Manchester City and XYLEM Tackle Water and Education Issues in Bangalore with Fan Volunteers

Five Manchester City fans from across India were given an exciting volunteering opportunity to team up with the Club’s Official Water Technology Partner, Xylem, to increase access to safe water for primary schools in Bangalore. Despite being one of the world’s fastest growing cities, many of Bangalore’s 12.3 million residents still do not have access to clean drinking water and are at risk of contracting water-borne diseases.

As part of ‘Water Goals’, a project supported by Manchester City and Xylem Watermark, the fans worked with Xylem and their local partner Planet Water Foundation to install new clean water filtration towers in two new schools. The schools were also fitted with an AquaSan latrine sanitisation system, to sanitise school toilets, accessible to hundreds of schoolchildren. Club legend Paul Dickov was also involved in the trip, joining the fans to complete the builds.

Since January 2019, Water Goals has trained 100 Young Leaders and reached over 5000 participants and young people in 26 locations, with support from local partner Magic Bus.

The City fans also joined up with young leaders from the Cityzens Giving project to find out how they use football to educate young people about the importance of water sanitation and hygiene. This trips marks the second annual volunteering opportunity for City fans building on the first installation of two Xylem water towers in 2019 which now provide access to clean water for up to 1800 people each day.

Paul Dickov, Manchester City legend, said: “I was honoured to join this year’s volunteering trip alongside our partner, Xylem, and our amazing fan volunteers. To see first-hand the difference being made in these communities, and to be able to contribute to the building of the water towers, was an incredible experience.”

Tom Pitchon, Director of City Football Foundation, said: “We are inspired by the impact of this second fan volunteering trip in Bangalore, bringing together Xylem’s expertise in clean water with the passion of City fans across India to make a difference in local communities. This, coupled with the long-term impact of our existing Cityzens Giving project in Bangalore, continues to demonstrate that football can truly help tackle social issues around the world.”

Joe Vesey, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Xylem, said: “Many of Bangalore’s more than 12.3 million residents do not have access to clean drinking water and are at risk of contracting water-borne diseases. This affects their health and can also impact their education.

“Our business and our mission are all about bringing the best technology to bear on solving the world’s most challenging water issues. It’s so rewarding to do that in partnership with Manchester City fans, through Cityzens Giving we’re bringing safe water and sanitation to thousands of students across Bangalore. This will have a huge impact on their health, on their education, and on their futures. “

Konica Minolta Consolidates its Position as an Environmentally-Sustainable Organization

Highlights

* Wins the prestigious Grand Prix award at the inaugural Nikkei SDGs Management Grand Prix
* The brand has already implemented a collection drive to help its India customers comply with the E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2016, and achieve their sustainability objectives

In keeping with its vision for a sustainable future, Konica Minolta ensures that its solutions are aimed at tackling deep-rooted problems that have a direct impact on society and the world at large. With this broad outlook, the company identifies pressing problems within its purview to implement ethical business practices that raise awareness and drive positive change at the grassroots level.

Each of Konica Minolta’s products and policies is designed to reduce energy consumption and paper wastage. The production process for its proprietary polymerised toner technology, Simitri HDE, reduces the carbon footprint and sulphurous/nitrous emissions and consumes minimal energy.

Konica Minolta also engages in Green Supplier Activities, linked to its Green Factory Activities. Under the initiative, environmental experts from Konica Minolta visit supplier production sites to evaluate existing setups and propose suggestions for improving processes/workflows, as well as outlining cost reduction benefits, investment rationale, etc. They also provide assistance to suppliers to implement the relevant measures, thus helping them simultaneously reduce both the environmental impact and their operating costs.

