Chennaiyin FC Sign German Midfielder Julius Duker As Team’s Final Foreign Recruit

Indian Super League club Chennaiyin FC have roped in German midfielder Julius Duker to wrap up their foreign roster for the upcoming season.

The 26-year-old is Chennaiyin’s second foreign midfielder after Rafael Crivellaro, who has been part of the team since 2019.

Vafa Hakhamaneshi, Fallou Diagne, Petar Sliskovic and Kwame Karikari are the club’s other international signings this summer.

“Our final foreign signing Julius will be a great fit in this youthful and fresh-looking team we have put together. His versatility will be a good asset for the team,” said Chennaiyin FC co-owner Vita Dani.

The left-footed player has 35 goals and 23 assists to his name from 210 career appearances so far.

Chennaiyin FC will be Duker’s first club outside Germany.

Expressing excitement ahead of his maiden stint in India, Duker said, “I‘m proud to be part of this big club. First of all, I would like to thank the fans for all the messages and the warm welcome.

“I’m just excited to finally be able to meet the team, the staff and our fans. Of course, I’m motivated to achieve the goals set by the club. I will work hard to create successful times for the club again. But first I want to get to know the team and get in shape.”

Duker will join a midfield that already consists of experienced players such as Crivellaro, Anirudh Thapa and Mohammed Rafique.

With his versatility and experience, the Braunschweig-born dynamic footballer will also offer different combinations for Chennaiyin FC.

A product of VfL Wolfsburg’s youth academy, Duker has been playing at the senior professional level since 2014 and has featured for some popular German clubs, including Eintracht Braunschweig and SV Meppen.  

Dare Ventures (VC Arm of Coromandel International Limited ) Has Invested In Bengaluru Based Biotech Startup String Bio

Dare Ventures, the venture capital arm of Coromandel International Limited has announced that they have invested in Bengaluru based biotech startup String Bio alongside Woodside Energy Group and existing investors Ankur Capital, Redstart and Zenfold Ventures. The investment was part of the $20 million first close of the Series B fund raise.

With a vision to build a world where cleaner and better ways of living are enabled by biotechnology, String has developed a set of next generation products across different sectors to deliver such solutions. Through its innovative technology platform, String leverages advances in biology, fermentation technology, chemistry, and process engineering to convert methane (a highly potent green-house gas) into high quality products and ingredients for agriculture, animal nutrition, human nutrition, and personal care sectors.

Targeting the agriculture industry, String has developed several bio stimulant products targeting horticulture as well as large acreage crops. These products are designed to enhance the yield while simultaneously contributing to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and catering to the demand of natural and healthy produce.

In addition, through its protein rich ingredients with robust amino acid and mineral compositions, String is also bringing a paradigm shift in animal nutrition and human nutrition sectors. The company has signed a strategic development agreement with Woodside Energy Technologies Pty Ltd. for production of these sustainable protein ingredients for animal nutrition.

Commenting on the investment Vinod Kumar, Cofounder and Managing Director of String Bio said, “Our fundamental ethos has been to make sustainability market relevant. With the onboarding of Dare Ventures and other Series B investors, we will now be able to scale up the manufacturing and market growth of carbon friendly products for the Agri sector at a greater speed.”

Coromandel, India’s largest private sector phosphatic fertilizer company also has a significant bio-products division with sales across several geographies including India, US, Europe, and Latin America. The company is presently the largest manufacturer of neem-based Biopesticides globally and is also the largest marketer of Organic agri-input products in India.

Commenting on their investment, Mr. Sameer Goel, Director, Dare Ventures Ltd., and Managing Director, Coromandel International Limited said “Coromandel has been pursuing investments in the AgriTech space through our corporate venture capital arm Dare Ventures. Our objective has been to identify and support startups in the Indian AgriTech space, which we believe will have a transformative impact in their respective applications. It excites me to have partnered with String Bio Private Limited. Coromandel is committed to promoting sustainable solutions for agriculture, as is evidenced by our widening portfolio of bio and organic product offerings. In String Bio, we see a novel biotechnology company catering to the growing market for sustainable products in the agri-inputs space, both in India and globally. String Bio’s core fermentation-based peptide synthesis technology is also being leveraged in animal nutrition, alternative proteins, and personal care space.”

