91springboard Celebrated ‘International Coworking Day’ with Three Days of Festivities Across Gurgaon

August 9 marks a special day in the coworking industry worldwide. Christened ‘International Coworking Day’ it was an occasion to celebrate coworking, collaboration, creativity and community.  On this special occasion,  91springboard celebrated the essence of coworking through a unique campaign titled ‘Happy Birthday Coworking’. As a part of the celebrations, people were invited to experience the marvels of a community driven coworking space at 91springboard hubs across Gurgaon.

Anand Vemuri, CEO, 91springboard said, “It is certainly exciting to see the growth and evolution of coworking in India. Although International Coworking Day has been celebrated across the world for the last 13 years, the celebrations by 91springboard, Gurugram brought the attention back to the birth of coworking and gave people an understanding of how and why it works. Our ‘Happy Birhday Coworking’ campaign was a creative expression that gave attendees an actual experience of coworking in all its glory”

The campaign began with an interesting event titled “Founders’ Catch Up” where founders  and entrepreneurs of startups from across sectors came together for a curated networking session.  With around 30 Co-founders attending the event, the focus was on moderated discussions where learnings were shared and attempted to provide effective solutions for common problems. Prominent moderators included Sambhav Mehrotra, Founder of Startup Movers, who solved for compliance issues for startups, Puneet Sharma, Founder of Krenovate Solutions, who focused on digital marketing as an effective tool, and Saumya Sharma, Founder, The Butterfly Effect, who talked about coping with the emotional pressures of being a Founder.

The second day began with yet another innovative event titled, ‘Life’s a pitch’ where 11 startups from various stages and across categories presented their idea in a three minute elevator pitch  to 15 investors. The startups that presented their pitches include Invacia Labs Private Limited - A Fintech blockchain startup, Aker Foods Agrotech Pvt. Ltd - a supply chain startup for hospitality brands, GoAyu - a legal tech brand, Perfume booth - an e-commerce platform for perfumes, Agrotech - a blockchain operator, Revolt - a service provided for EVs (charging, emergency assistance), Refer Hire, a peer to peer social hiring network, Zoo Fresh Food  - an ecommerce platform for meats, Womaniya - website dedicated to women and Rhymly  - a content and entertainment platform. More than 100 entrepreneurs attended this event

Speaking about the event, Anurag Kapoor, Investor, Greenhouse Ventures  said, “ Life’s a pitch is a great platform for startups as well as investors.  It reflects upon the fact that investing is not all about deal sourcing but it is also about understanding the technological revolutions happening at the ground level, the evolution of the startup ecosystem, scope of potential collaborations and much more.”

Sanchita Bamnote, Investment team, Blume Ventures added, “ Life’s a pitch was a great event. I was excited to see startups presenting a three minute elevator pitch that was amazingly crunched, concise and to the point. Another thing that I was happy to see was the curation of startups  that ranged from Agritech, EV, future of work and not all of them were at the same stage. It was a great mix of seed, series A & B’’

The last day saw the Big Birthday Bash  roll out an experiential flea market with a great mix of freelancers, SMEs and Startups coming together to not only celebrate International coworking day but also do some serious networking.

Idea Cellular Extends its Partnership with Route Mobile to Manage the International A2P SMS Traffic into their Network Range

Route Mobile Limited (“Route Mobile”), a cloud communications platform service provider, today announced that Idea Cellular, the largest mobile operator in India with almost 400 million subscribers has extended its partnership with Route Mobile Limited for a further two years. Route Mobile had deployed a multi-layered A2P Messaging HUB, its gateway connectivity and firewall managed service solution for the Idea Cellular side of the merged network entity a year ago.

“We are thrilled to extend our partnership with Idea Cellular”, said Mr. Rajdipkumar Gupta, Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer, Route Mobile Limited. "We had been optimistic of our This is an absolute reaffirmation of how our customer’s requirements are at the heart of our offerings and I am delighted that we have been able to successfully address, improve and monetize the A2P SMS sector for the Idea Cellular infrastructure. This is a testament of the premium customer experience we deliver for our clients in India and the world over through tailor-made analytics and cloud communication solutions”

With its multi-layered SMS Firewall, Analytics and Monetisation solution, Route Mobile has provided a secure SMS channel to the Idea Cellular part of the merged network to protect revenue leakage, open-up new and secure revenue channels. The messaging hub and firewall solution ensures that the brand’s International A2P SMS traffic enters Idea Cellular’s (India) network via authorized A2P SMS gateways. The international traffic includes messages originating from internationally sourced routes that terminate domestically and is filtered as per mutually identified and agreed security terms with Idea Cellular.

