REAP to Accelerate Tech Startup Innovations in Indian Real Estate

Brigade Group, a Bengaluru–based real estate developer, has launched Brigade Real Estate Accelerator Program (REAP).

REAP initiative is first of its kind in the Indian real estate sector and will focus on five technologies namely - Internet of Things; Nano Technology; Cleantech and Renewables; Visual Computing; and Logistics and Supply Chain to begin with in the first year. The new initiative will move to a new premises, located next to District 6, on a 5000 square feet of office space. But it has limited the number of seats to 46 and so it will be a rigorous process for the startups to get selected.

“REAP is being set up with the aim to give real estate innovators and inventors in the country an organised approach to help build sustainable and scaleable businesses,” said Nirupa Shankar, brainchild of this new initiative, and director, Brigade Hospitality services.

The real estate sector is one of the most globally recognised sectors contributing a significant number of jobs and GDP growth. In India, real estate and allied industries are the second largest employers after agriculture and are slated to grow at 30 per cent over the next decade, she adds.

“To keep pace with the ever-changing needs of the business, it is imperative to accelerate the pace of adoption of innovation and disruptive technologies in the industry,” said M R Jaishankar, CMD Brigade Enterprises.

“Brigade REAP has been conceptualised to combine resources within the group, as well as with partners and well-wishers to add value to young companies and help them build innovative and path-breaking companies from India,” he said.

REAP has called for online applications at www.brigadereap.com that opens on August 24, 2016 and closes on September 15, 2016. “All the suitable applications will be screened by a panel of experts and shall go live from October 3,  2016,” adds Jaishankar.

Speaking on the objective of Brigade REAP, John Kuruvilla, Chief Mentor, Brigade REAP said, “At REAP we work on ensuring that innovative ideas are not lost in execution and find the perfect application in the real estate industry”.

Samsung’s Z2, the First Tizen Powered 4G Smartphone; Pre-Loaded with Jio Services

Samsung India has launched its first 4G enabled Tizen-powered smartphone, Samsung Z2. Built on the Tizen platform, Samsung Z2 caters to the requirements of new smartphone users transitioning from a feature phone. Driven by the success of Z1 and Z3, and taking forward the smart, fun and simple attributes of Tizen platform, Samsung Z2 has been customised to offer unique value to the Indian consumers. The device comes with powerful specifications, pre-loaded essential apps and Samsung’s popular ‘Make for India’ features such as the Ultra Data Saving mode, S bike mode and the new My Money Transfer, to drive smartphone adoption.

Samsung Z2 comes with a complimentary invitation to the Jio Preview Offer to avail free voice and data services in the trial period. Z2 users will also get complimentary access to premium Jio applications – My Jio, Jio on Demand, Jio Beats – with unlimited options of latest movies, TV shows and songs across multiple languages during the Jio Preview offer.

Manu Sharma, Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India Electronics, said “Samsung Z2 makes 4G accessible and relevant to the unique needs of feature phone users and first time smartphone buyers. It brings consumers a fast and affordable mobile internet experience that will democratize 4G usage in the country.”

SMART
Fast and Easy to UseThe user interface on Samsung Z2 is simple and easy to use, offering faster and smoother device performance when combined with the Tizen platform. Powered by a 1.5GHz Quad-core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory expandable up to 128GB with a microSD card, the device features dual SIM support and delivers a seamless and user-friendly smartphone experience.  The device is fueled by a 1500mAh long-lasting battery, which is further boosted by the unique ‘Ultra Power Saving mode’, which keeps the phone operational, even at minimal battery levels.

FUN Unlimited Entertainment with Jio Apps As part of the partnership with Jio, Samsung sets a new standard in the mobile entertainment space by offering users with a wide range of free entertainment content to cater to the increasing consumer demand for streaming and on-the-go entertainment. For music lovers, Samsung Z2 consumers will have access to Jio Beats, which offers millions of HD songs in over 20 languages. The video streaming app, Jio On Demand, gives access to latest movies, TV shows and other video content across genres and languages.

Better Viewing and Camera Experience Samsung Z2 is equipped with a superior 4” WVGA screen which allows consumers to enjoy games, videos and other multimedia content to the fullest with superior resolution. The smartphone is equipped with a 5 megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a VGA front camera.

