7.4% Reduction in Severely Acute Malnourished Children after Successful Year of BSI’s Nutrition India Programme

 * BSI NIP saved 6,500 children between 0-5 years across districts of Amravati and Nandurbar in Maharashtra from malnutrition

* An independent evaluation by sustainable Square found every INR 1 invested in the BSI Nutrition India Programme delivers INR 36.90 of social value 

* The ongoing programme additionally aims to engage with 1,77,000 mothers and children with the goal to eradicate malnourishment in Amravati & Nandurbar in the next four years

After the first successful year of Dettol BSI - Nutrition India Programme, the community witnessed a 7.4% reduction in the proportion of severely acute malnourished children across the districts of Amravati & Nandurbar in Maharashtra. Within the first 10 months, the programme was able to save the lives of 6,500 children between the years of 1-5 with the help of 41 community nutrition workers. An independent evaluation by sustainable Square also found that every INR 1 invested in the BSI Nutrition India Programme delivers a social value of INR 36.90.

The programme was developed to support in the first 1000 days of a child’s life, utilizing digital and artificial intelligence-based innovative modules, to strengthen the health, hygiene and nutrition status of pregnant women and children in Maharashtra’s Amravati and Nandurbar.

Commenting on the partnership initiative, Gaurav Jain, Senior Vice President, South Asia, Reckitt Benckiser Health, “Proper nutrition & sanitation are the catalyst to social change and one of the most critical aspect to empower young children and mothers. Given the alarming number of malnourishment cases witnessed in states like Maharashtra, districts of Amravati and Nandurbar became the starting ground for the Nutrition India Programme in partnership with Plan India. The five-year programme is aimed at strengthening the health, hygiene, and nutrition status of pregnant women and children across impacted communities.”

Acknowledging this support Mohammed Asif, Executive Director, Plan India, said, “Nutrition India program has shown the light on the imperative of collaborative actions by governments, corporates and civil society to successfully tackle the challenge of malnutrition and undernourishment in rural communities. The learnings and outcomes from this program should be widely disseminated so that other development actors are able to replicate. Also this initiative by Reckitt Benckiser and its partners is contributing to the larger national efforts to mitigate the public health challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“We are thankful to RB for the partnership and for ensuring timely access to life-saving and preventive measures to ramp up nutrition and public health outcomes in underserved communities.” He added.

In the past one year, Nutrition India Programme has worked with local communities and developed a workforce of travelling nutrition champions who are known as ‘Community Nutrition Workers (CNWs)’. These workers are given rigorous training by public health experts, pediatricians, gynecologists, and community development specialists, and are educated about the golden rules of good nutrition. 

The ongoing programme is focusing on maternal and child health. Everything related to it is being taught to these community nutrition workers, such as–what precautions are to be taken by expecting mothers, what should be their diet, lessons on breastfeeding, the importance of breastfeeding within the initial hour of birth, exclusive breastfeeding for the newborn, and the diet which should be given to a child so that he/she is saved from the ill effects of malnutrition.

Over the next four years, the programme aims to reach 1,77,000 mothers of undernourished children across 1,000 villages with a target of 40% reduction in the number of children under five who are stunted, and to reduce and maintain childhood wasting to less than 5%.

Plan India’s on-ground expertise is helping reach communities properly through a systematized process. The partner organization is also supporting by providing nutrition workers with simple interactive tools that deliver clear and effective messaging around nutrition and hygiene to create behavioral changes in the society. For more information on Plan India, login to www.planindia.org

Social Return on Investment measures the value of the benefits relative to the costs of achieving those benefits. It is a ratio of the net present value of benefits to the net present value of the investment. The total public health impact could be measured for a population of 5 lakhs

About RB:

RB* is driven by its purpose to protect, heal and nurture in a relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world. We fight to make access to the highest-quality hygiene, wellness and nourishment a right, not a privilege, for everyone.

RB is proud to have a stable of trusted household brands found in households in more than 190 countries. These include Enfamil, Nutramigen, Nurofen, Strepsils, Gaviscon, Mucinex, Durex, Scholl, Clearasil, Lysol, Dettol, Veet, Harpic, Cillit Bang, Mortein, Finish, Vanish, Calgon, Woolite, Air Wick and more. 20 million RB products a day are bought by consumers globally.

