Atlassian Corporation Plc, a leading provider of team collaboration and productivity software and the maker of Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket and Trello products, has announced the launch of Atlassian Ventures, a new US$50 million fund that will invest into the up-and-coming startups, including established companies that are building products in the overall Atlassian ecosystem.
The company which set up its world-class R&D centre in Bengaluru last year and with plans to expand it further, is keen to interest India’s vibrant startup ecosystem and rich technical talent pool.
Atlassian Ventures, with the objective of supporting cloud-based products and services will invest in three types of companies. Firstly, the early-stage startups, who are building apps for any of Atlassian’s cloud products, whether it be – Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket or Trello. Secondly, the larger, more established ecosystem product partners scaling their businesses.
These investments will be made in partnership with institutional investors and will generally target series A onwards. And finally, the existing sales channel partners looking to step up their cloud services and create new products that support the future of teamwork.
On the company being extremely bullish about the India market, Dinesh Ajmera, Site Lead and Head of Engineering, Bengaluru, Atlassian said
Atlassian Ventures is a global program with the objective of supporting cloud-based products and services and unleashing the potential of teams all over the world. With India’s cloud market among the largest in the Asia Pacific region, we believe this fund will be an ideal opportunity for up-and-coming startups in India to access funding when building apps for our cloud products.
India is a significant market for Atlassian, one that’s teeming with an extraordinary developer community and a vibrant startup ecosystem that we plan to tap into.
We have kept the applications open to our existing Marketplace Partners and developers, as well as new-to-Atlassian app developers who are looking for the first funding for their start-ups. As part of this program, companies that receive funding are also eligible for mentorship as well as global exposure at Atlassian events.
As more and more customers transition to Atlassian’s cloud products, the company is committed to supporting their journey by fostering a robust ecosystem of cloud-based apps that enhance their experience and satisfy all use cases. Atlassian has 4,200+ apps already available in its Marketplace and offers integrations with popular tools like Slack, Zendesk, and GitHub.
To further consolidate its offerings and capabilities, the company has recently acquired a slew of companies in the ecosystem, which include Code Barrel [the company behind Automation for Jira], Mindville and Halp – the creator of Slack. Atlassian serves more than 174,000 customers worldwide and has been named a ‘Best Place to Work’ by Great Place to Work Institute in every market where they have a staff presence.
More details about Atlassian Ventures is available here.
Grinntech executed an MoU with the Government of Tamil Nadu which outlines the Company’s intent to establish a Battery and Battery Management System manufacturing facility in the state of Tamil Nadu to cater to the anticipated growth of Electric Vehicles [EVs] in India.
Grinntech, which has attracted several industry veterans as investors since its incubation at IIT-Madras Research Park, already operates its R&D and pilot manufacturing facility in Chennai. In addition, the Company has outlined plans for outlay of almost Rs. 100 Crores for R&D, product development and production facilities which will lead to the employment of 250 staff over the next five years.
The company has showcased a range of high-tech Lithium-Ion batteries, along with their proprietary Battery Management Systems, suitable for 2-wheelers, 3-wheelers, light vehicles and farm tractors. The company is engaged in discussions with a number of OEM manufacturers and fleet operators for supply of Batteries and related systems.
We are grateful to the Government of Tamil Nadu for their vision in attracting investment in the fast-growing EV and EV-component sectors. Chennai has had the label of ‘Detroit of the East’. Now, as the global auto industry shifts to electrification, this initiative by the Government of Tamil Nadu will help India’s EV industry be future-ready.
About Grinntech
Grinntech is an investor-backed, growth-phase start-up, specialising in Lithium-Ion batteries for EVs and energy storage systems along with our proprietary BMS and connectivity systems. Our product range has established new standards in safety, intelligent controls, energy-density, power-management, long life, and reliability. Apart from a range of standard products, we also undertake custom battery development for customers in India and abroad. Grinntech works closely with leading global technology companies and cell suppliers, bringing cutting-edge advances in semiconductor, materials, cell-chemistry and formats.
Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) is a means to invest in mutual funds. It is an investment strategy where an individual invests a specific sum of money in their desired mutual fund schemes at stipulated intervals for a pre-determined period of time. Investing in mutual funds via SIP helps investors to take part in the share market, without actively striving to time the market.
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This is because they are benefitted by a concept called rupee cost averaging where you end up buying varying units of the scheme at different market levels. They end up buying more units when the markets are down and vice-versa.
Another benefit of SIP investments is the power of compounding they offer. When you invest for a long period, your returns are further invested to earn returns on them. In short, your money works to make more money. Power of compounding is claimed to be the eighth wonder of the world by several experts. It helps an investor to build a significant corpus over time that helps to achieve long-term financial goals with small, regular contributions.
SIP investments are a popular investment vehicle as they are quite flexible. Apart from offering the different types of SIP to investors, they also provide the flexibility to choose periodicity of the investments. As an investor, you can invest in mutual funds via SIP daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, etc. according to their convenience. Though the most popular option of investing in mutual funds is a monthly SIP, investors can customise the way they make SIP investments.
So what should you choose – daily SIP or monthly SIP?
An investor who has selected a monthly SIP will purchase mutual fund units on a specific date of each month at different prices. So, when markets are costly, the investor ends up buying lesser units than when the market is cheap. This way, in the long run, the overall cost of purchasing mutual fund units will average out.
On the other hand, daily SIPs average out an investor’s risk through the month and the overall investment period. The daily SIP option works for those individuals who earn daily wages or have a daily cash flow, as daily SIP would help them to invest in a disciplined manner.
Hence, a monthly SIP option could have a higher risk factor as compared to daily SIP investment option. However, one should note that this risk factor enables a higher return from their initial investment. What’s more, though the daily SIP investment option might minimize volatility, it will unnecessarily increase the number of transactions in your investment portfolio which might get quite difficult to manage.
Irrespective of the fact that you invest in SIP using the daily option or the monthly option, you can use an SIP calculator to understand the future value of your investments. Happy investing!
I have been freelancing since October, 2019 and work with different set of clients on blog creation [business and technology], social media strategy, and more. The intent was to bridge the gap between content and technology by coming up with insightful pieces [blogs, whitepapers, etc.] that highlights work & expertise in their field of work.
Irrespective of the profession, personal branding has become extremely important. It could be done through writing or designing stuff that highlights what you are capable of doing! Designing can be a difficult job, especially for a person who is not from that field. This is where a tool like DesignCap can come to rescue. DesignCap is an online graphics designing software that lets you create awesome graphic-designs without the necessity to have design skills.
In this blog, we do a detailed DesignCap review and deep dive into the features, pricing, and other essential things related to this freemium designing tool. The review of DesignCap was done with the Plus Subscription that was offered by their team.
DesignCap Review – Creating Elegant Graphics with ultra-simplification
Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s, if there was a requirement for graphics designing, you had to install a designing software that is relatively heavy on CPU and GPU processing. Not to forget that procuring the software was a costly affair.
Fast forward now, there are options for creating ‘Awesome’ graphics at the click of a button and there is no need of installing designing software on the machine. This is where DesignCap can come to your rescue, as it lets you create amazing graphical designs, even if you have little to no designing skills.
DesignCap lets you create graphical designs for a wide range of sectors:
DesignCap is localized in seven different languages and lets you create high-quality graphic designs on the cloud. All this, with simple drag and drop operations!
Sign Up for DesignCap
Signing up with DesignCap is very easy. You would be prompted to choose an organization type so that the DesignCap can tailor-make the offerings according to your requirements. I chose self-employed.
Once you choose the organization type, you need to select the current role. I rightly chose Blogger/Writer 🙂
With this, the sign-up process is complete and you have to check the email to confirm your account.
DesignCap Editor
With DesignCap’s ‘Plus Plan’, you can create upto 1000 designs. The Cover photograph for this blog review was created using DesignCap and it took us less than ten minutes.
On logging on, you are prompted to create a design with ‘custom size’ requirements or ‘preset’ size according to the design type. The ‘preset’ size helps in scenarios where you are designing a particular category-type [e.g. Poster, Fyler, Infographic, etc.] for the first time and have minimal [to no] information about the ideal size.
