LG Electronics Organizes ‘Blood Donation Drive’ Across Country

On the occasion of LG Electronics India’s 22nd anniversary, the company is extending its commitment towards the nation by organizing a mega blood donation drive across 47 cities today.

The CSR initiative is led in association with National Blood Transfusion Council (NBTC), Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India. The blood bank partners are Army Command Hospitals, Red Cross Society of India, Rotary, Lion’s, Govt. hospitals and others.

In addition to the blood donation camps across the country, this initiative also aims in spreading the awareness about this noble gesture of donating blood. LG rolled out this initiative through radio, digital and on-ground activations at retail stores inviting Indian citizens to donate blood and become a proud life savior.

Ki-Wan-Kim MD LG Electronics India said, “We at LG understand the importance of good health. Certainly, there is a need to create awareness around blood donation and through such initiatives, we hope to bring a positive change in society. This is yet another gesture from us to showcase our deep commitment and care for the Indian society. I am thankful to all donors who came forward for this cause”.

Commenting on this initiative, Umesh Dhal, Director and CRO-LG Electronics India said, “The most valuable gift a human can give to another is Blood. We can create blood relation with other fellow citizens and build a strong bond with the nation, this gesture will make us Proud Life Saviors. This can bring real strength to our nation”.

Manoj Mohandas, Regional Business Head said, “We are extremely proud to organize this mega CSR drive in our region. Our 22 years long journey in India is a remarkable milestone. ‘Let’s create blood relations’ is a step towards sensitizing and motivating citizens for blood donation.”

This initiative further strengthens LG's core essence of 'Life's Good' and showcases brilliantly how the brand wants to reach out to those who are in need of such assistance. It allows individuals to witness the power in their hands and how collaborative efforts can help transform lives. LG is proud to initiate this droive across India. #bandwithnation

Reebok Hosted its First Night Marathon- Float-A-Thon in B'lore

A global pioneer in the running and fitness innovation space, Reebok organised its first ever night marathon - Float-A-Thon, the most exhilarating night run of the season in Bengaluru. In line with Reebok’s efforts to encourage consumers to make fitness a way of life, this innovative 5km and 10km night run was led by Reebok Running Squad and runners of the city to experience and explore a different side of Bengaluru.

Upping up the excitement quotient of the night, Float-A-Thon was graced by actors Kriti Kharbanda and Karan Tacker, who supported the attendees while participating and challenging their own limits. The event commenced with an energetic and fun Zumba warm up for the participants, followed by an adrenalin charged flag off of the night marathon.

Speaking of the night marathon, actor, Kriti Kharbanda, said, “Reebok’s Float-A-Thon was such an actioner. It was motivating to witness such great participation from Bengaluru and people eager to make fitness a lifestyle choice. I am glad to have been associated with such an exciting event.”

Sharing his experience, actor, Karan Tacker, said, “Running has been an essential part of my fitness regime. Reebok’s Float-A-Thon gave me an opportunity to share my passion with Bengaluru and it was nothing less than a spectacle.”

This unique initiative curated by Reebok brought together the fitness enthusiasts of the city to celebrate running as a choice that they have taken up along with Reebok’s Floatride- its most technologically advanced running shoe.

Driving a wave of fitness in the city, the night was an expression of fun, passion, empowerment and solidarity. Through this night run, Reebok offered an opportunity to boost and motivate the runners that brought out their boundless potential!

Canara Bank Records Narrow Losses of Rs 551 Crore Due to Lower Bad Loans During Q4, 2019

Canara Bank, India's leading PSU bank on May 10, 2019 said its net loss narrowed multi-fold to Rs 551.53 crore for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018-19, mainly driven by lower provisioning for bad loans. The bank had posted a net loss of Rs 4,859.77 crore during the corresponding January-March period of the preceding fiscal.

"Total income of the bank during the March quarter rose to Rs 14,000.43 crore, compared to Rs 11,555.11 crore in the year-ago period," said R.A. Sankara Narayanan, MD & CEO of Canara Bank.

