Driving Cultural Transformation - Microsoft Hosts World’s Largest Private Hackathon

Microsoft India is hosting the sixth edition of its annual One Week Hackathon 2019, the largest private hacking event in the world. For the first time in India, the Hackathon will host customers and NGOs at Microsoft campus to hack and work on real-world challenges along with Microsoft employees.

In 2014, Microsoft started One Week, a series of events that bring employees together across the globe and across disciplines to inspire more organic connection and collaboration. The core event at One Week is the Hackathon, which invites all employees to hack to solve a problem, build a passion project, or simply develop a new skill.

Reena Dayal, Director Garage India, Microsoft said, “Hackathon enables employees to collaborate to solve a problem they care about, with a focus on the big picture. Employees take on challenges they feel passionate about or to come up with “the next big thing” for our customers and create experiences that are accessible to all.”

Reena further commented, “each year, we see more customer obsession, diversity and inclusion, and a drive to work together across Microsoft and with partners to make a difference. We are very excited about the latest edition of the One Week Hackathon 2019, for the first time in India, we have invited customers and NGOs to our campus to hack with Microsoft employees to solve challenges through technology.”

Hackathon reflects Microsoft’s unique culture and vision to empower every employee and organization on the planet to do more. At Microsoft, hacking is for all employees, technical and non-technical, who come together to find diverse and inclusive solutions. It’s now the largest private Hackathon in the world with 23500+ employees participating in 2018, 30% of who were non-engineers.

Hackathon focuses on empowering employees, teams, and the organization through upskilling, collaboration on a broader perspective, and building on new ideas of applying tech in interesting ways. Earlier hackathons have had great results, including products such as the Seeing AI app, Xbox adaptive controller, Kaizala and SMS Organiser.

The One Week hackathon is a flagship platform of The Garage, which fosters employee-led innovation, bringing together people across roles, skills, and experiences to lend their passion to create change in the world - to improve society, business processes, or for the sheer joy of hacking an existing project and making it better. It also offers the opportunity to learn new technologies and work closely with people from different backgrounds helping employees to integrate the cultural pillars of growth mindset, making a difference, diverse and inclusive, One Microsoft, and customer obsession into everyday work.

What customers and NGOs have to say-

“Marrying Microsoft’s mission to empower everyone to achieve more with Deshpande foundation’s grass root knowledge of the problems that Indian farmers face is the epitome of using technology for real-time Innovation” - Mohd. Innus Khan, Director of Agriculture, Deshpande Foundation.

“The hackathon was a great experience and opportunity to ideate and accelerate solutions for mass entrepreneurs in a very short period. Market discovery through tech enablement is much needed and we had a good outcome which has the potential to solve for market linkages and be a game changer. Looking forward to more such targeted events in partnership with Microsoft.” - Vidya Chandy, Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship.

"Eleven01 is happy to have been part of the Microsoft global Hackathon, which allowed us to work with Microsoft internal team. It helped us immensely to accelerate our idea and showcase a solution around Azure" Rama Iyer, President & CTO Eleven01.

Study Indicates Email Attacks are Having a Major Impact on Businesses

Highlights:

74% of respondents say email attacks are having a major impact on their businesses.
78% of organizations say the cost of email breaches is increasing.
Spear phishing is widespread: 43% of organizations have been the victim of a spear-phishing attack in the past 12 months.
More than three-quarters of organizations say their employees aren’t good at spotting suspicious emails.
Barracuda, a trusted partner and leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions, today released key findings from a report with the title 2019 Email Security Trends. Commissioned by Barracuda, the research surveyed global IT stakeholders to capture their experiences and attitudes about the current state of email security.

Read the full report: https://www.barracuda.com/emailtrends

The survey includes responses from 660 executives, individual contributors and team managers serving in IT-security roles in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Companies surveyed include small, mid-sized, and enterprise businesses in technology, financial services, education, healthcare, manufacturing, government, telecommunication, retail, and other industries. A wide range of questions captured hard data about phishing, insider threats and Office 365, as well as the related business impacts, security spending and costs of breaches.