Templates
There are close to 3092 templates across all categories on their website. There is a provision to search for templates according to your requirements.
We tried searching for common topics like Social Media Marketing, Technology, Sales, etc. and it suggested the templates that matched our search query. It would be great if there was a ‘detailed search’ kind of option so that it becomes easy to narrow the search and reach to the expected templates with less effort!
Using the templates provided by DesignCap, it becomes easy to create posters, flyers, Facebook cover, attractive resume, Instagram cover, YouTube Channel graphics, and more. Once you select a template, there are numerous options to customize the design.
Customizing Background
After selecting the template, you would be offered numerous ways in which the design can be customized. You can change the background, upload images for usage in the design, add modules like Facebook like buttons [or Icons & Text, etc.], add custom charts, add elements [like abstract shapes, frame masks, etc.].
In the design shown above, we performed modifications on the background by adding ‘gradient color’ and it worked like a charm. Here, we have switched to a solid background. DesignCap lets you ‘Undo’ & ‘Redo’ changes endlessly which essentially means that there is an option to witness a ‘try and freeze‘ kind of experience before zeroing on the final design.
It would have been great if DesignCap could identify the color composition of the background and appropriately suggest the best-suited font color that goes well with the background color.
Adding ‘sector-specific’ photos [powered by Pixabay]
Whether you are a technologist or educator or running a sports academy or just planning to add juice to your content via photographs, DesignCap lets you customize their designs by adding stock photos from Pixabay.
This clearly avoids the headache of going to another website that provides stock photographs and spend additional budget on procuring photos from that site. DesignCap offers close to a million stock photographs in categories like Business, Animal, Art, Car, Celebration, Fashion, Food, Kids, Music, and more.
All you need to do it drag & drop the photo in the design and adjust as per the dimensions. It does not require much expertise and also avoids the headache of leaving the DesignCap platform in search of stock photos.
Adding ‘Modules’ and ‘Textual Content’ to beautify the Design
There are scenarios where you would like add team information in a business presentation or want to add popular icons (along with text) in a poster or show timelines demonstrating the progress of an activity. This is where ‘Modules’ in DesignCap is super handy as it lets you add modules like icons & text, images, steps, timelines, diagrams, comparisons, and more.
Once you select a particular category of ‘module’, it provides you with number of module options that can added to the design under development. It would be awesome if DesignCap can add a ‘hover’ kind of a feature [that can be toggled on request] when the user hovers on a certain module, as the content [and layout] in the module is not clearly visible.
The ‘Text tab’ on the left side bar lets you add text to the design. DesignCap provides a number of preset text styles and simply clicking on the text object adds the text box to the design.
Our Creation with DesignCap
I do not come from a Design background but have used Adobe Photoshop many years back. Apart from the cover image for this blog, I also designed the blog & social media covers that can be used as Facebook and Twitter cover.
The creation took less than ten minutes since the background was provided by DesignCap and all I had to do is add text objects to fill in the social media information. The Getting Started guide by DesignCap is exhaustive and provides information on the features of the platform with examples.
Top reasons to use DesignCap
There are alternatives to DesignCap, the most popular one is Canva. Though I have not used Canva to a great extent, my experience with DesignCap [Plus Plan] has been phenomenal. It caters to diverse sectors and the user need not have technical [and design] experience to use the platform.
These are the top reasons to use DesignCap:
DesignCap is easy to use and even a novice in Design can leverage the platform to the fullest.
It provides an extensive ‘image’ library that is powered by Pixabay that removes the unnecessary headache of going to different websites searching for stock photographs.
DesignCap Plus Plan comes with awesome templates that can be used in creating mesmerizing infographics, business presentations, sales pitch, brochures, business cards, leaderboards, and more.
The ‘learn’ section on DesignCap provides the user valuable information on how to make the most of awesome designs. It is super-helpful for someone who wants to gather information on the ROI from offerings by DesignCap.
Potential Enhancements in DesignCap
Based on the experience with DesignCap, we identified certain functionalities that can be of addition to their user based:
Addition of hover feature on Modules for better clarity on the module selected by the user.
