YES BANK Launches Banking Services on WhatsApp; Brings 60+ Products and Services to the Popular Messaging App

Uninterrupted banking Now Just a Message Away

* 24x7 Banking assistance, without the need for branch visits for key services

* Fully secure interactions with end to end encryption

* Potential customers can apply for 60+ products and services through WhatsApp

YES BANK announced the launch of WhatsApp banking services to empower customers and enable them to bank securely from the safety of their homes. This is in line with the Bank’s strategy of building a transformed ‘Digital Bank’ by making banking simpler and intuitive for customers.

Customers can now check their savings account balance, view recent transactions & digital banking products, avail loan against fixed deposits, order cheque book, report unauthorized transactions, connect with Contact centre via call or email, apply for 60+ products & services, donate to PM CARES Fund, view COVID-19 relief package, redeem reward points and locate nearby ATMs and branches, all just through a message.

Built on an AI enabled 24*7 personal banking assistant, YES ROBOT, banking through WhatsApp provides convenience as well as highest level of information security - the messages are secured with end to end encryption. Also, the green badge against the Bank’s name ensures that customers are interacting with a verified business account.

Key benefits of YES BANK WhatsApp banking services

* Trained for 10,000+ Banking related queries

* Powered by AI-enabled chatbot, YES ROBOT with Microsoft Azure’s cognitive services

* 24*7 Banking assistance on-the-go

* No additional app download needed

* Safe and secure transactions with end-to-end encryption

* Easy access and convenient banking

Commenting on the launch, Ritesh Pai, Chief Digital Officer, YES BANK, said “We are pleased to offer the convenience of round the clock banking assistance on WhatsApp, a platform that customers are familiar with and use frequently. The banking requests from customers will be addressed on a real-time basis through the messaging platform, thereby making banking more efficient. YES BANK will continue to leverage technology to create simple and innovative solutions for customers to enjoy banking services in a seamless and secure manner.”

To activate WhatsApp banking services:

Missed call: Give a missed call on +91-829-120-1200 to receive an SMS with a link to activate services.           

Save the contact: Save +91-829-120-1200 to contacts, open WhatsApp application and say ‘Hi’ to get started.           

Click Hi: Click on 'Hi' on YES BANK website (bitly link) and start chatting.     

About YES BANK

YES BANK is a ‘Full Service Commercial Bank’ providing a complete range of products, services and technology driven digital offerings, catering to Retail, MSME as well as corporate clients. YES BANK operates its Investment banking, Merchant banking & Brokerage businesses through YES SECURITIES and its Mutual Fund business through YES Asset Management (India) Limited, both wholly owned subsidiaries of the Bank. Headquartered in Mumbai, it has a pan-India presence across all 28 states and 8 Union Territories in India including an IBU at GIFT City, and a Representative Office in Abu Dhabi.

Central Square Foundation and Omidyar Network India Release ‘State of the Sector Report on Private Schools’

Central Square Foundation, a non-profit organisation that works towards ensuring quality school education, and Omidyar Network India, an investment firm focussed on social impact, released the first-of-its-kind report today on the state of the private school sector in India. The report highlights the need to improve learning outcomes in private schools which educate nearly half of India’s school-going children.

The report is a comprehensive analysis of existing research and evidence on the sector. It suggests reforms to streamline the operations of private schools with a focus on improving student learning. It aims to be a ready reckoner for policymakers, academicians, researchers, philanthropists and educationists amongst other stakeholders associated with the sector.

About 70% children in urban centres and a quarter from rural households attend private schools. Over 50% students in 16 Indian states are enrolled in private schools. The increased enrollment can be attributed to the rising demand by aspirational parents. A large number of parents — about 70% — pay less than Rs. 1000 per month as school fees. The report finds that 73% of parents with children in private schools believe these schools provide a better learning environment. However, student performance in private schools is only marginally better than government schools after adjusting for disadvantages in student backgrounds. About 35% of rural private school students in Grade 5 are unable to read a basic Grade 2-level paragraph.

The report finds that parents lack the means to make informed decisions while choosing schools based on learning performance. Board Examinations, among the only few reliable and standardised metrics to assess learning, are held in the last few years of schooling making it difficult for parents to judge the quality of schools during the early years of education. Moreover, nearly 60% of the private schools across India do not go up to a Board Examination grade.

Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, released the report at a digital event and said, “An educated and literate India is not possible without the private sector working towards our nation building. We must pay attention to getting it right. We need to bring reforms using access, equity and quality as guiding factors. More importantly, we need to shift the focus from monitoring of inputs to monitoring of outcomes. Quality education has been this government’s priority and NITI Aayog is drafting a model regulatory act in consultation with all stakeholders. We believe we will see fruitful results based on the references and results underlined in this report."

Highlighting the fact that private schooling is not popular among the elite alone, Mr Ashish Dhawan, the Founder-Chairman of CSF, emphasised that many families from underprivileged households send their children to private schools as well. “Today the private school sector in India is the third-largest school system in the world. These numbers are mainly made up of parents from low- and middle-income backgrounds who believe their children will have better learning outcomes in private schools. It’s critical now to institute a system that will give parents assessment-based information based on key stage examinations at Grades 3, 5, and 8, as the NEP suggests. They can use this information to compare school quality and pick the best school for their child.”

And speaking about the creating a demand for quality education among parents, Roopa Kudva, Managing Director, Omidyar Network India, said, “We need to empower parents to make informed decisions based on learning quality when choosing a school. In the absence of meaningful information on how schools perform on learning, parents tend to give weightage to tangible parameters like school infrastructure or English as the medium of instruction. Philanthropy capital can play a vital role in setting the ground in three main areas: greater awareness building, increased transparency from the schools themselves and improving the quality of engagement between parents and the schools.”

About the Report Launch

Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Education delivered a special address and spoke about the need for bold reforms to improve the quality of education and help India’s children acquire 21st Century skills for gainful employment. Other key speakers included Baijayant Panda, National Vice President & spokesperson of BJP; and Gurcharan Das, author and former CEO of Procter & Gamble India.

The release of the report was followed by two panel discussions. The first session on ‘Never waste a crisis: re-engineering the private school sector post Covid-19’ witnessed Baijayant Panda; Gurcharan Das; Arun Bharat Ram, Chairman, SRF Limited; and Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, Chair of Education Economics and International Development at the Institute of Education discuss how learning can be incentivised for private schools. The session was moderated by Ashish Dhawan.

The second session on ‘The need for reforms in the private school sector: Voices from the ground’ saw a very engaging discussion on the impediments in running and scaling private schools between Prabhat Jain, Co-Founder, Pathways World Schools & Pathways Early Years; Kulbhushan Sharma, President of NISA, and President, Federation of Private Schools Association, Haryana; Bhuvana Anand, Director, Research at Centre for Civil Society; and Vikas Jhunjhunwala, Founder & CEO of Sunshine Schools. Dilip Thakore, Co-founder and Managing Editor of EducationWorld moderated the session.

State of the Sector Report on Private Schools in India: About the Report

The report highlights the importance of private schools in educating India’s children. It provides details on the size of the sector, deep-dives into the challenges and outlines potential reforms to ensure improved learning outcomes for students. Specifically, the report stresses on two key challenges that need to be addressed urgently:

Under-regulation of learning outcomes

73% of parents believe their children will receive a quality education and have better learning outcomes in private schools. However, in the absence of a standard metric to measure learning outcomes, it may be hard for them to judge how much their children are learning in school in absolute terms, or how good their school actually is in comparison to other schools in their neighbourhood that charge similar fees. Grade 10 and 12 board exam pass percentages, sometimes used as a school learning marker, do not cover 60% of India’s private schools which end at Grades 5 or 8. Subsequently, parents tend to choose schools based on proxies for learning like "English medium" or the "School Infrastructure".

The information gap that exists for parents also means that schools are less likely to invest in learning-focused, invisible improvements like teacher training and quality, and more likely to spend on things that are observable by parents but may not lead to much improvement in learning - like computer labs, or marketing that proclaims English medium instruction.

Over-regulation of inputs

The second barrier is the over-regulation of inputs and a lack of policy focus on learning. Input-focused regulations prescribing playgrounds, computer labs, teacher salaries, etc., tend to be contextually unfit for under-resourced low-fee schools which make day-to-day operations difficult for them. Extensive licensing requirements deter quality providers from entering the sector and limits competition. For instance, opening a private school in Delhi calls for 125 documents, and applications move through at least 155 steps within the Directorate of Education. The non-profit nature of the education sector also discourages high-quality providers from entering or scaling up. These regulations have a direct impact on the capacity of private schools to deliver high-quality education.

