myNoticePeriod.com Is Rebranded As Hiree.com

myNoticePeriod.com, the company that pioneered just-in-time hiring and revolutionized recruitment in India, has rebranded itself as Hiree.com. The company has acquired 800+ paid customers in less than a year. The company counts world’s largest IT companies and India’s highest valued startups in its customer list. The portal is adding thousands of new jobseekers daily and has already crossed 170,000 profiles. Hiree.com is the world’s first and only destination that has jobseekers who are actively changing jobs. The company had recently raised INR 18 Crore in series A funding from IDG Ventures India.

Having only serious jobseekers gives an unparalleled advantage to recruiters using Hiree. The portal’s customers gain 20x efficiency improvement in their candidate search. With the rebrand and accompanying technology changes, the company now extends beyond candidates in their notice period and expands to a larger base of job seekers. Customers have liked the expansion and are happy to connect with active jobseekers in all stages of job change.

The company is at the forefront of innovation in the recruitment space. It has leapt ahead of competition by constantly adding benefits like smart matching algorithms, real-time alerts and a unique private messaging system. The recently launched powerful Android App for recruiters has allowed them to connect with candidates through call, whatsapp, SMS, e-mail or schedule meetings in real-time for future discussion. These have given tremendous benefits to all categories of jobseekers and employers.

“When we started myNoticePeriod, our aim was to reduce the hiring lead time for employers and give better offers to jobseekers. We started with smaller target group of notice period candidates. Given the success and customer feedback, we are now expanding the benefits of the powerful hiring platform to all categories of job seekers. Hence the need for a new name which is ‘Hiree’. With hiree.com we will grow even more faster, add innovative features and deliver further efficiency gains for our users.” says Manjunath Talwar, Co-founder at Hiree.

“We are not going after building a database of millions of candidates, we want to identify the most suitable candidates, who are very actively looking for opportunities and can join fast, including candidates who are on notice period. The core technology built to get most active candidates high within search results will further improve hiring efficiencies. This takes us closer to our vision of being the fastest technology driven hiring platform.” says Abhijit Khasnis, Co-founder at Hiree.

“We are very convinced with the vision of Hiree.com, to improve the productivity in hiring and believe that their unique positioning of focusing on only active job seekers, has a huge potential.  More than 12,000 employers have registered on the portal in a very short time, an early indication of the huge opportunity”, says, Venkatesh Peddi, Partner and Executive Director at IDG Ventures India.

"The Hiree.com platform delivers unprecedented speed and pinpoint targeting. The outstanding Hiree.com team has from the ground up designed the next generation recruiting platform specifically for the on-demand ecosystem and generation." says Ravi Gururaj, Co-Founder of HBS Alumni Angels India.  

Fanatical Support for Office 365 Now Available

Rackspace, a managed cloud company, today announced that it will offer Fanatical Support and premium managed services for Microsoft Office 365, a leading cloud business productivity solution. With two new offerings, Fanatical Support for Office 365 and Rackspace Managed Services for Office 365, customers can purchase multiple Office 365 services from Rackspace including migration assistance and tier-one support, as well as premium managed services for Office 365 licenses not originally purchased from Rackspace.

Rackspace support for Office 365 is the newest addition to the Cloud Office at Rackspace portfolio, which offers customers the flexibility to choose from a broad set of fully-managed business productivity tools delivered on a variety of technology platforms to help meet customers’ communication and collaboration needs. Rackspace will resell and support six Office 365 plans with management services for SMB and mid-market customers including deployment and migration assistance, tier-one troubleshooting and prioritized Microsoft support escalations. Additionally, Rackspace will offer managed services for Office 365, including a dedicated support team, on Office 365 licenses purchased through Rackspace or directly from Microsoft for mid-market and enterprise customers.

Rackspace has supported Microsoft Exchange for more than eight years. This new announcement extends the relationship with Microsoft to support customers across the Office 365 suite who are looking for an increased level of support. According to Gartner, “as of 2Q14, only 10% of users (67 million) in the overall enterprise office market have moved to cloud office systems and most have focused on email, not the broad range of capabilities.” However, “after slow growth from 2007 to 2013, cloud office system adoption is accelerating. It will reach 25% of the market's total potential by the end of 2017, 50% by 2020 and 90% by the market's 20th birthday in 2027.

Rackspace support for Office 365 will include two solution offerings: 

• Fanatical Support for Office 365 – Rackspace will sell and offer tier-one support for six Office 365 business and enterprise plans including Office 365 Business Essentials, Business, Business Premium, ProPlus, Enterprise E1 and Enterprise E3. Customers will receive free Microsoft Exchange migrations and Fanatical Support from a team of Cloud Office specialists.

• Rackspace Managed Services for Office 365 – Rackspace will offer a premium level of support and advisory services for mid-market and enterprise-level customers on top of Office 365 plans through either Rackspace or Microsoft. This level of managed support includes Exchange migrations, onboarding and deployment assistance and tier-one troubleshooting, plus Advisory Services from a dedicated account team to help configure Office 365 to best fit customers’ unique business IT needs.

