Google Rolls Out News Showcase In India; To Train 50,000 Scribes, Students On Digital Skills

* Google is also expanding its efforts under Google News Initiative (GNI) efforts in India

Google said it is rolling out its News Showcase in India with 30 news organisations, a move aimed at incentivising and supporting publishers in the country to curate high-quality content on Google's News and Discover platforms.

The tech giant is also stepping up its efforts to strengthen digital skills in newsrooms and journalism schools across India and will train 50,000 journalists and journalism students over the next three years.

"We are launching News Showcase now to help publishers reach people with trustworthy news, especially in this critical time with the Covid crisis continuing. News Showcase panels highlight the articles publishers want, allow them to give additional context about a story, so audiences can better understand what's going on around them," Google Vice President (Product Management) Brad Bender said.

He added that these news panels ensure branding, and drive all traffic back to the website of the publishers that helps deepen the relationship with readers.

"We are also paying publishers for access to paywalled content to provide users free access to select content, enabling people to try content that they may not have otherwise seen on their journey to becoming a subscriber," he added. 

Google News Showcase is rolling out in India with 30 news publishers including national, regional and local news organisations. Discussions are underway with more news partners to further expand the offering.

This builds on News Showcase deals signed by 700 news publications in more than a dozen countries, including Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, the UK, Australia, Czechia, Italy and Argentina.  

Bender said Google sends 24 billion visits to news websites globally every month, helping people discover content via Google Search and also helps publishers monetise their platforms through a suite of products.

News has been a deep focus and commitment for Google and the company has been helping a large number of journalists and media players to reach out to customers, Google Country Head and Vice President, India Sanjay Gupta said.

Gupta noted that while consumption of news across print, television and digital is growing, there are changing consumer habits wherein more young consumers are leveraging reach of digital to access news and that this poses two significant challenges - branding and monetisation. 

"We were very keen to get the Showcase to India... When you solve for India, you need to solve for languages in a very significant way and that's one capability that the product team was developing to help launch... Over the last 8-9 months, we spent a lot of time talking to each one of the publisher partners to see how we can both enable them and work with them," he said.

Content from Google's Indian publisher partners in English and Hindi will begin to appear in dedicated News Showcase panels in Google News and on Discover, and additional Indic languages will follow later.

Google Program Manager Tanuja Gupta stated that Google has not changed any of the ways that stories appear in the user's feed.

"...We have not artificially injected ranking or anything. We have swapped out regular articles with these premium content panels, making the brands more noticeable... Users can click on them and read other articles from publishers," she added.

Google is also expanding its efforts under Google News Initiative (GNI) efforts in India. Over the next three years, with increased support from the News Lab, the company intends to train 50,000 journalists and journalism students. 

"We'll focus on digital tools to aid verification and combat misinformation online, and we'll expand our programs to connect Indian journalists and fact-checkers. Second, we are introducing several new programmes to help small and mid-sized publications achieve financial sustainability – all part of the GNI Digital Growth Program," Gupta said.

The programme has already trained executives at 100 Indian news organisations since its launch last year. 

The new initiatives include new business training workshops, delivered virtually, to help news organisations address the needs of their audiences, grow their readership and deepen reader engagement. 

These workshops will be available for free to Indian publishers, alongside Google's existing workshops to support business success for news organisations. 

The GNI Advertising Lab will include training sessions and implementation support to help more than 800 small and mid-sized Indian news organizations grow their digital ad revenue, while the GNI Transformation Lab is a more comprehensive programme for 20 local small and mid-sized Indian news organizations to help them succeed online.

Gupta said these new and expanded programs build on years of investment in India.

In 2018, Google had launched the GNI India Training Network in partnership with BoomLive, DataLeads and Internews. To date, it has trained over 25,000 Indian journalists in 10 languages, touching more than 1,000 news organisations and more than 700 universities. 

In response to COVID-19, the company has provided financial support to 228 news organisations in India through the GNI Journalism Emergency Relief Fund. 