HackerEarth Sees Significant Surge In Full-Stack Developer Assessments, Driven By Demand For Customizable Solutions

* As companies navigate the complexities of screening full-stack developers, HackerEarth saw a 60% increase in full-stack assessments during the past six months

HackerEarth, a leading solutions provider for remote developer assessments, interviews, and upskilling, recently announced a significant increase of full-stack developer assessments facilitated on its platform in the past 6 months. The company’s recently improved full-stack assessments platform allows hiring managers and recruiters to assess candidates on the full spectrum of application development — from the back-end all the way to the user-facing front-end.

A comprehensive full-stack assessment must be able to support multiple different combinations of technologies. HackerEarth Assessments empower organizations to create customized assessments for the same full-stack role, depending on each candidate’s skills and their own requirements. This is important because many full-stack developers have specialized skills on the front or backend along with familiarity with the other components of building an application. 

The complexity of building and proctoring full-stack assessments is fueling the adoption of HackerEarth Assessments. In addition to conducting skills assessments specific to each developer, the platform features a Theia editor, which allows developers to write code on their own system, ensuring the best candidate experience. The upswing in full-stack assessments indicates companies are readying their workforces for Web3 and other emerging application development.

Enhancements made to the HackerEarth’s full-stack assessments include more personalized and customizable solutions for organizations and recruiters, all while providing candidates with seamless platform interactions.

Key Product Innovations Include:

300% Increase in available full-stack questions that allow tech recruiting teams to assess candidates’ knowledge of more frameworks, and test developers on skills of non-relational databases such as MongoDB.

Sample questions for various frameworks can now be loaded directly from within the product, significantly reducing time for recruiting teams by providing a ready-to-use boilerplate template. Additionally, this allows admins and question creators to focus on core questions’ logic instead of the structure and syntax, improving the user experience.

Enhanced customer interface that includes a reduced editor load time and improved auto-complete and debugging functionality. The improved interface offers users access to tools and functionality they may be familiar with in their local development environments.

Sachin Gupta, CEO of HackerEarth, said, “As enterprises prepare for the shift to Web3, blockchain, and the Metaverse, tech recruiting teams must be able to easily assess full-stack developers’ skills objectively and accurately. Full-stack development is not a one-size fits all role and comes with complexity around screening and proctoring tests that can last days and even weeks.  With a close eye on recruiting practices, developers also expect exceptional candidate experiences. Our  recent surge in full-stack assessments further demonstrates the value of the platform to both recruiters and candidates.”

DrinkPrime Raises ?60 Crore In Series A Round Led By Omidyar Network India, Surge Sequoia And 9Unicorns

* The funding will help the IOT-enabled customized water purifier company reach 1 million homes in India by 2026

DrinkPrime, the IoT-enabled customized water purifier on subscription raised ?60 crore in its Series A round. The company plans to invest in people, product and infrastructure to ensure they serve 1 million homes by 2026. The round was led by marquee investors like Omidyar Network India, Surge Sequoia and 9Unicorns at a time when the market is witnessing a steep capital crunch.

Speaking about the fundraise and the roadmap for DrinkPrime, Vijender Reddy Muthyala, Co-founder and CEO, DrinkPrime, said, “DrinkPrime is a drinking water company not a water purifier manufacturer. We raised funds to move closer to our goal of making safe drinking water accessible to the majority of India. We will do everything it takes to ensure we serve 1 million subscribers by 2026.”

The leading water purifier brand in Bengaluru has been growing exponentially over the past six months serving 1 lakh+ users across Bengaluru, Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Noida.

"Our subscriber base grew by 330% this year. With the rising interest in our service offering across several geographies, we expect to maintain the momentum we’ve picked up over the last few months,” said Manas Ranjan Hota, Co-founder and COO, DrinkPrime.