RB's passion to put consumers and people first, to seek out new opportunities, to strive for excellence in all that we do, and to build shared success with all our partners, while doing the right thing, always is what guides the work of our 40,000+ diverse and talented colleagues worldwide. For more information visit https://www.rb.com/

*RB is the trading name of Reckitt Benckiser group of companies.

PUBLIC HEALTH IMPACT CREATED BY NUTRITION INDIA PROGRAMME IN ONE YEAR

* 71% increase in proportion of child with timely initiation of complementary feeding

* 7.4% reduction in proportion of severely acute malnourished children

* 7% increase in proportion of pregnant women with Complete Ante Natal Care Coverage

* 23% reduction in pregnant women with anemia

* 59% increase in institutional birth at a public facility

* 56% reduction in proportion of low birth weight babies

* 37% increase in proportion of children with breastfeeding initiated within 1 hour of birth

* 11.6% increase in proportion of lactating women whose diet diversity is ensured

Acronis True Image 2021 Unites Award-Winning Backup With Advanced Antimalware, Creates Personal Cyber Protection Solution

Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, has today announced the release of Acronis True Image 2021. The new release integrates advanced cybersecurity capabilities with unmatched personal backup to create the first complete personal cyber protection solution for home users, prosumers, and small businesses around the world.

Delivery comes as the COVID-19 pandemic exposes gaps in traditional solutions and strategies. Securing home machines has never been more important, yet a recent Acronis survey found nearly half (47%) of remote workers never received clear guidance on working from home.

Incorporating cybersecurity capabilities such as real-time antimalware protection, on-demand antivirus scans, web filtering, and videoconference protection into Acronis True Image ensures users have complete cyber protection. For individuals and small business users, unifying these vital capabilities in one solution makes their protection easier to manage and more affordable, while greatly improving the security.

“As more people work or attend classes from home, the FBI documents a 400% increase in cyberattacks because hackers know home systems are not usually as well-defended as an office,” said Serguei “SB” Beloussov, founder and CEO of Acronis. “Backup without cybersecurity is an incomplete option in that situation, as is cybersecurity without backup. Acronis True Image 2021 delivers the easy, efficient, and secure cyber protection needed today.”

Standalone backup and cybersecurity are obsolete

With the modern reliance on everyday devices like computers, smartphones, and tablets, the data they contain has an inherent value. Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their attacks to reach that data, which is why security research firms such as AV-Test report more than 350,000 new malware threats every day.

Since backup software and files are often the targets of these new attacks to prevent recovery, backup alone no longer provides suitable protection for users. Similarly, conventional cybersecurity solutions do not provide the data protection and recovery capabilities users need.

Relying on multiple products that were not designed to work together creates security gaps, is more complex to manage, and is more costly. With a single, integrated solution, Acronis True Image 2021 users can proactively stop any malware attack and then quickly restore affected files. The single, intuitive interface reduces the complexity of managing their security and backups.

Integration delivers superior cyber protection

For the last few years, Acronis True Image has been the only personal backup solution with a built-in antiransomware that stops attacks in real-time, while automatically restoring any affected files.

With the launch of Acronis True Image 2021, those capabilities are expanded with the addition of the company’s advanced antimalware technology, which is currently deployed in Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. This next-gen, full-stack antimalware has been shown by independent security labs such as Virus Bulletin and AV-Test to return a 100% detection rate with zero false-positives.

As a result, home users gain advanced capabilities with Acronis True Image 2021, including:

* Real-time protection, driven by AI-enhanced behavioral heuristics, which stops all malware – including zero-day attacks by never-before-seen threats

* On-demand antivirus scans of the full system or quick scans of at-risk files, either of which can be scheduled in advance or run instantly

* Web filtering that automatically blocks Windows users from accessing malicious websites that harbor malware, disinformation, scams, and phishing attacks

* Videoconference protection prevent hackers and malware injection attacks from exploiting popular apps like Zoom, Cisco Webex, and Microsoft Teams

* Comprehensive detection, with both behavioral analysis and signature-based analysis engines

These advanced antimalware capabilities are included with Advanced and Premium licenses, and offered as a three-month trial with Standard and Essential licenses.

