Aakash Institute Announces Revised Dates for its Flagship National Scholarship Exam, ‘ANTHE 2020’

* Hundreds of deserving students will be awarded up to 100% scholarship to help them take the first step in their endeavour to become doctors and IITians 

* One of the largest private sector entrance exams in the country, ANTHE saw more than 3.4 lakh plus students appearing for the exam in 2019 

* Since 2010 when it was first instituted, ANTHE has seen more than 19 lakh students appearing for the Aakash National Talent Hunt Exam 

* Students studying in Class VII- XII can take benefit of this scholarship program 

* Apart from scholarship, students will also get the Meritnation School Booster Course free of cost  

Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL), the national leader in test preparation services for aspiring doctors and IITians with more than 200+ centres across the country, has announced revised dates for the Eleventh edition of its flagship Annual Scholarship Exam, named as Aakash National Talent Hunt Exam (ANTHE). The examination will now be held over a period of 9 days starting from December 12 -20, 2020 across 24 states & Union Territories in the country.  

Online examinations will be conducted between December 12-20, 2020 (every day) from 12:00 PM – 08:30 PM. Students can take the exam anytime during this login window. The offline examinations will be held on December 20, 2020 in two shifts - 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM (morning) and 04:00 PM – 05:00 PM (evening) following the government guidelines. 

Post the announcement of the initial examination dates, Aakash Institute had received innumerable requests from students as well as parents from all over India to reschedule the dates for ANTHE 2020 amid the pandemic and festive season. Additionally, during this period several schools will be conducting their Pre-Board examinations which will make it difficult for students to prepare for ANTHE 2020. Standing true to its core value of student-first, Aakash Institute has decided to reschedule ANTHE 2020 in the interest of the students so that they can appear for the exam without any hindrances. 

Being one of the largest private sector pan-India exams, ANTHE gives deserving students an opportunity to earn up to 100% scholarship and helps them take the first step in their endeavour to become doctors and IITians. In 2019 alone, the number of students who appeared for the exam was more than 3.4 lakhs. The last date for submitting enrolment form for ANTHE 2020 is 3 days before the date of the online exam and 7 Days before the date of the offline exam. The exam fee is a nominal Rs. 200 which can be paid through net banking channels, debit card, credit card or directly at Aakash Institute’s branch/centre.  

As an additional benefit, students enrolling for ANTHE will also get the Meritnation school booster course free of cost. Meritnation is a subsidiary of AESL. 

The results will be declared on 4th Jan 2021 for students studying in Class X, XI, XII and on 2nd Jan 2021 for students studying in Class VII, VIII & IX. 

2000+ students across Classes VII to XII will be eligible for 100% scholarship on Tuition Fee, along with 700 students eligible for Cash Awards.   

Beyond the top scoring students, there will also be attractive scholarships on Tuition Fee based on the marks scored by the student in ANTHE test. 

The countrywide talent hunt will be conducted across the states & Union Territories of Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal. AESL has also announced that more ANTHE centres can be opened in any city on request from students, parents or school authorities, subject to minimum conditions. 

Commenting on the rescheduling of dates of ANTHE 2020, Mr. Aakash Chaudhry, Director and CEO of Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL), said “We are overwhelmed by the response that ANTHE has received over the last decade. Today, it has emerged as one of the largest gateways in the country for school students aspiring to realise their Medical or IIT dreams. Keeping the current situation in mind, we have rescheduled the dates for the examination so that the students get time to prepare better. To encourage more participation, we have invited applications from students’ studying in Class VII-XII.” 

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. The “Aakash” brand is associated with quality coaching and a proven student selection track record in various prestigious Medical and Engineering Entrance Examinations, Scholarship exams & Olympiads. 

With over 33 years of operational experience in the test preparatory industry with a PAN India network of 205+ Aakash Centers (including franchisee), and a student count of more than 2,50,000, Aakash is the biggest education organisation in India. A subsidiary of the AESL group, Aakash Edutech Pvt Ltd (AEPL) was launched in the year 2020. It comprises two distinct divisions namely, Aakash Digital and Meritnation.    

