Joint State Tests of Mi-26T2V Helicopter Begins in Russia Until 2020

Russian Helicopters holding company (part of Rostec State Corporation) and representatives of the Russian Ministry of Defense started joint state tests of Mi-26T2V heavy-lift military transport helicopter which are to last until the end of 2020.

As part of Russian Helicopters' program on upgrading the heavy Mi-26 helicopter for the Russian Aerospace Forces, in 2018 Rostvertol produced a prototype of the modernized Mi-26T2V helicopter.

"Currently, Mi-26T2V prototype  has successfully completed preliminary tests at the manufacturing facility, allowing us to start the joint state tests program which is to last through the entire year 2020. We have taken into account all preferences of the customer and implemented them in Mi-26T2V helicopter design. The performance of the machine will be considerably improved due to the modernization. I am convinced that Mi-26T2V helicopter will have a rightful place in the Russian armed forces," said Director General of Russian Helicopters holding company Andrey Boginsky.

The tests will take place on four proving grounds. The crew of the helicopter will include representatives of the Russian Aerospace Forces and will check the main performance characteristics of the helicopter and operation of new equipment.

The modernized Mi-26T2V helicopter which can be used at any time of the day and has modern avionics is a heavy-lift military and transport helicopter which can carry up to 20 tonnes of cargo. The rotorcraft has the modern NPK90-2V integrated avionics which ensures piloting during the day and at night, enabling the helicopter to fly the route in an automatic mode, come to a preset point, perform approach and final approach maneuvers, and return to the main or alternate aerodrome. The onboard defense system of Mi-26T2V ensures protection of the helicopter from being hit by air defense missile systems.

Mi-26T2V will be able to make flights in the conditions of any region, including those with complex physical and geographical and adverse climatic conditions, at any time of the day, at equipped and unequipped routes, or even without routes, and on featureless terrain, in conditions of fire and information counteraction of the enemy. The number of crew members of the modernized helicopter (five persons) remained unchanged.

Currently, Russian Helicopters holding company produces the entire range of military helicopters for the Russian military agency in accordance with contracts. These machines are necessary for performing the tasks of the Russian armed forces: Ka-52 Alligator, Mi-28NM Night Hunter and military Mi-35M attack helicopters, Mi-38T paratrooper carriers and transport helicopters, Mi-8/17 military transport helicopters, heavy-lift military transport Mi-26 rotorcraft, training and specialized machines.

University Admissions Company LeverageEdu Raises $1.5Mn+ To Fuel Expansion & Growth

University Admissions & Career Guidance platform Leverage Ed-tech Private Limited, announced today that it raised over $1.5Mn from its existing investors. DSG Consumer Partners & Blume Ventures have co-led the latest funding round. Saama Capital founder Ash Lilani & PayU CEO Amrish Rau also participated in this round.

Founded by Akshay Chaturvedi in January 2017, Leverage Ed-tech operates education platforms LeverageEdu.com and Univalley.com. The Company aims to be the go-to brand for university admissions and career guidance for the millennials.

Leverage Edu provides students enrolled on its platform with a seamless college application journey which includes personalized mentor-led 1:1 workshops, portfolio build-up sessions, access to pre-program internships & online courses, and exclusive scholarship options. The company also helps students with post-admit services through their partners for education loans, accommodation options and much more. In September 2019, the company has also launched a new business vertical Univalley.com, which provides advisory, tech and recruitment solutions to partner universities across the globe.

About a million students visit the LeverageEdu.com platform every month to learn more about higher education options & careers they are interested in. The platform also has an AI tool that helps students predict what options are best suited for their profile, and the company continues to focus on making its free tools grow faster and have wider access.

This financing round takes the company’s total capital raised to over $3Mn.Presently in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, the company will also expand their presence to more tier 2 and 3 cities in the next few quarters.

Founder & CEO of the three-year old company, Akshay Chaturvedi, said, “We have been massively obsessed with student experience on the LeverageEdu.com platform and clear well-defined student success outcomes - which has led to an exceptional revenue growth in the last 9 months, as well as early signs of building a trusted brand. Focusing on few core areas and executing them really well has helped. Fortunate to have phenomenal investors who understand what it takes to build a company in this space, and who’ve been extremely helpful while scaling up. I am absolutely thrilled that they have decided to back down on us. Excited to continue to execute and build a leading global full stack company in this space - one happy, relaxed, confident student journey at a time!”