Overall, the study indicates that while most IT professionals are more confident about their email security systems than they were a year ago, email attacks continue to have a significant impact on businesses. Highlights include:

Email attacks are having a direct business impact — and impacting the personal lives of IT security professionals.
74% of respondents said that email attacks are having a major impact on their businesses.
The most common effects cited were loss of employee productivity, downtime and business disruption, and damage to the reputation of the IT team.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents reported experiencing higher stress levels, worrying about potential email security even when they’re not at work, and being forced to work nights and weekends to address email security issues.
Phishing and ransomware are top concerns.
43% of organizations have been the victim of a spear-phishing attack in the past 12 months.
Breach costs and monetary losses are on the rise.
78% of organizations said that the cost of email breaches is increasing.
66% claimed that attacks have had a direct monetary cost on their organization in the past year.
Nearly a quarter of respondents advised that attacks have cost their organization $100,000 or more.
Employees remain a major weak link in an organization’s security defenses.
More than three-quarters of organizations said their employees aren’t good at spotting suspicious emails.

There are growing concerns about insider threats and Office 365.
79% of IT professionals said they are worried about attacks and breaches stemming from inside the organization.
92% of Office 365 users have security concerns
Based on the success and proliferation of email-based attacks, IT security professionals will need to stay focused on the evolution and escalation of phishing, ransomware, and other threats and improve email security that goes beyond the traditional gateway. Barracuda offers a broad solution against email-borne targeted attacks and social engineering. For more information, please visit: https://www.barracuda.com/products/email_protection.

Six Deep Tech Startups Win Accenture Ventures ‘Applied Intelligence’ Challenge 2019

Accenture has announced the winners of the second annual Accenture Ventures Challenge in India, which this year recognizes deep tech growth-stage Indian startups with the most innovative business-to-business (B2B) use cases in five categories related to Applied Intelligence: artificial intelligence (AI), data, analytics, automation, and industrial AI.

“The Accenture Ventures Challenge helps us recognize the most disruptive technology startups in India and provides them with access to our Global 2000 clients,” said Avnish Sabharwal, managing director for Accenture Ventures and Open Innovation in India and the Middle-East. “This year’s competition scaled new heights with record participation from mature startups focused on Applied Intelligence. We’re excited about the possibilities that this creates for the winners, and for our clients globally.”

This year’s challenge drew over 370 entries from across India. Of these, 15 finalists were evaluated by a jury of Accenture executives and industry leaders from Indian businesses, multinational corporations and the venture capital community. The judges selected the following winners based on innovative edge, business value and scalability:

MMS.IND – for its GeoMarketeer platform, which delivers geo-location-based intelligence using micro market focused data and analytics functionalities, delivered as a service.
Numberz – for its secure, cloud-based insights driven enterprise platform, which helps streamline the accounts receivable process and accelerate collections by using AI, machine learning and robotic process automation.
Locobuzz – for its portfolio of software as a service-based offerings including social listening, AI, command centers and customer relationship management, to address core challenges related to customer experience management in the digital world.
Strayos – for its 3D visual AI platform for the mining and infrastructure industry. The platform utilizes imagery data to extract hidden insights about geology in mining for optimized drilling and pre-excavation object detection below the ground surface to enable the accurate inspection of job sites.
Niramai – for its AI-based advanced thermal imaging solution, Thermalytix, which provides a non-contact, radiation free, affordable and accessible way to detect early stage breast cancer in women of different age groups.

Additionally, this year a sixth winner was chosen by the audience at the grand finale event on July 25 in Mumbai. This award was won by CropIn for its platform which uses big data analytics, AI and remote sensing, to enable clients in the agriculture ecosystem to analyze and interpret actionable insights on crops, such as stress levels, yields and cycles based on both historical and real time data.

Anindya Basu, senior managing director, Accenture India, added, “Competitive edge in the age of disruption demands rapid, shorter innovation lifecycles. At the same time, emerging technologies are more important than ever, often requiring ecosystem partnerships in order to fully harness their capabilities. Our Open Innovation program connects the startup community with clients from around the world, enabling them to collaborate, create new ideas more quickly and implement them at scale.”

The winners will join Accenture Ventures’ Open Innovation partner program, through which they will be able to collaborate with Accenture and co-create solutions for enterprises across the globe. The winners will also be mentored by Accenture leaders, introduced to top industry forums, and have access to the Accenture Innovation Hub in Bengaluru where they can further scale their solutions.

