Cyber attacks in India surge since lockdown !!

MUMBAI: Cyber security attacks and breaches in the country may have jumped by as much as 500% since the lockdown was first announced in March, according to security experts. Internet service providers ET spoke with said they receive cyberattack alerts from corporate clients almost every alternate day compared with an average of once a week before lockdown was announced as part of measure to contain the spread of Covid-19. “There could be as much as a 500% increase in cyber security incidents since March. Most of the attacks are below…

India looks inward to save economy as crisis bites !!

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to make India more self-reliant, but if the experience over the past few years is anything to go by, it’s not going to be easy. Faced with disruptions to raw material supplies from China because of the Covid-19 pandemic and millions of job losses following a nationwide lockdown, Modi has ratcheted up calls to boost local manufacturing and reduce India’s reliance on imports. A shortage of personal protective equipment at the beginning of the outbreak  increased his resolve — and within the space…

Custom check for Chinese goods can worsen shortages of smartphones, laptops, TV !!

Kolkata: India’s move to check each and every consignment coming in from China will lead to delays and amplify shortages of smartphones, tablets, computers and televisions, said executives of leading brands and contract manufacturers. The disruption in the industry’s supply chain comes at a time when demand for these products is higher than supplies, they said. Three senior industry executives said supplies will be impacted for brands such as Apple, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, RealMe, Lenovo and several online focused brands, as consignments for most of them are currently stuck…

Sequoia India Backs AI-Based Sales Solutions Provider In $8 Mln Round !!

Bengaluru: Salesken.ai, a start-up that provides artificial intelligence-based tools to improve sales, has raised $8 million in a Series A round from Sequoia India. The round also saw existing investors such as Unitus Venture and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation making a partial exit. Founded in 2019 by Sreeraman Vaidyanathan and Surga Thilakan, Salesken’s proprietary technology uses machine learning and data science tools to learn successful sales tactics and help teams with real-time intelligence to land more deals. The Bengaluru-based company said the new funds would be used for further development…

This Social Commerce Start-Up Is Creating a New Way To Shop For Bharat !!

Jaipur: The spectacular entry of Reliance Jio and the subsequent disruption in Internet data usage led to the creation of unimaginable possibilities. Millions of people were going to be able to access the Internet for the first time, and most of them were going to be mobile-first as well. About 4 years later, the expected disruption has happened, and while content platforms such as TikTok have probably been the biggest gainers so far, online commerce is not too far behind. There’s the likes of Facebook-backed Meesho and Mumbai-based Shop101, which…

This Indian Start-Up Wants To Bring More Customers To the Digital Payments Landscape !!

Bengaluru: Akash Sinha has always had the proverbial entrepreneurial itch. From trying to build a social network for workplaces to running a portal that would match entrance exam scores with the qualifying institutions during his undergraduation, he has dabbled a fair bit into starting up to know how it works. “It’s always been about looking at the problems in the market and trying to solve them; that’s what you do as an entrepreneur,” he says. Sinha is now the co-founder and chief executive officer of Cashfree, a payments and banking…

India Needs to Get Over ‘National Security’ Myth, Revamp Remote Sensing Policies !!

In the challenging time of a COVID-19 outbreak, satellite monitoring has been playing a pivotal role in curbing the spread of the infection, mainly by helping identifying risk zones and facilitating quick response. However, there remains a huge potential to use Earth-observation (EO) data to shed new light on societal and economic changes currently taking place. The spate of reforms announced by the Indian government designed to create and nurture private enterprises in the field of space exploration, satellite communications regulations and remote-sensing has not only inspired hope for countless space…

Why India Needs a Different Way to Support Climate Research and Education !!

New Delhi: Climate science has been an accidental tourist at the debate dominating human discourse in the last two decades. Developing countries like India are being forced to strike a fine, but often impossible, balance between pushing aggressively for economic development and mitigating the unavoidable environmental damage that comes with such development (because of, among other reasons, reliance on dirty energy, unmanaged land use and natural resource exploitation). Economic development however  also facilitates higher investments in the human and computational resources required to advance weather and climate predictions as well…

IIT Guwahati Students Develop Drone to Sanitise Large Areas !!

New Delhi: A group of students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati, has developed a drone with an automated sprayer to sanitise large areas including roads, parks, and footpaths. The student group, which has a start-up called “Racerfly”, has approached the Assam and Uttarakhand governments with their sprayer system which they claim can accomplish the task in less than 15 minutes which would otherwise take a person 1.5 days of work. According to Anant Mittal, a Civil engineering student at IIT Guwahati, the sprayer system can be deployed and…

AICRA and IASC-SSC will jointly do Assessments of 3.5 Lakhs Industry Workers on Qualification Packs (QP) as per approved NOS !!

New Delhi: AICRA and IASC-SSC, an autonomous body of Ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship, Government of India agreed to work in collaboration with each other to conduct livelihood program by skilling the unemployed youths and up- skilling the un- organised sector technicians in Industries. The thrust of the agreement is to promote and conduct up-skilling projects for MSME sector on Industry 4.0 outcome-based training Assessment and Certification on Qualification packs (QP) as per approved National Occupational Standards (NOS). Initially 17 QPs will be rolled out under various skill development projects…