SIMPLE Easy UI, Essential Apps and Features Samsung Z2 gives an effortless mobile experience with Tizen OS and clutter free, intuitive interface making it easy to understand and use. It comes preloaded with essential apps for the ease of new smartphone users. It also features the ‘Make for India’ features developed specifically for Indian consumers. The Ultra Data Saving mode saves up to 40% mobile data by blocking unnecessary background applications from data consumption and by data compression technology, hence ensuring the most simple and cost-efficient 4G experience. Samsung Z2 comes with a dedicated S bike mode, which is designed considering the safety concerns of two-wheeler users in India. It lets consumers ride tension free while encouraging responsible riding.

My Money Transfer Samsung Z2 is equipped with a built-in app that enables users to easily manage transactions and generate mini bank statements. A first of its kind initiative, users can enjoy convenient internet free banking by simply using the unique MMID which can be linked to the registered smartphone through M Pin set by the user. Money transfer to/from popular private and public banks is supported using standard IMPS.

Price and Availability
Samsung Z2 has been priced at Rs 4,590 and will be available in India from August 29, 2016, in three attractive colours – Gold, Black and Wine Red – across mobile phone retail stores. For online consumers, the device is also available through our online partner Paytm exclusively.

Amit Bagaria, Vice President, Paytm, said, “We are delighted to roll out Samsung’s much-awaited launch in one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market. The new Samsung Z2 will add significant value to the multiple exciting smartphone offerings available to Paytm users. With the reach that the Paytm platform enjoys, with a base of 130 million customers, the partnership allows consumers across the country to effortlessly shop for their favorite Samsung smartphone in a few easy clicks.”

Samsung also sponsored ‘Tizen App Challenge’, a Tizen application contest for Unity developers, which runs from August 18 to November 21, 2016. Any developer providing a Unity-based game application service can enter the contest at https://unity3d.com/partners/samsung/tizen-challenge.

Mindtree Celebrates its 17th Anniversary with Care 2 Share Initiative

Mindtree is organizing a month-long voluntary initiative “Care 2 Share” as part of its anniversary celebrations to foster social responsibility and incorporate the spirit of community service among its employees. In consonance with its commitment to support and nurture communities, this initiative, spearheaded by the Mindtree Foundation, is aimed at giving back to the community in impactful ways and inspiring philanthropy at an individual level. Instituted since inception, this initiative is an annual affair and this year “Care 2 Share” includes Joy of Giving, Blood Donation, Stem Cell Registry and Old Clothes Drive.

In 2015, over 4000 Mindtree Minds participated and close to 8000 children benefited from this initiative. As a part of Joy of Giving, sports and educational items are bought for children studying in rural government schools that the Foundation is associated with.

Mindtree is one of the largest blood donors among IT companies in the city, with steadily increasing contribution every year. August being Dengue-prevalent season, the donated blood is primarily used to help Dengue patients in rural areas. Last year, 1804 units were collected, with each unit capable of saving 3 lives.

Initially started to help an employee’s son suffering with Leukemia, Stem Cell Registry has since become a regular part of this extensive event. It is seeing increased number of participants every year through rising awareness and internal communication campaigns. Mindtree’s efforts have yielded two successful matches and so far, close to 1400 people have enrolled into the registry.

Mindtree Minds are encouraged to donate toys, books, stationery and old clothes towards the Old Clothes Drive. While toys and books are shared with children, Mindtree Foundation works with Goonj, an NGO that empowers poor communities through clothing, to use old clothes towards making sanitary napkins for rural women which is distributed free of cost.

“Care 2 Share” ends on the 31^st of August and is conducted across all office locations in India. Family and friends of Mindtree Minds are also welcome to be a part of this initiative. Founded in 1999, Mindtree celebrated its 17^th anniversary on the 18^th of August.

Accenture’s Australian Security Company Redcore Will Expand Security’s Offerings

Accenture has entered into an agreement to acquire Redcore, a privately held Australia-based consulting company that specializes in providing identity and access management services (IAM), as well as security services for Cloud, network management, public key infrastructure, cyber defense, applications and the internet of things. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. Financial terms are not being disclosed.
 

As part of its offerings, Redcore develops holistic authentication, authorization and administration services across a range of cloud, web, mobile and adaptive access-management technologies. Redcore has deployed multiple large-scale cybersecurity solutions, including multi-factor authentication and secure application gateways that are used by some of the major Australian banks and government agencies.
  