Acronis True Image 2021 gives individuals and small businesses access to the same protection technologies relied on by global companies and top teams in the world’s most high-pressure professional sports.

“Cyber protection is a top priority for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing,” explains Bobby Rahal, co-owner of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. “When our races were on pause, Acronis continued to provide protection for our team working remotely. Now, with Acronis True Image, everyone can safeguard their personal data against the worst-case scenario.”

Pricing and availability

Four versions of Acronis True Image are available: Standard, Essential, Advanced and Premium. One-computer licenses starting at $59.99 for Standard and $49.99 for Essential. Special launch prices for Advanced and Premium licenses (starting at $69.99 and $99.99, respectively) are available until November 2020, at which time the full MSRP will be in effect (starting at $89.99 and $124.99, respectively).

Clearwater Analytics Marks First Year of Business Operations in India, Continues to Ramp Hiring for Development Talent

Clearwater Analytics, a global SaaS provider of investment accounting and reporting, is celebrating one year of business operations at the Delhi-NCR office. The company has continued to grow globally during these challenging times and plans to add to its product development talent for its India-based teams.  

Established in August 2019, the Delhi-NCR site is part of Clearwater’s operations and development centre network, with offices also in Boise Idaho, USA; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Seattle, Washington, USA. The centre plays a strategic role for Clearwater from the Asia Pacific region with access to a strong talent market and the ability to provide follow-the-sun servicing capabilities.

Clearwater has continued to add clients and hire employees worldwide during a year marked by a public health crisis and a sudden shift to a work-from-home model. The Delhi-NCR office met its original growth target and plans to double that headcount by year-end 2020.

“As we mark our first year operating in India, we are thrilled about the advances made by our talented team of professionals in Delhi-NCR and the significant contributions they have already made to Clearwater’s technology, servicing expertise, and culture in general,” said Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer of Clearwater Analytics. “While expanding globally this year, the company responded to the pandemic by implementing initiatives to drive an integrated focus from all our centres in support of our clients. The Clearwater team’s focus on operational excellence and metrics is a model for success. We are all excited to see what the next year brings for our employees; their contributions to our key initiatives and overall roadmap continue to make us better, and to delight our clientele.” 

Clearwater’s cloud-based solution is more vital than ever as the global business community has adapted to evolving remote office work models. Technologies like machine learning, cloud, and hyper-automation are key elements to fortifying the company’s technology and services offering as it serves some of the world’s largest and most complex institutional investors.

“Staying ahead with technological advancements is so important to our company’s mission to be the world’s most trusted and comprehensive software platform for investment accounting and analytics,” said Warren Barkley, Chief Technology Officer of Clearwater Analytics. “New and advancing technologies are the future and, in some ways, the now. They continue to affect how we build a world-class product and the new products we are eager to build at our Delhi-NCR development centre.”

Job roles at the company include skilled positions for software developers, data operations specialists, reconciliation analysts, and investment accounting and reporting experts.

“Over the past year we have built an excellent product development team in India. Given that we have so much more to do, we are looking to further scale our software development effort from India,” said Anurag Singh, Managing Director, India for Clearwater Analytics. “The strength of the talent market in India strongly aligns with Clearwater’s companywide initiatives.”

About Clearwater Analytics

Clearwater Analytics is a global SaaS solution for automated investment data aggregation, reconciliation, accounting, and reporting. Clearwater helps thousands of organisations make the most of their investment portfolio data with a world-class product and client-centric servicing. Clearwater offers a full complement of middle- and back-office solutions like trade confirm/affirm, client billing, composite management, client statements, and more.

Each day, the Clearwater solution reports on more than $4 trillion in assets for clients that include Arch Capital, AXA Art Insurance, Catalina Holdings, Cisco, Convex Group, Facebook, FBD Insurance, Garmin, J.P. Morgan, London & Capital, Oracle, Spotify, Starbucks, Unum Group, and many others.

Since its founding in 2004, Clearwater has provided a cloud-native solution that helps investors make the most of their data. Investment professionals in more than 49 countries trust Clearwater to deliver timely, validated investment data and in-depth reporting.

