All Posts by Himanshu Sheth

|In: Marketing|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

India is moving to a golden age of philanthropy that hasn’t been seen since the middle of the last century. Whereas the last period of giving led to the setting up of many of the trusts, hospitals, universities and similar institutions, modern givers are looking to find new ways to invest. Running alongside the new spirit of giving, charities are employing marketing techniques such as viral videos to help promote their causes.

Image Source – Marketing

The Modern Givers

Philanthropists such as Erik Gordon plan whole campaigns looking to building sustainable futures and to tackle the causes of the issues they are addressing. Brands such as Siyaram have started campaigns to encourage their customers to carry out good acts every day. Charities and other non-profits are more reliant on partnering with brands, or appealing to a wider audience in a kick-starter fashion.

Marketing Techniques To Bring In More Engagement

Digital marketing techniques have a lot to teach those who wish to do good deeds. Marketing has become a science over the years, which allows it to be cost effective. For big businesses this can help with profitability but for those wanting to help other it is vital to ensure as little as possible is spent on administrative costs. Before starting any plan to do good you need to know who your audience will be. By understanding your audience you will be able to plan your campaign to suit them. Data harvesting will tell you more about their likes, dislikes and where to best engage them. The best way to reach out to this audience has been proven to be storytelling. YouTube provides services for non profits that can help enormously with campaigns.

The Future Of Giving

The future for those wanting to do good works online will be a far more professional one. Our world is expanding and it is increasingly becoming difficult to be heard in the crowd. It is vital that to get your message heard that you employ all the techniques available. Storytelling, social media, networking and data mining are all tools that will be necessary to succeed. Only by taking these professional attitudes and approaches will charities be able to stand out and be seen.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

With the college admission season just around the corner, Stanza Living, a unique co-living student housing platform has expanded its offering spanning over 2,000 beds across multiple educational hubs such as Delhi University – South Campus, Delhi University – North Campus, Noida, Greater Noida and Dehradun.  The company is also looking at increasing its portfolio to over 10,000 beds in the next 12~18 months.

Image Source – Stanza Living

With a ‘student’s first’ approach, the company currently operates in Delhi University’s North Campus and South Campus. Apart from offering high-quality accommodation services to students, the company also offers additional services like career enhancement opportunities as part of their Stanza Springboard programme. Additionally, Stanza Social is another unique program which the company runs under which it organizes a range of community events throughout the year and provides exclusive, discounted access to a curated list of restaurants, events, coaching classes along with goodies and rewards to Stanza’s community of student residents.

With safety and security being a huge concern for parents, Stanza residences are equipped with advanced, high-tech security systems that provide a safe and secure environment to students. A technology enabled 24-hour central command center, an on-ground rapid response team, perimeter tagging, geo-fencing and motion sensors attached to all residences are some of the unique measures used by the company to prevent unauthorized entry into its resident facilities and ensure a safe and secure environment while offering students the flexibility of enjoying their college.

Commenting on the expansion plans, Sandeep Dalmia, Co-founder, Stanza Living said

Stanza Living is not just another hostel or paying guest accommodation, but a unique community living concept created for students moving to a new place to pursue their dreams. We go beyond accommodation in what we have to offer – we see ourselves as a ‘students first’ brand and hence Stanza Social and Stanza Springboard are uniquely designed keeping the interests of the student in mind.

We recently hired 50 interns across 10-12 colleges across India and are providing them with once-in a lifetime opportunity to work in a fast-paced, constantly evolving start-up ecosystem, helping us understand and solve student problems and allowing us to train them for various skill sets such as marketing, content, sales, using digital and social media platforms.

Anindya Dutta, Co-founder, Stanza Living further added saying

We are re-imagining co-living in India with our student-first approach by providing best of living experiences with our world-class accommodation offerings. In terms of revenue, we clocked 2~3 crore in 2017-18 with all units profitable. We are currently aggressively expanding and have witnessed 20x growth since our inception.

Stanza Living, a young start-up has grown exponentially, with the numbers of beds we are managing rising from 100 to 2,000 in the last 12 months. We are excited at this pace of growth which makes us one of the fastest growing start-ups in the Indian eco-system with a strong focus on high quality delivery and execution.

About Stanza Living

Stanza Living is a technology-enabled, high-quality student accommodation concept which is seeking to disrupt the multi-billion-dollar student housing market by putting the student, as a consumer, at the heart of the product and service design, development and execution. From smart space planning in rooms to gamifying food, from creating common areas for engagement and community living to delivering reliable, predictable and standardized services to residents through back-end cutting-edge technology integration, Stanza is challenging the status quo when it comes to student community living. For more information, please visit Stanza Living

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

APUS, world’s leading technology company specializing in Android development and information services announced plans to bring the next phase of disruption in India’s gaming industry through its unique live quiz game ‘Go Millionaire‘, launched on its flagship product APUS Launcher. The company plans to give away over Rs. 4 crores as cash prize to the winners of the game, typically millennials, working professionals or non-working individuals aged between 17 to 35 years of age. The quiz game aims to bring together a seamless integration of entertainment, knowledge and surprise.