For such consistent efforts, Konica Minolta Inc. has recently received the prestigious Grand Prix award at the first Nikkei SDGs Management Grand Prix. The platform recognizes businesses that are actively addressing environmental, societal, and economic challenges, and taking this a step further by integrating SDGs in their corporate practices to enhance corporate values. The assessment was made based on the company’s responses to the Nikkei SDGs Management Survey with questionnaires in four categories, viz. SDGs strategy and economic value, social value, environmental value and governance. Konica Minolta was rated highly across all four categories after a comprehensive evaluation of the initiatives it has implemented at multiple levels.

In line with the latest achievement, the company is now working towards furthering its vision and efforts towards achieving the SDGs by creating new values and developing solutions in association with its customers in India. As an ethical and environmentally conscious organization, Konica Minolta India has been compliant with the norms and guidelines mandated under the E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2016, by the Government of India. The brand has also initiated a collection drive to enable its production printing customers to achieve the same compliance with the rules pertaining to e-waste. To facilitate this, it is conducting a collection of empty toner bottles and used/defective spare parts from customers. The drive began on January 15th, 2020, and is being carried out in all metro cities to create an avenue for customers to do their part for the larger mission to build a greener, more sustainable future. 

McAfee Helps Partners Build Competitive Edge With Open Platform Approach to Cloud Security

McAfee, the device-to-cloud cybersecurity company, today announced substantial headway with its partner program. Eight new partnerships and seven new certified integrations to McAfee Security Innovation Alliance (SIA) and McAfee CASB Connect Program give organizations a competitive advantage to secure people, devices and data in the cloud. RSA attendees can learn more about these programs at McAfee booth #N-5745 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

McAfee SIA accelerates the development of open and interoperable security products and simplifies integration within complex customer environments. These capabilities provide a truly integrated, connected security ecosystem to maximize the value of existing customer security investments. As an extension of McAfee SIA, the McAfee CASB Connect Program is the industry’s first self-serve framework that enables any cloud service provider or partner to rapidly onboard any SaaS application onto McAfee MVISION Cloud. This fosters the ability to secure data within any cloud service in McAfee’s catalog. New partners that joined the McAfee SIA program include:

A10 Networks
AttackIQ
Cythereal
D3 Security
Dragos
Indegy
Mimecast
Nasuni
Nutanix
OpenText
Siemplify

The McAfee CASB Connect framework, which allows cloud service providers or partners to build lightweight API connectors to McAfee MVISION Cloud, has significantly expanded. As a result, the following new service providers adopted the MVISION Cloud Platform:

Atlassian
Clarizen
DbCom
Introhive

Opposed to uncertainty concerning the availability and maturity of most cloud service APIs, the McAfee CASB Connect Framework provides a unified platform for comprehensive control over all sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services, from managed and unmanaged devices. This allows cloud services and partners to be fast-tracked onto the MVISION Cloud Security Platform.

Leveraging the power of CASB Connect, MVISION Cloud customers can extend the same levels of data security across all cloud services through a single platform to:

Enforce Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies to protect sensitive and regulated data.
Enforce internal and external collaboration policies.
Inspect login, data upload, data download and administrator activity to maintain an audit trail for forensic investigation to detect any anomalous behavior.
Enforce contextual access control policies to enforce data access and download controls based on user, location or device (both managed and unmanaged).
“Not all cloud service providers have the APIs needed to integrate with MVISION Cloud,” said Javed Hasan, global head of enterprise products, strategy and alliances, McAfee. “Even in those cases, the CASB Connect framework can now be used out-of-the-box to quickly onboard a SaaS application to McAfee’s CASB platform with support for the most critical use cases. The unique advantage of this new capability helps customers enforce security policies to prevent sensitive data from being downloaded on to any managed or unmanaged device, both within and outside of the corporate network perimeter.”

McAfee has a total of 160 integration partners through its McAfee SIA and McAfee CASB Connect Programs.

“MVISION Cloud allowed security to say yes to the business at Pacific Dental Services (PDS) by transparently addressing our critical security and compliance needs in the use of cloud services like Office365, Box, and AWS among others,” said Nemi George, CISO at PDS. “Through McAfee’s CASB Connect program we have seamlessly extended those same policies and controls to cloud services like Okta and SmartSheet thereby improving our cloud maturity and reducing our TCO.”

