Micromax Introduces New Range of Window and Split Air Conditioners

Reinforcing its vision to be a leading consumer electronics company, Micromax Informatics, India’s leading mobile brand, today introduced a new range of Air conditioners, to strengthen its presence in the AC market. This will be the first year to see a complete line-up of ACs from Micromax, after it successfully introduced ACs as a pilot project last year in June 2016. The range comprises of 07 split ACs and 01 Window AC right at the onset of the peak summer season in India.

To begin with, the focus markets will be the top 10 states (Punjab, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Telangana and Tamil Nadu) where Micromax has established a strong distribution with over 4000 sales touch points and backed it up with 400+ service centres to ensure strong after sales service support. In addition to the traditional retail touch points, the products will also be made available through leading E-commerce websites, in the months to come.

Commenting on the launch, Rohan Agarwal, Vice President, Consumer Electronics, Micromax Informatics Ltd. said, “We are bullish on the Indian air conditioner market and have invested heavily in building a strong product portfolio, a robust distribution network to ensure wide presence and best-in-class service experience.  Being a dominant consumer electronics player, Micromax enjoys a strong brand equity and our success in these segments has given us the confidence to foray into a new product category. The key differentiators for our ACs is the local innovation that we have built as per consumer feedback (100% copper two-way drainage, turbo cooling etc.), along with the right implementation. We believe that as a brand we are very well entrenched to grow this category.”

He further added, “At Micromax, we realize that service is of utmost importance in order to connect with the last mile. We are introducing the Micromax Home Assist application for our AC and TV consumers to help facilitate, raising any enquiry or complaints with utmost ease and faster redressal. We want to replicate the same success that we have witnessed in the LED TVs segment and achieve a double digit market share over the next 3 years in AC segment as well.”

Capital Float Nominated for Emerging Small Business Lending Platform of the international LendIt Industry Awards

LendIt, the world’s largest Fintech conference-recently announced - that they have selected Capital Float as a finalist in the Emerging Small Business Lending Platform category. Capital Float is India’s leading digital lending platform to SMEs. The Emerging Small Business Lending Platform finalists were chosen on their capability to demonstrate the greatest potential to impact the future of small business lending in the world. Capital Float is the only Asian representative in the category.

Capital Float was nominated as a finalist out of hundreds of applicants worldwide and by more than 30 industry experts who judged finalists representing innovation, emerging talent and top performers. Capital Float will compete for top honors within its award category at The LendIt Awards Ceremony on March 7 at the LendIt conference in New York City.

“Having been on the front lines of emerging and later stage Fintech companies for the past five years, we wanted to unveil our own best of the best industry accolades,” said Jason Jones, Co-Founder, LendIt. “We were positively overwhelmed with the high number and high caliber of entrees. These finalists represent some of the most innovative companies that are radically improving financial services through technology.”

“We are thrilled to be shortlisted for the LendIt Awards. This nomination is another feather in our cap of being the leading digital lending platform in India. LendIt offers a great platform for us to showcase our disruptive products to more than 5000 of our industry peers spanning across 40 countries,” said Gaurav Hinduja, Co-founder and MD, Capital Float. “We are proud to represent India at such a prestigious forum. This further boosts our confidence to continue innovating and serving the SME market,” he adds.

CASHe Disburses 1 Crore Loans Per Day and Aims At 30 Crore Disbursements by March 2017

Aeries Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a fin-tech company promoted by serial entrepreneur and private equity investor V. Raman Kumar, today announced that CASHe, India’s fastest loan giving app for young salaried professionals is now disbursing loans well over 1 Crore per day in less than a year of operations. CASHe now processes an average of 450 loan applications per day for young salaried professionals. CASHe is now India’s leading and most preferred fintech company in the personal lending space.

Launched in April 2016, CASHe offers loans based on a combination of Big Data Analytics and proprietary Artificial Intelligence based algorithm, the Social Loan Quotient, which enables loan disbursal within 8 minutes.

