All Posts by Himanshu Sheth

|In: Hackathon|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Creativity and innovation go hand-in-hand with learning at Stonehill International School [SIS]. At Stonehill, they believe in providing newer and enhanced opportunities to their students to be able to integrate technology and innovation with academics, to foster holistic development of each student.

Image Source – Hackathon

Stonehill hosted its first inter-school Hackathon. A ‘Hackathon’ or a ‘Codeathon’ is an event where teams of developers get together to come up with solutions to problems. These solutions include, but are not limited to, robots, machine learning algorithms, mobile and web applications and websites. For the most part, there is only one constraint – time.

Participants of the Stonehill Hackathon included students from six international schools in Bangalore. The participating school included Bangalore international School [BIS], The International School, Bangalore [TISB], Inventure Academy, Neev Academy, Oakridge International School and Indus International School. Twenty-one Secondary School students from SIS also participated in the event. All participants were grouped into teams, with each team comprising of a minimum of two and a maximum of five students.

The participants coded and created solutions to a variety of different challenges ranging from medical technology to natural language interfaces.  The participants had six hours to create solutions by using any programming language of their choice.

The enthusiasm of the students was palpable while students worked on software and hardware based projects. Students worked on a number of projects like an artificial intelligence based facial recognition system, neural networking, computer games using Python, database projects, messaging applications, Arduino/Raspberry Pi and Lego Mindstorms, to name few.

At the end of their allotted six hours, the teams had to present their projects to our panel of judges and the rest of the Hackathon participants. The distinguished panel of judges comprised Mr. Dale Vaz of Amazon India and Mr. Nasser Ebrahim from IBM. Mr. Vaz is Head of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer at Amazon India and Mr. Ebrahim is Senior Technical Mentor in the IBM India Software Lab Machine Learning Hub.

The first prize was won by Team Robomatrix from Indus International School who made a robot meant to carry medicine to a destination. The team was awarded prize money of INR 15, 000/-

The second prize went to Team ETWAS of Oakridge International School that made a home automation system using an artificial intelligence based facial recognition. The team won prize money of INR 10, 000/-

Neev Designers of Neev Academy walked away with the third prize. The team designed a prosthetic arm using Lego EV3 and they won prize money of INR 5000/- The event was an immense success and Stonehill plans to make this an annual event.

|In: Accelerator|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Brigade REAP, an accelerator program with a focus on technology that Impacts the real estate industry, announced the graduation of its third cohort of five startups during the Brigade REAP Handover Day. Located in the premises of the iconic World Trade Centre – Bangalore, the Brigade REAP accelerator program is Asia’s first-ever startup accelerator, designed to help enterprise startups in the Real Estate sector.

Image Source – Brigade REAP

REAP was Launched in October 2016 with an intention to mentor startups leveraging technology which can help in delivering greater efficiencies to the Real Estate sector. Over 100 plus start-ups were evaluated for Cohort three and after two rounds of intense jury selection, 5 start-ups were inducted into the program. The start-ups inducted in the program went through a rigorous four and a half month mentorship and acceleration program before being handed over to the real estate Industry for consumption of their products and services.

The five start-ups reaped immense benefits from mentoring, stakeholder development, tech evaluation, business modelling and investor & enterprise connects. The six pillars of engagement focused by REAP are product development, Technology road-map, people strategy, go-to-market strategy, marketing-branding-PR strategy and strategies to make startups investment ready.

At the Handover Day of the 3rd cohort, these five start-ups demonstrated their ventures to eminent developers from the Real Estate Industry, Investors, HNI’s, other startup founders and senior management of global corporates. The event marked the culmination of the third cohort’s technology and market acceleration journey. Even as alumni’s, the startups will have continued access to mentorship and go-to-market opportunities with Brigade REAP, as well as eco-system connects.