CII 15th India Innovation Summit from Aug 21-22, 2019 in Bengaluru

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will organize the 15th India Innovation Summit on 21st & 22nd August 2019 at Hotel Taj West End, Bengaluru. Themed ‘Innovation Manifesto – Scaling for the next decade’ the annual flagship event by CII will focus on strategic rationale and development plan for innovation in the country. It will focus on creating policies for innovation and help build pathways for its effective implementation. Winners of the 2019 3M-CII Young Innovators Challenge Awards will be felicitated during the summit.

Announcing the 15th India Innovation Summit, Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan, Past President, CII & Chairman, India Innovation Summit said that the theme of the summit ‘Innovation Manifesto – Scaling for the next decade’ is apt as it is a statement of belief and intent. Innovation is a critical component of the future, yet, companies and the country are slow to act. The summit will create a platform for industry captains, academia, technocrats, young innovators and policy makers to deliberate and generate ideas which can be embedded within the economy & ecosystem to build an era of innovation. A dossier of recommendations from a CII standpoint on Industry, future trends, issues & bottleneck impeding the overall ecosystem of innovation will be presented during the summit.

Speaking on the Young Innovators Challenge Awards, Mr. Ramesh Ramadurai, Managing Director,3M India Limited said that 3M India & CII, once again completed a successful cycle of the ‘Young Innovators Challenge Awards’ themed ‘Disruptive Innovations to Create Social Impact’. Congratulating the six most innovative projects selected as winners under three categories i.e. Product Innovation, Service Innovation and Rural Innovation to be awarded at the summit, he said that the 2019 series received over 800 submissions with 31% of projects submitted under the Product and Service Innovation categories. Moreover, 43.5% of the total submissions received this year, were either passed the prototyped stage or have institutionalized their initiative in some form. This year the Challenge introduced two prizes for each category – Idea Prize and Impact Prize – to bring all winners at par when evaluated for innovation.

Mr. Vijaya Kuamr Ivaturi, Co-Founder & CTO, Crayon Data Pte said that concurrent to the two-day conference, CII will also be organizing an exhibition to provide an experiential understanding and a display of technological innovations by various Research and Industry partners. The pavilions would cover the spectrum of innovation, representing the macro and micro level of creativity and entrepreneurial zeal. Some of the key focus areas of the conference include Vocational Skilling, Climate change and Sustainability, living in the 5G world, Impact of digitization in Linguistics, Application of Technology in governance and transparency, New Engines of mobility, technology in fitness, Teens@work and Innovation from basics science.

Mr. Sandeep Singh, Vice Chairman, CII Karnataka said that innovation has really caught on in interior India. We need to align future strategies and growth with innovation. The Innovation Summit for the last fifteen years has been a flagship event of CII Karnataka it focuses on innovation as a process to generate ideas and formulate a plan for execution.

More than 200 Exhibitors from various sectors of business will showcase their Innovative products and Services at this Exhibition. The two-day event will focus on transformative polices based on sustainable, just and a resilient approach. It will facilitate a meeting of the minds from diverse sectors with a unique mix of corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, Govt. representatives, academia and general public making it a great networking event as well as a learning experience.

Subex Releases the State of IoT Security Report India for Q2 2019

Subex, a leading telecom solutions provider released the findings of its State of Internet of Things (IoT) Security Report for the second quarter (April-June 2019) of this calendar year in New Delhi today. The report, based on threat intelligence data gathered from across 15 cities all over India, outlines key sectors being attacked, the methods of attack, malware, and variants deployed, key cities that are being attacked and studied by hackers, malware developers and hacktivist groups.

The report was released by Minister of State for Home, Krishna Reddy at a function in New Delhi.

