Billionaire Mukesh Ambani has raised the promoter stake in flagship Reliance Industries by 2.71 percent to 48.87 per cent, according to regulatory filing by the company.
Reliance Services and Holdings Ltd, controlled by promoter group firm Petroleum Trust, acquired 17.18 crore shares or 2.71 percent stake in Reliance on September 13, it said.
The acquisition was pursuant to a scheme of arrangement not directly involving Reliance, the filing said without giving details.
Ambani and his private firms held 47.29 percent stake as on June 30, 2019 in India's second-most valuable company.
As on June 30, FIIs held 24.4 percent stake in the firm, mutual funds had 4.56 percent and insurance companies 7.1 percent. The remaining share was with public.
Earlier in July, Reliance had announced a composite scheme of amalgamation by merging Reliance Holding USA into Reliance Energy Generation and Distribution and the latter with the company itself.
Recently, Reliance Industries’ retail subsidiary Reliance Retail, which pegs the number of kirana stores in India at more than seven million, said it is readying a technology platform to bring small retailers into its fold as part of its "new commerce" plan. At present, Reliance Retail's revenue is Rs 130,000 crore - the largest retailer in India so far.
The Indian conglomerate plans to use AI, machine learning, Blockchain, and cloud computing to help kirana stores become competitive. With this move, it will gain data of 900 million Indians, which will help it become a full-stack data company. Not only will it have B2C consumption data, but it will also have B2B data from kiranas and Jio. YourStoryreported this first on May 6.
Reliance Retail has data of 350 million Indian shoppers. With Jio, it has accumulated data of 300 million telecom consumers. Now, with this "New Commerce" move, Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced a gargantuan plan at the 42nd Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Reliance Industries to go after data, and at the centre of it is a data-based architecture.
Online lingerie retailer Zivame has raised fresh funding of about Rs 25 crore from Indiblu Investment Advisors, Avendus Capital, and Avezo Advisors, as part of the company's Series C funding round, the company said in a MCA filing.
The Bengaluru-based company operates on a two-company model (a standard in all e-commerce businesses) with Actoserba Active Wholesale Pvt Ltd (“Actoserba”) and Mila Star Retail Pvt Ltd (“Mila Star”). The fresh capital has been infused in the e-commerce business.
While Zivame denied commenting on the transaction, sources in the company said, that the fresh funds will be used to support usual scale of the company.
The company had raised funding of Rs 60 crore as part of a bridge round in March 2019, led by Zodius Technology Fund, with participation from HNIs, and Allana Investment and Trading Company.
Started in 2011 by Richa Kar and Kapil Karekar, Zivame started out as a marketplace for the lingerie brands, and later expanded its offerings with activewear, sleepwear, and shapewear. Now, the company has its own private label.
Zivame has been trying to reinvent itself ever since the founders exited the company. Over the years, Zivame has taken an omnichannel route, and has about 31 offline stores all over the country. It is now looking to expand to more than 60 stores in a years’ time to all major malls and high streets with a special focus on Tier 1 cities, the company had said in March.
Back in 2015, Zivame had raised Series C funding worth Rs 250 crore led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad (Government of Malaysia’s strategic investment fund), and Zodius Technology Fund, with participation from its existing investors Unilazer, IDG Ventures, and Kalaari Capital. In May 2018, Zodius Capital had increased its stake to at least 45 percent in Zivame by acquiring stakes from Kalaari Capital, and IDG Ventures India.
Zivame competes with Noida-based lingerie brand Clovia, which raised $10 million in a fresh round of funding led by Singapore-based private equity firm AT Capital, in the beginning of the year.
According to E&Y, the retail industry is estimated to be at $650 billion, with organised retailing only accounting for $65 billion, including e-commerce. With its e-commerce and omnichannel strategy, Clovia is focusing on smaller towns, where the market is estimated to be nearly $300 million in size.
T-Hub, an initiative of the Telangana government for startups, on Wednesday signed a tripartite MoU with Choose New Jersey, an economic development organisation, and VentureLink to collaborate in the areas of startup innovation, funding, and entrepreneurship,
Under the agreement, two individuals per startup (to be selected based on certain criteria) will get complimentary space for two months in VentureLink, a community hub for technology companies at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, T Hub said in a press release.
Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Industries and IT, Telangana State, said,
“Over the years, the Telangana government has been able to attract global corporate US giants like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Deloitte, and Amazon, among others to set up their offices in India. The partnership today with ‘VentureLink’ and ‘Choose New Jersey’ is another such milestone for us, as it will create a nexus and boost the startup innovation ecosystems of both the countries (India and the US)."
The MoU will promote technology and investment exchange between New Jersey and India through collaboration between T-Hub, VentureLink, and Choose New Jersey, it said. The tie-up will support joint research and development in areas of common interest between the parties.
New Jersey is one of the top sites in the world for access to innovation capital, with some of the biggest names in venture capital located there.
In the last five years, New Jersey has recorded over $60 billion in venture capital investments.
Under the MoU, T-Hub will enable the selected startups to get direct access to relevant funding opportunities via VentureLink, the release added.
BVR Mohan Reddy, Director on the Board, T-Hub, and former Regional Chairman, CII, said,
“T-Hub has always upheld its commitment in making proactive efforts, right decisions, and effective collaborations to strengthen the ecosystem. The MoU signed today will provide growth opportunities for the innovation ecosystems of both the geographies. It will enable Indian startups to explore business scaling opportunities in new geographies.”
Time and again, whistleblowers have played an essential and legitimate role in revealing organisational crime around the globe. The concept of whistleblowing on behalf of one’s government dates back to 7th century England.
India became familiar with the idea of whistleblowing thanks to the 14,000 crore Satyam scam in 2009, when India’s metro-man E Sreedharan, alerted the then-Planning Commission deputy Montek Singh Ahluwalia, landing B Ramalinga Raju in jail.