The report also dives into the five-pillar sectoral reforms that account for the above-mentioned challenges and can help improve learning outcomes:

Create a universal learning indicator to help parents compare learning performance across schools and make informed decisions

Develop a pragmatic accreditation framework that factors in constraints of low fee schools and state capacity to implement while focussing on learning outcomes and child safety                    

Establish an independent regulatory agency for the private school sector

Review non-profit mandate and existing fee regulations to attract investment and enable easy access to credit for schools

Strengthen RTE Section 12(1)(c) which mandates 25% reservations for underprivileged children to ensure more robust targeting and fee reimbursements

While the report focuses on private schools, many of the regulatory issues raised in the report are also relevant for the public education domain.

Cloud computing helps organization to remain more secure

Today the biggest challenges for CIO’s are managing and securing the exponentially growing information in the IT infrastructure that supports their business and providing centralized access to multiple data centers across the globe, said Manjunath Kashi, Director, Enterprise Computing Group, Unisys. He said a secure cloud, whether private or public, can enable them to do both more effectively. Excerpts of the interview.

1. How does cloud computing help address CIO challenges?

The biggest challenges for CIO’s today are managing and securing the exponentially growing information in the IT infrastructure that supports their business and providing centralized access to multiple data centers across the globe. A secure cloud, whether private or public, can enable them to do both more effectively.

Unisys believes that cloud computing will revolutionize the way enterprises obtain business and IT services and change the kind of payback they get from their IT investments. In a severely constrained global economy, the prospect of de-capitalizing enterprise IT, deferring and avoiding operational costs, fixing the IT bottleneck and more effectively mapping availability of IT resources to fluctuating business demands provide powerful incentives to adopt cloud computing.

The major attributes and benefits of cloud computing are the following:

1. Multi-tenant –the capability to process the needs of multiple users with shared resources, dynamically and transparently;
2. Elastic and scalable –resources can be expanded and contracted as needed;
3. Metered/rented – to a certain extent, “pay only for what you use”;
4. Self-provisioned – “self-check-in,” at least to some degree;
5. Internet-based – accessible by using Internet technology, usually over the public Internet;
6. “X” as a service [with “X” being software or infrastructure, for example] – The details/concerns of implementation are abstracted for the customer.

Clients and prospects consistently tell Unisys that concerns about security is the major impediments to adopting cloud computing for business needs. Secure, then, is the additional benefit that differentiates Unisys’ strategy and solutions for cloud computing from other cloud offerings available in the market. The word “secure” refers to providing an overall reduction in risk due to greater security protocols and tools for data in motion (transiting the infrastructure), data at rest (in storage networks) and data in process. Unisys offers those through the Stealth data protection technology in its Secure Cloud Solution.

2. What kind of applications do you expect enterprises to host on the cloud? Why?

Most enterprises have until now been comfortable moving only test and development suites to the cloud, because they don’t involve transmission of sensitive data outside internal firewalls. Unisys Secure Cloud Solution – a managed public cloud service with an unmatched level of data protection based on unique bit-splitting technology called Stealth – enables enterprise clients to securely move conventional business applications into a managed, shared cloud service without costly, time-consuming rewrites or other alterations. Those applications often include secure or sensitive data, such as human resources, financial, customer and healthcare information. The Unisys Secure Cloud Solution can thus help clients reduce capital and operating expenditures and protect their investment in critical business applications.

3. Benefits of cloud computing to the large and small enterprises?

Cloud computing – especially as embodied in Unisys strategy and solutions portfolio – can benefit organizations of all sizes. The Unisys approach enables clients to choose the type of data center computing services that best meet their business objectives, from self-managed, automated IT infrastructures to Unisys-managed cloud services. Using Unisys services and technologies, organizations can create a private cloud within their data centers, a public cloud through secure Unisys-managed cloud solutions, or a hybrid cloud solution combining the best of both private and Unisys-managed cloud services.

Clients and prospects in organizations of all sizes tell Unisys that they see great operational and economic value in moving enterprise applications and data to the cloud. However, they have lacked the comprehensive security to make them confident in doing so.

Unisys cloud computing strategy and solutions focus on helping clients overcome those security concerns. We like to say that security is in Unisys DNA, data center transformation and application modernization are our heritage, and outsourcing services tailored to the client’s specific business needs are our forté. Unisys cloud computing strategy draws on all those core capabilities to help clients break through the barriers to adoption and gain a full range of options for cloud services while safeguarding their operations and lowering IT costs.

4. How secure are Unisys’s cloud computing offerings? What are the special features that Unisys offers on the cloud?

Most of the current cloud computing solutions lack the comprehensive security that gives clients the confidence in moving enterprise applications and data into the cloud.