SmarterBiz Raises INR 8 Crores Pre-Series from StartupXseed and Prominent Angels

 • A post-COVID new norm start-up working on Customer Experience delivery with the most secure technology stack

• Aims to grow at 8X doing about 72 Crores in ARR by Mar 2021 

• Remote WFH solution to enable companies to traverse towards OPEX model 

• Solving Customer Experience (CX) for enterprises 

SmarterBiz, India's first end-to-end CX platform enabled with the gig workforce has raised INR 8 crore as a part of their Pre-Series A round. 

The contributors for this funding round were StartupXseed Ventures (Deep Technology – B2B – Early-stage fund); Mr. Bhaskar Pramanik, Former Chairman of Microsoft India; Mr. MJ Aravind, Former co-founder Daksh, Former Partner Artiman; Mr. Ravi Viswanath; Mr. Ramesh Radhakrishnan; Mr. Ranjan Biswas; and Mr. MJ Aniketh. 

Founded in 2014 by Rajesh Bernard, Vijay Krishna, and Prateek Mehta, the company was funded initially by Utthsihta Yekum Fund.

SmarterBiz is an AI-powered customer experience platform that enables remote management of customer journeys and agent life cycles. SmarterBiz has helped several enterprises, including unicorns build scalable, flexible, and hyper-local customer experience, cost-effectively. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged businesses to ensure business continuity and manage increased customer interactions through remote workforce and reduced costs. With the SmarterBiz CX platform, customers can now remotely enable and manage the complete life cycle of the CX process across both digital and human touchpoints. With a single integrated approach, SmarterBiz takes away the pain of running customer experience on multiple siloed systems and processes that do not talk to each other. SmarterBiz provides an end-to-end platform to CX teams to manage the entire lifecycle of their customer, technology backbone, process, and customer support agents on the cloud. 

SmarterBiz serves several enterprises, including five segment leaders in E-commerce, BFSI, Hospitality, and Telecom sectors. It manages more than 5000 agents as part of its gig workforce. 

Rajesh Bernard, CEO & Co-founder of SmarterBiz said, "SmarterBiz has built a CX platform for a gig-workforce ideally suited under these COVID 19 conditions. SmarterBiz is committed to offering an omnichannel experience that elevates the experience across all customer touchpoints. We provide a competitive advantage to our customers by offering a choice between automation and manual intervention at all these touchpoints. With the investment, we plan to grow by 8X ARR this year and create more gig opportunities in the market." 

"Companies like SmarterBiz can foresee the benefits technology can bring, to reinvent the businesses and add value to the system. It will surely be a game-changing category disruptor during and post-COVID 19. There will be an increasing need for companies to integrate customer journeys, tech, remote work, and Gig models into their business process. We believe that SmarterBiz will be one of the most sustainable global companies of the future, for the solution it brings in and the execution capabilities of the team," said Mr. BV Naidu, Managing Partner, StartupXseed Ventures.

"At last, a seasoned leadership team, a novel premise, immaculate conceptual skills, and meticulous execution. SmarterBiz is indeed a company to watch out for." Mr. M J Aravind, Ex co-founder Daksh. 

The key benefits of the solution for customer experiences are that it facilitates remote work opportunities across India, flexible working hours, earning potential in a WFH set up, and is a mobile light, simple, and efficient application. 

The unique CX platform—Uearn.ai— streamlines the customer journey across multiple touchpoints with an omnichannel CX tech platform, fluid workflow management, and gig workforce, replacing the CapEx model to an OpEx model. The competitive advantage of SmarterBiz is the scalability (4X) it offers at lower costs and faster time to serve as compared to traditional models. 

About SmarterBiz: SmarterBiz, founded in 2014, is India's first end to end CX platform enabled with gig-workforce. It allows companies to shift their CX centres to 100% OpEx model. SmarterBiz streamlines customer journeys across multiple touchpoints with its CX platform—Uearn.ai—lowering the cost to serve, time to serve, for CX centre. It delivers the customer experience through its platform and gig-workforce, bringing convergence of tech and people to run multi-layered operations for its clients. Its fluidity allows clients to scale 4X times faster than the traditional model supported by a talented workforce that can work from remote distributed locations. Uearn.ai facilitates remote work opportunities and has 5,000 trained gig workforces with customer experience profiles. Uearn is available as a remote gig workforce app in Google Play Store. 