QuEST Global Set To Expand Its Operations In Pune To Accelerate Growth; To Hire 2000+ Engineers

QuEST Global, a global product engineering and lifecycle services company, announced that its plans to expand operations in Pune and hire more than 2000 engineers in the next three years. The company currently has an employee strength of more than 350 engineers working out of its Pune center with capabilities in software and digital engineering capabilities and plays a crucial role in supporting customers in hi-tech verticals globally. By increasing its headcount in the city, the company aims at enhancing its focus on new age digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Internet of Things, Data Analytics, etc.

As part of its expansion plan, the company will hire engineers with expertise in technologies like Cloud, JAVA, Android & iOS, Web Technologies, Angular, React, Restful API technologies, and .NET/C++. Last year, the company had also launched a dedicated Center for Excellence (CoE) for Microsoft Azure in Pune. Along with this, QuEST will also hire local talent from well-known educational institutions in Pune. In an effort to bridge the gap between the industry and academia, QuEST has been associating with engineering colleges in Belgaum, Bengaluru, Trivandrum, and other Indian cities where they operate in.

In the recent past, QuEST's Pune center had played a crucial role in developing a fleet management solution for UNDP in partnership with Microsoft. Apart from this, the engineers at Pune center have developed and demoed solutions such as Third Eye AI Solutions, AR360 for Equipment Training & servicing, Fleet management, Energy management platforms, Intelligent & Multi-platform Test Automation Framework. Being at the forefront of the convergence of Mechanical, Electronics, Software, and Digital Engineering Innovations, the company has been delivering transformative engineering solutions based on the emerging needs of customers worldwide.

Piyush Jain, Vice President and Global Delivery Head - Software and Digital Services, QuEST Global said, "The Pune center is an integral part of our growth story, and we are delighted to expand our footprint in the city. Over the past two decades, QuEST has been at the forefront of creating innovative solutions to solve customer problems, thereby cementing its position as a game-changer in the industry. Our plan to strengthen the Pune center is a testimony of our deep commitment towards the strategic customers and the local economy, where we will create multiple employment opportunities for passionate engineering professionals. QuEST is committed to invest and bring more engineering jobs to the region that will enable us to drive transformation for our customers through engineering solutions."

With the pandemic accelerating digital transformation across sectors, enterprises across the globe are investing heavily in digital solutions to lead and take advantage of this wave of software product engineering. Being a trusted thinking partner to its customers, QuEST has been helping them solve some of the toughest problems they face to create new products, open new markets and maximize efficiency. Along with this, the company also provides an opportunity to its employees to learn and grow without limitations, develop expertise, collectively achieve aspirations and experience a rewarding journey.

About QuEST Global

For more than 20 years, QuEST Global has been a trusted global product engineering and lifecycle services partner to many of the world’s most recognized companies in the Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Energy, Hi-Tech, Medical Devices, Rail and Semiconductor industries. With a presence in 13 countries, 56 global delivery centers and 11,250+ personnel, QuEST Global is at the forefront of the convergence of the mechanical, electronics, software and digital engineering innovations to engineer solutions for a safer, cleaner and sustainable world. QuEST Global’s deep domain knowledge and digital expertise help its clients accelerate product development and innovation cycles, create alternate revenue streams, enhance consumer experience and make manufacturing processes and operations more efficient.

Tata Communications Unveils Project ‘S.H.E.’ To Promote Entrepreneurship Education At The UNESCO World Conference

* Collaborates with The Better India; Aimed to reach out to one million women in India by 2024

Tata Communications, a global digital ecosystem enabler, announced the launch of the ‘School of Hope and Empowerment’ (S.H.E.) at the 2021 UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development. S.H.E., a multi-media, multi-stakeholder impact communications initiative is designed in collaboration with The Better India, an impact driven Indian digital media platform, to support and educate women from small towns in India to overcome key barriers to entrepreneurship. By leveraging the power of digital connectivity and partnerships, Tata Communications will create enabling environments of, for and by women from marginalised communities to establish themselves as entrepreneurs and leaders in their communities.

S.H.E. includes a series of short films highlighting challenges faced by women in becoming entrepreneurs, such as gender stereotypes, family commitments, financial and societal constraints, and lack of self-belief. The trailer of the six-part video series, highlighting the inspirational journey of Hasrat Bano, a real-life rural woman entrepreneur, has been unveiled at the UNESCO event.

