All posts by Gouri

Meesho and Plum Partner to create the Future of Employee Care and Benefits

New Delhi, April 28th, 2022: Meesho, the fastest growing internet commerce company in India, has partnered with Plum, an employee health insurance platform to create a new benchmark for employee care and benefits. This initiative is part of Meesho’s comprehensive MeeCARE programme that has been conceived and designed with an aim to boost holistic wellbeing for Meeshoites and their families. Recognising the diverse day to day challenges in human lives, the programme aims to enable employees to balance professional and personal goals.

With the world of work fast evolving, employee care and benefits are of foremost importance while attracting and retaining talent. Studies suggest, 63% of employees (globally) prioritise joining a company that has their care at heart. Meesho and Plum, at their core, focus on employee health and well-being, and together they have redefined what a care and benefits policy should look like.

Key highlights of the Meesho Group Health Insurance (GHI) policy*:

● Coverage for maternity-related expenses of up to INR 100,000 for normal and c-sec deliveries

● Group health insurance with a coverage of INR 600,000 with top up options upto INR 2,500,000

● Insurance coverage for new born children from Day 1

● Coverage for infertility treatments

● Coverage for Air Ambulance up to INR 100,000

● Coverage for members of the LGBTQ community and live in partners

*The plan has a robust design covering illness, injury and death comprehensively through adequate Group Health Insurance, Group Personal Accident Cover and Group Term Life Insurance. Cover is provided not just for employees but also for dependent parents / in-laws, spouse, kids and live-in partners as well. Additionally, it will also include access to Plum’s wellness and telehealth services and health checkups, vision care, unlimited dental consultations and discounted medicines. The claims process itself is completely digitised with Plum delivering a best-in-class Claims NPS (Net Promoter Score) of 79.

Ashish Kumar Singh, CHRO, Meesho said, “We, at Meesho, place significant importance on the holistic wellbeing of our employees. Emanating from the philosophy of ‘doing the right things’, MeeCARE attempts to elevate employee experience through a host of wellness initiatives and world class benefits. With constantly evolving workplace dynamics, our efforts are channelised towards meeting the unique and individual needs of our people. With insurance being an integral part of wellbeing, the collaboration with Plum in introducing robust plans is expected to accentuate our employee centricity.”

Driven by the people-first mantra, MeeCARE covers a broad spectrum of wellness initiatives through a combination of policies, benefits and other interventions. These will encompass mental and physical health through yoga, meditation, insurance plans and sessions on nourishment and female health while educating employees on financial protection as well. The programme also caters to the emotional wellbeing of the employees while driving social impact through regular interventions and activities.

Abhishek Poddar, Co-founder and CEO, Plum says, “Plum aims to foster a culture of care and employee wellbeing. By pushing the envelope and creating a comprehensive group health cover for clients like Meesho, together, we are creating a new paradigm for employee benefits. Employees are a moat for any company and by setting a new benchmark in technology-led-insurance, we are ensuring that all companies (from size two to thousands) take notice and prioritise being care-first.”

Plum has seen a phenomenal 10 fold growth over the past year. The company is well on track to reach its goal of insuring 10 million lives by 2024. With its product-led innovation, the company aims to accelerate the pace of health insurance adoption in India and encourage all businesses to think about employees’ health-first.

QuoDeck’s one-of-a-kind gamified campaign #D2City receives more than 5 Million Impressions in just 14 days!

28th April 2022, Mumbai: What does the future of engagement look like? QuoDeck’s one-of-a-kind gamified campaign #D2City may hold the answer! In this age of fleeting brand loyalty, enhancing customer engagement is the only way to sustain a business for the long term. Given the lack of a physical space where consumers can experience or see D2C brands, run-of-the-mill ideas of marketing are no longer enough. D2C brands need to adopt new innovative ways of customer engagement. Launched on 14th February 2022, the visionary new gamified campaign #D2City used hyper-casual games as an engagement strategy for more than 28 brands that enrolled on the platform. In just 14 days, the campaign received 5 million+ impressions across India, with over a million users engaged through videos, games, and other content.

In a world with unpredictable consumer behaviour, brands need to accentuate focus on being more relatable and human. With #D2City, QuoDeck, India’s leading SaaS Digital Learning and Engagement Platforms, set out to bridge the gap between brands and technology. “Innovative brand communication is the key to capturing customer attention in this age of transient loyalty, and with #D2City, we established a brand new high engagement marketing tactic for D2C brands across sectors to create brand affinity,” said Kamalika Bhattacharya, CEO, QuoDeck on the completion of the campaign.

The campaign was designed as an interactive digital city that allowed visitors to experience, explore, play and learn about their favourite D2C brands. For the campaign, Quodeck hosted 28+ big and small D2C brands from industries such as Cosmetics, Electronics, Personal Care, Food, Apparel, Baking Goods, amongst others, in a mobile-friendly gaming microsite designed as a city with buildings, with key buildings playing host to brands and their games.

The D2City campaign leveraged the growing popularity of gamification to help D2C brands capture consumer attention from far beyond just Tier 1 cities. During the duration of the #D2City campaign, the platform received more than 80 percent hits from Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities across the country, which also correlates with the rising demand for D2C in these areas.”Games have a universal appeal, and when used as a marketing strategy, they can even solve for the challenges that brands face when they are looking to engage customers from Tier 2 & Tier 3 Cities.” Kamalika added.

The #D2City campaign also demonstrated that gamified content could help brands gain valuable behavioural insights that, in turn, will help them optimise experiences across customer lifecycle stages while reducing overall marketing costs.