“The acquisition of Redcore will allow us to expand our existing IAM services and security-as-a-Service capabilities – along with other critical cyber defense services – while also immediately extending our leadership position in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Kelly Bissell, managing director, Accenture Security. “Redcore has a team of seasoned security leaders who have exceptional security skills and industry knowledge. Together, we will be better positioned to tailor intelligent security services to organizations’ unique businesses and industries and deliver innovative solutions that help build business resilience from the inside out.”

Redcore, with its headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, provides security services and IT service management for a wide range of clients, including government agencies and companies across the finance, health, retail and telecommunications industries. Founded in 2010, Redcore has multiple offices in Australia, India, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore and has approximately 130 security professionals.

Joseph Failla, co-founder, Redcore, said, “We are excited to become part of Accenture Security and to bring our proven deep, highly-specialized skills and services to strengthen Accenture’s IAM and other cybersecurity offerings. We are very proud of Redcore’s wonderful team and our achievements, and we now look forward to creating an unrivalled combined cybersecurity team and launching capabilities that will change the market. With Accenture’s extensive global security resources, its methodologies and its interdisciplinary security ecosystem of innovators from across the world, we will be able to rapidly advance Redcore’s capabilities and innovate leading-edge solutions for clients, as well as provide excellent opportunities and career paths for our employees.”

FullContact Expands Footprint with Acquisition of Profoundis in Kerala

FullContact, a US-based provider of the most powerful contact management platform for professionals and enterprises, today announced the acquisition of Profoundis, a Kerala, India-based provider of technology enabled human verifieddata research platform.This is the first-of-its-kind acquisition in Kerala’s startup community.

 Funded by a group of angel investors since mid-2015, Profoundis was founded in 2012 by a group of enterprising technology professionals who were batchmates at the College of Engineering, Chengannur, Kerala. Based at Startup Village, Kochi, the company was the first company from Kerala to get selected to the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator programand one of the three companies to get selected for ‘Start-Up Chile’, an initiative by the Chilean Government in 2013.

FullContact’s purchase of Profoundis follows $25 million in new funding, which the company will use to accelerate its growth, recruit global talent and fund further acquisitions.

“Our goal is to be the smartest, most comprehensive, and most up-to-date address book on the planet.” said Scott Brave, CTO, FullContact. “The only way to truly achieve that is by integrating the best of human intelligence with machine intelligence. Profoundis is a key element of that strategy.”

FullContact will integrate all of Profoundis’ 70 employees, most of whom will remain in Kochi, into its global workforce and add human-based data research to its growing list of capabilities supporting its strategy for expansion and rapid growth. This combination will establish FullContact as a market leader in data quality and data breadth across its contact management solutions for individual professionals and businesses and have a direct impact on the company’s revenue and sales.

“As a strategic partner, Profoundis has been instrumental to adding value and increasing the effectiveness of our data solutions for our clients,” said Bart Lorang, co-founder and CEO of FullContact.  “Together we can further accelerate the growth of FullContact as we continue to build the most powerful fully-connected contact management platform for professionals and businesses.”

“With Profoundis, we were on a mission to help businesses do better by providing additional contextual data about organizations and people,” said Arjun R Pillai, Co-founder and CEO of Profoundis who will be FullContact’sHead of Data Strategy. “Becoming part of the FullContact team allows us to further execute on this mission globally, and together, our users will benefit by having more detailed information about their contacts, allowing them to be even more awesome with people."

Currently, FullContact is used by millions of people through its free apps, enterprise customers and API platform partners. With the suite of consumer apps spanning across iOS, Mac, Android, Gmail, and Web, FullContact’s offerings support two-way sync between iCloud, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Exchange and multiple Google email accounts.

 "The acquisition of Profoundis marks a key milestone for Kerala and its startup community,” said Keyur Patel, Chairman of Profoundis and Founder, Chairman of Fuse Global Ltd. “It also indicates the growing maturity of startup teams in the enterprise space and showcases the global cultural and technological synergies that are evolving. FullContact is the fastest emerging player in the contact management space and picking Profoundis to become part of its growth clearly shows the value each company can derive over the coming years at a global scale.”

Academy of Cyber Defence & Advanced High Tech Advanced Security Now in India

The Vital Intelligence Academy will be a full service facility that will incorporate a multitude of highly advanced training capabilities to include several state-of-the-art training classrooms, conference and event halls, high tech business meeting rooms and the world's most advanced security and cyber security training simulators.

The Vital Intelligence Academy will provide a full range of courses that will fill the needs of emergency management, law-enforcement, disaster management and safety organizations, military and governmental agencies, private security groups, executive protection personal, corporate executives, E-learning facilities (able to live stream safely and securely to most locations in the world) and host international visiting students.