Detailed search option for narrowing the search results. Current search feature is basic and narrowing down to the exact result takes time, since DesignCap provides lot of design options.
Suggestion of font colors based on the composition of the background image used in the design.
DesignCap Pricing
There are three pricing models in DesignCap:
Free
Basic
Plus
Users have the option to be charged on a ‘Monthly’ or an ‘Annual’ basis. The Annual option offers good savings and best-suited for someone [individuals or organizations] looking to make the most out of ‘features and pricing’ of DesignCap. Here is the detailed information on pricing plans offered by DesignCap:
DesignCap – Annual Pricing
DesignCap – Monthly Pricing
Its a Wrap
DesignCap is a wonderful designing tool for individuals and organizations look to add quality & flair to their content, marketing, and educational material through Design. It is easy to get started with DesignCap, as users have to use simple drag, drop, and click operations to weave magic in their designs :).
Clickhereto kickstart your ‘Design’ful journey with DesignCap
ICICI Bank announced the launch of a programme for startups that takes care of their banking as well as beyond-banking needs such as regulatory assistance, analytics, staffing, accounting, customer acquisition and digital outreach to customers, among others.
Named ‘iStartup2.0‘, the country’s most comprehensive programme, offers customers an eponymous Current Account which is available in three variants – Platinum, Gold, and Silver – the widest range by any Bank for start-ups. New businesses [up to 10 years old] including partnerships, private and public limited companies as well as limited liability partnerships can opt for the Current Account.
Further, startups can seamlessly open an account and get the account number instantly at the time of incorporation as the Bank has integrated its APIs with the website of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs [MCA]. It offers significant convenience to founders/entrepreneurs as it saves time and efforts since they don’t have to fill details again to apply for an account. As further convenience, the Bank sends an official to startups at a time of their choice to verify the original documents for KYC.
Other benefits of this Current Account include availability of a dedicated Relationship Manager, premium savings account for promoters and salary accounts for employees and waiver of quarterly average balance for a year. Additionally, startups can customize and choose the facilities required in their account and use the single account for both domestic and international trade transactions with preferential pricing, both industry first services.
The beyond-banking services are available under an umbrella, named ‘Startup Assist’ that offers services, in association with partners, to help startups in their early stage as well as growth stage. Typically, start-ups spend a lot of time and bandwidth to reach out to individual service providers. With ‘Startup Assist’, they get the convenience of single-point access to a host of services. It consists of a ‘Set-up’ concierge, which gives them access to an array of experts at a discounted price to help the start up with complex services like company registration, taxation, compliance, logistics, facility management among others.
Additionally, for start-ups wanting to expand business digitally in the virtual world, a ‘Digital concierge’is available. It offers a one-stop solution for services ranging from website development & hosting, social media marketing, SEO & SEM among others, thus making the digital transformation of a start simpler and easier.
All of these services are available through a dedicated concierge helpline or via an app or an email. Further, the Bank has tied up with various other companies to bring in attractive offers on solutions for instance on ‘Work-From-Home’, IT hardware deals, web-hosting, accounting software, telecom packages, printing and stationery among others.
With the above array of services, ‘iStartup 2.0’ offers a 360-degree holistic and most comprehensive proposition for startups with a combination of banking and beyond banking services across their life stages in a single place.
Speaking about the initiative, Pankaj Gadgil, Head – Self Employed Segment, ICICI Bank said
The MSME & self-employed segment in India is the backbone of the economy. Within this, we foresee that the startup segment in the country is poised for rapid growth with favourable regulations in the ecosystem and high spirit of entrepreneurship.
We believe that ‘iStartup 2.0’ is the most comprehensive programme available in the country. It offers them unprecedented convenience of getting on-boarded with us instantly in a digital manner during incorporation with MCA. It undertakes all business, trade and personal banking requirements within this one relationship and transact digitally using the robust mobile and internet banking platforms on-the-go.
Our research shows that startups also need immense hand-holding initially for other areas of business like website development, digital marketing, staffing solutions, regulatory and tax solutions and accounting. Armed with this insight, we have tied up with companies who are leaders in their fields to offer services under ‘Startup Assist’.
