Clumio Launches Research and Development Center in Bengaluru

Clumio, innovators of authentic SaaS for enterprise backup, today announced the launch of the Clumio Research and Development Center in Bengaluru to begin operations in India. Clumio provides a secure backup as a service for enterprises that reduces the cost and replaces the complexity of managing data across all clouds with an authentic approach to SaaS. The center will be an integral part of Clumio’s capability to build and deliver services on its cutting-edge platform built on AWS. Clumio leverages the most modern cloud capabilities, including more than ten major AWS services, to ensure it meets the current and future backup requirements of the most demanding enterprises. The startup headquartered in Santa Clara, California was co-founded in 2017 by Poojan Kumar, Kaustubh Patil and Woon Jung, and to date has raised $186M of funding through Series A, B, and C.

The Clumio Research and Development Center in India is a strategic investment for the company to innovate and build SaaS-based data protection solutions. To ensure steady progress through excellence across products and customer experiences, Clumio is hiring bright individuals to fill roles across Software Engineering, Cloud Operations and Customer Support and Success. The company, which continues to redefine data protection for an all cloud world, is creating a strong base in India already having 34 employees and planning to expand to more than 70 by the end of 2020.

"When multi-national companies go to India, they generally go as an afterthought. Their ‘when’ and ‘why’ are different from Clumio. ‘When’ is very late for them, sometimes 10 years in. For instance, a $45B collaboration software company went only a couple years ago. The ‘why’ is often only for cost reasons. Clumio is unique in that we went to India within 18 months of our founding. The ‘why’ was very pure - to tap into the big candidate pool in India and not for cost reasons - it’s for the talent. This will enable us to have the Clumio Research and Development Center be part of the DNA of the company - not an afterthought." said Poojan Kumar, CEO and co-founder, Clumio.

The Clumio Research and Development Center in India will not just act as support for the global team. It has its own charter and will drive front-end innovation and research to build cloud solutions from the ground up. The engineering teams will play an integral part in product development and building best-in-class technology solutions. To enable this, Clumio drives an entrepreneurial mind-set giving employees complete responsibility and fosters a culture of innovation.

"India has a huge talent pool in technology and it is only growing as top-tier Indian educational institutes such as IIT’s, BIT’s, NIT’s produce new graduates. Just like the country skipped the evolution of landline-based communication for cell phones, this upcoming ambitious generation of talent is going to skip any kind of on-premises software development. SaaS services in the public cloud are going to be the draw. Clumio provides the perfect platform for them to build this. The existing generation of developers need to pivot their careers and learn how to build in the cloud. Building a great startup with a strong vision and taking it to fruition, on strong technical fundamentals, requires one to balance the exuberance and energy of youth with the direction provided by the steady steering of experience. Clumio has already assembled senior engineers with this pivot ambition and they are paving the way for the next generation to directly jump to the cloud". said Sandeep Soni, GM and Vice President of Engineering, India operations, Clumio.

Clumio Research and Development Center is driving cutting-edge solutions in cloud innovation, data protection and proactive customer support. Key examples of work already done with the India team’s support include the recent addition of Microsoft 365 to its secure backup as a service. This made Clumio the industry’s first private, public and SaaS enterprise data protection service on a single platform. The team also built the REST API platform for Clumio - it delivers on the promise of what REST architecture was supposed to solve for the internet era, applied to an enterprise domain such as backup, offered as a service. The team has also, in parallel, built strong foundations in simplifying user experience by constructing simple and intuitive user interfaces for several crosscutting features implemented by their state-of-the-art engineers from across the globe.

About Clumio

Clumio is the innovator of authentic SaaS for enterprise backup. Using this secure service, organizations eliminate hardware and software for on-premise backup and avoid the complexity and cost of running third-party backup software in the cloud. As enterprises move aggressively to cloud, they use Clumio to protect workloads like VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS native services and SaaS. Born in the public cloud, Clumio can leverage the most modern cloud services to ensure it meets the current and future backup requirements of the most demanding enterprises. For more information, visit: www.clumio.com

Clumio is supported by leading investors like Mike Speiser - Sutter Hill Ventures, Mike Volpi - Index Ventures, Mark Leslie - Leslie Ventures and John Thompson - Chairman, Microsoft.

Projects Today Survey - Projects Scenario in Post COVID-19 Era

Projects Today, India’s largest online database of new and ongoing projects in India, conducted a nationwide survey of experts in the project fraternity to pick their brain and learn their views on the current situation and the likely projects investment scenario in major sectors during the post-lockdown period. In all, 233 leaders, a part of the Indian project fraternity (promoters, architects, consultants and contractors) selected from across India participated in the Survey.