Image Source – Go Millionaire

The quiz game starts every day at 10:00 PM IST with cash prize of Rs. 1,00,000/- daily and Rs. 2,00,000/- on Sundays being given out to the winners. Over 80% of the questions are related to the local culture with 12 questions from diversified topics such as entertainment, politics, history, culture, nature, sports and technology. In the last two months, the game has resonated well with the fun, cool young Indian minds who are always in a quest to re-invent their mundane lifestyle.

Speaking about the upswing in India’s gaming industry and overall reaction to APUS’ ‘Go Millionaire’ quiz game, Raymond Chen, APUS India, said

Go Millionaire has managed to open opportunities for young Indian minds to stay connected with the outside world and serve as a window for the world to understand Indian culture and delve into the lives, thoughts and dreams of the millennials.

We, at APUS, are betting big on the potential of India’s digital gaming industry which is growing rapidly. This country’s mobile games market is expected to touch a whopping figure of $1.1 billion by 2020. And, the number of smartphone users is projected to become 628 million by then. There is no doubt that it is a very interesting time to be in India – where the rising interest in mobile gaming is running in parallel to the rise in smartphone adoption as well.

Go Millionaire is not just a unique platform that elevates the knowledge quotient of India’s young minds but also renders a sense of financial independence combined with elements of surprise thereby providing a fascinating user experience. The APUS users, the players of the game, who typically earn nearly Rs. 4000 everyday, have unique stories to tell.

Priyanka Wagh, a homemaker from Dhule, Maharashtra, an avid player of the game said

My friends introduced me to the game on social media and I have been playing it ever since. I love the concept of the game as it enhances my knowledge, makes me financially independent and is fun too. Last week, while playing on ‘Go Millionaire’, question after question, I crossed all hurdles and to my complete surprise that day I earned Rs.4264/-. I used the money to pay off the loan amount for that month. Now, I play the game at least 3-4 times a week.

Another ‘Go Millionaire’ enthusiast Satya Srivastava who works at an education focused firm in Mumbai said

I have been playing ‘Go Millionaire’ for a while now as I see a great combination of learning and fun in this. I also thought it would be a good idea to use this platform to re-invent the work culture in our company. And now all my team members play this game. I have introduced it to the students’ community too that liaisons with us daily as it is a brilliant opportunity for them to improve their learning curve and earn decent money as well.

Currently, the quiz game is seamlessly integrated into APUS Browser, which is best known for its boosted speed and privacy protection features.  In the next phase, the game will move to a continuous live quiz show format and will be made available in all APUS products. Additionally, the game is in English at this stage and will be launched in multi-lingual version to cater to the larger segment of India’s young audience very soon.

About APUS Group

Beijing Headquartered APUS Group is one of the world’s leading technology company specializing in Android development and information services. Founded in June 2014 by APUS Group CEO Tao Li, the former vice president of Qihoo 360, APUS Group’s mission is to deliver the world’s most intuitive user experience to Android smartphone users worldwide.

|In: Marketing|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The leading mobile marketing platform, CleverTap, has announced their powerful suite of Discovery Tools, based on automated user segmentation. These tools enable mobile marketers to quickly unearth customer insights and accelerate ROI on their marketing strategies. CleverTap’s Discovery Tools are already being leveraged by enterprise customers to build long term customer value and to create impactful customer experiences.

Today’s customers expect brands to respond to their needs immediately. Businesses that are able to predict and respond to their user’s behaviors in a timely manner are the ones that will win. While progressive marketers have been using manual means of segmenting their users into micro-segments, this is a time consuming and expensive effort. Automated segmentation goes through users behavior data, running different machine learning algorithms and models on this data and is finally able to present interesting segment of users to marketers.

This set of advanced tools will instantly identify champion users, loyal customers differentiated from hibernating users and about to churn users. Automatically exposing these user segments allows marketers to focus their creativity on finding the best ways to engage with these segments – run a loyalty program for champion users and possibly run some win back campaigns on users likely to churn to get their interest back. With automated user segments at their fingertips, marketers can optimize their mobile strategies to drive higher conversions while reducing friction points.

CleverTap’s Discovery Tools Suite includes automated segmentation using the following models

  • RFM [Recency, Frequency and Monetary]

How recently a user has visited your app in combination with how frequently a user visits are valuable insights into how marketers can engage with them. Treating someone whom you’ve seen yesterday or a week ago differently from someone you’ve not seen for a year is critical. CleverTap’s RFM model automatically segments your entire user base into 10 automatic segments [from champions to hibernating users] so that you can see what you are doing right with one group, and what you can do more effectively to connect with others.