Deepak Shahdadpuri, Managing Director of DSG Consumer Partners, said, “DSGCP first invested in LeverageEdu and partnered with Akshay a year ago. In that short period Akshay & his team have demonstrated very strong execution capabilities and have positioned LeverageEdu as a leading emergent higher education & career advisory brand. A large part of their success to date is the unrelenting focus on making the student the core of everything that company does. We are very excited about the next phase of growth as LeverageEdu expands into becoming a full stack service provider and expands operations to more Indian cities.”

Karthik Reddy, Managing Partner at Blume Ventures, said, “Akshay and team have put in place strong frameworks for building a large long-term company, in this first year of our partnership. The scale of the overseas education opportunity set is even more massive than we initially imagined and the pace at which the team has executed has meant that we are happy to see ourselves co-leading a second round with DSG into an early breakout from fund III.”

Tata Tele Business Services Emerge Key Enabler for SMEs to Harness Digital Transformation Wave at Calicut

Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS), India’s leading enterprise connectivity solution provider showcased an array of technology solutions for the SMEs at ‘Do Big Forum’ – its flagship customer programme. The event under the aegis of the theme “Smart Solutions” witnessed participation from over ninety delegates from SME community.

Elaborating on the TTBS initiative, Mr. Kalidas Pai Ks, Vice President, SME Operations said, “With technological disruption happening at a humongous rate, it is necessary for SMEs to leverage technology in order to drive efficiency at an optimum level. As a progressive digital catalyst, we believe in providing the best in class bespoke technological solutions at reasonable costs while addressing the challenges faced SMEs.”

“For instance, our award-winning solution SmartOffice, a cost-effective single box solution, which allows business entities to have access to voice, data, network storage, and apps.  For evolving SMEs and start-ups SmartOffice can prove to be a boon as they don’t need to worry about procuring and deploying connectivity & unified communications equipment. We provide complete stack of hardware that go into creating IP-based integrated communication infrastructure that supports voice, data, and video assorted with enhanced sense-of-cloud; and for that, we don’t charge anything. We only charge for the services, which are routed through this box. Its Pay as you go model make it very affordable, reliable, easy-to-deploy solution that can greatly enable SMEs and start-ups alike”, added Mr Kalidas.

The SME segment is growing rapidly and is fast adopting technology, as businesses realize that technology not only cuts cost but also is an integral part of operations. Technology enables them to reach their customers faster, service them better and to manage the organization more efficiently by connecting offices, partners, and the larger ecosystem for closer collaboration and proactive servicing.

Commenting on the Smart VPN, Mr. Kalidas said – “Fast, secure and dependable connectivity is the top of the digital enterprise agenda to manage a data rich future business. Our Smart VPN solutions will enable SMEs to maximize their growth potential, optimise connectivity costs, enhance their customers’ experience and securely extend reach with instant access to cloud platforms. As SMEs are embracing digital, they are benefitting greatly by adopting cloud-based servers but are struggling to protect their data in transit as well as manage and monitor exactly who accessed these services. With Smart VPN, they can now have easy to use and highly secure interface and diverse selection of location specific servers, which allow for reduced latency, high bandwidth and unobstructed internet access.”

Technology adoption is one of the key challenges for SMEs given the huge CAPEX requirements for setting up Cloud services, voice, cloud storage and data security services.  Solutions offered by Tata Tele Business Services however provide a level playing field to SMEs to compete with big corporates by offering a host of state-of-the-art technology driven services at affordable prices, thereby bridging the digital divide.

India's Fitness Studio cult.fit Opens its First Center in Jammu

Integrated healthcare start-up, cure.fit officially announced the opening of its first cult.fit studio here at Jammu. cult.fit is the fitness vertical of cure.fit; India’s largest and most loved fitness studio with over 270 outlets across India and Dubai.

cult.fit offers different workout formats like yoga, boxing, strength & conditioning, sports conditioning, dance fitness, HIIT, HRX, PROWL; these sessions are train led, non-equipment based and crafted by our team with a proper warm up, balanced full body workout and cool down. We ensure our customers stay fit the right way and help them explore different group workout formats that impacts them the most and help achieve their fitness goal.

Speaking about the launch, Naresh Krishnaswamy, Growth and Business at cure.fit said, “As announced earlier this year, we have launched our first center in Jammu. We are delighted to be amongst the first private companies to be offering our services and creating employment in the newest formed union territory in India.

We have had a great response to our pre-opening offer . We will soon be launching a few more cult centers and offer our other services here.”