Nirupa Shankar, Director, Brigade REAP, said

The main focus of the accelerator program is to make startups ‘industry ready’. Many of them need to tweak their business model in order to work seamlessly with established real estate developers who have their own idiosyncratic way of working. We try to work with startups that can help developers either increase revenues or decrease cost and time taken to deliver on products or services. We look at startups in the Real Estate, Hospitality, Office and the Retail Sector. We hope to add value to the industry and ecosystem through our efforts. ” said Ms. Nirupa Shankar, Director, Brigade REAP speaking on the occasion.

Startups that graduated from the Brigade REAP program

ECOSTP – A ‘Zero Power’ sewage treatment technology. Compared to conventional STP’s that consume energy, ECOSTP produces energy. A 200 KLD ECOSTP based sewage treatment plant can generate 50KL/day Biogas, energy equivalent to 25 liters of Diesel.

Tharun Kumar, Co-Founder, EcoSTP, said

REAP helped us succeed and coached us on all aspects of our business. If you have an idea which can disrupt the realty market place, REAP is the place to knock.

QuickQuotes– An enterprise procurement platform for construction, infrastructure & interiors. With a month on month growth of 100% in GMV since inception, they have over 300 QuickQuotes trained vendors dealing with a client base of over 150.

Prem Shankar, Founder, QuickQuotes, said

I had a great experience with REAP and the learning will continue despite graduating from the program.

Synconext– An IoT based building workplace technology that does energy monitoring for commercial Real Estate. They have successfully saved 157K kw/h of energy within an area of 561K sq.ft.

Vishal Jain, Co-founder, Synconext, said

The REAP team is very experienced and provides all round mentorship which is critical for any startup to succeed. REAP’s connects in the ecosystem is brilliant and this has helped us in opening doors for acquiring various leads.

WeGoT Utility Services – An IoT based water usage Analytics Company which helps track user consumption of water. In more than 2000 homes they have saved over 30 Million liters of water within the first 2 years of existence.

Abilash Haridass, Co-founder, WeGoT, said

Being part of REAP has given us the opportunity to interact and connect with various stakeholders in the industry that are striving to bring about a real change in this space.

Woodzon – An Online B2B marketplace for woodworking industry. They have 20,000 plus products with categories ranging over 200 plus.

Binesh Viswanath, Co-founder, Woodzon, said

Being a startup it’s really hard for us to have an acceptance in the market but the brand name Brigade REAP gave us a huge push to the market. The program helped us in improving our conversion ratio which was one of our biggest ask.

Applications for the fourth cohort are now open. Selected startups will receive technology and business mentorship as well as access to markets and investors. To know more, please visit Brigade REAP

About Brigade REAP

Brigade REAP is focused on technology startups whose end product/service is applicable to Real Estate be it Residential Commercial or Hospitality projects. The sectors range from IoT, Nano Technology, Cleantech and Renewable energy, Logistics and Visual Computing. The program is mentored by John Kuruvilla, Chief Mentor for the program and Apul Nahata, Mentor-in-Residence and has a stellar line up of mentors and advisors.

|In: Education|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Stonehill International School [SIS] hosted Ms. Marietheres Maier, Ms. Aya Goeorgieve, Ms. Irina Mitina and Ms. Christina Schoftner from the Music University of Vienna. These accomplished musicians were in India to perform with the India National Youth Orchestra and Chorus. The four of them are trained in western classical string orchestra and played the violin, viola and cello.

Image Source – StoneHill

The day began with the musicians from Vienna performing a variety of pieces to allow the audience to experience their lowest and highest registers as well as all the sounds in between, which the three string instruments can produce. After that, they performed Mozart’s Quartet, giving the audience a brief glimpse of heaven.

After this wonderful experience, two Stonehill Primary students played ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ and ‘Moon River’ on the violin. Ms. Maier and Ms. Goeorgieve decided to join the duo. After the performance, the experienced musicians gave the budding musicians feedback on their technique and played the pieces again with them.

