upGrad’s New Year Dhamaka: Rewards 600 Employees with ESOP Grants in India

upGrad was in the news in July for being the first company in India to reverse pay cuts due to covid, retrospectively. Now on the first working day of the year India’s largest online higher education company upGrad has announced the grant of ESOPs to around 600 of its 2500 employees as a reward for the company’s stellar performance in 2020, and in recognition of the tremendous hard work and commitment of all who have completed more than a year with upGrad.

“We have seen our workforce adapting to the remote-work mechanism with sheer diligence and have worked harder throughout the year, contributing to our steep business growth & driving career outcomes for our learners. Hence, it is our conscious call to grant ESOPs to our team as gratitude towards their commitment. We believe this will further foster their & their family’s belongingness to our institution and create a shared ownership, in addition to long term wealth creation opportunity with upGrad,” said Mayank Kumar, Co-founder & MD, during the company’s quarterly town hall today.

This announcement was accompanied by the introduction of flexible paid time-off/leave policy and a spate of work-friendly policies for its 2500 team members, which will allow the employees to design their own paid-leaves calendar themselves, thus enabling flexible work culture across the board. 

With these initiatives, upGrad aims to strengthen its position as an employer of choice in India, and globally.

“We are cognizant that the personal and professional drivers for our workforce are different and rather than traditional designs of workforce policies and benefits, we are getting personalised in meeting the exact needs of each of our employees. To bring more inclusivity, fluidity, and flexibility in our people practices, we are making sure that we address the drivers that are critical to them – want to upskill and learn, upGrad will provide paid time off to do so; have a family exigency, the organisation will support them in taking time off to be with their loved ones. We want our employees to share our success, hence the ESOPs.  Also, we want to meet the personal needs, hence the flexibility to carve better work-life balance. This is just the beginning of the series of progressive policy changes that will be implemented over the year, our effort to create better employee experience and a happier workforce,” said Preeti Kaul, President - HR, upGrad.

Elated by the announcement, Neha Prasad, Senior Executive - Brand Marketing, upGrad said, “This, by far has been the best thing that has happened after 2020 and to start a new year on such an overwhelming note, is special. I am now waiting for HR’s crash course on ESOPs to truly understand how it can create value for me and my family. Attending town halls is the thing to look forward to now, as they have become the bringer of good news.” 

About upGrad

upGrad is India’s largest online higher education company. Founded in early 2015, upGrad has impacted over 1 million individuals globally, within a short span of 5 years. 

upGrad provides online programs in the areas of Data Science, Technology, Management and Law to college students, working professionals and enterprises. These programs are designed and delivered in collaboration with top-notch universities like IIT Madras, IIIT Bangalore, MICA, BIMTECH, NMIMS Global Access, Jindal Global Law School, Duke CE, Deakin University, Liverpool John Moores University, and others. With an 80% program completion rate, robust tech platform, outcome-based learning approach, industry-relevant curriculum, finest university credentials, strong mentorship, and steadfast placement support, upGrad has established its position as the leader in the Indian education system.

IIIT Bangalore and upGrad's PG Diploma in Data Science is India’s first-ever PG Diploma, with over 10,000 alumni & learner-base, to be recommended and validated by the NASSCOM and is aligned to Government approved National Occupational Standards (NOS). ​upGrad ranked​ as India's​ No.1​ startup,​ ​as per the LinkedIn​ ​Top​ ​Startups 2020 list. This is the third time in a row that upGrad has been featured​ ​in the​ top startup list by LinkedIn. ​The edtech major received the title of 'Best Education Brands' by Economic Times in 2020​ for the second time, post winning the same title in 2018. ​The brand made it to the​ prestigious​ GSV Global EdTech 50 List 2020. upGrad has emerged on the list of BW Top Education Brand 2020 and has been titled as the Best E-Learning Company of the year by Business World. ​Owing to its world-class learning platform. upGrad won the 'Best Communication and Teaching Platform' in the Education Innovation Awards 2020 by Entrepreneur India​ as well as received the title of ‘Best Tech for Education’ by IAMAI in 2019.

Ozone Shelters Fined Rs 10 Lakh by the Courts on Customer Complaint

The growing real estate mafia has been taking prospective home seekers for a ride by not delivering homes as per agreed terms and conditions. This is case which has been fought for seven years but the owner won it hands down as he had all points going in his favour.

