Pine Labs, a merchant platform company, has announced a collaboration with Google India to enable offline transactions for their digital payments service, Google Pay. With this collaboration, Google can have access to over 330,000 POS terminals in over 3000 towns in India. Pine Labs’ solutions are used by merchants from diverse sectors – electronics, food & beverage, fashion, pharmacy, telecom and airlines. Pine Labs enables online and offline last-mile retail transaction for over 100 brands.
We are excited to collaborate with Google and bring the convenience of UPI at point of sale for Google Pay users through our platform in India. Last year, over 100 million customers bought products and services from our merchant network. With Google Pay, we expect to reach many new groups of customers across the country.
Pine Labs branded POS terminals in offline stores can be used by merchants to process Google Pay using a secure, two-step process. Merchants can initiate a payment request using a Google Pay user’s mobile number. The user then authenticates this request via their Google Pay app for the payment to be processed. Both the merchant and customer receive instant notifications on the completion of a transaction.
About Pine Labs
Pine Labs is incorporated in Singapore and has its largest operations in India. It is a merchant platform company that provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology. Pine Labs’ offerings are used by 1,00,000 merchants in 3700 cities and towns across India and Malaysia. Its investors include Sequoia India, PayPal, Temasek, Actis Capital, Altimeter Capital, Madison India Capital and Sofina. Visit Pine Labs for more information.
In one of the largest financial inclusion initiatives of its kind in India, NiYO, a fintech company managing employee benefits and payroll, and Upwardly, a tech-enabled financial advisory startup, have jointly launched a savings and investment solution for the financially underserved population in the country.
The partnership will make their combined wealth-creation app – NiYO Bharat mobile app – available to the masses, including over 1 million existing and new users of NiYO. The new investment strategy will lower the entry barriers to structured investment to a minimum of Rs 100.
NiYO Bharat mobile app users, who comprise blue and grey collar workers from the services and manufacturing sectors, will have a best-in-class solution with ease of convenience and top performance. The NiYO-Upwardly solution will target investors with annual incomes of $2,000 to $4,000 falling outside the purview of traditional banks and wealth management companies. This segment is estimated at over 50 million households.
NiYO has been launching financial products that are carefully curated by the proprietary algorithms designed by Upwardly. NiYO Co-founder and CEO Vinay Bagri said
Financial inclusion has always been at the core of our business. We are delighted to collaborate with Upwardly and offer a savings and investing solution to our customers through the NiYO Bharat mobile app. We believe this will go a long way in helping both our existing and new customers manage their short-term and long-term financial needs, and fulfill their financial goals in life.
We started Upwardly to democratize investing and wealth creation. We are excited about our partnership with NiYO and we believe that we can take investing to the next Rs 10~20 crore savers in India. A minimum investment amount of Rs. 100 and a choice between savings and growth options will excite our customers. We have also introduced Video KYC to seamlessly on-board NiYO customers. We expect NiYO users to widely adopt the solution and benefit from structured wealth creation.
About NiYO
NiYO is a fintech startup conceptualized in 2015 that offers digital banking solutions for salaried employees across various sectors. Currently, with over 5 lakh customers and relationships with 3000 corporates, NiYO is growing to be a truly trusted digital banking platform across India. For more information, please visit NiYO.
There are number of technical conferences being held every year and major focus of all these conferences is to keep the crowd updated about what are latest trends in the industry & how the overall industry is surging ahead to embrace that change. Seldom do we come across a conference that can cover topics related to Open-source, Cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Analytics, etc. in one single day! We had an opportunity to attend the IBM Developer Day which was held on 14th March, 2019 in Bengaluru. True to it’s promise Build [Smart], IBM gave detailed insights into ‘all things technical‘ and ‘all things eco-system‘ at this year’s IBM Developer Day.
The audience which comprised of students, IBM partners, seasoned technologists, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc. were excited to attend IBM Developer day had four major reasons
Hands-on coding – A separate session for coders where you get assistance from the IBM technical team to build apps in 15-minute Code Labs session
Technical Workshops – Exciting workshops led by their development team shared insights into the latest technologies & open-source technologies.
