Intuit QuickBooks Joins Hands with Milaap to Support Small Businesses in India During COVID-19

Intuit QuickBooks today announced the launch of the Small Business Relief Initiative, in collaboration with Milaap, to help small and micro businesses in India to raise money to tackle the challenges arising from the COVID-19 lockdown. Intuit’s QuickBooks Online is the world’s leading financial management solution for small businesses and accountants.

The Small Business Relief Initiative aims to raise funds for small and micro-businesses that are facing difficulties in paying employee salaries and in covering business expenses due to COVID-19. India has around 6.4 crore MSMEs that contribute to 29% of the GDP and employ 11.1 crore people. (Source)

As the COVID-19 induced lockdown continues, most of the small and micro businesses in the country are struggling to survive mainly due to cash flow problems. The Small Business Relief Initiative brings together Milaap’s crowdfunding platform with Intuit QuickBooks’ expertise, to provide local businesses with the resources and tools they require to start a crowdfunding campaign in a few clicks, via the Milaap  platform where qualifying businesses that have been impacted by COVID-19 can raise micro-grants to meet essential business expenses.

Talking about the program, Aditi Puri Batra, Country Manager, Intuit QuickBooks India, said, “Small and micro businesses play an important role in the larger supply chain and thus their health is imperative to kick-start the industry when the lockdown eases. While the Government of India and Reserve Bank of India have taken multiple steps to address the liquidity crunch faced by these businesses, there is a need for more programs that can put cash into their hands as not every one of them may have access to lending. We are hopeful our initiative fills that gap and empowers these small and micro businesses that are also a crucial source of employment for millions of people in the country.”

Intuit QuickBooks India is also fundraising by enabling its employees in India to donate funds to a small and micro business of their choice on Milaap’s platform and creating awareness about the initiative across its small business network and associated brand channels.

Regarding this initiative, Mayukh Choudhury, CEO and co-founder, Milaap said, “Small and micro businesses are a lifeline for countless communities. Over the last decade, Milaap has supported over 1.5 lakh micro and small businesses. An immediate financial stimulus, for these vulnerable businesses is the need of the hour. Such a stimulus will address not only the availability of goods across local areas, but also the sustenance of employment across the economy.”

How the Small Business Relief Initiative works:

Intuit QuickBooks India Small Business help site: Intuit QuickBooks is providing its network of small businesses with a resources and tools site that enables businesses to start their own fundraiser or support an existing one. From there, small businesses can share their story on Milaap and request help covering employee-related and business expenses. Then everyone - friends, family, neighbours, companies - can all search the Small Business Relief Initiative site to find small businesses in need and donate directly to them.

Milaap.org Small Business Relief Fund: Milaap.org, India’s largest crowdfunding platform for medical emergencies and social causes, has launched the Small Business Relief Initiative where people can donate to support the overall initiative. Donors in India will be able to donate towards a business of their choice on the Milaap platform.

The Small Business Relief Initiative in India follows a similar program Gofundme launched by Intuit QuickBooks in the US in partnership with Gofundme.

Emirates Steps Up Safety Measures for Customers and Employees at the Airport and On Board

Emirates is stepping up precautionary measures at the airport and on board to ensure the health and safety of its employees and customers. All cabin crew, boarding agents and ground staff in direct contact with passengers will now don personal protective equipment (PPE) which includes a protective disposable gown over their uniforms, and a safety visor, in addition to masks and gloves.

At Dubai International airport, gloves and masks are mandatory for all customers and employees. Thermal scanners monitor the temperatures of all passengers and employees stepping into the airport. Physical distancing indicators have been placed on the ground and at waiting areas to help travellers maintain the necessary distance during check-in and boarding.

The airport team has also installed protective barriers at each check-in desk to provide additional safety reassurance to passengers and employees during interaction over the counter.

On board Emirates’ flights, seats are pre-allocated with vacant seats placed between individual passengers or family groups in observance of physical distancing protocols.

Emirates has also modified its inflight services for health and safety reasons. Food and beverages continue to be offered in the form of bento-styled boxes to reduce contact between the crew and customers during meal service, and minimise risk of interaction. The personal boxes provide customers with sandwiches, beverages, snacks and desserts.