About cult.fit workout formats:

* Yoga – The cult instructors infuse every class with an array of breathing techniques, a variety of postures and meditation techniques that helps in improving self-confidence and balance while gaining a stronger body in the process.
* Boxing - This class is designed to help one hone self-defense skills and release stress by practicing powerful punches and knock-out kicks.
* Strength & Conditioning – A combination of compound movements and high-intensity interval training that provides lasting fitness and enhanced endurance.
* Sports Conditioning – Designed to train an individual like an athlete by putting oneself in situations that will help gain an edge through a series of resistance workouts.
* Dance Fitness - A full body aerobic workout, divided into different genres of music providing peaks and troughs of intensity. Help boost confidence, ease stress, burn a lot of calories, improve cardiovascular & muscular endurance, lose weight, have fun and leave the room sweaty, happy and healthy.
* HIIT - A training methodology which incorporates high intensity exercises followed by planned intervals, repeated over multiple rounds to achieve faster result.
* HRX - The workout is a combination of Primal movements, Zero momentum rep, compound movements & conditioning routines designed to challenge the human body and accelerate growth.
*PROWL - A unique mix of combat, dance and functional fitness done to foot tapping music. The session will consist of skill teaching for combat like boxing, muay thai, mma etc, skill for dance and functional fitness.

The cure.fit app also offers cult.fit’s popular Do-It-Yourself (DIY) workout videos, where customers can work out at their own place. Downloads of the cure.fit app have crossed two million.

At cure.fit, we make group workouts fun, daily food healthy & tasty, mental fitness easy with yoga & meditation, and medical & lifestyle care hassle-free. #BeBetterEveryDay.

Deepak Jain Appoints as its Chief Financial Officer at Ather Energy

Ather Energy’s senior leadership team is joined by Deepak Jain as Chief Financial Officer. Deepak, brings over 20 years of experience across global brands like First Advantage, Apple India, P&G and Gillette. He joins Ather after a five year stint at First Advantage as CFO for their India Business.

Deepak has been a finance leader with exposure to large multi-location and transnational revenues. He began his career at E&Y before moving on to Gillette and Procter & Gamble, where he took on key leadership roles in distribution modeling & sales finance. In 2010, he joined Apple India as the CFO and led the finance team during a period of exponential growth for five years. Specialising in conceptualizing, leading and executing business expansion strategies in manufacturing, trading and services business environments, Deepak will play a key role in Ather’s aggressive expansion plans.

Tarun Mehta, Co-founder & CEO at Ather Energy: says, "In his prior roles, Deepak has scaled up technology and product led companies making him an ideal addition to Ather’s team.  For a rapidly expanding company like Ather, an important focus area is laying the structure for effective processes. We are scaling up to meet the demand for the Ather 450 across the country and this requires robust systems and operations. Deepak’s experience in leading teams and integrating manufacturing and business processes will play a key role in the next part of our story."

Deepak Jain, Chief Financial Officer, Ather Energy remarks, "Working with Ather is a rare opportunity to work on cutting edge technology and building products that are setting the bar in the two wheeler category. Tarun and Swapnil’s vision for electric vehicles and automobiles will serve as a lighthouse for the industry. I look forward to working with the team as we enter new markets and increase our footprint across India."

Masai School Launches Online Coding Program for Women and Working Professionals

Masai School, India's first Military style coding school, announced the launch of its first online coding program, primarily targeted towards giving a head start for women beginning the second innings of their career. This part time evening course focuses on building a strong foundation in backend software development and computer science. The course is open to all working professionals and registration for the same can be done on the Masai School website.

Masai School launched in June this year with an on-campus program on full stack software development. Masai School introduced this online coding program with the aim to help working professionals upskill and strengthen their profile to enhance career growth. The course consists of 600 hours of coding, 30 hours of Soft Skills and 60 hours of building mathematical abilities in the time period of 30 weeks. Along with this, the course also brings 24 Guest Lectures, 2 Demo Days, 2 Hackathons, 10 Projects, 50 Challenges and 5 Mock interviews.

At the outset of the launch, Prateek Shukla, Co-founder and CEO, Masai School, said,  "Post our launch this year, we have received great feedback not just from our students but also from working professionals across the country. Many of them were keen on joining Masai School but could not think of quitting their jobs. It was this positive response that made us design this part - time course which would cater to this genre of learners." He further added, "Coding is soon going to be the world's second language. With the rapid evolution of technology, this will also create a demand for professionals with specific skills. These are clear indicators that professionals need to upskill to avoid getting redundant. Through Masai School's backend developer program, our aim is to help working professionals FastTrack their career graphs."

