Tata Motors Brings More Cheer to the Season; Launches ‘India Ki Doosri Diwali’ Campaign

Doubling the cheer and festivities for its customers, Tata Motors, India’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturer, has announced the commencement of ‘India ki Doosri Diwali’ campaign, to extend the continued celebrations. After its highly successful run last year, Tata Motors has launched the campaign to spread the festive cheer even after Diwali. Under this offer, the customers of the Small Commercial Vehicle (SCV) and pick-up range, which includes the Tata Ace, Tata Yodha and the Tata Intra, will receive an assured gift through a lucky draw, in addition to the exciting consumer offers. The bumper offer include gifts ranging from gold vouchers up to Rs. 5 lakh to LED TVs, washing machines, mobile phones and fuel vouchers to name a few. The offer is valid till 30th November 2020.

The campaign announcement also marks the momentous 15 years of the iconic Tata Ace, which has been the no. 1 brand of SCVs throughout its journey, with over 22 lakh happy customers. Tata Motors entire BS6 range of vehicles has been extremely well received by the customers, with over 50,000 BS6 SCVs already on the roads. The new range of vehicles come with latest technology, more comfortable cabins, higher fuel efficiency and lower total cost of ownership to help increase the profit potential for its customers.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Rajesh Kaul, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Commercial Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors, said, “Tata Motors has built its legacy by positioning its customers’ best interests at the core of everything. The high-value benefits with unique ‘Power of 6’ proposition is a testament of our promise to our customers. At Tata Motors, the priority is to deliver the best products and service experience in the industry. In our continuous endeavour to help businesses grow and promote entrepreneurship in India, Tata Motors aims to extend the best deals to its prospective customers. ‘India ki Doosri Diwali’ campaign received great response last year, and we’re happy to bring it back this year, as well, to add even more cheer among the customers.”

The campaign will be promoted across print, radio and digital platforms, in addition to on-ground activations across all Tata Motors commercial vehicle dealerships in India.

About Tata Motors

Tata Motors Limited (NYSE: TTM; BSE: 500570 and 570001; NSE: TATAMOTORS and TATAMTRDVR), a USD 35 billion organization, is a leading global automobile manufacturer of cars, utility vehicles, pick-ups, trucks and buses. Part of the USD 113 billion Tata group, Tata Motors is India’s largest and the only OEM offering extensive range of integrated, smart and e-mobility solutions. It has operations in India, the UK, South Korea, Thailand, South Africa, and Indonesia through a strong global network of 103 subsidiaries, 10 associate companies, 3 joint ventures and 2 joint operations as on March 31, 2020.

With a focus on engineering and tech enabled automotive solutions catering to the future of mobility, Tata Motors is India’s market leader in commercial vehicles and amongst the top four in the passenger vehicles market. With ‘Connecting Aspirations’ at the core of its brand promise, the company’s innovation efforts are focused to develop pioneering technologies that are sustainable as well as suited to evolving aspirations of the market and the customers. Tata Motors strives to bring new products that fire the imagination of GenNext customers, fueled by state of the art design and R&D centers located in India, UK, US, Italy and South Korea. Internationally, Tata commercial and passenger vehicles are marketed in countries, spread across Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, South East Asia, South America, Australia, CIS, and Russia.

MongoDB Hosts Virtual Summit to Empower Businesses in India and ASEAN on their Digital Transformation Journeys

MongoDB, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDB), the leading, modern general purpose database platform, will be hosting MongoDB.live for India/ASEAN, a free, fully digital community conference on November 19th 2020 from 9.30am. 

It will be an opportunity to hear new product announcements, learn how Indian/ASEAN customers are running mission-critical functions on the MongoDB platform and participate in breakout sessions and live technical demos. The event will include a keynote from MongoDB’s Chief Product Officer, Sahir Azam, and a Live Q&A session with Mark Porter, CTO, and Chirag Shah, VP Server. Mr Azam will address the latest breakthroughs and milestones in MongoDB’s foundational developer mission to make data stunningly easy to work with. 

