should be given more assistance and support. Only then the moto – ‘Perform, Reform and Transform’ will happen. People of Delhi and nearby areas should come and take advantage of the expo and should encourage new innovators.
The two major problems of our agriculture sector are fragmentation of land and high pressure on resources. There is no capacity building in agriculture sector. MSME is the only way to revive the sector in India. The holistic solutions provided by the government have helped in improving the sector but to sustain it we need MSME involvement to take it further and this will help in doubling the income of the farmer.
We are aiming to make India as World’s manufacturer and sourcing hub alternative to China. Importantly, we have also tried to create a political will among political parties to acknowledge this movement.
There were various topics covered in the on-going expo in different sessions that is Innovative Financing & Founding Opportunities for MSMEs & Startups, MSME in Tourism, Logistics & Service sector, Vendor Development in Railways, Defense & Govt/PSUs and Agri Business: Doubling Farmer’s income.
The agenda of the exposition is to promote entrepreneurship & self-employment to generate maximum job opportunities. The event will also provide one stop global platform to connect, network, partner and share information with Domestic & International SMEs to find new business opportunities in either country. The expo also aims to spread awareness about Government’s promotional schemes to make new Entrepreneur and transform job seekers to job creators. It accelerates growth of MSMES, Startups and Budding entrepreneur. In addition, it focuses to bring Small Entrepreneurs on a single platform and address their persistent issue and concerns. The agenda will also target to be the leading MSME Startup Advocacy Forum.
The event witnesses more than 20,000 visitors, 250 exhibitors, 100 B2G/B2B Meetings, 50 Embassies & Global Participants, 30 banks and investors, 15 PSUs-Government Departments and 10 concurrent summits.
SMARTup is a series of round table knowledge sharing and networking events being organized by ah! Ventures & meetingsandoffices as part of their endeavour to connect the start up fraternity and create valuable business centric conversations between domain specialists and entrepreneurs.
The focus of these events would be to deal with issues and problems that plague young companies and divert their focus from their core competences and business. Issues such as business planning and strategy development, aligning immediate and long term goals, generating investor interest, scaling a business, managing cash flows, building sticky relationships & customer loyalty, getting paying customers, regulations, compliance, understanding term sheets, understanding how to go about building your tech as a non-techie without a tech co-founder, sales and marketing processes, how to focus on and enhance the logic of business, what is the role of IoT in business, when do you need AI and what does Ai mean beyond chatbots for your business etc. will all be amongst the critical topics that would be covered under the series. [Source]
Note – Himanshu Sheth’s Blog is an Outreach Partner for the event !
SMARTup is a focused and enriched networking and knowledge sharing experience that will bring tremendous value to entrepreneurs and young businesses. Each SMARTup event shall have limited seating.
SMARTup has traveled across 10 cities in India and of the 190 startup companies that participated, 10 are already shortlisted for funding on the ah! Ventures Funding Platform. After having taken the SMARTup revolution to 10 Indian cities & Dubai, SMARTup is back at Bengaluru. SMARTup is offering at least 3 1-on-1 Meetings to all Gold Pass Startups at SMARTupBengaluru with some of the best investors in South India. Book your 1-on-1 Meetings today & take your startup to new heights.
The event would be held at 91SpringBoard on the 7th of July. More details about SMARTup, Bengaluru can be found here.
VeriSign, Inc., a global leader in domain names and internet security, today announced that approximately 1.4 million domain name registrations were added to the internet in the first quarter of 2018, bringing the total number of domain name registrations to approximately 333.8 million across all Top-Level Domains [TLDs].
The increase of approximately 1.4 million domain name registrations globally equates to a growth rate of 0.4 percent over the fourth quarter of 2017.1,2. The Domain Name Industry Brief [DNIB] further shows that domain name registrations have grown by approximately 3.2 million, or 1.0 percent, YoY.
Key Highlights
The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of approximately 148.3 million domain name registrations in the domain name base3 at the end of the first quarter of 2018 This represents an increase of approximately 1.9 million domain name registrations, or 1.3 percent, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017
As of March 31, 2018, the .com domain name base totaled approximately 133.9 million domain name registrations, while the .net domain name base totaled approximately 14.4 million domain name registrations
The .com and .net TLDs had a combined increase of approximately 4.6 million domain name registrations, or 3.2 percent, YoY
New .com and .net domain name registrations totaled approximately 9.6 million at the end of the first quarter of 2018, compared to 9.5 million domain name registrations for the first quarter of 2017
Growth of .com and .net domain names redirecting to popular global social media and e-commerce sites compared to Q1 2017 is dominated by Instagram [70%] followed by Etsy [18%] and LinkedIn [16%].
