Sagisu Bags the Prestigious GlobalTiE50 Award at TiEcon 2019

Sagisu a new age intracity logistics partner which is disrupting the transportation eco-system, recently bagged the sought-after TiE50 Award. Now in its tenth year, the award institutionalised by TiEcon is the world’s largest conference for tech entrepreneurs.

Through its proprietary Smart Hub and state-of-the-art technology, Sagisu is changing the fragmented Logistics Market by deploying technology, achieving efficiency, better volumes at lower costs to deliver state-of-the-art intracity transportation experience to customers.

Mithun Kadur, the Founder of Sagisu said, “We are the next generation urban freight service provider, specialising in intracity movements and catering to enterprise customers in their logistics needs. The award reciprocates the same value and vision we cherish the most – to fulfill the aspirations. Such appreciation from the industry boost our efforts and fuels us to work even harder for achieving our mission”.

The company known for its unique business and service model, with its offices in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad started its expansion plans for the entire South India by setting-up its operational offices in the two most important business hubs in the region. It’s a giant leap from the promising start-up which sets to increase its trucker’s fleet to 1000+ in the next 6months servicing 25+ clients in each city.

The initial area of service is aggregation business with primary focus on Ecommerce, Retail, Pharma, Logistics, Dairy & Farm Fresh, Real Estate and CPG sectors. Sagisu has hired initial employee strength of 15+ people in each of the two cities.  Both the regional offices are being led by General Managers with their past experiences from Paytm, Ola and the likes, supported by Supply Operation Managers, Territory Business Managers and the frontline Supply Executives.

“For over 27 years as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship and with a global footprint of half million entrepreneurs, enterprise executives, and investment professionals, at TiE Silicon Valley we take pride in the fact that we have created TiE50, a strong 10-year-old brand for recognising high potential startups,” said B.J. Arun, President, TiE Silicon Valley.

Now celebrating its tenth year, TiE50 Awards provides a one-of-a-kind showcase for the world’s top technology and technology-enabled startups. Since its inception, 84 percent of TiE50 winners and top startups have been funded at a total of over $1 billion. Many of these companies went on to acquisition or IPO with 29 of the exits at over $100 million.

About Sagisu: Sagisu was incorporated in May 2016 with an idea to be the new-age intra city logistics service provider who seamlessly integrates demand and supply between our Customers & Truckers. Based out from Bangalore, 'Sagisu' truly reciprocates its meaning - seamlessly move the goods from one place to another. The company addresses the core problem of a demand supply asymmetry between truckers & customers for intracity logistics with an integrated cutting-edge technology to provide a seamless & consistent experience. Guided by its values and beliefs, the company thrives on collaboration, cohesion, and fostering a culture where employees’ stands for ‘diversely equal’. Sagisu plans to further expand its operations in major cities across South India catering to more cities and clients supported by a highly skilled operations team.

Amazon India’s First Community Centre in Karnataka Celebrates Two Years of Transforming Lives

Amazon Cares, the CSR initiative of Amazon India had launched its first Community Centre in Karnataka in April 2017 to support 17 villages like K. Mallasandra, Besthamanahalli, Mayasandra and Samethanahalli, in Bangalore in line with its continued efforts for positive engagement with the ecosystem it operates in. The Community Centre set up in partnership with FORD India (Forum for Rural Development) has now completed two years of focused initiatives in education, health & hygiene, environment, livelihood & skill development and women empowerment. There are two Community Centres currently in the region with fourteen such centers across the country with the objective of achieving sustainable development.

“Keeping our vision in mind, over the past 2 years, we have created opportunities for close to 5,000 individuals to realize their potential in Karnataka and in turn supported the transformation of the lives of the local communities. We are committed to using our resources and infrastructure of innovation and technology to enable diverse communities succeed. We believe that through our sustained efforts we can help support India’s development” said Karuna Pande, Director, Customer Fulfilment, Amazon India.

Commenting on the same, Srinivas, Headmaster, Lower Primary School, Rachamanahalli village said “The Centre has created spaces for women, youth and children in our villages to learn various skills, become more computer literate, have access to books for reading and learn with educational aids. Over the past two years, by adopting better health and hygiene practices, we have witnessed a significant change in the quality of life. With the experience of Amazon India and the focus of our local community, we are confident of building a sustainable effort towards creating a better future for all of us.”