According to Bryant Lee, head of partnerships and integrations at Atlassian, “Through the CASB Connect program, McAfee and Atlassian have collaborated to provide Atlassian customers with advanced data security and threat protection capabilities to help businesses reduce the risk of data breaches and data loss as well as more easily detect malicious activity.”

Partner highlights include:

A10 Networks - The A10 Thunder® SSLi® is an SSL/TLS visibility solution that eliminates encryption-induced security blind spots by decrypting enterprise traffic and enabling security devices to detect and stop encrypted attacks. Thunder SSLi integrates with the McAfee Network Security Platform (NSP) by intercepting enterprise traffic, decrypting it and forwarding it to NSP in clear text. This enables NSP to inspect encrypted traffic easily and perform advanced intrusion prevention and malware analysis without compromising performance.
Clarizen – With ongoing concerns over data security and privacy, the McAfee and Clarizen partnership offers an added layer of protection for large enterprise organizations. By leveraging self-service API connectors to McAfee MVISION Cloud, Clarizen can give their customers confidence that their data is safe and secure without sacrificing collaboration and business processes managed through Clarizen One.
D3 Security – D3 SOAR provides security orchestration, automation and response with MITRE ATT&CK in its DNA. This allows SOC operators to coordinate incident response workflows across all tools and assets, ensuring rapid and consistent remediations. The integration between D3 SOAR and McAfee ESM helps SOC and IR teams by improving the speed and quality of investigations, enabling proactive analysis and dramatically reducing MTTR. Events in ESM trigger detailed playbooks in D3, which automatically act on intelligence from security infrastructure and data sources, which keeps SOC operators focused on suspicious behavior and threats.
DbCom – Eqube is a regulatory compliance system designed and hosted by DbCom to maintain sensitive customer data for large multinational financial systems. Cloud security controls are essential for DbCom as they undergo frequent cyber audits to ensure customer data is secured. It is critical these organizations have 100 percent clarity on content and patterns of data moving between their premises and DbCom’s hosted application in AWS. With McAfee’s CASB technology, DbCom can provide real-time visibility of data in motion, providing the utmost sense of security to DbCom and their customers.
Indegy – The Indegy Security Suite gives users visibility and control of their industrial operations, operational technology (OT), and IT networks. Indegy surfaces industrial control system (ICS) events and OT security event information in McAfee ESM, so security administrators have view into both the IT and OT environments for enhanced situational awareness.
Introhive – Introhive's API integrates seamlessly with MVISION Cloud to allow clients to expose and correct negligent, malicious and suspicious user behavior. This helps to prevent sensitive data from integrating into Introhive and customer relationship management systems via Introhive Data Automation.
Siemplify – Siemplify, a leading independent provider of security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR), has partnered with McAfee to make its flagship Siemplify Security Operations Platform available to McAfee customers via MVISION ePolicy Orchestrator. SOAR technology, which is experiencing booming adoption rates across industries, allows security operations teams to work more efficiently and effectively by seamlessly automating and orchestrating the multitude of tools and processes required to triage, investigate and respond to cyber threats at scale.

Bengaluru’s Leading 5km Run – My Country Run, Edition 5 on March 8

Highlights

* My Country Run, Edition 5 invites Bengaluru to #RunForABetterTomorrow
* Registrations open for My Country Run, Edition 5, Bengaluru’ own run

My Country Run, Edition 5, supported by Jain (Deemed-to-be University), the largest 5km run, is coming to Bengaluru with its fifth edition on Sunday, March 8th 2020, Nice Road Tollgate, Hosakerehalli. To cheer for the participants many prominent dignitaries & public personalities – such as Shri C T Ravi, Minister of Tourism, Kannada & Culture, Sports and Youth Affairs, Govt. of Karnataka, Shi Tejasvi Surya, Member of Parliament- Bengaluru South, have confirmed their presence for the run.