A majority of the participants agreed that barring pharmaceuticals and healthcare all other sectors are affected by the current lockdown and it would take a while for these units to restart functioning after the lockdown is lifted.

The 60+ days’ nationwide lockdown has brought the entire economy to a standstill. Producers, Consumers and the Government all are uncertain when the pandemic will slow down or when factories and offices can commence functioning.

India witnessed one of the longest and unprecedented lockdowns seen across the world, and also saw reverse migration of millions of labourers from their worktown to hometown fearing hunger, exposure to the virus and uncertain future.

As per the Survey, for promoters the main hurdles in kick starting their halted projects are getting adequate funds at reasonable interest, finding labourers matching the skills of those who have left for their hometown and procuring the required raw materials and machineries at the project site. The nationwide lockdown has completely disintegrated the supply chain network. It will take a while to reorganise the same. The other three constituents of the projex world – Architects, Consultants and Contractors -- said their immediate priority would be, to complete the projects in hand and try to retain their current clients.

The Survey participants expect the “Work from Home” culture to continue during the post COVID-19 era. Hence, they see demand for housing (bigger houses) to go up in the long run. On the other side, they think demand for Commercial space will undergo some change as large companies would look for disintegrating their offices – instead of having one centralised office, setting up more smaller offices to reduce the commuting time and adopt the new norms work culture.

As far as Advantage India is concerned around 27.9 percent of the Survey participants said there is no advantage India, because the country will take at least next two to three years to come out of the current economic moribund. Further, they opined that India does not possess the key advantages China has – high-class infrastructure, liberal labour laws and very industrial-friendly policies. On the positive side, a whopping 69 percent of the Survey respondents agreed that India does have an opportunity to emerge as a winner on the other side of COVID-19 at least in a couple of sectors like Pharmaceuticals, Medical Equipment, Automobiles, Textiles, etc.

To re-boot the economy, the Government of India presented a whopping Rs 20,00,000 crore economic stimulus involving both fiscal and monetary measures. It also proposed some path breaking reforms in the agriculture, mining, power distribution, health and education sectors. It has also assured to bring in the long-delayed labour reforms soon. How far all these measures will mitigate the current economic pain and will put India once again on the growth path will depend on the timely and effective implementation of the proposals and revival in the domestic demand.

Projex in Hotspot Districts

As per Projects Today, of the 130 Red Zone districts, 108 have projects investment and as of 31 March 2020, there were 29,255 projects entailing a total investment of Rs 51,07,831 crore. Of this, 8,917 projects worth Rs 21,11,985 crore were under various stages of implementation, but are currently halted due to the nationwide lockdown. Around 62.9 percent of such projex are owned by government agencies and the balance 37.1 percent is by private companies.

Among the hotspot districts, Mumbai and Mumbai Suburban together account for 12.5 percent of the total under-execution projects found in the hotspot districts of India. Mumbai is also the leading district in terms of virus-affected people and death toll.

YES FINTECH Selected Among Best Financial Innovation Labs 2020 by Global Finance Magazine

YES BANK’s Innovation and Business Accelerator Program for Fintech Start-ups, YES FINTECH, has been selected among the Best Financial Innovation Labs by Global Finance magazine, as part of The Innovators 2020, for the second time in row.

In its eighth year of hosting the awards, Global Finance announced its selections for The Innovators 2020 honoring entities that regularly identify new paths and design new tools in finance.

YES FINTECH was launched in 2017 to support startups in co-creating innovative solutions to enhance customer experience. The innovations focused on several areas which include customer experience enhancement, process automation, smart decision-making, big data & analytics, cybersecurity, trade finance platforms and alternate credit decision-making. It also provided access to the Bank’s APIs (application program interface), opportunities to expand to global markets, mentorship and scale up support.

Building on the success, in late 2019, the program was expanded to a multi-sector innovation platform – YES SCALE.  YES SCALE works with startups across key sectors, supporting them in co-creating solutions with banking APIs and joint go-to-market. Under the YES SCALE platform, the Bank also launched ‘YES SCALE Marketplace’, an industry first online marketplace of innovative solutions, co-created with startup partners across sectors. This platform addresses challenges faced by SME businesses in identifying and adopting affordable digital solution through a ‘one-stop-shop’ experience, enabling SME businesses to not only view and discover multiple solutions but also explore them in detail through demos, tutorials and integrate banking seamlessly on their platform.  More than 100 SMEs currently avail of banking integrated solutions on the platform.