Despite the rare heroic applause, investigations in MNCs reveal that whistleblowers have often lost jobs. If the finger is pointed at a CXO, the board is faced with the question, “whom am I willing to let go?”
That's because a majority of organisation espouse the “perform at any cost” culture, making unethical practices flourish. These usually include organisations where internal fraud goes unaddressed and eventually brings about the downfall of the company. Boards must take tough decisions, even at the cost of short term performance losses.
Whistleblowers could potentially restore ill-gotten gains and offer reinforcement to the corporate governance mosaic, however they continue to struggle to establish the legitimacy of their role in the eyes of society.
Key factors that deter whistleblowers from coming forward include-
Reputation of the perpetrator: Dinesh Dubey, a former Allahabad Bank director, cried foul about the number of times he had raised objections to unsanctioned loans for Nirav Modi; all of which fell on deaf ears. The reputation of Nirav Modi, as a powerful businessman and the first Indian jeweller to be featured on the cover of Sotheby's and Christie's auction catalogues, was a deterrent.
Pliant and handpicked independent directors: When the leadership lacks integrity and appoints stooges all around, whistleblowers find themselves in a helpless situation. Sherron Watkins, VP at Enron Corp, found herself singled out, when she sounded the alarm on the company’s fraudulent accounting practices that ultimately led to its collapse.
Onus of proof: Establishing fraud is extremely challenging; a group of uncoordinated and disconnected people may be involved. The whistleblower’s morality, resourcefulness and determination are key to do the paperwork required to raise a ‘formal stink’. In the case of ICICI Bank, Arvind Gupta wrote to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, to add gravitas to his claim.
Media support: Media undoubtedly serves as the springboard - to establish credibility for the whistleblower in the eyes of the public. Whistleblowers have no training to present themselves in a credible manner.
The good news is that in India, the Whistleblowers Protection Act, 2014 enables any person to report an act of corruption, wilful misuse of power or discretion, or criminal offence by a public servant; this was amended in 2015 to leave out matters relating to national security.
This has definitely brought in a culture where well-governed companies take up internal whistleblower allegations at the board level and conduct an unbiased investigation into the allegations with no focus on who the whistleblower is.
Today, whistleblowers have moved on from sending quiet letters to regulators, to actively pursue cases of deemed fraud, alerting whoever necessary to bring justice. Case in point being Bengaluru-based entrepreneur Hari Prasad who wrote to the Prime Minister’s office (PMO) in July 2016, drawing the attention of the authorities towards Mehul Choksi’s story and the Gitanjali scam. Choksi is also believed to be a key player in the 14,000 crore Nirav Modi-PNB fraud loans case of March 2018.
There have been a few noticeable infamous incidents where either the whistle-blower has been harmed, threatened and / or made to feel vulnerable. There is Satendra Dubey’s infamous case of 2003 which shocked the country where this engineer employed with NHAI was murdered after he exposed corruption in road projects under his watch.
International examples abound as well.
Harry Templeton, who initially blew the whistle on the Daily Mirror ’s 400 million pound pension in 1988, was fired from the company under the pretext of threatening another worker. “You have to remember, companies don’t sack someone for blowing the whistle,” Templeton says. When media mogul Robert Maxwell died in 1991, the murky details proved that Templeton had been telling the truth.
Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on NSA activities 10 years before the infamous Edward Snowden did, obeyed US whistleblower laws, and raised his concerns through official channels. Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally. The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington.
Fugitives
Readers will be amazed to know that whistleblowers exist not just in corporates but among relief workers as well. Refugee workers in Kenya, Uganda and Yemen blew the whistle, accusing that UNHCR staff members and suspected brokers were asking refugees to pay to start a new life in the West. The refugees who spoke out were subject to physical violence, withholding of food rations, changes in their refugee status, being blocked from receiving UNHCR assistance, death threats and arrest. Many had to flee and find alternative shelters.
There is an equal number of people who feel that the Whistleblowers Protection Act, 2014 has not been implemented fully. Activists of the National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information (NCPRI) say that in the last five years, scores of people have been killed and many more attacked and victimised for coming forward to report on corruption and wrongdoing.
It is true that while SEBI mandates listed companies to create guidelines around whistleblower mechanisms, it lacks the checks and balances needed to address lapses. As part of a corporate governance guideline, regulators must check if companies (at least listed companies are publishing the same visibly in their annual reports). Just this internal awareness will deter perpetrators while encouraging employees to come forward with information without fear.
A strong internal whistleblower policy will also protect the company’s reputation. The prevention of corruption Act 1988 allows leniencies in case companies have reported such incidents within 7 days; so when a company can demonstrate that they have taken cognisance of the complaint, the law takes the same into account and shows leniency towards the corporate while acting on perpetrators.
The flip side is that there will be times that a disenchanted whistleblower will levy frivolous allegations to settle personal scores. Under the circumstances, it is better to have looked into the allegation rather than dismissing it as one would never know the difference between genuine and frivolous.The focus of investigations must be proving the veracity of the allegations rather than the identity and motivation of the alleger. The latter may give rise to frivolous allegations - which may prevent the real irregularities from emerging.
Statistics have proven that most allegations come from employees or shareholders with genuine goodwill for the company. But when it comes to business investigation and risk intelligence for organisations, whistleblowers are a much-needed medicine.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)
In August 2016, some developers got the wind of a mystery codebase on Github and identified a source code for a next generation operating system. This led to a revelation that Google is ambitiously working on developing a new OS. However, the attempt to bring forward a successor to its existing Android mobile OS has been only under the lids since then.
Fuchsia OS has also been an impending mystery for the developer community across the world. It is only natural to be curious about how the next generation of the world’s best-selling mobile operating system would look like, and more importantly what it would do.