Tech Talks – Seasoned IBM technologies, as well as young talent at IBM conducted 20+ sessions on Blockchain, AI, Open Source, Cloud Computing, etc.
Ask IBM Anything– There was a sufficient amount of time given to the audience after every session so that they could interact with the speakers & other technologists of IBM.
Eco-systemDevelopment – Major details were shared about initiatives like Call For Code, Girls of Code and more.
Opening Keynote – Sriram Raghavan, Vice President of IBM Research AI
The event commenced with an inspiring keynote by Sriram Raghavan, Vice President, IBM Research AI. He touched upon how the technological landscape is changing every single day and how this change can fuel the passion for learning new-age technologies like Machine learning, AI, Blockchain, etc. There was major thrust laid on collaborative learning and using technology for good. He particularly cited example of the ‘Kerala Floods’ where developers came up with simple apps to keep people updated about the situation.
He also spoke about open source and IBM’s commitment towards open-source. The keynote was ended at an inspiring one-liner ‘Open Source has become the corner stone of technology innovation‘.
Opening Note – Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President & CEO of IBM
The event commenced with an opening note by Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President & CEO of IBM where she spoke majorly about the work that IBM has been doing around open-source technologies. There are many developers & technologists who had the myth that IBM is not contributing much to the open-source community and this opening note was an eye-opener for everyone. Ginni Rometty stressed upon the commitment & expertise that IBM has towards open-source technologies and how the team at IBM has been contributing to open-source long before IBM acquired Red Hat.
As the crowd comprised of a mix of people with different levels of experience, it was important to let developers [especially students & newbie developers] know about the learnings they can acquire by contributing to open-source. She aptly explained the key advantages of open-source contribution and how it can help developers build knowledge & expertise by learning from the community. To summarize, in the opening key-note, the president & CEO of IBM reaffirmed IBM’s commitment to open source technologies in three guiding principles
Open Governance
Open Collaboration
Giving back to the open source community
You can watch the entire opening note session by Ginni Rometty below
Panel Discussion on Development & Open Source
Since developers are the ones who are coming up with innovative applications, a panel discussion on open-source was a must have in this conference. The panelists cleared some of the myths that are associated with open-source i.e. open-source code is buggy, no particular channel is there to file bugs, contributor fragmentation, etc.
The panel reiterated on how open-source technologies can be leveraged to develop applications and how startups can use these technologies to quickly prototype their ideas. With low-cost hardware and open-source software, technologists can now convert their ideas into reality at a fraction of a cost. They are also emphasized that students & lesser experienced developers can also contribute to open-source technologies and how they can enhance their skills & knowledge in doing the same.
Last but not the least, all the panel members were of the point that developers have an exciting opportunity ahead and they should look forward to solving real business-problems to give wings to their dreams. This means that they should think out of the box as they already have innovative technologies at their rescue!
Talk on Developer eco-system & Cognitive Computing
Bob Lord, Senior Vice President, Cognitive Applications, IBM spoke about IBM’s expertise in cloud computing and how enterprises & developers can make use of cloud technologies & cognitive computing systems to solve real-world problems. There was a particular mention about code patterns that can be used by developers to get started. There are code patterns on Blockchain, TTS [Text to Speech], usage of Kubernetes clusters for usecases on Blockchain, usage of Watson services, etc.
Shraddha Sharma of YourStory who is an inspiration to many young entrepreneurs spoke about the importance of telling stories that can create a meaningful impact on everyone. She emphasized that a path breaking product needs a wining story so that it can connect with the audience [whether it is developers, entrepreneurs, or enterprises].
IBM announced its partnership with NASSCOM to catalyze the developer community. KS Viswanathan, Vice President [Industry Initiatives], NASSCOM, Bengaluru, said
We are witnessing remarkable growth in the ecosystem propelled by innovative thinking where technology plays a revolutionary role. We believe that our association with IBM will not only catalyze the developer community but will also help design path-breaking solutions for disaster management and preparedness for society at large.
IBM also announced number of programs for developers, some of the key one’s are mentioned below
Code and Response – IBM announced that in its very first year of ‘Code and Response’, it will pilot Project Owl that won the Call for Code 2018. You can find more about Project Owl here.