“When you decide to do a business, being a man or a woman does not make a difference, your brain and thinking does,” said Hasrat Bano. “S.H.E. is a milestone project in the journey of women like me who dream to become entrepreneurs. This initiative provides us with the knowledge and guidance to use technology, learn new skills and become financially independent. It creates opportunities for us at a local level that helps us run a business. We are grateful for this platform and hope women in rural India are able to benefit from this.”

Tata Communications aims to spotlight such stories of successful local entrepreneurs who are women, and offer them business grants, mentorship, digital training, amongst other key resources. Women, therefore, will be supported to embark on the path of financial independence to pursue their ideas and bring it to life. In addition to The Better India, the technical and knowledge partners will help strengthen the program implementation.

The aim of this project is to inspire at least a million women to realise their dreams of becoming entrepreneurs. In the first phase, S.H.E. is focused on aspiring women entrepreneurs aged 18-35 years from low-income backgrounds in the peri-urban areas of Dhanbad, Bokaro, East Singhbhum, Hazaribagh and Ranchi in Jharkhand. With just 25% of women in the labour force and limited employment opportunities in the region, this project will address the challenges of financial independence of these women. The next two phases of the project are aimed at including the entrepreneurial women in Odisha and Bihar.

Mamaearth Appoints Karan Bajwa As Vice President, Human Resources For Honasa

* Bajwa has 8 years of experience across talent functions like Total Rewards, Business Partnering and HR Shared Services in companies across telecom and FMCG

Mamaearth has appointed Karan Bajwa as Vice President, Human Resources for Honasa Consumer Pvt. Ltd. He has 8 years of experience across talent functions like Total Rewards, Business Partnering and HR Shared Services in companies across telecom and FMCG.

Mamaearth has grown exponentially over the past few years and is expanding at a rapid rate. Adding Karan to the team is part of their plans to identify and implement long-term strategic talent management goals. With a post-graduation from SCMHRD, Karan has years of experience at Airtel and Reckitt under his belt.

In accepting the position, Karan Bajwa stated, “Mamaearth is a brand that has made a difference, not just to the consumer market, but also to the way FMCG companies conduct business. I am honoured to be part of the management team and look forward to helping create an impactful talent strategy by streamlining existing processes in addition to  implementing new initiatives for the positive growth of the company.”

Commenting on the appointment, Varun Alagh, Co-Founder, and CEO, Mamaearth said, “Being the fastest-growing D2C brand, we don’t want to simply add to the volume of our workforce, but want to grow as a family. Mamaearth wants to ensure that our employees are well looked after, have access to benefits, and experience a happy company work culture. We’re excited to grow our family and are glad to have someone as experienced and able as Karan to help us achieve our goals.”

Mr. Karan Bajwa will be based out of the Gurgaon office and this appointment comes on the heels of other critical and strategic additions to the leadership team of Mamaearth. 

Palo Alto Networks 2021 Cortex Xpanse Attack Surface Threat Report

Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW) today released the 2021 Cortex Xpanse Attack Surface Threat Report, which highlights lessons in attack surface management from leading global enterprises.

The Palo Alto Networks Cortex® Xpanse™ research team studied the public-facing internet attack surface of some of the world’s largest businesses to help enterprises. From January to March, they monitored scans of 50 million IP addresses associated with 50 global enterprises to understand how quickly adversaries can identify vulnerable systems for fast exploitation.

Key Reveals:

Adversaries are constantly scanning for weaknesses in the public-facing internet attack surface of enterprises, in the cloud and traditional data centers. Attackers scan for vulnerable systems once an hour on a typical day, but this activity picks up dramatically when new vulnerabilities are disclosed. 

Scans started within 5 minutes after disclosure of the high-profile zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s widely used Exchange Server. 

Scans started within 15 minutes after most vulnerabilities were announced.

Global enterprises are far behind the attackers. It takes weeks for such scans to begin. 

Vulnerabilities in the public-facing internet of global enterprises are widespread. One serious vulnerability turned up twice a day, or every 12 hours, in the global enterprises we studied. 

