Giottus Announces Zero-Fee Window To Aid Crypto Investors Ahead Of New Tax Regime

·         Giottus will waive all fees on trade of INR pairs from March 30 to April 2, 2022

·         The offer is applicable for all customers (new and existing) on the platform

Giottus, India’s top-rated crypto platform, today announced a zero-fee window over March 30 to April 2, 2022 to facilitate all investors to execute their strategies ahead of the new tax regime that kicks in from April 1, 2022.

Investors on the platform will be able to make unlimited trades with INR pairs in this four-day window without worrying about the fees. Fees of crypto-crypto trades will continue to be at the prevailing rates with all trades being zero fees on Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether (USDT) pairs for market markers.

The new tax regime is expected to present crypto investors with a disadvantage as a loss in one virtual digital asset (VDA) can’t be offset in another while declaring profits. Many investors would have likely arrived at their own personalized strategy ahead of the new financial year. Giottus recognizes the need to serve all such investors a window to maximize their returns and hence have extended this offer to all existing and new users on the platform.

About Giottus

Giottus is a customer-centric, all-in-one crypto investment platform that is changing the way Indian investors trade their virtual digital assets. Giottus aims to shed barriers that arise from the complexity of the asset class and the need to transact in English. We focus on building a simplified platform that is vernacular at heart. Investors can buy and sell crypto assets on Giottus in eight languages including in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali. Giottus is currently India’s top-rated crypto platform as per consumer ratings on Facebook, Google, and Trustpilot.

15 Years Of ‘Make In India’. BMW Group Plant Chennai Celebrates Crystal Anniversary

* An exceptional journey of manufacturing excellence driven by quality and sustainability.

* #15YearsBMW #BMWPlantChennai #SheerDrivingPleasure

BMW Group Plant Chennai has completed 15 years of operations in the country today. Following all necessary safety guidelines, the plant celebrated this significant landmark at a memorable event with all associates.

Mr. Thomas Dose, Managing Director, BMW Group Plant Chennai said, “BMW Group Plant Chennai has emerged as a centre of manufacturing excellence in the last 15 years. It is a world-class facility that locally produces ‘Made in India’ BMWs and MINIs with the toughest quality standards. Along with consistently modernising and building our technical competencies, we have built a very strong, connected team that outshines due to its steadfast commitment, deep value system and cultural diversity. BMW Group Plant Chennai achieves its goals every time, even under difficult situations, because of a positive attitude and high level of efficiency in all pillars. We look forward to establishing many more milestones.” 

Mr. Vikram Pawah, President, BMW Group India said, “Big congratulations to the team at BMW Group Plant Chennai on this joyous event. The plant plays the most instrumental role in fulfilling demand for the latest, most aspirational BMW and MINI products. The unparalleled quality of our ‘Made in India’ cars, immaculate efficiency and fast turn-around time are key strengths of the plant that have contributed towards building a fine product offensive strategy and sales success. We are also proud of the pioneering role that BMW Group Plant Chennai has assumed in sustainable manufacturing practices in the auto industry.”

On the same day in 2007, BMW Group Plant Chennai built its first car – a BMW 3 Series. Since then, it has grown in multi-fold ways, expanding the facility, increasing operations, growing manpower and substantially increasing localisation. Recently, the plant rolled-out the 100,000th locally produced car from its assembly lines.

BMW Group Plant Chennai has set a benchmark in quality production with advanced manufacturing processes, technology, state-of-the-art machinery and skilled associates. Each car that rolls-out of the facility has the same international quality standards as any other BMW Group plant across the world.

BMW Group Plant Chennai started operations on 29 March 2007. Since then, the BMW Group has continuously increased the number of its locally produced car models. Currently, 13 car models are locally produced - BMW 2 Series Gran Coupe, BMW 3 Series, BMW 3 Series Gran Limousine, BMW M340i, BMW 5 Series, BMW 6 Series Gran Turismo, BMW 7 Series, BMW X1, BMW X3, BMW X4, BMW X5, BMW X7 and MINI Countryman.