Total new gTLD [ngTLD] domain name registrations were approximately 20.2 million at the end of the first quarter of 2018, with a decrease of 0.4 million domain name registrations, or 2.0 percent, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017. ngTLDs decreased by approximately 5.3 million domain name registrations, or 20.7 percent, YoY.
Verisign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide statistical and analytical research and data on the domain name industry. The second quarter 2017 Domain Name Industry Brief, as well as previous reports, can be obtained at Verisign.com/DNIB.
The figure(s) includes domain names in the .tk ccTLD. .tk is a free ccTLD that provides free domain names to individuals and businesses. Revenue is generated by monetizing expired domain names. Domain names no longer in use by the registrant or expired are taken back by the registry and the residual traffic is sold to advertising networks. As such, there are no deleted .tk domain names. More here.
The generic top-level domain [gTLD] and ccTLD data cited in this brief: (i) includes ccTLD Internationalized Domain Names, (ii) is an estimate as of the time this brief was developed and (iii) is subject to change as more complete data is received.
The domain name base is the active zone plus the number of domain names that are registered but not configured for use in the respective Top-Level Domain zone file plus the number of domain names that are in a client or server hold status.
Microsoft India showcased several of its own and third-party solutions that use Microsoft Cognitive Services and bring the power of Artificial Intelligence [AI] to users and organizations through vision, speech, language, knowledge and search scenarios. Over 370 enterprise customers in India already use these cognitive APIs from Microsoft. Microsoft is working with over 650 partners to bring AI solutions to benefit large, medium and small enterprises in the country.
Microsoft Cognitive Services is a collection of intelligent APIs that allow systems to see, hear, speak, understand and interpret human needs using natural methods of communication. Developers can use these APIs to make their applications across platforms more intelligent, engaging and discoverable. Available at www.microsoft.com/cognitive, it includes APIs on
Vision: From faces to feelings, allow apps to understand images and video
Speech: Hear and speak to users by filtering noise, identifying speakers, and understanding intent
Language: Process text and learn how to recognize what users want
Knowledge: Tap into rich knowledge amassed from the web, academia, or your own data
Search: Locate relevant information among billions of web pages, images, videos, and news with the power of Bing APIs
To date, more than a million developers around the world have already discovered and tried Microsoft Cognitive Services.
Microsoft and partner solutions available to Indian customers are many. Here are a few examples.
Vision
Seeing AI – Designed for users with visual impairment, the Microsoft Seeing AI App combines Artificial Intelligence and rich computer vision to describe surrounding people, text, objects, colors, and currencies in real-time to the user, and is available for download on iOS devices. It can now detect Indian currency and narrate the denomination to the user. This includes all the currency notes that are currently in circulation including the new currency bills issued recently. The Seeing AI app now supports five different currencies including the Euro, US & Canadian dollars as well as British Pounds.
The Intelligent Kiosk – The Intelligent Kiosk is a Windows 10 Universal App showcasing workflows and experiences using Microsoft Cognitive Services. The kiosk app is a great example of an intelligent application, one that can analyze the emotions on human faces as well as still photographs and predict their age, gender and emotion. It also allows developers to quickly create and train a model to perform face identification against any pre-determined set of faces.
Transforming remote hiring – Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company, India’s leading private general insurer, is using an automated video interviewing solution from Microsoft partner Talview to hire from the untapped talent from multiple cities across the country. The cloud-based solution, powered by Microsoft Azure, can be accessed by candidates from any smartphone device and is fully functional even on low speed Internet.
To be more competitive and agile in today’s dynamic marketplace, Bajaj Allianz needed to tap talent from multiple locations. This otherwise came with huge investments in time and resources from both the recruiter and candidate. Deploying automated video interviewing has saved the company time and resources while vastly improving the recruitment process. Candidates are now remotely participating in interviews via smartphones at their own convenient time and place, and hiring managers have the flexibility to assess and evaluate candidates without the need to travel to different locations. The company is also using Talview Behavioral Insights [TBI] to build behavioral profiles of candidates. These profiles are enabling hiring managers to find the right person for the job backed by data-driven insights.