Similarly, to reduce risk of spreading the virus by touch, magazines and other print reading material are temporarily unavailable. Cabin baggage are currently not accepted on flights. Carry-on items allowed in the cabin are limited to laptop, handbag, briefcase or baby items. All other items have to be checked in, and Emirates will add the cabin baggage allowance to customers’ check-in baggage allowance. Customers have to wear their masks and gloves throughout their journey from check-in until they disembark.

All Emirates aircraft will go through enhanced cleaning and disinfection processes in Dubai, after each journey.

Tata Tele Business Services Offer ‘Work from Home’ Solutions to Enterprises

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered both demand and supply side challenges for enterprises across India. With most of the businesses moving their operations to a work from home mode, Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) is offering ‘Work from Home’ solutions that empower these enterprises with robust, end-to-end connectivity solutions with secure access, collaboration and back-office operations.

As enterprises adapt to this new reality, TTBS’ Work from Home solutions help them maintain ‘business as usual’ mode while improving their efficiency and productivity as their employees work remotely. Some of these solutions include Hosted IVR, which allows enterprises to quickly set up distributed call center and enable agents to work from home, Audio and Web conferencing solutions which enable collaboration across employees, partners and customers, International Bridging Services that allow business to remain globally connected and Secure Document and Data Management solutions that address security concerns arising out of a distributed and remote working environment.

Elaborating on these solutions, Mr. Sai Pratyush, Group Product Head – IOT, Cloud and SaaS, Tata Teleservices Ltd. said, “The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a need for business continuity and we are committed to not only providing our customers with uninterrupted telecom services, but also support them with innovative solutions that help them deal effectively with this unprecedented crisis. As working from home becomes the new normal, our customers want solutions that enable employees to connect securely from their homes and collaborate effectively with their colleagues who are also working remotely. We will continue to focus on bringing to market, innovative solutions that would help our customers address this new normal.”

TTBS has leveraged its expertise and experience in the telecom sector to address the surge in customer demand for reliable connectivity and access to applications and services they need. With the focus on customer centricity and innovation, TTBS will continue to play the role of technology enabler by strengthening its portfolio of services especially in the areas of SaaS, IaaS, IOT and Cloud.

Following are the Work From Home solutions from TTBS:

* Hosted IVR – The service allows enterprises to setup a ‘Distributed Call Centre’ for remote work scenarios. The cloud-based IVR service facilitates agents receive customer calls on mobile devices, perform complex tasks such as Dynamic Call Routing and Call Hunting for a seamless customer service experience. Moreover, the service al so enables team leads track team’s performance by analyzing call quality and critical parameters like received and missed calls ratio per hour.

* Interactive Website - The service ensure a higher level of customer satisfaction in all digital aspects. It can help the businesses automate visitor’s experience by providing tools to address customer queries remotely. The suite also offers ‘Auto Routing’ to direct customer queries to department specific agents, and ‘In-chat’ file sharing to facilitate agent collaboration to resolve a specific customer query

* Audio & Web Collaboration - Tala Tele Business Services ensures a higher degree of digital collaboration at every step of remote working setup. The ‘Audio & Web Collaboration’ ensures seamless exchange of multimedia files over different platforms and devices. It offers unlimited conferencing service at fixed affordable monthly rentals wherein you can add up to 125 participants at a time. The service enjoys a wide reach with local dial in across 80 countries across the world with 130+ access numbers. The suite offers File Sharing, Chat, Record and Replay meetings over a ‘Secure Conferencing Setup’ for your employees, colleagues, partners and customers over desktops, smartphones and tablets.

* International Bridging Services – With employees making international calls while working from home without any ISD packs, Tata Teleservices’s IBS ensures globally connectivity at optimized ISD costs. The service includes ‘Secure Calling’ to offer password protected ISD calling at employee level with basic mobile devices without any third-party app installation. Moreover, the ISB feature also ensures privacy of employee’s personal mobile numbers by masking it on International calls.

* Document Management System - The DMS service facilitates sharing of large documents remotely without compromising on security. Our document security algorithms secure and de-risk document repositories from data loss. The DMS also enables highest standards of data confidentiality by only allowing authorized users to access certain documents. The service also enables role-based access to boost employee’s collaboration by allowing them to work on the same set of documents remotely.

