Cascade Family Learning Services Offers Montessori Flexi Education Learning Pods

 * A specially designed program which ensures safety, mental health and well-being of children during Covid times

Cascade Family Learning Services (CFLS), a unique educational ecosystem, today announced the introduction of its Montessori Flexi education learning pods with an intention to empower children, self-direct their learning. Families cooperate to provide the needed facilities-academic and non-academic and come together to form these pods under the guidance of the CFLS team. Keeping the current Covid situation in mind, CFLS has specially designed this program which not only ensures safety, mental health and well-being of children, but also explores home based learning using classroom materials, yearlong parent education on stress-free parenting and supporting students at home.

This program caters to children in the age group of 1 to 18 years. Some of the key elements of the program:

¥ The Toddler Community ( 14 – 36 months of age)

Two or more adults to facilitate their daily routine. The main focus will be on personal hygiene, independent dressing and undressing skills and introduce toileting and food prep appropriate for that age. Also, it provides opportunities to contribute on care of environment, in both indoor and outdoor areas, designed to help the child refine skills based on real-life activities.

¥ Casa or Primary Program (2½–6 years)

This program encourages them to explore, discover and to collaborate with peers. It also inspires self-directed learning, promotes self-confidence, independent thought and action, critical thinking while fostering social-emotional and intellectual growth. Uninterrupted blocks of work time (typically 3 hours in length) allows children to work at their own pace and fully immerse themselves in an activity with undivided attention. This cycle respects individual variations in the learning process, facilitates the development of coordination, concentration, observation, peer interaction, independence and a sense of order while facilitating the child’s assimilation of information.

¥ Elementary program (6–12 years)

This is an individually paced curriculum that challenges children academically and safeguards their well-being and sense of self. Engaging as contributing members of a respectful community, they learn to question, think critically and take responsibility for their own learning skills that would support them in later education and in life.

¥ Adolescent program (12–18 years)

This adolescent program at Cascade is designed to provide a number of socially and culturally relevant discussions for their growing personality that hinges on moral development, while preparing them to live as an adult in the society. Field experiences in two associated rural centres offer deep impressions and systematic understanding of human needs vs earth ethics, combined with a call for action.

Admission of children is based on interviews and discussions with families, besides home visits, to recommend early head-start into screen free experiential learning at home.

Speaking on the flexi program, Ms. Vidya Shankar, Founder, Mentor, Adolescent and certified Montessori Coach and Sports Guide said, “We are proud to be the FIRST educational institution to introduce this unique and flexi program with utmost importance given to the parent-children-guide relationship. We strongly believe parents and guides are the main pillars for the child to construct early impressions on education and their pleasant collaboration in early childhood setting is critically important to the overall development of the child”.

She added, “We have supportive evidence from our extensive research on the impact of educating the child using this unique and collaborative approach. Our research findings have aided us to polish the unique path-breaking tool we developed, a few years ago, that would measure the Child Rights Compliance in schools. The CRCI Index tool is copyrighted and is expected to take-off soon”.

Schools that are keen to certify themselves with the CRCI index on entitlement of rights for children in their school, can apply to our parent organisation Relief Foundation. This tool would also enable parents to educate themselves on the safety and well-being of children if they are admitted into a school with higher order of compliance.

Many parents are currently facing a range of concerns in this pandemic situation, especially lack of continuity in their child’s education and progress, due to the sudden shift from the traditional face-to-face learning to online learning. CFLS has re-calibrated its learning program to address the core issues that have resulted from the pandemic, with counselling and support for parents and children to improve familial relationships while maximising their learning and fear-free, caution-laced gleaning of knowledge from the world happenings.

About Cascade Family Learning Services

CASCADE FLS was started by its 23 year old parent organisation Relief Foundation in 2010, aims to empower families into collaborative learning by offering collective resources in a common space, priming up parents to do Montessori courses and enter the classrooms as guides under the leadership of Ms. Vidya Shankar.