For Every ₹ 1 Invested, Dettol School Hygiene Education Programme Delivers ₹ 33.05 of Social Value

●        In the past three years, initial investment of Dettol School Hygiene Curriculum INR 15.9 crore has yielded worthy outcomes

●        At a time when hand hygiene is of critical importance to prevent the spread of COVID-19, an increase of 86% in the adoption of hygiene practices by students was witnessed  

RB, under its flagship campaign, Dettol Banega Swasth India today, launched the Social Return on Investment (SROI) Evaluation Study Report of its successful Dettol School Hygiene Education Programme at ISC-FICCI Indian Sanitation Conclave 2020. The virtual discussion focused on the need for an integrated approach to WASH in schools in the times of covid-19.

The link between hygiene and public health has now been clearly established. Yet, proper hand washing practices remain elusive in much of the country. Even before a meal, 69.9% of rural India still washes their hands without soap. Another 15% only wash their hands with water after defecation. The Dettol School Hygiene Programme was envisioned as a step towards improving poor sanitary practices in schools, homes, and communities, by promoting behavioral changes.

Mr. Ravi Bhatnagar, Director External Affairs and Partnerships, Reckitt Benckiser Health AMESA said, “We at Dettol BSI believe in the idea of health & hygiene for all. Dettol School Curriculum in partnership with our development partners was introduced to drive behavior change among young children based on age appropriate behavioral nudges. Our aim is to emphasize on the need to facilitate a sanitized environment & to create the importance of WASH in preventing the spread of infection amongst children.”

He further added, “There is a tremendous amount of work done by corporates, NGOs and citizens to work with the Government. However, to address the current situation we all must come together to fight this pandemic. A standalone intervention receives a lower social return on investment, however with an  integration of interventions which is more nutrition-sensitive including water, right to nutrition & diarrhoea management, social return on investment touches the ratio of 1:47. This creates a bigger impact on society. It's time we look at hygiene, sanitation and health together and not separately to tackle this pandemic.”

Ms. Naina Lal Kidwai, Chair, India Sanitation Coalition said “In addition to the monetary investment, corporates like RB also bring their ability to successfully implement and their need to measure outcomes that we see in the SROI report of the Dettol School Hygiene Education Programme. The fact that we can measure every 1 rupee invested has delivered 33 rupees of social value is a huge multiplier when looking at actual impact on ground.”

“Through the hygiene programs in school, we have seen role reversal of children & parents where children have taken up the role of teaching the right way to wash hands. They have become an agent of change in communities in spreading awareness about health & hygiene. We believe that hygiene curriculum should be part of the daily school day. As we have seen through the pandemic, the only way to protect ourselves from diseases is by washing hands.” said Ms. Tinni Sawhney, CEO, Aga Khan Foundation.

Key highlights from the report:

●        For every ₹ 1 invested, the Dettol School Hygiene Education Programme delivers ₹ 33.05 of social value

●        An initial investment of INR 15.9 crore has yielded worthy outcomes through innovations such as using creative platforms to reinforce key hygiene measures, structured hygiene sessions in schools, supporting trainings at multiple levels and more, we have brought about social value worth INR 526 crore

●        At a time when hand hygiene is of critical importance to prevent the spread of COVID-19, an increase of 86% in the adoption of hygiene practices by students was witnessed  

●        The program has reached 13 million children so far and counting across 8 states, 40 districts and 650,000 schools across India

●        250+ Schools awarded by PM under Swachh Vidyalaya (Clean School) Awards

●        Direct Impact on children:

o   14.2% Reduction in diarrhoea among children

o   17% Increase in school attendance

o   89% students follow all the necessary hygiene practices which have been taught in school

o   92% students share hygiene knowledge with parents and family members

The Dettol School Hygiene Education Programme seeks to drive behaviour change through a multifaceted approach, which targets schools and the community at large. The school programme has been designed in recognition of the fact that, by changing the mindset and behaviour of school students, they can become a catalyst for change in schools, homes and neighbourhoods. By working with teachers and principals, the right knowledge can be passed on to build good habits in children and future generations.