Both sessions will share new product updates including the 4.4 server and MongoDB Atlas multi-cloud clusters - an industry-first capability that allows customers to deploy a fully managed, distributed database across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure simultaneously. The conference will also feature sessions from major corporations and high-growth scale-ups across India/ASEAN, such as Cure.fit and Gametion (Ludo King) who explore exciting use cases for innovative applications built using the MongoDB platform.

"In India & ASEAN, we're are seeing clear signs that the current environment is reinforcing the long-term trends towards digital transformation and cloud migration.  Every company is looking to become a software company for improved value and modernisation,” said Suvig Sharma, Senior Director, APAC, MongoDB. "At .Live India/ASEAN, we're excited to share the latest and greatest on MongoDB and how we're helping some of the regions’ biggest companies, institutions and organizations innovate with data and software."

About MongoDB

MongoDB is the leading modern, general purpose database platform, designed to unleash the power of software and data for developers and the applications they build. Headquartered in New York, MongoDB has more than 20,200 customers in over 100 countries. The MongoDB database platform has been downloaded over 125 million times and there have been more than one million MongoDB University registrations.

Key facts:

●     More than 20,200 customers in more than 100 countries around the world

●     18,000 Atlas customers and 2 million Atlas free-tier users

●     More than 125 million downloads total

●     More than 1.5 million registrations for MongoDB University courses

●     Over 2,100 employees in 40+ offices around the globe

Microsoft Announces Dynamics 365 Project Operations in Indian Market

Microsoft has announced the general availability of its Dynamics 365 Project Operations solution across India. It has been developed to help service-based businesses in unifying operational workflows to provide visibility, collaboration, and insights to drive success across teams, from prospects to payments to profit.  An all in one application, it uses real-time analytics to connect and empower leadership, sales, resourcing, project management, and accounting teams with the visibility needed to deliver services to customers on-time and on-budget. 

Service organizations often face challenges arising from disparate systems and data silos which impact their success. These issues lead to inadequacies in client expansion, collaboration between project managers, visibility & mobility of team members, workforce optimization, agility among business leaders, and timely billing. Managing projects in different systems results in lack of visibility & transparency, increasing manual processes, lowering accuracy, slowing timelines, cost overruns, and even higher attrition rates. Therefore, service-based businesses are accelerating cloud adoption to benefit from the increased streamlining, productivity and efficiency that comes with cloud-based software and enterprise business solutions.

Rajiv Sodhi – COO, Microsoft India, said, “In today’s evolving business landscape, service organizations are looking for flexible and scalable ways to address their functional requirements. Through Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, we are committed to helping service-based businesses succeed in a highly competitive market. The solution will help organizations in winning new deals, tracking & managing projects throughout their lifecycle, retaining best people, and increasing profit margins. We believe that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations will truly enable businesses to reimagine project management by bringing together cross-functional teams to deliver differentiated customer experiences.”

Built on the Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365 Project Operations brings together capabilities from Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation, Dynamics 365 Finance, and Microsoft Project. It integrates with an organization’s current enterprise systems helping drive business growth across their sales and delivery processes, without the need to rip and replace existing systems. Businesses can also easily scale Project Operations using Microsoft Power Platform and other Dynamics 365 applications, like Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service. It can easily adapt to changing market conditions by connecting with other Microsoft apps and services, including Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365.

The solution offers customized capabilities for various functions:

* Leaders get better access to business insights, data, and AI capabilities for faster decision making, and increased visibility. The Power BI tool helps CXOs in understanding upcoming business needs.

* Sales is enabled to win more deals and accelerate sales cycle with fast, accurate quotes, flexible pricing, and seamless transitions from estimate to execution. They can also use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to improve customer experience.

* Project managers can accelerate project delivery with built-in Microsoft Project capabilities. They can also track their project efficiently and collaborate across the project lifecycle using a single management dashboard.

* Resourcing and HR can optimize workforce utilization, by aligning right people with right skills to right projects, improving quality and helping retain top performers. Managers can also anticipate resourcing needs with intelligent scheduling.