Study Shows Healthcare Industry Is In Early Stages Of Multicloud Adoption, But Deployments Are Rising

* Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index Report Reveals Hybrid Multicloud Is The Ideal IT model, But Healthcare Is Slower To Adopt

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in hybrid multicloud computing, announced the healthcare findings of its global Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures enterprise progress with cloud adoption in the industry. The research showed that healthcare organizations appear to be in the early phases of cloud adoption and are behind the cross-industry global counterparts. However, adoption is expected to jump from 27% to 51% in the next three years, in line with the global trend of evolving to a multicloud IT infrastructure that spans a mix of private and public clouds.

Multicloud is the dominant IT architecture in use worldwide, however, among healthcare ECI respondents, 30% say private cloud is their most common IT deployment model. The healthcare industry is highly regulated and has likely been slower to embrace the public cloud as a bonafide component of their IT environments for security and privacy reasons. While multicloud adoption is trending upwards, the complexity of managing across cloud borders remains a major challenge for healthcare organizations, with 92% of respondents agreeing that success requires simpler management across multicloud infrastructures. To address top challenges related to interoperability, security, cost and data integration, 90% agree that a hybrid multicloud model, an IT operating model with multiple clouds both private and public with interoperability between, is ideal.

“Multicloud is here to stay, but complexity and challenges remain as regulations drive many of healthcare organizations’ IT deployment decisions,” said Joseph Wolfgram, Healthcare CTO at Nutanix. “Regardless of where they are in their multicloud journeys, evolution to a hybrid multicloud IT infrastructure that spans a mix of private and public clouds with interoperability is underway and necessary for healthcare organizations to succeed.”

Commenting on the report, Faiz Shakir, Managing Director - Sales, India and SAARC, Nutanix said  “Since the advent of the pandemic, healthcare has taken centre stage and the segment continues to evolve at a rapid pace. This is driving massive demand for innovative solutions that can cater to the needs of the healthcare IT team as well as the requirements of the patients. Therefore, the hybrid multicloud model emerges as an ideal solution to serve as the foundation for improved service and, eventually, improved health with a better telehealth experience. We at Nutanix are consistently working towards enabling a hybrid multicloud environment that provides our customers with more flexibility and freedom”.

Healthcare survey respondents were asked about their current cloud challenges, how they’re running business applications now, and where they plan to run them in the future. Respondents were also asked about the impact of the pandemic on recent, current, and future IT infrastructure decisions and how IT strategy and priorities may change because of it. Key findings from this year’s report include:

Top multicloud challenges include integrating data across clouds (49%), managing costs (48%), and performance challenges with network overlays (45%). While multicloud adoption is trending upwards, most healthcare organizations are struggling with the reality of operating across multiple clouds, private and public. Given that more than 84% say they currently lack the IT skills required to meet business demands, simplifying operations is likely to be a key focus for many in the year ahead. However, IT leaders are realizing that there is no one-size fits all approach to the cloud, making hybrid multicloud ideal according to the majority of respondents.

Application mobility is top of mind. All healthcare organizations (100%) have moved one or more applications to a new IT environment over the last 12 months, likely moving applications out of legacy three-tier environments and into private clouds given healthcare’s above-average private cloud and traditional datacenter penetration. Yet, 80% of respondents agree that moving a workload to a new cloud environment can be costly and time-consuming. They cite security (48%) most often as the reason for the move, outpacing the global average (41%), followed by gaining control of the application (38%), and improving performance (36%).

Focus on business continuity and disaster recovery is helping to drive cloud adoption. Due to being a highly regulated industry, healthcare organizations have been slower to embrace the public cloud as a main component of their IT environments for security reasons. However, healthcare IT professionals indicated an intent to use public cloud services as supplemental IT infrastructure to which they can fail over for improved business continuity levels and disaster recovery setups (BC/DR). In fact, they cited improving BC/DR most often as motivating their three-year plans to increase multicloud use (38%). Healthcare’s interest in boosting BC/DR could prove to be the impetus for greater public cloud acceptance, as this use case has a strong public cloud component, which could accelerate the industry's general multicloud usage.