Major School Hygiene Education Programme interventions that helped to bring Behavioural Change Communication/aspect are:

Hygiene Corner: A dedicated corner to teach WASH practices using posters, paintings, etc.

Adoption of Games and Experiential Learning Methods: Gamification helped to make learning fun and day-to-day application led to experimentation of the lessons learnt at home and in school.

Distribution of Hygiene Kits: Access to soaps, hand-wash and sanitary pads.

Soap Banks: Soap kept near toilets and wash basins for use before and after meals or after using the toilet./

Vi Unveils Collaborative Program to Offer Range of Benefits for Learning & Upskilling, Health & Wellness, and Business Help

Equipping consumers for a better tomorrow, Vi - the newest telecom brand, today announced its collaborative program to offer unique propositions across learning & upskilling, health & wellness, and business help for the Indian mobile users. Vodafone Idea Limited has launched this initiative to address the changing requirements of today’s digital society enabling individuals and enterprises to get a range of benefits and value-adds.

Through this new proposition, Vi will offer not just enriched connectivity but also an array of digital products and services to complement the core business.

In just a few months’ time, the world has seen a permanent shift in the way we live and work. The pandemic has accelerated digital adoption and telecommunications has become a platform for this digital society. The changing circumstances have seen the consumer needs evolve beyond connectivity and entertainment, to online education, health, and business becoming daily essentials in the digital way of life.

To cater to consumer needs, VIL has entered into strategic partnerships with key players in the areas of Learning & Upskilling, Health & Wellness, and Business help to offer benefits to the new age customers. The company has forged partnerships with upGrad, Udemy, Pedagogy, cure.fit, 1mg, MFine, Eunimart and others, and plans to on-board more partners under each of these areas to enable Vi users get exclusive offers from these players.

Commenting on the initiative, Ravinder Takkar, MD & CEO, Vodafone Idea said, “One of the key pillars of VIL’s business strategy is to drive partnerships and digital revenue streams, across segments. This will help us drive more value for our customers and offer growth opportunities for the business.”

“Having established pan-India 4G coverage for 1 Bn Indians and delivering fastest 4G speeds, Vi is now bringing a range of new age service offerings to address the digital shift in customer behaviour. Through our collaboration with the category best across key areas of consumer interest such as learning & upskilling, health & wellness, and business help, Vi will now offer a platform of services for our customers”, further added Ravinder Takkar.

Vi customers can look forward to more such possibilities in the next few weeks!

To avail the exclusive benefits, Vi customers just need to download the Vi app and unlock the benefits. The offer is available to all prepaid, postpaid Vi users and not attached to any plan or pack.

SecOps, DevOps and CloudOps Need to Work in Tandem to Achieve Cyber Resilience for Future-Ready Enterprises: CLOUDSEC 2020

* Trend Micro plans to launch its local XDR data lake in India early next month 

* Invests in building a strong cloud delivery team in India, with AWS and Microsoft Azure integration 

CLOUDSEC 2020, one of the industry's biggest cybersecurity events hosted by Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE:4704), attracted more than 100 business and technology leaders from industry-defining companies speaking at the virtual event this year. At the exhilarating three-day event, the panelists and experts emphasized on how a fine balance between SecOps, DevOps and CloudOps should be met, for organizations to achieve success in their digital transformation journey. A model, where CloudOps and SecOps teams can talk about doing touchless or SOC-less security, that is automation all the way through the workflow. Where, DevOps and CloudOps teams can share dashboards and talk a lot about vulnerabilities. Also, where SecOps and DevOps teams can discuss full shift left with no code releases etc. 

They broached on important aspects, such as what they consider to be the biggest barrier to successful cloud migration among organizations – which is, while working with the DevOps function, the question that usually arises is – How come I have to learn about security as DevOps, but security doesn’t have to learn about DevOps? Automation was a hot and trending topic, with two very big in different forms of automation currently underway in security operations. The first one being Automation/ Security-as-Code (SaC) for SOC, which is about focusing on the alert problem. This is a very important form of automation, however, it’s not the automation that drives a successful cloud migration use case. That can be achieved through a different automation - Automation/ SaC for DevOps. The difference is that this automation is targeted at cloud security deployment, configuration and DevOps workflow, and not security operation workflow and operations. 