MCR is certified by AIMS (Association of International Marathon and Distance Races), and is the largest 5km run to encourage sports and raise awareness about health in Bengaluru. In its 5th year the event is expected to witness 15,000+ participants. There are three categories in MCR – Elite 10k, Open 10K & Cool 5k.

Speaking on this momentous fifth edition of the run the spokesperson, Col (Hony.) Dr. N Sundararajan, Vice Chancellor, Jain (Deemed-to-be University)  said, “As we start gearing up for the fifth edition of My Country Run, I must say I am extremely delighted by the acceptance and encouragement we have received for our previous editions. With our motto of #RunForABetterTomorrow this year we are expecting a greater participation and awareness about health & fitness.

“As a nation, it’s heartening to see Govt. promoting “Khelo India”, which is a big boost to the nation where sports was never considered as a career option. I am hopeful that My Country Run will surely create that awareness. I urge Bengaluru to come forward and participate in large numbers.” He Added.

MCR has reached out to more than 500,000+ people and a turnout of 40,000+ enthusiast runners in the first four editions. It is entering into the 5th edition with trust and support of thousands of like- minded people joining hands to support the cause. My Country Run is entitled in India Book of Records & Asia Book of record.

As a part of its value system, Jain (Deemed-to-be University), believes in the concept of promoting health and encouraging individuals to pursue their passion. This belief system is the root for organizing ‘MY COUNTRY RUN (MCR). As a part of its Social Impact Initiative to achieve the following objectives;

* To create awareness on good health and wellness for every single individual in the country that, in turn, transforms into a Healthy Nation.

* To support deserving sportsmen with the best facilities and equip them to excel at National and International   level   and   also   to   create   the   next generation OLYMPIANS from India.

* To create a sports Eco System/Community of Sports

Online registrations are open for everyone. Health enthusiasts and runners can register themselves by visiting the website www.mycountry.run.

Poornima Ramaswamy, Former Cognizant VP Joins Qlik’s Executive Team as EVP Strategic Clients

Qlik has announced that Poornima Ramaswamy joined its executive team as Executive Vice President, Strategic Clients. Poornima will lead a multi-disciplinary team that blends sales, value engineering and consulting to design and execute transformational strategies for Qlik’s enterprise customers, helping them to accelerate the value of their overall data investments.

“Poornima is a recognized industry leader in AI and analytics, having earned the trust of many CDOs and CIOs during her career,” said Mike Capone, Qlik CEO. “Her depth of real-world transformational success will be a huge benefit to our growing strategic enterprise account base, who are looking to maximize the impact of their investments in data integration and analytics to drive more value from data.”

Poornima joins Qlik at an exciting time, when customers are looking to partners like Qlik for help on both the strategy and execution aspects of the people, process and technology challenges to unlocking the full value of their data. She brings more than two decades of experience across all industries to a growing executive team that has pivoted the company to an intense focus on customer outcomes.

“As a former partner to Qlik, I know the commitment and quality Qlik brings to every customer engagement, and I admire the company’s bold, forward-looking vision for data and analytics,” said Ramaswamy. “I’m thrilled to be in a position to help Qlik’s valued customers through the hurdles everyone faces on the way to realizing the full business value of their data.”

The company also expanded its C-level bench with the promotions of James Fisher to Chief Product Officer, Joe DosSantos to Chief Data Officer and Ruthann Wry to Chief People Officer.

Qlik recently evolved its product management and marketing efforts through the creation of a Global Products organization, led by James Fisher. James is now responsible for driving focus on key product business investments in support of Qlik’s data and analytics go-to-market execution, helping define product strategy through a market-first approach.

Qlik also created a new Chief Data Officer organization run by Joe DosSantos under the leadership of CTO Mike Potter. Joe will lead Qlik’s efforts to execute its internal data and analytics strategy, and serve as an external thought leader for Qlik on topics ranging from data lake automation, data strategy and data governance.

