Equitas Small Finance Bank Becomes The First SFB To Offer End-To-End Online Process For NRI Account Opening

* Only small finance bank to have VRM based on time zones

Equitas Small Finance Bank has now become the first small finance bank to offer its NRI customer segment the ease of account opening online. The company will also be the only one in the small finance bank sector to have Virtual Relationship Managers based on time zones.   

The online process of account opening for NRIs can done via smart phone or computer connected to Internet. The applicants will have a span of 90 days to courier documents after account opening.  With this pioneering move, Equitas Small Finance Bank is seamlessly increasing opportunities for its NRI account holders to manage their investments, deposits and the income earned in India. The Equitas Net banking would also facilitate investment in mutual funds and Portfolio Management Services for the NRI account holders.  

Through banking alliances, Equitas Bank also offers online and offline remittance facilities to its NRI customers at the best exchange rates thereby making it easier and beneficial to transfer their overseas earnings to India seamlessly. 

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Murali Vaidyanathan, President & Country Head, Branch Banking Liabilities Product & Wealth Equitas Small Finance Bank said, “Digitization of banking at ESFB has helped to offer the services at the convenience, safety and wellbeing of our customers and employees being our paramount concern.  The seamless online process for NRI account opening launched will enable hassle free account opening and help our NR customers to enjoy the complete banking services with ease and comfort of their country / place of their residence ably supported by a team of VRMs based on the time zone of the customer. We at Equitas Small Finance Bank continue to offer the Best in Class Interest rates of 6.8% per annum on Fixed Deposits and 7% per annum on SB Balances between Rs. 1 Lac to Rs. 2 Crores for NRI accounts making it an enriching experience”.  

Non-Resident accounts are the most stable books in the branch portfolio for Equitas Small Finance Bank. Additionally, high average Relationship Value of NR accounts hints at a promising outcome for the bank’s focus on increasing its NRI customer base.  

About Equitas Small Finance Bank Limited [ESFBL]  

Equitas Small Finance Bank Limited is the largest SFB in India in terms of number of banking outlets, and the second largest SFB in India in terms of assets under management and total deposits in Fiscal 2019. (Source: CRISIL report). Its focus customer segments include individuals with limited access to formal financing channels on account of their informal, variable and cash-based income profile. It offers a range of financial products and services that address the specific requirements of these customer segments by taking into account their income profile, nature of business and type of security available. Its asset products are suited to a range of customers with varying profiles. 

Samsung India Donates Medical Kits, Oxygen Concentrators And Oxygen Cylinders To Help Karnataka Fight Against COVID-19

* 14,000 Medical Kits sourced locally and 24 Oxygen Concentrators, 150 Oxygen Cylinders flown from South Korea

Company also supporting employees with end-to-end Covid care

Samsung India has donated 14,000 Medical Kits, 24 Oxygen Concentrators and 150 Oxygen Cylinders to Karnataka, supporting its fight against the current surge of Covid-19.

As part of this support, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore (SRI-B), the largest R&D centre of Samsung outside Korea, has collaborated with Shrimad Rajchandra Sarvamangal Trust (SRST) for donating Medical Kits to Government of Karnataka. These medical kits are prescribed by the Government of Karnataka and will be used by Covid patients in home isolation.

SRI-B has donated 14 Oxygen Concentrators to charitable hospitals working towards Covid-19 relief. These Oxygen Concentrators, which have been flown in from South Korea, will be used by patients from weaker sections of the society. Another 10 Oxygen Concentrators were handed over to the Government of Karnataka.

In addition to the aid for Karnataka, Samsung had earlier pledged USD 5 million (INR 37 crores) to India's fight against Covid-19, providing donations to central and state governments, and boosting the healthcare sector with essential medical equipment for hospitals including 100 Oxygen Concentrators, 3,000 Oxygen Cylinders and one million LDS syringes.

At Samsung, employee health, safety and well-being is of utmost priority. As part of its people's initiative, Samsung has also announced it will cover the vaccination costs for over 50,000 eligible employees and beneficiaries in India.

SRI-B has extended end-to-end Covid care to its employees, providing tele-consultation with doctors, RT-PCR tests, home packages with remote medical care, food and medical kit for people staying alone, paid time off for recovery, ambulance on call, Covid Care Centre for isolation and hospitalization, if required.

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.  

Samsung inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies. The company is redefining the world of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, digital appliances, network systems and memory, system LSI, foundry and LED solutions. 

Edukemy Announces "100% COVID Support Scholarship On PYQ Courses For UPSC Aspirants"

Edukemy, India’s first EdTech Company in the non-STEM segment, today announced a COVID Support Scholarship Program to support students preparing for the upcoming UPSC examinations. Students can avail a 100% scholarship on Previous Year Question (PYQ) sessions for GS and Optional subjects.  

The course structure has been designed meticulously and comprises of Booster PYQ (Previous Year Questions) Sessions for answer writing in GS and Optional subjects of UPSC Mains 2021. Students will learn to sculpt effective answers using model handwritten answers and will learn the art of incorporating current affairs and factual information into answer-writing to improve the overall score. 

As the UPSC Prelim Exams have been postponed to 10th Oct 2021, students are seeking expert advice and Edukemy has come forward to support UPSC aspirants in these trying times. The expert faculty of Edukemy has devised a unique strategy in light of postponement of UPSC 2021 thus, enabling students to ace mains and prelims for UPSC 2021 at the comfort of their home. 