 “Microsoft Office 365 is one of the world’s most popular email and productivity solutions in the cloud, with a run rate of over $2.5 billion in 2014,” said Aziz Benmalek, vice president, Hosting Service Provider business at Microsoft. “As a leading managed cloud company, Rackspace is well positioned to offer premium support for Office 365 so customers have more variety when deciding on the support level that best suits their business needs. We are pleased to see Rackspace continue to expand our longstanding collaboration following them joining the Microsoft Cloud OS Network in November and now adopting Office 365 into their Cloud Office suite.”

Forum Showcases Solutions to Enable Indian Enterprises Implement GST

SAP India, a subsidiary of SAP SE reaffirmed its assurance to its customers and partners with regard to Goods and Service Tax (GST) reform in the country at the SAP GST India Forum in Delhi today. SAP will offer a range of localized solutions which have the Indian tax functionalities integrated within the business process to help companies transition to GST. At the forum SAP laid out its plan to address GST legislation and showcased solutions that will equip Indian enterprises to provide greater transparency and effective management practices to support their tax compliance requirements.

The corporate landscape for GST is rapidly evolving with the proposed amendments and is expected to impact the Tax Structure, Tax Incidence, Tax Computation, Utilization and Reporting leading to a complete overhaul of the current indirect tax system.  The SAP GST India Forum which was designed to assess the impact GST would have on the business processes across various industries, brought together an ecosystem that included decision makers, partners, customers and consultants.  Over 450 organizations and 1500 participants were present at the event.

Globalization Services (GS), the localization wing of SAP SE, has initiated a working model with customers by setting up individual workgroups, each of which focus on GST scenarios (including legal aspects) with respect to various industries, to ensure a smooth transition to GST.

The localized SAP GST solutions are designed to provide organizations with transformational opportunity by

·          Providing common infrastructure and services including document and file management as per Central and State Government guidelines

·          Building efficient and convenient interfaces with tax payers and tax administrators by leveraging SAP’s global experience

·          Facilitating, implementing and setting standards for providing common GST solution for corporates

·         Enriching and enabling  the SAP ecosystem in India to manage the transition effectively

As a technology pioneer SAP is playing a key role in the transition and enablement to the new taxation regime. With SAP solutions, Indian enterprises can now embrace GST with minimal disruption to their businesses.   

Incessant & NIIT Tech Enters Strategic Agreement For 51% Stake

Incessant Technologies, a global BPM specialist announced, that it has entered into a strategic agreement with NIIT Technologies Limited, a global IT solutions organization for a stake of 51 percent. Incessant will provide NIIT Technologies with the capability to be a significant player in the Digital Integration space with Digital Legacy Integration, Digitization and Automation of business processes for seamless customer experience.

Incessant Technologies is sharply focused in enabling its clients to automate and integrate business processes with digital front ends and currently has 300+ consultants who are certified practitioners. The company has strong relationships with 20+ clients and strong alliance partnerships with leading BPM platform providers like Pegasystems and Appian.

This partnership will enable Incessant Technologies to build new capabilities, invest in R&D expand in new geographies like North America and Europe and enter into new verticals such as Travel & Transportation.

Vijay Madduri, CEO Incessant Technologies stated that, “This agreement is a part of our strategic endeavour to build on our strengths and continue our growth trajectory. I am convinced that this association will offer our clients, partners and employees tremendous value by building a very strong and sustainable entity”.

On this agreement Sudhir Chaturvedi, COO NIIT Technologies states, “Incessant is a perfect match for NIIT Technologies both from being optimally positioned to capitalise on the digital integration opportunity and having a strong growth track record. Our combined strengths will enable our clients to address their growing needs in the Digital space”.

Incessant Technologies is a fast growing Company with FY’14 revenue of US$13.9Mn, estimated to report revenue of US$17Mn for FY’15.

Deb Deep Sengupta Takes Charge As New MD SAP Indian Subcontinent

SAP has announced the appointment of Deb Deep Sengupta as the new Managing Director for SAP Indian Subcontinent to drive its growth strategy and operations in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Based in New Delhi, Deb Deep Sengupta reports to Adaire Fox-Martin, President of SAP Asia Pacific Japan.

Deb Deep brings more than two decades of wide-ranging IT industry and management experience to the role, with a track record of increasing market share, winning key customers and leading effective teams. Deb Deep was most recently the Chief Operating Officer for SAP Indian Subcontinent where he provides leadership and direction to SAP’s multi-functional sales and operations organizations in India, driving continuous productivity improvements, and significantly contributing to the achievement of revenue and profitability objectives. He has been an integral part of SAP’s leadership team in India for the last decade, more than doubling the size of SAP’s enterprise business in India as the VP for Integrated Large Enterprise Business. Prior to this, he built the SME & Channels team in SAP India and catapulted its ecosystem business into the Top 3 SME business within SAP. Before joining SAP, Deb Deep held various Sales Management and leadership roles in IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which merged with HP.