Established in 2017 by avid gamers, QuoDeck uses gaming principles to engage enterprise learners and provide data-based insights to improve user experience.

Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam and Team Cleans by Agrotech India kickstart Ghaziabad wastewater treatment project to restore and rejuvenate the Brij Vihar Drain

28th April 2022: Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam and Team Cleans by Agrotech India have joined forces to run their latest Ghaziabad wastewater treatment project. The idea is to restore and rejuvenate all the decentralized sewage systems of the 10-12 km long Sahibabad Drain/Brij Vihar Nala using advanced water cleaning technologies.

The Brij Vihar drain is highly contaminated with various carcinogenic waste products like heavy metals and arsenic, transmitting dangerous pathogens and diseases, affecting the water quality and threatening wildlife living in and around the water body. The poor condition of the drain is attributed to illegal discharge of garbage from connecting points like Sri Durga Mata Mandir and the nearby market and shops, Alaknanda Apartment, pipe market and the failure of J-point pumping station in managing the flow coming from the Bhopura area.

Through this project, Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam and Team Cleans have attempted to resolve three major problems: water pollution with solid and dissolved contaminants coming from industrial and municipal sources; accumulated silt and sediment at the Brij Vihar Nala bed; and high risk of water overflow during monsoons, which can cause flooding and property damage in the nearby areas.

The project has 2 phases. Under phase 1, the teams have leveraged Mechanical Desilting, Trash Barriers to remove floating debris from the water surface and Geotube Technology to treat the water quality using hydraulic pressure to transport the sand from water to the land area. So far, they have already covered around 5 kms of the drain (from J-point to the Police Station Link Road area and bhopura to shaheed nagar metro station), and successfully removed around 20,000 tons of silt and floating garbage.

The desilting process included removing garbage like water bottles, debris, animal carcasses, plant branches, etc., sludge removal such as rocks, bricks, construction materials, removal of floating sludge using net, and cleaning drain side banks on both sides by labors. Additionally, the teams have also been driving public awareness around the same through awareness rallies and taking feedback and suggestions from people residing in the nearby locations. The team will also be utilising Battery powered Roboats to collect garbage in already cleaned areas

As part of phase 2, Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam and Team Cleans are using Eastern Europe Technology to rejuvenate the water by reducing the biological oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD), followed by complete filtration and beautification of the drain. It’s an ongoing project that is estimated to complete in the next 10-12 months.

Akhilesh Jain, Co-Founder, Agrotech India, said, “We are honoured to be a part of this great initiative that Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam has taken to make the lives of Ghaziabad residents hazard-free. The Brij Vihar Nala is extremely polluted with household waste and illegal industry discharge, posing a threat to people and the environment. We at Team Cleans have already made 35% progress in our journey and are confident to make this area clean and hygienic in the coming months. Moreover, as part of this project, Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam will also be taking strong action against industries doing illegal discharge, which is the main cause of contamination.”

Mahender Singh Tawar, Commissioner, Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation, said, “The condition of Brij Vihar Nala worsened with a constant discharge of household and industrial waste, and it called for dire attention. The Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam and the Team Cleans have taken a great and much-needed initiative to clean this drain and make Ghaziabad a hazard-free zone. I would also like to thank all the residents of this area for sharing regular feedback about the issues they face and how we can tackle them. Through this initiative, we strive to improve peoples’ standard of living and encourage them to lead a hygienic and healthy life.”

Founded in 2019, Agrotech India is a technology company offering high-impact end-to-end agricultural solutions to farmers using its proprietary Crop Loss Assessment Support System (CLASS) analytical software platform. Backed by Trinity Group (India) and Ctrl2Go LLC. an Eastern European company, the company focuses on four verticals: Agriculture, Water Resources, AgFinTech and Drone Services. The first vertical includes solutions that ensure better results in agriculture, rejuvenation of water bodies and verification of the farmers. Through its third vertical, it provides banking solutions such as digital onboarding of farmers, KCC loan, farm loan screening through Agrotech Farm Analytics Report (AFAR), farmer rating using AI and ML, and on the spot screening of farmer applications for loan processing. The idea is to connect farmers with banks and make credit and other finances easily accessible to them, ensuring a better livelihood for farmers.

Lupin and Yabao Announce Strategic Partnership in China

New Delhi, Beijing, April 28th, 2022: Global pharma major Lupin Limited (Lupin) today announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Yabao Pharmaceutical Co. Inc. (Yabao), to meet the growing demand for quality drugs with pediatric formulations in the Chinese markets.

The demand for high quality pediatric medicines has been growing rapidly in China as a result of the government’s support and policy measures. The latest Chinese pediatric pharmaceutical market report indicates that the market for pediatric drugs in China is expected to reach 210 billion CNY (33 billion USD) in 2021, growing at a rate of 9.23%.

Dr. Fabrice Egros, President – Corporate Development and Growth Markets, Lupin said, “We are excited about this partnership as it paves the way for us to bring quality pediatric formulations to the growing needs of patients in China. In addition to marketing our pediatric products in the Chinese market, we intend to expand our collaboration in other strategic therapeutics areas such as cardio- metabolic, central nervous system and gastro-enterology.”

Mr. Wei Ren, President of Yabao said, “We are very pleased to be partnering with Lupin to further strengthen Yabao’s leadership position in the pediatric market. Yabao strives to develop its pediatric pipeline to address the urgent unmet needs in the market and to serve the pediatric patients. Moreover, Yabao also looks forward to expanding the collaboration with Lupin in other areas.”