Ruthann Wry is a strong, long-time HR leader at Qlik. She joined in 2014 to lead the Americas culture and talent organization, a responsibility which she will continue overseeing in her new global role. 

Fifth Edition of Mahindra Club Challenge Set to Dazzle Off-Roading Enthusiasts in Bengaluru

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (M&M), a part of the US$ 20.7 billion Mahindra Group, will host the fifth edition of the Mahindra Adventure ‘Club Challenge 2020’ in Bengaluru, where top-15 off-roading clubs from across the country, will fight for the coveted title of the ‘Best Off-Roading Club’ in India. The obstacles will focus on teamwork rather than on individual performances. The top three teams will take home a grand prize money.

The ‘Club Challenge’ is scheduled to kick off on Saturday, February 22nd, 2020 with exciting night stage from 5:00 PM till midnight. The next day, Sunday, February 23rd, 2020 will witness the day stages between 09:00 AM and 5:00 PM.

There are two new stellar obstacles that will be seen this year in addition to signature obstacles such as ‘Demolition Derby’ and ‘Pass the Baton’ which will continue at this year’s Club Challenge.

According to Bijoy Kumar Y, Chief, Adventure Initiatives, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. said, “The off-roading community in the country has grown at a steady pace over the last decade. With ‘Club Challenge’, we are delighted to see the passion of off-roading enthusiasts from chapters of other cities fight for the title of “Best off-roading club”. After the success of previous editions, this year too participants come together to celebrate the tough & rugged DNA of Mahindra vehicles and strengthen the bond between various off-roading clubs.”

About Mahindra Adventure

A unique concept to showcase the tough and rugged DNA of Mahindra vehicles, Mahindra Adventure functions as an umbrella brand with a series of self-drive overland adventure expeditions organized under its banner. Mahindra Adventure was launched as an independent entity for all adventurous activities, in 2011, headed by Bijoy Kumar Y, Chief of Adventure Initiatives. He is a motoring enthusiast and the erstwhile editor of a popular motoring magazine.

To spread the DNA of off-roading, the Mahindra Adventure team has also launched the Mahindra Adventure Off-Road Training Academy in Igatpuri , India’s first dedicated facility providing a one stop solution to learning everything about a Mahindra 4WD vehicle and how to use it to its full potential. Through this, we hope to leverage the brand’s off-road heritage, showcase the vehicles abilities and give the participants the confidence to explore the limits of the vehicles. Custom-made Mahindra Thars equipped with radio sets are exclusively used as training vehicles at the facility. After dominating the Rallying scene in India with back to back victories in 2017, 2018 and numerous Cross Country Rally wins; the Super XUV500 has made way for the new kid-on-the-block the Super XUV3OO. The potent R2C spec XUV3OO won the last round of INRC 2019. And is roaring to set the stage on fire this year. 

Urban Mobility Lab in Bengaluru Discuss Solutions to Further Accelerate Bengaluru’s Transition to Shared, Clean, and Citizen-Centric Mobility

Rocky Mountain Institute and Micelio in partnership with the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT), Invest Karnataka Forum, and Department of Industries and Commerce (DIC), launched their ambitious Urban Mobility Lab in Bangalore today to identify, develop, and implement mobility solutions that transform how people and goods move.

Tejasvi Surya, Member of Parliament for Bengaluru South Lok Sabha Constituency was the chief guest for the occasion. Other dignitaries present included, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited Managing Director - Ajay Seth, Bangalore City Police, Commissioner of Police - Bhaskar Rao, Government of Karnataka, Transport and Commerce and Industries Principal Secretary - Gaurav Gupta, Directorate of Urban Land Transport, Commissioner -  V. Ponnuraj, BMTC Managing Director - C. Shikha, EkStep Foundation CTO - Pramod Varma, Infosys and Axilor Ventures co-founder - S. D. Shibulal, RMI’s Principal - Akshima Ghate, Micelio’s founder & director - Shreyas Shibulal.