Girls of Code – IBM announced collaboration with state governments across India where the company would empower more than 2,00,000+ women & girls in government schools to create ‘new collar jobs’ over a period of next three years. More than 50,000+ participants from Girls of Code would also get an opportunity to participate in ‘Code and Response’ hackathons that are held at a global level by IBM.
Call for Code– Call for Code is a global initiative by IBM where start-ups, technologists, government organizations, enterprise developers, etc. can be seen under one platform. The registrations for the Call for Code 2019 Global Challenge are still open and you can find more about the developer challenge here.
India Developer Champions – Recognizing contribution to Open Source
Along with the above mentioned initiatives, IBM in co-operation with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology [MeitY] and NASSCOM announced ‘India Developer Champions‘, a new multi-year program that recognizes developer contributions to the open source community.
The program will create a single, unified platform to acknowledge outstanding developer work in open source, the key driving force behind groundbreaking technologies that are impacting millions of lives every day in India and around the world. Since developers are the torchbearers of innovation in business and society, IBM expects thousands of nominations from passionate developers, as well as from enterprises & startups. If you are excited about this opportunity, you should sign up to become an IBM Coder.
Demo Booth
There were interesting set of demos by IBM developers and their enterprise partners. There were couple of demos that demonstrated how enterprises can leverage the capabilities of Watson & Cognitive computing to solve problems in different sectors like e-commerce, manufacturing, etc.
The demo that caught our attention was a Brain football game titled ‘War of Minds‘ where headsets [which had number of sensors including sensors that could read your brainwaves] were used by participants to move a football around the field. If you need further insights, we recommend you to read the whitepaper titled Can we communicate just by thinking?
Bloggers Round-table with IBM Leadership team
The IBM Developer eco-system led by Johanna Koester – Director, Worldwide Developer Advocacy answered questions on Hybrid Cloud, Red Hat acquitsition, etc. from limited set of bloggers who were invited for the round-table. Some of the questions that the IBM team patiently answered were
IBM’s contribution to open-source and future plans of Red Hat [at a very top level].
Advantages of using IBM’s Hyperledger which is an open source blockchain platform for business.
Feedback from bloggers on how they can make use of individual developer communities to drive more developer engagement.
IBM’s role in building a last mile eco-system for developers from schools, tier-2/tier-3 universities & institutions.
If you have attended the #IBMDevDay, do leave your experience in the comments section and if you are a developer, do not forget to signup as a IBM Coder.
Related read – We earlier interacted with Seema Kumar, Country Leader – Developer Ecosystem & Startups, IBM. Be sure to catch the insightful interviewhere.
Vodafone Idea Limited, India’s leading telecom operatorandZee Entertainment Enterprises Limited[ZEEL] announced a strategic partnership for ZEE5 – the fastest growing OTT platform in the country. Under the strategic partnership, aimed at driving the growth of digital ecosystem in India, the content portfolio of ZEE5 will be available to Vodafone Idea customers on Vodafone Play as well as Idea Movies & TV app.
Customers of Vodafone Idea can now enjoy the entire content catalogue of ZEE5 thereby providing a seamless viewing experience via multiple devices. The association between the two industry leaders will help create a beneficial ecosystem for viewers that will drive the growth of video viewing in smaller cities and towns in times to come. The content of ZEE5 can be accessed by customers through Vodafone Play or idea Movies & TV app.
The ZEE5 content is available across 12 languages like English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Gujarati & Punjabi across genres like Kids content, Cineplays, Live TV and Health and Lifestyle content.
Commenting on the partnership, Avneesh Khosla, Operations Director – Marketing, Vodafone Idea Limited said
Our customers are constantly seeking rich and diverse content options and we aim to provide enriched entertainment to our customers by offering high quality content on Vodafone Play and Idea Movies & TV. We are happy to partner with ZEE5 and bring their library of content to our customers.
Our insights on customer preferences, salience and relevance along with ZEE’s deep understanding of the Indian content viewership habits are being brought together through this partnership. We are happy to offer the entire catalogue of ZEE5 along with 2 exclusive channels to our customers as an introductory offer.
Speaking about the association, Tarun Katial, CEO, ZEE5 India said
ZEE5 and Vodafone Idea lend themselves to a complementary partnership. Having established ourselves as the fastest growing OTT platform in India with the largest repertoire of content, we have attracted subscribers across geographies and demographics.