Education: Aligned with the National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM), the education support initiative enabled access to quality education for the community through digital literacy and has positively affected the lives of about more than 700 people so far. The centres have also imparted basic training sessions on computer skills, reading and writing workshops and career counselling sessions to women and youth that has enabled them to secure better job opportunities.

Amazon India has supported parents with Early Childhood Development sessions across 13 anganwadis in the villages where around 500 children in the age group of 2 -6 years ‘learn while they play’ through various activities. There are two libraries in these Centres, well equipped with thousands of carefully selected books ranging from school textbooks and encyclopedias to novels and competitive examination reference books that have helped more than 200 students in the region.

Livelihood: The livelihood initiative focused on creating awareness among the community members about government schemes that work towards supporting the marginalized and economically weaker sections of the society. The project has reached out to more than 700 beneficiaries of the community.         

Women Empowerment: In order to promote women empowerment, the centres have assisted around 1,200 local women to support their families financially by training them on vocational skills like Basic and Advanced Tailoring, a beautician course and so on. Many women were also provided sessions on micro-entrepreneurship, financial literacy and given exposure visits for practical learning.

Health and Hygiene: Amazon India promotes preventive healthcare through partnerships with the local medical community and government organizations. Some of the initiatives rolled out at the centres include awareness programs on cleanliness and household waste management, maternity care and menstrual hygiene to name a few. Besides this, regular health check-up camps are conducted for people across all age groups. Overall, around 1,700 adults and children have benefitted from these programs so far.

Amazon Cares demonstrates the philosophy of being ‘good neighbors’ through the activities undertaken in areas where Amazon India operates. The Company imbibes this philosophy to empower and engage its employees, customers, sellers, local communities and other stakeholders in its contributions to create opportunities and transform lives.

Dineout’s IPL 2019 Campaign -‘Predict & Win’ Receives Massive Participation

Dineout, India’s leading dining out and restaurant tech Solutions Company, today successfully concluded its IPL 2019 campaign – ‘Predict & Win’. Launched in the month of March 2019, the idea of the campaign was to leverage the cricket fever in India. The campaign attracted close to 42 lakh no of predictions and a whooping Rs.104 crore was given as cashbacks by Dineout.

Designed on the theme of ‘predict online and eat offline’, it focused  on bringing people together during the cricket matches and encouraged them to dine out at their favourite restaurant. The campaign was a hit right from the start as it crossed Rs. 20 crore cashback to users with over 1 million predictions within 10 days of its launch.

Commenting on the success of the campaign, Ankit Mehrotra, Co-Founder & CEO, Dineout said, “Indians loves IPL and they love food too. We launched the campaign with a thought to combine both and give people reason to dine out more and enjoy the season without burning a hole in their pocket. We are happy that millions of diners chose to participate in ‘Predict & Win’ and enjoyed their favourite meals at their favourite restaurants. I would like to thank our restaurant partners too who helped us in providing unique experience to millions of diners who utilized their earnings and enjoyed matches with their loved ones. I would also like to congratulate the final winner of this contest and am sure he will enjoy the upcoming World Cup live!”

‘Predict & Win’ is a game on the Dineout app, where users choose their winning teams and predict scores to win Dineout earnings to save upto Rs. 900 on restaurant bills everyday.

Along with these interesting insights, Dineout also announced the winner of the ‘Predict & Win’ contest who ended up winning the grand prize of a trip to London powered by IXIGO to see World Cup matches. Going with the kind of response the campaign has received, Dineout will continue with ‘Predict & Win’ during the World Cup too, giving its customers to dine out more.  

Nabard Unveils Venture Capital Fund for Agri Startups in Indian Market

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) Monday announced an Rs 700-crore venture capital fund for equity investments in agriculture and rural-focused startups.

NABARD has been contributing to other funds till now and this is the first time that the rural development bank has launched a fund of its own.

The fund has been launched by Nabventures, a subsidiary of NABARD, and has a proposed corpus of Rs 500 crore with an option to retain over-subscription of Rs 200 crore, called as the greenshoe option, an official statement said.

NABARD has given an anchor commitment for the fund, which will be investing across startups engaged in agriculture, food and rural development space, it said.

The statement said, the fund had its first close but details of the investments done by NABARAD and other limited partners, if any, were not immediately available.

The fund will have a high impact as it will provide a boost to investment ecosystem in the core areas of agriculture, food and improvement of rural livelihoods, NABARD chairman Harsh Kumar Bhanwala said.

Nabventures is now scouting for equity investments in asset-light, innovative, technology-led start-ups in its focus areas, the statement said.