The two-day multi stakeholder workshop held February 19-20, 2020 saw a culmination of over 150 participants from the mobility ecosystem in Bengaluru who worked together to address system-level barriers and develop implementation plans for the city. The workshop was organized around six thematic areas —charging and battery swapping infrastructure, data-based solutions, electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing, first and last-mile connectivity, public transit, and urban final-mile delivery.

Speaking on the occasion, Tejasvi Surya, Member of Parliament for Bengaluru South said, “All transport agencies that we have, including our private operators must work in a coordinated fashion towards a common objective. Revising transport laws is also important. The concern with monopoly in public transport must be addressed with more private players coming in. We need to make our people use public transport and avoid private vehicles. We also need to look into increasing the size of the fleet in our city. What is lacking in the indian context is the lack of specialists in managing urban mobility decisions which is a concern. Structural reforms should be undertaken imperatively and I am confident that the Urban Mobility Lab will go a long way in proposing concrete suggestions and solutions.”

Commenting on the launch, Shreyas Shibulal, Founder & Director - Micelio, said, “The  collaborative effort of the last six months bringing together all key stakeholders - the government, private sector, and civil society under one roof has been fruitful to identify solutions that will eventually accelerate Bengaluru’s transition towards shared, clean and citizen-centric mobility. This is just the beginning. At Micelio, we are committed to going the distance to make this happen.”

At the workshop, Akshima Ghate, RMI’s, Principal said, “We’re grateful to the Government of Karnataka  for extending their full support for the launch of the Urban Mobility Lab in  Bengaluru. Efficient and sustainable transportation is key to Bengaluru’s mobility goals and to transform the lives of the citizens of this city and we’re glad that we are making progress together.”

About Urban Mobility Lab

The Urban Mobility Lab is a platform that helps leading urban geographies, called Lighthouse Cities, identify, integrate, implement, and scale mobility solutions that transform how people and goods move.

The Lab was launched in November 2017, when NITI Aayog and RMI launched a grand challenge to select the first host city.

Since 2017, RMI has partnered with the Delhi Government and Pune Municipal Corporation to co host the Lab in Delhi and Pune. In these cities, the Lab has helped identify policy, business, and technology solutions to system-level barriers and accelerate the implementation of shared, clean, and citizen-centric mobility projects.

About Directorate of Urban Land Transport

DULT has been set up by the Government of Karnataka (GoK) under the Urban Development Department (UDD) with the objective to coordinate planning and implementation of urban transport projects and programs. The directorate is, in general, responsible for overseeing all the urban land transport initiatives in urban/ local planning areas of Karnataka and administers the State Urban Transport Fund (SUTF).

DULT’s vision is to provide efficient, sustainable and integrated transportation systems that enhance Karnataka’s economic competitiveness and prosperity while preserving the quality of its environment and communities.

About Department of Industries and Commerce

DIC acts as a catalyst for the overall development of the industrial sector through effective discharge of developmental and facilitation roles. With a view to promote investment and trade, the department formulates and implements the state policies,. Identification of sectoral advantages of the state and human resource development for sustainable and growth-oriented industrialization have been  crucial roles of the department. Facilitating the takeoff of infrastructure projects that boost industrial growth has also been the department’s forte. The department helps enhance the competitiveness of domestic industry through modernization, technology upgradation and adoption of best practices. It also provides a forum for entrepreneurs and industrialists, through their associations, to represent their needs to the government, which translates into policies of the state.

About Rocky Mountain Institute

RMI is an independent, apolitical, nonprofit think-and-do tank that transforms global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure future. Cofounded by Amory Lovins in 1982, RMI has been a leader in energy efficiency and renewable energy for 35 years. RMI published India Leaps Ahead: Transformative Mobility Solutions for All with NITI Aayog in May 2017, and works with key government partners such as NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to support India’s transition to clean, shared, and connected mobility systems.