We have an ambitious growth plan charted out for us and through this partnership with Vodafone Idea, India’s largest telecom company, we will leverage synergies between the brands and further bolster our presence across the country.
Through this alliance, Vodafone Idea subscribers will be able to access the content repertoire of ZEE5
LIVE TV offering of ZEE’s Network content on Vodafone Play and Idea Movies & TV through ZEE5 app
Real-time broadcast of shows that are being telecast on any of the ZEE channels including Hindi and regional channels – ZEE TV, & TV, ZEE Anmol, Zing, ZEE Marathi, ZEE Tamil, ZEE Bangla, ZEE Yuva, Sarthak TV, ZEE Kannada, ZEE Cinema, ZEE Action, & Pictures, ZEE Café, & flix, ZEE ETC and so on
Unrestricted catch up of ZEE Network content through ZEE5 app
Customers will be able to access the ZEE5 content library including TV shows, movies and Before TV content
Vodafone Idea customers will get access to ZEE5 premium subscription which includes Original shows and films, premium movies, digital movie premieres of upcoming blockbuster films, etc. as an introductory offer
Vodafone Idea subscribers will have access to the complete content portfolio of ZEE5 that includes the original web-series in Hindi and regional languages [including dubbed versions]
ZEE5 offers original content in six languages – Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam
Customers will also get unrestricted access to the entire movie library on the platform including digital premieres, acquired content, original films and so on
The highlight is 2 exclusive linear digital channels including Zee Theatre – premium theatre content to be available on Vodafone Play and Idea Movies & TV app
ZEE5 is India’s fastest growing entertainment OTT destination that has invested heavily in acquiring and producing content that will resonate with a cross-section of viewers across the country. As of December 2018, ZEE5 has 56.3 mn monthly active users, who spend an average of 31 minutes on the platform per day. ZEE5 has consistently been amongst the top-5 free and grossing entertainment apps in India as per the Google Play store rankings.
In a first of its kind initiative, in the past quarter, ZEE5 launched regional subscription packs for Tamil, Telugu and Kannada users. These tiered SVOD packs enable consumers to watch premium content in a language of their choice at half the price. Subscribers of these packs are also able to watch their favourite TV shows hours before they are aired on television later in the day. This offering has helped ZEE5 gather subscription momentum in the south Indian market.
Employment which is one of the rising problems in India is resulted due to many factors. High job candidates, unfamiliar jobs, poor job facilities, and low recruitment options are the major factors concerned to it. Organization is finding it difficult to recruit employees according to their job profile resulting in low process outcome.
As on the other side, candidates are adjusting with jobs in which they are not familiar of. The growing problem of India can be taking as an example over here. Large number of candidates are showing up at various job station without knowing the proper job profile.
Organization are now let with an only option to hire such employees so as to get the work done by hook or crook. These organization can push them to a certain space where they achieve the basic work satisfaction but cannot give them with the satisfaction of growing to a certain position. All these work-related problems can be brought to nil if organization decides to outsource their recruitment process to an external agency known as recruitment process outsourcing.
Recruitment a term defines many objectives within as it is related with all the activities from putting out an ad for job to posting an employee in an organization. This agency evaluates organization on basis on many factors and list out the objective of the employees before listing it out in open.
They then carry out the process of interviewing the candidates based on the organization specification and carry various interview test to check their skill within. Vacant position in the organization are then filled out with these talented candidates which takes this organization to new level. All these comes after the process which is pulled out by the recruitment agency such as analyzing the job requirements, reviewing applications, screening, shortlisting and selecting the right candidate.
To ensure that the recruitment process is carried out in best way, the agency has to work out the principles which is recruitment planning, strategy development, search for candidates, screening, evaluation and control. Recruitment process outsourcing is an important aspect and should be taken acute care while giving these to someone. Organizations should look out all these possible measures before handling the process to someone. Proper job analysis is said to be done by these agencies so as to list out the all factors to the candidates kicking in for the job. Job analysis includes Recording and collecting job information, Accuracy in checking the job information, generating job description based on the information, Determining the skills, knowledge and skills, which are required for the job.