* Finance managers can improve cash-flow by accurately invoicing customers and managing payables, and ensure compliance with published standards and practices. They can also track project spends, and payables with invoicing and purchase order management. Dynamics 365 Finance helps them keep track of key business parameters, viz. revenue, gross margin, and project profitability.

* Team members can increase productivity, compliance, & submit, approve, process, and reconcile time and expenses, from anywhere. They can also use Microsoft Teams as a secure hub for all documents, calls, meetings and more.

Microsoft has deep expertise and rich history with front office, back office, collaboration, productivity, and project management. Microsoft Dynamics 365 ​Project Operations builds on the company’s depth of expertise and existing applications across all functional pillars of service-based businesses to increase their agility.

About Microsoft India:

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft set up its India operations in 1990. Today, Microsoft entities in India have over 11,000 employees, engaged in sales and marketing, research, development and customer services and support, across 11 Indian cities – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune. Microsoft offers its global cloud services from local data centers to accelerate digital transformation across Indian start-ups, businesses, and government organizations.

Prince Charles Inaugurates Hinduja's Diwali Celebrations by Lighting the Traditional Diwali Lamp

The Hinduja Family introduced Diwali to the city of London in the early 80s. Their in-person annual Diwali celebrations have come to be an integral part of London’s hi-profile social calendar. Today Diwali is so ubiquitous in London that even Times Square is lit up every year.

But this challenging year, marred first by the economic slowdown and then with the world in the grip of covid 19, the Hinduja Family felt it could not be the usual celebration anymore. Yet to keep the spirit of Diwali alive despite lockdown and social distancing which ensured an in-person event was not possible, the Hinduja Family raised it to a different dimension. The celebrations gave way to a virtual Prayer event for global wellbeing where different religious heads including the Archbishop of Canterbury .with their good wishes, and multi-faith spiritual masters joined in to offer their words of wisdom to resolutely face the current challenging times. To keep the momentum going, some of the golden voices of the contemporary Indian music industry like Kailash Kher, Sonu Nigam, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Anup Jalota, Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan, and Anuradha Paudwal performed live from different parts of the globe. Kailash Kher, Sonu Nigam, and Rahat Fateh Ali khan sang specially curated prayerful anthems with powerful messages of positivity to lift the sagging spirits.

Members of Royalty, HRH Prince Charles inaugurated the event by lighting up the Diwali lamp, and Prince Edward led the messages from the political class. Good wishes were in order from PM Boris Johnson, Home Secretary, Priti Patel, Foreign Office state Minister, Lord Tariq Ahmad, Faith Minister Lord Greenhalgh, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. The Vice President of India, Governor of Maharashtra, and Indian High Commissioner to the UK sent their special messages for the Hinduja Family.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. G.P Hinduja, Co-Chairman of the Hinduja Group said, “The Indian Festival of Lights, Diwali, has a deep spiritual significance. In these times, we, as a family, thought that keeping in mind the challenging times being faced all and with Covid affecting millions around the world irrespective of country, colour, creed, gender,  it could not be celebrations as usual. My late father had always instilled this value in us that whether it’s work or pleasure, every step should be taken keeping in mind the collective welfare of the community where we live and operate from. I like to do things differently and I was not willing to be limited by covid restrictions. So we said, why not keep the spirit alive and yet pray for the collective wellbeing of all. With thousands of people joining us from the US to the Far East, we feel humbled that our efforts were appreciated. We thank all the dignitaries who took the effort to send us their good wishes.”

About HINDUJA GROUP

The Hinduja Group is one of India’s premier diversified and transnational conglomerates. Employing nearly 150,000 employees, with a presence across 38 countries it has multi-billion-dollar revenues. The Group was founded over a hundred years ago by Shri P.D. Hinduja whose credo was "My duty is to work so that I can give."