It provides a one-stop shop for nearly all the early stage as well as growth stage needs of a startup. We believe that this ‘all-in-one’ and comprehensive ‘iStartup 2.0’ programme will provide easy banking and beyond- banking services to start ups, free up their bandwidth from paper-intensive procedures and thus boost their business growth by improving overall productivity and efficiency.
Prominent features of the ‘iStartup 2.0’ programme
Banking features
Access to state-of-the-art ‘InstaBIZ’ mobile application – With over 150 services, this comprehensive mobile app enables businesses to complete almost all their banking transactions digitally, without visiting a bank branch. It offers many industry first features namely instant payment of GST, easy bulk collection & payments of funds through multiple modes, automatic bank reconciliation and inward/outward remittances among others.
Availability of Corporate Internet Banking platform and Trade Online, a specialised digital platform for export-import transactions
Automatic bank reconciliation feature via ‘Connected Banking’ with over 40 popular accounting / ERP platforms
Business debit card and FD backed business credit cards
Preferential pricing on ‘Loan Against Securities’ and ‘Overdraft facility against Fixed Deposit’
Zero processing fee and commitment charges on Fixed Deposits/Overdrafts
Group Health & Personal Accident cover
‘Beyond Banking’ features with ‘Startup Assist’
Start-up set up concierge – Especially curated to assist startups in set up stage. Offers single point service to startups at a special discounted price for ICICI Bank customers. They can get access to services like company registration, taxation, compliance, logistics, facility management among others through a dedicated concierge helpline or via an app or an email
Digital concierge – Useful for start-ups wanting to expand digital business. It offers a one-stop solution ranging from website development & hosting, social media marketing, SEO & SEM among others. The digital packages come with a host of benefits for ICICI Bank customers at an exclusive discounted price offered by a partner through a dedicated help-desk & mobile app.
Additional offers – For attractive discounts on solutions for ‘Work-From-Home’, IT hardware package deals on purchase of laptops consisting of free accessories like printer, hard disk & monitor. Also offers exclusive packages at an attractive price for ICICI Bank customers with a leading accounting software, website hosting company and for cloud services among others. Further, they also get exclusive packages for advertising with a leading online streaming network with complimentary additional advertising value.
Any start-up can apply for the ‘iStartup 2.0’ programme, whether or not ICICI Bank customer. The promoters can apply digitally for the iStartup Current Account either from the MCA website during incorporation or visit iStartup 2.0 by ICICI Bank.
In its continued endeavour to enable startups to achieve more, Western Digital concluded its flagship startup challenge – Data Innovation Bazaar 2020. Data Innovation Bazaar 2020 was hosted in partnership with Startup India and Invest India, and Ecosystem partners – Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology [MeitY], Department of Science & Technology – Ministry of Science & Technology [DST] and The Indus Entrepreneurs [TiE Delhi-NCR].
The annual startup challenge delivered a platform to promote data-driven solutions for industries including healthcare, education, agriculture, energy & environment, smart transportation and smart cities.
India has the world’s third largest startup ecosystem. Today, startups are gaining more momentum and entrepreneurs are increasingly looking to collaborate with partners, get more exposure and expand their business. The corporate sector has been engaging with startups to get a fresh perspective in addition to making corporations more agile.
Western Digital’s initiative – Data Innovation Bazaar has been architected in India under the leadership of Supria Dhanda, and has helped in enabling entrepreneurs showcase their data-led ideas and also build a network with key stakeholders.
Winners of Data Innovation Bazaar 2020 were announced in a virtual event led by the office of the India Country Manager and Vice President – Supria Dhanda and in the presence of Chief Guest – Deepak Bagla, MD & CEO of Invest India, members from Western Digital’s executive leadership, the government and leading academia.
The top five startups who were awarded a total grand prize of Rs. 25 lakhs are:
The first place was awarded to AarogyaAI Innovations Private Limited and earned a prize of Rs. 10 lakhs for their genomics and AI-driven rapid diagnostic solution for drug-resistant tuberculosis
Anukai Solutions Private Limited was awarded the second-place prize of Rs. 6 lakhs, for their innovative traffic management solutions with the help of AI.