The interesting thing about Fuchsia is that it is completely developed and managed by Google itself, while Android, the open-source OS, was majorly managed by its independent users.
Though Google has not uttered a single word on any developments of this Area 51 like project, Hiroshi Lockheimer, Chief of Android and Chrome OS, during a live recording at the tech giant’s flagship annual summit Google I/O told The Verge:
“We’re looking at what a new take on an operating system could be like. I know people out there are getting pretty excited saying, ‘Oh this is the new Android,’ or, ‘This is the new Chrome OS’. Fuchsia is really not about that. Fuchsia is about just pushing the state of the art in terms of operating systems and things that we learn from Fuchsia we can incorporate into other products.”
Right now, Android OS powers all kinds of mobile devices like smartphones, tablet PCs, Wear OS for wearables like smartwatches, and Android Auto for navigation in automobiles. When the next generation operating system arrives, all eyes point toward extension of applications to even embedded systems.
In January 2018, Ars Technica reported that Fuchsia OS worked for laptops. Google’s laptop model Pixelbook, which actually works on Chrome OS, was tested by Ars Technica with the Fuchsia OS, and it was found that the system actually underwent a boot.
Besides having developed Android, Google also came up with Chrome OS in June 2011, which is also a Linux Kernel-powered operating system, rooting from the free Chromium OS. Using the browser Google Chrome as its primary user interface (UI), the OS supports all kinds of web applications. Subsequently, the data of the users stays in the cloud.
What’s inside Fuchsia OS?
Fuchsia OS is powered by Zircon (named after the Zirconium Silicate mineral). While Android runs on Linux Kernel, the developer website fuchsia.dev suggests that the new OS would be powered by Zircon, a microkernel, formerly known as ‘magenta’. The website, though currently not fully functional, also gives the public access to documentation data and prospective news on code development and features.
However, the difference between a microkernel like Zircon and a monolithic kernel is that in the former, all the user and kernel services like scheduler, basic IPC, VFS, virtual memory, and device drivers are stored in separate address spaces, while in a monolithic kernel, the user and kernel services are kept in the same address space.
In case a service crashes, only a part of the microkernel gets affected, but the entire system goes down if a service crashes in a monolithic kernel. This gives the foundation a lot more space to build an advanced OS like Fuchsia on top of it.
At present, the original software suite of Android comes along with the mobile devices. This Google-developed software, called Google Mobile Services, offers a standard set of applications like Google Play and its complementing services - Gmail, Google Search, and Chrome.
As of May 2017, Android mobile OS had more than two billion MAUs (monthly active users), and as of December 2018, Google Play Store featured more than 2.6 million apps.
Volkswagen Finance on Wednesday said it has picked up 25 percent stake in Chennai-based instant lending digital platform Kuwy Technology Service.
As part of the deal, the company, which supports Volkswagen Group customers in India by facilitating financing and insurance solutions, will now have access to Kuwy's pan-country network related to car financing.
"At Volkswagen Finance, we always try to add more value to our offerings and this association is a step towards the evolution of the consumer journey in the digital space," the company's MD and CEO Aashish Deshpande said in a statement.
The aim is to offer a simplified and agile solution to the company's customers, he added.
The company, however, did not share financial details.
Volkswagen Finance's association with Kuwy will help improve efficiency in processes and reduce the loan processing time, making it a win-win for both dealers and customers.
The partners will also offer finance, insurance and warranty products for Volkswagen group customers on Kuwy platform.
"We are confident of delivering comprehensive digital solutions to the Volkswagen Finance network and aiming for a mutual growth in the digital space," Kuwy Technology Service CEO B Ganesh Kumar said.
Mumbai-based Volkswagen Finance Pvt Ltd (VWFPL) was incorporated in 2009 and is owned by Germany's Volkswagen Financial Services AG, which is a wholly-owned unit of auto major Volkswagen AG.
Volkswagen Financial Services employs around 16,267 persons worldwide.
Kuwy employs over 72 people across 70 locations in the country.
Earlier this month, a retail-focused automotive leasing startup OTO Capital has raised Rs 10 crore from early-stage venture capital fund Prime Venture Partners. The Mumbai-based startup had earlier received Rs 5 crore in a Pre-Series A round of funding in December 2018, led by Venture Catalysts, along with serial entrepreneur K Ganesh and Sameer Sawhney, previously Managing Director at ANZ India.
Bengaluru-based self driving car rental firm, Zoomcar India secured a fund infusion of Rs 14.14 crore ($1.98 million) from its US-based parent entity, Zoomcar Inc, regulatory filings made with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) showed.
According to the RoC filings, Zoomcar India Private Limited issued 28,484 equity shares of Rs 10 each, at a premium of Rs 4,956 per share.
Since January 2019, Zoomcar has secured about Rs 70 crore – in both equity and debt - from various entities including its US-based parent, Mahindra, Blacksoil Capital, Mahaveer Dwellers, Trifecta and others.
Founded in 2013 by David Back and Greg Moran, the startup is a self-drive rental company. In January 2018, Zoomcar claimed that it had turned EBITDA-profitable in December 2017.
In FY18, it reported a revenue of Rs 158 crore, which is 32 percent higher than the Rs 120 crore it reported in FY17.
Its expenses, which was at Rs 225 crore in FY17 rose to Rs 274 crore for FY18. Additionally, its loss widened by about 10 percent from Rs 105 crore in FY17 to Rs 116 crore in FY18. The company is yet to file its annual returns for FY19 with RoC.
Last month, the company announced a partnership with ticketing and travel portal ixigo which has enabled it to offer its rental services through ixigo's platform.
Shared mobility startups have been gaining traction in India, at a time when country’s millennials have been preferring to use these services without worrying about vehicle loans and EMIs. Zoomcar and Drivezy are tapping these young customers who are fond of the shared economy and prefer an asset-light lifestyle.
