All posts by Sujata

BODDESS Beauty the Indian multi-brand beauty retailer opens its second experiential store in India in JAIPUR

6th October 2022; Boddess Beauty, the Indian omnichannel multi-brand beauty retailer opens its second experiential store in India and plans for aggressive retail expansion to strengthen its omnichannel presence. Following its very successful online launch in 2020 with 200+ beauty brands on its platform and its first Luxe store at Ambience Mall, Gurgaon in 2021, Boddess Beauty now opens its new store in Jaipur setting in motion the brand’s robust plans to expand its retail footprint across the country with 80+ stores in the coming 5 years.

The retail expansion is aimed at increasing accessibility to the best of International and home-grown beauty brands across skincare, make-up, body care, haircare; and world-class beauty services pan India.

Located at the Mall of Jaipur, Boddess Beauty is home to a curated range of international and home-grown beauty brands and elevated service stations equipped with best-in-class skin experts, make-up artists, and beauty advisors.

True to being a ‘Global Beauty Hub’, the store features a handpicked selection of international cult favorites namely US’ Celebrity Beauty and no.1 Brow Brand – Anastasia Beverly Hills, luxury British skincare brand, Neal’s Yard Remedies, award-winning farm to Skin brand, Juice Beauty; the revolutionary innovative cosmetics beauty brand – AVON, the brand created by U.S’s celebrated YouTuber and make-up mogul himself, Jeffree Star, Supermodel Miranda Kerr’s Kora Organics, natural skincare brand – Caudalie, Korean Luxury Skincare brands Sulwhasoo, Laneige, Innisfree and many more. In addition to international favorites, Boddess Beauty also presents an array of popular home-grown brands; Mamaearth, Sugar Cosmetics, caffeine, Colorbar, Plum, Minimalist, and more. Luxury fragrance brands like Salvatore Ferragamo, Marc Jacobs, and Chopard make for premium brands across the fragrance category.

Speaking on the occasion, Ritika Sharma, Founder-Director, of House of Beauty [Boddess Beauty], said, “Boddess Beauty was conceptualized to introduce global beauty experiences to Indian customers with a digital-first launch in 2020. Thereafter, we swiftly launched the first Luxe store in India at Ambience Mall, Gurgaon. The first non-metro store in Jaipur is another step towards increasing our retail footprint with over 80+ stores in the coming 5 years. While we continue to expand, the best of global and homegrown beauty assortments, experiences inside the store, and guidance through our beauty advisors are features that will remain consistent across our online and physical stores touchpoints at Boddess Beauty.”

Sharad Sharma, Chief Business Officer, Boddess Beauty, added, “Since its inception in 2020, Boddess has seen exponential growth in customer acquisition and will continue to blend online and in-store experiences. Opening a second store in the country within the first two years of the brand’s journey is a testament to the growing need for a premium beauty experience and our understanding of the consumer preferences across metro and non-metro cities.”

Experts from the IT industry can now go as faculty to colleges as ‘Prof of Practice’ without formal academic qualifications: Jayesh Ranjan

Hyderabad, October 06, 2022….The profile of the IT industry in Hyderabad is no longer just a service-oriented one. The industry is slowly shedding its image of service-based companies. IT product companies are gaining traction. For many years service companies dominated the Information Technology Industry. Now there is a visible difference. More IT companies are getting into products, said Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Industries & Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology (IT), Government of Telangana, at Quadrant Resource.

Jayesh Ranjan was Chief Guest at the inauguration of the 22000 st Quadrant Resource Global Delivery Center in Hyderabad located in Raheja Mindspace in Madhapur on Thursday.

The Senior leadership of Mr. Balu Kuncham; Raghava Kothamasu; Balaji; Sunil Gundrathi, VV Suryanarayana, Lakshmi, and Venkat graced the inaugural along with guests Dr. Shanta Thoutham from Telangana State Innovation Cell; Amarnath Reddy Atmakuri, Chief Relations Officer; Vijay Rangineni, IT Investments all from Govt of Telangana graced the inaugural. Mr. Muralidhar Reddy K, father of Vamshin Reddy, one of the co-founders also graced.