The 4th additional Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (CDRC) Bengaluru has penalized Ozone Shelters Pvt Limited Rs 10 Lakh (Rupees ten lakhs) for a complaint raised by Devaraj Sharma. The apartment cost was a little over Rs 30 lakhs while the builder promised him to handover in May 2011 with a grace period of three months. The builder kept on delaying the project with new agreement terms which showed that the intentions were not right and was cheating the customer. The customer in this casepaid all money as per terms but failed to move into new house due to the developer’s lackadaisical approach. . The seven year battle with Ozone Shelters came to end finally with the advent of New Year.

The developer used various excuses to evade the delivery of finished home to the customer blaming it on supply issues of raw material, strikes, labour issues, price issues, non availability of material etc. This was questioned by courts diligently for which the developer had no answers.

Hailing the CDRC order A M Iktear Uddin (Anik), Advocate High Court of Karnataka stated, “Being a lawyer is a chance to represent someone who needs help. This order is a testament to the tenacity of our team here at Prime Legal, we stood with our client and fought the case for 6 and a half years and finally, and justice is served. This is a wake-up call to those who think that they can evade the law because of delays in court process. The stringent laws with the best mind at its place have to take care of any delay in delivery of flats to safeguard the interest of the aggrieved”.

About Prime legal- PRIME LEGAL is a full service and one of the best law firm in Bengaluru and brings to the table expertise and experience of more than one decades across various sectors and practice areas including consumer disputes issues. The team is over 25 strong lawyers.

Akamai Partners with MX Player to Deliver Seamless Viewing Experience to Users in India

MX Player has partnered with Akamai Technologies, the intelligent edge platform for securing and delivering digital experiences, to provide its increasing user base in India with seamless digital experience.

Earlier in the year, MX Player was ranked by App Annie as the No. #1 streaming app in India and the onset of the pandemic saw the platform witness not just a massive boost in viewership, but also new subscribers, and a newer audience. This accelerated growth heightened MX Player’s need for infrastructure that could support the scale and availability of the app across different networks and locations. MX Player found Akamai’s world class media delivery solution to be the right choice in order to deliver a high-quality viewing experience to their customers across different cities. The enhancement in performance and user experience was particularly pronounced in the case of MX TakaTak, a popular short video platform, that has seen a rapid surge of users, with a large portion of them coming from tier II and tier III towns.

According to Redseer, the online content consumption in India grew by 35% in April 2020 compared to January 2020. It further stated that short-form video content consumption recorded the most significant jump during the lockdown.

Vivek Jain, Chief Operating Officer, MX Player said, “In the last couple of months, our user base has increased exponentially. The demand to consume content on the go and the need for virtual entertainment amongst the middle, mass, mobile, millennial audience in India is growing faster than ever before. MX Player has seen more than 7x jump in time spent on the app. Even MX TakaTak, which we recently launched, crossed 1Bn video views per day within a month from launch and has quickly become the market leading app in the short video category. We have always obsessed about best-in-class video load times. Akamai is a pioneer in Edge distribution and its presence particularly in tier II and tier III towns has helped us deliver an unmatched viewing experience for our customers across India’s mega cities as well as the hinterlands.”

Commenting on this partnership, Mitesh Jain, India Sales Head, Media & Carrier Division of Akamai said, “Unprecedented demand for content coupled with rapidly evolving user behavior poses a challenge for apps trying to ensure high-quality viewing experience across a complex network topology. We are glad to have partnered with MX Player to help them scale the user base and step up to conform with user expectations of evolving Indian consumers. Given MX player’s ambition, I am sure that this is just a start and we will be accomplishing many more milestones together.”

About Akamai:

Akamai secures and delivers digital experiences for the world’s largest companies. Akamai’s intelligent edge platform surrounds everything, from the enterprise to the cloud, so customers and their businesses can be fast, smart, and secure. Top brands globally rely on Akamai to help them realize competitive advantage through agile solutions that extend the power of their multi-cloud architectures. Akamai keeps decisions, apps, and experiences closer to users than anyone — and attacks and threats far away. Akamai’s portfolio of edge security, web and mobile performance, enterprise access, and video delivery solutions is supported by unmatched customer service, analytics, and 24/7/365 monitoring. To learn why the world’s top brands trust Akamai, visit www.akamai.com, blogs.akamai.com, or @Akamai on Twitter.

