Atlassian Launches $50M Venture Fund to Propel the Cloud-Based Startup Ecosystem

Atlassian Corporation Plc (NASDAQ:TEAM), a leading provider of team collaboration and productivity software and the maker of Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket and Trello products, has announced the launch of Atlassian Ventures, a new US$50 million fund that will invest into the up-and-coming startups, including established companies that are building products in the overall Atlassian ecosystem. The company which set up its world-class R&D centre in Bangalore last year and with plans to expand it further, is keen to interest India’s vibrant startup ecosystem and rich technical talent pool.        

Atlassian Ventures, with the objective of supporting cloud-based products and services will invest in three types of companies. Firstly, the early-stage startups, who are building apps for any of Atlassian’s cloud products, whether it be - Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket or Trello.  Secondly, the larger, more established ecosystem product partners scaling their businesses. These investments will be made in partnership with institutional investors and will generally target series A onwards. And finally, the existing sales channel partners looking to step up their cloud services and create new products that support the future of teamwork. 

On the company being extremely bullish about the India market, Dinesh Ajmera, Site Lead and Head of Engineering, Bengaluru, Atlassian said, “Atlassian Ventures is a global program with the objective of supporting cloud-based products and services and unleashing the potential of teams all over the world. With India’s cloud market among the largest in the Asia Pacific region, we believe this fund will be an ideal opportunity for up-and-coming startups in India to access funding when building apps for our cloud products. India is a significant market for Atlassian, one that’s teeming with an extraordinary developer community and a vibrant startup ecosystem that we plan to tap into.” 

“We have kept the applications open to our existing Marketplace Partners and developers, as well as new-to-Atlassian app developers who are looking for the first funding for their start-ups. As part of this program, companies that receive funding are also eligible for mentorship as well as global exposure at Atlassian events,” he further added. 

As more and more customers transition to Atlassian’s cloud products, the company is committed to supporting their journey by fostering a robust ecosystem of cloud-based apps that enhance their experience and satisfy all use cases. Atlassian has 4,200+ apps already available in its Marketplace and offers integrations with popular tools like Slack, Zendesk, and GitHub.  

To further consolidate its offerings and capabilities, the company has recently acquired a slew of companies in the ecosystem, which include Code Barrel (the company behind Automation for Jira), Mindville and Halp – the creator of Slack. 

Atlassian serves more than 174,000 customers worldwide and has been named a “Best Place to Work” by Great Place to Work Institute in every market where they have a staff presence.

About Atlassian 

Atlassian unleashes the potential of every team. Our team collaboration and productivity software helps teams organize, discuss, and complete shared work. Teams at more than 174,000 customers, across large and small organizations - including General Motors, Walmart Labs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Lyft, Verizon, Spotify and NASA - use Atlassian’s project tracking, content creation and sharing, and service management products to work better together and deliver quality results on time. Learn more about our products, including Jira Software, Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket, Opsgenie, Jira Service Desk, and Jira Align at https://atlassian.com/. 

Kuchipudi Parampara Foundation - Presents its Seventh Edition Natya Parampara Utsav 2020

Kuchipudi Parampara Foundation,Bengaluru Presents its Seventh edition Natya Parampara Utsav 2020 on Saturday Oct 31, 2020,  6.30PM live streamed online on Kuchipudi Parampara Foundation Youtube channel, Facebook page and Instagram.

Programmes will include Recognition & Honouring of the works of senior Kuchipudi Guru of Kuchipudi village Pasumarthi Keshavprasad, Bharatanatyam danseuse Mamatha Karanth Bangalore, Kuchipudi Solos presentation by Raktim chanda disciple of Guru Deepa Narayanan Sashindran, Padmaragini Puttu from Moscow Russia, Geetha Padmakumar from Kerala, Anna Mashak from St Petersburg Russia, Mohiniattam by Gopika Nath from Kerala and concludes with an talk by Guest Guru Sailaja, Kuchipudi Exponent from Chennai.

The event is curated by Deepa Narayanan Sashindran, Kuchipudi Exponent and Life Trustee Kuchipudi Parampara Foundation, Bangalore.

Kuchipudi Parampara Foundation, Bengaluru a Non Profit Trust founded by Kuchipudi Exponent and Managing Trustee Deepa Narayanan is presently offering systematic Kuchipudi dance training and choreography in Bengaluru to bring forth artists of high calibre.

For more information’s contact kpf.bangalore@gmail.com/ 9845315272.

www.kuchipudiparamparafoundation.com

Shell Deepwater Selects Bentley’s iTwin Platform for Project Delivery

Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading global provider of comprehensive software and digital twin cloud services for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure today announced that Shell’s Deepwater business has selected Bentley’s digital twin approach to streamline its capital projects process and accelerate time to first oil.   