Unisys’ cloud computing solutions provide the much-required extra layer of security. Underpinning our strategy is Unisys Stealth security solution, an innovative, patent-pending data protection technology, initially designed for government applications and now available to commercial clients too. The Unisys Stealth technology cloaks data through multiple levels of authentication and encryption, bit-splitting it into multiple packets so it moves invisibly across networks and stays secure in storage environments.

As I mentioned earlier, the Stealth technology also anchors Unisys Secure Cloud Solution, which is designed to provide the highest level of data security possible within a cloud environment today, while reducing clients’ upfront investments and ongoing operational costs for cloud computing. Using Stealth technology, the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution allows different clients in a multi-tenant environment to share the same IT infrastructure without the fear of exposing one client’s data to another.

In addition to the Stealth technology, clients of Unisys Secure Cloud Solution benefit from Unisys’ layered security infrastructure, which includes comprehensive capabilities, including intrusion detection and prevention service, security monitoring, advanced correlation and analytics, firewall management and logging.

5. How different are your offerings from other players in the same space?

Unisys cloud computing strategy is uniquely flexible. It draws on all the company’s core capabilities of security, data center transformation, application modernization and outsourcing services to help clients break-through the barriers to adoption and gain a full range of options for cloud services, while safeguarding their operations and lowering IT costs. As I said before, the Unisys cloud computing strategy enables clients to choose the type of data center computing services that best meet their business objectives -- from self-managed, automated IT infrastructure to Unisys-managed cloud services. Using Unisys services and technologies, organizations can create a private cloud within their datacenters, a public cloud through secure Unisys-managed cloud solutions, or a hybrid cloud solution, combining the best of both private and Unisys-managed cloud services.

The Unisys Secure Cloud Solution – a core component of Unisys cloud computing strategy – provides a global platform for delivering a full range of highly secure, managed IT infrastructure and application services available “as a service” through the cloud. This innovative solution enables enterprise clients to securely move conventional business applications – including those with secure or sensitive data, such as human resources, financial, customer and healthcare information – into a managed, shared cloud service without costly, time-consuming rewrites or other alterations. The unique Stealth technology, which delivers an unmatched level of data protection for the cloud environment, is a real differentiator for Unisys cloud computing strategy and solutions.

Also, Unisys portfolio of Cloud Transformation Services rounds out our cloud computing solutions. They provide clients a unique way to understand both how cloud computing can benefit them and what are the strategic and financial implications of adopting specific approaches.

6. What segment is Unisys targeting in India and why?

Unisys believes that our cloud computing strategy and solutions – with their unique emphasis on security – will have special appeal in market sectors such as federal government/public sector, healthcare and financial services, where data security, compliance with regulations for data management, and other security concerns are driving forces in decision-making.

In addition, industries or functions – e.g., financial reporting, benefits administration, and secure document management – that have weekly, monthly or even seasonal spikes in demand for IT resources to support business requirements could benefit from Unisys secure cloud solutions.

Unisys launched its cloud computing strategy and solutions on June 30th. We’re in the process of engaging with clients in a range of industries with our Unisys Cloud Transformation Services – a portfolio of advisory and implementation services that help clients assess potential cloud computing options and determine which option best suits their needs or financial objectives – and our Secure Cloud Solution, a managed, public-cloud service that multiple clients can share.

7. How much do you estimate the market size of cloud computing in India? What is the present growth rate?

Gartner says worldwide cloud services revenues are on a pace to surpass $56.3 billion in 2009, a 21.3 per cent increase in revenues from $46.4 billion in 2008. The market is expected to reach $150.1 billion in 2013. The Indian market, according to Springboard Research, will register a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 76 per cent between 2007 and 2011 and reach $260 million (around Rs 1,300 crore) in revenue by 2011. This presents a great opportunity for Unisys cloud computing solutions.

8. Despite being an old concept, why is this space picking up at the time of recession?

In the current economic scenario, the prospects of de-capitalizing enterprise IT, deferring and avoiding operational costs, fixing the IT bottleneck and more effectively mapping availability of IT resources to fluctuating business demands provide powerful incentives for enterprises to adopt cloud computing.

Has US companies cut 4,91,000 jobs during April 2009?

In a possible sign that the worst may be over for the country's labour market, a new report shows that American private companies slashed as many as 4,91,000 jobs in April, much less than expected.

The latest ADP National Employment Report showed that non-farm private employment fell 4,91,000 from "March to April 2009 on a seasonally adjusted basis".

Experts were expecting that the decline would be more than 6,00,000.

"The estimated change of employment from February to March was revised by 34,000, from a decline of 742,000 to a decline of 7,08,000," ADP said in a statement on Wednesday.