Organizations has to look out for best recruitment agencies in India before outsourcing their work to these agencies. There are lot of agency out there who is giving out their services of recruitment, but it is the job of organization to list the best agencies for them. On these ongoing race Manpowergroup is leading with an example by providing organization with all their job recruitment activities with highest level of satisfaction. Only with proper knowledge one as well as organization can move forward.
CropIn, a SaaS-based AgTech company, has made it to the list of THRIVE Top 50 Companies 2019 in recognition of its scalable and disruptive agtech solutions. The full-stack agtech company has expanded across Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe, and is generating more than 50% of its current revenue from its international markets.
Listed among the top 50 companies this year, CropIn would be showcasing its technology at the annual THRIVE Innovation Summit scheduled to be held on 27th March 2019 at Santa Clara, Silicon Valley. Beth Ford, CEO Land O’lakes and other top leaders and investors in the AgTech and FoodTech space would be participating in the event. The summit is a platform for innovative organizations to engage with leaders of Fortune 500 food and agriculture corporations scouting for the latest disruptive technologies.
Commenting on the development, Krishna Kumar, CEO, CropIn, said
We are thrilled to be recognized as an innovative player in the agtech domain. The ranking corroborates the enterprise readiness and scalability of our platform, and encourages us to build more ground-breaking innovations for the agricultural sector.
CropIn has been actively doing some high impact work with a very diverse set of clientele and partners globally with the ultimate goal of making farming sustainable. So far, CropIn has digitized over 5 million acres of farmland and enriched the lives of nearly 2.1 million farmers, while managing 3,500 crop varieties across 30 countries.
CropIn has raised investments amounting to a total of $12 million till date, including Series A funding for an undisclosed amount from Singapore-based BeeNext in 2016 and $8 million in a Series B funding round from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Strategic Investment Fund [SIF] and Chiratae Ventures [formerly IDG Ventures] in 2018. The current institutional investment partners of CropIn are Ankur Capital, BEENEXT, BSP Fund LLC, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation SIF and Chiratae Ventures.
CropIn won the ‘Best Innovation in Digital Farming Technology’ at Agrow Awards in London for its flagship product, ‘SmartFarm’. A case study on SmartFarm is also published by IVEY for classroom training of management students. ‘SmartRisk’ was the winner at the ‘HDFC Bank Digital Innovation Summit’, for its capabilities that will make agri-lending and agri-insurance processes more data-driven.
About Thrive 50
The THRIVE Top 50 Innovation Showcase and report spotlights fifty growth stage companies from around the world pushing the boundaries of innovation and technology in agriculture. THRIVE Top 50 is part of SVG Partners’ corporate innovation program, which connects major corporate brands like Coca-Cola, Corteva, Trimble, Land O’Lakes, Wells Fargo, Heidenhain, EY, Forbes, National Pork Board, Driscoll’s Berries, Taylor Farms, and others with promising growth stage companies for custom pilots and partnerships. Top 50 startups are scouted for exemplary leadership, technology, and traction, and selected based on alignments with specific organizational criteria and industry pain points outlined by corporate partners. For more information, please visit THRIVE Top 50 Innovation Showcase.
Hinduja Global Solutions [HGS], in collaboration with NASSCOM Foundation, has launched a Center of Excellence [CoE] for training Persons with Disabilities [PwDs] in Bengaluru. The CoE will train a minimum of 100 PwDs, making them industry ready over the next 12 months, with a target of placing at least 50% of them in companies already sensitized for hiring them. This is the partnership’s third center after setting up one each in Noida and Delhi.As part of the training program, these 100 trainees will be skilled in a variety of job roles suitable for Hospitality, IT/BPM and Retail industries. They will also be trained on soft skills, interview skills, communication skills, English language etc. Efforts have been made to ensure that the center is accessible not just in terms of barrier-free access but also uses assistive technologies and follows the principles of Universal design. The training will be conducted using the best assistive technologies and training methodologies.