Speaking about their decision to invest in DrinkPrime, Badri Pillapakkam, Partner, Omidyar Network India said, "We are delighted to continue our partnership with DrinkPrime which is increasing access to water purification devices and making quality drinking water on tap more affordable than bottled water and accessible to the Indian mass market, including the Next Half Billion. We look forward to supporting them in their journey to become the largest player in the consumer durable subscription market.”

"Safe drinking water remains one of the biggest challenges in India with around 50 per cent of the population having no access to it and this is all set to increase with time. In such a scenario, the need of the hour is to evaluate if technology can solve a part of it. As a part of our ESG investment approach, we invested in DrinkPrime that is making safe drinking water accessible to millions. Such solutions make a huge impact on the environment as it lessens the need for plastic. We expect some Unicorns to emerge from this space soon and DrinkPrime has huge potential, " said Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder, Venture Catalysts & 9Unicorns.

Aureolis Ventures, Kwaish Ventures and ZNL Growth Fund are a few other investors who participated in DrinkPrime’s Series A round in addition to participation from Northern Arc Capital and Unitus Capital in the debt capital raise.

“DrinkPrime has a unique business model which solves the fundamental problem of clean drinking water in urban cities in an environmentally responsible manner and has seen significant adoption of its tech led water as a service offering. We are delighted to partner with DrinkPrime, given their strong mission orientation and their ambition to scale up this business,” said Bama Balakrishnan, Executive Director & COO, Northern Arc Capital.

COVID-19 increased awareness on a wide range of issues related to health and wellbeing. With 37.7 million Indians affected by waterborne diseases in India yearly, the demand for DrinkPrime’s services will continue to grow as people return to their homes and offices in India’s urban areas.

About DrinkPrime

DrinkPrime was started to solve a personal problem - How do we get access to clean, safe, and healthy drinking water? Seems simple, but here’s what we found. First, most of the water you get in plastic cans isn’t fit for drinking. Second, less than 5% of Indians actually own a water purifier! That’s when we realized this was not just a personal problem but an opportunity to help more people. It’s been six years since we started on this journey. Today, more than 1 lakh+ users in 7 cities depend on us to access clean and safe drinking water!  

Healthcare, Medical Education Unaffordable For People, Says Minister

Appreciating the efforts of Sadguru Sri Madhusudan Sai for starting a free medical college in Karnataka for rural poor students, Karnataka Minister, Dr K Sudhakar said that medical education and healthcare are unaffordable for millions of people at an International Conference on post-pandemic reforms in medical education for accessible & affordable rural healthcare organised by Sri Sathya Sai University for Human Excellence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a critical need for the current medical education system to provide affordable, accessible, comprehensive, compassionate, and high quality healthcare to all, especially to the underserved populations living in villages. This conference brought together leading medical education experts from India and other countries to share their ideas and programmes and lead the way to national and international reforms in format, curriculum, structure, funding, evaluation, and access to quality medical education.

“The goal of medical systems is to provide good healthcare and service delivery. Today healthcare and medical education is not affordable for all. Understanding this, Sadguru Sri Madhusudan Sai has decided to start a free medical college to give an opportunity for all the rural children who are bright and goal-oriented. Today, I am so glad to announce that Chikkaballapur will have two medical colleges and two super-specialty hospitals. We have representatives from Ayush today, who focus on traditional medicines which are as old as the vedas. To promote traditional medicines, the Government of Karnataka has taken a step to establish an autonomous Ayush University in Shivamogga. We aim at meeting the WHO's target of reducing the MMR rate, for which there is a huge requirement for good mother and child healthcare hospitals. Like Sadguru always says, State Government and selfless organisations like the Sri Sathya Sai University for Human Excellence should come together and see to that every individual receives their fundamental right to quality healthcare”, Dr K Sudhakar, Minister of Medical Education & Heath, Karnataka, said in a statement.