Till now, NABARAD has contributed Rs 273 crore to 16 alternate investment funds, the statement said.

Bollywood Actor Deepika Padukone Invests in FMCG Brand Epigamia

Drums Food International, the parent company of fresh FMCG brand Epigamia, on Monday announced a multi-crore strategic partnership with Deepika Padukone, which includes an investment from the Bollywood actress.

The company, however, did not elaborate the funding amount.

“This investment is an extension of the recently closed series C round of funding led by Verlinvest, a Belgium-based consumer-focused investment firm, Danone Manifesto Ventures, the venture investment arm of one of the world’s leading food and beverage companies, and DSG Consumer Partners, an Asia focused VC (venture capital) fund,” Drums Food International said in a statement.

Brand Epigamia, on the back of the capital raised and the strategic partnership with Deepika, will now look to expand into new products and enter new cities, it added.

Launched in June 2015, Epigamia is currently available in 20 stock keeping units (SKUs) under greek yogurt, artisanal curd, snack pack, MishtiDoi and smoothies.

The brand retails across approximately 10,000 touch points, including modern trade chains, ecommerce and general trade retailers.

Subex Announces FY19 Results with Consolidated Revenue of ₹3,481M and EBITDA of ₹514M

Subex, a leading telecom analytics solution provider, today announced its consolidated financial results for the year ended March 31, 2019.

Performance Highlights for the year ended March 31, 2019:

Revenue for the year at ₹3,481 million as against ₹3,243 million in FY18, up by 7.3%.
EBITDA* for the year at ₹514 million as against ₹508 million in FY18, up by 1.1%.
Profit after Tax (PAT) for the year at ₹252 million as against ₹207 million in FY18, up by 21.7%.

Performance Highlights for the quarter ended March 31, 2019:

Revenue for the quarter at ₹1,019 million as against ₹823 million in FY19 Q3, up by 23.8%
EBIDTA* for the quarter at ₹269 million as against ₹76 million in FY19 Q3, up by 254%.
Profit after Tax (PAT) for the quarter at ₹129 million as against ₹21 million in FY19 Q3, up by 514%.

Highlights of the Year

Announced the launch of multi-vertical anomaly detection solution, CrunchMetrics with a market potential of $2.25B
Won multi-million-dollar contract from Optus to deploy its ROC Network Asset Management solution
Announced a multi-year partnership with Econet Wireless Zimbabwe to deploy Analytics Centre of Trust
Announced a 5-Year multi-million-dollar partnership with BTC to implement Integrated Revenue Assurance & Fraud Management, Partner Settlement, and Route Optimization solutions
Partnered with Telefonica on a new Cybersecurity Venture
Announced partnership with Town of Florence, Arizona to cyber-secure critical infrastructure
Awarded IoT Security Platform of the Year by Compass Intelligence
Awarded three Pipeline Awards for the Big Data & Analytics, Managed Services and Security & Assurance categories
Launched next-gen digital fraud prevention solution to help telcos proactively deal with existing and emerging fraud types

Appointments

Appointment of Mr. George Zacharias as an Independent & Non-Executive Director of the Company with effect from May 13, 2019

Vinod Kumar, Managing Director & CEO, Subex said, “This has been a year of moving from stability to growth phase for Subex. FY19 has been a successful year both from a strategy and execution perspective where we met expectations.

We started off the year by defining a 3-Horizon strategy with an objective to be the pioneers in Digital Trust across multiple verticals. We have reinvigorated our core offerings in Horizon 1 with the infusion of AI/ML, empowering our customers to embrace digital disruption. This has enabled us to significantly improve our competitive advantage and perform well on our core areas, thereby providing us the necessary platform to pursue newer growth areas. We have also successfully achieved targets that we had set for ourselves in the new offerings in Horizon II like IoT Security and Analytics, and the demand in these areas continues to grow. Further in line with our Horizon III plans, we launched CrunchMetrics, which has opened a huge addressable market for us. Both Horizon II and III offerings allow us to adopt subscription-based revenue models that presents us with exponential growth opportunities.

I am happy to state that all these efforts have resulted in us securing a 30% increase in new business acquisition over last year and thereby providing the necessary impetus for a stronger FY 20. Digital trust is emerging as a key pillar of digital economy and being a major player in this space will help in significant value creation for all our stake holders in the coming years.”