At the sidelines of the event, Trend Micro also highlighted the tremendous growth they have achieved in India in the last two years, especially in its cloud and endpoint security business. The company has increased its team size to address the cloud requirements and has launched Trend Micro Cloud One – Network Security this year, that delivers simple and comprehensive protection of virtual private clouds at scale to support compliance requirements, with zero disruption to applications or traffic. The company will also launch its local XDR data lake next month in India, available for key partners and SOC solution providers. Trend Micro will continue to have a razor-sharp focus on banking, manufacturing and government sectors as the major segments for the coming year. 

Nilesh Jain, Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Trend Micro said, “India is a growing and an important market for us. As the cybersecurity industry and the technology landscape evolves, we see ourselves transitioning to become a DevOps company, emphasising more on product development to drive growth. With digitalisation and the ongoing pandemic, Indian enterprises are rapidly moving to cloud and adopting next generation technologies and SaaS based solutions. There is a growing concern on data sovereignty issues, and at Trend Micro we consider this as a big priority and hence have decided to invest in our local data lake for majority of our critical projects like XDR, Apex One and Cloud App Security solutions. We opine that enterprises will increasingly choose solutions from vendors who give them assurance on their confidential data not leaving geographical boundaries of the country. Also, globally we will be launching file storage security for cloud, which is a first-of-its-kind and unique offering that is going to address the requirements of customers.” 

Sharing his advice for CIOs and CISOs on choosing the right security solution and safeguarding their journey to the cloud, he further added, “Analyzing technologies which provide proactive protection and detection with cross-generational technology to prevent cyberattacks should be a priority. It is also important to invest in technology with minimum of five years value in mind, for it to be effective. Being the organizations’ security gatekeepers, they need to identify a vendor who provides best-in-class solutions in all categories with the ability to integrate and work together, without compromising on the functionalities and security posture. This is where XDR comes into the picture.” 

With respect to the growth of its channel and partner ecosystem, Trend Micro is investing heavily in building a strong service and cloud delivery team in India, considering the tight integration with AWS and Microsoft Azure. The company is enabling and recruiting partners with the skillsets of doing API, SOC/SOAR integration, incident response services, coding and programming and those who understand security analytics. This team will also be responsible for developing partner ecosystem not only in India but also in APAC and bigger regions for Trend Micro. 

About CLOUDSEC 

Founded in 2011, CLOUDSEC has established itself as a global community for cyber security experts and professionals. The CLOUDSEC 2020 tagline “Transformation Your Way” aims to inspire technology professionals and users to achieve transformation wherever they are in the digital transformation lifecycle. The virtual event this year enables enterprises to stay connected, informed and on track with their cloud security journey - through access to insightful resources, thought leadership and networking. 

About Trend Micro 

Trend Micro, a global leader in cybersecurity, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Leveraging over 30 years of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro enables resilience for businesses, governments, and consumers with connected solutions across cloud workloads, endpoints, email, IIoT, and networks. Our XGen™ security strategy powers our solutions with a cross-generational blend of threat-defense techniques that are optimized for key environments and leverage shared threat intelligence for better, faster protection. With over 6,700 employees in 65 countries, and the world's most advanced global threat research and intelligence, Trend Micro enables organizations to secure their connected world. 

Majority of Indian Workers Would Want to Work Completely from Home: Atlassian Survey

Atlassian Corporation Plc (NASDAQ:TEAM), a leading provider of team collaboration and productivity software and the maker of Jira, Confluence, and Trello products, has launched an India-based study highlighting the changing work practices of individuals, teams and organisations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the report titled - Reworking Work: Understanding The Rise of Work Anywhere, 83% of employees in India are still nervous about going back to the office while there’s no vaccine and restrictions are still in place. 

The study commissioned by Atlassian and conducted by Australian research agency PaperGiant, is an extension of the previous global survey conducted in early 2020 with knowledge workers in Australia, USA, Japan, Germany and France using observational, qualitative, and ethnographic research methodologies. In India, 1,425 participants from tier 1, 2 and 3 cities were surveyed for over four weeks in October 2020.  