This platform builds on the Bank’s strategy of providing comprehensive technology solutions with integrated banking, thereby addressing the business needs of both Corporate and SME clients, enabling deepening of business connect in these segments.

YES SCALE also eases the process for startups to jointly go-to-market with YES BANK, enabling them to explore ‘live’ use-cases, register their solution and further assist startups in completing their solutions with banking integrations (API Sandbox) to cater to the Bank’s corporate and MSME clients.

About YES BANK                                                             

YES BANK, is a high quality, customer centric and service driven Bank. Since inception in 2004, YES BANK has grown into a ‘Full Service Commercial Bank’ providing a complete range of products, services and technology driven digital offerings, catering to corporate, MSME & retail customers. YES BANK operates its Investment banking, Merchant banking & Brokerage businesses through YES SECURITIES and its Mutual Fund business through YES Asset Management (India) Limited, both wholly owned subsidiaries of the Bank. Headquartered in Mumbai, it has a pan-India presence across all 28 states and 9 Union Territories in India including an IBU at GIFT City, and a Representative Office in Abu Dhabi.

Aegon Life Insurance Launches Industry’s First “Life Plus Hospitalization Cover for COVID-19” with Flipkart

In an industry-first move, Aegon Life, the pioneer of digital insurance in India, has announced the launch of ‘Life Insurance with COVID-19 Cover’ for hospitalization expenses up to Rs 1 lakh along with Flipkart, India’s homegrown e-commerce marketplace. This launch is aimed to provide Flipkart customers with a comprehensive insurance cover against COVID-19, that can be availed on the Flipkart app instantly along with the base life insurance plan. This innovative offering of ‘Life Insurance with COVID-19 Cover’ supports the policyholder by covering hospitalization costs of up to INR 1 Lakh on minimum 24 consecutive hours of hospitalization on the first-ever diagnosis of COVID-19 condition along with death benefit from the life cover. This product available on Flipkart first, is aimed to help millions of people to financially protect themselves from the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic in an affordable way from the convenience and safety of their home.

On the launch of ‘Life Insurance with COVID-19 Cover’, Mr. Satishwar Balakrishnan, CFO, and Principal Officer, Aegon Life said, “The government across the nation has taken bold steps towards containing the outbreak. However, many Indians do not have health insurance. Our goal through Aegon Life’s ‘COVID -19 Hospitalization Cover’ is to provide financial aid bundled with life benefits at an affordable premium. The policy takes care of hospitalization costs, which will help curb the financial burden that may arise if a person is declared COVID-19 positive. In case of death, one can avail of the life benefit through the base plan, which will help in supporting the insured's family.”

He added, "At Aegon Life, we take pride in being a pioneer of digital insurance in India. The cover being available easily on the Flipkart app is a step in the direction of enhancing our digital offerings for our customers."

Mr. Ranjith Boyanapalli, Head– Fintech and Payments Group, Flipkart, said, "During these unprecedented times, businesses must come together, be agile and innovate for the hour. At Flipkart as we continue to cater to 200 million customers across the nation, we believe that a full cover product such as ‘COVID-19 Hospitalization Cover’ will provide our customers the much-needed option of having life and hospitalization cover rolled-up into one product. Our partnership with Aegon Life enables these innovations to reach consumers affordably and conveniently.”

The technology and customer-first focus of Aegon Life and Flipkart has enabled this unique and powerful offering which is the need of the hour during this pandemic.

Airtel Payments Bank, Mastercard to Develop Customized Financial Products for Farmers and SMEs in India

Airtel Payments Bank (APBL), India’s first Payments Bank, has partnered with Mastercard, leading technology company in the global payments industry, to develop customized products catering to customers across the underbanked spectrum including farmers, small and medium enterprises and retail customers.

As part of the Government’s vision of Digital India and Banking for every Indian, both entities have been working towards driving adoption of formal banking and digital payments in the country. The collaboration will bring together Mastercard’s global and local experience in developing advanced financial solutions and Airtel Payments Bank’s strong distribution network to reach the last mile and its large customer base.

The collaboration aims at building a digital platform which provides farmers with knowledge about advanced farming techniques and connection to marketplaces, while simultaneously enabling them to receive payments directly in their Airtel Payments Bank account. Combined with 500,000 banking points of Airtel Payments Bank, the platform will provide farmers with access to neighborhood banking, earnings stability and income growth. This will be a significant move towards building a cashless economy.

Both partners will also work together to create customized solutions for millions of small businesses across the country. These solutions will empower small and medium scale enterprises, who have limited access to finance, to make assisted payments, manage their financial & transactional processes, and also avail working capital in these times of crisis.