The Accenture Ventures Challenge was open to B2B startups in the deep tech space with operations in India, and an annual revenue of at least USD 100,000 in the last reported financial year. This year, nearly 50 startups with more than USD one million revenue participated.

A key component of the Accenture Innovation Architecture, Accenture Ventures is a bridge to the global innovation ecosystem that unlocks growth opportunities for our clients by bringing them together with best in class emerging enterprise startups. In India, Accenture Ventures tracks more than 1,300 startups and has engaged with nearly 200 that have technologies relevant to Accenture’s enterprise clients.

Synechron LIBOR Accelerator Uses Data Science to Address Industry Benchmarking Challenge

Synechron Inc., a leading Digital Consulting firm for financial services, today announced the launch of its newest Accelerator solution, the Data Science Accelerator for LIBOR Impact Analysis, the latest addition to Synechron’s existing AI Data Science Accelerator program. The Accelerator will help financial services firms solve complex benchmarking challenges approaching the 2021 London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) phase-out deadline as well as to tap into a robust digital and data science toolkit to help drive larger, global enterprise transformation initiatives.

The Accelerator for LIBOR Impact Analysis enables financial institutions to identify and quantify their LIBOR exposure at either a contract level or across all contracts within an institution.  It delivers a powerful digital tool to address complex regulatory changes related to the transition from LIBOR to alternative rates and leverages a powerful combination of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and three levels of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify and quantify LIBOR exposure at the contract level, or across all contracts within an institution. The Accelerator then allows contracts to be revalued using alternative rates and valuation models for a dramatic reduction of manual LIBOR impact assessments and enhanced productivity making the overall contract review process 30x faster and reducing costs by 80%. The Accelerator joins over 60+ Digital Accelerator solutions built for banks, asset managers and insurance companies through Synechron’s Financial Innovation Labs (FinLabs) in the last three years.

Additionally, Synechron’s AI Data Science program is continuing to gain momentum in the year since its launch with a number of global projects underway. Synechron has been selected in a highly-competitive field to implement large-scale engagements in email and document classification; the application of AI to customer interactions; customer behavior prediction; system failure prediction; model lifecycle management architecture; Data Science strategy and organizational design; and AI application development.  There is also a strong demand to apply Data Science to LIBOR benchmarking, which has driven the creation of the new Accelerator added to the program.

To bolster its offerings, Synechron has activated several strategic alliances, including a partnership with Infer for intelligent lead scoring, as well as DataRobot and Squirro, which focus on predictive analytics, machine learning, and cognitive insights. The Data Science program, overall, has contributed significantly to the global industry innovation agenda with these Applied AI for banking solutions having receiving three industry awards for leadership, innovation and excellence in the last six months, including the Business Intelligence Innovation Awards, the FTF Innovation Awards, and a Stevie Award for Synechron U.S. Head of Data Science, Robert Huntsman as Innovator of the Year.

“Synechron’s Accelerator Programs are business-driven solutions to complex problems our clients are facing every day. They provide strategies to address rapid changes in the regulatory landscape and digital transformation,” said Faisal Husain, Co-founder and CEO of Synechron. “Given the tremendous feedback we have already received for our AI Data Science program, I am confident that the LIBOR Impact Accelerator will be a great addition to help arm our clients to advance their digital strategies with transformative, powerful innovation.”

Toyota Kirloskar Motor’s Unique CSR Initiative ‘Project ABCD’ Makes it Way to Harvard Case Study List

Toyota Kirloskar Motor’s [TKM] CSR case study titled “Toyota Kirloskar Motors: Evaluating A CSR Project” and authored by Prof. Utkarsh Majumdar and Namrata Rana on the unique CSR initiative, Project ABCD (A Behavioral Change through Demonstration), has been accepted for publication by the prestigious Ivey Publishing and is made available on Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business School Publishing case collections. Project ABCD, in support of Government of India’s “Swachh Bharat Mission”, was rolled out in the year 2015 being implemented in 527 schools covering 44,773 children at Ramanagara district (Karnataka) to improve public health and sanitation in villages.

India is the second most populous country in the world, with more than 1 billion citizens, and as per records, roughly half of its population, a staggering 522 million, practice open defecation. The World Bank estimates that 21 percent of communicable diseases in India are linked to unsafe water and the lack of hygiene practices, with more than 500 children under the age of five dying each day from diarrhea.

