India’s largest and fastest growing Functional Fitness Studio Brand ‘MultiFit Wellness Private Limited’, today announced India’s first Gym chain driven fitness incubator program, namely ‘MultiFit Fitness Incubator Program (MFIP)’. To be housed out of its Bangalore and Pune facilities, the program will be a healthy mix of technology-based start-ups and ideas as well as conventional ones across sports, fitness, wellness and nutrition. MultiFit has already commenced incubation of a Fitness CRM, Nutrition program ‘Fitsperts’ and MMA Academy ‘MultiFit MMA Pro-Academy’ – all to be commercially launched over the next three-four months.
Commenting on the Incubator Program, Dr. Samir Kapoor, Founder & MD, MultiFit said: “The fitness business is changing extremely rapidly, driven not just by technology but by the fast-changing socio-economic landscape of the country. It is a known fact that over 400 million will be added to our urban population count over the next decade, over 75-80% of all mortality in the country will be driven by NCDs by 2020 and technology will enter a Machine Learning / AI dominated space, transforming and disrupting everything in the process. If we are not prepared for this change, we will be left way behind. Having said that, while we understand the business of fitness and wellness extremely well we most definitely need to go the collaborative route for the rest.”
“Launching the fitness incubator program was thus imperative. Through this program we aim at tapping into all the brilliant ideas that come up on a day-to-day basis across the country but lack the financial and business experience to take it forward. Add to this the large rapidly growing organic community of fitness enthusiasts we have built over the last couple of years as a native market for these ideas, the probability of getting winners increases. While our program will largely focus on early stage ideas, we would not be averse to established entities coming up with new ideas in the space as well,” added Samir.
Assisting MultiFit in this endeavour would also be its newly inducted Technical Advisory Board comprising 11 International Olympic Athletes including Andy Turner, Marilyn Okoro, Chris Tomlinson, Sarah Stevenson, Mark Lewis Francis, Sebastian Rodger, Zoe Smith, Alyson Dixon, Georgina Cassar, Luke Lennon Ford and Manoj Pingle.
Having started off as a 3000 sq. ft. single studio in 2015, MultiFit currently operates a chain of over 32 large format multi-disciplinary Functional Fitness studios across India, UK & UAE marking a presence in 10 cities. Further it has another 20 more signed up gyms which are slated to go live over the next 4-5 months taking the total count to 52 fitness studios.
At its annual K7 Odyssey event, K7 Computing today announced a strategic repositioning of its business, along with a new brand appearance, marking a strong commitment to helping businesses, from SOHO to large enterprise, secure their digital business.
Building on its success in the consumer segment and recent recognition of its leadership in security technologies by international testing organizations such as AV Comparatives, K7 Computing today announced a set of new products and initiatives to expand and strengthen its presence in the Indian enterprise cybersecurity market.
New products announced are:
K7 Mobile Device Management (MDM)
K7 MDM is a cloud-based service that enables organizations to monitor, manage, and secure employees' mobile devices from mobile malware threats, and enforce compliance with company policies.
K7 line of UTM Gateway appliances
The K7 range of UTM gateway appliances brings together K7 Security’s award-winning anti-malware technology tightly integrated into a cost effective, proven gateway solution for Small Office/Home Office (SOHO), Small Business, Medium Enterprise, and Enterprise networks.
K7 Security for macOS
K7 Security for macOS provides comprehensive real-time and on demand protection from both Mac and Windows-based malware threats. It consumes minimal system resources ensuring uninterrupted computer performance, adhering to the performance benchmark set by K7 Computing over the years.
Medal of Honour Awards
Along with new business and product announcements, the evening also witnessed K7 Computing’s annual ‘Medal of Honour’ initiative. This year the company has recognized 25 industry stalwarts who have played a critical role in contributing to the growth of digital India with the K7 Medal of Honour award. The Chief Guest for the evening was N. Ram, Chairman of Kasturi & Sons Limited and Publisher of 'The Hindu' and the Guest of Honor were Munirathnam, founder-RMK group of Institutions and Lakshmi Narayanan, Former Vice Chairman & CEO, Cognizant Technology Solutions.