“As India gears itself up as a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy in a hyper connected era, SAP remains ever relevant to support the transformation of Digital India,” said Adaire Fox-Martin, President of SAP Asia Pacific Japan. “We are confident that Deb Deep’s track record of customer engagements and deep knowledge of the industry will propel SAP India to continued success, as we increasingly deliver simplicity to our customers to address the complexities of hyper connectivity.”  

LocalOye Shifts HO to Bengaluru; To Hire 125 in City

LocalOye, a leading mobile marketplace for hiring local service professionals has announced the launch of its Bengaluru operations. LocalOye was one the first companies to diversify in to the local professional services market and has enjoyed an extremely successful stint in Mumbai. The startup which currently works with 3000 merchants in Mumbai will now be launching 20 new catagoeries of service in Bengaluru. The launch will also mark the shift of LocalOye’s headquarters from Mumbai to Bengaluru; purely to drive the expansion of its technology team and aggressively ramping up its business.

Commenting on the launch, Aditya Rao, CEO – LocalOye said, “The local services market has not witnessed any kind of innovation in the last decade. We took this as an opportunity  by delivering a mobile based solution to our customers and have successfully managed to do that in Mumbai. 1 lakh customers, 3,000 merchants with an average wallet size of Rs. 7,000 spread across 250 categories in Mumbai – we are looking at going past these numbers in Bengaluru. 28% of our customers give us repeat enquiries, clearly showcasing a trend in the shift in customer preferences.”

The LocalOye app uses an advanced recommendation engine to connect customers with high-quality service professionals within few minutes. Once the requirements have been posted, the vendors are notified and the user details like budget, location, timing etc are sent to them. After a service provider accepts the lead, LocalOye connects both the vendor and customer. This way the customer does not have to search or choose from multiple service providers.

Aditya further added, “We are focussed on our growth and are aiming at significantly scaling up our operations in Bengaluru. We intend to be the go-to platform to provide solutions for the customers’ daily problems by leveraging mobile technology.”

LocalOye, which recently concluded its round of Series A funding of US$5 million from Tiger Global Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners, is on a massive expansion drive. Aditya Rao further added, “Now that we have set up our base in Bengaluru, we will be ramping up our team from 25 to 150 employees in the coming months. It would have probably taken us 18-24 months in Mumbai, but in Bengaluru we should be able to grow much quicker.”

LocalOye will be tapping vendors in Bengaluru present across various service categories like Health & Fitness, Home Maintenance, Education, Events and more.  

Integrated ICT Framework of Smart City Mission On May 21

National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has shared its vision on the role of ICT in the 100 Smart Cities Mission. It also announced that a detailed report titled - “Integrated ICT and Geospatial Technologies Framework for 100 Smart Cities Mission” will be launched at the upcoming Smart City Expo in Delhi on May 21, 2015.

Over a 24 week effort, NASSCOM in partnership with several industry members and partners have built a framework to highlight the role of ICT in developing Smart Cities, and categorize ways and means to make relevant ICT interventions that will enable management of future smart cities in a sustainable and transparent manner. This effort was mounted by NASSCOM in response to the suggestion by the Ministry of Urban Development.

India is expected to witness a 3X increase in its urban population by 2031. This rapid urbanization is putting an additional pressure on Indian cities in terms of delivering basic city services and infrastructure to citizens and businesses. Therefore, there is a growing need to embrace innovative approaches to new city development and city management. A Smart City will effectively deliver public services to citizens and businesses with a balanced focus in terms of modernizing city infrastructure and leveraging technology to improve efficiency and capacity of city services. Therefore, it is important for all the stakeholders to think of an integrated framework and come together to build a smart and sustainable future for India.

The ICT Framework suggested by NASSCOM will address the unique challenges faced by the Indian Cities and provide an integrated perspective across the key pillars of physical infrastructure, social infrastructure, environmental and institutional (governance). The framework further defines and assesses the core of each sub system of a potential smart city, identifies ICT governance interventions, organizational requirements, and capability development needs at city levels.

Speaking on the occasion R. Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, said, “The Smart Cities Initiative is a much needed step as it aims to broad base urban infrastructure in the country. It is imperative that the ICT application / framework is integrated across the key infrastructure and environmental pillars, especially when procured as a component of individual infrastructure pillars. The report aims to demystify the role of ICT and enable State Governments and Urban Local Bodies to integrate ICT into their future City Master Plans. This also represents an opportunity for the industry to partner with the government, as the total ICT spending for Smart Cities can account for 10-15% of the overall budget. This would translate into as much as  US$30-40 bn over the next 10 years. We also thank the ministry of urban development for reaching out to NASSCOM to device appropriate strategies to leverage the capabilities of ICT in the overall development of India.  ”  

It is also very important that this program has synergies with vital national plans for Urban areas like Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Heritage City Development & Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY), and Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). Accordingly, this report also showcases how these initiatives are aligned with the Smart Cities planning and roll-out”.

Efficient usage of technology can help in the improvement of city sub systems to improve quality of life of citizens, and help improve urban management using mobile and internet channels. Developing Smart cities requires investment and therefore will need different financing institutions and models involving both public and private stakeholders.