Families have stayed in as a community, helping through the Covid times and providing excellent support online for older students and offline, scheduling with the guides. It is a refreshing and enriching education place for families and children, to learn and grow together!

Koo Launches “Talk To Type” Feature For The Indian Languages

* Becomes First Social Media Platform in the World to launch “Talk to Type” Feature

Koo announces the launch of what they call the Magic “Talk to Type” feature. Anybody who wants to share their thoughts can now do so easily without having to type. They can speak their thoughts out loud and the words will show up magically on the screen. All at the click of a button and without using a keyboard. This will happen in all the Indian languages Koo is currently available in. It’s touted to be the easiest way to share thoughts with people in a native Indian language.

Koo is the first social media platform in the world that is using this “Talk to Type” feature, that too in Indian regional languages, apart from English. This will enable regional language creation in the easiest way possible for millions of Koo users. Many users who are uncomfortable using the keyboard will be enabled and empowered with such a feature.

Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder, Koo said “This “Talk to Type” feature is magical and takes creation for regional language creators to the next level. Users don’t have to use the keyboard anymore and type out lengthy thoughts. India language speakers can now speak their mind and the words will show up on the screen magically! For those who found it difficult to type in local languages, this feature removes all that pain. We will keep adding value to Indians by enabling the easiest localized forms of expression and present their thoughts to India in a seamless way.”

Mayank Bidawatka, Co-founder, Koo said “Our mission at Koo is to connect India and enable a billion Indian voices to express themselves freely in their mother tongue. We will keep simplifying expression for anybody who wants to connect with their audiences. We are very excited to launch the “Talk to Type” feature that enables people to create without typing. All they have to do is hit a button and speak into their phone and the words will magically show up on the screen. It can’t get easier than this! We are first social platform in the world to launch such a feature. You won’t find this on Facebook, Twitter or any other global platform.”

B-Town Celebs Pick New-Age Mobile Platform ‘Celebfie’ As Their Go-To-App For Their Digital Footprint

Amidst the ongoing second wave of pandemic, several Bollywood and Television biggies are doing their bit to help their fans keep entertained and pass their time in a  positive midframe this lockdown. From renowned actors like Sharad Kelkar, Shakti Kapoor, Bhagyashree, Mahima Chaudhary to Rahul Dev and others have been utilising their idle time to interact and connect with their fans directly and more meaningfully through this new-age mobile platform called “Celebfie”.

Celebfie is a marketplace where fans and brands can seamlessly connect with their choicest celebrities from different verticals like Bollywood, Music, TV, Sports and even Authors and Chefs for any requests by just a click on the mobile app. As of now, Celebfie is close to having 300+ carefully chosen celebrities to be part of their “500 premium celeb club”, with many more exciting regional, national and even international celebrity names in the pipeline.

The celebrities have been curating exclusive content for fans on their ‘Celebfie Micro Channels’, which fans and brands can subscribe to for not just the content, but to directly interact with the celebrity and much more. Very soon to release among various innovative and very interesting features coming on Celebfie a AI and ML enabled App, is ‘Celebfie Live’ where fans can request for live video calls, watch live celebrity events & attend live masterclasses and can also enjoy shopping via an experiential ‘C-commerce’ offering where the celebrities will be promoting their merchandise, or the products they use through their special-edition boutiques on the platform.

“I am very happy to join this new platform Celebfie and to be receiving such a warm welcome from the audience. The platform is doing a great job by letting celebrities on board to showcase their creative content and building strong bonds with the fans,” Shakti Kapoor said.

Meanwhile, fitness freak Vindu Dara Singh is thrilled with the kind of response he has been getting on Celebfie. The actor said, “I always wanted to be a part of a platform that actually bridges the gap between celebs and their fans. And guess what, I have got my hands on Celebfie, a perfect blend of all. The kind of options they provide including brand endorsements, promotional video bytes, etc. is an added advantage.”