Three Stonehill Secondary students gave the audience a wonderful instrumental performance using flutes and piano. Next, one of their Grade twelve students sang a jazz number. Her performance was so good that it got her an invitation to perform at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music [ABRSM] high achievers concert in April! To allow the guests to get a brief glimpse of classical Indian culture, one of Stonehill’s Grade 9 students also performed a Bhartnatyam piece.

|In: Finance|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

There is no denying the fact that the stock market can perform exceptionally well over a short period and post a record high after high. Investors may feel excited due to the upward movement and expect the market to continue to move in the same direction. However, seasoned investors are well aware of the fact that the market never moves in one direction forever. With the upward trend, the market will eventually come down but there is no reason to panic.

Image Source – Stock Market

Things to remember when the market falls

Here are a few things every investor needs to remember about equity investment and stay calm while making investment decisions.

Occasional declines are normal

The world does not end when the market declines. It is very normal for the share market to show a decline occasionally. It should be expected by the investors. Market analysts who study the historical returns and offer equity tips are of the opinion that market declines happen from time to time. There could be a massive decline yet the market may finish the year with a positive return. It is important to accept the fact that investment in the equity market has its own difficulties. Hence, investors must stay invested and remain patient.

No one can predict the market movement

The movement of the market cannot be predicted by anybody. Investors, media, and wealth managers who study the markets have never been able to time the market accurately as to when to get out and when to get back in. Sometimes investors get lucky and exit the market at the right time. However, this rarely happens. Investors should focus on what they can control and leave out the rest.

The biggest threat is not the market

If investors put all their money in a specific sector or industry, they will end up losing all the funds when the market falls. In this case, the threat to an equity portfolio is not the market but it is the investment strategy. This is why analysts recommend diversification of the portfolio. It helps reduce losses and spread out the risks.

Investors should make logical decisions and not let emotions drive their financial goals. The emotion of panic and fear of loss will lead to irrational decision making. Accept the highs and lows of the market as a part of the investment strategy and deal with it calmly. The stock market has resulted in significant results in the past but it requires patience for every investor to achieve the same in the long run.

|In: Business|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

In the wake of strong dissent expressed by Indian Taxi drivers, it is worth asking whether the aggregator model is one which can keep both the customer as well as the supplier [the taxi driver, in this case] happy? As we speak, numerous taxi unions are on an indefinite strike in major cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi with an overarching complaint- India’s two most popular on-demand cab companies are not helping drivers earn enough; in fact the daily earn for some cab drivers has plummeted by 80% over the last 6 months.

Image Source – Customer Centric Approach

The Customer vs. Supplier Conundrum

With the intense competition in the on-demand taxi aggregation space, the two key actors in the eco-system viz. the driver as well as the customer are often left dissatisfied due to diverging demands – one party is simply not earning enough while the other party is asked to pay an exorbitant amount for a ride. Given that on-demand ride hailing has become a habit, customers are forced to accept the fares displayed on their screens under the guise of the ‘going-rate’ or the ‘price that you pay for comfort’. And there’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever- demand drives prices. Why would a company not want to charge a customer, a certain something, a premium, if there’s a demand for that service?

The problem becomes a little more complicated when it comes to the drivers. In the early days, aggregator companies invested significant capital into acquiring and retaining driver partners by incentivizing them with lucrative payouts, even if they were losing significant money on every ride. With the focus increasingly turning towards profitability, the companies are forced to cut costs. And the drivers are suffering in the process because of the sudden decline in their incomes.

Savaari’s Ethos – Value based service delivery

Savaari Car Rentals is India’s premier intercity car rental service provider that provides chauffeur driven cabs in 98 cities across India. Primarily an Intercity travel company, Savaari’s customers spend upwards of 5 hours on an average within a cab each day. The car and the driver thus become integral actors in the customer’s multi-day journey; be it a vacation or a business trip. It is to leverage this significant captive customer time within a car that Savaari tackles the aforementioned conundrum in an alternate fashion- by moving away from a cost-based offering to a full value-based service offering.

While it works hard to provide the most affordable fares to customers, Savaari does not [want to] compete with its competitors merely on the price-point. It simply doesn’t compromise towards striving and delivering the best-in-class services to the customer. Savaari does this by carefully handpicking its drivers and cars, working extremely hard in listening to and addressing customer feedback as well as crafting its service offering by putting itself in the shoes of the customer. The output is a prodigiously evolved product that accommodates customer tastes, seasonal demands and service-standards.