Agua Wireless Systems Private Limited was awarded the third-place prize of Rs. 4 lakhs for their IoT-based solutions that enable smart water management by automating water distribution, billing and leakage detection in buildings, layouts and cities.
The fourth-place prize of Rs. 3 lakhs was awarded to Paraclete Image Labs Private Limited for their assistive device for the visually impaired which acts as a reader as well as exam writer.
ShilpMIS Technologies was awarded the fifth-place prize of INR 2 lakhs for their platform that simplifies Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality content creation and discovery for immersive & interactive learning.
Additionally, Aarogya AI was awarded a special women entrepreneur prize of Rs. 2 lakhs.
Deepak Bagla, MD & CEO, Invest India, said
Invest India has long been at the forefront to enable startups to achieve more, and with the help of corporate partners we are able to build a strong startup network and make them enterprise ready. Frugal innovations, which form the core of the Indian startup ecosystem, provide a plethora of solutions to combat the socio-economic issues in the country and across the globe.
As one of the largest forums promoting entrepreneurship in India, our wide community of stakeholders has helped talented entrepreneurs succeed and take their innovations from labs to land.
Siva Sivaram, President, Technology & Strategy, Western Digital, said
To define the success of a startup, one needs to build blocks of vision and strategy, leverage the ecosystem along with new-age innovation; and these are few of the traits which we saw in our finalists. Technology has played an elevated role during challenging times by transforming our lives and creating a greater positive impact on business.
With data growing at an exponential rate and the rise in startup innovation, we are hoping to foster more breakthrough solutions with Data Innovation Bazaar by bringing together the entrepreneurial ecosystem, investors, corporates, academia and the government.
Supria Dhanda, Vice President and India Country Manager, Western Digital, said
Western Digital believes in strengthening its relationship with the Indian startup ecosystem to empower the local talent. The zeal to solve the challenges India faces was seen across all the solutions. Nearly 50% of the applications were ideas for the healthcare and education sector, and about one-third of the short-listed applications are directly relevant to the areas of smart cities, smart video, connected homes and transportation.
Data Innovation Bazaar has received an overwhelming response this year and we saw an 85% rise in the number of applicants. We are invested to play a role in igniting engineering minds and catalyzing the startup ecosystem of India.
The top 40 shortlisted teams of Data Innovation Bazaar 2020 will be given TiE membership and will also be invited for a three-day innovation bootcamp offered by Western Digital. All the women-led entrepreneurs in the top 40 will get an exclusive three-month accelerator opportunity offered by WE Hub, a government of Telangana initiative.
The 40 finalists will also get to participate in Khoj Incubator program offered by Atal Incubation Centre-BIMTECH with 15 of them getting an opportunity to be a part of the Incubation Program.
The 2020 edition of Data Innovation Bazaar received a total of 963 applications and saw entries across various industries. Western Digital along with its partners have curated an exclusive platform which offers an opportunity for students and budding entrepreneurs to have direct access to key stakeholders across the startup ecosystem.
Data Innovation Bazaar is a platform to harness technology to inspire paradigm shift in data-driven innovation.
After a successful launch in Japan, Japanese tech startups Bitgrit and Atrae brings their professional job ‘matching’ app in India. The Yenta app will allow professionals and employers to ‘swipe right’ to the profiles of their interest.
Under the initiative, the company is also inviting data scientists from around the world for an online competition – ‘SwipeToSuccess‘ – to submit their optimization models for the app. Starting today, the competition will be accepting the optimization algorithms for the next 69 days – until October 31, 2020.
The competition kick-started on August 24 and will be accepting optimization algorithms for the next 69 days [till October 31, 2020]. The top five submissions will be rewarded with cash prizes totaling USD 10,000 [nearly Rs. 7.4 lakh].
Global data science platform Bitgrit has collaborated with Atrae, a Japanese internet company, to launch their professional job ‘matching’ and networking application – Yenta app – to bridge the talent gap in India. The joint initiative will allow professionals to connect and engage with hiring managers for jobs in India and Japan.