“We are enabling our Celebrity partners to curate more meaningful, entertaining and exclusive content for their fans and will also be digitally promoting multiple artists who had to compulsively slowdown in these tough times. This pandemic has shown us that when every industry may be forced to slow down, digital has not only survived but thrived, so adapting to this new way of doing business is extremely beneficial, this for sure is the best and a must way forward,” said Raminder Singh, Founder & CEO- Celebfie.

Meanwhile, there is a long list of TV celebs too who have already joined the platform and have motivated a lot of their fans to join Celebfie. Sharad Malhotra, Helly Shah, Shubhangi Atre, Kishwer Merchant, Shekhar Suman, Natasha Suri, Sonu Kakkar, Sana Saeed, Shazahn Padamsee,  Raju Srivastava and Apara Mehta among others.

The fans can now subscribe to directly get access to exclusive BTS, unknown or lesser known insides of their favourite celebs only on Celebfie Micro Channel. To send brand video requests and custom fan requests to your favourite celebrity download the Celebfie App. https://www.celebfie.com/

About Celebfie: Celebfie is a new-age celebrity-fan engagement platform that enables fans and brands to have direct access to the celebrities and their exclusive content. Just by clicking on ‘Book a Celebfie’ fans and brands can now request for customised video messages, social media interactions or private event bookings, and for brands they can put in a request for social media collaborations, promotional video bites, brand endorsements or appearances at events amongst other things.

This Mother's Day, Madame Launches Special Campaign To Honour Their Love And Everlasting Impact

Leading Women's fashion brand Madame with their new campaign is honouring the contribution mothers play in every individual's life. The campaign showcases the bond between a mother and a child, and their everlasting impact. The emotional, supportive and always understanding nature of a mother is depicted very well through the video. 

Stylish western wear women's fashion brand Madame understands what it takes for a mother to juggle work, life and play. They know that moms often put others before themselves and they find that so admirable! To promote this, Madame will soon be launching a video to thank all of the moms out there on Mother’s Day! 

Akhil Jain, Executive Director, Madame, said that the purpose of this campaign is to remind ourselves of the special place mothers hold in our lives and the ways in which they make our lives easy and beautiful, sometimes unbeknownst to us. The core idea behind the launch of the campaign is to secure the customer's trust and faith in the Madame brand, akin to the trust and faith they have in their mothers. The campaign also throws light on the everlasting emotions and their depth which only grows deeper with time and generations, just like a mother's love.

"Madame, as a brand, has dedicated itself to the spirit of Indian women and we wanted to ensure that our campaign reflects our ideology. That is why the team spent long hours working on the concept of the campaign and the video. I would also like to make a special mention for our brand manager Harshit Ralhan who contributed to the ideation of the campaign," says Jain.

A mother and child share an unbreakable and unique bond of love. This year, Mother’s Day will be celebrated on 9th May across the globe. Mr. Jain further stated: "The campaign appeals to our sensitivities because of the subtle interconnection made between the robust place of mothers in our lives and Madame as a trusted brand. Both are not subject to the tides of changing times. They will always be there for you. You would just have to look. The feeling of reassurance is implicit and refreshing. It comforts the heart."

Last year, Madame had launched a special Autumn-Winters collection themed after Warner Bros. Wonder Woman to honour the indomitable spirit of women. The brand has been known for its unique initiative and campaigns which reflect its commitment towards the idea of women empowerment.

About Madame

Madame, a women's fashion brand of western wear was launched in 1993. It caters to a wide range of apparel, handbags, footwear, and accessories for women. The brand provides fast fashion in-trend merchandise, casual wear, and party wear. In-Line with its global image, currently, Madame has 150+ exclusive stores in metros, Tier I & Tier-II cities. Ever since the start of its first store in 2002, the brand has briskly grown across India the brand is available in over 500+ retail outlets across the country. The brand is vented through online markets including Myntra, Ajio, Flipkart and Amazon, and its own online store, Glamly.com.