Balu, Balaji, and Raghava shared that Quadrant Resource is on an expansion spree. Globally we have recently expanded to the UK, Singapore; Mexico, Costa Rica; Malaysia, and Canada. The Indian operations wing is likely to add 800 more resources by the end of this fiscal. Their center at Warangal is fast coming up and likely to function by March 2023.

Speaking to the gathering of 200 plus staff and guests Jayesh Ranjan said a good office has an impact on productivity. Survey after a survey revealed that a good working ambiance has a positive impact on the productivity and happiness of the workforce.

Jayesh said ‘your progress in Indian operations in the last seven years is remarkable. We also appreciate your presence in Warangal. You also know the entire IT industry is concentrated in Hyderabad, which is an important technological hub globally. The IT industry must also spread to tier-II cities. You have a guest mover advantage. Your moving to Warangal gave confidence to other large IT companies. Because of this, we have now almost a half dozen IT Companies that either have already set up their presence or planning to do so in due course he said.

Today, a lot of niche product development is happening in Hyderabad. Though we boast a lot about large IT companies’ presence here, the real backbone for the IT industry is mid-sized companies like yours, Mr. Ranjan said.

I know Quadrant Resource is a ‘Cloud and Data’ company involved in building and delivering managed services. Cloud Migration is a huge opportunity. Many companies are struggling to Migrate. You have rightly identified the opportunity he said.

We are pleased with your success. We hope you continue the same. I am happy to note that many of your employees are started working from an office on a rotation basis. Please encourage more to work from the office. Working together, collaborative working is fun. It is safe now to work from the office. There might have been some advantages of working from home but there is no substitute to work from offices Mr. Jayesh Ranjan said.

Later Mr. Ranjan answered questions asked by the staff and guests.

When asked about why we were not R & D oriented and what we should do? Jayesh said our education system and the gaps have pulled us down from becoming R & D conscious and oriented. But things are changing. The New Education Policy is also encouraging Research oriented studies. Things are changing, he said.

Replying to another question that today big IT companies which were once started from the garage can produce world-class products but why India is unable to do so, he said it is because of the way we studied our education. Take for instance if you study the first set up of start-ups, the poster boys of the Indian Economy, and their ventures are only replicated but not the original Ideas. With due respect to them, they all were copycat ideas. Be it Oyo, Ola, Flipkart, etc there is nothing original about them. We need to encourage original thinking. We need to encourage people to search for local problems and find solutions, bringing technology solutions, he said. That is why we are encouraging innovative thinking. The due importance must be given to college projects, he said. But it might take a generation, he said.

Replying to a question asked by Shriram, an employee, about why industry practitioners are not encouraged to go to colleges and share their experience and teach, Jayesh said National Education Policy mentions that the faculty of the colleges must have a good mix of academia and industry experts or practitioners. So that industry experts who do not have Ph. D or M.Tech degrees can go and teach. Already few private institutions have started this practice.

Mr. Jayesh has reminded UGC’s (University Grants Commission) recent guidelines on Professor of Practice, a faculty position that can be filled by industry and professional experts even without formal academic qualifications, allowed in higher education institutions.

Quadrant Resource specializes in diverse services like Cloud, Data & Analytics, Accessibility, Business Intelligence, Quality Testing, DevOps, AI & ML, CRM, ERP, Big Data, and Application Development.

Quadrant Resource which is headquartered in Redmond, Seattle in the USA is a midsized company established in 2004 by three futuristic and visionary IT professionals—Ram Paluri, Vamsi Reddy, Kancharakuntla; Bhaskar Gangipamula. It expanded to India in 2017 and set up a Global Delivery Centre at Madhapur. It also has a presence in Chennai, Bangalore, and Warangal. It currently has 3000 resources across the globe half of which work in India. It is also one of the pioneers in foraying into Warangal and its premises are coming up at Warangal and ready to be functional by the end of this fiscal.