As global enterprises transformed their operations to support remote work, that created security gaps: 

79% of observed exposures were in the cloud, compared to 21% for on-premises data centers.

Nearly one in three vulnerabilities uncovered were due to issues with Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), whose usage has soared to enable remote work. It can provide direct admin access to a server, which makes it one of the most common gateways for ransomware.

Concerns about digital transformation introducing security gaps not only proved grounded but also understated the impact.  

In reality, digital transformation has realigned the risk equilibrium in the attacker’s favor. Most tools in IT and security’s arsenal—namely asset and vulnerability management—focus on evaluation but not discovery. In other words, these tools manage known assets while remaining blind to unknown ones. Worse yet, the common methods of discovering unknown assets—such as pen-testing—take place on a quarterly basis (see figure 1).

These programs should start with the basics:

Global internet visibility: Implement a system of record to track every asset, system, and service you own that is on the public internet, including across all major CSPs and dynamically leased (commercial and residential) ISP space using comprehensive indexing, spanning common and often misconfigured port/protocols (i.e., not limited to the old perspective of only tracking HTTP and HTTPS websites).

In-depth attribution: Detect systems and services belonging to your organization using a full protocol handshake to verify details about a specific service running at a given IP address. By fusing this information with a number of public and proprietary datasets, match the full and correct set of internet-facing systems and services back to a specific  organization.

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Methodology

Using the externally available attack surface from global enterprises, Cortex Xpanse researchers examined and interpreted data to help defenders understand the attack surface in order to:

Quantify and remediate externally facing vulnerabilities.

Provide security teams with attack surface benchmark metrics.

Optimize threat modeling.

Convey the threat landscape to technical and nontechnical audiences.

Deploy proactive security measures.

Cortex Xpanse operates a proprietary platform that continuously collects more than one petabyte per day of information related to all systems on the public internet to ascertain how attackers view potential targets. We fuse this information to discover cybersecurity risks present on the networks of the world’s largest and most complex organizations, which no one else can find. Our technology helps our customers see the world through the eyes of highly sophisticated attackers. 

For this report, they looked at the attack surface and threat data coming from 50 global enterprises, including a subset of the Fortune 500, covering around 50 million IP addresses from Q1 2021 (January 2021 – March 2021) and representing 1% of total, global IPv4 space.

JK Tyre Records Excellent Growth Performance During Q4FY21

Consolidated                                    Q4FY2021                  

Net Revenue                                     2,945                                

EBIDTA                                           472                          

PBT                                                 281                           

Indian Tyre Industry major JK Tyre & Industries Ltd. (JK Tyre) announced its results today for Q4FY21 & FY21.

The Board has recommended a dividend of 100 % on its equity shares.

Performance Highlights (Consolidated) - Q4FY21 vs. Q4FY20

Consolidated net revenues stood at Rs.2,945 crore up by 63%.

EBIDTA at Rs.472 crore, recorded an increase of 119% with margin expansion of 400 bps.

Multifold growth in PBT and PAT on y-o-y basis stood at Rs.281 crore and Rs.195 crore respectively.

Performance Highlights (Consolidated) - FY21 vs. FY20

Consolidated net revenues stood at Rs.9,145 crore up by 4%.

EBIDTA at Rs.1,349 crore, increased by 33% with margin expansion of 310 bps.

PAT stood at Rs.331 crore, an increase of 134%.

Commenting on the results, Dr. Raghupati Singhania, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD), said, “The year began with India in lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic and the economy grinding to a halt with Q1FY21 almost a wash out.  Economy started opening up gradually from mid-May. As a result of several initiatives taken JK Tyre recovered fast and achieved highest Sales in Q3FY21 & Q4FY21 increasing its market presence. With high-capacity utilization, control on costs and reduced working capital, special focus on customer outreach and premium products offering, profitability improved significantly.  Similarly, JK Tyre subsidiaries - Cavendish Industries and JK Tornel also added to substantial overall improvement in the profitability of the Company.”

Dr. Singhania further said, “JK TYRE is fully geared to face challenges emanating from rising raw material prices and prevailing lockdowns under second wave of novel virus.”  