Total income of the bank during the March quarter rose to Rs 14,000.43 crore, compared to Rs 11,555.11 crore in the year-ago period, Canara Bank said in a regulatory filing.

For the full 2018-19 fiscal, the bank has posted a net profit of Rs 347.02 crore. There was a net loss of Rs 4,222.24 crore in 2017-18.

Total income during the fiscal was higher at Rs 53,385.30 crore as against Rs 48,194.94 crore a year earlier.

The Bengaluru-headquartered lender witnessed improvement in the asset quality with the gross non-performing assets (NPAs) falling to 8.83 per cent of gross advances at March-end 2019 compared to 11.84 per cent a year earlier, he said.

Net NPAs or bad loans stood at 5.37 per cent, compared with 7.48 per cent year ago.

In absolute-value, the gross NPAs were Rs 39,224.12 crore at March-end 2019, as against Rs 47,468.47 crore a year earlier. Likewise, the net NPAs stood at Rs 22,955.11 crore in the quarter under review, compared to Rs 28,542.40 crore.

There was also a reduction in provisioning requirement to the tune of Rs 5,120.85 crore in March quarter FY2019 as against Rs 8,762.57 crore parked aside in the year-ago period.

The overall provisioning and contingencies stood at Rs 5,523.50 crore, less than Rs 9,075.04 crore a year ago.

Canara Bank said, as per the RBI directive, it restructured as many as 41,602 MSME account as on March 31, 2019 with amount involving Rs 753.51 crore as a relief to them under Goods and Services Tax (GST).

During the quarter ended March 31, 2019, six fraud accounts were detected, amounting of Rs 704.06 crore, wherein the bank is required to provide Rs 429.87 crore, in addition to the provision of Rs 274.19 crore already provided up to December 2018, it said.

"The total amount provided during the quarter is Rs 107.47 crore, representing 25 per cent of the provision to be made. Further, the remaining unamortised provision amount is debited to other reserves, which will be amortised during first three quarters of next financial year," it added.

During the March quarter, the bank allotted 2 crores equity shares at Rs 186 each under Employee Share Purchase Scheme, the lender said.

Provision coverage ratio as on March 31, 2019 stood at 68.13 per cent, as against 58.06 per cent a year ago.

Shares of Canara Bank closed 3.21 per cent up at Rs 265.45 apiece on the BSE.

Seagram’s Royal Stag Unveils Limited-Edition Cricket World Cup Pack

Royal Stag, the official whisky partner of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, is truly making the cricket fever larger than ever with the launch of a new limited-edition Cricket World Cup pack.

The limited edition packaging has been conceptualised & designed by Ogilvy & is inspired by the actual ICC World Cup Trophy. The innovative packaging design represents elements from the sport of cricket along with iconic monuments from England & Wales. The pack truly embodies the spirit of cricket & has been launched just before the start of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 being held in England and Wales.

Commenting on the launch of new packaging, Kartik Mohindra, Chief Marketing Officer, Pernod Ricard India said, “For Indian fans, The ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 goes beyond the boundaries of a regular sporting event. The passion, madness, thrill, excitement and love for the sport can be seen in every devoted cricket lover. Our long-standing association with cricket bolsters our relationship with consumers across the nation. By introducing a limited-edition Cricket World Cup pack, we are giving cricket lovers a world cup memorabilia to hold on to & together celebrate the spirit of cricket. Additionally, the on pack contest offers consumers a chance to watch the ICC Cricket World Cup Live in England & Wales”

Speaking on the occasion, Kapil Arora, President, Ogilvy said, “Cricket and Royal Stag have been synonymous with one another for many years. However, when the brand decided to partner with the ICC Cricket World Cup, the world’s greatest festival of cricket - it deserved a special commemoration. The result is a limited-edition pack of Royal Stag that will give fans of the brand and cricket, an opportunity to collect a unique pack that celebrates and brings alive the spirit of the World Cup.” 