L&T Technology Services Reports Resilient Q4FY21 To Close FY21 With Strong Execution

 * Q4 Revenue of $197.5mn, up 4% QoQ

* Q4 Net profit of ₹195 crore, up 5% QoQ

L&T Technology Services Limited (BSE: 540115, NSE: LTTS), India’s leading pure-play engineering services company, announced its results for the fourth quarter and full year ended March 31, 2021.

Highlights for Q4FY21 include:

Revenue at ₹14,405 million; growth of 2.8% QoQ

USD Revenue at $197.5 million; growth of 3.9% QoQ

EBIT margin at 16.6%; up 140 bps QoQ

Net profit at ₹1,945 million; growth of 4.5% QoQ

Highlights for FY21 include:

Revenue at ₹54,497 million; decline of 3%

USD Revenue at $737 million; decline of 6.3%

EBIT margin at 14.5%

Net profit at ₹6,633 million; decline of 19%

Board has recommended a final dividend of ₹14.50 per share

During the quarter, LTTS won 6 deals with TCV of USD10 million plus, which includes 2 USD25 million plus deals. Revenues from digital and leading-edge technologies stood at 52% during the quarter.

“We are exiting FY21 on an optimistic note post three consecutive quarters of strong deal wins and sequential revenue and operating margin improvement. The annual free cash flow generation at ₹1,252 crores was at a record high. I am happy to note that in Q4, our revenue is back on the positive year-over-year growth path.

We are seeing healthy deal win closures and pipeline build up as customers look for innovation and digital led transformation to strengthen their market positioning. Across all our five segments, we are investing in disruptive technologies and design labs to further the growth.

As we continue to execute in an environment made difficult by Covid uncertainties, I would like to thank our employees for their commitment, customer focus and resilience that has helped us deepen strategic relationships”, said Amit Chadha, CEO & Managing Director, L&T Technology Services Limited.

Industry Recognitions:

·   LTTS has been recognized as a ‘Leader’ for Development and Verification & Validation services in Industry 4.0 by Everest Group

·   ISG Group rated LTTS as ‘Leader’ in Smart Manufacturing Services for Automotive and Hi-Tech

·   LTTS won the 2021 Big Innovation Awards, USA for Chest rAI™ and i-BEMS™.

·    For its Solar Electrification tribal village project, LTTS was conferred with the Mahatma Award for CSR Excellence.

Patents

At the end of the fourth quarter, the patents portfolio of L&T Technology Services stood at 650, out of which 485 are co-authored with its customers and the remaining 165 have been filed by LTTS.

Human Resources

At the end of Q4FY21, LTTS’ employee strength stood at 16,452.

About L&T Technology Services Ltd

L&T Technology Services Limited (LTTS) is a listed subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Limited focused on Engineering and R&D (ER&D) services. We offer consultancy, design, development and testing services across the product and process development life cycle. Our customer base includes 69 Fortune 500 companies and 53 of the world’s top ER&D companies, across industrial products, medical devices, transportation, telecom & hi-tech, and the process industries. Headquartered in India, we have over 16,400 employees spread across 17 global design centers, 28 global sales offices and 69 innovation labs as of March 31, 2021.

Plaksha University Partners With The Edutech Giant Anthology

* To deploy Anthology’s enterprise applications and solution suite to deliver a world-class higher education experience to its students

Plaksha, an upcoming technology university for the future, has partnered with Anthology to leverage Anthology’s enterprise applications and solution suite including Anthology Student International, Anthology Reach, Anthology Finance & HCM, Anthology Payroll and a host of enterprise level applications, to provide a world-class higher education experience to its students and meet the expectations of next generation learners, faculties, and university staff members. With its APAC & EMEA headquarters in Bengaluru, Anthology is a leading US based edutech organization and most of its Research & Development (R&D) is carried out of its Bengaluru facility in India. Anthology is proud to extend its digital solutions to Plaksha, located in Mohali, Punjab.