Finally, Airtel Payments Bank and Mastercard will work together to create differentiated card solutions, including solutions for contact less payments via NFC (Near Field Communication) for customers and merchants.

Anubrata Biswas, MD and CEO, Airtel Payments Bank said “We are glad to partner with Mastercard to develop innovative solutions as part of our endeavor to drive financial and digital inclusion in the country. Together, we aim to create products that will motivate customers to adapt formal banking behaviour and start opting for digital payments. These solutions will be an addition to our existing differentiated bouquet of easy, accessible and convenient banking and payment solutions to serve the underserved and unbanked population.”

Porush Singh, Division President, South Asia, Mastercard said, “Digital payments have the potential to bring a positive change to the lives of millions of Indians. Mastercard is delighted to extend the partnership with Airtel Payments Banks to build innovative digital payments solutions that will help farmers and small & medium businesses connect with the digital world. These solutions will enable them to access a larger market base, receive payments easily into their bank accounts, safeguard their money against risks associated with cash and get easy access to credit. The partnership will also play an important role towards achieving Mastercard’s goal to empower India’s merchants with digital payments acceptance infrastructure by the end of this year.”

Airtel Payments Bank has been working with Mastercard for last 3 years to offer Mastercard powered debit cards to its savings bank account customers in the country.

Acer India Expands Another Winner in the Gaming Portfolio with Aspire 7 Gaming Laptop

Editor’s Summary:

* The latest Aspire 7 offering comes in 4 variants. The Intel based models are equipped with upto 9th Gen Core i7 processors, while the other two is being offered with the latest AMD Ryzen 3000 series chipsets along with the Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics
* The laptop also comes with up to 1TB M.2 PCIe SSD and up to 32GB DDR4 (SO-DIMM) RAM storage to carry out tasks
* Aspire 7’s Full HD IPS technology features two narrow bezels and an impressive 81.61% screen-to-body ratio that helps tame distracting reflections
* The new Aspire 7 gaming laptop weighs 2.15 kg and offers upto 8.5 hours (under test conditions) of operation on a single charge.

Acer India, the global PC brand, today announced the expansion of its gaming portfolio in India with the launch of powerful Aspire 7 gaming laptop on Flipkart that comes in 4 new variants to cater to gamer’s demand. Acer’s new Aspire 7 gaming laptop hides a powerful processor and graphics which will help gamers get the most of the 15.6” screen with a large screen-to-body ratio and weigh only 2.15 Kg, fairly lightweight for a gaming PC. The laptop can be equipped with up to 9th-gen Intel Core i7 processor or AMD Ryzen™ 3000 along with latest NVIDIA graphics to keep everything running at its optimum speed. Enabling smooth multi-tasking and productivity, it has the latest USB- C connectivity, TrueHarmony™ audio technology, and Multi User – Multi Input Multi Output (MU-MIMO) which handle multiple wireless devices at once with faster speeds and is 2x faster than single-user MIMO.

Acer continues to innovate and bring great gaming experiences to the Indian market for consumers when it comes to laptop design, and the new Aspire 7 is yet another device exclusively designed to meet the needs of the casual gamers who value the subtle design as much as the performance. Aspire 7 is a svelte gaming machine that delivers a solid combination of power coupled with restrained aggressiveness from the outside. The new Acer Aspire 7 is aimed at casual gamers who want a take-anywhere laptop. The latest processors will deliver a complete platform with the performance to empower rich user experiences and the power efficiency to extend battery life. Acer is facilitating gamers with cutting-edge technology that is proven and reliable, considerably improving the experience. In fact, Acer has reportedly retained its spot of being the “No.1 Gaming PC Brand” in India for two consecutive years (2018 – 19) as per the leading research firm (Source: IDC Gaming Tracker, based on Branded Gaming

Speaking on this occasion, Chandrahas Panigrahi, CMO & Consumer Business Head, Acer India said, “Maintaining the growing demand for gaming PCs in India, Acer has always gone further to ensure our gaming machines offer the right design and power for the best gaming experience. We are excited to introduce another winner to our gaming portfolio Aspire 7 gaming laptop for Indian gaming enthusiasts. With our Nitro and Predator series of gaming laptops already leading in the market, this new line of Aspire laptops will further expand our presence in the gaming segment. The new collection is built with an emphasis on strong performance, sensitivity, and intelligent design and will be available on Acer eStore (https://store.acer.com/en-in/) and other online and offline portals from Jun’20. We are also collaborating with Flipkart as we believe that this new Acer Aspire 7 gaming laptop could be a perfect fit for gaming enthusiasts across platforms.”