Under the initiative, the company is also inviting data scientists from around the world for an online competition – ‘SwipeToSuccess’ – to submit their optimization models for the app. The idea is to build a model to predict the level of compatibility of a pair of users based on their profiles – and ensure that the app recommends the most linked and suitable profiles to the users.
Toshiyuki Oka, CTO of Atrae Corporation, said
We are pleased to announce the launch of Yenta in India as our first base for global expansion in collaboration with Bitgrit. India’s data science community is inevitably going to grow in the future. With this competition, we aim to tap the potential of data scientists and expand the services provided by the Yenta app across India.
Commenting on the launch, Tetsuro Masunaga, Co-founder & CEO of Bitgrit, said
We are pleased to partner with Atrae for the expansion of their Yenta app to India and this online AI competition to improve the app’s profile-matching algorithm. This partnership will strengthen Bitgrit’s data science community and provide a platform to showcase their domain skills in emerging technologies.
The mobile application, which was first launched in Japan in 2016, aims to connect professionals in the IT space. It currently has users from over 20,000 companies where professionals can network, get a job, engage with industry experts and founders for partnerships. The cross-industry platform will enable employers to spot and hire skilled talent and also interact with other business owners.
The professionals and employers registered on the Yenta app can ‘swipe right’ on a suitable match and chat with them if the other user also likes the profile.
The ongoing pandemic has created a massive job loss as businesses came to a grinding halt. As per the data by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy [CMIE], the urban unemployment rate in India stood at 9.15% in June – higher than rural unemployment.
Masunaga added
This initiative is even more relevant now with the coronavirus-induced economic crisis that has severely impacted businesses, thereby triggering unemployment on a large scale.
The application is available for both iOS and Android users. The details of the competition can be viewed here.
Horses Stable, India’s first-ever business-based show that empowers young entrepreneurs to raise funding for their business associates with a Mumbai-based VC firm ah! Ventures [earlier coverage here]. The show format allows participating entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas to a panel of renowned investors a.k.a Horses and persuade them to invest in their startups.
Horses Stable aims to be a global funding platform to motivate and give wings to the dreams of ambitious entrepreneurs. To accelerate the vision, Horses Stable has collaborated with ah! Ventures to magnify its capabilities of accommodating participants on a larger scale. The VC firm will help the show unveil unprecedented opportunities with its network of over 62,000 entrepreneurs and 3,000+ global investors.
As a part of the partnership, ah! Ventures will curate the registration process of Horses Stable Season 1 to spread the word and invite enormous participation while welcoming a new set of Investors and Deal Masters. Registrations will be open from September 1st to 25th 2020 on both the portals.
Commenting on the partnership, Prashant Agarwal, Co-Founder – Horses Stable, stated
I believe collaborative culture is a powerful tool to create a competitive edge. The credibility of the new platform is multiplied to manifolds when produced together by two expert and experienced entities. Hopefully, Horses Stable Season 1 powered by ah! Ventures is going to be an example of one such platform.
We are very excited to join hands with HS and believe that the show will provide a big boost to entrepreneurs and add the X-factor to the world’s 3rd largest startup ecosystem. The passion of the HS team fueled by our experience will surely make Season 1 a big hit.
Horses Stable Season 1 will potentially be a common ground for entrepreneurs and investors to connect and work together to expand their business and profitability. Along with generating funding, entrepreneurs will get an enriching experience to meet prominent names of the industry.
Heating the excitement, Horses Stable will be announcing the launch of their pitch season on one of the prominent OTT platforms in India. However, the team is yet to reveal the details, so stay tuned.
About Horses Stable
Horses Stable is a flagship web series of Singapore-India based media house Horses Productions Pvt. Ltd. Based on business-oriented content, the web series offers first of its kind platform to aspiring entrepreneurs and investors to connect and grow together. It is a platform where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their business model to a panel of investors and persuade them to invest money in their business. The startup aims to help businesses find the ideal investor and open up exciting opportunities for investors too. For more information, please visit Horses Stable.