SmarterBiz is transforming the CX delivery for some of the leading banks to tech unicorns. To know more, visit www.smarterbiz.ai

Religare Health Insurance Advocates Comprehensive Health Coverage as COVID-19 Drives Greater Consumer Awareness

Covid 19 Coverage 

* Standalone Health Insurance sector in India registers 40% YoY hike

* Comprehensive health cover is imperative in India since retail health insurance penetration is only 3% and out-of-pocket healthcare spending stands at ~65%

With COVID-19 acting as a catalyst of change and increasingly nudging people to explore diverse health coverage options, Religare Health Insurance (RHI) is endorsing the need for comprehensive health insurance policies. Emphasizing the soaring significance of health insurance amid an unprecedented global health crisis, the Standalone Health Insurance sector registered a 40% YoY rise. This growth will ensure further impetus for health insurance penetration, where India records one of the world’s highest out-of-pocket spending rates in healthcare.      

Highlighting the rising numbers of other potentially-fatal lifestyle ailments such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases, among others, RHI endorses comprehensive health insurance coverage. Furthermore, the increasing cost of quality healthcare services even for infectious diseases underscores the need for comprehensive health insurance.

Accordingly, Religare Health Insurance offers a comprehensive bouquet of services ranging from basic hospitalization (Care); high sum insured options (Care Advantage); insurance for PED, including insulin-dependent diabetics (Care Freedom); post-cardiac event/intervention insurance (Care Heart) and many others, backed by all-encompassing wellness and insurance benefits.

Elaborating on the latest institutional developments, an RHI spokesperson said, “The coronavirus pandemic has come as a thought-provoking black swan event for people disdainful of health insurance. As morbidity and mortality rates rise directly due to COVID-19 and indirectly from the neglect of other equally life-threatening conditions, there is a pronounced and inescapable realization about the need for health insurance. Besides managing COVID-19-related treatments, health cover is indispensable in safeguarding individuals and their families from other chronic conditions that lead to unexpected and unaffordable medical expenses, driving millions of uninsured people into debt, devastating lives permanently. Fortunately, a broad bouquet of health insurance solutions happens to be available today, customized for almost every consumer segment. Therefore, we urge consumers to opt for a suitable coverage plan as per their specific healthcare requirements. This is vital in our country, where retail health insurance penetration is only 3% and out-of-pocket healthcare spending stands at around 65%.”

RHI’s endorsement of comprehensive insurance coverage comes in the wake of increased awareness about health insurance products after the COVID-19 outbreak. Given the importance of health insurance in promoting better healthcare outcomes across India, the Company believes it is important to leverage this trend by apprising people about the far-reaching benefits of comprehensive health policies. Moreover, against the backdrop of pandemic-induced income losses for a significant employed segment, the role of health insurance can be paramount in saving lives in the event of any healthcare crisis.

About Religare Health Insurance (RHI)

Religare Health Insurance (RHI) is a specialized health insurer offering health insurance services to employees of corporates, individual customers and for financial inclusion as well. With its operating philosophy being based on the principal tenet of ‘consumer-centricity’, the company has consistently invested in the effective application of technology to deliver excellence in customer servicing, product innovation and value-for-money services.

RHI currently offers products in the retail segment for Health Insurance, Critical Illness, Personal Accident, Top-up Coverage, International Travel Insurance and Maternity along with Group Health Insurance and Group Personal Accident Insurance for corporates.

Religare Health Insurance has been adjudged the ‘Best Health Insurance Company’ once at the ABP News-BFSI Awards 2015 and again at the Emerging Asia Insurance Awards, 2019 & ‘Best Claims Service Provider of the Year’ – Insurance India Summit & Awards 2018. RHI has also received the ‘Editor’s Choice Award for Best Product Innovation’ at Finnoviti in 2013 and was conferred the ‘Best Medical/Health Insurance Product Award’ at the FICCI Healthcare Excellence Awards in 2015, 2018 and 2019.

