Be Q-rious! Diversity Job Portal Equiv.in Unveils Initiative to Promote Inclusiveness of the LGBTQIA Community

India’s leading diversity job portal Equiv.in launched “Q-rious”, the first-of-its-kind networking initiative that will bring together corporates and the LQBTQIA community to collaboratively evolve policies that can promote inclusiveness of the community at the workplace.  The initiative was unveiled on Saturday in the city at the eighth edition of the Women Changemakers Career Fair and Confluence, a job fair for women organized by Stockroom.io, the parent company of Equiv.in. Stockroom.io is an HR tech start-up that aims to become the primary and biggest platform for companies to hire curated, skill-based talent at scale.

With an ambition to have a pan-India impact, starting early 2020, Equiv.in will host ‘Q-rious’ sessions at six cities across India – Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Pune and Chennai. In the no-fee entry programme, Equiv.in will facilitate members of the LGBTQIA community and representatives of some of the biggest corporate brands to hold informal discussions that will enable both parties to understand each other’s hiring and employment needs and challenges in an open and honest manner. A vast range of issues, from workplace discrimination to talent development and reskilling is expected to be addressed in these free-wheeling discussions, with the ultimate aim of co-creating meaningful and actionable hiring policies.

Commenting on the launch of Q-rious, Naren Krishna, Founder and CEO, Stockroom.io and Equiv.in, said, “Diversity is a nascent market in India, where HR departments are still focused on improving the gender ratio within their companies. However, this leaves out a significant section of the available talent pool, comprising of highly skilled individuals in other hiring cohorts, like the LGBTQIA community. The barriers of entry for this community are often cultural ones, but repeated exclusion due to discrimination can lead to employable LGBTQIA members being unaware about the changing skill demands of the increasingly specialized and competitive job market. With Q-Rious, we seek to build a forum for dialogue between corporates and the LGBTQIA community to break down barriers and evolve hiring strategies that will benefit both parties.”

Q-rious is modelled after the start-up’s highly successful Women Changemakers Career Fair and Confluence, where women-centric focused discussions and networking opportunities have drawn thousands of female job aspirants across varied levels of experience, many of whom eventually landed in their dream careers. This year, the eight edition of the event saw participation from over 1200 women who leveraged networking and knowledge sharing opportunities presented by prominent corporate brands including Genpact, McKinsey, Maersk,Dell, Thoughtworks, American Express, Shell, Coca Cola, Shell, Standard Chartered, Mphasis, Paysafe, Akamai and Apus.

“It is really great to see such large number of women participating in Career Fairs such as Women Changemakers. These platforms are enabling women who are ready to start their career or are looking to restart their journey in the professional world. At Dell Technologies, we provide flexibility for all genders and encourage our team members to keep themselves abreast of the latest technologies and be upskilled.

We are also focused and committed to provide the ecosystem with ample opportunities. Our recent VMinclusion program ‘Taara’, is one such initiative for women who want to upskill themselves and return to work.  It encourages women to join back the workforce by providing them with free technical education to become VMware certified professionals. The training and certification is free of cost. With rapid pace of technology evolution and transformation, every woman needs to realise that it is essential to evolve, and we are happy to act as a catalyst to that journey." said Sujatha Idiculla, Senior Director – Dell Digital, Dell Technologies

Other highlights of the event included a moving talk by Paralympic medal winner Hitesh R who discussed his battle with cerebral palsy, a storytelling session on gender equality by Ankita Mehra & Shakti Iyer Singh. Participants were also treated to a speaking session by Bollywood actor and motivational speaker Ashish Vidyarthi.

Micro Focus Introduces New Robotic Process Automation Product, Ignites Enterprise Productivity

Micro Focus has announced the general availability of Micro Focus Robotic Process Automation (RPA) which gives companies the power to build, secure, and scale automated business processes, from legacy to modern, across the enterprise.

According to Gartner, “The ability to integrate legacy systems is the key driver for RPA projects. By using this technology, organizations can quickly accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, while unlocking the value associated with past technology investments.”  Micro Focus RPA automates repetitive, error-prone UI-based human actions on legacy apps and integrates them with modern IT process automation in a single product.

