Goldman Sachs Invests $250 Million and Opens New Bengaluru Office

Goldman Sachs, a leading global investment bank, today announced a major milestone in its continued growth in India with the opening of its new $250 million Bengaluru office. Located at Helios Business Park, 150 Outer Ring Road (“150 ORR”), the new office will serve as a global center supporting innovation at the intersections of technology and financial services.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David M. Solomon said: “The Bengaluru office has grown in size and technological sophistication to become an incubator of talent for our businesses around the world. The significant investment we have made to build this state-of-the- art workplace reflects the importance placed on the high-quality work done in India and our focus on hiring the best people.”

The Bengaluru operations started in 2004. Today it has employees over 5,000 professionals and is Goldman Sachs’ third largest office in the world by headcount and an integral part of the firm’s global activities, especially in the arena of technology where it has the second largest number of engineers after the firm’s New York headquarters.

Over the past five years, the Bengaluru office headcount has grown at approximately 24 percent CAGR (year-over-year growth rate). During the same period, Goldman Sachs has also increased campus hiring of full-time employees in India by 20 percent. In the past two years, engineering campus recruitment in India has increased by more than 60 percent (full-time hires and interns). In 2018, Goldman Sachs recruited from 89 Indian universities and post-graduate programs.

Gunjan Samtani, head of Goldman Sachs in Bengaluru, said: “Our Bengaluru office has become one of the firm’s global centers of innovation focused on the development and application of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics to help solve business problems for our worldwide network. The world-class facilities built into 150 ORR, which is a name that commemorates the firm’s 150th anniversary this year, will enable our people to further locally
innovate and collaborate with our offices around the world.”

In addition to developing successful, long-term domestic careers, the office has also been a global exporter of exceptional talent. For the past five years, over 700 Indian professionals, who started their careers at Goldman Sachs in Bengaluru, have relocated internationally to 30 Goldman Sachs offices around the world, including New York, London, Hong Kong and San Francisco, across global divisions and business units, including Securities, Investment Banking, Research and Technology.


In 2014, Goldman Sachs first broke ground for the construction of the new Bengaluru office. Reflecting the firm’s broader commitment to sustainability, 150 ORR has been designed to achieve LEED Platinum i and WELL Gold certifications ii. It is one of the largest commercial office buildings in India to achieve such high ratings.

Designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, who also designed Goldman Sachs’ global headquarters 200 West in New York, the new Bengaluru office has 1.2 million square feet of building area housed within three 10 story towers connected at the ground level and a capacity for approximately 7,300 employees. 150 ORR features world-class health, fitness and childcare facilities adjacent to 2.5 acres of landscaped outdoor parks and courtyards with over 400 trees.

In 2018, Goldman Sachs Bengaluru was named to LinkedIn’s “Top 25 Companies: Where India Wants to Work Now” list and the “100 Best Companies for Women in India” list by Working Mother & AVTAR.

Baby Cleanne Papillon is Perhaps the 3rd Miracle Baby in the World with a Shared Heart

Team of doctors at Narayana Health City performed the world’s first PDA stenting as well as region’s first thoracopagus separation surgery and saved the life of baby Cleanne Papillon. Hailing from Mauritius, Baby Cleanne Papillon was one of the conjoined twins who had a shared heart with her sister.

Born to Mrs. and Mr. Ian Papillon, the babies were thoracopagus twins. Generally in thoracopagus twins the bodies are joined from the neck to the upper abdomen, however, in this case their heart were also joined. Instead of four chambers for each, together, they had seven chambers. As their survival required expert care, the Mauritian health department reached out to hospitals abroad. However, as it was a complex case with negligible chances for survival, many of the hospitals in Europe and other Asian countries were not open to consider the case. Narayana Health City stood up as a Good Samaritan and took up this challenging case owing to their vast experience in handling complex pediatric cases.