With a plan to deliver several subsea tie-back projects over the next 10 years, Shell Deepwater Projects has recognized a significant opportunity to accelerate capital project delivery and cut project delivery time by implementing an integrated digital project & engineering environment.  The solution spans project conception in the early phase design through to handover.   

“Shell Deepwater Projects is developing an integrated Workflow and Data Platform from system selection to asset handover to streamline our capital projects processes and accelerate time to first oil,” said GT Ju, General Manager Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Projects. “The platform is being developed in partnership with Bentley leveraging Bentley’s iTwin open, scalable Azure cloud-based platform which provides interoperability across owner and supply chain systems. We believe that an end-to-end platform that gives us visibility and transparency to Project and Engineering data across our portfolio will be a key driver to delivering competitive projects.” 

Commenting on the project, Nicholas Cumins, Chief Product Officer – Bentley Systems, said “Think Big – Prove Small – Scale Fast – sums up the overall approach Shell and Bentley share in this initiative.  Bentley’s iTwin platform is ideally suited to providing aligned, secure and visual access to project data across the supply chain and capital projects ecosystem.  Shell’s selection of Bentley’s iTwin platform validates our open approach to digital twins and underscores the ability of the platform to scale to the largest, most complex capital projects and dynamic engineering use cases.” 

Bentley Acceleration Fund Investment 

In addition, Bentley announced that it is providing investment funds to FutureOn, a Norwegian software company supporting deepwater subsea projects, to accelerate going digital within the oil and gas industry. The investment sets the stage for FutureOn and Bentley to deliver the next-generation digital twin technology required for oil and gas ecosystems to manage and analyze data, integrate with existing systems, provide analytics visibility, and rapidly explore ideas collaboratively.   

FutureOn builds on more than 20 years of visual engineering experience specifically in the oil and gas subsea domain. The company will combine its award-winning field design application (FieldAP) and its API-centric collaboration platform (FieldTwin) with Bentley’s digital twin platform (iTwin) to advance user organizations like Shell Deepwater.  Both FutureOn and Bentley platforms use open web standards to facilitate complex integration and customization, and the combined offerings are already being implemented in exploration and production workflows for the creation and curation of subsea digital twins.  

“The Bentley Acceleration Fund investment is a significant milestone for FutureOn and will help drive the growth of our business by advancing the FutureOn technology as well as extending our reach,” said FutureOn CEO Paal Roppen. “Today, digitalization is more important than ever for the oil and gas industry as challenging market conditions persist. Innovative and disruptive digital twin technologies such as those we develop alongside Bentley will help farsighted organizations like Shell Deepwater to improve project and asset performance.”   

Equitas Small Finance Bank Limited IPO to Open on October 20, 2020

* Price band fixed at Rs 32 to Rs 33 per equity share

* Offer to remain open from October 20th to October 22nd 2020

Equitas Small Finance Bank Limited (the “Company’), the largest SFB in India in terms of number of banking outlets, and the second largest SFB in India in terms of assets under management and total deposits in Fiscal 2019. (Source: CRISIL Report), will open the initial public offer of equity shares of face value of Rs. 10 each (“Equity Shares” and such initial public offer, the “Offer”) on 20th October 2020. The Offer will close on 22nd October 2020. The price band of the Offer has been fixed at Rs 32 to Rs 33 per Equity Share.

The Initial Public offering consists of a fresh issue aggregating up to Rs. 2,800 million (the “Fresh Issue”) and an offer for sale of up to 72,000,000 Equity Shares by Equitas Holdings Limited (the “Promoter Selling Shareholder”, and such Equity Shares the “Offered Shares”). The Offer includes a reservation aggregating up to Rs. 510 million, for subscription by Eligible EHL Shareholders (“EHL Shareholder Reservation Portion”) and a reservation aggregating up to Rs. 10 million, for subscription by Eligible Employees (the “Employee Reservation Portion”). The Offer less the EHL Shareholder Reservation Portion and the Employee Reservation Portion is hereinafter referred to as the “Net Offer”. 

Bids can be made for a minimum of 450 Equity Shares and in multiples of 450 Equity Shares thereafter.