“Micro Focus RPA delivers on key capabilities such as scalability, resiliency and security that our customers and partners demanded,” said Tom Goguen, Micro Focus Chief Product Officer. “It adapts to UI changes, automates UI and API-based applications, and includes real-time auditing and traceability, giving our customers the confidence to deploy RPA across the enterprise while providing for centralized governance and compliance for their digital workforce.”

“As we have worked closely the last few years with our customers and partners to leverage test automation for their first RPA projects, it presented a convenient way to evaluate the potential of business-related automation and further prove its value to the organization,” said Raffi Margaliot, Micro Focus General Manager for Application Delivery Management. “With Micro Focus RPA, we augmented our core capabilities to be purpose built for RPA and we believe our innovations in making automation more resilient to change will deliver a lower TCO compared to existing solutions.”

Micro Focus RPA capabilities include:

Easy-to-use design studio: An intuitive design interface that allows users to easily record screen actions and design sophisticated end-to-end RPA workflows, visually or with code.
Cross-platform connections: A technology-rich product that combines UI automation with API and other integration methods to connect business processes spanning old and new applications.
Scalable robots: A worker-queue-based architecture to scale robots up or down as workloads change, making it possible to run hundreds or thousands of robots at once.
Centralized security: A centralized dashboard to manage the robots that have unique IDs and encrypted, role-based credentials.
Resilient robots: Advanced object recognition technology to detect UI changes and automatically adapt as needed, saving time on maintenance.
“Our customers demand genuine improvements through integrated service delivery, and we know this can only occur with advanced service offerings and innovative partnership in technologies like robotic process automation,” said Denham Seneviratne, National Sales Manager for Winthrop Australia. “We believe Micro Focus is well placed to help deliver on this promise and we hope our customers are the beneficiaries.”

“At Kinetic IT, we strengthen our personalized service offerings by minimizing effort on activities better suited to automation,” said Brett Roberts, Chief Product Officer of Kinetic IT. “The release of Micro Focus RPA opens up new opportunities to explore and pursue for the benefit of our customers.”

“As a Platinum partner of Micro Focus, we are excited about the release of the RPA product and see the definite benefits it can start to bring our clients,” said Jamie Duffield, CEO of Revolution IT. “The RPA product will enable us to automate their processes and focus areas of their application stack to drive value into repetitive tasks quickly and efficiently.”

With cost-effective licensing, companies can keep their RPA costs predictable and scalable. Pricing starts at $15,000 USD per robot, with special pricing that extends to Micro Focus Unified Functional Testing and Operations Orchestration customers.

A Man from Utrecht Arrested for Producing and Distributing Malware

Recently the high tech crime team (THTC) of the Dutch National Police Unit arrested a 20 year old resident of the Dutch city of Utrecht. He is suspected of large-scale production and selling of malware. The young man offered programs with names like Rubella, Cetan and Dryad, enabling the buyer to include secret code or malware in amongst others Word or Excel files. In view of the ongoing investigation, the arrest could not be disclosed earlier by police and National Prosecutor’s Office.

The suspect was active at hackers’ forums under various names. Eventually all these names could be traced to the man from Utrecht who was arrested sitting at his computer. The police were helped in tracing the man thanks to investigations of two private companies, including the cybersecurity company McAfee.

The suspect developed and supplied amongst others the macro builder Rubella, selling it for prices ranging from a couple of hundred to thousands of euros. A macro builder is a toolkit designed to include fragments of hidden code to widely used Office documents such as Excel and Word. Upon opening of such an infected document, the hidden code would be executed. This code could amongst others (surreptitiously) download malware or start a program on the device. The macro builder would design the documents in such a way that they would not usually be detected by a virus scanner.

Distribution of such malware generally takes place via an e-mail containing an infected document as an attachment. The message in the mail is designed to inspire confidence in the potential victim and to induce him to open the attachment. This is actually a kind of phishing, but it is very difficult to protect yourself against it, according to THTC and the public prosecutor of the National Public Prosecutor’s Office. In all cases the advice is not to open, view or download such files as a matter of course and to perform all updates for security software on data carriers.