Key findings of the report include:

Mumbai, New Delhi, and Bengaluru are attracting the maximum number of cyberattacks
Smart cities, financial services, and transportation sectors lead the sectoral rankings in terms of cyberattacks
The number of cyberattacks registered a 22 percent jump in the quarter
There has been a significant rise in reconnaissance attacks 
A range of sophisticated malware is being deployed by hackers to target critical infrastructure projects
IoT projects are being targeted at the proof of concept stages itself and many malware samples isolated showed a tendency to persist and listen to the network traffic
The study identified over 2550 unique malware samples in the country which is the highest reported so far. Modular and military-grade malware is often used by specialist hackers and groups with budgets and access to research and development facilities or online shops that develop and sell such sophisticated malware. Increase in the number of attacks with a geopolitical motivation is also a trend the study has reported.

The high level of malware persistence reported is indicative of a larger trend. Hackers are becoming more patient and willing to wait to attack or steal data. Also, the newer malware variants being detected are stealthier and can evade detection for a longer duration of time than before the study found. Such malware operates by staying silent while keeping their footprint and signature below detection thresholds. They can also streamline their behavior to match network traffic and stay dormant until certain thresholds are breached.       

“By releasing these findings we intend to increase awareness and provide decision makers and other stakeholders sufficient data points to frame appropriate interventions. We hope this report will serve its purpose and help India secure its infrastructure and connected components. Today, our honeypot network is active in 62 cities around the globe. The threat intelligence generated from these cities is crunched in our IoT lab in Bengaluru to generate actionable intelligence on the threat environment surrounding IoT deployments. The threat intelligence compiled points to a high level of hacker interest in projects in India and this is indeed a matter of concern,” said P Vinod Kumar, CEO, Subex.

Emami Limited Posts 47 Percent Profit Growth in Q1FY20

The Board of Directors of Emami Limited met on August 2019 to consider the unaudited financial results of the company for the quarter ended June 30, 2019.

The June quarter witnessed challenges in terms of adverse economic conditions such as channel liquidity issues and muted rural incomes which coupled with a high base in Q1FY19 impacted growth levels in the domestic business. Despite such challenges, the company closed the quarter with Revenues of ₹ 649 cr which grew by 6% over previous year.

During the quarter, both Kesh King and 7 Oils continued to post robust growth, while Navratna grew satisfactorily.  However, muted performance of Pain Management, Male Grooming, BoroPlus and Healthcare range led to lower growth in the domestic business. While, key brands like Navratna, Zandu & Mentho Plus balms, Kesh King and BoroPlus continued to gain market shares, Fair and Handsome maintained its leadership.

International Business grew by 34% during the quarter led by a strong performance in SAARC and MENAP regions. Excluding the new acquisition Creme 21, International Business grew by 10%.

During the quarter, Gross margins at 64.2% declined by 210 bps due to an increase in raw material costs.  Despite this, EBIDTA grew by 11% and EBIDTA margins at 20.7% grew by 110 bps. PAT at ₹ 39 cr grew by 47% and PAT margins increased by 170 bps.

Mr Mohan Goenka, Director, Emami Limited said, “We are happy to report a healthy profit-led growth this quarter with revenues growing by 6% and PAT growing by 47%. Despite continuing input cost pressure, our EBIDTA margins expanded by 110 bps. However, the macroeconomic environment continues to be challenging, with a distinct slowdown in the consumer demand curve particularly for discretionary products. Despite such challenges, we are satisfied with the performance of Kesh King, Navratna, 7 Oils in One and international business this quarter. With the stabilization of raw material prices and the government impetus to put rural growth on the fast track, we expect business to bounce back in the coming quarters”

Mr Harsha V Agarwal, Director, Emami Limited said, “Our power brands reinforced leadership in the respective categories increasing their market shares during the quarter which we believe is credible given a hesitant consumer sentiment.  In the international front, our new acquisition of the German personal care brand Creme 21 received encouraging consumer traction. Our outlook for the balance quarters in FY 20 remains positive based on the business strategy adopted to build a strong foundation for sustainable profitable growth, efficient management of risks /challenges and improvement of operating margins.”