He further commented, “Despite these headwinds, the Company expects to continue capturing opportunities that are arising in this new environment in India and abroad.”

Nickelodeon Re-Imagines The Epic Game Of Ludo With A Little Help From Google

Of all the games we have grown up playing, Ludo is a crowd favorite. It spans across all age groups, feels more than a game where your friends can turn foes before at a single roll of a die. Despite the gamut of board games, the sheer joy of strategizing to win Ludo remains unmatched. The lockdown saw a resurgence of Ludo as we cocooned ourselves indoors and went virtual to make our pegs win. And now, it’s time for an upgrade. Bringing back the nostalgia, Nickelodeon, the pioneering kids’ brand and category leader for 7 consecutive years, in a collaboration with Google India brings to you Nickelodeon Ludo, an innovative format to play the game hands-free with your favorite Nicktoons’ pegs and their voice. Sounds amazing right?

Nickelodeon and Google have collaborated to ride on the burgeoning fondness and popularity of Nicktoons that have captivated young minds for years and an attempt to redefine the craze for Ludo through the kid’s most favourite characters thus making the game more fun to play. The game will enable the users to play just with their voice from the convenience of a device. Adding a tinge of spunk to the classic game from google, for the first time ever you'll be able to play Nickelodeon with a little voice help from Google. The game will have four houses with only two pegs each, with faces of your favorite Nicktoons on the pegs in each house and all you have to do is say ‘Ok Google, talk to Nickelodeon Ludo’. While teams with Green and Red colors will be renamed as Motu- Patlu, and Rudra Rangeela, that of Blue and Yellow will be re-named as Shiva- Reva, and Happy- Pinaki, respectively. 

Keeping in with the fervor, the game will be voiced over by your favourite Nicktoons. Upon launch, Nickelodeon Ludo will treat its users to a refreshing look and feel with its modern, yet minimalistic design as compared to the classic board. The game can be played hands free by a single player or 4 friends together present at the same place. The two pegs format instead of four, will give you a chance to reconnect with your friends, bond and help you unwind if you are looking out for a quick game! Nickelodeon Ludo will be available in English language and be open for all users.

Speaking on the initiative, Sonali Bhattacharya Head Marketing Kids TV Network at Viacom18 said “With a perpetual spirit to innovate we at Nickelodeon have always endeavored to engage with our young viewers by providing them unique and immersive experiences through multiple touchpoints that are unparalleled. This association with Google is yet another step towards collaborating with like-minded partners and creating a platform to experience different aspects of the media & entertainment ecosystem thus transporting them to the world of fun with their favourite Nicktoons.”

To proliferate the initiative further, the campaign will leave no stone unturned in reaching out to kids through all possible screens i.e. YouTube, on-air and digital mediums of the brand. From high rotation on air promotions on the Nickelodeon franchise channels and a robust digital plan across the Nickelodeon franchise social media and gaming platforms. The channel has also devised expansive influencer promotion and digital engagement through an array of exciting activities to keep them intrigued and drive their attention to Nickelodeon Ludo.

So, no more downloads, no more installation, with just their voice, users can play the game by just saying "Ok Google, talk to Nickelodeon Ludo”. This is hands down a perfect reason for the fans to try this game! 

About Nickelodeon:

Nickelodeon India has established itself as a thought leader by being the No 1 channel in the kids’ category with a household availability in about 120+ million households. The franchise boasts of a bouquet of channels like Nick, Sonic, Nick Jr and Nick HD+ catering to kids across all age groups from tots to teens. The franchise today has the largest original content library in the country with over 500+ hours of content and plans to add over 200 hours this year. The franchise is a home to the most legendary iconic characters like Motu Patlu, Rudra, Golmaal Jr, Pakdam Pakdai and Shiva on Nick and Sonic; and Dora The Explorer, Paw patrol , Peppa pig on Nick Jr and marquee international properties like Kung-fu-panda, Avatar, Penguins of Madagascar etc on Nick HD+. The channel continues to engage and entertain kids across India through large scale experiential formats, consumer product range and with digital and online presence.