According to the report, private employment in the service-providing sector plunged by 2,29,000 in April. During the same period, jobs in the goods-producing segment decreased 2,62,000 while that in the manufacturing sector dropped by 1,59,000.

Last month, construction employment dropped 95,000, which was also the "smallest" in nearly six months.

"This was its twenty-seventh consecutive monthly decline, and brings the total decline in construction jobs since the peak in January 2007 to 1,261,000. April's decline, however, was the smallest since November of 2008," the statement said.

Large businesses, defined as those with 500 or more workers, witnessed their employment decline by 77,000 whereas medium-size businesses -- having between 50 and 499 workers -- skid by 2,31,000.

Further, small-size entities, which have less than 50 workers, saw a fall of 1,83,000 in employment.

"The employment declines among medium-and small-size businesses
indicate that the recession continues to spread beyond manufacturing and housing-related activities to almost every area of the economy," it noted.

The report sponsored by ADP is maintained by Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC and it is a measure of employment derived from an anonymous subset of roughly 5,00,000 US business clients.

In the last six months of 2008, the subset represented nearly 4,00,000 US business clients representing nearly 24 million American employees working in all private industrial sectors, ADP said.

Agencies

Buy your software from a cloud to ease your budget

As small and medium businesses in India struggle to stay afloat during the global economic slowdown, they are opting for cheaper computing services, and a Boston-based entrepreneur is here to promote his solution, cloud computing, in which software is shared over a wide network of computers.

Sumeet Sabharwal, senior vice-president of outsourcing and IT hosting firm Navisite Inc, says cloud computing is a viable Internet model for small and medium businesses across India, especially in the technology hubs in and around the capital and in Bangalore.

"The demand for having a reliable hosted infrastructure has increased over the years in India as businesses are shifting to the Internet from off-line facilities. At the same time, users do not want to burden themselves with the cumbersome processes of installations and hardware specifics. They look for solutions that are flexible, to scale and automated from the deployment standpoint, to maximise profit and output," Sabharwal said.

He said cloud computing was "still in a nascent stage in India and users need to be educated. Demand will grow as medium and small business owners realise its financial upside. I think it is the technology of the future for a country like India".

"Cloud computing," explained Sabharwal, a Cornell University alumnus, "is a computer paradigm in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections. It operates on three basic principles - computer, bandwidth and storage.

"It eliminates the manual tasks of shipping the software to the user and allows users direct access to the software from the net. This network of servers and connections is collectively known as 'the cloud', which is a kind of a platform."

Computing at the scale of the cloud, said Sabharwal, allowed users to access supercomputer-level power. "Using a thin client or other access points like an iPhone, BlackBerry or laptop, users can reach into the cloud for resources they need. For this reason, cloud computing has also been described as on-demand computing."

Cloud computing, where the "intelligent network acts as the supercomputer", is a way to increase network capacity or add capabilities without investing in new infrastructure, new personnel or licensing new software.

"It is a pay-per-use service and cuts business cost by at least 40 percent depending on how the businesses leverage it. At the same time, one can scale up or scale down on the network itself, going by the number of visits to a business site
and its growth," Sabharwal said.

"Clouds are of two types - the public cloud, where infrastructure can be shared horizontally depending on areas and geographies of growth - and large private clouds dedicated to big companies, mostly the independent software vendors
, retail firms and technology providers.

"Cloud Computing," said Sabharwal, "is also the most effective technology for hosted e-mails for medium-sized corporate firms."

Agencies

US private cos layoff 5,22,000 jobs in January

Private sector companies in the US slashed a stunning 5,22,000 jobs in January, in yet another indication of the worsening labour market situation.

The latest ADP (Automatic Data Processing Inc) report showed that non-farm private employment on a seasonally adjusted basis, declined 5,22,000 in January 2009.

The ADP National Employment Report is based on anonymous payroll data and is maintained by Macroeconomic Advisers LLC.

In a statement today, ADP said the report for January estimates "non-farm private employment in the service-providing sector fell by 2,79,000".

While the goods-producing sector shed 2,43,000 jobs, the manufacturing industry saw the loss of 1,60,000 jobs last month.

According to the report, large businesses which are defined as those with 500 or more workers, slashed 92,000 jobs. Further, medium-size and small-size entities reduced their workforce by 2,55,000 and 1,75,000 employees, respectively.

Medium-size companies are those having 50 to 499 people whereas small-size firms are described as those with less than 50 workers.

Agencies