The customer is unequivocally placed at the center of its business. In our ten years of being in the cab aggregator business, we’ve learnt that customers feel most comfortable when they’re able to communicate well with their driver. And this holds true especially on long trips where both customer and driver rely on each other for information and planning. In a cosmopolitan city like Bangalore, Savaari offers its customers the option of selecting a Hindi speaking driver. On road trips, customers embarking on a longer journey can specifically choose a car with a luggage carrier attached to the top in case they are travelling with large baggage.

So where does this leave the driver? A problem that has plagued the erstwhile unorganized intercity car rental sector is the reliability and customer centricity of services offered. Savaari believes that is not particularly due to the sub-par service standards in the unorganized sector but due to the information asymmetry between requirements of the customer and on-the-ground execution capabilities of the driver. This is the single most important gap that Savaari strives to bridge. The results have been emphatic among both the driver as well as the customer community. With this value-based service offering, drivers and other suppliers are engaged in transparent contracts that have healthy payouts, one of the best in the industry.

Furthermore, they are additionally incentivized [or penalized] on a customer-satisfaction led score that has increased performance accountability. One of our vendors in Mumbai had a particular driver not performing as-per the requisite quality levels demanded by Savaari. As a result, bookings assigned to this vendor dipped significantly. Once the feedback was incorporated by the vendor and quality reached acceptable levels, the vendor’s payouts rose by over 10% of their steady-state business. This customer-satisfaction led supplier incentives have yielded success throughout the country – thus placing Savaari in the leading quadrant of NPS [net promoter score] metrics.

In conclusion, with a mission of inspiring India to travel by road, Savaari is on an ambitious journey of walking the tight-rope in keeping all its key stakeholders happy. And it has the right ingredients that ensure its success.

Note : The article was originally published here and has been reproduced with the company’s & author’s consent.

|In: LinkedIn|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network on the internet, unveiled the 2018 Top Companies list for India. The annual ranking highlights the 25 companies in the country that are most sought-after by professionals, based on proprietary LinkedIn data and billions of actions by more than 546+ million professionals on LinkedIn.

Homegrown tech and mobile internet companies Directi, Flipkart and One97 Communications Limited steal the top three spots on this year’s list, followed by Amazon in the #4 position that held the #2 spot for two consecutive years. Ola has dropped 11 spots from #5 in 2017 to #16 this year, and McKinsey & Company has made a significant jump from #24 to #6. This year, more than 50% of the companies are new entrants to the list including Directi [#1], Anheuser-Busch InBev [#5], EY [#9] and Daimler AG [#11] that have given stiff competition to the usual top runners, Adobe [#12], Reliance Industries [#24], and Ola [#16].

Adith Charlie, India Editor, LinkedIn said

The Top Companies list highlights the companies where professionals in India want to work now, from home grown companies to global giants. Studying the job interest rates, engagement with the company pages on the platform as well as retention rates, we found several common threads that make these companies the most preferred among Indian professionals. Data shows us that an opportunity to work at solving big problems, rewriting the rules of one’s industry or simply putting a big name on one’s resume could be powerful motivators. This year the India list diversified from tech and internet companies to new entrants from industries such as Automotive, Oil & Gas, and Consumer Goods. Similar to last year we continue to see a trend of homegrown companies taking the top spots on the list.

As competition for job-seekers intensifies, the 2018 Top Companies have actively deployed employee-first strategies such as flexible hours, a good parental leave policy, and time-off to do more than work to attract and retain good talent. Some of the emerging themes this year are:

Unconventional hiring methods – The top companies in India are looking beyond the grades and college rankings to recruit new talent. Directi [#1] cherry-picks talent using unconventional techniques such as case studies, tasks like app development and solving the Rubik’s cube. At Alphabet [#7], if you were to land an interview, expect questions such as, ‘Estimate the number of tennis balls that can fit into a plane’, and ‘Which do you think has more advertising potential in Boston — a flower shop or funeral home‘, DBS Bank [#15] hired around 150 techies last year through hackathons alone.