Language
Real-time language translation – Microsoft has recently brought the power of AI and Deep Neural Networks [DNN] to improve real-time language translation for Hindi, Bengali, and Tamil. With DNN-powered language translation, the results are more accurate and sound more natural. Users can avail the benefits of DNN-enhanced Indian language translation while surfing the internet across any website on the Microsoft Edge browser, on Bing search, Bing Translator website, as well as Microsoft Office 365 products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Skype.
The Microsoft Translator app in Android and iOS can recognize and translate languages from text, speech and even photos. AI deployed in Microsoft’s language translation technologies is bringing more accurate speech recognition and higher quality machine-powered translations to all 60 languages supported by Microsoft’s translation technologies worldwide.
Knowledge [Conversational User Interfaces]
WittyParrot – WittyParrot is an AI & ML powered knowledge and process automation platform for sales, support and knowledge workers. Key solutions include Voice enabled Chat Bots, Document Automation, Contract Lifecycle, Omni-Channel Communication and Engagement. WittyParrot was part of Bengaluru-based Microsoft Accelerator’s 10th batch where they underwent an intensive six-month coaching and mentoring programme.
They are using Microsoft’s Azure cloud offering and leverage it for technologies like big data, Internet of Things [IoT] and advanced analytics, among others, while being fully integrated with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office 365, several CRM platforms and various voice enabled chat-bot technologies. WittyParrot solutions are being used by leading IT and ITES organizations such as Oracle, Couchbase, Collabera and Data Endure.
Ruuh – Ruuh, Microsoft’s social AI chatbot created specifically for India, has approximately 1.5 million users. Launched a little over a year and a half ago, Ruuh has exchanged 100 million messages with her users so far. You can engage with her on Facebook in the same way you would interact with a friend.
She is built using the vast social content available on the Internet [with strong checks and balances to protect her from exploitation]. Further, she is well versed with Bollywood and has a good sense of humor too. As an AI chatbot, she is learning increasingly from human interactions to respond emotionally and intelligently, providing a unique viewpoint, with manners and emotional expressions.
Knowledge [Productivity]
AI in Office 365 – Microsoft’s AI infused Office 365 helps organizations and employees get the most out of O365 in the following ways:
Intelligent, personalized search: This personalized experience uses signals from the Microsoft Graph to provide tailored search results across content and people in an organization based on a user’s work patterns. The redesigned results are easier to explore and allow users to preview files with support for over 270+ different file types without ever leaving the search page.
PowerPoint Designer: It is easy to get beautiful designs in minutes for even more types of slides. Designer in PowerPoint now can recommend professional design options for bulleted process lists. This expansion builds upon previous Designer updates to incorporate facial detection, color extraction and more in images. Additional categories of text will be supported in the future, such as timelines.
QuickStarter in PowerPoint and Sway: Powered by the Bing Knowledge Graph, QuickStarter in Sway and PowerPoint provides carefully curated outlines for any topic, including recommendations on information to include, categories to consider and associated images tagged with Creative Commons licenses. This provides a solid starting point to then continue building a presentation.
MyAnalytics: Users can createbetter work habits with the help of Microsoft MyAnalytics. MyAnalytics provides insights to help understand how users spend time at work, across meetings, email, time they designate as ‘focus time’ and after-hours work. This way, they can set productivity goals and monitor progress over time.
Users can also gain visibility into who they collaborate with most. In the future, MyAnalytics will deliver insights to teams and Office 365 Groups to help them establish better ways of working together, uncover hidden inefficiencies and align on priorities.
Some useful resources for getting started with Microsoft’s Cognitive Services and How app developers can infuse Language & Speech capabilities into their apps can be found below:
Getting started with Microsoft Cognitive Services
Language with Microsoft Cognitive Services: Infusing language and speech capabilities into your app
AI and Microsoft
Microsoft has an ambitious goal to make AI accessible and valuable to every individual and organization, amplifying human ingenuity with intelligent technology.
Microsoft is infusing intelligence across all its products and services to extend individuals’ and organizations’ capabilities and make them more productive; providing a powerful platform of AI services and tools that makes innovation by developers and partners faster and more accessible; and helping transform business by enabling breakthroughs to current approaches and entirely new scenarios that leverage the power of intelligent technology.
In its work to deploy AI everywhere, Microsoft is taking a thoughtful and trusted approach – designing AI innovations that extend and empower human capabilities in all aspects of life, while keeping people in control. Microsoft’s approach to AI puts users in control, with intelligence that is transparent and secure, and sets the highest bar for protecting privacy, while also being inclusive and respectful to all.