As the children shared a heart and were not in a position to even breathe, they were supported by hand pumps for oxygen through the journey. As soon as they arrived, the multi-disciplinary team under the aegis of Dr. Ashley D’Cruz, Director & Sr. Consultant Pediatric Surgeon & Urologist, Dr Sanjay Rao, Sr consultant – Paediatric Surgery and Organ Tranplant, Dr. Shreesha Shankar Maiya, Consultant – Paediatric Cardiology and Electrophysiology, Dr. Riyan Shetty, Consultant Critical Care Services & Head of Extracorporeal Life Support, Dr Ganesh Sambandamoorthy, Consultant – Anaesthesia & Critical Care and Dr. Harini Sreedharan, Consultant Neonatology, did a thorough examination of the babies. Considering the babies had a shared heart and survival chances were bleak, multiple specialties had to deliberate to find a way to save at least one of them. With the parents consent the team of doctors started the treatment. The doctors put them on intensive care. The intensive care team under the leadership of Dr. Riyan Shetty and Dr Ganesh Sambandamoorthy ensured the babies were stabilized faster. Once they were stabilized, PDA stenting was performed to improve the condition of the heart.

Elaborating about PDA (Patent Ductus Arteriosus) stenting, Dr. Shreesha Shankar Maiya, Consultant – Paediatric Cardiology and Electrophysiology said, “Open surgery was not a choice in this case as the children were conjoined from the thorax region. Further, their heart was fused and the chambers were merged making their case a complex and unsuitable one for any surgical treatment. PDA (Patent Ductus Arteriosus) stenting is interventional procedure wherein a stent is placed in the PDA and the blood flow from the heart is maintained. The intervention was successful and they were oxygenated well.”

While the intervention was successful, as staying together will affect both the lives, the doctors advised separation surgery. Though the babies were twins, one of them suffered from non correctable congenital anomalies. In fact, the unhealthy child was becoming more like a burden on the healthy baby and hence the parents along with the doctors chose to support the healthy child. They separated the babies.  The tissues of sacrificed baby were used to reconstruct the torso of surviving twin.

Elaborating about the case, Dr. Ashley D’ Cruz said, “The survival rate in conjoined twins are minimal. In fact, the survival ratio of siamese twins with fused heart is even low. The child is the ‘3rd Miracle Baby’ in the world who has survived a Thoracopagus separation surgery.”

Expressing his gratitude, Mr. Ian Papillon, father of the patient said, “When we got to know that we are expecting twins, we were very excited. After the delivery when we were informed that our daughters were conjoined and were sharing a single heart we were shattered. We thought we will lose both of them. Today, we have at least one of our daughters with us only because of the doctors at Narayana Health and I am extremely thankful to them for that. We are also grateful to our government for funding my children’s visit and their treatment. While I am taking back one daughter, however for me she is mirroring for her sister as one.”

Baby Papillon has responded well to the intervention and is in a position to return to her homeland. Equipped with a team of multi disciplinary experts Narayana Health City has become one of the most sought after hospital to treat conjoined twins. The surgery makes Narayana Health City one of the few hospitals in the world to have successfully completed and saved 4 sets of conjoined twins and 1 case of parasitic twinning apart from this case.

GOJEK Celebrates 10 Million Trips in Singapore and Introduces ‘Driver Milestones’ Programme

 

Ride-hailing platform GOJEK today announced that it has hit the milestone of 10 million completed trips in Singapore. This announcement coincides with the Indonesia-based company celebrating six months of operations in Singapore, after officially launching its ride-hailing service on November 29, 2018.

In line with 10 million trips, GOJEK is launching ‘Driver Milestones’, a rewards programme for its Singapore driver-partners to thank them for their continued support and professional service. Drivers who have completed 1,000, 2,500 and 5,000 trips since GOJEK’s launch in Singapore, will soon be recognised with enhanced benefits and decals that mark their trip milestones.

Raditya Wibowo, GOJEK’s Global Head of Transport, commented: “I am immensely proud of the dedication and passion that our Singapore team has shown since we started operations here. Following our launch in Singapore, response from the driver community has been extremely positive, with tens of thousands of driver-partners signing up and achieving their milestones, and many new driver-partners coming on board our platform every day. Even so, we are not stopping now and we remain focused on enhancing our product to meet the everyday needs of Singaporeans.”

Lien Choong Luen, General Manager of GOJEK Singapore, added: “This feat of 10 million

completed trips would not have been possible without the support of all of you: our loyal driver-partners, passionate riders, and everyone in the GOJEK Singapore team. With this milestone, we have taken a solid first step in bringing choice back to riders and drivers, and created a great, sustainable ride-hailing product. Our entry has also spurred competition in the market, and most importantly, greater innovation and value for users.”