Flexibility first – With job seekers increasingly demanding a work-life balance, these top companies have chalked out flexible parental leave policies and programs for planned time-off to recuperate or even pick up a new hobby. Amazon [#4] has a Ramp Back program that offers new parents eight weeks of flexibility and partial work hours, so they can acclimatize to their new schedules. At McKinsey & Company [#6], under ‘Take Time’, employees can take five to 10 extra weeks off to pursue their passion – get a pilot’s licence, write a book – or attend to family matters. At Daimler AG, they say, ‘We want that the job is flexible enough to accommodate your other needs. Not the other way around.’

Wellness at work – Wellness and fitness facilities continue to be the top draw for employees while choosing a company to work for. Alphabet [#7] is known for its gourmet meals, fitness facilities, and on-site childcare services, whereas Ola has on offer multiple clubs for activities ranging from music to sports — where employees can mingle with other teams.

Democratising power – From office interiors to policy creation, top companies are ensuring its employees have a say in how things are done. For instance, PwC‘s NextGen Sounding Board comprises 200 millennial employees who participate in policy creation for the company. All new and revised people policies are first taken to this group. OYO crowd sources ideas for designing its five-floor office from employees. So whether it’s pictures of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk adorning the walls or London-style telephone booths, employees at OYO have a say in how they want their surroundings.

Learn to lead: The top companies have made in talent growth and development an in-house responsibility. EY [#9] last year rolled out a program called EY Badges that allows employees to earn digital certificates for skills like artificial intelligence, data science and data visualization. Nurturing employees to become future leaders, GE [#17] runs eight different leadership programs; and MakeMyTrip [#18] offers a bevy of free courses for its employees, ranging from customized behavioural programmes to study tours to Europe and Southeast Asia.

Here are the 2018 Top 10 Companies for India:

  1. Directi
  2. Flipkart
  3. One 97 Communications [Paytm]
  4. Amazon
  5. Anheuser-Busch InBev
  6. McKinsey & Company
  7. Alphabet [Google]
  8. KPMG India
  9. EY
  10. OYO

The full list of 2018 Top 25 Companies for India can be found here. Join the conversation on LinkedIn using the hashtag #LinkedInTopCompanies.

LinkedIn Top Companies List Methodology

The Top Companies list is the only ranking of its kind to be based entirely on the actions of users. We analyze billions of data points generated by LinkedIn’s 546+ million members around the world to come up with a blended score used to rank the winners in each geography.

How the list was assembled: The methodology is designed to measure interest in a company’s jobs and people, as well as a company’s ability to retain its employees. Some of the metrics include:

  • Job demand – At what rate are people viewing and applying to job postings, including paid listings, unpaid ones and those linked from other sites? All job views and applications are normalized for the total number of job postings.
  • Engagement with the company – How many professionals are viewing a company’s career page? How many new followers has the company attracted?
  • Interest in its employees – How many non-employees are viewing and asking to connect with a company’s employees?
  • Retention – Are employees sticking around for at least a year?

|In: Mobile|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Truecaller and Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecommunications services provider, said that the Airtel Truecaller ID service now has over 1 million paying subscribers across India.

Launched in March 2017, this first-of-its-kind service is aimed at bridging the digital divide between the urban and growing semi-urban and rural markets in India. The service has helped more people experience a data-only product in offline mode and enabled them to make their communication safe and efficient.

Expressing his elation on the landmark, Arun Krishnan, Director, Strategic Partnerships, Truecaller said

With the Airtel Truecaller ID service, we opened data-centric inroads to offline users, who gave us an extremely positive response by subscribing to Truecaller in its flash message form. We hope to further empower these feature phone users in India and safeguard them from spam calls and making sure there are no unknown calls.

India being a large feature phone friendly population, Truecaller expanded its caller ID feature to this quintessential group of users in April last year.