Speaking on the occasion, J Kesavardhanan, MD & CEO, K7 Computing said, “Over the years, enterprises have enhanced their levels of mobility by shifting their communications and transactions to the online space, thereby; creating a paradigm shift in the way devices and data need to be protected. We are convinced that our renewed focus and strategy will deliver value, higher performance and a new level of convenience for our clients. Our digital competence will be a true strategic differentiator in the market.” He further added; “By advancing our offerings to the Enterprise segment, our efforts are in tandem with the order by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to promote domestically manufactured Cyber Security Products. We are proud to be the only Cybersecurity player in India having a vast portfolio of indigenously built products. Our products are internationally acclaimed by reputed testing organizations and are built without any external dependencies.”
Diwali, is just around the corner and each of us have dived into the spirit of enjoying the festive season and the perfect time to share gifts with family and friends. This Diwali you can bring joy in the lives of people by giving them some fabulous gadgets as gifts. While you have some tech savvy friends and people around, you would have a hard time figuring out the best tech gift within your budget. Don’t worry, we won’t let your budget dampen down your festive spirit. There are some very exciting products and accessories available in this price bracket that often get lost in the crowd of listings.
Here we are listing down 5 Best Tech Gifts under Rs. 1000 For Diwali Season
Britzo Eco Series Phones (Smart bhi, Kifayati bhi)
Britzo-owned mobile company iVVO has introduced its news ‘Eco Series’ smart feature phones with the tagline “Smart bhi, Kifayati bhi”. All phones under the series are priced below Rs 669, with a starting price of Rs 569 Products under this Eco Series include iVVO IV1801, iVVO IV1805s, and iVVO Eco Beatz (earlier known as iVVO Beatz IV1805/IV1805s). All three devices sport 1.8-inch screen display and pack a storage space expandable upto 32GB. These smart feature phones are powered by a 1000mAH battery. Other features available on the devices include MP3 and MP4 player, LED Torch, Bluetooth support, dual-SIM support, one-touch music access, GPRS web browser, wireless FM and megapixel camera.
Britzo phones’ are segmented across five product categories, namely BEATZ, PRIMO, SELFEE, TUFF, and VOLT. The company will also be launching of its first 4G feature phone ‘Skipper’ along with two Android Go 4G smartphones belonging to the smartphone series ‘Storm’. All of the launched products are priced from Rs. 649 to Rs. 5,999 and extend superlative features aimed at the rural population – including multilingual support, feature phone-based WhatsApp and Wi-Fi tethering, facial recognition, shatterproof smartphone screens.
boAt BassHeads 225 in-Ear Super Extra Bass Headphones
These boAt in-ear headphones, which available at Rs 449 has super extra bass with rich immersive audio. Users can experience detailed high quality sound with its 10mm dynamic drivers which deliver a powerful, precise and natural sounding bass. One of the things that you always wanted to do is to have everything under control with a single touch, boAt BassHeads 230 allows you to do that and more with the inline microphone and one button control.
Nokia 105
This feature phone from Nokia is selling at Rs 942. The phone has a 1.8-inch display, offers 4MB RAM, 800mAh battery and single SIM support. Featuring a curved, ergonomic body and an island key layout for easier dialing and texting, the Nokia 105 gives you the feeling of a solid, quality phone nestled in the palm of your hand.
SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive
The SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive combines faster data speeds and generous capacity in a compact, stylish package. Spend less time waiting and transfer files to the drive up to ten times faster than with a standard USB 2.0 drive.2 With storage capacities up to 256GB3, the drive can accommodate your bulkiest media files and documents.
Intex 11000 mAh Power Bank. Available at Rs 899
Whether you’re travelling or at office, use your smartphone as much as you want without the fear of running out of power. If you’re someone who is always glued to your phone, the Intex IT-PB11K power bank is your go-to option. It features a 11000 mAh battery that ensures your smartphone doesn’t die when you need it the most. Help your friends to charge their devices as well, as it comes with three USB ports.
McAfee, the device to cloud cybersecurity company, today released its Cloud Adoption and Risk Report, which analyzed billions of events in anonymized customers production cloud use to assess the current state of cloud deployments and to uncover risks. The report revealed that nearly a quarter of the data in the cloud can be categorized as sensitive, putting an organization at risk if stolen or leaked. Coupled with the fact that sharing sensitive data in the cloud has increased 53 percent YoY, those who do not adopt a cloud strategy that includes data loss protection, configuration audits and collaboration controls, will endanger the security of their most valuable asset—data—while exposing themselves to increased risk of noncompliance with internal and external regulations.