Lack of Sanitation facilities causes serious health hazards in the local communities especially affecting safety of women and adolescent children. To achieve sustainable sanitation practices in the local communities, TKM incorporated a two-pronged approach: firstly, working on building the sanitation facilities in schools and household, and then sustaining the impact with the introduction of ‘A Behavioural Change through Demonstration’ program.

Toyota ABCD program has been significantly contributing to the Government’s Sustainable Development Goal of ending open defecation in India. In the local villages of Karnataka, children hesitated to attend or would drop out from schools because of lack of toilets and

hygiene issues. Sanitation was a serious issue for girl children who had to face safety and health risks due to open defecation. TKM partnered with an NGO called SNEHA, to carry out the activities and spread the awareness at the grass-root level.  Students, teachers and villagers were educated about the unhygienic impact of open defecation, the necessity of washing hands, maintaining cleanliness of toilets and precautionary measures against infections.

TKM believes that the children would act as catalyst and using ABCD they could create a bigger impact in the community. As a result of the ABCD program, and motivated by TKM’s participation and children’s determination, individual families have started championing community sanitation. With government scheme linkages for toilet construction, residents have built their own sanitation units, with no monetary support from TKM.

Owing to TKM’s girl child sanitation initiatives and ABCD project implementation, school missing hours have also drastically reduced to zero (Earlier, an adult girl child used to go to their home for toilet usage and miss the school for over one-two hours). By the year 2018-19, TKM has further set a target to cover 100% sanitation in 1000 schools in Ramanagara to make Open Defecation Free across the state of Karnataka. Until now, more than 2,70,000 village population have been trained on sanitation through this uniquely-designed CSR program while motivating the community to initiate and construct household toilets.

Additionally, Project ABCD was taken as the case study by two IIM professors and have been published by Ivey Publishing, a leader in providing business case studies with a global perspective.

Speaking on this recognition, Mr. Masakazu Yoshimura, Managing Director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor said, “We are happy that our unique CSR initiative, Project ABCD, that began in the villages of Karnataka has been globally recognized now. It gives us great motivation that our dedicated efforts towards improving sanitation facilities and changing the mindset of local community has earned us the acknowledgement in a case available on Harvard Business Review case collection. TKM had adopted Toyota Business Practices Methodology to manage this project. Problem’s point of occurrence was identified, root cause analysis done, targets were set by further breaking it down into activities and then outcomes were measured periodically to maximize the impact and achieve the objective of 100% sanitation in target villages, by this year.

We have been witnessing a rising awareness about the sanitation levels in the villages and it’s heartening to see the project’s impact on the behavioral changes among the school children and their families. Consistent awareness created by Project ABCD amongst children on better sanitation has helped to achieve 407 school children using toilets at home. As a result of the behavioral change training, 12,517 toilets have been built across villages in Ramanagara District.  This is a further testament of our belief that instilling behavioral change is the key to sustain Health and Hygiene practices.”

One of the beneficiary, Indiramma, Mother of Monisha – a class VIII student at Government High school, Billagumba, Ramnagara said, “We never had sanitation facility at home, so we never knew the advantages of having one. But, my daughter was very determined to get a sanitation facility constructed at our home. I could experience the real difference only when I started using it. I was not educated, I couldn’t teach my daughter anything. Now that my daughter is educated, she is not only following the right practices, but educating me as well. And, all the credit goes to TKM’s Project ABCD initiative.”

Till date, TKM has constructed more than 795 units of sanitation facilities in 237 government schools across India, including: 124 units in Varanasi (UP), 497 units in Ramnagara district, 80 unit in Bangalore (Karnataka) and 94 units in Vaishali (Bihar).

PremiumAV Launches New Wireless Mobile Bluetooth Handsfree

PremiumAV, leading provider of mobile accessories, launched PremiumAV Wireless Bluetooth Handsfree. The handsfree are ergonomically designed to provide comfortable fit to the ears while listening to music or for long calls. Wireless Bluetooth Handsfree is engineered to keep up with your active lifestyle. The slick designed Bluetooth handsfree stays intact in the ears while the user is on the go or even working out at gym.