As per the research findings, Indian employees were more likely to want to work completely from home (66%) than any other country surveyed. While people are still managing new challenges that come with remote work, many reported a sense of ‘relief’ being free from the usual presenteeism of the office environment. 70% of people reported their job satisfaction is better than before COVID-19 restrictions. In fact, 61% of employees find it manageable to effectively work at home during the COVID-19 restrictions. With all the positives surrounding remote work, the study also revealed that a majority of Indian workers (78%) were actually worried about what their home life looks like to their colleagues and what it says to them. 

A core finding mentions that 86% of employees in India thought the members of their team feel closer to each other now and 75% thought their team worked better together compared to pre-Covid. People are sharing more personal experiences with their team. The majority of Indian employees (89%) reported a feeling of unity and cohesion in their team. Another insightful revelation was that 1 in 2 (50%) of managers said their job security was much better now than before COVID-19. The pandemic has triggered a shift in managerial roles and managers are feeling more integral to workflows and productivity than ever. 

Dinesh Ajmera, Site Lead and Head of Engineering, Bengaluru, Atlassian said, “The research findings point to how the ‘new normal’ will shape work, relationships and collaboration in the future. These are the voices of real people facing real complexities. Now is our opportunity to use the insights we have been presented with to adapt for the better, guided by the experiences of employees around the world.” 

“We at Atlassian are embracing this change wholeheartedly and investing early in developing a workforce that can navigate this new environment, and thrive in it. We believe that our unique organisational culture and focus on employee wellbeing, will go a long way in making this transition smooth. It’s heartening to know that even during these difficult times, our India office has been steadfast with an uptick in hiring,” he further added. 

Consistent with the industry sentiment on digital adoption seeing a quantum leap during the pandemic, the study reveals that Indian employees are rapidly adopting digital toolkits and skills for worry of being left behind. The introduction of social distancing and remote working has accelerated the move to a digital-first environment, forcing people to adapt. 

From an organisational perspective, 88% of Indian employees believed their company was already well prepared for returning to the office, while 78% of the workforce in India were annoyed that it took a pandemic to allow them to work from home. While from a work-life balance standpoint, 81% of people in India say it’s more difficult to maintain boundaries between work and personal lives, compared to 79% in Australia and 58% in the US. 

To find out more about the research and download the report, please visit here. Assess your Work Life Impact with Atlassian Team Playbook.  

About the research 

The Reworking Work: Understanding The Rise of Work Anywhere was commissioned by Atlassian and conducted by PaperGiant, with the support of international research partners. Our research was conducted over four weeks in October 2020 – almost eight months since the pandemic began. The methodology used a mixed-method approach, combining 19 in-depth remote interviews via Zoom with various workers in India, a two-week global diary study of six participants as well as a 15-minute quantitative survey of almost 1,400 knowledge workers across tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India. Respondents for all three methodologies were between the ages of 25-64, at a company of 250 employees or more. 

About Atlassian 

Atlassian unleashes the potential of every team. Our collaboration software helps teams organize, discuss, and complete shared work. Teams at more than 182,000 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 products including Jira Software, Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket, Opsgenie, Jira Service Desk, and Jira Align at https://atlassian.com. 

About PaperGiant 

PaperGiant is a strategic research and design consultancy that helps organizations understand and solve complex problems. PaperGiant specializes in combining qualitative and quantitative research to understand customers and communities and translates that understanding into designs for product, service, and policy. PaperGiant has offices in Melbourne and Canberra and works throughout Australasia. Learn more about their work and services at http://papergiant.net. 

Paisabazaar.com Transforms Lending with ‘Paisabazaar Stack’, a Digital Stack with Microsoft Azure and Azure AI

 

Paisabazaar.com, India’s largest digital marketplace for lending products, has developed ‘Paisabazaar Stack’ – a digital lending solution using Microsoft Azure technologies and Azure AI to optimize loan disbursals and credit card issuance. Built on the Azure platform, the Stack is integrated with Paisabazaar’s partner banks and NBFCs to enable consumers to access credit products through end-to-end presence-less and contactless processes. In addition to help consumers stay safe, the Stack is also enabling banks and non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs) to disburse unsecured loans in a presence-less, completely digital manner, within 3 to 5 hours as compared to 3 to 7 days earlier. 