Seeing the vast potential, even ride-hailing service platform Ola Cabs, has forayed into self-driven car rental business. Recently the homegrown cab aggregator obtained a licence to launch a self-drive car rental service from the Karnataka State Transport Department.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved an ordinance for banning production, import, distribution and sale of electronic cigarettes and proposed a jail term for those violating the provisions, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.
First-time violators will face a jail term of up to one year and a fine of Rs 1 lakh. For subsequent offences, a jail term of up to three years or a fine of Rs 5 lakh, or both have been prescribed.
Sitharaman, who had headed a Group of Ministers (GoM) on the issue, said the Cabinet decided to ban e-cigarettes and similar products as they pose a health risk to people, especially the youth.
Union Health Secretary Preeti Sudan said a debate on whether e- cigarettes and similar products are more harmful than tobacco cigarettes was of little help.
"Why are we debating whether it is more or less harmful...it is a good move to ban it," she told reporters at the cabinet briefing here.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said it is a preventive step and it is always better to prevent health risks at a later stage of life.
The ordinance will come into force once approved by the President. It will be converted into a bill in the next session of Parliament.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan is out of the country and was not present in Wednesday's Cabinet meeting.
Cigarette stocks gained up to 5.5 percent on Wednesday after the Cabinet approved an ordinance for banning production, import, distribution and sale of electronic cigarettes.
Shares of Godfrey Phillips India jumped 5.55 percent and Golden Tobacco climbed 4.69 percent on the BSE.
Likewise, VST Industries rose by 3.43 percent and ITC gained 1.03 percent.
The Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation in February had written to all state drug controllers, saying they should not allow sale, online sale, manufacture, distribution, trade, import or advertisement of ENDS like e-cigarettes and e-hookah with nicotine flavour.
Flipkart, India’s leading ecommerce marketplace, has revamped the experience for consumers seeking to buy beauty care products on its platform ahead of the upcoming festive season.
A release from Flipkart said that to boost transparency and assist customers with selecting the right product from the vast range on the platform, it has consolidated brand/product images and images from actual customers under one tab.
Beauty is one of the fastest-growing product categories online, and Flipkart currently hosts over 20,000 brands who sell more than 10 lakh products in this segment.
According to Flipkart, the new features introduced will make it easier for consumers to discover and select products, as well as assure them of their authenticity.
Under the new initiative, it has also collated and classified user reviews according to the sentiment they convey or the product aspect they highlight – from whether it is ‘true to colour’ to whether the scent of the perfume lasts for as long as the brand claims.
Cosmetic products typically come in 15-20 variants, which has, in the past, posed a challenge for customers when shopping online, as they had to switch between multiple pages or tabs. Flipkart has now simplified and shortened this process by showing swatches of all the available shades on the product page itself, making it much more convenient to compare.
Knowing that consumers like to see how make-up and cosmetics look on them before purchasing, Flipkart has introduced an in-app feature called ‘Try and Buy’, wherein customers can choose their skin tone and see for themselves which shade they prefer. Users can pick a product shade, compare variants, and toggle ‘ON’ and ‘OFF’ between their pre- and post look before making their final decision.
The beauty and personal care industry is growing at a fast pace in India, helped by online sales, which have crossed the $400 million mark in 2018, up from $100 million in 2014, according to industry reports. The rapid growth in India is in line with a global trend that will expectedly see the global market for online beauty and personal care products grow exponentially.
With India’s growing youth population and the middle classes’ increasing disposable income, grooming has become an integral part of contemporary Indian lifestyles. Consumers are willing to spend more to look and feel at their best, and online shopping has proved to be a popular choice for customers looking to satisfy their Personal Care needs.
Nishit Garg, Vice-President of Books, General Merchandise and Home at Flipkart, said,
“All our initiatives are designed to make the online purchase journey as seamless and convenient as possible for our customers, so we can build their trust in this key segment. These steps will empower them to make the best choices and create an enjoyable online experience for them.”
Users in India can now speak to Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa in Hindi to carry out tasks like checking cricket scores, requesting for songs and even asking how she's doing.
Launched in India in 2017, Alexa was able to understand and pronounce names of popular places, names and songs in regional languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Punjabi but supported commands only in English.
With the latest update, Alexa can now understand customers speaking to her completely in Hindi and Hinglish.
Alexa, which competes with digital assistants like Apple's Siri and Google Assistant, is available across Amazon's Echo range of devices as well as products from brands like Bose, MyBox, iBall and Syska.
"India has uniquely challenged our AI teams with its cultural and linguistic diversity. We have worked to ensure that customers can interact with Alexa in different regional variants of colloquial Hindi," Amazon Vice President and Head Scientist, Alexa AI, Rohit Prasad told reporters.
He added that along with Amazon's own team, many Indian users contributed to Hindi development through the Cleo skill on Alexa.
Prasad said Alexa already has 500 "skills" for Hindi language and the firm will continue to work with developers in India to introduce more such skills.
Skills are capabilities like providing weather forecasts, ordering cabs or telling stories by simply asking Alexa to do so. Over 90,000 skills are available for Alexa worldwide with a significant number catering to Indian users.
Prasad said Alexa has been equipped with a rich Hindi vocabulary and speaks in fluent Hindi while responding to customer requests.
He indicated that other languages could also be introduced in the future.
While all Amazon Echo smart speakers like Echo Dot, Echo Show 5 and Echo Input and select smart speakers from Bose will get the update right away, brands such as Motorola, MyBox, Boat, Portronics, Fingers, Sony, iBall and Dish will launch and update their existing Alexa-built in devices to support Hindi soon.
In August last year, Amazon had announced the launch of a new skill 'Cleo' to enable users to teach Alexa local Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi and Bengali. This, it had said, would also help the e-commerce giant improving Alexa's speech recognition capabilities as well.