Following its launch into the Singapore market, GOJEK has also been continuously enhancing its offering by using feedback submitted by users. “Number masking” was recently implemented on the platform to improve privacy for both its riders and driver-partners, and GOJEK enhanced its newly-launched GoalBetter driver benefits programme by adding a partnership with Singtel that offers mobile data savings to its driver-partners.

Helo Takes Users to Cricket World Cup 2019 With #CheerforIndia

Helo, India's leading social media platform, is giving cricket fans a chance to cheer for team India in England during the Cricket World Cup 2019 with its #CheerForIndia campaign. The campaign encourages users to use the #CheerforIndia hashtag and post original content related to the World Cup 2019 on the Helo, in any of the 14 Indian languages on the app they are most comfortable with. Helo users with the most engaging and interactive posts will get a chance to travel to England and witness team India’s match live.

Coinciding with the highly-anticipated World Cup 2019, the campaign, which runs from May 25th to June 14th, is specifically designed for all cricket enthusiasts as well as the fence-sitters on Helo. While select winners will win tickets to India’s matches in England, other winners also stand a chance to win exciting prizes.

“Cricket in India is a religion that unifies all and with this campaign, we aim to bring our Helo community even closer together to support and cheer for team India during the Cricket World Cup’. Through our #CheerforIndia campaign, we aim to engage and encourage our 40 million monthly active users, who can choose to express themselves in any of the 14 Indian languages available on the platform. We are looking forward to engaging cricket lovers and enthusiasts to come together, connect and participate in a contest, built around India’s favourite sport. Helo wishes Team India all the very best for the tournament,” said, Shyamanga Barooah, Head of Content Operations, Helo.

Recently, Helo partnered with Indian Wheelchair Cricket team as the team sponsor for the Asia Cup in Nepal. This association made Helo the first social media app to host and promote Indian Wheelchair Cricket on its platform. As part of this partnership, Helo also served as the official digital media partner for the Indian Wheelchair Cricket team during the tournament.

Helo’s machine learning powered, visual platform is specifically designed for Indian mobile users who prefer to communicate in their mother tongues. It enables users to create quality content with easy-to-use tools, make new friends, share latest and top trending jokes, memes, status updates, wishes, quotes, shayari and Bollywood news. Available in 14 Indian languages, the app currently has 40 million users, including celebrities, influencers and general users. For more updates, download Helo via iOS or Google Play.

Amazon Expands its Pantry Service to 110 Smaller Cities in India

Amazon.in today announced the expansion of its popular program ‘Amazon Pantry’. It will now be available to customers in 110 cities & towns. Customers in Belgaum, Chikkaballapur, Dharwad, Hubli, Karwar, Kolar, Ramanagara and Attibele can now choose from up to 5,000 grocery and household products from 500 plus brands on Amazon Pantry.

Amazon Pantry makes it convenient for customers to stock-up for a basket of frequently purchased products while increasing savings. Customers can build a basket from Amazon Pantry and have all the products delivered in a single box at their doorstep the following day. They can choose from 5,000 products by over 500 brands. In select cities of Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune, customers can also choose from convenient time slots to schedule their order deliveries.

Commenting on the expansion, Saurabh Srivastava, Director - Category Management, Amazon India said, “Amazon Pantry has become popular with customers as it offers unbeatable savings and convenience of door step delivery, month after month. We have now added more than 70 cities & towns in the last few months to take the total number of cities covered by Amazon Pantry to 110. Customers even in towns like Karwar, Kolar, Ramanagara among others can now enjoy the benefits of Amazon Pantry.”

Amazon Pantry offers selection ranging across staples, cooking essentials, snacks, beverages, packaged food, household supplies, personal care, skin care, pet food, baby products such as diapers & baby food and lots more.

Trend Micro Partners with Market Leading Security Awareness Vendors to Offer Comprehensive Free Training Content

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today announced partnerships with several leading cybersecurity training providers to help businesses protect their employees from the latest cyber threats. To ensure customers have a wide variety of training styles and formats, Trend Micro is teaming up with four leading partners:  NINJIO, InfoSec,  NextTech Security, and  GoldPhish.