Emirates Group Records 31st Consecutive Year of Profit of US$ 631 million at 2018-19 Results

Key Highlights 

Group records 31st consecutive year of profit of AED 2.3 billion (US$ 631 million)

Strong business growth leading to a record revenue of more than AED 109 billion (US$ 29.8 billion)
Solid cash balance of AED 22.2 billion (US$ 6.0 billion)
Declares a dividend of AED 500 million (US$ 136 million) to the Investment Corporation of Dubai. 
Emirates reports a profit of AED 871 million (US$ 237 million), 69% down from the previous year

Revenue increases by 6% to AED 97.9 billion (US$ 26.7 billion), supported by steady passenger and cargo performance
Airline capacity crosses 63 billion ATKM with a net addition of 2 new aircraft to the fleet
dnata makes record profit of AED 1.4 billion (US$ 394 million), which includes AED 321 million (US$ 88 million) gain from one-time sale of HRG stake

Revenue increases by 10% to AED 14.4 billion (US$ 3.9 billion), reflecting further business expansion with international business now accounting for 70% of revenue
Expands global footprint with acquisition of Qantas catering in Australia and 121 Inflight catering business in the Americas, adds new facilities and service capabilities across its airport operations, catering, and travel services divisions

The Emirates Group today announced its 31st consecutive year of profit and steady business expansion.

Released today in its 2018-19 Annual Report, the Emirates Group posted a profit of AED 2.3 billion (US$ 631 million) for the financial year ended 31 March 2019, down 44% from last year. The Group’s revenue reached AED 109.3 billion (US$ 29.8 billion), an increase of 7% over last year’s results. The Group’s cash balance was AED 22.2 billion (US$ 6.0 billion), down 13% from last year mainly due to large investments into the business, including significant acquisitions and payment of last year’s AED 2 billion (US$ 545 million) dividend. 

In line with the overall profit, the Group declared a dividend of AED 500 million (US$ 136 million) to the Investment Corporation of Dubai for 2018-19.

His Highness (H.H.) Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive, Emirates Airline and Group, said: “2018-19 has been tough, and our performance was not as strong as we would have liked. Higher oil prices and the strengthened US dollar eroded our earnings, even as competition intensified in our key markets. The uptick in global airfreight demand from the previous year appears to have gone into reverse gear, and we also saw travel demand weaken, particularly in our region, impacting both dnata and Emirates.

“Every business cycle is different, and we continue to work smart and hard to tackle the challenges and take advantage of opportunities. Our goal has always been to build a profitable, sustainable, and responsible business based in Dubai, and these principles continue to guide our decisions and investments. In 2018-19, Emirates and dnata delivered our 31st consecutive year of profit, recorded growth across the business, and invested in initiatives and infrastructure that will secure our future success.”

In 2018-19, the Group collectively invested AED 14.6 billion (US$ 3.9 billion) in new aircraft and equipment, the acquisition of companies, modern facilities, the latest technologies, and staff initiatives, a significant increase over last year’s investment spend of AED 9.0 billion (US$ 2.5 billion).

In February, Emirates announced a commitment for 40 A330-900s and 30 A350-900s worth US$ 21.4 billion at list prices in an agreement signed with Airbus, to be delivered from 2021 and 2024 respectively. The airline will also receive 14 more A380 deliveries from 2019 until the end of 2021, taking its total A380 order book to 123 units.

dnata’s key investments during the year included: the acquisitions of Q Catering and Snap Fresh in Australia, and 121 Inflight Catering in the US; the buy-out of shares to become the owner of Dubai Express, Freightworks LLC; and a 51% majority stakeholder of Bolloré Logistics LLC, UAE; the build of new cargo and pharma handling facilities in Belgium, the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, Singapore and Pakistan; the acquisition of German tour operator Tropo, and a majority stake in BD4travel, a company providing artificial intelligence driven IT solutions in the travel sector.