Mr. Anil Singhvi, Chairman, said “It gives me great pleasure to welcome Mr. George Zacharias as an Independent & Non-Executive Director. George is a very experienced business leader and we are extremely pleased to have someone of his caliber and expertise join our Board. On behalf of the board and everyone at Subex, I would like to welcome George to the Subex family.”

NetApp Powers Data-Driven Organizations to Succeed Globally

NetApp, the data authority for hybrid cloud, today announced NetApp ONTAP 9.6, the new midrange, end-to-end NVMe AFF A320 storage system and an expanded portfolio of services to help businesses maximize the value of their data.

NetApp’s cloud-connected flash solutions, an element of a Data Fabric strategy, provide the simplicity, operational efficiency and protection needed to support innovation, add unprecedented performance and power the most demanding data sets and technologies, such as artificial intelligence or 5G networks. Only NetApp delivers everything that companies need to build their own unique Data Fabric that spans public cloud, private cloud and on-premises environments. With NetApp solutions, this Data Fabric can deliver applications that engage users and can provide analytics that turn insights into a competitive advantage.

“As enterprises evolve to new, more data-centric business models where data is a key strategic resource, data availability requirements are on the rise,” said Eric Burgener, research vice president, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies Group, IDC.  “NetApp’s cloud-connected flash solutions, coupled with their Data Fabric strategy, provides the performance, availability, agility and simplicity enterprises undergoing digital transformation need in their hybrid cloud infrastructure to create and leverage innovative business opportunities.”

“In advances that are coming our way, like 5G networks, we can see that a company’s  ability to generate, gather and disseminate a massive volume of data will be enabled like never before and companies that aren’t ready are going to be overwhelmed,” said Joel Reich, executive vice president, Storage Systems and Software, NetApp. “With NetApp ONTAP, organizations can overcome the challenges introduced by these data-intensive technologies and cutting-edge innovations with a smart, powerful, and trusted solution that maximizes the value that organizations can derive from data.”

Maximizing Value in the Hybrid Cloud

By accelerating applications painlessly and by delivering simplicity and security for a future-proof infrastructure, ONTAP 9.6 data management software allows organizations of all sizes to maximize the value of data and take on new data-driven initiatives. ONTAP 9.6 includes the following enhancements:

Expanded NVMe over Fibre Channel (NVMe/FC) ecosystem now includes VMware ESXi, Microsoft Windows, and Oracle Linux hosts, in addition to Red Hat and SUSE Linux, with storage path resiliency. Organizations can experience NVMe/FC performance for most workloads.
FabricPool now supports Google Cloud Platform and Alibaba Cloud, in addition to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and IBM Cloud Storage. Organizations can lower the cost of primary storage by automatically tiering cold data to any major public cloud or to a NetApp StorageGRID® private cloud.
NetApp FlexCache® software now supports NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, allowing organizations to experience the benefits of FlexCache in hybrid cloud deployments.
Over-the-wire encryption for NetApp SnapMirror® technology and FlexCache increases security for data replication and remote caching.
NetApp MetroCluster™ IP support for entry-level NetApp AFF and FAS systems now makes business continuity a cost-effective option for organizations, taking advantage of existing customer IP networks between sites.

New Midrange End-to-End NVMe System

Last year NetApp introduced the AFF A800, the industry’s first end-to-end NVMe system with industry-leading performance and unmatched data services that are backed by the industry’s most effective Efficiency Guarantee. With this announcement, NetApp has extended these benefits to the midrange market. The AFF A320 system enables customers to:

Accelerate traditional and emerging enterprise applications such as artificial intelligence and deep learning, analytics, and databases with extremely low latency.
Reduce data center costs by consolidating applications with a powerful system.
Future-proof their environment with NVMe technology, 100GbE Ethernet, and cloud integration.

Expanded Services Portfolio to Meet Broader Customer Needs

Customers can rely on NetApp standards-based best practices and expert engineers to improve efficiency and performance and to protect against business disruption and data loss. NetApp’s expanded services portfolio now includes:

SupportEdge Prestige offers a high-touch, concierge level of technical support that resolves issues faster through priority call routing. Customers are assigned a designated team of NetApp experts and receive specialized reporting, tools, and storage environment health assessments.
Tiered Deployment Service accelerates time to value for new NetApp technology and reduces the risk of improper installation or misconfiguration. Three new high-quality options include Basic, Standard and Advanced Deployment, each aligned to customer business objectives.
Managed Upgrade Service is a remotely delivered service that reduces security risks by ensuring NetApp software is always up to date with all security patches and firmware upgrades.