The Equity Shares offered in this Offer are proposed to be listed at both BSE Limited and the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (“NSE”) post the listing. For the purpose of the Offer, NSE is the designated stock exchange. JM Financial Limited, Edelweiss Financial Services Limited and IIFL Securities Limited are the book running lead managers to the Offer (“BRLMs”).  The Offer is being made through the Book Building Process, in terms of Rule 19(2)(b) of the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules, 1957, as amended (“SCRR”) read with Regulation 31 of the SEBI ICDR Regulations and in compliance with Regulation 6(1) of the SEBI ICDR Regulations wherein not more than 50% of the Net Offer shall be available for allocation on a proportionate basis to Qualified Institutional Buyers (“QIBs”) (the “QIB Portion”) provided that our Bank and the Promoter Selling Shareholder may, in consultation with the BRLMs, allocate up to 60% of the QIB Portion to Anchor Investors on a discretionary basis in accordance with the SEBI ICDR Regulations (“Anchor Investor Portion”), of which one-third shall be reserved for domestic Mutual Funds, subject to valid Bids being received from domestic Mutual Funds at or above the Anchor Investor Allocation Price. In the event of undersubscription or non-allocation in the Anchor Investor Portion, the balance Equity Shares shall be added to the Net QIB Portion.

Further 5% of the Net QIB Portion shall be available for allocation on a proportionate basis to Mutual Funds only and the remainder of the Net QIB Portion shall be available for allocation on a proportionate basis to all QIB Bidders including Mutual Funds, subject to valid Bids being received at or above the Offer Price. However, if the aggregate demand from Mutual Funds is less than 5% of the QIB Portion, the balance Equity Shares available for allocation in the Mutual Fund Portion will be added to the remaining QIB Portion for proportionate allocation to QIBs. Further, not less than 15% of the Net Offer shall be available for allocation on a proportionate basis to Non-Institutional Bidders and not less than 35% of the Net Offer shall be available for allocation to Retail Individual Bidders in accordance with the SEBI ICDR Regulations, subject to valid Bids being received from them at or above the Offer Price. All potential Bidders (except Anchor Investors) are required to mandatorily utilise the Application

Supported by Blocked Amount (“ASBA”) process providing details of their respective ASBA accounts, and UPI ID (in case of RIBs and Eligible EHL Shareholders Bidding in the EHL Shareholder Reservation Portion) if applicable, in which the corresponding Bid Amounts will be blocked by the SCSBs or under the UPI Mechanism, as applicable. Anchor Investors are not permitted to participate in the Offer through the ASBA process.

Aakash Student Chirag G from Bengaluru Secures AIR 113 in NEET 2020 Examination

Chirag G, a student of Aakash Institute, has made Bengaluru and the Institute proud by securing All India Rank (AIR) 113 in the prestigious NEET 2020 by scoring 697 out of 720 marks. NEET is one of the major exams for admission to noted medical colleges in the country, results for which were announced by the National Testing Agency (NTA) today.   

Including Chirag, there are as many as nine other students who have secured positions in the Top 1000 AIR from Karnataka. The top scorers from the state are Yashas MS from Mysuru (AIR 148), Srija Chattopadhyay from Bengaluru (AIR 154), Veeresha R Sabarad from Bengaluru (AIR 157), Jathin ALD from Bengaluru (AIR 412), Yadhunandan D from Mysuru (AIR 537), Leroy D’Souza from Mangaluru (AIR 588), Sreya Jha from Bengaluru (AIR 712), Prajjwal Kashyap from Bengaluru (AIR 900) and Purva Reddy from Bengaluru (AIR 934). 

Congratulating the students, Mr Aakash Chaudhry,Director and CEO of Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL) said, “It is a matter of great pride for us that our 10 students from Karnataka centres including 7 from Bangalore centres have excelled in the highly competitive NEET 2020 entrance exam. The credit goes to the hard work of our students, the support of their parents and instructors who have guided them throughout their journey. Our quality test preparation is renowned in the industry for preparing students to excel in medical and engineering entrance exams. I wish all of them all the best for their future endeavours.” 

The students credited the outstanding performance to burning the midnight oil and the excellent coaching provided by instructors of Aakash for the NEET examination, which is considered among the toughest in the world. The NEET Exam is applicable for admission to all the medical colleges in India and few colleges in abroad. 

The Top 3 Rank holders of NEET 2020 are students of Aakash, from its classroom and distance learning programs. This is an impressive feat considering that 15.97 lakh students have registered for the test this year.  

About Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL) 

Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL) provides comprehensive test preparatory services for students preparing for Medical and Engineering Entrance Examinations, School/Board Exams and Competitive Exams such as NTSE, KVPY, and Olympiads. AESL believes that the “Aakash” brand is associated with quality coaching and a proven student selection track record in various Medical and Engineering Entrance Examinations, Scholarship exams & Olympiads. 

With over 32 years of operational experience in the test preparatory industry, the company has a large number of selections in Medical & Engineering Entrance Exams and several Foundation level Scholarship exams/Olympiads, a pan India network of 200+ Aakash Centers (including franchisee), and a student count of more than 250,000. 

The Aakash group also owns famous K-12 EdTech brand, Meritnation.com as well. 