The Group owns businesses in Automotive, Information Technology, Media, Entertainment & Communications, Banking & Finance Services, Infrastructure Project Development, Cyber Security, Oil, and Specialty Chemicals, Power, Real Estate, Trading, and Healthcare. The group also supports charitable and philanthropic activities across the world through the Hinduja Foundation.

#MoneyTransferHuaEasy – Paytm Continues to Promote Money Transfers from Bank A/c with New Digital Campaign

- Launches 3 unique ads on digital platforms for raising awareness on direct bank transfers using mobile number

- Showcases easy of Money Transfers from Paytm app at Zero charge, without the need for Wallet KYC

- Paytm users get best-in-class security, super fast transactions and assured cashbacks 

India’s leading digital financial services platform Paytm has launched 3 new ads on social media, as part of its new #MoneyTransferHuaEasy campaign to raise awareness of how instant money transfer through the Paytm app remains a quick, safe and easy way to directly send and receive money into one's Bank accounts. The films, targeted at millenials, highlight how by simply choosing the recipient's Mobile number, users can transfer money directly from their bank a/c at zero charge. Without the need for wallet KYC. 

The films, which have been favourably received on social media, feature internet sensations Saloni Gaur, Danish Sait and Paytm's very own Abhinav Kumar.  

Prior to this, the company had launched multiple TV ads that had struck a chord with millions of Indians. While the public interest in the entire campaign has remained massive, certain scenes from the earlier ads have become especially popular due to the portrayal of episodes from everyday lives. These included a scene from an Indian wedding ceremony where the groom transfers money to his sister-in-law’s bank account by just using mobile number and in return, gets back his shoes from her, had a take on the popular Indian marriage tradition. Another scene of a young female tenant paying her rent through the Paytm app, to her landlord's shy son, also got major positive reviews.

With the latest series of films, the company has now released 6 large scale entertaining films as part of its initiative to highlight the ease of making digital payments without the need of completing their Wallet KYC. Apart from the obvious benefits, users are also assured of sturdy security architecture, the best success rate for transactions in the industry and a chance to win assured cashbacks.

Abhinav Kumar, Vice President at Paytmsaid, "Paytm remains committed to expanding the reach of affordable and easy to use technology, to every citizen. We believe that digital payments solutions are not only a great enabler in addressing daily challenges but also helps improve the quality of lives of our fellow countrymen. Consumers now have the option of instantly making payments directly from their Bank accounts, by simply entering the recipient’s mobile number on the Paytm App. No other steps such as Wallet KYC are required, while transaction charges are also absent. The new marketing campaign reflects that and is geared around taking forward this message to the consumers, making them aware of the digital payments options they have. It also aims to further promote our mission to increase seamless digital transactions across the country." 

Film 1: https://youtu.be/oNUwQ7Zirfo

Film 2: https://youtu.be/e2hjxPf0T4E

Film 3: https://youtu.be/6b0jFDTNGs0 

About 113 Students from Aakash Institute Qualify the AFMC MBBS 2020

* 7 secure rank in Top 10 in Girls Merit List and 4 secure ranks in Top 10 in Boys Merit List  

* Poyla Ghosh from Pune and Monalisha Kumari from Bhubaneshwar secure AIR 2 and 3 in Girls Merit list respectively

* Animesh Pawar, Aakash DLP student, secured AIR 3 in Boys merit list 

* AIR 2, 5, 12, 17 are from Aakash institute, Pune

* Total students qualified are 113 out of which 86 are classroom and 27 are from DLP and Digital courses

A whopping 113 students from Aakash Institute, the national leader in test preparatory services, have qualified the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) MMBS 2020 entrance examination, registering one of the best results in the AFMC MBBS examination in the test preparation sector in India, an impressive feat that speaks volumes of the faculty, curriculum and training at Aakash. Out of the 113, 86 students are from the regular classroom course of Aakash Institute while 27 students from DLP (Distance Learning Programme) & Digital courses have qualified the prestigious examination.

11 Aakshians Make it to the Top 10 in the Girls and Boys Merit Lists with 7 securing ranks in Top 10 in Girls Merit List and 4 securing ranks in Top 10 in Boys Merit List. AIR 2, 5, 12, 17 are from Aakash institute, Pune. 