About MX Player:

MX Player is an entertainment super app that caters to over 200 million Monthly Active users in India, integrating all forms of entertainment on one platform – including video playback, streaming video, music and gaming. Defining “everytainment” for viewers with entertainment that suits every mood, it currently operates on an ad supported model and hosts a wide library of over 2,00,000 hrs of premium content across 10 languages, including a critically acclaimed slate of MX Original/ Exclusives, movies, web series, TV shows, news and audio music. The app is available across Android, iOS, Web, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Android TV and OnePlus TV amongst others.

Having launched its gaming feature in February 2020, Games on MX Player has grown exponentially with 25m Monthly Active Gaming Users and this tournament style slew of hyper casual mobile games is now available across its Android and iOS apps.

From the stable of Times Internet (the digital venture of Times of India, India's largest media and entertainment group), MX Player has now spread its footprints across 12 markets including UAE, US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Srilanka, Maldives, and Bhutan.  MX has further expanded its business with the launch of its short format video app MX TakaTak - a home-grown platform that offers a wide variety of short form content and creation tools across genres that is home to the largest number of 6Mn+ digital influencers as well as MX ShareKaro that is an easy-to-use file sharing app with rapid transfer speed.

Flock Releases ‘How India Corporates Worked Remotely Through Covid in Report 2020’

Flock, the leading workplace communication and collaboration platform has released an extensive report on how Flock users in India which include corporates, decision-makers, senior executives, individual contributors, and more from businesses of all sizes have changed the way they work since March 2020. The study takes a look at data from 48 small businesses and 70 enterprises amassing 53,000+ active users. This report showcases a clear picture that the work from home or work from anywhere age is a welcome change for many organizations during Covid.

The findings of the report state that working habits of employees remained the same more or less: Flock users in India started their day at 8:00 am and ended their day at 6:00 pm on an average. A lot of the user activity dipped between 12:00 pm and 3 pm, during typical lunch time hours. It was also understood that users tend to be online longer on Thursdays, presumably to chase their remaining work at the end of the week. And while most Flock users are offline on Sundays, the platform saw a lot of activity on Saturday afternoons.

Interesting findings on How India worked in 2020:

* An average amount of calendar invites sent per user per day on Flock increased by 22% after March 2020.

* There has been a 13% increase in 1:1 messages sent between individual users since March 2020 as the teams have been working together a lot more

* Thousands of channels have been created to help groups communicate and get the job done: public channels have increased by 76% since March.

* The platform also noticed collaboration and communication occur out in the open more, too—the number of private channels created decreased by 28% in India.

* The collaboration platform also saw small businesses in India increase their amount of files shared by 55%

Commenting on the findings of the report, Bhavin Turakhia, Founder and CEO said, “It’s no surprise that people are working online more than ever now. But it’s the steps they’re taking to ensure their productivity and efficiency increases in the remote workplace. Despite the biases against remote work, businesses and employees alike continue to prove that working from home is indeed an effective alternative. Businesses are continuing to communicate and collaborate in new, innovative ways that are transforming the modern workplace each passing day. And people all around the world are comfortable with a new style of work as it suits their requirements.”

Gaurang Sinha, Director, Go-to-market Strategy at Flock commented, “In 2020, we saw people begin to work their own way, utilizing new tools and the newfound flexibility of the workplace. New features on Flock, like voice notes and Zoom integration empowered our users to build happier, more productive workplaces by adding different ways of communicating with co-workers. We’re optimistic and excited to see the ways people and companies will thrive in the new normal in 2021.”

Flock introduced its voice notes feature in March and since then the number of voice notes posted increased by a massive 379%. Another very interesting finding by the platform states that Flock’s shared to-dos tool, which allows users to assign a task to an individual and set a deadline and reminders, saw its usage increase by 37%. This means employees and managers are being more proactive in getting their tasks done, and sharing their status with others in the team.

Flock’s most used features are video conferencing, to-dos, notes, file sharing, and reminders. Last quarter the platform announced that it had seen massive 40% revenue growth for the past three consecutive quarters.