Across its more than 120 subsidiaries, the Group’s total workforce increased by 2% to 105,286, representing over 160 different nationalities, mainly influenced by dnata’s new acquisitions and its international business expansion.

Sheikh Ahmed said: “In 2018-19, we were steadfast with our cost discipline while expanding our business and growing revenues. By slowing the recruitment of non-operational roles, and implementing new technology systems and new work structures, we’ve improved productivity and retarded manpower cost increases.”

He concluded: “It’s hard to predict the year ahead, but both Emirates and dnata are well positioned to navigate speed bumps, as well as to compete and succeed in the global marketplace. We must continually up our game, that’s why we invest in our people, technology, and infrastructure to help us maintain our competitive edge. As a responsible business, we also invest resources towards supporting communities, conservation and environmental initiatives, as well as incubating talent and innovation that will propel our industry in the future.”

Data Literacy Project Announces Community Forum Dedicated to Fostering a More Data Literate Society

Today the Data Literacy Project, the community dedicated to making a data literate world, announced the launch of its official community forum – an online destination where individuals and organizations can engage with industry leaders and influencers to share ideas that fuel data literacy.

An essential skill in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, data literacy empowers everyone to ask questions of data and machines, build knowledge, make decisions and communicate its meaning with others. The Data Literacy Project, which was launched by founding partners Qlik, Accenture, Cognizant, Experian, Pluralsight, Chartered Institute of Marketing and Data to the People in October 2018, aims to create a more data literate society and places data literacy at the heart of individual and organizational success.

This official community forum will be the epicentre of the data literacy conversation, where people can have their questions answered, start discussions around the most important and relevant topics, share tips and ideas, and ultimately give back by supporting others to shape a successful, data literate world.

Last month, the Data Literacy Project announced the launch of its Advisory Board with eight key appointments: Jordan Morrow, Qlik; Paul Malyon, Experian; Jane Crofts, Data To The People; Rahul Bhargava, MIT; Meri Rosich, VISA; Chantilly Jaggernauth, Millennials and Data; Ben Jones, Data Literacy, LLC; and Alan Schwarz, DataPhi Communications, LLC.

These data literacy thought leaders will also be active on the forum to provide impartial, third-party strategic counsel and direction in support of the Data Literacy Project’s three commitments:

Inspiring major organizations globally to make data literacy an imperative
Creating the most accessible and comprehensive global data literacy educational resource ecosystem
Empowering educational institutions globally to place data literacy into the mainstream curriculum

“The new community forum will further aid us in our mission to create a more data literate society,” said Jordan Morrow, Chair of the Data Literacy Project Advisory Board and Global Head of Data Literacy at Qlik. “As the Data Literacy Project’s community continues to grow, we’re excited to provide a space that will foster constructive conversations and allow us to spread our message on the importance of data to individuals around the world.”

The community forum is now live on the Data Literacy Project website at www.thedataliteracyproject.org/forum.

Nutanix Expands Private and Public Cloud into Multicloud Solution Portfolio for Customers

Nutanix, Inc., a leader in enterprise cloud computing, has announced the continued evolution of its offerings across private and public clouds, further making multicloud computing a reality for its customers. With today’s news Nutanix is extending its Xi Frame desktop-as-a-service solution from the public cloud to the private cloud, enabling the delivery of apps and desktops in a true hybrid cloud environment. In addition, the company is announcing new functionality and additional planned availability zones for its cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) service, Xi Leap.

According to the ​IDC InfoBrief, Sponsored by Nutanix​, “Surviving and Thriving in a Multi-cloud World,” multicloud deployments are now the norm for enterprise organizations – less than 30% of customers report using single cloud environments. Most customers leverage different cloud platforms across multiple service providers. The interoperability of data and applications between these varied cloud environments is growing in importance and yet access to hybrid cloud capabilities where a single application runs across clouds remains elusive to most organizations. As companies eagerly seek out ways to make the multi cloud environment a reality, these new updates from Nutanix provide additional capabilities to streamline the implementation of their cloud services deployments.