Aakashians who secured impressive results are Poyla Ghosh from Pune who secured AIR 2 in the girl’s merit list; Animesh Pawar, Aakash DLP student and Monalisha Kumari from Bhubaneshwar secured AIR 3 in the boys and girls merit lists respectively; Krishi Gupta from Meerut and Divya from Chandigarh secured AIR 4 in the boys and girls merit list respectively; Sonali Diyawar from Pune secured AIR 5 in the girls merit list; Aditi Mahajan, Aakash DLP student secured AIR 7 in the girls merit list; Zareef Islam from Guwahati secured AIR 8 in the boys merit list; Rhea Rao from Mumbai secured AIR 9 in the girls merit list; Vaibhav Barfa from Indore and Ashi Anand from Kochi secured AIR 10 in the boys and girls merit list respectively and passed the AFMC’s screening test with flying colours. 

Congratulating the students, Mr. Aakash Chaudhry, CEO, Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL), said, “We are proud that a significant number of students have qualified the AFMC entrance for MBBS 2020 course. The credit goes to the hard work of our students, the support of their parents and instructors who have guided them throughout their journey.  I wish them all the best for their future endeavours. We congratulate all our students for consistently working hard to achieve their goals.”  

The students credited the outstanding performance to burning the midnight oil and the excellent coaching provided by the faculty at Aakash. Armed Forces Medical College, set up in 1948, is a premier medical institute of India acknowledged as a centre of excellence in education and research. The college provides training to under-graduate and post-graduate medical and nursing students with assured career prospects in the defence services. 

AFMC MBBS 2020 screening test is conducted to offer admission in AFMC, Pune. Students are selected on basis of marks secured by them in the NEET entrance exam as well as in the screening test. 

This year the top 3 Rank holders of NEET 2020 are also students of Aakash, from its classroom and distance learning programs.

BR Shetty Stopped from Flying Out of the Country By Indian Immigration Authorities

BR Shetty, the founder of NMC Health was prevented from leaving the country by the immigration authorities. Shetty, along with his family were traveling to UAE by Etihad flight on Saturday at 3 am. He was not allowed to travel, when he approached the immigration clearance officials. Shetty has been embroiled in multiple cases for financial misappropriations and is under investigation by various authorities in India and UAE.  

Shetty’s healthcare chain, NMC Health is saddled with massive debts and unpaid dues. Shetty owes India’s state-owned bank, Bank of Baroda, over Rs.1850 crores. The bank has sued the defaulting businessman and the case is in Karnataka High Court. The courts have also paid heed to the bank’s plea and have attached 16 properties of Shetty, which were given as collateral to the bank.  

Shetty is also facing legal challenges in UAE and owes the banks in Dubai large sums of money. His defaults have led the Abu Dhabi Commercial bank in Dubai to file a criminal case against NMC. Shetty’s firms NMC and Finablr have borrowings worth $6.6 billions and nearly 60% of these borrowings have not been reported, thereby indicating the funds could have been diverted or siphoned off. Investigators have unearthed a series of transfers from NMC Health, to the tune of one million dirhams, transferred to his family owned entities. There are also reports of Shetty using NMC funds to fuel his lavish lifestyle and used the funds to purchase a private jet for $4.2m. 

BR Shetty had also signed on a slew of ambitious projects with various state governments in India and failed to fulfill any of them. Earlier this year, Karnataka State Cabinet scrapped the Rs. 450 Crore Jog Falls project with BRS Ventures. The MOU was signed for development and revitalization of Jog Falls but there was no progress and the project failed to take off. Shetty had  also announced the $2b medical city spread across 100 acres in Amaravati and signed an MOU with Telangana govt to set up a state of the art healthcare manufacturing facility, hospital and higher education hub, but none of them have seen the light of day.   

The travel restriction on Shetty are said to be initiated by the public sector bank, Bank of Baroda over the unpaid debts that Shetty owes to the bank.