Top healthcare IT priorities for the next 12 to 18 months include adopting 5G (47%) and AI/ML-based services (46%), and improving BC/DR (45%), and multicloud management (44%). Healthcare respondents also said that the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred them to increase their IT spending in certain areas such as bolstering security posture (62%), implementing AI-based self-service technology (60%), and upgrading existing IT infrastructure (48%).

For the fourth consecutive year, Vanson Bourne conducted research on behalf of Nutanix, surveying 1,700 IT decision-makers around the world in August and September 2021. This report is supplemental to the global Fourth Annual Enterprise Cloud Index master report and focuses on cloud deployment and planning trends in the healthcare industry, based on the responses of 250 IT professionals in that market. It highlights healthcare provider cloud plans, priorities, and experiences and includes comparisons of the healthcare industry’s multicloud activity with that of other markets and the global response base overall. The respondent base spanned various business sizes and the following geographies: the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA); and the Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) region.

Nutanix works with a range of healthcare providers in India such as Apollo Healthcare, Max Healthcare and Sakra World hospital. With significant experience in the sector, Nutanix firmly believes that hybrid multicloud is key to propelling the healthcare industry's digital revolution which will grant greater patient autonomy and improved long-term health management.

Medtronic Commences PRAAN, India’s Clinical Registry To Assess The Role Of Brain Blood Clot Retrieving Devices In Stroke Patients

* The registry will be conducted for approximately two and a half years and up to 200 subjects will be enrolled

India Medtronic Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Medtronic plc (NYSE:MDT) — a global leader in healthcare technology, today announced the launch of India’s first ever dedicated registry for the collection of real-world data associated with the use of revascularization devices in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients. The Prospective Registry for Assessment of Acute Ischemic Stroke Patients Treated with Neurothrombectomy Devices in India (PRAAN) is an industry-first endeavour to create a post-market registry to assess clinical outcomes associated with the use of Medtronic market-released revascularization devices in patients experiencing acute ischemic stroke. The duration of the registry will be approximately 28 months and up to 200 subjects will be enrolled in it. Devices that are used to restore blood flow in the brain by mechanically removing blood clots from occluded blood vessels are called neurothrombectomy (or mechanical thrombectomy) devices, which include stent retrievers and aspiration catheters.

In India, nearly 1.18 million patients are affected by stroke each year of which 68-80% of the strokes are ischemic (i.e., blood clot in the brain).1,2 Although current clinical practice guidelines recommend the use of neurothrombectomy for stroke management, patient utilization remains low in India. In India, while more than 2.7 lakhs patients are eligible for neurothrombectomy each year, fewer than 1500 (~0.5%) are treated with neurothrombectomy.3 Data emerging from prospective studies can provide information on patient characteristics, systems of care and the (short-term) clinical outcomes of neurothrombectomy on Indian patients. These data may provide valuable insights that will facilitate greater awareness of this therapy, improve care delivery systems and enable policy decisions to provide access to treatments.

Commenting on Medtronic’s disruptive efforts to sharpen clinical understanding of neurothrombectomy in AIS patients, Madan Krishnan, vice president and managing director, Medtronic India said, “Medtronic remains firmly committed to the practice of Evidence Based Medicine in the medical device industry in India. Facilitating patient access to life-saving therapies requires world-class clinical and economic outcomes evidence. The kickstart of PRAAN registry marks the beginning of one of many pioneering efforts undertaken by the company in stroke management. We hope to gain valuable insights from the emerging data from our prospective registry.”

Dr. Jeyaraj Pandian, vice president, World Stroke Organization and president, Indian Stroke Association, said, “Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability in India, and there exists a pressing need to deepen our understanding of stroke patients and prospective therapies and treatments. Medtronic’s PRAAN registry can play a critical first step in the creation of a comprehensive database for stroke patients in India, taking us closer to bringing beneficent therapy systems and policy interventions for their care.”