The objective of this conference was to develop practical approaches for making medical education and training accessible and equitable, to increase the access to high-quality integrative medical education and training the students from rural, tribal and underserved areas, based on their educational accomplishments and future academic portal, and to enhance the quality of medical education system by developing national metrics to evaluate the credentials & social impact of individual, faculty, departments, programmes and institutions.

“We cannot expect the Government alone to function for the nation’s collective welfare.  All the sectors must come together and contribute to the betterment of the healthcare services of our nation. Our speakers today were on the same line of quality healthcare for all, which brought out a whole new spectrum of contributions and innovations. Our hospitals will be completely free of cost and shall grow up to become one of the most buzzing medical service centres soon for people around the globe reviving the tradition of Vasudaiva Kutumbakam", the Founder of the varsity, Sadguru Sri Madhusudan Sai, said in a statement.

Health is wealth, for only healthy people can work and create prosperity for themselves and the society, as well as attain the spiritual goals of one’s life. It is the fundamental right of every human and the fundamental responsibility of the State and the society to provide it to all.

Acer Televisions Powered By Android 11 Launched In The Indian Market

•     The new generation of Acer Televisions - The I-Series, will be available in four sizes. The 32-inch model has a High Definition display resolution; while the 43-inch, the 50-inch and the 55-inch models have been launched in Ultra High Definition display resolution. All the models come with Dual Band WiFi, and 2-way Bluetooth features

•     It is also equipped with powerful 30-watt speaker systems and supports Dolby Audio in all models

•     The new range of Acer Televisions will be available on all major e-commerce platforms & offline retail stores from today

The highly anticipated new range of Acer Televisions was launched with the unveiling of the I-Series televisions powered by the certified Android 11 operating system today in India. The new generation of Acer televisions allows customers to access a rich library of content for endless entertainment options.

It comes with an edge-to-edge display with a frameless design which is a continuation of the almost bezel-less display that Acer televisions are popular for in the market. I-Series also delivers a significant upgrade in picture quality with an enhanced Wide Colour Gamut+ that delivers over a billion colours in display, HDR 10+, Super Brightness, Black Level Augmentation and 4K Upscaling and much more.

Interestingly, the I-Series also comes with an in-built Smart Blue Light Reduction technology to reduce the blue light exposure to the viewer’s eyes during long periods of content consumption. This makes for a safer and more comfortable viewing.

Speaking on the launch, Anand Dubey, CEO, Indkal Technologies Pvt Ltd, said, “Following a phenomenal response on the first generation of Acer televisions in India, we are excited to launch the I-Series. This new launch reinforces our commitment to offering premium quality televisions with advanced technologies and specifications, which are loaded with many segment-leading features.

”We’re excited to see the Acer-branded television line grow in India, providing consumers with more choice for premium entertainment,” said Jade Zhou, VP, Global Strategic Alliances, Acer Inc. “Our collaboration with Indkal Technologies will continue to bring quality viewing experiences to the Indian market.”

ABOUT THE ACER BRAND 

Established in 1987, the Acer brand empowers people with the technology to make their mark and the freedom to live their desired lifestyle. Acer-branded products strive to make technology accessible to everyone. 

ABOUT INDKAL 

Indkal Technologies Private Limited is a technology and innovation company based out of Bengaluru. Indkal excels in delivering, high-quality and revolutionary products across a wide spectrum of consumer electronics appliances and products. Founded in the year 2020, the company’s mission is to provide prudent, high-quality, and contemporary products to the growing Indian consumer market. 

Toyota Kirloskar Motor And NSDC Along With ASDC Collaborate Towards Rural Skill Enhancement & Employability

* Collaboration to establish Skill Development Centers across India with focus on rural areas thereby providing students opportunity to enhance skill and making them employable

* TKM’s unique Toyota Technical Education Program(T-TEP) initiative currently has associations with 56 Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) and Diploma Institute across 21 states in the country

Toyota Kirloskar Motor [TKM] today announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and Automotive Skill Development Council (ASDC) to enhance student skill with special focus on rural areas making youth more employable through the company’s unique training initiative, Toyota Technical Education Program (T-TEP).