“Flipkart ensures a shopping experience for customers that is driven by a diverse selection, offering them with best-in-class technology at affordable prices. With gaming, as a category, seeing tremendous uptake in the country in the past few years due to evolving consumer preferences, our large youth consumer base is always looking for new and exciting products. We are pleased to extend our partnership with Acer to offer the latest in gaming technology and further enrich our portfolio for a great consumer experience," Rakesh Krishnan, Senior Director at Electronics, Flipkart

Powerful Productivity:

The Aspire 7 packs a lot of power into the chassis. It gives professionals a max of 1TB M.2 PCIe SSD and up to 32GB DDR4 (SO-DIMM) RAM where users have enough power and storage to carry out their tasks. It also packs in performance with its incredible visuals, powerful processor and superior audio. Powered by upto 9th Gen Intel® Core™ i7/i5 processor and AMD Ryzen Processor, the latest NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX graphics,  the Aspire 7 has the power to multitask with ease and power through compute-intensive applications and keeps everything running at its optimum speed.

Stunning Visibility:

The Aspire 7 comes with the stunning FHD narrow border 15.6-inch display screen that offers 100% of the sRGB color gamut. It is further enhanced by Acer's own suite of Color Intelligence and ExaColor software with the two narrow bezels and an impressive 81.61% screen-to-body ratio and its BluelightShield technology allows adjusting of the screen’s blue-light emission over extended periods of use.

Latest connectivity:

In terms of connectivity, the Aspire 7 has HDMI and USB 3.2 ports as well as Wi-Fi 6 with MU-MIMO technology. With Wi-Fi 6 connectivity in a laptop, it’s all about satisfying users’ need for speed. It will provide faster file transfers and streaming; faster and higher quality video chats on-the-go; even faster screen refreshes for gaming. Dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) improves the average network throughout by up to 3 times and reduces latency by up to 75% compared to Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac). The Aspire 7 also supports MU-MIMO that can handle multiple wireless devices at once with faster speeds and is 3x faster than single-user MIMO. With Wi-Fi 6, users get easy updates to the latest information with a full range of connectivity options. Also, using USB-C™ users can get superfast data transfer over SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps.

Long Battery Life and Professional appearance:

Adding to the user experience, the laptop is powered by the latest Intel® and AMD Ryzen processors and offers an exceptionally fast and responsive experience with the battery life that lasts up to 8.5 hours a day (Under test conditions). Thanks to the LED-backlit keyboard, users can work effectively in dimly lit environments and even at night.

QuEST Global to Sponsor COVID-19 Tests for 300+ Police Officers at Whitefield in the City

QuEST Global, a global product engineering and lifecycle services company, announced today that it has partnered with the Bengaluru City Police to sponsor COVID-19 tests for more than 300 police officers in the city. The Real-Time PCR test for the frontline warriors will be conducted at Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Whitefield, where 30 police personnel will be tested daily. As part of this initiative, police officers from 8 stations across the Bellandur - Marathahalli - Whitefield belt will be tested on an ongoing basis.

Commenting on the initiative, Shrikant Naik, Head – Global Delivery, QuEST Global said, “During these trying times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bengaluru City Police have been working tremendously to enforce the lockdown and contain the COVID-19 spread in the city. Through this initiative, we would like to support and honor our warriors who have been bravely fighting with a selfless sense of duty at the frontlines and enabling us to break the chain and maintain law and order. We wanted to show our gratitude and also make sure that these frontline warriors are safe while doing their duty.”

Earlier in April, QuEST had reached out to the Bengaluru City Police to offer sanitizers and masks to all frontline workers. The company also distributed 500 grocery bags among the needy to assist them in this unprecedented situation.

“These are very trying days for all of us, especially to the police force and healthcare workers who are trying to curb the spread of COVID-19 across the country. All our frontline warriors have been working tirelessly in conditions of extreme risk to keep our citizens safe. We are very thankful to QuEST for supporting us with this initiative,” said M N Anucheth, IPS, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru City.

D A Kalpaja, Director Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre said, “The healthcare professionals and law enforcement personnel are the most vulnerable group of people during these times when COVID-19 is spreading across the country. Their health and wellbeing must be taken care of to ensure these frontline warriors are safe and healthy. We are glad to be part of this initiative that will ensure the wellbeing of police personnel in the city. This is a very noble initiative taken by QuEST to support the Bengaluru City Police who have been working relentlessly since the very start of the outbreak.”