* Office 365 Collaboration Suite - Tata Tele Business Services also offers ‘Office 365 Collaboration Suite’, the one-stop collaboration and productivity package for all the business requirements. The cloud-based software` suite includes- Microsoft Teams, One Drive, Share Point and Yammer to help the businesses thrive in today’s digital era.

* Dropbox for Business - The ‘Dropbox for Business’ that serves as a central place to store and access documents during work from home scenarios. With Dropbox for business, the teams can work from anywhere and sync important files across all devices.

Faradion Bags First Order for Sodium-ion Batteries from ICM Australia

Highlights

* Sodium-ion batteries are a superior alternative to Chinese Lithium-ion batteries
* Sodium-ion batteries poised to revolutionize mobile and automobile sectors
* Faradion actively looking at India as a destination for manufacturing of Sodium-ion batteries

Faradion Ltd., world leader in sodium-ion battery technology, has announced its first order from ICM Australia. Sodium-ion batteries, owing to its exceptional superiority over lithium-ion batteries, are likely to revolutionise the automobile/mobility, storage and mobile sectors across the world.

Faradion’s Sodium-ion technology provides similar performance to conventional chemistries, while replacing expensive materials such as cobalt and lithium with the far more abundant sodium. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, Faradion’s sodium-ion batteries have exceptional thermal stability and safety. Further they can be safely transported and maintained at zero volts.

India is one of the largest markets for mobile devices across the world. Recently the country has also demonstrated significant progress in the adoption of EV (Electric Vehicle) technology, making it a priority market for Faradion. Further, as the world seeks out alternatives to China-dependent Lithium-ion batteries, Faradion’s Sodium-ion based technology offers a promising solution. In line with this, Faradion is actively exploring manufacturing presence in India for its Sodium-ion batteries for diversified applications.

Having seen significant interest in regions such as the US, Europe and India due to its performance, safety and price point, Mr. James Quinn, CEO of Faradion says Australasia is the next logical region for Faradion given the market conditions.

“Faradion is accelerating large scale industrialisation of its safe, low cost, Sodium-ion energy storage technology.”

“After Australia, we foresee India as our next priority big market, given the huge growth in mobile devices and a bigger electric mobility market waiting to grow rapidly” Quinn concludes.

In recent years, Australia and New Zealand have demonstrated a steady uptake in battery storage in residential, commercial and grid scale applications due to factors including significant reductions in the cost of storage and solar systems; increasing cost of electricity, concerns about blackouts and financial incentives and policies from the government.

Speaking about this order from ICM Australia, Mr. Thomas Gregson, ICM Australia Investment Director said, “This order represents a first step for an Australian company to commercialise world leading sodium-ion technology, and we’re pleased to be offering a premium product that is safe and price competitive to the Australasian market.”

“We have seen large interest in energy storage solutions recently and believe the Faradion technology can provide, in a sustainable way, the energy security customers require at attractive ROIs,” Gregson adds.

Airtel Marks Earth Day 2020 with LIVE Streaming of Concert by Grammy Award Winner “Ricky Kej”

As India stays home as part of its battle against COVID-19, Airtel’s digital entertainment platforms will enable its customers to celebrate #EarthDay2020 in a unique way.

To mark the global Earth Day celebrations, Airtel will LIVE stream a special concert by globally renowned and Grammy Award winning artist Ricky Kej, who along with 40 other musicians from across six countries will perform online from their respective homes.

The artists will also perform a new song ‘Shine Your Light” which the unique world ensemble of musicians are performing to promote a message of solidarity and showing kindness to everyone especially during these testing times.

The concert will available to Airtel customers for FREE on Airtel Digital TV (DTH Channel 222) and Airtel Xstream App starting 8pm (April 22, 2020).

The mega-concert has been brought together by One Page Spotlight along with WWF, United Nations Climate Change, UNCCD, UNICEF, UNESCO – MGIEP and the Earth Day Network with an aim to support WHO and COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.

Del Monte Partners with Zomato, Swiggy & Dunzo for "Home Delivery of its Products" Amidst Lockdown

Fieldfresh Foods Pvt. Ltd announced strategic tie-ups for its premium food brand, Del Monte, with online food delivering platforms Zomato and Swiggy as well as door to door delivery app Dunzo to deliver its range of premium food products - which include Tomato Ketchup, Mayo, Pasta, Olive Oil and fruit drinks - to consumers’ homes amidst the continuing lockdown.