  • Flows

Users traverse through your apps via a thousand different paths. Some sophisticated users navigate it optimally, but many others get stuck and need help at different steps along their paths to conversion. CleverTap’s Flows lets you instantly visualize all possible paths of all your user segments. Using conversion percentages, you can identify the most optimal paths in your app. Provide an improved customer experience to user segments that are getting stuck and help them reach their destinations within your app.

  • Pivots

With a few clicks, breakdown your users into weekend vs. weekday warriors; users who consume content in the afternoons vs. nightowls. CleverTap’s Pivots give you unlimited combinations of data visualizations to make your data actionable by providing the ability to pinpoint each cell as a segment of users. Easily discover your best customer segments without needing a data scientist to try hundreds of permutations and combinations to get to the same answer.

Sunil Thomas, Chief Executive Officer at CleverTap, said

Today’s users don’t have the time and patience to visit your app and dig for the information they need. Brands almost need to anticipate and dynamically react to their users’ needs. With the launch of Discovery Tools, we aim to automate a large part of how marketers discover their valuable customer segments. These tools will significantly improve marketing efficiency and help marketers spend their marketing dollars effectively.

About CleverTap

CleverTap helps consumer brands retain their users for life. It? is a powerful mobile marketing solution that brings together user data from online and offline channels on one centralized platform. Everyday, thousands of brands leverage CleverTap’s machine learning models to orchestrate differentiated customer engagement strategies that help marketers drive omni-channel growth. For more information, please visit CleverTap

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

According to data from Indeed, the world’s no. 1 job site, Bengaluru is the leading city for those seeking job opportunities in the technology sector, by a considerable margin, with 22% of all job postings in the country originating from the city.

It is followed by Delhi-NCR [comprising New Delhi, Noida and Gurugram], Pune, Hyderabad, and Mumbai, making up the top five destinations for technology careers in India. Smaller cities such as Mohali and Ahmedabad also see a fair share of job postings in the sector; with Chennai also featuring in the leading cities for jobs in the technology sector.

Top cities for technology jobs in India

Aptly named the Silicon Valley of India, it comes as no surprise that Bengaluru continues to lead in terms of job opportunities in the technology sector, given that it has in the past been the home ground for several start-ups. According to a previous study by Indeed, Bengaluru is also the leading city in India for jobs related to blockchain, an upcoming segment in the technology space.

While the actively job seeking age group of 20-29 year olds continue to show a relatively high level of interest in the technology sector – indeed, the age group is also the most actively hired; interestingly, senior job-seekers above the age of 55 are also showing significant interest in the sector. Conversely, the 40~49 age group shows the least interest in the sector.

Commenting on the subject, Sashi Kumar, Managing Director, Indeed, said

Today organizations must keep constantly evolving in order to keep pace with the advent of new technologies, be it artificial intelligence, machine learning, or big data analytics. New technologies bring with them opportunities for employment, as new job roles emerge in their wake.

However, while there are ample jobs available in India, the need of the hour is talent that is adequately skilled to fulfill the responsibilities the job entails. Employers all over the world are in search of employees with the ability to continuously up-skill themselves, and thus continue to stay relevant to the organization.

There has been consistent demand for professionals in the technology sector, with jobs outnumbering talent, due to a persistent skill gap or talent mismatch. While India produces a significant share of the world’s graduates, there is an urgent need to ensure parity between skilling programmes and industry’s requirements. It is up to both employers and job seekers to undertake measures that help in developing the requisite skills for the job roles in question. Such initiatives could go a long way towards reducing the skills gap and alleviating the perceived talent crunch that companies are facing.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

In today’s era all small and large corporate are sitting on a gold mine of data, however, the biggest challenge they are facing to use these data to get business insights which they can to take effective business decisions and optimize their business.

Image Source – Business Optimization

‘Data Science’ is one of the most talked about topics in the CXO community and even leading analysts like Gartner and Forrester have quoted 2018 as a milestone year for organizations, with over 70% of them expected to leverage Data Science for Business Optimization.

Data Science is an automated method to analyze massive amount of data from various sources and extracting insights from them. Data science starts with examining raw data followed by applying statistical techniques for the purpose of drawing business related conclusions about the information and for modelling and predicting business outcomes.

According to recent industry reports, by the year 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet. Hence, unraveling insights from this enormous amount of information will require the seamless adoption of big data technologies, stronger data security, and integration of AI, machine learning and cognitive technologies applications with business operations.

In 2018, the following trends around Data science and Big Data would likely surface. Trends which include – Prescriptive analytics is poised to drive proactive decision-making, which would impact HR processes; Demand for data scientist will substantially increase, while finding data scientists will be an equally arduous task; Cognitive technologies and Artificial Intelligence [AI] will help reshape business processes; Machine learning [ML] is fast becoming the fulcrum of big data platforms and analytics; Enterprises will increasingly adopt a cloud-first strategy and cloud-based platforms for big data analytics.