The MoU was exchanged between Mr Ved Mani Tiwari, Chief Operating Officer and Officiating CEO, NSDC , Mr. Arindam Lahiri, CEO, ASDC, and Mr. Sabari Manohar R, GM, TKM in the presence of Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar Hon’ble Union Minister of State for Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Mr Vikram Gulati, Executive Vice President, TKM.

Aimed at generating talented and technically skilled professionals for the automobile industry,

T-TEP is strongly aligned with “Skill India mission” and so far, been associated with 56 ITI/Polytechnic colleges covering 21 states. Currently more than 10,000 students have been trained and 70% of the students are working in various automobile companies.

On this occasion, Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar Hon’ble Union Minister of State for Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said, “Toyota Kirloskar Motor’s initiative, in collaboration with NSDC and ASDC, to establish skill development centers across the country with a special focus on rural areas will have a big impact in making the students highly skilled, employable, and future ready. This effort is aligned with the Government of India’s Skill India Mission. The government is committed to encouraging, supporting and collaborating with industry partners like Toyota by providing them with a platform that will boost their efforts in bridging the existing skills gap and help develop a workforce of global standards.”

The Minister further added, “Automotive sector is an important pillar of Indian economy and offers huge scope in the manufacturing economy over the next 5-6 years. India can also be the Principal Pole for future of Automobile Sector in India thereby creating huge opportunities for Skilling.

The partnership with Toyota is going to be an important one to shape this new direction to Skilling and also serves as a shining example for other manufacturing companies to partner with Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship through NSDC to take PM’s vision of making India a Global Skills Hub forward”.

Lauding the initiative, Mr. Ved Mani Tiwari, COO and Officiating CEO, NSDC, said, “Automotive industry is growing tremendously and since 2006 T-TEP has become a benchmark in imparting automotive training and providing immense benefits to the automotive service industry and society at large. By partnering with TKM and ASDC, NSDC will not only be able to build a highly skilled technical workforce, with greater career prospects in the automotive service industry, but also enable youngsters earn a decent livelihood by providing them with employment opportunities. This partnership will also encourage other automotive players to step forward in making India a Skill Capital of the World”

Talking about this partnership, Mr. Arindam Lahiri, CEO, ASDC said, “With advancements in technology in the auto industry and unprecedent growth in motorization, we need to ensure that the consumers receive the best-in-class services, especially in rural areas. To align with it we will be needing highly skilled technicians, making it imperative that students at technical training centres have access to advanced technologies and gain hands-on training experience. With this collaboration, training partners will get an opportunity to understand Toyota’s values, best practices, and advanced technologies which will benefit not only the students but also the entire industry, thereby contribute toward the Skill India Mission.”

Expressing his views, Mr.  Vikram Gulati, Executive Vice President, Toyota Kirloskar Motor said, “Toyota is known for its exceptional quality products and services, which stems from developing world-class people, processes, and infrastructure. We are continuously growing and adapting to the changing needs and dynamics of auto industry. Through the T-TEP initiative we are striving to provide talented youths, training, and access to advanced technologies hence this new collaboration with NSDC and ASDC will strengthen the talent available at the grass root level and help them upskill as per the market requirements.”

As a part of this initiative, ASDC will identify the institute as per the requirements and Toyota will support the institute with latest curriculum covering automobile fundamentals, safety, Toyota values and basic soft skills. In addition, the company will provide e-learning content, engines, transmissions, practice kits and train the institute’s faculty through Train The Trainer approach. Further Toyota dealer partner will support skill development centers in sustenance and extend On-Job-Training to all the students. ASDC would support in infrastructure enhancement and ensure student training. TKM, dealer partners and ASDC will also conduct quarterly audits to ensure the training quality. Post successful completion of T-TEP course the student will be certified by Toyota, NSDC & ASDC.