Bank of Baroda enables Digital Loans through the Account Aggregator Framework

Hyderabad, October 6, 2022: Bank of Baroda (Bank), one of India’s leading public sector banks, today announced that it has gone live on the Account Aggregator (AA) platform as a Financial Information User (FIU) and has enabled digital lending through the platform. In the first phase, the Bank has integrated its Digital Personal Loan journey with the AA ecosystem. This will be followed by all other digital lending products offered by the Bank.

Applicants applying for a Digital Personal Loan from the Bank of Baroda can now give their consent to share their financial data in a hassle-free, digital, and completely secure manner, leading to faster loan processing and superior customer experience.

Speaking on the occasion Shri Joydeep Dutta Roy, Executive Director, Bank of Baroda said, “Account Aggregator provides a unique opportunity for the Bank to deliver a more personalized and engaging customer experience. As we evolve in this journey, we believe that with the other BFSI entities regulated by IRDA, SEBI, and PFRDA also joining the account aggregator framework shortly, our ability to offer uniquely tailored products to customers will be further greatly enhanced.”

Shri Akhil Handa, Chief Digital Officer, Bank of Baroda said, “Technology has changed the face of banking in India and the Account Aggregator ecosystem has the potential to be the next big disruptor in providing credit and investment options to millions of Indians. The Account Aggregator framework has many benefits, right from giving customers greater control over their financial information and enhanced customer experience to fraud prevention and better monitoring capability. We believe that the bank’s ability to introduce innovative financial products and services for customers is greatly enhanced via this very significant digital ecosystem enabler.”

Under the guidance of the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Bank of Baroda has adopted the Account Aggregator framework and the first set of services launched were those of a Financial Information Provider (FIP), wherein customers of the Bank could easily share their banking information with other service providers. Increasing awareness amongst customers and a diverse range of entities joining the ecosystem will make the system more robust and increase the use cases.

The Account Aggregator framework gives easy access and greater control to individuals over their banking/financial data as well as the power to choose to share this information lying with different financial entities in an aggregated manner, significantly reducing the time and effort when applying for a loan or other services.

Both existing and new Bank customers can apply for a Digital Personal Loan through Bank of Baroda’s Digital Lending Platform via the bob World mobile app, net banking, and the Bank of Baroda website in a completely digital and paperless manner.

NASSCOM Foundation and DXC Technology partner to Digitally Enable and Skill Marginalized Communities

Bengaluru, 6th October 2022: NASSCOM Foundation today announced its collaboration with DXC Technology to enable marginalized communities with digital capabilities and skilled Indian youth as part of an eight-month project. In its fourth consecutive year of collaboration, NASSCOM Foundation and DXC Technology will be working towards the common goal of bridging the skills gap that the youth in India faces today, and addressing the digital divide, especially in Tier-II and Tier-III cities wherein there are accessibility constraints.

This project closely aligns with Technology’s philosophy of leveraging technology for social good and for improving the quality of life of the local community and society at large. The aim is also to contribute to economic development across communities, in keeping with the Digital India vision.

The scope of this partnership will have two key focus areas – within the ambit of the first category, 20 ‘Resource Centres for Digital Literacy and e-Governance’ will be established in aspirational districts spread across seven states including, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. These Resource Centres will help in creating agents of change and engines of development by providing need-based information, e-resources, and an array of digital services that will impact citizens’ lives and livelihoods in alignment with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

The Resource Centres will be equipped with digital assets like computers and printers, online resources like subscriptions to informative pages/channels, and physical resources such as books, magazines, and newsletters to make digital tools accessible to the entire community. Communities will also be connected to appropriate government schemes and e-governance services in addition to receiving ample training in digital skills.
The skill-building initiative, on the other hand, strives to prepare India’s youth for a digital future. Through this initiative, young people in India will receive advanced technical training that will improve their employability skills to meet market demands, and 60% of the beneficiaries will also receive support with job placement after successfully completing the course.