As part of the tie up, Zomato has started home delivering Del Monte products in Bangalore.

Zomato has created a Del Monte store under its new Zomato Market section where consumers can glance through the Del Monte product range available in their vicinity and place an order for the same on the app itself.

Del Monte’ partnership with Swiggy will ensure safe and secure supply of its products to consumers homes, starting with Kolkata and Bhubaneshwar in the East region, followed by Bangalore, Delhi NCR and other major cities over the next few days.

Dunzo is currently doing doorstep delivery for Del Monte in Bangalore with Chennai and Pune going live shortly.Again, one just needs to search for Del Monte in the app and the list of stores and products available nearby get displayed.

“In such unprecedented times, we striving to ensure continuity in the supply of our products to consumers. In our efforts to ensure the same, we have partnered with app-based delivery platforms for smooth and safe delivery of our products across major cities, enabling accessibility and convenience for the consumers,” Yogesh Bellani, CEO Fieldfresh Foods said.

These products will be available at Del Monte’s distribution centers from where these partners will pick up and then, ensure safe delivery of these products across cities.

“We are happy to partner with leading delivery startups in this endeavor.This will make sure safe door to door delivery of food items that will help consumers to avoid stepping out and support social distancing, as it becomes the biggest tool for India’s fight against Covid-19,” Bellani said.

All the three tie-ups are operational and have started delivering from 17thApril, 2020.

About Del Monte:

Brand Del Monte has over 100 years of rich international heritage during which it has been synonymous with quality and taste. The brand originated in the US and is now available all across the globe. The Del Monte range of branded processed food and beverage products in India includes Fruit drinks, Ketchup & Sauces, Packaged Fruits and the Italian Range consisting of Pasta, Olive Oil and Olives and a Culinary range for both B2B and B2C markets.

Healing Touch’ Hand Sanitiser Launched By N. Ranga Rao and Sons to Combat COVID-19

N. Ranga Rao and Sons, the makers of Cycle Pure Agarbathies are launching sanitisers under the brand name ‘Healing Touch’ to combat the novel Coronavirus pandemic. The organisation has converted one of their fragrance lines to meet the surge in demand of sanitisers in the market. The vitamin C enriched Lemon based sanitiser has been crafted to ensure hygiene and safety of the citizens.

Committed to serving the nation and its people whom they work with, the brand has turned one of their fragrance lines into manufacturing hand sanitisers to meet the need of the hour. Ensuring the quality and accessibility of the product, the making was guided and certified by AYUSH.

Speaking on the launch, Mr. Kiran Ranga, Managing Partner, N Ranga Rao & Sons said, “The market has seen a surge in demand for hand sanitisers lately, in the wake of COVID - 19. With the support of FSSAI, we have created Healing Touch in just 15 days to meet the supply and demand for this essential commodity. Our target is to reach maximum consumers and safeguard them at a time like this.

"Considering hygiene is of utmost importance in the health space, our hand sanitisers are safe and have been curated in-line with the hygiene standard. Manufacturing hand sanitisers was within our reach and we are glad that we are introducing this in the market at the right time.”  He adds.

About NR Group: 

The Mysuru-based NR Group was founded by Shri N. Ranga Rao in 1948. A true visionary and philanthropist, Shri. Ranga Rao created the ubiquitous Cycle Pure Agarbathies which has today become the largest selling incense brand in the world. From a home-grown enterprise, NR Group has evolved into a successfully run business conglomerate with an established presence in India and abroad. The Group has diversified into various business categories like functional air care products (Lia brand of room fresheners and car-fresheners), wellness home fragrance products (IRIS) under Ripple Fragrances, floral extracts (NESSO) and Rangsons Technologies. Today it is truly an Agarbathi to Aerospace conglomerate as it is also involved in making parts for defence helicopters. The organization has largely committed towards social responsibilities and fulfills them, through its charity arm ‘NR Foundation’. NR Group today is managed by the third generation of the Ranga family. For more information on NR Group, please visit http://www.nrgroup.co.in/