Last year, Amazon had also started making its e-commerce marketplace available in Hindi to users in India to enable the next 100 million users to shop online.
Tech companies like Google and Amazon are betting on vernacular languages as reports suggest that 90 percent of new internet users in India are native language speakers. This makes it imperative for these tech companies to offer rich experience in local languages in India, that is witnessing strong growth in internet usage as well as consumption of connected devices.
“B2B sales have evolved from an art to a science,” according to authors Tim Colter, Mingyu Guan, Mitra Mahdavian, Sohail Razzaq, and Jeremy D. Schneider. They point to a number of developments and innovations that are changing the very nature of the profession. As their data confirms, organisations that embrace this shift are pulling ahead of their peers in terms of revenue growth, profitability and shareholder value.
Digital and advanced analytics are helping businesses focus on understanding the ‘what, why, and when’ of their customers’ businesses, better. And to help the local ecosystem learn more and leverage the possibilities with this evolution, LinkedIn and YourStory are curating an exclusive, by-invitation-only event titled ‘Built to Scale - the Science of Accelerating B2B Revenues’ together with industry leaders, LinkedIn experts and key players from the B2B SaaS ecosystem in Chennai.
Experts on the accelerating B2B revenues
Optimising sales is a fundamental requirement for any B2B business looking to achieve scalable growth, and the event will be truly impactful for any professional influencing sales strategies and looking to harness technology to drive new and sustained growth, including CEOs, founders, Chief Revenue and Commercial Officers, sales and marketing heads and regional sales leaders.
Bringing together key stakeholders from the ecosystem, conversations at the event will focus on key trends shaping the future of B2B sales, the mindset, methods and metrics to focus on for accelerating growth, how to align sales and marketing priorities for predictable revenue, how industry stalwarts are using LinkedIn for business and success stories and best practices from across the globe.
Chennai, a city on the pulse of India’s thriving SaaS industry
With over US $1 billion in revenue, a workforce of around 15,000, and having attracted investments to the tune of US $ 500 million from investors, Chennai is pivoting around its SaaS industry that’s driving the B2B landscape. The city is home to two unicorns - Freshworks and Zoho (both SaaS-led enterprises), who have managed to cross the $ 500 million revenue mark while companies like OrangeScape have reached more than 10,000 customers across 160 countries. Startups such as Chargebee, Cloudberry, Mad Street Den continue to bring new value to the SaaS ecosystem as veterans like Ramco Systems continue to make a global impact.
Exceptionally curated speakers and topics
Kicking off with a welcome address by Alok Soni of YourStory after the networking lunch, the first session will have Edward Hunter, Head of LinkedIn Sales Solutions in India, talking about ‘The Next Era of Evolution in Sales.’ Next up, Prasanna Krishnamoorthy, a Partner at Upekkha Catalyst (an organisation that helps SaaS businesses scale in the most capital-efficient way), will expand on ‘Scaling Revenues with B2B Hierarchy of Needs.’
Following this, Sannidhi Jhala, Senior Sales Productivity Consultant at LinkedIn (APAC), will focus on the what, why and how of modern sales enablement. Tapan Acharya, CRO of Arvind Internet (whose proprietary technology stack connects inventory and customers across online and offline channels) will speak next on winning sales strategies for the B2B world.
Last on the agenda is a panel discussion moderated by Alok Soni featuring Srividhya V.S, Head of Sales Effectiveness at Infosys; Prakash Ramnath, Director of Global Marketing and Partnerships at Ramco; and Jayati Singh, Global Marketing Head, Tally Solutions, on thinking globally and acting locally, before ending with high tea and networking.
Earlier this year, IBM acquired Open Source heavyweight Red Hat for a landmark $34 billion in the largest software acquisition in history. According to Red Hat Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jim Whitehurst, it was an ‘opportunity to bring more open source innovation to an even broader range of organizations.’ A strong advocate of how open source fosters innovation and is disrupting the world of traditional proprietary software, Jim believes it is important to open up all non-proprietary data and technology.
Jim’s leadership journey began as a Partner at Boston Consulting Group, following which he took over as Chief Operating Officer at Delta Air Lines. Jim took over as CEO of Red Hat in 2009. Borrowing from the open source principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration, Jim says, “the blueprint for success in any organization includes engagement, rewarding meritocracy, and healthy debate”. In his book, The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance, he writes about the transformative effects of openness in an organization at the deepest and highest levels. He describes the open organization as “an organization that engages participative communities both inside and out—responds to opportunities more quickly, has access to resources and talent outside the organization, and inspires, motivates, and empowers people at all levels to act with accountability.”
Jim was named one of the World’s Best CEOs by Barron’s in 2018. Under his leadership, Red Hat’s stock price grew 900 percent, with revenues growing to over $3 billion in 2018. The company was part of the Forbes’ World’s Most Innovative Companies list in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.
Red Hat has been a technology and business model innovator throughout its 25-year history.
Jim and Naren Gupta, Co-founder and Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners and Chairman of the Board at Red Hat, have worked closely for more than 10 years. Naren is a seasoned technology entrepreneur and leader and an experienced early-stage investor. He was the co-founder of Integrated Systems and its CEO for 15 years, where he led the company to a leadership position in embedded software and a storied public offering.
Nexus Venture Partners is a leading India-focused venture capital firm with $1.5 billion under management focused on enterprise technology and consumer Internet. Nexus is an early backer of several notable companies, including Snapdeal, Delhivery, Pubmatic, Olx, Sedemac, Gluster, Druva, Eka, Postman, Unacademy, Paysense, Turtlemint, cloud.ai, Jumbotail, Observe.AI, Pratilipi, Rapido, Zolo, Postman, H2O.ai, Hasura, Rancher Labs, Kaltura and Minio.