About Airtel Truecaller ID

All feature phone users in India using Airtel can subscribe to ‘Airtel Truecaller ID’ to get a caller ID service. The identity of unknown numbers is delivered to users via Flash SMS before the call hits the user’s mobile.

|In: Hackathon|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

HackerEarth, a leader in innovation and talent management, has announced the launch of its first virtual AI hackathon for Alexa. This unique hackathon is aimed at building more engaging skills for Alexa, which is the cloud-based voice service and brain behind Alexa-enabled devices, including the Amazon Echo. 

Image Source – Alexa Hackathon

Registration for the hackathon is open now. The contest will encourage developers to think outside of the traditional application development approach and embrace a voice-first design approach. The participants will be given access to the Alexa Skills Kit, a set of free, self-service, public APIs, that developers can utilize to easily create new experiences for Alexa. The existing architecture allows developers to build applications or skills to enhance the customer experience for its users. The Alexa Skills Kit [ASK] is a useful tool for independent developers, designers and brands to create new ways to engage Alexa.

The hackathon is being conducted keeping in mind that the resulting skills will be useful for the end users. For this reason, it is an open themed hackathon where participants can build any skill that can benefit Alexa customers. Participants are encouraged to create business productivity solutions, cool games, engaging chat bots, smart home applications or anything else that users might be looking for.

To get started, participants can have a look at the existing skills in the Alexa India skills store. There are over 12,000 skills in the store across multiple categories including Business & Finance, Food & Drink, Games, Music & Audio. Over the past few months, Alexa developers from across India added a localized flavor to the skills, enabling customers to listen to devotional songs like Hanuman Chalisa and Gayatri Mantra, find out diverse information ranging from Indian pin codes, Indian presidents to Indian Railways PNR status, or play Indian Tambola, Mahabharatha quiz and Indian GK Quiz. Lifestyle and Entertainment skills like ‘Rock Paper Scissors’, ‘Ganesha Speaks’, ‘Find My Phone’ and ‘Help me Sleep’ are among the most popular skills within Indian customers. This hackathon will give participants an opportunity to work on voice-controlled skills that will make Alexa smarter.

Alexa is currently being used for myriad applications including ordering food and transportation, controlling a smart home, playing music, and much more. Popular services such as Ola, Zomato, Saavn and The Times of India have also identified the potential of voice-enabled customer-interactions early on and provide their services to users through Alexa and Echo devices.

The registration process of this hackathon will conclude on April 1st, 2018. All teams that qualify will be required to submit a working skill based on their idea by April 15th, 2018. All skill submissions that pass the skills qualification process by April 21st, 2018 will get published to the India skill store and will be readily available for users to install on their Alexa app. Teams can also add other language support [e.g. EN-US] to make their skills available to the global skill stores, however participants must register themselves as India vendors and publish their skills to the India store to qualify for the competition.

The name of winning team will be announced on May 1st, 2018. The jury for the hackathon includes senior leadership from Amazon and Alexa Skills business in India. The winning teams will also be awarded cash prizes, devices including Amazon Echo and Amazon Kindle and will also get to meet senior team members from Alexa Skills team in India. 

Sprint, HackerEarth’s innovation management software is a platform to ideate and collaborate on interesting products, solutions and processes. It also helps organizations to crowd source solutions, from internal and external audiences, helping them minimize the time, effort and capital spent on driving innovation. HackerEarth also hosts a global network of top developers which companies and governments can tap into through Sprint, to generate ideas and solutions. Organizations use Sprint to crowd source ideas that help them meet larger goals, which are broken down into distinct themes and specific campaigns.

  • Registration and Idea Submission: 20 February – 1 April 2018
  • Skills submission phase: 2 April – 15 April 2018
  • Skills certification phase on Alexa Skill Store: 16 April – 21 April 2018
  • Judging: 22 April – 28 April 2018
  • Winner announcement: 1 May 2018
About the hackathon
The Alexa hackathon began on Feb 20th and the winners will be announced on May 1st, 2018. The winners will not only win a cash prize and an Echo device, but will also get the opportunity to interact with the senior members of the Alexa Skills team. Currently, close to 2000 participants have already registered for the hackathon. For more information, please visit the Alexa Hackathon site