Use Cases – Key Success factor for any Data Science Program
There are 2 key success factors when it comes to a Data Science program. First one is the identification of the right business use case and the second one is the availability of underlying data. While many organizations are in the process of preparing their systems to be able to apply Data Science and reap its true benefits, the true challenge is with nailing down the right business cases. Business use cases always needs to start with expected outcome and has to be a combination Business Benefits, Organizational Readiness and Technical Complexity.

Business use cases are often specific to the industry and it is important to select the right use case for your data science program based on your industry.  Let’s look at the top practical use cases by each Industry.

Conclusion

Unlike traditional analytics, Data Science programs are focused on a more specific optimization area but yield multi-fold business value. The key lies in the selection of the apt business use case and program execution – right from the data understanding to model deployment. Most of the successful data science program are executed in an iterative manner to refine the scope of the business case to achieve the desired outcome.

About the author

Srinivasan Rengarajan is the VP & Global Head of Data Science and Analytics at 3i Infotech Ltd. More details about him can be found here

|In: BlockChain|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Whether you are an employed professional, student, entrepreneur, or investor – technology touches us all. It is mandatory to keep pace with technological revolutions that will shape the future, in order to ensure that none of us are left behind.

Image Source – BlockChain

Free Global Blockchain Workshop!

Blockchain is a technology that is hugely disruptive, just the way the internet created a significant disruption in the late 1990’s and the early 2000s. There are many use cases of Blockchain that hold immense potential to disrupt many businesses across the world. Some examples of such use cases include Finance, eCommerce, Distributed Storage, Crypto Currencies, Smart Contracts and Decentralization.

Dr. Arthur Langer, Director, Center for Technology Management – Columbia University & Dr. Artit Wangperawong, PhD, Stanford University and Chief Technology Officer, runs.com will discuss the disruptive role of Blockchain and what it means for the future of technology.

You can expect to learn more about

  • Basics of Blockchain and how it works
  • What are the potential uses of Blockchain
  • What it all means for the future of technology

This webinar is hosted by runs.com in partnership with Columbia University CTM.

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Concerns about online trading security will always be there, thanks to all the scary stories you read online about computer hackers and viruses. However, all online brokerages use high-end encryption to scramble data so that only the intended receiver can use it. Stealing information that is encrypted is virtually impossible even if they seem simple in those horror stories of online trading you may have heard from a friend or colleague.

Image Source – Trading

But as they say, “Prevention is better than cure.” Here are twelve amazing ways to protect your personal and financial data when trading online.

  1. When you are opening a demat account, create a password that is complicated and difficult to guess. Avoid your names, birth-dates, wedding dates, etc. Also, never share your password with anyone ever, and do not write it down on a piece of paper or your diary.
  2. Just having a complicated password is not enough, you must maintain it too. So, change the password every quarter. Though web browsers offer the ‘remember your password’ facility, avoid it. And do not use the same password for all your online transactions.
  3. Avoid using your internet accounts from a cyber cafe, as chances are no proper anti-virus or anti-phishing software are installed on these machines.
  4. Brokers will provide a Two Factor Authentication [2FA] security to help maintain a safe and secure trading account. This security level will require you to enter an OTP password sent via an email or mobile.
  5. Do not entertain phone calls and emails that try to extract your trading and banking details. These people are probably scammers and typically request for an OTP. Never share your OTP password with anybody else.
  6. While using your trading account, if you feel that your system has become too slow or there are too many pop-ups opening, log out and change the password immediately from another machine. Chances are that the security of your PC or laptop has been compromised.
  7. When trading, remember the 3 golden rules –
  • Never let your trading screen remain unattended
  • Always log out of your trading account instead of simply closing the window
  • Regularly clear the cache
  1. While it’s fine to use Wi-Fi to access your internet, you must avoid free Wi-Fi services offered at hotels and airports because these are mostly insecure. A dedicated connection for internet trading is always preferred.
  2. Avoid downloading unknown software on the device you use for trading, no matter how entertaining they seem.
  3. It’s wise to have a personal firewall with anti-virus and anti-spyware components. These firewalls may have a small price tag attached to them but consider it an investment.
  4. When trading, type your trading account name in the status bar. Don’t use any short cuts or hyperlinks. Also, ensure that the trading address starts with https:// and not http:// to be sure that you are using a secured and safe site.
  5. Stay away from unauthorized trades; one smart way to do this is to cross-check your personal trade sheet, order book, and trade book. Also, monitor the contract notes closely and reconcile it with your demat account and bank account at least once a week.

Given all the potential risks we are susceptible to, it is always better to ensure that we are trading safely and securely.