Watch Jim and Naren in a candid conversation in Bengaluru on October 15, 2019, where they will discuss what it takes to win; and the importance of company culture, organization structure and processes, as a startup evolves into a market leader, and ultimately an impact-making global company. They will discuss their shared belief in Open Source Software as a key requirement for business innovation in the future; the principles behind an open organization; and Red Hat’s journey that culminated in one of the biggest software acquisitions in history.
Bengaluru-based Nestaway Technologies officially announced the launch of its independent subsidiary Hello World on Wednesday.
Hello World, which has been around for the last five months, focusses on co-living and student housing and is already 10,000 beds strong.
At present, it is available in 15 cities, including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR, Pune, Kota, and Dehradun. The home rental startup claims that Hello World has recorded a 90 percent occupancy rate in the last five months.
In a statement, Nestaway founder Jitendra Jagadev said,
"It is important for urban migrants to find a sense of belonging in a new city and a place to call home. Our key factor will always be to provide emotional safety to our customers while encouraging community living. At Hello World, we host well-designed community events that bind the residents together, enriching them emotionally."
A Hello World membership will provide students and urban migrants access to engaging community activities, weekly gatherings, and an online community to exchange conversations, common interests, and meet like-minded people.
It will also provide additional benefits including therapy dogs on properties, free food samples for a day, community gatherings in the building, smart-tech security systems, housekeeping services, round-the-clock concierge service, and internal transfers to any other property.
Moreover, Hello World charges one month's rent as security deposit - at zero brokerage fee.
Additionally, it provides free stay for parents who come to meet their children. Hello World by Nestaway is also LGBTQIA+ friendly, claims the startup.
The subsidiary leases out entire plots of land or buildings to develop purpose-built rental houses. The startup plans to launch Hello World in nine more cities, aiming to reach 50,000 plus beds in the next year.
Kolkata-based Wow! Momo Foods, which owns and operates two quick-service restaurant brands Wow! Momo and Wow! China, on Thursday said it had closed its latest Series B funding worth $23 million led by Tiger Global.
According to the firm, it will use the capital to further scale its operations backed with disruptive research and development to reach out to a larger consumer base within the country.
A large part of the funding in the current round by Tiger Global is primary capital into the business with a $3 million partial secondary exit to the Indian Angel Network (IAN), which registered an approximately 7x return from its investment in Wow! Momo Foods over four years.
In 2015, Wow! Momo had raised Rs 10 crore from its first backer, Indian Angel Network, led by Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Saurabh Srivastava, and Ashvin Chadha.
Following the current investment from Tiger Global, the restaurant chain is now valued at $120 million (Rs 860 crore). The company said this was a significant scale-up from its earlier valuation of $42.19 million (or Rs 300 crore) valuation, which it had achieved after securing Rs 3 crore from Fabindia MD William Bissell in 2018.
Wow! Momo Foods' current investor Lighthouse Funds choose not to exit and remain completely invested into the company.
Speaking on the investment, Sagar Daryani, CEO and Co-founder of Wow! China and Wow! Momo, said,
“From running a handful of kiosks in Kolkata to becoming a brand operating in over 15 cities, our ‘Make-in-India’ journey has come a long way. We are super excited and thankful in welcoming Tiger Global aboard and look forward to leverage their global connects, experience, and know-how. This partnership is indeed a big step forward in our endeavour to become an Indian-origin QSR chain with an aim to go global in times to come.”
The growth trajectory
Incepted in a garage by two students of St Xavier’s College with an initial investment of only Rs 30,000, the Kolkata-based startup has been dishing out momos and more, for over a decade now.
With 282 outlets of Wow! Momo and 11 outlets of its newest brand Wow! China spread across 15 cities combined, the company is now gearing up to notch further milestones in its growth trajectory. The startup had launched its sister brand, Wow! China, in March 2019.
The company is also looking at building a hybrid operating model - a mix of physical stores in prominent retail locations and that of cloud kitchens - to cater to its extensively growing delivery business.
“We are excited to partner with Wow! Momo. We believe the company has a strong leadership team focused on creating value through innovation and creativity. We expect Wow! Momo to continue gaining market share of Indian QSR,” said Scott Shleifer, Partner, Tiger Global.
Wow! Momo Foods Pvt Ltd is projected to get to revenues of around Rs 190 crore for FY20.
The company currently claims to be clocking a monthly revenue run rate of over Rs 15 crore per month and opening over 10 new stores every month.
The business intends to expand and grow its profitability to over 1,000 stores, reaching an annualised turnover of over Rs 1,000 crore in the next four to five years.
Reliance Jio on Wednesday said it has joined hands with Chinese telecom operators and other international technology companies to develop 5G network solutions based on open standards and support interoperability.
The leading telecom players and vendors have come together to start an Open Test and Integration Centre (OTIC).
The companies include "China Mobile and Reliance Jio along with participation from China Telecom, China Unicom, Intel, Radisys, Samsung Electronics, Airspan, Baicells, CertusNet, Mavenir, Lenovo, Ruijie Network, Inspur, Sylincom, WindRiver, ArrayComm, and Chengdu NTS," Jio said in a statement.
These firms "are collaborating on multi-vendor interoperability and validation activities for realising O-RAN compliant disaggregated 5G access infrastructure that leverages open software and hardware hardened for commercial deployments," it added.
Airtel, NTT Docomo, Softbank, SK Telecom, Singtel, Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm are also members of the open radio access network (O-RAN) but select players from the alliance have announced collaboration for the OTIC.
"We are fast-tracking our efforts in 5G and Open technologies by developing and working with OTIC to accelerate the adoption of industry standard, interoperable O-RAN based deployments," Reliance Jio President Mathew Oommen said.