Speaking on the occasion, Partha DeSarkar, Global CEO, HGS said
The PwD community in India is a highly talented workforce, who unfortunately might not always have had the right opportunities for growth. We believe that they can achieve amazing things if given the right training to make them job ready. Since 2017, the HGS-NASSCOM Foundation partnership has seen great success stories with the two CoEs in Noida and Delhi, where over 75 PwDs have gained jobs in various organizations and become financially independent. We aim to replicate this in Bangalore too.
HGS is supporting this cause as part of its CSR initiatives. V-shesh, the training partner for this initiative, has vast experience in conducting training programs for PwDs and others from marginalized backgrounds. NASSCOM Foundation will be the overall owner of the initiative, ensuring maximum impact.
Even though Persons with Disabilities constitute a significant 5 to 6 % of India’s population, their need for meaningful employment remains unmet. By setting up CoEs for PwDs, NASSCOM Foundation in partnership with HGS, is working towards building skills for people with disabilities to become employable and financially independent.
The success of the Noida and Delhi centers is proof that, if equipped with the right skillset, the employability quotient for people with disabilities can be bettered. We are thankful to HGS for its continued support to skilling persons with disabilities and encourage more corporates to collaborate with us towards making PwDs job ready and raise the percentage of PwDs employed in the IT-BPM sector from 0.5% to at least 3%.
NASSCOM Foundation’s Disability Initiative encourages the inclusion of PwDs in the IT-BPM and other industries by sensitizing the sector about accessibility [barrier-free workplace and assistive technology] and employment. Disability Initiative helps companies inculcate inclusive best practices across – Physical Accessibility, Web Accessibility, Assistive Technologies and Employability. Since 2011, NASSCOM Foundation has worked towards Advocacy, Inclusion and promoting equal opportunities for persons with disabilities in the IT- BPM and ITeS.
Microsoft India partnered withThe Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs [MoHUA] to deploy Microsoft’s Project Sangam [cloud-hosted, mobile-first community learning platform] to train functionaries and officers across India on Swachh Bharat e-Learning Portal. Through this partnership, MoHUA has successfully trained 1,10,000+ municipal functionaries on best sanitation practices across 4000 plus cities in India.
Swachh Bharat Mission [SBM] is a nation-wide campaign in India that aims to clean up the streets, roads and infrastructure of India’s cities, towns, and rural areas.To successfully execute this campaign,MoHUAwanted to standardize, centralize, modernize, and establish systems for knowledge exchange and capacity development to train thousands municipal functionaries spread across cities in India.
Partnership with Microsoft to use the cloud powered Project Sangam, enabled delivery of large-scale, far-spread training programs with high quality and efficiency. The Sangam platform was designed to train municipal functionaries of state sanitation missions, city managers – engineers, administrators, field supervisors and sanitation workers with an aim to equip, assess, measure and accredit training of these officers.
Project Sangam empowered the Municipal functionaries by enabling MoHUA to run custom community training courses and track their process, manage content, users and analytics across the program in one place. It also provided video-based learning for users who have low-bandwidth supporting offline learning for the Swachh Bharat e-Learning Portal users.
Commenting on the partnership Shri V.K. Jindal, Joint Secretary & National Mission Director – SBM (U) said
The objective behind Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has been to improve urban sanitization by encouraging large scale participation and spreading awareness amongst all sections of society. This partnership with Microsoft has helped increase adoption of best practices and equipped the workers with the knowledge they need to perform their tasks much more efficiently. We are already witnessing the phenomenal success of this partnership and the technology support by Microsoft is integral to that.
Anil Bhansali, Corporate Vice President, Cloud & AI, Microsoft, said
As there are different states working towards a common mission of Swachh Bharat, there is a need for having standardized and centralized practices for cleanliness. Project Sangam is a perfect fit for training the municipal workers with skilling content that is simple and easy to consume, ensuring high course completion rates and increased attendance.
It has been designed to enable organizations to reach the length & breadth of their target audience. Irrespective of the end user, the Sangam portal provides an excellent opportunity for a continuous learning process. This is a great example of how innovative use of technology can be leveraged to empower organizations and individuals from all walks of life.
In the phase two of this Swachh Bharat e-learning mission, the Ministry will now roll out Citizen Training program with aim to train citizens of India on subjects like public toilets hygiene, waste management, household hygiene, sanitation practices. The citizen training app can be downloaded from here.
