Samsung Opera House Offers K-Culture Treat to Bangaloreans

Bangalore’s favourite technology, cultural and entertainment hub, Samsung Opera House, hosted a special event for K-Pop fans in the city, organised by Bengaluru’s most popular Korean fan group Indhangul.    Korean pop culture is the most prominent aspect of the Korean cultural wave that has taken the world by storm. This extremely youthful musical form — along with K-dramas — has driven the love for South Korean content among millennials around the globe. In Bengaluru alone, there are about 8-10 K-pop fan groups with close to 3000 fans.

The Korean pop culture has received an overwhelming response in India and is a major hit amongst Indian millennials. Keeping the growing popularity of ‘K-pop’ in mind, this day-long event brought K-pop fans from across Bengaluru under one roof. The excitement among K- pop fans was evident among the crowd as this event gave them a platform to explore latest K-pop music powered by Samsung My Galaxy app. It's fascinating to see how Korean music has achieved such an incredible fan following in India.

Participants engaged in wide range of engagement-led activities themed around K-Culture which include screening of Korean content, K drama Quiz, singing and dance performances. Amongst the many activities planned for the attendees, ‘Guess the K-pop song with the help of emojis’ got the audience going with participants showing off their knowledge on K-pop culture.

Samsung has been at the forefront of understanding the millennial mindset and has been investing in building technologies that complement the evolving needs of consumers. Taking note of the huge popularity of K-content amongst its consumers, Samsung recently introduced a wide range of Korean content on its My Galaxy App - International blockbuster K-drama titles like Jugglers, Queen for Seven Days and Manhole are exclusively available on the app along with access to over 750 K-Pop songs of top artists and bands such as BTS, Exo, BTOB, and MONSTA-X.

Since its inception, Samsung Opera House has been evolving into a hub in the heart of the city. Over 60 events have been organised at the premises of Samsung Opera House in the past 10 months. Samsung is in a constant endeavour to delight the consumers and has organised a diverse range of events like workshops, tech talk shows, portrait photographer’s meet up, UK High Commission Talk Show, band performances, traditional form of art like malkhamb & Kalaripayattu performances, Screening movies and much more. Each event held at Samsung Opera House has been different and unique in its nature to keep the Bangaloreans exited and entertained. In keeping with the pulse of millennials, Samsung will host more K-Culture events at Samsung Opera House.

Streax Professional Reinvents Vintage Styles with Latest Launch ‘Retro Remix’ at Mega Hair Show ‘Hair & Beyond’

Retro-inspired trends are back again to reinvent contemporary fashion in 2019. Leading the way is Streax Professional, the premium product range for hair care, colour and style, specially crafted for salon professionals and technicians, which today showcased Retro Remix, its new collection of vintage styles, reimagined for present-day fashionistas. The collection was launched in Bengaluru at the 2019 edition of its mega hair show “Hair & Beyond”. Using products such as Argan Secrets hair colour, CanvoLine straightening cream, and the Hold & Play styling range, Retro Remix mixes brunette, gold and copper blonde, and brown shades to create a range of sophisticated retro styles for Indian women.

Announcing the launch of its new collection, Mrs. Rochelle Chhabra, Professional Division Head, Hygienic Research Institute said, “Streax Professional is proud to present this new vintage range, inspired by ultra-glamorous 70s hairstyles created for style icons like Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn in the West, and Zeenat Aman and Hema Malini in the East. Our collection, which highlights the brown palette, has been specially designed for the fashion-conscious Indian woman. It combines old world charm with contemporary freshness, making Retro Remix a perfect fusion of the old and the new.”

Actress Pranitha Subhash, who was the showstopper, did her part in turning up the glamour quotient when she walked the ramp at the event. She made heads turn in her retro chic hairdo accompanied by other models who looked their classic best. The event showcased an array of hairstyles including the romantic amber retro chignon, bouffant fudge sleek, the dark chocolate precision bob, undone beige messy ponytail, gypsy tangerine blonde heart shaped braid, all created using the perfect blend of the collection’s range of products.

International celebrity hair stylist Yolly Ten Koppel, also known as ‘Queen of Hair’, who was hosting the training sessions at the event said, “I am delighted to participate in Streax Professional’s mega hair show. Besides the high profile launches that it showcases, “Hair & Beyond” provides India’s hair technicians with a unique opportunity to receive new insights and learning about hairstyling, helping them emerge as true experts of their craft.”

Yolly Ten Koppel joined Agnes Chen, Technical Head of Streax Professional to lead the training sessions at Hair & Beyond 2019—sharing styling tips, haircut tutorials, and colouring techniques with the audience.

Streax Professional continues its endeavor to educate and train hair professionals through ‘Hair & Beyond’, making international standards and global techniques accessible to Indian professionals. The brand has already conducted a Hair & Beyond 2019 Seminar in New Delhi, Kolkata, Kathmandu, Mumbai, Chennai, Dehradun, Jammu, Ahmedabad and Vijayawada. After Bengaluru, Retro Remix will also be showcased in Jaipur and Faridabad.  

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.