Introducing Nutanix Xi Frame for the Private Cloud

With Nutanix Xi Frame customers can already access applications and virtual desktops from popular public clouds like AWS and Azure, simply and easily, using any browser and any device. With the latest Xi Frame update running on the Nutanix AHV hypervisor, customers can now extend desktop delivery to their Nutanix private cloud, integrating virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) services with the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud platform. Xi Frame desktops can be simultaneously delivered via multiple clouds and managed via a single console for seamless control and administration, providing a true hybrid experience.

In addition to being available to users on AWS and Azure, Xi Frame is now also available to customers worldwide for Nutanix private cloud deployments using AHV. Customers can provision 1000s of virtual desktops in minutes as opposed to weeks enabling them to improve the economics, speed and scale of desktop delivery. IT teams can now select the right cloud - public or private - for their VDI initiatives.

Extending the Reach of Cloud-based DR to More Regions with Nutanix Xi Leap

As enterprises continue to embrace cloud services, and enterprise infrastructures become more virtual, data and IT operations are rapidly migrating to the cloud. When done right, cloud-based disaster recovery is an attractive strategy for any size organization to protect their business-critical applications. Nutanix Xi Leap extends the enterprise datacenter to the cloud allowing IT teams to harmonize public and private clouds, and to deliver enhanced availability for critical data and applications. Customers get a natively-integrated DR cloud service, and single pane management, to protect critical workloads running in the datacenter ​and in a cloud, delivering improved business continuity.

Nutanix is adding new capabilities to its Xi Leap DR service, including:

New Availability Zones: ​Nutanix Xi Leap is expanding beyond its current availability zones in US West, US East and the U.K. In the coming months, additional Xi Leap availability zones are expected to be available in Italy, through Nutanix’s partnership with Sparkle, the international services arm of Telecom Italia Group, as well as in Japan and Germany.
Support for ESXi: ​Xi Leap now also provides DR services for enterprise workloads running on Nutanix private clouds using VMware ESXi, making it even simpler to transform existing applications into a hybrid service.

“With previous disaster recovery systems, we weren’t able to achieve the performance we expected for virtual machine restoration and managing DR as a separate silo made our infrastructure more complex,” said Patrick Sudderth, Director of Technical Services, Lexipol. “Nutanix Xi Leap allows us to configure policies that automate the DR workflow directly within the Prism Console and restoration happens in a matter of minutes. No other DRaaS vendor can come close to the simplicity of execution we experience with Xi Leap.”

Securing Cloud Applications

Fundamental to delivering applications in a multicloud architecture is ensuring that applications remain secure - independent of the cloud infrastructure chosen. Comprehensive and automated compliance assessments are necessary to ensure application mobility between clouds. Xi Beam, a Nutanix SaaS offering that provides cloud governance, will include a real-time security compliance module designed to identify critical cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities and recommend specific remediation. With new security and compliance functionality, IT architects will be enabled to fix security risks before they impact the business.

“The multicloud world is the new reality for IT - it’s no longer up for debate. Customers need solutions that can bring together the full mix of public, private, and edge clouds that will soon make up their critical infrastructure without drowning them in needless complexity and unchecked costs,” said Sunil Potti, Chief Product and Development Officer, Nutanix. “By continuing to add new capabilities to our portfolio, we’re giving customers the freedom to deliver their applications and data from the cloud that makes the most sense for their business.”

Availability

Nutanix Xi Frame for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform deployments using AHV is available now. Xi Leap services are currently live in several availability zones including US West, US East and the U.K. Additional availability zones are planned for Italy, Germany and Japan in CYQ3’19. Nutanix Xi Beam is already generally available for cloud governance and optimization. The real time security compliance capabilities in Xi Beam are currently available to certain customers in early access, with general availability expected in CYQ2'19.