Harpic Mission Paani to Spread Awareness on Need for Saving Water for Improved Hygiene Across India

Harpic Mission Paani through its new campaign ‘Swachhta aur Paani’ (Hygiene and Water) aims to reinstate the importance of water in maintaining hygienic practices and emphasizing on how there is an increased urgency for efficient usage and conservation. Over the years, the focus for water-conservation has been understandably more on saving drinking water, but with the COVID-19 outbreak it has become clear that an increased need for water is also evident to maintain best-in-class hygienic practices to combat diseases.

Water is an issue that is affecting the daily lives of many Indians. As per Water.Org, 99 Million Indians lack access to safe water and 541 Million Indians lack access to improved hygiene. Until now, our water-conservation narratives had been focused on making drinking water accesssible, but with COVID-19 we have realized that water is equally important for maintaining hygiene and combating diseases.

Harpic has been pioneering the cause of hygiene and sanitation in Indian homes for decades and has been working towards driving behaviour change through awareness campaigns. Harpic Mission Paani’s new strategic pivot of ‘Swachhta aur Paani’ (Hygiene and Water) rests on the critical components of both water and hygiene, and the aim is to bring everyone together in this mission for a safe, hygienic and sustainable tomorrow.

Speaking about the pivot, Mr. Narasimhan Eswar, Senior Vice President, RB Hygiene, South Asia said, “RB’s purpose- to protect, heal and nurture in the relentless pursuit of a cleaner and healthier world- has never been more relevant. Harpic Mission Paani is one of our key campaigns aimed at raising awareness and driving behavior change on water conservation and sanitation in India.  At this point, the need for hygienic sanitation alongside efficient water management is absolutely critical for our country. Through Mission Paani, we are now keen to encourage all our citizens on driving optimum utilization of this crucial resource for improved hygiene and sanitation that will help save lives. Harpic with this strategic shift continues to play the role of an enabler in providing superior hygiene and healthier homes.”

RB India in collaboration with News 18, launched Harpic Mission Paani, a nation-wide water conservation drive in 2019. In wake of the critical challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Harpic Mission Paani Campaign has been re-calibrated with an objective to save water for improved hygiene and focus on efficient water management.

Ms. Sukhleen Aneja, CMO & Marketing Director, RB Hygiene, South Asia supporting the cause as well as the new direction said, “Our fight is to make access to the highest quality of hygiene, wellness and nourishment a right and not a privilege. Harpic has been at the forefront to raise awareness and educate people on the importance of hygiene and sanitation. For over a year now, Harpic’s Mission Paani campaign has been solely focused on water conservation. During the ongoing pandemic, there has been an increased need for water consumption to enable the fight against Covid-19. It is now more important than ever to save water so that there are more people who can use this resource to keep themselves and their homes healthy and germ and virus free.”

We stand at a critical threshold today, where we are facing a pandemic and are witnessing the ever-depleting level of water. A precious natural resource, that is imperative for our survival and overall wellbeing needs to be nurtured, cared, protected, and preserved.

It’s urgent. It’s important. And it’s imperative for a better future. Let’s all pledge together for a more equitable, more sustainable tomorrow, by focusing on water as well as hygiene.

Fourth Edition of UTT Postponed to 2021 due to Coronavirus Pandemic

The fourth edition of Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) has been deferred to 2021 in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) authorities and the UTT management have jointly taken the decision to postpone India's premier table tennis event, keeping in mind various concerns, foremost being the safety and well-being of the players and other league stakeholders.

"We must avoid any risk to the health and safety of the players and other stakeholders, especially with 2021 being an Olympic year. Furthermore, international travel restrictions are still abound with clarity awaited on the same. So after evaluating the current situation and after due deliberations with TTFI, we have arrived at a mutual consensus to not conduct UTT in this calendar year. We are optimistic that 2021 will be healthier and happier, and in due course of time we hope to announce the dates for UTT to be held next year," UTT co-promoters Vita Dani and Niraj Bajaj said in a joint statement.

UTT has been a launchpad for many Indian paddlers while also supporting domestic tournaments and the larger ecosystem of the sport in our nation. The league has also given the sport a platform to showcase top-quality table tennis in India, as our country's finest rub shoulders with the world's best.

"We have been very keen for table tennis to resume, however there are various issues to be considered and addressed. And under such circumstances, conducting UTT with the presence of foreign players doesn't seem feasible. However, we are really looking forward to the fourth season of the League in 2021. We will identify a window to conduct UTT at the earliest next year, with the situation surrounding the pandemic also hopefully improving," TTFI General Secretary MP Singh said.

With the sporting world gradually moving towards resumption of live action, the fourth season of UTT next year will be a welcome boost for Indian table tennis.