Dvara KGFS Receives Rating Upgrade from ICRA Agency

Credit rating agency ICRA upgraded the long-term rating of Dvara KGFS one notch up from BBB-  to BBB. The rating upgrade is for both the Line of Credit (LOC) and Subordinated Debenture Programme of Dvara KGFS, with the outlook on the long-term rating set at stable.

The rating upgrade comes on the back of a recent equity infusion of 97 crores in April 2019, which allowed the company to diversify its operations into newer geographies, strengthen its presence in existing geographies and solidify its capital base for further growth. The rating upgrade reinforces the strong collection efficiency witnessed across Dvara KGFS operations and is an affirmation of the management team’s ability to execute the company’s growth plans while maintaining its strong financial position.

Commenting on the rating upgrade, Joby C O, Chief Executive Officer, Dvara KGFS, said "This upgrade by ICRA is an endorsement to the credibility that the Company has earned based on its performance in the past many years, and a strong risk framework that has been put in place. This rating upgrade is hugely positive in the current market and an acknowledgement to the management’s clear intent and focus on performance. This helps to reinforce the confidence the banks have put on us. We are hoping that this helps our fund-raising effort in the next quarters. "

Highlighting the importance of the upgrade, Samir Shah, Executive Vice-Chair & Group President of Dvara Trust, said "Dvara KGFS is a key part of the Dvara Group with a mission to be the preferred financial partner to rural households in India. We are delighted to see its progress, excited about its future as a truly unique deep rural holistic customer-centric financial services business model and thankful to all our partners who support KGFS in its journey to help underserved rural households to achieve their aspirations."

McAfee to Acquire NanoSec to Enhance its Market-Leading Capabilities in Cloud Security

McAfee, the device-to-cloud cybersecurity company, has announced the acquisition of NanoSec, a multi-cloud, zero-trust application and security platform. The acquisition will enable organizations to improve governance and compliance and to reduce risk of their cloud and container deployments.

Organizations are increasingly looking to adopt container technologies to help modernize legacy applications and create new cloud-native applications that are scalable and agile. Gartner predicts that “by 2022, more than 75% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production, which is a significant increase from fewer than 30% today1.” Gartner recommends the following security and governance best practice, “security can’t be an afterthought. It needs to be embedded in the DevOps process, which Gartner refers to as ‘DevSecOps’. Organizations need to plan for securing the containerized environment across the entire life cycle, which includes the build and development process, deployment and run phase of an application.”

The acquisition of NanoSec will strengthen the container security capabilities of McAfee MVISION Cloud and MVISION Server Protection products, giving its customers the ability to speed up application delivery while enhancing governance, compliance and security of their hybrid, multi-cloud deployments. NanoSec’s security capabilities will be applied to applications and workloads deployed in containers and Kubernetes and will be integrated into McAfee MVISION Cloud and MVISION Server Protection offerings. These capabilities include continuous configuration compliance and vulnerability assessment as well as runtime application-level segmentation for detecting and preventing lateral movement of threats.

“McAfee’s focus and innovation have allowed it to deliver industry-leading cloud security capabilities to help our customers securely leverage the cloud to accelerate their business,” said Rajiv Gupta, senior vice president and general manager of the cloud security business unit, McAfee. “NanoSec’s technology is a natural extension for McAfee MVISION Cloud, enhancing our current CASB and CWPP products, and adding to our ‘Shift-Left’ capabilities to deliver on the DevSecOps best practice to improve governance and security. NanoSec’s team brings a wealth of experience to McAfee, and together we are committed to enabling organizations to reach their full cloud potential.”

“Joining forces with McAfee means that our groundbreaking capabilities including our unique application-identity based approach for app-level protection and micro-segmentation will be available on a global scale,” said Vishwas Manral, founder and CEO of NanoSec. “McAfee has demonstrated not only its leadership in cloud security, but its desire to continually innovate and deliver new capabilities that reshape how organizations can operate workloads and applications safely in the cloud. It felt like a natural fit to join McAfee to deliver to application development and security professionals greater visibility and control over detecting, responding and resolving threats to reduce risk.”

McAfee’s acquisition of NanoSec further demonstrates how McAfee is working to integrate security natively into DevSecOps processes and toolsets to discover and address security issues before applications are deployed.