About Flock

Flock is a real-time communication and collaboration app for companies. It offers a rich and intuitive messenger, as well as modules to help teams manage their people and processes better and automate workflows. Flock comes with a powerful platform that allows users to integrate frequently used external apps and even build custom apps, bots, and integrations. Flock is supported across all platforms, including Desktop (Windows and Mac), Mobile (iOS and Android), and the Web. To know more about Flock, visit ​www.flock.com or follow Flock on​Twitter​,​Facebook​, and LinkedIn.

Trend Micro Announces World's First Cloud-Native File Storage Security

Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), the leader in cloud security, today announced the world's first cloud-native, fully serverless file storage security tool for organizations building applications in the cloud. Trend Micro Cloud One – File Storage Security is designed to mitigate threats across the cloud environment and support strict compliance requirements. 

The explosion of cloud-based file and object storage presents a new attack vector for threat actors to target with malicious files. Cloud One – File Storage Security provides automated anti-malware scanning to keep information safe and ease compliance needs. 

"Global organizations are increasingly looking to public cloud providers to drive IT agility, cost savings and business growth. But while the provider deals with security of the cloud, the customer is responsible for everything inside their cloud environment," said Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president of cloud research for Trend Micro. "This is a highly scalable, automated scanning tool that's fast to deploy with no added infrastructure, allowing organizations to confidently store cloud files and data associated with their cloud applications." 

Backed by Trend Micro's 30+ years of cybersecurity experience and industry leading threat intelligence, the tool blocks known bad files, and looks for hidden or changing malware variants. 

The scanner itself is a lightweight, cloud-native serverless function that's designed for minimal operational overhead. This architecture enables fast, seamless deployment and flexible integration with organizations' existing custom workflows for added value. 

The tool supports various compliance requirements that call for anti-malware scanning of cloud files while maintaining data sovereignty. 

Trend Micro Cloud One – File Storage Security is available now for AWS S3, with support for Microsoft Azure Blob storage and Google Cloud Storage coming soon. 

Using Trend Micro's Cloud One platform, teams can implement a range of security services and compliance checks without hindering agile cloud development and deployment. This single cloud-native security seamlessly complements and integrates with existing AWS, Microsoft® Azure™, VMware®, and Google Cloud™ toolsets. 

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. 

Powered by Microsoft Azure and Developed by CoRover, IRCTC’s AI Chatbot AskDISHA Enhances User Experience

Powered by Microsoft Azure, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation’s (IRCTC) AI-powered chatbot AskDISHA has helped improve satisfaction of customer interactions by 70%. Developed by conversational AI platform CoRover, the virtual assistant uses technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to answer passenger queries. Following the success of AskDISHA, IRCTC is partnering with CoRover to co-sell and re-sell AI products and services to government and private organizations across industries.

Earlier checking train running schedules or status of tickets through phone, email or interactive voice response (IVR) was a lengthy process. The nature of queries was highly repetitive, yet passengers had to experience significantly long waiting periods for even minor queries. In search of instant responses, users sought information from unverified sources. Interactions with the virtual assistant have provided customers with instant responses and frequent queries now have zero wait time.

Since its inception in October 2018, the AskDISHA chatbot has handled over 10 billion interactions benefiting more than 178 million passengers. Supporting both voice and text capabilities in English and Hindi, it is available on both web and mobile app interfaces. The chatbot can answer user queries on ticket reservation, refund status, PNR search, cancellations, probability of ticket confirmation, as well as other travel and tourism offerings of the Indian Railways subsidiary.

AskDISHA processes about 1,50,000 passenger queries daily and customer queries across other channels like social media, phone calls and emails have been reduced by 70%. Passengers receive immediate responses with 90% accuracy and user feedback on the chatbot service has been 85% positive. AskDISHA has also received the Asia Leadership Award for Innovation Using Technology 2019 for being the first chatbot for any government organization in India.

Ankush Sabharwal, Founder, CoRover, said, “Across sectors, cognitive technology can help organizations generate revenue, save cost, improve customer experience and operational efficiency. With secure and scalable architecture on Microsoft Azure, conversational AI platforms like AskDISHA can offer multi-format, omni-channel as well as multilingual support using different technologies like AI, ML, NLP, AR, VR, or RPA. Easy to integrate as well as create and train, CoRover’s chatbots also offer real-time analytics for quick decision-making.”