The Vita Intelligence Academy will also serve as a “showcase” for the most advanced and up-to-date cyber defense and security related technology and an integrated gateway to demonstrate and market niche’ and unique security related technology coupled with some of the world's most experienced professional counter terrorism experts. 

After identifying cybersecurity as one of the most serious economic and national security challenges India faces, along with the threats of physical terror attacks that are not at all new to India, the Vital Intelligence Group will share skills and technology in an effort to create sensitive job skills much required especially in the Cyber Sector as well as unique teaching modules in the counter organized crime and terror spheres that will integrate the two providing an aggressive defense platform for the information and communications infrastructure and the development of a comprehensive approach to securing India's digital infrastructure as physical assets.

In making the announcement, Kamal Punjabi, Director of Colosseum Events Pvt Ltd., who with his team has been appointed as the Vital Intelligence Academy's official marketing and P.R agent and representative in India stated “Marc Kahlberg's military and policing intelligence experience along with his fearless approach to voicing key issues of security will provide a valuable point of view and an overall solution to reducing the current threats on a national and personal level but also create the needed skills and eventual jobs that are waiting for this specific sector."

Before his business career, Kahlberg served in the South African Army, Israel Defense Force and Israel National Police. He has created and established police units and has trained Law Enforcement personal from all over the world. Kahlberg has witnessed first-hand 16 serious terror events in the form of suicide bombers and vehicle borne terror attacks. Kahlberg served as the Commander of the Israel National Police Tourist Police Unit in Netanya and Police foreign press spokesperson for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip. He was involved in the security architecture and design for the South African hosted 2010 soccer world cup, trained and consulted to the organizers and emergency management personal of the Euro 2012 soccer tournament in Poland amongst other large projects.

Marc Kahlberg is the Vital Intelligence Group's CEO and a founding member of the Vital Intelligence Academy and will lead the initiative and program backed by experts from Australia, Africa, Europe, India, Israel, the U.K and the United States. 

ConveGenius Raises Rs 60 Million from Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

ConveGenius, a leading ed-tech company committed to offering mobile solutions for an enhanced quality of education in India, has raised an equity investment worth Rs 60 million from The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. ConveGenius will leverage the invested amount in providing engaging, impactful ‘education for the masses.'

Built on a business model that artfully combines delivering profit by driving volume of sales with improved learning outcomes among children from all backgrounds, ConveGenius curates content from multiple high-quality companies like Mexus Education (Iken), StoryWeaver from Pratham Books, and Chipper Sage. The company’s strength lies in using cutting-edge technology, assessments and data analytics tools to track the progress being made by students in real time, and provide them personalized learning paths with the most relevant content.

Jairaj Bhattacharya, Cofounder and CEO of ConveGenius says “We are excited to be backed by MSDF in our endeavors to reach 3 million children across India and other emerging markets by 2020, thus working towards bridging the gap between the availability and accessibility of good quality educational content. With the current investment, we seek to scale our operations, build on our existing archive of educational content by aggregating more exciting content providers across various languages, and further strengthen our technology for self-learning by building in intelligence and Adaptivity on the CONVEGENIUS Slate platform." 

Director for Michael and Susan Dell Foundation’s India Education portfolio, Prachi Windlass says, “Unlike most educational tech companies that are spending all their time and resources on creating more content, ConveGenius has taken a bold approach: to be a platform leveraging already available content and focus its energies on effective delivery.”

Founded in 2013 by Jairaj Bhattacharya and Shashank Pandey, alumni of IIIT Hyderabad, ConveGenius aims to improve learning outcomes of school-going children by making learning interactive, result-oriented and fun. The company is the first platform company in the K-12 space in India, offering learning programs that enhance grade level competencies for primary school children. The Company had been backed by Mr. Ashish Gupta, Founder and Trustee of Ashoka University and ex COO and Global Head of Evalueserve in their Seed and Angel rounds apart from other angels from Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.

The solution’s disruptive price of about Rs 4500/year has enabled its widespread adoption by NGOs across India as well as high-end learning centers in Singapore. This year, their flagship tablet-based product -- ConveGenius Slate will impact nearly 90,000 children across the country. In June 2016, ConveGenius partnered with Lenovo to launch the first learning tablet mapped to NCERT for classes KG to 5 which is currently available for parents to purchase online on Flipkart.