Furthermore the suspect was found in possession of data concerning dozens of credit cards and manuals on carding, a type of credit card fraud. The young man also possessed access credentials for thousands of websites. It is not known what he was planning to do with these.

The suspect has collected an amount of approx. 20,000 euro in crypto currency such as bitcoins. These have been seized. The investigation into further amounts the young man may have (unlawfully) earned will continue. In due course, a confiscation order will be issued.

The public prosecutor has meanwhile decided that the suspect will have to face trial. No court date has yet been set.

L&T Technology Services Q1FY20 Revenue Rises on Large Deal Wins

L&T Technology Services Limited, India’s leading pure-play engineering services company, announced its results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2019.

Highlights for Q1FY20 include:

*USD Revenue at $194 million; growth of 15% YoY
*Revenue at ₹ 13,475 million; growth of 17% YoY
*EBIT margin at 17.1%; up 230bps YoY
*Net profit at ₹ 2,039 million; growth of 3% YoY

During the quarter, LTTS won 7 multi-million dollar deals across all major industry segments. On a YoY basis, LTTS has increased its USD20mn+ clients by 2 and its USD10mn+ clients by 5.

“We had a strong quarter in most of our segments – Industrial Products, Transportation, Medical and Process Industry, with sequential growth accelerating in Q1 as compared to Q4 on the back of multiple deal wins and good deal conversions.  Digital & leading-edge technologies - the growth driver for ER&D, contributed to 37% of Q1 revenues and grew by 44% YoY. On the operational front we executed well with the margin trajectory continuing to inch upwards on YoY basis.

Innovation and speed-to-market are key priorities for our customers, and our end-end capabilities spanning product and process engineering are enabling us to engage with them at a more strategic level. Further, we are seeing good opportunities to leverage our platforms and solutions that have inbuilt AI & Machine Learning capabilities in the areas of predictive maintenance and energy management.

We are excited about the opportunities in our pipeline and see a clear trend of increasing deal sizes and outcomes,” said Dr. Keshab Panda, CEO & Managing Director, L&T Technology Services Limited.

Industry Recognitions:

·         A global automotive major conferred LTTS with the ‘Performance Excellence Award’ for exceeding performance standards including quality, cost and service.
·         Zinnov rated LTTS in the leadership zone for its deep expertise in the Broadcasting domain and recognized the practice as mature and established in the OTT and Content Security ratings in its Zinnov Zones for Media & Technology Report 2019.
·         LTTS was appraised with Maturity Level 5 in the CMMI V2.0 Development view, the highest capability maturity level in the new CMMI framework. LTTS’ CMMI Maturity Level 5 certification is an indication of the company’s continually improving processes and business performance.
·         At the 17th Annual American Business Awards, LTTS was recognized as the Best Human Resource Team of the Year and conferred with the Stevie Award

Patents

·         At the end of Q1FY20, the patents portfolio of L&T Technology Services stood at 399, out of which 288 are co-authored with its customers and 111 are filed by LTTS.

Human Resources

At the end of Q1FY20, LTTS’ employee strength stood at 15,913 a net addition of 773 during the quarter.

Honda 2Wheelers India Gives Wings to Young Females in Realising their Dream Across Four States

Giving wings to young women’s dream of becoming a commercial pilot, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Pvt. Ltd. today announced project SAPNO KI UDAAN - Honda’s unique CSR initiative on women empowerment. Five girls from Karnataka will be selected.

Honda firmly believes that empowering women means strengthening nation and it is with this philosophy Honda is supporting young females to pursue commercial pilot training. Their journey towards becoming a commercial pilot begins with Honda.