Masai School recently graduated its first batch with 90% placements for its students. One such student is Hassan. He hails from Salem, Tamil Nadu. He does not belong to a privileged family and did not have access to quality education. Though he graduated as a Mechanical Engineer, he lacked the right exposure to the world outside. This made him take up a job as a mechanic in a local workshop with a monthly income of Rs.18,000. Today, Hassan has cracked one of the toughest technical interviews and joined one of the fastest growing startups of our country. His new job includes 3 months of apprenticeship (Paying 4.5X his previous salary) followed by a full time role as Full stack developer, with a salary that is 8X times of his previous salary.

Another inspiring student is Mahesh. He hails from the town of Sangli in Maharashtra. He has done his Masters in MCA, post which he joined his father in running the family business. A year and a half later, he decided to look for a job relevant to his line of studies. Mahesh applied to more than 25 companies who were offering an average of 2.5 lac per annum, but got rejected everywhere. It was at this stage that Mahesh applied to Masai School. Today, almost at the end of his course, he has been placed as a full-stack developer with a salary of nearly 4 times of what companies were offering him prior to joining Masai School.

Masai School began operations in the month of June 2019, in the city of Bangalore. At present, it also has a branch in Patna and plans to graduate 2000 students in the next 10-12 months.

Celebrate this Holiday Season with TECNO Spark Power, Camon 12 Air & Spark Go

TECNO, the premium smartphone brand from TRANSSION India, has set the market ablaze with new range of affordable smartphones all priced between INR 5K to 10K. SPARK series followed by the launch of CAMON 12 Air are the latest offerings by the brand targeted at the first-time smartphone buyers, feature phone to smartphone upgraders and for consumers who are looking for premium specifications at pocket friendly price.

If you have a budget under INR 10K and are looking for smartphones with Bigger screen & vibrant display, contemporary design, advance AI camera and long lasting battery then your search ends with TECNO offering multiple choices at every price-point under INR 10K.

With data revolution and digital content platforms sprouting to provide online streaming and video on demand has led to personal screen time on the rise amongst the millennials. There is a dire need for multimedia device with best in class features in the budget segment. Understanding this consumer need, TECNO’s affordable range of smartphones sports best in class features including bigger screen, Dot-in display, exceptional camera with AI capabilities and bigger battery amongst other features at an attractive price point that is only available at flagship prices in other brands.

* BEST SMARTPHONES UNDER INR 9,000 WITH MASSIVE BATTERY

o   Tecno Spark Power:

Priced at INR 8,499, Spark Power is a game-changer in the sub-9k category owing to its segment-first 6000 mAh battery – a monster that can make the phone last up to five days giving users 29 hours of video playback, 35 hours of calling, 17 hours of gaming or 200 hours of music – all in a single charge! Additionally, it has a brilliant 6.35-inch HD+ dot notch display with AMOLED Screen. The ‘category defining’ 6000 mAh battery of TECNO Spark Power with AI power saving & safe charging addresses the most important need of the category consumers -- enjoy uninterrupted entertainment on the go.

* SMARTPHONES UNDER 10K WITH ‘DOT-IN DISPLAY’

o    TECNO CAMON 12 Air:

The newly launched phone has a 6.55-inch HD+ display, AI triple rear camera (16MP+ 2MP+ 5MP), 4GB RAM, 64GB of internal storage and 4000mAh battery available for purchase at just INR. 9,999. A power-packed performer, the phone is powered by the Helio P22 Octa-core system-on-chip, mated with 4GB RAM & 64GB ROM and 256GB expandable storage handles everyday operations and heavy-duty tasks with ease. Moreover, the phone is secured with advanced face unlock 2.0 and superfast anti-oil fingerprint sensor which unlocks the phone in just 0.27 seconds.

All new TECNO portfolio is available across 35,000+ offline retail stores.  Extending more power in the hands of consumers, all TECNO smartphones come with a unique promise of “111” under which the brand offers 1-time screen replacement in six months, 100 days’ free replacement, and 1-month extended warranty over 12 months on all the devices.

*  BEST BUDGET SMARTPHONES UNDER 6K

o    TECNO SPARK GO:

Priced at INR 5499, TECNO SPARK Go has been the best-selling device and is a game-changer as it comes with ‘segment-first’ 6.1” HD+ dot notch display. The device comes with a unique AI Read mode that automatically adjusts the screen brightness and colors while reading to provide extreme comfort to your eyes and an ease of reading like never-before. It sports front flash in 5 MP AI selfie and 8MP AI rear camera with dual flash light. The phone is available in the capacity of 2GB + 16 GB storage and 3000mAh battery with safe charging.