Paisabazaar.com works with over 130 partners with lending products on its platform and caters to credit enquiries from over 1200 cities and towns every month. Traditionally, a loan application requires in-person meetings between the applicant and back representative to fill up forms, collection of supporting documents and verification of identity. This is followed by an additional manual verification by bank officials before a loan is granted or declined, and a final in-person signing of the agreement. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, there was a breakdown in these steps and processes. With the launch of the Digital Stack, the process has been restored digitally and the time required for loan disbursal been significantly reduced.  

According to Mukesh Sharma, Chief Technology Officer, Paisabazaar.com, “The Stack is actually a tectonic shift in the industry. Most large lenders and Fintechs were unprepared due to the lack of digital processes and infrastructure. We all had to wake up to a new reality and adapt to it. Everybody was impacted and our focus was to ensure that consumers could have access to the loans they needed, through completely paperless and presence-less processes. We recognized the potential of AI and Cognitive Services to make end-to-end digital loan disbursals a reality with our Digital Stack.  As the market leader with partnerships with most large banks and new-age lenders - and a culture of innovation since inception - we are well placed to accelerate this critical shift towards the much-needed digitization of the entire ecosystem.”   

To ensure continuity and minimize difficulties for customers, the start-up embraced a culture of innovation, which according to a study by IDC commission by Microsoft, identifies the synergy between technology, process, data, and people, that allows organizations to drive sustained innovation.  

Sharma also adds that the lockdown accelerated the process,” We were trying to create this stack before the pandemic hit us. We wanted to create paperless digital programs, but things were not moving because the industry was not ready. But when the lockdown happened, we were the first to launch this digital stack.”  

The Paisabazaar Stack is providing flexibility, scalability, security, and efficiencies to its lending partners. End users can access credit much quicker, from the comfort of their homes, with zero physical interaction. Each physical step in the lending process has now been built digitally: 

* KYC Verification – the Digital KYC Module in the Paisabazaar Stack includes offline KYC verification(O-KYC) and Video KYC that uses Azure Cognitive Services. Applicants can verify their identity and also their location and liveliness—ensuring they were real people and not bots.  

* Income & Employment Validation – The Stack accelerates income validation and employment verification of consumers. An applicant’s bank statements are analysed digitally using AI to determine his/ her financial health and provide results to Paisabazaar’s lending partners, which enables quicker decision-making. Additionally, customers can provide self-attested proof of income viz., bank statements and salary slips digitally.  

* Repayment Set-up & Agreements –Using the stack, Paisabazaar has been able to fast-track the NACH process and streamlined verification of bank account details and set up repayment instructions through digital mandate on behalf of its partner lenders.  

Moreover, their ‘Chance of Approval’ feature enables Paisabazaar to provide customized lending solutions to using a predictive algorithm model. Paisabazaar.com also provides ‘pre-qualified offers’ from partner banks and NBFCs.  The model which is built using big data, machine learning and mass scaled using Azure Kubernetes and Container Services, matches a borrower's profile like income, credit score, age, among others, with the various lending criteria of different lenders. It then provides customers with the odds of getting their loan application approved—Excellent, Good, Fair or Poor—against each lender.  This has improved loan approval rates considerably over the last 18 months since the feature was launched. 

Rajiv Sodhi, Chief Operating Officer, Microsoft India, said, “Organizations in India understand that they need to improve across all culture of innovation dimensions, especially technology. It is encouraging to see business leaders recognize this, and plan to focus on technology to drive sustained innovation and realize their digital transformation ambition. Achieving success in digital transformation requires both the adoption of tools and technologies as well as enhancing own people’s capabilities – what we term as tech intensity – a critical component of the culture of innovation. Our goal is to realize an inclusive future where all organizations in India are dynamic and resilient – to recover well and thrive despite the crisis. At Microsoft, we are committed to working with organizations in India to make this happen, together,”  

Culture of Innovation  

Microsoft India and IDC have recently published a study highlighting that looks at the relationship between a culture of innovation and an organization’s growth. The Culture of Innovation refers to an organization’s ongoing ability  to respond quickly to challenges and successfully perform in four dimensions - People, Processes, Data and Technology capabilities.  