Dr. Vipul Gupta, neurointerventionist, Artemis Hospitals, Gurgaon, said, “While the treatment for stroke requires timely intervention before all else, the benefits of thrombectomy care in preventing morbidity is noteworthy. Stroke thrombectomy is minimally invasive, safe, and highly effective. Yet, its potential remains severely underutilized, and it is imperative to foster research and awareness around its benefits. I’m hopeful that the registry initiated by Medtronic will provide us robust data around effectiveness of mechanical thrombectomy in Indian patients.”

Subject enrolment for PRAAN is already underway, with 18 months of a scheduled enrolment window until February 2023. Publication of the reports of the registry is expected to happen in December 2023.

Mechanical thrombectomy with the use of stent retrievers has consistently shown improved neurological outcomes and reduced disability within 6 hours post stroke onset.4 Timely removal of blood clot via either neurothrombectomy devices, or clot-dissolving agent to restore the blood flow in brain is essential.5 Six landmark studies have reported reduced disability with the use of mechanical thrombectomy and clot-dissolving agent in patients with AIS.6-11 These outcomes resulted in the new 2015 American Heart Association (AHA/ASA) guidelines with an added recommendation for endovascular treatment with stent retrievers in subjects with large vessel occlusion (LVO).12

About Mechanical Thrombectomy

Based upon current clinical data and usage of these products, the risks associated with the Solitaire™ Revascularization Device and React™ Aspiration Catheter are outweighed by their individual and collective clinical benefits when used as intended in the target population.

About Medtronic

Bold thinking. Bolder actions. We are Medtronic. Medtronic plc, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is the leading global healthcare technology company that boldly attacks the most challenging health problems facing humanity by searching out and finding solutions. Our Mission — to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life — unites a global team of 90,000+ passionate people across 150 countries. Our technologies and therapies treat 70 health conditions and include cardiac devices, surgical robotics, insulin pumps, surgical tools, patient monitoring systems, and more. Powered by our diverse knowledge, insatiable curiosity, and desire to help all those who need it, we deliver innovative technologies that transform the lives of two people every second, every hour, every day. Expect more from us as we empower insight-driven care, experiences that put people first, and better outcomes for our world. In everything we do, we are engineering the extraordinary. For more information on Medtronic (NYSE:MDT), visit www.Medtronic.com and follow @Medtronic on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Snapdeal Partners With Cashfree Payments To Enable Instant Refunds For CoD Orders

* Buyers can encash their own refunds whenever and however they want

Snapdeal, India’s leading value commerce platform, announced its partnership with India’s leading payments and API banking solutions company, Cashfree Payments, to enable instant processing of refunds against Cash on Delivery (CoD) orders.

Traditionally, processing refunds for CoD orders has been a multi-step and time-consuming process, which includes manually adding the customer's bank account details, onboarding the customer as a payee and tracking as well as reconciling refunds batch-wise. With the integration of Cashfree Payments’ product ‘Cashgram’, Snapdeal will be able to process refunds with only the customer’s mobile number or email address, with credits automatically flowing to the customer’s UPI-linked bank account, or wallet.

Online shopping is getting increasingly more popular, especially among customers from smaller cities. A recent RedSeer report commissioned by Snapdeal has highlighted this rapid growth of online customers in India’s 2+ cities and towns, who are expected to triple in size from approx. 78 mn in 2021 to nearly 256 mn by 2026.

A significant proportion of buyers from smaller cities prefer to pay in cash for their online purchases. For this cohort of buyers, the ease and speed of getting refunds for orders that they may choose to return is a key consideration. With the integration of ‘Cashgram’ by Cashfree Payments, Snapdeal now offers a seamless and fast refund process, where customers can get their refund instantly or later as per their own choice, either to their bank accounts or to their preferred wallets.