“We have seen a fantastic response to our loan products with a month-on-month 45% growth in customer base and 60% growth in disbursal value in the past few months,” said V. Raman Kumar, Chairman, Aeries Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd. “Our loan disbursements now stand at 1 crore per day and we have achieved a significant milestone of processing over 450 loan applications on a daily average – all this within a year of setting up our operations. We are now well set to disburse loans worth 30 crores for March 2017. CASHe has embarked on a tremendous growth trajectory to achieve a loan disbursement value of Rs 100 crore for the month of December 2017. We have leveraged innovative technology along with our proprietary Artificial Intelligence based algorithm platform, the Social Loan Quotient, to make loan disbursal hassle free for our customers, leading to over 70 percent of them returning for fresh loans.” he added.

CASHe provides hassle-free loans with its app enabled documentation and loan disbursal/repayment process. Powered by its industry-first algorithm driven credit scoring platform, The Social Loan Quotient (SLQ), CASHe quickly determines a user’s credit worthiness by using multiple unique data points to arrive at a distinct credit profile of the customer. SLQ is transforming the traditional credit rating measurements thereby providing immediate loans to the under-served young professionals who are kept out by traditional credit rating and banking systems. CASHe is completely automated and requires no personal intervention and no physical documentation. The average time taken for a loan to be disbursed is about 8 minutes, subject to proper submission of all documents.

Nearly 1/5th Wallet Transactions on FreeCharge Driven by Online Partners

Amidst increasing digital payments push and awareness amongst consumers, FreeCharge has announced that it is witnessing a major chunk of its transactions coming through online partners. Nearly 20% of the wallet transactions happening on the platform are on either one of the online merchant partners. This is closely followed by offline partnerships wherein Fuel and Food are the top 2 categories driving adoption and transaction.

In the offline space, fuel refilling and dine-out or food orders are driving growth for the firm. On a percentage basis, Fuel right now comprises 39% of the daily offline merchant transactions while the same figure for the food category stands at 29%. This is basis the fact that both these categories drive high repeat usage on the part of the customer and builds the digital transaction habit for the consumers.

FreeCharge had recently announced its plan of on-boarding 1 million merchants in the next 12 months already has a lot of online partners and will increasingly focus on offline space to meet the target. The company has already on boarded nearly 18,000 petrol pumps in the top 20 cities for example and plans to cover petrol pumps associated with HPCL, IOCL and BPCL pan India in a period of 2 months.

With an increasing focus on the less cash economy, FreeCharge is increasingly focusing on both online and offline partnerships to enhance its digital footprint in the payment space. Few of the prominent online merchants for the wallet firm include irctc, foodpanda, swiggy, bookymyshow, redbus, zomato amongst many others. In the offline space the prominent partners include McDonalds (West and South), Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop, Café Coffee day, Barista, Heritage Fresh and many others.

Speaking on the development, Sudeep Tandon, Chief Business Officer - FreeCharge said, “Partnerships with varied offline and online merchants form the bedrock of FreeCharge acceptance in the payments landscape. FreeCharge has witnessed a great response from the tech savvy online consumer base in terms of adoption and repeat usage. With the increased push on digital economy, we have recently seen the same happening in the offline space as well, which is a very promising trend for us. Our teams are working towards the goal of making FreeCharge the default payment app on the consumer's home screen and we wish to achieve this very soon.”

Snapdeal, Truecaller Partner to Make Your Shopping Experience Frictionless

Snapdeal, India’s largest online marketplace, has partnered with Truecaller, one of the leading communication apps in the world to enhance consumer experience by integrating Truecaller Priority in the company’s IVR and order confirmation numbers. Customers with Truecaller app installed on their mobiles will be able to easily identify and filter IVR or delivery verification calls when shopping on Snapdeal.

Any calls received by users who have placed an order on Snapdeal, while be clearly marked as ‘Snapdeal Order Team’ or ‘Snapdeal Delivery Team’, and color coded in purple; thus, assuring the users that the call is important and from a reliable source, not spam.

Jayant Sood, Chief Customer Experience Officer, at Snapdeal said, “We are very pleased to bring the Truecaller Priority feature to our platform. It will help reduce a key friction point in the delivery process; ensuring that our customers don’t miss out on any important calls from Snapdeal, and also increase the daily rate of deliveries for us by increasing the call completion rate.” 

Besides boosting customer satisfaction and ensuring that customers are always in the know about the status of their product, this feature will also reduce the rate of “no response” calls for Snapdeal.