Sharing his views on the exclusive scholarship, Mr. Chandrahas Panigrahi, CEO and Co-Founder, Edukemy said, “As India is navigating through a challenging time with the current wave of COVID, we remain committed to supporting students in these tough times. This is a step forward in accelerating our mission of taking students closer to their goals.” 

Classes commence from May 24th, 2021 and students can visit https://www.edukemy.com to register and avail the scholarship. Additionally, downloadable study material and model answers will be provided so that students can revise important topics and prepare effectively.  

To be a part of the empowered UPSC community and to learn more about the COVID Support Scholarship Program on PYQ sessions, aspirants can join Edukemy's Telegram Channel - Edukemy for UPSC:  https://t.me/WithEdukemy4IAS  

Huawei Commits To India’s Fight Against COVID-19, Extends Support For Strengthening Medical Care Facilities

* Facilitating 400 Oxygen Concentrators, 400 Contactless Vital Parameter Monitoring devices, 25 HFNC CPAP Oxygen therapy system, other medical supplies worth INR 5CR

* Commits to setting up a 50-bed Covid-19 medical care facility in Gurugram

As an effort to accelerate Covid-19 relief efforts in India, Huawei has collaborated with local NGOs, specialised institutions to facilitate medical resources to strengthen the efforts in managing the crisis.

Huawei India is facilitating the availability of 400 Oxygen Concentrators, 400 Contactless Remote Vital Parameter Monitoring devices, 25 HFNC CPAP Oxygen therapy systems, and other medical supplies worth INR 5 crore for Indian public hospitals, makeshift hospitals, and other facilities for Covid-19. The initiative is also providing aid for scaling-up and incubation support to partner organisations.

Speaking on the initiatives, David Li, CEO, Huawei India, said, “Given the urgency of healthcare requirements, we decided to join hands with local partners to accelerate the facilitation of urgent medical supplies to support those most affected. We firmly believe that this situation can be overcome with joint, comprehensive, and targeted community efforts. We at Huawei are committed to standing strong with the nation during these challenging times.”

Separately, the company is also working on setting up a 50-bed Covid care facility in partnership with a local medical institution in Gurugram for patients requiring mild medical support. The facility will be equipped with medical equipment like Oxygen concentrators, BiPAP, patient monitoring, etc., and will be operated by a partner medical institution.

In addition to its direct response, Huawei is contributing to provide meal support for more than 18,000 government school children whose families are affected by Covid-19.

Storytel Makes Listening To Audiobooks In Indian Languages Pocket Friendly

* Priced at ₹149 pm, get unlimited access to audiobooks in 11 Indian languages

Demand for content in regional languages has gone up significantly in the last few years and continues to be on rise. With focus on regional languages, Storytel is expanding its starter subscription plan - Select -  which allows customers to access audiobooks in 11 regional languages. 

Storytel had piloted Select services with thousands of audiobooks & ebooks in Marathi language only in 2020. Now the offering is expanded to 11 languages including Kannada Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Assamese, Gujarati, Odia &  Urdu to choose from, at an affordable price point of ₹149 per month. You can subscribe for the plan here

Consumers will now get two paying options -  “Select “payment option priced at Rs 149/-  with access to regional languages and another one '’Unlimited' priced at Rs 299 with access to all 11 languages along with English. The aim is to keep the offer choice to people who want to listen to Indian languages only or also the premium International titles in English.

Book lovers and literary enthusiasts will find many sought-after titles on the Storytel app, from Nagamandala, Samaskara, Ammachi Yemmba Nenapu, Sandhyaraga as well as contemporary bestseller such as Ghachar Ghochar,Life is Beautiful, Grastha, Teru . Storytel is associated with some of the best publishing houses and  many more.

One can listen to Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Moorkhana Mathugalu and many more titles that are added in the app every month.

Expanding Storytel Select is the next step in Storytel’s journey to offer customers options that they have been asking for, which is very much in sync with our strategy of going local and understanding customer needs better.

“Our aim is to get people more and more closer to stories and literature that stems from their roots.With expanding Select as a product, we want to give users the power to choose and pay for what they actually consume. We were seeing doubled interest in the consumption of audiobooks in languages other than English, which is when we decided to launch an India specific plan- which lets one enjoy audiobooks in their language at an affordable pricing. ” said Yogesh Dashrath, Country Manager, Storytel India.

Storytel is an audiobook and ebook app streaming service launched in India on 27th Nov 2017. The company is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and currently present in 25 markets across the globe. In India, the app currently hosts more than 2 lac+ audiobooks and ebooks across 12 languages namely English, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Assamese, Gujarati & Kannada . Our vision is to make the world a more empathetic place with great stories to be shared and enjoyed by anyone, anywhere and anytime

Availability: Storytel is available on both Google Play store http://bit.ly/2rriZaU and iOS App store https://apple.co/2zUcGkG

About Storytel

Storytel is one of the world’s largest subscribed audiobook and ebook streaming services and offers listening and reading of more than 500 000 titles on a global scale. Our vision is to make the world a more empathetic and creative place with great stories to be shared and enjoyed by anyone, anywhere and anytime. Storytel’s streaming business is conducted under the brands Storytel and Mofibo. Storytel’s publishing business area is carried out through the audiobook publisher StorySide and acclaimed Nordic publishing houses such as Norstedts, People’s and Gummerus. Storytel operates in over 20 markets around the globe and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

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.