OTIC alliance has invited additional partners to join the network to advance the creation of ready-to-implement blueprints for wireless telecom network solutions conforming to O-RAN specifications in order to realise open and disaggregated 5G networks, it added.
Global telecom industry body GSMA expects India to have 920 million unique mobile subscribers by 2025, which will include 88 million 5G connections.
"5G connections in India are forecast to reach 88 million by 2025...This will leave India trailing regional peers such as China, which is set to see almost 30 percent of its total connection base on 5G by 2025," the GSMA Intelligence report released in May said.
It said there were close to 750 million unique subscribers at the end of 2018, and expected to reach almost 920 million by 2025.
The Directorate General of Training (DGT), under the skill development and entrepreneurship ministry, has signed an agreement with IT major IBM to carry out a nationwide Train-the-Trainer programme in basic artificial intelligence, an official statement said on Wednesday.
As part of the programme, ITI trainers will be trained on basic artificial intelligence (AI) skills towards using the technology in their day-to-day training activities, the ministry said in a statement.
This programme, it said, aims at enabling the trainers with basic approach, workflow and application of artificial intelligence that they can apply in their training modules.
"IBM aims at training 10,000 faculty members from ITIs across the country and the programme will be executed over a period of one year with 14 trainers across 7 locations with over 200 workshops," it added.
Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship said, many more training programmes will be initiated for the trainers.
These digital skills will provide an edge to the trainers responsible for imparting academic curriculum to students and help them enter the workforce as they are aligned to industry 4.0, he said.
The participants will take online courses with technical support from the trainers enabling continuous learning.
On completion, participants will go through a post assessment to further gauge their skill set and the level they have achieved.
This May, India's largest telecom operator Vodafone Idea Ltd announced a five-year multi-million-dollar IT outsourcing deal with tech giant IBM.
"This engagement will also contribute to Vodafone Idea's merger synergy objectives by reducing its IT related costs," the telecom firm said in a statement.
The company did not divulge the size of the deal but some reports pegged it at about $700 million.
The deal will also provide a platform for fast-track joint initiatives in artificial intelligence (AI) and internet-of-things (IoT).
Agile software development implies software development methodologies anchored on the idea of iterative releases, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organising, cross-functional teams. The ultimate value in Agile development is that it enables teams to deliver value faster, with greater quality and predictability, and greater aptitude to respond to change.
Challenges with Agile
Agile without adaptation and good planning does more harm than good. Agile in it’s ideal shape should serve as a catalyst / tool for progressive elaboration on requirements, better sprint planning and refactoring cycles.
In bad shape Agile results in loads of technical debt, unwanted context switches and poor flow efficiency. Implementing Agile well is a collective effort from management, product leads and developers. Let us first look at issues which are commonplace across orgs practicing Agile:
Management Issues
Committing deadlines without / inadequate consultation: Management often commits deadlines externally with inadequate consultation with the stakeholders. Let me put up one such sample communication:
Manager: Why don’t you give us an estimate of how long it will take to build something like this?
Product Lead: It’s difficult to give an estimate upfront. We’ll need to do a thorough requirement analysis, account for existing work etc.
Manager: Just give me a rough sense considering this to be your only deliverable.
Product Lead: 2 months give or take.
Manager to Client: It will take around 3 months to delivery.
Technical Leadership Issues
Under-planned Sprints:
Sprint planning must take into account cross vertical dependencies and wait time, unplanned seasonal work, sequencing of deliverables to improve clarity with every release. Failing to plan these properly leads to a lot of context switch and wait time.
No Room for Refactoring Cycles:
Overall schedule must include smartly planned refactoring cycles in between regular sprints. Failing to do this results in everlasting technical debt and a frustrated tech team.
How to do it right
Requirement Segmentation
Agile makes progressive elaboration for requirements fairly simple. An iterative model like Agile can help you split the overall requirements into multiple segments of different confidence values. Confidence value here is directly proportional to the clarity that Client /Org has on the requirement.
Creating these segments can enable the execution teams to:
Plan the sprint right. (Mix of items with different confidence values)
Re-engage with client / org to increase the confidence value of some of the requirement segments in subsequent iterations.
Extrapolate Timelines from Action Items and not vice versa
After requirement segmentation is done, creating milestones and splitting them across sprints is the next heavy duty task. There are 2 ways to go about it:
a) Fix a timeline for the release (often externally driven) and than work in backwards to split the requirements across sprints.
b) Select a mix of items from requirement buckets with very high confidence value and buckets with extremely low confidence value and then extrapolate a timeline for it. Why select a mix and not all low confidence value requirements:
All low confidence items run the risk of giving Client/Org an impression that all progress has been made in the wrong direction.
Development team may feel demotivated with almost all the work running the risk of being scraped.
Having a mix helps with both and gets good clarity by moving some of the requirements to higher confidence buckets after every iteration and keeping the team and client motivated at the same time.
Get clarity on floating requirements across verticals in the sprint timeframe
AdHoc requirements from different verticals within org often come up as a bummer when addressing those requires a lot of context switch for the developers. Context switch can often disturb the whole flow of the pipeline and can result in multiple resources being stuck and waiting for the interim releases to go through while some other high priority task is being delivered.
These scenarios can never be completely eradicated unless the org has a strong bench strength. One way to deal with it is to gather seasonal requirements upfront from different stakeholders which may need attention. This exercise if done periodically in between sprints results in lesser surprises and improves team’s ability to make corrections to the timeline well in advance.
Create buffers for refactoring and replanning in between Sprints
Creating buffers for refactors after releasing low confidence requirements is a must. Once low confidence requirements are rolled out after a sprint, it has strong odds of:
Increase in scope of work
Need for refactor.
Hence low confidence line items should be split across first few releases where refactoring is costs less.