Anthology has been empowering higher education universities across the globe for over 30 years by transforming their conventional campuses into digital campuses. Plaksha is working closely with top IIT faculty members and has a 50-acre campus with research labs, library, an innovation centre, and maker space with state-of-the-art infrastructure.

With Anthology’s customizable and robust enterprise applications suite, Plaksha will handle the core university processes by reaching its students and engaging with them across channels throughout their student lifecycle including CRM and examinations. This solution will eliminate redundancy and ensure the highest degree of integrity through its data and analytics services.

“Plaksha’s vision to create ethical problem solvers and fearless leaders who transform the world through advances in science and technology, resonates with our vision at Anthology. As we share this vision, we are motivated to work with Plaksha to enable them to reach their full potential using technology”, says Mr. Raj Mruthyunjayappa, MD & SVP – International Operations at Anthology.

Using our next generation enterprise applications and solutions, institutional needs such as identifying at-risk students early in their academic careers, creating individual support plans, and enabling students to excel in their field is made easy.

Anthology Student International is designed to not only provide security and stability but also consistency. The solution will allow Plaksha to seamlessly integrate with learning management systems and other technology solutions. Its core design principles provide an effective user experience.

The technology components of our ERP solution will ensure a superior online and classroom learning experience and facilitate the management of academic records, curriculum management, student academic progress, and graduation processing. It will also facilitate positive engagement with various communities to promote research and entrepreneurship.

Anthology’s enterprise applications and solutions are built using Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Power BI, and are designed to harness the collective power of world-class technologies and decades of higher education expertise. Using the cloud-based, mobile-enabled Anthology’senterprise applications suite, institutions have 24/7 access to their accounts and information. Faculty and staff teams are able to use enterprise-wide data to power reports and analytics for informed decision making from anywhere.

About Anthology

Campus Labs, Campus Management and iModules have joined together to form Anthology. We exist to help higher education advance and thrive. Through a connected data experience that offers a holistic view, creates efficiencies, and provides intelligence, Anthology inspires constituents to reach their full potential using technology insights in admission and enrolment management; student success and retention; institutional and learning effectiveness; alumni and advancement; and enterprise applications and infrastructure. Anthology partners with more than 2,100 colleges and institutions in over 30 countries to address the needs of all constituents in higher education.

Lam Research Commits $1 Million To Battle Against COVID-19 In India

* Funds will go to local charities and the Direct Relief organization to provide critical medical supplies and support

Lam Research today announced it will donate $1 million (~7.5 cr INR) for COVID-19 relief and recovery efforts in India​. The funds will support both local efforts in Bangalore and the Direct Relief organization’s efforts to provide oxygen concentrators and other critical medical supplies to health care providers in communities across India.

Additionally, the company has established a two-for-one matching gift campaign for monetary donations made by its global employees to eligible COVID-19 relief programs supporting India.

“It is heartrending to see the suffering of so many communities in the country,” said Rangesh Raghavan, corporate vice president and general manager at Lam Research India. “Here at Lam, we are committed to standing strong with the nation during these very difficult times. Given the massive scale and rapid pace of this health crisis, together with the global leadership team at Lam, we decided to accelerate and strengthen our funding to support those most affected.”

Throughout 2020, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team at Lam Research India, has invested in education and COVID-19 relief, including designing and funding Suraksha kiosks used for sample collection that put a protective physical barrier between healthcare professionals and patients as well as donated personal protective equipment (PPE) kits to government-run hospitals.

Over the last few weeks, the CSR team has engaged with local NGOs, authorities, and healthcare professionals to prepare an even more broad and meaningful strategy in the fight against COVID-19.

“We are humbled to be able to support those on the front lines, as well as families who are most vulnerable in our community,” Raghavan added.

In 2020, Lam Research gave each employee around the world below the director level a support payment to empower employees to use this relief funding where they believe it will have the greatest impact. This initiative reached over 90% of Lam’s approximately 10,700 employees.

With more than 1,000 employees in Bengaluru, the Lam Research India site plays a crucial role in working on the leading edge of the semiconductor innovation cycle.