The study found that while organizations aggressively use the public cloud to create new digital experiences for their customers, the average enterprise experiences more than 2,200 misconfiguration incidents per month in their infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) instances. Cloud service providers only cover the security of the cloud itself, not customer data or customer use of their infrastructure and platforms. Companies are always responsible for securing their data wherever it is, hence highlighting the need to deploy cloud security solutions that span the whole cloud spectrum, from SaaS (software-as-a-service) to IaaS and PaaS.
“Operating in the cloud has become the new normal for organizations, so much so that our employees do not think twice about storing and sharing sensitive data in the cloud,” said Rajiv Gupta, senior vice president of the Cloud Security Business, McAfee. “Accidental sharing, collaboration errors in SaaS cloud services, configuration errors in IaaS/PaaS cloud services, and threats are all increasing. In order to continue to accelerate their business, organizations need a cloud-native and frictionless way to consistently protect their data and defend from threats across the spectrum of SaaS, IaaS and PaaS.”
Cloud Collaboration a Blessing and a Curse:
Cloud services bring a momentous opportunity to accelerate business through their ability to quickly scale, allowing businesses to be agile with their resources and provide new opportunities for collaboration. Cloud services like Box and productivity suites like Office 365 are used to increase the fluidity and effectiveness of collaboration. However, collaboration means sharing, and uncontrolled sharing can expose sensitive data. Findings demonstrate that:
Twenty-two percent of cloud users share files externally, up 21 percent YoY
Sharing sensitive data with an open, publicly accessible link, has increased by 23 percent YoY
Sensitive data sent to a personal email address also increased by 12 percent YoY
To secure sensitive data in cloud storage, file-sharing and collaboration applications, organizations must first understand which cloud services are in use, hold their sensitive data, and how that data is being shared and with whom. Once organizations have gained this visibility, they can then enforce appropriate security policies to prohibit highly sensitive data from being stored in unapproved cloud services and provide guardrails that prevent noncompliant sharing of sensitive data from approved cloud services, such as when data is shared with personal email addresses or through an open, public link.
IaaS and the Risks of Misconfiguration:
With SaaS, securing data, user identity and access to data is primarily the customer’s responsibility. With IaaS, customers take on a much larger share of security responsibility that includes data, identity, access, applications, network controls and host infrastructure. While this provides customers with an opportunity to have greater control over their cloud infrastructure, it also increases the organization’s surface area for security risks and their responsibility for the same. IaaS providers, like Amazon Web Services (AWS), provide several infrastructure and platform services, each having deep and complicated security settings. Magnifying the IaaS/PaaS security challenge is the fact that organizations use multiple IaaS/PaaS vendors running several instances of each vendor’s product. Our research found:
Ninety-four percent of IaaS/PaaS use is AWS, but 78 percent of organizations using IaaS/PaaS have both AWS and Azure
Enterprise organizations have an average of 14 misconfigured IaaS/PaaS instances running at one time, resulting in over 2,200 individual misconfiguration incidents per month
Five-and-a-half percent of AWS S3 buckets have world read permissions, making them open to the public
McAfee recommends that organizations continuously audit and monitor their AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform and other IaaS/PaaS configurations as a standard security practice, while protecting data stored in IaaS/PaaS platforms. IaaS/PaaS use is growing rapidly as an alternative to on-premises data centers. Businesses need to get ahead and address their security responsibilities—data protection and threat defense as they would for SaaS cloud services and also configuration compliance and workload protection for IaaS/PaaS cloud services—before they experience a security incident.
Compromised Accounts and Insider Threats:
Most of the threats to data in the cloud result from compromised accounts and insider threats. The average organization generates over 3.2 billion events per month in the cloud, of which 3,217 are anomalous behaviors and 31.3 are actual threat events. In addition:
Threat events in the cloud, such as a compromised account, privileged user, or insider threat, have increased 27.7 percent YoY
Eighty percent of all organizations experience at least one compromised account threat per month
Ninety-two percent of all organizations have stolen cloud credentials for sale on the Dark Web
Threats in Office 365 have grown by 63 percent YoY
To get ahead of comprised accounts and insider threats, organizations should understand how cloud services are used. They should also identify anomalous behavior, such as when the same user accesses the cloud from disparate locations simultaneously, which could indicate a compromised account threat.
As a first step towards protecting data in the cloud, cloud access security brokers (CASB) should be implemented. CASBs are cloud-native services that enforce security, compliance and governance policies for cloud services. They help organizations leverage and extend their existing security controls where appropriate and define and deploy new cloud-native ones where appropriate to enable enterprises to consistently protect their data and defend from threats across the spectrum of SaaS, IaaS and PaaS.