Announcing Honda’s biggest CSR initiative, Mr. Harbhajan Singh, Director, General & Corporate Affairs, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Pvt. Ltd. said, “As a responsible corporate citizen, Honda 2Wheelers is always committed to bring a positive change in our society. Gujarat and Karnataka are special for Honda 2Wheelers India as it is here we have together covered a long journey of growth and development. Taking one step further in our commitments, we are delighted to announce project SAPNO KI UDAAN - Honda’s unique CSR initiative on women empowerment. Many of the bright young women are not able to pursue their dreams due to lack of financial support. Under this unique initiative, Honda will provide 100% scholarship 20 deserving young females in becoming commercial pilots. We believe that these young women would not only get into a highly respectable profession but also inspire millions in realizing their power of dream.” 

In India, percentage of women commercial pilots stands only around 12%. Encouraging young women to pursue a highly respected profession, Honda has announced its biggest CSR project SAPNO KI UDAAN. Honda is inviting all girls from Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Karnataka to apply in this initiative. Honda will provide 100% scholarship to 20 females for their dream of becoming a commercial pilot.

Supporting the deserving females in realizing their dream to become a commercial pilot, Honda will empower them with this once in a lifetime opportunity. Honda will bear the entire cost of training right from their selection to training period of 18 months in one of India’s leading flying school. Moreover, Honda will also assist them in getting a job as commercial pilot.

The final 20 girls will be selected based on an exhaustive selection process. The selection would take merit and income level into the consideration.  Young women having scored more than 90% in Physics and Mathematics in class 12th science under State Education Board will be eligible to apply.

Further, the submitted applications would be screened based on different parameters including achievements in co-curricular activities. Finally, a written test, Medical test, Psychometric test, and a Technical assessment would be carried out to select 20 most deserving female candidates. The girls, proving their merit by qualifying the same, will thus get to avail special training course, supported by Honda.

Candidates can apply online by submitting their documents (10th and 12th mark sheets, scanned copy of recent photograph, email id, and mobile number) on pilotadmission@teamleaseuniversity.ac.in. The application date closes on 10th August.

About Honda’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives:

As a responsible two-wheeler manufacturer, Honda 2Wheelers India’s corporate social responsibility philosophy is aligned with United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Over the years, Honda is contributing towards women empowerment, community development, road safety promotion, environment sustainability, rural sports, healthcare, education and skill development. Under these 7 pillars, Honda’s CSR initiatives have benefitted nearly 40 lakh people.

1.     Women empowerment: Under Project Unnati and Project Ummeed Honda is providing Vocational training to women, making them self-reliant. Honda has made difference in the lives of 3 lakh women in last 18 years of its operation in India.

2.    Community development: Under Project Jan Uthaan, Honda is developing infrastructure including bus stands and shelters, public parks, overhead tanks. Over 1.5 lakh people benefitted through this initiative.

3.    Road safety promotion: As a responsible corporate, road safety is top priority for Honda. Since 2001, Honda educated more than 29 lakh Indians on road safety and adopted 14 traffic parks in India.

4.    Environment sustainability: Honda’s Project Harit Udaan is not only providing livelihood to 153 families in 75 villages, but also increasing green coverage with help of modern irrigation technologies.

5.    Rural Sports: Encouraging youth at local level, Honda is developing sports infrastructure in rural areas while developing stadiums, sports ground. Honda is also training talented young players for Tennis, cycling etc.

6.    Healthcare: Honda’s Aarogya Abhiyaan is providing medical mobile vans, free cataract surgeries, dispensaries, medical tests, toilets for community, aids to physically challenged.

7.    Education and skill development: Under Shiksha evam Kaushal Vikas Abhiyan, Honda has benefitted more than 1.15 lakh students. Upskilling youth Honda is providing job oriented skill enhancement training at its adopted 23 ITIs across India.

AMW-CFmoto Cruises into Indian Market with Four New Motorcycles

AMW Motorcycles in association with CFmoto, has announced the much-awaited launch of the year for the die-heart bike enthusiasts. AMW Motorcycles today launched four models of CFmoto in India. The models of CFMoto motorcycles launched are the 300NK, the 650NK, the 650MT and the 650GT. The bikes were unveiled today amidst grand fanfare in presence of a host of dignitaries.

Speaking at the launch, Mr. Vamsi Krishna Jagini – CEO AMW Motorcycles said “This is the most awaited launch yet in the Indian market. We are thrilled to partner with CFmoto to bring their globally renowned models to India. The bikes are in the premium niche segment and there is a healthy demand in the category.”