Conclusion
There is a lot of scope of improvisation when it comes to Agile methodology. The steps discussed in the article try to capture a big section of issues which are commonplace in our development teams today. With more n more tracking, planning and documentation setups coming up, it’s easy to create and plan sprints well. Success of these sprints and output of each iteration still depends on a whole bunch of subjective aspects of planning.
In the discussed methodology the success of sprints may vary from org to org. Some orgs may be more comfortable pushing all the low confidence requirements into initial few iterations for getting as much clarity upfront as possible. Some orgs may want to demonstrate good progress in quick time with respect to high confidence requirements.
Tata Motors, which is a leader in electric vehicles in the domestic market, Thursday announced a new EV powertrain that will power a range of its upcoming models, including a new model scheduled for the fourth quarter.
Ziptron, the soon to be introduced EV powertrain, will help it drive economies of scale on one hand and make new EVs more affordable for consumers on the other, the largest domestic automaker told reporters here.
Ziptron offers efficient high voltage system, better performance, long range and fast charging, and a battery warranty of eight years, and adherence to the IP67 standard.
(R to L) Guenter Butchsek, CEO & MD, Tata Motors Ltd, Shailesh Chandra, President - Electric Mobility Business & Corporate Strategy and Anand Kulkarni - Product Line Head – EVBU
Announcing the launch, the managing director and chief executive Guenter Butschek, said, "Ziptron is designed in- house utilising our global engineering network. At the heart of our future EV line-up, this technology has been tested across 1 million km proving its reliability. With this, we hope to usher in a new wave of e-mobility and accelerate faster adoption of EVs."
Ziptron technology comprises an efficient permanent magnet AC motor providing superior performance on demand. It also offers best-in-industry dust- and water-proof battery system meeting the IP67 standards. Further, it also employs smart regenerative braking to charge the battery while on the drive, he said.
The Tata Motors counter was trading up over 2.5 percent at Rs 124.85 on the BSE bucking the trend against a massive 1.20 percent plunge in the benchmark at 1430 hrs.
Tata Motors on Wednesday also announced the launch of a new platform, TACNet 2.0, to tap startups and technology firms as it seeks to harness new solutions in the automobile and mobility ecosystem.
The new platform will also allow the company to engage with startups and technology firms to connect with them, spark innovative solutions in the automotive technologies and mobility ecosystem, and explore synergies, it said.
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio added 85.39 lakh mobile users in July, while its competitors Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea lost a cumulative 60 lakh users during the month, according to TRAI data.
The overall telephone subscribers in India, mobile and landline combined, increased to 118.9 crore at the end of July, registering a monthly growth of 0.2 percent.
The mobile subscriber base of Reliance Jio stood at 33.97 crore, as the company added 85.39 lakh users in July. In contrast, telecom operators Airtel and Vodafone Idea continued to experience subscriber churn.
Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel (including Tata Teleservices numbers) lost 25.8 lakh mobile users during the month, bringing down its subscriber base to 32.85 crore.
Vodafone Idea, on the other hand, lost 33.9 lakh customers as its base fell to 38 crore users.
Fund-starved Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), that has been in news over delay in salary and vendor payments, was the only other operator besides Jio to acquire subscribers during July.
BSNL added an impressive 2.88 lakh mobile users in July, shoring up its user base to 11.6 crore subscribers.
In the headline numbers, telephone subscriber base in both urban and rural India saw a growth.
Urban subscribers increased to 67.8 crore in July compared to 67.5 crore in June, while rural subscription increased a tad to 51.1 crore in the same period, data by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) showed.
The overall tele-density in India increased to 90.23 percent at the end of July.
The number of broadband subscribers increased to 60.4 crore at July-end, rising 1.60 percent over the previous month.
"Top five service providers constituted 98.95 percent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of July 2019," it said.
Reliance Jio led the tally in broadband (download speeds greater than or equal to 512 Kbps) subscriber numbers with 339.79 million, followed by Bharti Airtel (123.94 million) and Vodafone Idea (110.92 million).
Hyderabad-based early stage investment firm SucSEED Venture Partners has made an undisclosed amount of investment in Eunimart, a complete AI enabled end-to-end omnichannel trade and commerce management platform for small and medium enterprises (SME) selling globally.
Speaking on the funding, Vikrant Varshney, Co-founder & Partner, SucSEED, said,
"Eunimart provides one-stop ecommerce solution to sell Anywhere, anytime. This offers a huge potential for SMEs in India like handicrafts, handlooms, Jewellery merchants, SME companies aspiring for exports, to reach global markets, grow their revenues and margins with ease."
Founded in 2016 by Shayak Mazumder and Archana Shah, Eunimart helps SMEs to sell their products globally through cross-border e-commerce. The platform provides merchants access to 18 marketplaces, 10 shipping partners, two payment partners, warehousing options etc across 84 countries. It brings all these platforms on one dashboard and automates all the functions so that SMEs do not need highly technical staff, months of preparation or heavy losses in selling overseas.
The company’s AI tools help merchants with cataloguing automatically, pricing of products, image and content optimisation, portfolio optimisation, understanding of competition, sales prediction, etc.
Shayak Mazumder, Co-founder of Eunimart said,
"The world has shifted from a straight line value chain to a circular mesh value chain where everyone is connected to everyone and our value is not limited to what we create alone. Today, the more value we add to our ecosystem, the more valuable we become. By adding value to every stakeholder, we seek to empower the ecosystem globally and become synonymous with supply aggregation and SME enablement across the globe."
This February, Eunimart raised bridge funding from the UAE-based digital services company TMT Connekt. It had also received a Pre-Series A round from Kuwait-based logistics company Agility last year.
Archana Shah, Co-founder of Eunimart, added, "We believe cutting-edge technology products can be created from India with the right support and SucSEED Venture Partners, formed by Senior CXOs and Technology experts, can help us just do that."
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