CoRover has helped in the seamless automation of customer engagement services for organizations across banking and financial services, healthcare, retail, travel and tourism, energy, transportation, and media and entertainment sectors. Their chatbot-as-a-service offering is compatible with over 13 Indian languages and more than 100 international languages and is available in multi-channel support for websites, mobile applications, SMS, and social media among other platforms. With over 275 million unique active users, 4 million daily active users and 800,000 concurrent users, CoRover’s platform meets stringent security norms and processes.

Sangeeta Bavi, Director – Startup Ecosystem, Microsoft India, said, “Microsoft Azure helps CoRover deliver highly scalable solutions like AskDISHA that allows organizations like IRCTC engage effectively with their customers. We are excited to partner with CoRover as their chatbot-as-a-service platform is adopted across industries.”

Microsoft is committed towards empowering startups in India and helping them become enterprise-ready with its deep technical expertise and go-to-market resources, including support from its global enterprise sales and partner ecosystems.

About Microsoft India

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. 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, Bengaluru, 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 startups, businesses, and government organizations.

About CoRover

Human-centric conversational AI Platform, CoRover’s proprietary cognitive AI technology, offers managed Chatbot as a Service with self-onboarding support to help organizations generate revenue, save cost, improve customer experience and operational efficiency. Founded in 2016, CoRover has seen highest user traction in India and provides AI virtual assistants to enterprises in India, US, UK, UAE and Japan. CoRover’s proprietary and patent protected platform offers various products like Chatbot, VoiceBot, VideoBot, IVR Bot, WhatsApp Bot and various IM and Social Media Bots in 12+ Indian/Vernacular and 100+ foreign languages.

Iacharya Ties up with BSS to Launch Diploma Courses in Solar Design & Installation

Iacharya, one of the largest online training providers in renewable energy space, today entered into a partnership with Bharat Sevak Samaj (BSS), (formed by Planning Commission of India under the skills mission) to offer online Diploma and Advanced Diploma Courses in Solar Design and Installation.

The partnership will offer 3 diploma courses namely, BSS Diploma in Solar PV Design & Installation, BSS Diploma in Solar PV Technical Sales, BSS Diploma in PV Design Using PVSYST, PVSOL & SAM and one advanced diploma course ‘BSS Advanced Diploma in Design of Solar Utility Power Plants’. The fee for these courses ranges from Rs. 9,000 to Rs. 11,000.

Mr. Karthik Ramakrishnan, Co-Founder Iacharya said “This partnership with BSS is a milestone for Iacharya as it will take our result-oriented training programs in the renewable energy space to the next level. We always thrive to provide our students with specific knowledge and training so that they will get an edge in the employment market. Our aim is to help our students remain competitive and keep their skills up to date. So far more than 2000 Iacharya students have started their own small businesses. I am sure these Diploma Courses powered by BSS will be a vital cog in our country’s push towards renewable energy”.

Iacharya is already offering certification courses from National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE), a unit under Ministry of New & Renewable Energy and NABCEP (North American Board of Certified Energy Professionals). Having trained and certified over 6000 professionals, IAcharya offers high quality training programs at affordable rates to empower small entrepreneurs, ITI, diploma students and professionals.

About Iacharya

Iacharya was started by Mr. Karthik Ramakrishnan, Technocrat from Anna University with MBA from California University in USA and Mrs. Uma Ramakrishnan, a Post Graduate, one of the leading women entrepreneurs and an Industrialist since 1975. Mr.Karthik Ramakrishnan has over 27years International experience in sales, marketing and running various manufacturing industries. Mrs. Uma Ramakrishnan has over 45 years’ experience in running various Electronic and Engineering industries and was involved in the initial set up of one of the first solar manufacturing companies in India.

The company, Iacharya, initially focused on Solar training and Solar consulting in association with UL India Pvt Ltd., Bangalore (an associate of Underwriters Laboratories, USA for certification), started its Solar EPC and solar trading division in 2012. Later the also diversified in the Installation of Solar Power Projects including a sizerable residential Solar Roof Top market share in Tamil Nadu. The company has over 1.4 GW (Giga Watt) of solar consulting experience and over 4 MW (Mega Watt) of installation experience in the Roof Top solar market for leading Corporate, Educational Institutions besides various Governmental departments and Temples under HR&CE, TN Government. The company has traded over 25mw of solar products to small installers across south India.

https://iacharya.in/