Accops Systems, leading developer and providers of Secure Workspace Virtualization solution, has been awarded under the category - "Most Innovative Indian Product for SMEs" by a jury of CIOs at SME Channels Conclave & Awards 2018.
Mohan Bhat, Managing Director & Co-Founder at Accops Systems Private Limited said, "SME Channel Partner Summit & Awards is a magnificent platform which connects partners and IT entrepreneurs under one roof. Since the IT transformation continuous in Indian market, this platform plays a crucial role in influencing and motivating the partners and showing the roadmap for their self-transformation. It also helps market experts to guide the channel partners in addressing the emerging market challenges."
SME Channel Partner Summit & Awards 2018 is the most cognized listing of super 100 channel partners who deliberate on the growth drivers of the IT industry. The event witnessed more than 300 value partners and SIs along with top executives from the IT industry, key stakeholders and key representatives from IT associations, industry clusters, Department of IT, Govt. of India and the Govt. of Delhi.
Knowledge Sessions were held by IT Decision Making community oriented at giving the channel community clarity on what today's enterprise customers demand and expect from the technology providers. The Summit saw a number of eminent CIOs from the Delhi NCR region join the partners and vendors and discussing the current challenges in technology and the way forward for the Indian IT ecosystem.
Receiving the award, Mohan Bhat said, "It is an honor for Accops to be awarded with such a prestigious award. Surely, this recognition charges up the Accops team with more strength, motivation and enthusiasm to achieve more such awards in the future. Moving further, we will strive to cater more innovative products for SMEs."
Shoptimize, India’s leading and most advanced AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered brand e-commerce platform has been recognized amongst the top 100 global start-ups by Red Herring 2018 at a recently concluded glittering ceremony in California, US. Red Herring 100 Awards are widely recognized as one of the industry’s most prestigious recognitions, with thousands of companies competing to be amongst the Top 100.
Incepted in November of 2012 by Mangesh Paditrao & Vivek Phalak, Shoptimize has been pioneering the brand e-commerce space by partnering with leading brands to help them setup and grow online sales through its AI powered growth engine. Shoptimize drives growth for a multitude of marquee Indian and global brands with the likes of Haldiram’s, Luminous, Schiender Electric, Lotus Herbal, Gits, Mother’s Recipe, Liberty Shoes, Camlin Kokuyo, Zippo, amongst others.
Speaking at the occasion Mangesh Panditrao, CEO & Co-Founder, Shoptimize Inc said, “We’re excited to be recognized among an elite group of Red Herring Top 100 Global companies. The Red Herring award further validates the strength of our company and our proven value we bring to brands, helping them build a profitable digital business through our AI and machine learning capabilities. We are particularly happy as the Red Herring announcement comes close to our planned expansion in US and Asia. Our team is gratified to see Shoptimize’s innovations to drive brand e-commerce into a successful channel being recognized by Red Herring.”
Red Herring’s Top 100 Global list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising companies and entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, Dropbox, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work.
“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from thousands of candidates from across the globe to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Shoptimize embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. Shoptimize should be proud of its accomplishment.”
E-commerce is transforming the way business is done in every market across the globe. With a steady rise in the penetration of internet and smartphones, the opportunity is extremely large and brands are increasingly looking beyond marketplaces to increase the share of revenue through their own brand websites. In a rapidly changing eCommerce landscape Shoptimize brings together the benefits of social commerce, SEO, SEM, quick payment technologies and superior aesthetics in one place.
Taking forward its commitment as a Safety Leader, Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) organized yet another social drive under its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative, to enhance “Road Safety” in Bangalore city.
In an endeavor to create a more-safer society, Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) today conducted its fifth activity under ‘ICARE’, an employee voluntary initiative to build basic road safety requirements in prime road junctions of Bangalore city. More than 100 employees jointly participated towards improving road safety infrastructure to ensure the safety of the road users.
The identified roads are potential risk interms of road accidents. In order to avoid such safety risks, as a preventive measure - Toyota identified the road safety structures to be installed at prime locations. This is to ensure the road users are safe and stay alert on the roads, thereby minimizing the road safety related mishaps.
Proper road safety systems helps to create a conducive environment for road users and eases the vehicular movement. This voluntary activity would involve installation of road safety - Sign Boards, Solar Blinkers, Cat Eyes Reflectors, Convex Mirrors at turns in the Primrose Road, Brunton Road and Magrath road of Bengaluru. With these basic safety measures on the roads, Toyota hopes to prevent road accidents and fatalities, reduce congestion and pollution.