Speaking on the partnership, Sarvartha Kanchan, Vice President - Supply Chain Management and Customer Experience, Snapdeal said, “We endeavour to provide a delightful experience to our users at all touchpoints. For our users, who prefer the convenience of cash on delivery, we wanted to provide an equally efficient, yet secure refund process. Through our integration with Cashfree Payments, we offer our buyers the convenience to directly add the required details to their “Cashgram” and receive their refunds when and how they want, including on weekends and also outside banking hours.

Reeju Datta, Co-Founder, Cashfree Payments said, “In a customer journey, providing a seamless payment experience is critical. And issuing refunds, especially to Cash on Delivery (CoD) customers, has been one of the concerns for e-commerce businesses. We are delighted to partner with Snapdeal to  enable a seamless CoD refund experience for their customers. An instant, hassle-free refund experience, combined with consistent and accurate communication to the customer is going to be a breakthrough and a way forward from all the future payment.”

About Cashfree Payments

Cashfree Payments is a leading payment and API banking solutions company. It provides full-stack payments solutions enabling businesses in India to collect payments and make payouts via all available methods with simple integration. Cashfree Payments’ offerings include an advanced and easy way to integrate payment gateways, a split payment solution for marketplaces, bank account verification API and Auto Collect -- a virtual account solution to match inbound payments to customers. Founded by IIIT Hyderabad alumnus Akash Sinha and IIT Kharagpur graduate Reeju Datta, www.cashfree.com is among the leading payment service providers in India processing transactions worth USD 20 Billion annually. It has leveraged technology to lead payment disbursals in India with more than 50% market share among payment processors. Cashfree Payments enables more than 1,00,000 businesses with payment collections, vendor payouts, wage payouts, bulk refunds, expense reimbursements, loyalty and rewards. Apart from India, Cashfree Payments products are used in eight other countries including the USA, Canada and UAE. Cashfree Payments is backed by Silicon Valley investor Y Combinator, Apis Partners, State Bank of India (SBI) and was incubated by PayPal.

NSDC, Masai Announce Strategic Partnership Focused On Outcome-Driven Skilling For Tech Jobs

* The partnership is aimed at skilling over 1.5 lakh students for in-demand tech jobs

National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and Masai School today announced a strategic partnership to skill India’s youth for tech jobs through an outcome-driven skilling model. The partnership agreement was signed by Ved Mani Tiwari, Chief Operating Officer and Officiating CEO, NSDC and Prateek Shukla, Co-Founder & CEO, Masai School today.

Giving impetus to the Skill India Mission, the collaboration will benefit the lives of over 1.5 lakh students and their families in tier 2 & 3 cities over a period of seven years. This will enable aspirants to go beyond their economic & educational background by creating a level-playing field for private-sector tech jobs through skill-based learning certified by NSDC. The two organisations will also work towards creating alternatives to the banking loan system for skill-based education, which generally acts as a setback for low-income families.

Ved Mani Tiwari, COO and Officiating CEO, NSDC said, ‘’It is NSDC's endeavour to skill youth who do not have any prior education or work experience in Future Skills. To ramp up our efforts of making Future Skilling more outcome focused, our partnership with Masai School will create an impactful framework for tech-focused skilling in India. NSDC and Masai will impart skill training to students in IT fields - software development, data analytics and product design, especially. This collaboration has the potential to democratise aspirational employment opportunities for India’s youth.”

With an outcome-driven approach that incentivises learning with jobs post completion of the course, Masai’s Income Share Agreement has proven to be a successful model. Under this model, 96% of its students are being placed with an average salary of INR 8 Lakhs Per Annum (LPA) in top Indian start-ups including Ola, Meesho, Ajio and Swiggy and with multinational IT service companies such as Capgemini & GlobalLogic among others. Masai does not charge any upfront fees. Students only pay for their learning when they get a job that pays them INR 5 LPA or more, else they pay no tuition fee. With no prior technical knowledge needed to join the course, 65% of the 5000+ students currently studying at Masai are from a non-computer science educational background. Two years into its operations, Masai has pulled over 100 families out of poverty with 70% of their students hailing from disadvantaged sections of the society. This partnership will enable NSDC to expand its outreach to the grassroot level.