“We constantly strive to enhance the user experience through safe and efficient products. With Truecaller Priority, Snapdeal ensures enhanced efficiency in its user communications while users get to know that call is critical and for relevant reasons. We are confident that such seamless experience will add immense value to both sides” said Arun Krishnan, Director, Strategic Partnerships at Truecaller. 

239 Students from 19 Design Institutes Participate in India Aerospace Design Challenge 2017

Honeywell has announced the winners of the fourth edition of India Aerospace Design Challenge, the annual competition sponsored by Honeywell to attract and develop talent in India for its growing Aerospace industry. The company announced the winners on India’s National Science Day, celebrated each year to mark the discovery of the Raman effect by Indian physicist and Nobel Laureate Sir Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman on February 28, 1930.

The 2017 Honeywell India Aerospace Design Challenge drew the participation of 239 students from 19 design institutes across India. The students were charged with designing a user-friendly, enhanced situational awareness solution for Aerospace communication, navigation and surveillance. Akhil Patel and Harmeet Singh from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and Harshika Jain and Salil Parekh from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, were announced winners of this year’s contest at the award ceremony held at the Honeywell campus in Bangalore.

“I’m delighted to meet the brilliant design students at the Aerospace Design Challenge 2017. They are India’s future for building human-centered software industrial solutions for our country,” said Dr. Akshay Bellare, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Technology Solutions, India, Honeywell’s technology development and engineering arm. “As Honeywell transforms into a software industrial company with about half of its 23,000 global engineers working on software, we know that digital and physical solutions will become more and more connected to change the way we live and work. Domain knowledge will become very important, and we’re committed to nurturing Indian engineering talent and building Make in India solutions to support rapid growth in the country.”

“I’m very excited about winning the Honeywell’s fourth Aerospace Design Challenge,” Akhil Patel said at the award ceremony.  “Moreover, it is a great opportunity for students like us to showcase our design capability and how our designs can help improve existing processes and create solutions to tackle present-day challenges in India.”

Started in 2014, the Honeywell India Aerospace Design Challenge is an annual contest for college students to design innovative solutions addressing specific needs of the Indian aviation industry. More than 650 students from 20 institutes in both aviation and design fields have participated in the yearly competition.    

Three-Day Mega Science Fair at GMHP School, Jakkur to commemorate National Science Day

To commemorate National Science Day, Agastya International Foundation organized a three-day mega science fair at Government Model Higher Primary (GMHP) School, Jakkur Village in Bengaluru from February 26 – 28, 2017. The students from GMHP School displayed science models to explain complex scientific concepts through simple experiments – learnt as part of the Honeywell Science Experience program at the school.

Through its uniquely scalable, hands-on teaching-learning method, the program aims to foster child and teacher participation in experiential learning, and boost science education. To promote science education among other children, the students from GMHP School demonstrated close to 100 scientific phenomena, including solar and lunar eclipse, seasonal changes, and concepts such as pressure and volume relationship, and the formation of insulin with protein chains, at the mega science fair. More than 3,000 children, including students from nearby schools, attended the science fair and experienced the Honeywell Science Experience center and mobile science lab at the school. 

  “Peer-to-peer learning instills confidence, improves communication, and helps students understand complex scientific methods in a more agile way. As we run one of the largest hands-on science education programs for economically disadvantaged students, it becomes crucial for us to introduce unique ways to nurture creativity and boost confidence. We hope that peer-to-peer teachers will catalyze a movement across India.” said, Ramji Raghavan, Founder and Chairman, Agastya. “Support from partners like Honeywell India will continue to be critical to foster a new generation of science professionals in the country,” he explained.

Munirajappa, school principal, said, “I have seen tremendous change in the way students collaborate and learn at the science center. I think it fills a critical gap in our infrastructure and provides a great platform for students who want to acquire an in-depth understanding of science.”

Vikas Chadha, President, Honeywell India, said, “The Honeywell Science Experience not only enables students to understand complex scientific concepts, but helps them realize their natural potential for learning and prepares them for leadership and proactive community engagement.” He explained, “Being one of the world’s leading technology companies, Honeywell understands the importance of STEM education and its impact on the global economy.”

Launched in August 2016, the Honeywell Science Experience reaches more than 48,000 students and 600 teachers in Gurgaon, Delhi, and Bangalore through 11 unique experiential science centres, 10 mobile labs, and 1,100 student mentors.