The study highlighted that innovation is not an option anymore – it is a necessity. The findings included the following:  

·         77% of Indian organizations have found innovation to be critical or important to their performance and resilience  

·         In a short span of six months, organizations in India have increased their ability to innovate by 4% by maturing their Culture of Innovation.  

·         Close to 78% of India organizations are speeding up digitalization in a variety of ways to adapt to the new reality. This included launching digital products and introducing digital payments to embracing ecommerce and automation.  

·         As a result, Indian companies are aiming at increasing their revenue from digital products and services to 50% in the next 3 years from 36% at present.  

·         64% of respondents acknowledged that innovation has become easier in the post-COVID-19 era. Prior to the pandemic, only 32.5% of Indian business found innovation in their products and services easier.  

·         45% organizations indicated that for the next 12 months, they will focus on Technology as most essential for business resilience and recovery.  

Importance of Organ Donations and Saving Lives Through Kidney Transplant

Due to the fear of COVID-19 infection, at the end of March 2020, the Government of India had stopped all elective surgeries for some time. However, it is important to adapt and co-exist in these uncertain times and Manipal Hospitals as a patient centric institution has once again shown the way by giving hope and setting a benchmark when it comes to transplantations and organ donations. The Hospital has successfully carried out few such emergency kidney transplants during the extended lockdown maintaining an infection-free environment throughout. In recent months, Manipal Hospitals has carried out 13 kidney transplants i.e, 6 including a cadaver transplant in September, followed by 3 in October, 4 in November. One more transplant scheduled to happen this week.

Dr. Sudarshan Ballal, Chairman of Manipal Hospitals says, “At Manipal Hospitals, we have come to realize that the new normal in our lives has to coexist with the pandemic. Also, over a period of time, it becomes inevitable especially in emergencies, living transplantation is the only chance of saving a life. Manipal Hospitals was one of the first to give hope and set another benchmark by deciding to step up to the new normal situation.”

Elaborating on the topic, Dr Vishwanth. S – HOD and Consultant - Nephrology, Transplant Physician, Manipal Hospitals, Old Airport Road said, “Approximately 220,000 people in India require kidney transplantation annually due to kidney failure mostly resulting from long-standing diabetes and hypertension. However, only 7500 transplants are possible due to the lack of donors. Some of the most common barriers to living donation include donor's concern r egarding complete recovery post-transplant. Living donors have a very low chance of long-term health problems in most cases and can be expected to live a full, healthy life as any other person. At present, cadaver kidney transplantation accounts for only 10% of all kidney transplants. As per the Indian law, intensive care doctors can request for organ donation in the event of brain death to promote decreased donation rate in India. Though the rates of cadaver kidney transplantation rates have improved over 3 times since 2012, it has dropped down significantly in the wake of the pandemic”

Though transplant is elective, sometimes it can be lifesaving. Living donor success rate is as high as 90-95% and the rate of survival in patients receiving a cadaver kidney is about 80-85%.  The hospital restarted the transplant programs with all the precautionary care needed. Coupled with globally accepted state-of-art infrastructure and able and expert hands of doctors and staff of the Manipal Hospitals Old Airport Road was triumphant in driving 12 live renal transplants and one cadaver renal transplant to successful completion during the recent months. Further, to minimize hospital exposure, postoperative hospital stays were made shorter and video conferencing was also being undertaken for follow-ups.

Dr Deepak Dubey, HOD and Consultant – Urology, Robotic Surgery and Renal Transplant, who was extremely pivotal in performing some of the transplants, remarks that, “A kidney transplant offers a better quality of life than dialysis for those with end-stage renal disease. With the covid-19 pandemic, there is an obvious concern about the risk of acquiring an infection during the transplant process. Our team has been successfully conducting renal transplants during the pandemic with very positive outcomes. All precautions are being maintained to prevent covid transmission during the transplant process.”