Commenting on the partnership, Prateek Shukla, Co-founder & CEO, Masai said, “We believe that India has an equal distribution of talent but not opportunities. We are honoured to have partnered with NSDC as this association takes us one step closer towards accomplishing our mission of increasing Bharat’s employability quotient. This partnership will be a game changer as it aims to bring new ways of delivering skill-based education in India. This partnership will also lend credibility to the talent coming out of Masai, opening new doors of opportunities for our students that still accord higher value to degrees than skills.”

The two organisations intend to host one of India’s biggest digital tech learning conferences, to be attended by aspiring techies, focused on democratising success in tech careers. Masai will also roll out scholarships worth INR 10 crore, the first phase of which will impact 250 aspirants. In the long run, both organisations are looking to create a framework of sustainable skill development that will transform the higher education landscape for the youth.

90+ My Tuition App Launches Virtual Labs To Encourage Students’ Scientific Temperament

* The contents of 90+ MTA's Virtual Lab are designed exclusively for the students of class 11th to 12th

90+ My Tuition App, a burgeoning Indian edtech startup, has announced the launch of virtual labs to help students understand difficult scientific concepts in a fun and engaging way. The company initially launched the programme as a pilot project during the pandemic last year, but after receiving positive feedback, it has decided to go ahead with a full launch. The virtual lab provided by 90+ My Tution App covers a variety of subjects ranging from Physics, chemistry, Biology & Mathematics. Virtual labs aims at bringing  practical lab experience right at any student’s study desk

The programme is open to 5 lakhs+ students currently, and some of the Virtual Lab content is also freely available on its YouTube page. Recently, on the occasion of National Science Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged startups to come forth with innovative ideas like virtual labs to help build scientific temperament among young students. Online education has emerged as a boon during the pandemic, and even in the union budget 2022, the central government had emphasised online, accessible education with the launch of 200 TV channels for supplementary education.

Vingish Vijay, Founder & Creator of 90+ My Tuition App says, “Early years are the most essential period in a student's learning age. Providing them with simplified and fun scientific concepts will enhance their knowledge and encourage them to learn more about different concepts building a scientific temperament from a young age. Which can eventually result in them choosing the STEM field as their career option The bigger problem that we are trying to solve through these virtual labs is that students can practice subject based concept multiple number of times even in the absence of access to a physical practical lab”

Recently, 90+ My Tuition App also launched ‘90+ Connect’, which is an initiative to produce young edupreneurs. In which the company will provide them with needful resources and guidance. 90+ My Tuition App is an edtech startup founded by Vingish Vijay in 2018 with the aim of educating India affordably. The company offers CBSE and 14 state board curriculum tuition at a competitive price. Because of its high-quality, affordable services, the firm was successful in attracting over five lakh subscribers in its first year. Owing to the immense success it received in the country, it has expanded its services to CBSE students in the GCC nations.

About 90+ My Tuition App

90+ My Tuition App is India’s best-in-class Tuition App helping students to achieve exceptional grades through digital visualization in an affordable way. With the start of lean operations in 2018 and the launch of classes in May 2020, the App has touched the lives of more than 5 lakh students within a year. With the vision of “Educating India Affordably”, 90+ My Tuition App provides the most simple and accessible content pedagogy for 14 State Education boards and CBSE board curriculum for 5th to 12th division. With an 86% program completion rate, robust tech platform, outcome-based learning approach, state board and NCERT curriculum, a testament of students with exceptional grades, strong mentorship, 90+ My Tuition App has established its position as a substitute for physical tuitions in the Indian education system. 90+ has recently launched its second premium product 90+ Top Rank for students aspiring for competitive examinations. Its first initiative is coaching for PSC aspiring students in Kerala. The upcoming modules will be for training SSC and Railway aspirants.