QuEST Global Enhances Deep Learning Solutions with Intel’s Industrial Edge Insights Software

QuEST Global, a global product engineering and lifecycle services company, announced today that it has enhanced its vision analytics and predictive maintenance solutions with Intel® Edge Insights for Industrial. QuEST developed these deep learning solutions to help OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers in the industrial and semiconductor sectors to automate security and monitoring systems and manufacturing tools used for making semiconductor chips.

The vision analytics solution developed by QuEST uses the Intel distribution of the OpenVINO toolkit to provide manufacturers with actionable insights based on specific patterns captured by machine vision systems. The solution uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to develop insights based on video feeds. In addition to OpenVINO toolkit, the solution incorporates Intel Edge Insights for Industrial framework to facilitate deployment by end-users.

The predictive maintenance solution developed by QuEST is designed to help semiconductor OEMs maintain manufacturing tools. In this application, Intel Edge Insights for Industrial framework provides times series analytic capability as part of a predictive maintenance solution. This analysis help OEMs determine the remaining useful life of an asset and help to optimize maintenance time.

Commenting on the two solutions Krish Kupathil, Head – Hi-Tech and Digital, QuEST Global said, “As a trusted thinking partner to our customers, we aim to develop and implement innovative solutions in the areas of manufacturing, security and monitoring, and automotive. Intel’s Edge Insights for Industrial framework and related technologies have been enhancing our vision analytics and predictive maintenance solutions and AI capabilities, helping us create the frontier for our customers. We look forward to continued collaboration with Intel to drive tech-driven business growth for customers across industries.”

Intel Edge Insights for Industrial enables near real-time analysis at the edge by making it easy to integrate data, devices, and processes in manufacturing applications and easy to utilize Intel processors and accelerators. “The industrial sector is using Intel Edge Insights for Industrial-based solutions and tools to help improve operational efficiency and to help tighten factory security and monitoring. This enabling software makes it easy to deploy AI solution and optimizes the hardware performance across Intel-based platforms,” said Jonathan Luse, General Manager, Intel Industrial Solutions.

QuEST Global works with leading global companies across diverse verticals, helping them to address the growing demand for providing connected engineering experience to the end customers. Over the past two decades, the company has been helping its customers take the next step in their digital transformation journey by automating the process of identifying production problems, proactively implementing innovative solutions, and making products safer and more reliable.

Jaguar Land Rover Inaugurates New 3S Retailer Facility in Bengaluru

 New 3S in the city

* Jaguar Land Rover unveils new state-of-the-art 3S (Sales, Service and Spare parts) Retailer Facility on New Airport Road

* Spread over a total area of over 4 160 m2, the facility offers a showroom display of a wide range of products from Jaguar and Land Rover’s portfolio, and a fully equipped service workshop with 19 service bays. 

* Jaguar Land Rover India distribution network is spread across 27 outlets in 24 major cities across India.

Jaguar Land Rover India today announced the opening of a new 3S Retailer facility in Bengaluru by Marqland in a fast developing area on New Airport Road.

This new 3S Retailer facility in the prominent location of New Airport Road complements the Boutique showroom in City Centre on Cunningham Road to offer exceptional Customer Experience and Convenience. Marqland previously operated its 3S facility on Hosur Road.

This Retailer facility is spread over 4 160 m2 and is designed to provide the highest quality of sales and after-sales service. It provides an enhanced premium customer experience, displaying a wide range of products from the Jaguar and Land Rover portfolio, and has an impressive handover bay for delivering vehicles to customers. 

This facility also has a Jaguar Land Rover approved pre-owned car section and showcases a wide range of Jaguar Land Rover branded accessories and merchandise for its discerning customers. It also has a fully equipped workshop, with state-of-the-art tools and equipment and highly trained technicians and staff to provide the highest quality after-sales experience. 

Rohit Suri, President & Managing Director, Jaguar Land Rover India Ltd (JLRIL), said, “Post the opening of the Boutique Showroom in City Centre in  2019, this new, ultra-modern integrated 3S facility on New Airport Road will further strengthen JLR’s presence in the Bengaluru area. It will ensure that our customers are able to enjoy world-class sales, service, and spares under-one-roof from a location that is convenient and easily accessible.”

Customers can even book their cars by visiting the online booking platform at www.findmeacar.in for Jaguar and www.findmeasuv.in for Land Rover..