The new training materials are available on Trend Micro’s Phish Insight tool, which is a free, highly flexible security awareness solution. This new educational platform will offer customers a diverse library of training content to enhance employee awareness initiatives and arm organizations with the resources they need to improve overall enterprise security.

“All businesses today are susceptible to socially engineered phishing emails and BEC attacks, which can cause severe financial and reputational damage,” said Wendy Moore, vice president of product marketing for Trend Micro. “We want to help make the digital world safer, and have partnered with four leading organizations from around the world to offer educational resources to complement our free Phish Insight tool. Adding educational resources allow companies to not only test their employees’ security awareness, but also improve this awareness.”

Reported BEC attacks cost global businesses nearly $1.3 billion in 2018, more than any other threat category, and phishing emails are linked to a third of data breaches and 94% of malware occurring last year. The latest improvements to Phish Insight will enable businesses to better train staff to curb the impact of these threats.

In line with customer feedback, Trend Micro is working with multiple proven training providers to offer a wide range of content to fit the broadest possible variety of organizational cultures – whether that’s a more conservative teaching style or animated story telling. Some firms will prefer micro learning experiences for their employees whereas other will prefer longer more detailed training sessions, the key is to have enough choice to meet this demand.

Customers will have access to the content that best fits their needs with no contracts or subscriptions, completely free for the first six months during a beta period.

6 Proptech Startups Successfully Graduate at the Brigade REAP Accelerator Demo Day

Brigade REAP, an accelerator program focused on technology that impacts the Real Estate industry, celebrated its Demo Day by unveiling its latest cohort of 6 startups to the industry and VC community.  The keynote address was given by Vipul Roongta, Managing Director and CEO of HDFC Capital Advisors

Located within the Brigade Gateway Campus at Bangalore, the Brigade REAP accelerator program is Asia’s first-ever startup accelerator focused to help startups in the Real Estate sector.

REAP was Launched in October 2016 with an intention to Mentor startups leveraging technology which can help in delivering greater efficiencies to the Real Estate sector. Till date 21 startups graduated through the Brigade REAP Accelerator program.

Over 200 plus start-ups applied for this cohort and the shortlisted startups went through 2 rounds of intense jury selection before the final 6 startups were inducted into the program. The startups inducted in the program went through a four month intensive mentorship and acceleration program before being handed over to the Industry for consumption of their products and services.

At the Demo Day, the 6 start-ups demonstrated their ventures to eminent developers from the Real Estate Industry, Investors, HNI’s, other startup founders and senior management of global corporates.

"In today’s competitive business environment, the ability to adopt and make use of technological innovations to improve operational efficiencies and customer delight will be the key differentiator between the good and great performance. ," said Ms. Nirupa Shankar, Director, Brigade REAP speaking on the occasion.  Rajeev Nair, Head Operations , ] added, “At Brigade REAP, we work with companies on an individual basis and strengthen their value prop, business models & product road map thereby helping them scale in a sustainable and exponential manner.

The startups that presented at the Demo Day are:

1.      Bluesinq Automations: An IoT company that converts existing switches to intelligent switches with an aim to make them staple in every Indian home. They provide simple to install, easy to use & visually pleasing products at cost effective rates.
2.      Clairco:  A clean air company that monitors and purifies indoor air quality and ensures clean air indoors in an affordable and measurable way, by adding purification capabilities in existing AC systems. Customer can view the air quality remotely on a Dashboard which gives never seen before clarity on the quality of air.
3.      Dextra Square: A property security solutions company that helps consumers secure their properties in an effective & hassle-free manner.
4.      Exprs:  A last yard logistics company, building an efficient network of micro-distribution centres across gated communities and corporate buildings to make communities safer and businesses more efficient.
5.      Renewate: India’s only platform for renovation and refurbishment, contributing towards organizing an unorganized sector through a single platform.
6.      Smarter Dharma: Leveraging technology to deliver cost and resource efficiency for the Real Estate industry by injecting sustainability right from conceptualization to handover of infrastructure projects.

Brigade REAP is looking for the next set of exciting startups who are solving problems in the proptech space.