Speaking on this initiative, Naveen Soni, Vice President - Toyota Kirloskar Motor said, “At Toyota, we believe in integrated strength to give back to the society we live in. Our objective is not only manufacturing ever better cars, but also enrich community lives.
Safety has been the DNA of Toyota and of prime importance. And hence, we started the awareness program on road safety to school children from 2007 onwards. We were the first corporate to set the road safety infrastructure at schools with the philosophy of “Seeing is Believing” to bring about a positive behavior change amongst children towards developing responsible future road users.
‘ICARE’ is driven solely by the passion of our employees and shared responsibility to make a big difference in the society we live in. These kinds of activities empower our employees to be the change makers in the community and support them grow as individuals with real understanding of the social issues around them. Our employees have been actively involved to drive many CSR interventions in the areas of health, environment and education. This initiative further focuses on road safety being one of the key national issues. It is heartening to see our employees as social enthusiast, joining in large numbers to support this road safety initiative and needless to mention with “Safety” culture that is so deep rooted in each one of our employees being part of their work culture.
As a company, we are committed to the cause of Safety. We hope to see this transcend beyond vehicles into everyday lives of everyone while using safer roads.” He added.
Commenting on the employee engagement initiatives by TKM, Vikram Kirloskar, Vice Chairman, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said, “I would like to thank Prime Minister, Narendra Modi for launching a digital platform “Self 4 Society”, and encouraging corporates to organize employee engagement initiatives for social causes. At Toyota, we are always committed to give back to the community in our own way and try to uplift the lives of the underprivileged. We are happy to align Toyota’s employee engagement programs with “Self 4 Society”, thus strengthening the impact of the causes we stand for. We would like to dedicate this program to the “Self 4 Society” initiative by the Prime Minister”.
Toyota follows an integrated safety approach towards addressing the grave issues of road safety in our country, aiming to build a safer community by adopting 3 dimensional concept – Manufacturing Safe Cars, Developing Safe Drivers & Building Safer Environment.
In pursuance of its safety mission, “Safest Car with Safest Driver”, Toyota Kirloskar Motor has been consistently engaged in Road Safety initiatives since 2005 through various pan India campaigns. TKM launched Toyota Driving School [TDS] across India in cities like Kochi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai [2 driving schools], Faridabad, Surat and Vijayawada. With TDS, the company aims to bring down the rising number of road accidents caused majorly due to human error, by developing Safety Ambassadors. The training module will integrate technical expertise along with enhancing behavioral skills to create awareness about safety nationwide. The. Toyota Driving School has till date enrolled 4,500 plus. By 2020 the company plans to cross 50 such schools across India, voicing their traffic safety commitment louder.
As a safety leader, Toyota initiated the Toyota Safety Education Program (TSEP) in 2007 which aims at educating school children and teachers through phase wise approach on important aspects of road safety and eventually passing on the learning to the general public. Toyota has educated more than 700,000 school children on road safety across India until now as part of “Toyota Safety Education Programme”
Further the company has also launched “Safety Model Schools” as part of the “Team Toyota Activity (TTA)”, aiming to enhance safety awareness among the school children, teachers, parents and school vehicle drivers on responsible road safety habits, to create a safer traffic environment for all. The unique comprehensive program will help school children know & learn about the road safety habits in their daily curriculum. The program is aimed at developing Safety Ambassadors in schools by creating safety zones within school premises, implementation of Toyota Safety Education Program (TSEP), and training of school vehicle drivers and creation of safety group in the school. So far, Toyota Dealers & Suppliers have rolled out this initiative in partnership with Toyota at Delhi, Kochi, Varanasi, Hissar, Rewari & Kolkata.
To ensure safest drivers on Indian roads, TKM has been conducting Driver Training Programs & Health Check-Up Camps for Airport taxi drivers in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi International Airport since 2014 as part of the CSR Initiatives on road safety awareness with over 5,000 drivers participating in the campaign till date. Through this initiative Toyota aims at creating a strong road safety sense amongst the drivers, and encourage them to adopt safer driving practices.
Through varied CSR projects, Toyota has touched more than 11,00,000 lives. Toyota will further continue its various CSR interventions from a longer-term perspective and development of socio-economic stature of the society, touching many more lives to make a difference in each one’s well-being.