Extremely encouraged by the partnership, Nidhi Bhasin, CEO, NASSCOMFoundation said, “We have always recognized India’s demographic dividend as one of its greatest assets. However, what needs to be addressed is the ever-increasing digital divide in the country. A holistic approach, embedded in digital empowerment the need of the hour, not only bridges the digital divide but also makes the youth future ready. For that reason, this collaboration with DXC Technology is extremely encouraging as it strives to address both these key aspects of digital literacy and skilling. The next 8 months will be critical in proving that technology can enable transformation at scale, especially when the right partners come together with a shared vision”

Nachiket Sukhtankar, DXC Global Delivery Network Lead, and Managing Director, DXC India said, “DXC’s social responsibility mission is to strengthen the backbone of our society by enabling the youth with the right education and skilling opportunities. In today’s digital world, if young minds, and especially young women of the country are empowered with the knowledge of technology and important life skills, we can transform the future for the better. Engaging with and enabling the youth in tier II and III cities is the key to unlocking the full potential of tomorrow’s change agents. This collaboration with NASSCOM Foundation has enabled us to take another step in the direction of our goal and we are proud to be a part of this journey.”

This collaboration will also provide DXC Technology an opportunity to enable its employees to be part of this transformation journey through volunteering. DXC employees can volunteer as certified Digital Ambassadors (DAs) who will be responsible to motivate community members to participate in the program and be the change agents. Employees can also participate in DAs training sessions and conduct some ice-breaking sessions and mentor DAs with leadership, communication, and liaising skills. Lastly, the initiative also allows volunteers to interact with community members who are being trained in digital and financial literacy modules.

ACCA welcomes Mazars in India to Approved Employer status

Mumbai, October 06, 2022: ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), the global body for professional accountants, is pleased to announce that Mazars in India has become the latest organization to meet its high standards of employee training and development. In recognition of their best practice, Mazars in India has been awarded ACCA Approved Employer accreditation status under both the trainee development and professional development streams.

Mazars is an international audit, accountancy, advisory, and tax services firm committed to confidently building and growing businesses and believes a responsible firm must create shared value. Mazars aims to achieve this by upholding independence, caring for the future of the industry, and balancing sustainability and profit, as they seek to pass on a just and prosperous world to future generations.

Md. Sajid Khan, Director-India at ACCA said: ‘Our approved employer program is the accreditation of employers’ excellent learning and development policies and systems. We’re delighted to recognize Mazars India’s support for the ACCA Qualification and the ACCA students and members they employ.’

Ms. Neetu Sidana, Director-HR at Mazars in India said: “ACCA Approved Employer status marks out organizations in all sectors as ones that provide the highest level of support and assistance for the ACCA members and students they employ. We are now able to attract key talent, as ACCA members and future members are keen to work with approved employers like us. Additionally, it enables us to retain the finance talent workforce and get further recognition in the market for our commitment to talent and development.”

Orb Energy Secures Follow-On Funding from US Development Finance Institution, DFC

BANGALORE, INDIA – 6 October 2022:

Rooftop Solar Installation by Orb Energy

Orb Energy, a vertically integrated provider of solar energy solutions in India, announced today that it had received a $20 million USD follow-on loan from the United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to support its unique in-house financing facility for rooftop and ground-mounted solar customers in India.

Orb Energy is a vertically integrated provider of solar energy solutions in India, operational since 2006. The company manufactures its own range of solar panels, designs, installs, and services solar systems, and also provides critical finance for up to 5 years to its commercial and industrial customers. Notably, Orb is unique in providing to SMEs (small to medium scale enterprises) who find it difficult to otherwise secure long-term finance for rooftop and ground-mounted solar. Orb received its first loan from DFC for $10mln USD to support its in-house finance for SMEs.

Ground Mounted Solar Installation by Orb Energy

Damian Miller the CEO and co-founder of Orb Energy explained “We are delighted that the DFC has decided to back Orb Energy again with a second loan of $20mln USD. We will be using these funds to extend further finance to our SME customers to enable them to gain quick and easy access to the rooftop and ground-mounted solar systems from Orb that can dramatically improve their competitiveness”

Jake Levine, DFC’s Chief Climate Officer said, “DFC’s second loan to Orb Energy will further expand renewable energy use by SMEs across India. With DFC’s loan, Orb Energy’s work will create additional jobs and cut energy costs for businesses, boosting economic growth in a sector that is key to India’s development goals.”