Mr.Kent Chen, Assistant General Manager – Global Sales CFmoto said, “We are happy to bring CFmoto to the Indian consumers. India is a vast and exciting market and in AMW we found a perfect partner to make our India foray. The Indian two-wheeler sector has seen tremendous growth and the premium motorcycle market in India is not only growing but also evolving in consumer tastes and preferences."

CFmoto 300NK is a street fighter and features dual riding modes, TFT Color Display, LED Lighting and Rear mudguard. It will have full LED headlamps with LED turn indicators and will be powered by a 299cc, single cylinder engine.

CFmoto 650NK is also a street fighter and boasts of a muscular fuel tank and sharp tail section.

CFmoto 650MT is an adventure tourer powered by a 649.3cc liquid cooled engine. The tourer gets a tall windscreen and comfortable riding position. It sports a large fuel tank with 18 litres capacity.

CFmoto 650GT is a sports tourer powered by a 649.3cc, liquid-cooled, parallel-twin engine that makes 70PS of power at 8,750rpm and 62Nm of torque at 7000rpm. The 650GT comes with a 6-speed gearbox.

The CFMoto Motorcycles launch are powered between 300-650 cc. The four CFMoto motorcycles that will be available are - 300NK, 650NK, 650MT and the 650GT. The models range from INR 2,29,000/- INR 3,99,000/- INR 4,99,000/- INR 5,49,000/- (ex-showroom prices all India) respectively. The motorcycles will be brought in via the CKD route and will be assembled locally at AMW’s assembly plant located in Bengaluru.

The new models will be available through their dealer network in 6 cities based at Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Cochin, Kolkata and Guawahati.

Jaguar, Land Rover Inaugurates its First Boutique Showroom at Cunningham Road in Bengaluru

Jaguar Land Rover India today announced the opening of its new Boutique showroom by Marqland at Cunningham Road in Bengaluru. The new facility was inaugurated by Rohit Suri, President & Managing Director, Jaguar Land Rover India Ltd (JLRIL) and Naveen Philip, Director, Marqland.

Located in the heart of Bengaluru, the facility offers better customer access and allows for the display of both Jaguar and Land Rover’s portfolio. The boutique showroom is equipped with a digital personalization studio, offering enriched customisation options. It also showcases and retails the latest accessories and branded goods. 

Rohit Suri, President & Managing Director, Jaguar Land Rover India Ltd (JLRIL), said: “We are pleased to introduce a boutique showroom in one of our key markets, Bengaluru. Enabled by the latest in digital technologies, the brand new facility will help us enhance customer experience and engagement with the two iconic brands. The showroom is very well located and offers great ease of access to many fans and customers of Jaguar Land Rover in Bengaluru.”
Customers can even book their cars by visiting the online booking platform at www.findmeacar.in for Jaguar and www.findmeasuv.in for Land Rover.

The Jaguar range in India includes XE (starting at ₹ 40.61 Lakh), XF (starting at ₹ 49.78 Lakh), F-PACE (starting at ₹ 64.64 Lakh), XJ (starting at ₹ 102.58 Lakh) and F-TYPE (starting at ₹ 90.93 Lakh). All prices mentioned are ex-showroom prices in India.

Land Rover Product Portfolio in India
The Land Rover range in India includes the Discovery Sport (starting at ₹ 44.68 Lakh), Range Rover Evoque (starting at ₹ 52.06 Lakh), Discovery (starting at ₹ 76.94 Lakh), the Range Rover Velar (priced at ₹ 72.47 Lakh), Range Rover Sport (starting at ₹ 86.71 Lakh) and Range Rover (starting at ₹ 181.86 Lakh). All prices mentioned are ex-showroom prices in India.

Jaguar Land Rover Retailer Network in India
Jaguar Land Rover vehicles are available in India through 27 authorised outlets in Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Kochi, Karnal, Ludhiana, Mangalore, Mumbai, Nagpur, Noida, Pune, Raipur, Vijayawada and Surat.