Sanjay Garg, CEO at PremiumAV, said "Today's faster generation demands easy seamless and wire-free devices. Our new Bluetooth handsfree aligns with their demands. It is wire-free, light weight and comes with good quality of sound and effects. So go ahead and Crank it Up! No Wires. No Limits. Pure Sound. Our products comes with a promise to provide high quality for our customers."

PremiumAV is focused to entrust its users with innovative products and with value for money proposition. Wireless Bluetooth Handsfree is ideal for enjoying music. Intelligent voice helps in seamless flow of key words and phrases from your phone calls. Other key specifications include voice SMS notification, CVC double noise reduction, power display self-timer function, HS stereo long standby light weight with V.41+ED Passing 3000 time human ear test.

Availability, Warranty and Pricing
PremiumAV Bluetooth Handsfree is available at an MRP of 499/- It comes with a warranty of 1 Year and can be purchased from Amazon.

PlayShifu Raises $7 Million in Series A to Strengthen Early STEM Learning Through Augmented Reality

PlayShifu, the award-winning technology startup, announced today a $7 million Series A round of funding led by Chiratae (formerly IDG Ventures India), Inventus Capital and Bharat Innovation Fund (BIF). Existing investor, IDFC-Parampara Fund also participated. A pioneer in the field of creating highly engaging and immersive AR experiences for children that encourage early STEM skills, PlayShifu has an aggressive strategic plan in place to expand on its tech prowess with this round of funding.

With $8.5 million raised to date, the company’s primary focus will remain tech innovation, continued research on unique phygital interactions and new product developments. PlayShifu   also plans to update current products significantly and expand the diverse retail presence from 15 countries to 30+ countries in 2020 and beyond.

"We are extremely excited to have investors who are highly focused on consumer tech, on board in our journey to make early learning fun and accessible to children around the world," said Vivek Goyal, CEO, and Co-Founder of Playshifu. "We have an exhaustive product pipeline, an incessantly creative and passionate team of innovators, and now, the right partners to make an extremely positive impact on the educational foundations of generations to come."

PlayShifu's first flagship product, Shifu Orboot, is an AR-based globe that promises an adventure around the world. The user base has crossed 250,000 kids worldwide, but that’s not all. Orboot  has seen unprecedented engagement among 4-8-year-olds. While the best of the children's apps/ toys retain approximately 8% of kids after the first month, Orboot boasts more than 40% of kids retained in the second month! In other words, the amount of time spent on the app, thanks in  large part to the breadth and depth of learning, has resulted in an impressive frequency of play, and month-after-month retention equal to 4-5 times that of kids-app category benchmarks.

In less than a year, teachers and technology integrators from hundreds of schools in the US, Europe, India discovered PlayShifu and experimented with adopting the innovative products in their tech-friendly classrooms. Today, more than 65% of these schools use Orboot every week in their classes. With Orboot 2.0 launching soon (student profiles and progress tracking, teachers' portal, detailed lesson plans), this engagement will only increase from here, as PlayShifu prepares to expand its reach in schools by 10x this year.

The newest addition, Shifu Plugo, combines the charm of classic physical consoles with new-age digital interactions. Helping kids conquer STEM skills with super-fun characters, captivating storylines, and enriching tactile play, Plugo will soon replace tons of toys in your kid's toy box.

The physical consoles bring alive the alphabet, math, engineering, music, steering, and more. With two consoles available today, PlayShifu plans to introduce four more by the end of 2019. PlayShifu's global appeal is evident from the fact that they have managed a deep-rooted retail presence in key markets and countries around the world, including the US, Canada, UK, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, Hong Kong, South Africa, Middle East, and Japan.

"We are experiencing incredible demand from international markets across the world, purely due to the reason that our innovative products make early learning agnostic to markets and languages. Our products make an instant connection with kids and parents alike," added Dinesh Advani, Co-Founder, and COO. "We now have the tools at our disposal to execute against an even more impactful retail strategy and presence, while we continue to strengthen our position as the segment leader and disruptor in the early learning space."

About PlayShifu
Founded in 2016, PlayShifu has offices in Bay Area and Bangalore, India. The co-founders Vivek Goyal and Dinesh Advani, graduates of Stanford GSB and IIT Kharagpur, are two dads who juggle toddlers, tech, and toys in their daily lives. They are revolutionizing the toy industry by creating groundbreaking AR experiences with a passionate pack at PlayShifu. For more information, visit the website at www.PlayShifu.com.