upGrad sets up not-for-profit foundation, commits Rs 50 crore corpus fund

UpGrad, an upskilling and higher learning edtech company, announced the opening of upGrad Foundation, a philanthropic and non-profit division on Monday. The foundation plans to focus on a variety of working professionals, including first-generation students, women returning to the workforce, and those in the public sector or the military forces, with a capital of Rs 50 crore. “LifeLongLearning, upskilling, and career enhancements can no longer be the right of only those who can afford it. Online learning has changed the perspective of all working professionals around the world and how…

Read More

Enkash raised $20 million in a new round of funding led by Ascent Capital

Enkash, a corporate spend management business backed by fintech entrepreneurs Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta, has acquired $20 million in a new round of funding led by Ascent Capital, Baring India Private Equity Partners, and Singapore-based White Ventures. Other backers already on board Axilor Ventures and Mayfield India also took part in the investment round. The fintech firm provides a payments management platform for businesses, including corporate card issuance. The Mumbai-based firm plans to utilise the capital to expand its offerings around banking-as-a-service, scaling up its ‘plug and play’ cards…

Read More

Stem innovation challenge: A platform for budding innovators to shine

The All India Council for robotics and automation through its ambitious initiative India stem mission launches the STEM innovation challenge. The innovative global challenge is expected to engage budding STEM innovators all around the world. This space provides STEM enthusiasts with a platform to show off their ideas and impeccable skills in science, technology, engineering, and maths. Sharing the details of the competition, the organizers said that STEM Innovators can now submit their entries online to participate in the challenge. Interested candidates are required to shoot a self-explaining video of…

Read More

Tweetdeck May Soon Become A Paid Feature

Tweetdeck, Twitter’s productivity tool, may soon be combined with Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service. Reverse engineer Jane Manchung Wong claims that Twitter has built up a new signup page for Tweetdeck that highlights two important modifications. To begin with, the legacy Tweetdeck platform may be “deprecated in the future.” Second, unlike the previous Tweetdeck, the new Tweetdeck is being advertised with an ad-free experience. Wong also points out that Twitter isn’t modifying the UI of the legacy Tweetdeck, but rather creating a new platform for subscribers from the ground…

Read More

Facebook-Meta Resorts to Smear Tactics Against TikTok

Facebook was caught red-handed eleven years ago after it engaged a prominent public relations firm to try to plant stories in major news publications harshly criticising Google’s privacy practises. In 2018, it engaged Definers, a public relations firm, to conduct opposition research on the company’s opponents, including George Soros, a wealthy philanthropist. Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s longstanding head of communications, accepted responsibility for the employment of Definers and comparable firms and resigned. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is employing similar strategies to combat another rival,…

Read More

MIT launches cross-disciplinary program to boost AI hardware innovation

The AI Hardware Program, announced by MIT, is a new academic-industry alliance aimed at boosting research and development. “A sharp focus on AI hardware manufacturing, research, and design is critical to meet the demands of the world’s evolving devices, architectures, and systems,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering, and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “Knowledge-sharing between industry and academia is imperative to the future of high-performance computing.” As the diversity of the inaugural members shows, the program is intended to be a…

Read More

More than 10 lakh Indian WhatsApp accounts were banned in February

Every month, WhatsApp bans lakhs of accounts in India, and the picture remains the same in February. According to the IT Rules 2021, the Meta-owned instant messaging platform released its ninth monthly report for the month of February 2022, stating that more than 10 lakh WhatsApp accounts (1.4 million to be exact) were banned between February 1 and 28. These accounts may have been banned for engaging in detrimental behaviour on the network, such as harassing other users, spreading false information, and so on. “Over the years, we have consistently…

Read More

Indian startups racked up $10 billion in Q1 2022 led by late-stage funding deals

Even as the global startup ecosystem begins to talk about a slowdown in dealmaking due to macroeconomic challenges, Indian companies raised more than $10 billion in the first quarter of 2022, up from $5.7 billion in the same time of 2021, according to Venture Intelligence statistics. Because official deal announcements often take a few months after closing, the record-breaking first quarter funding data does not account for the present downturn. A rise in US interest rates, rising geopolitical tensions as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, record-high fuel prices,…

Read More

Spacetech startup Pixxel launches ‘Shakuntala’ satellite with Elon Musk’s SpaceX

Pixxel, a spacetech startup, has successfully launched its first full-fledged commercial satellite, dubbed ‘Shakuntala,’ using SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket, which is run by Elon Musk. ‘Shakuntala,’ Pixxel’s first fully-fledged satellite, hosts one of the highest resolution hyperspectral commercial cameras ever flown to orbit, putting the company one step closer to developing a 24×7 health monitor for the globe, according to the company. This launch, which took place on Friday on SpaceX’s Transporter-4 mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, gets the business closer to completing its ambitious aim of assembling one of the…

Read More

Hackers duped Apple, Meta and other tech firms with forged data requests for user information

Apple and Meta were deceived into revealing the data of some of its users with hackers according to esports. The companies supplied the information in response to fictitious emergency data demands from hackers posing as law enforcement officers. It has recently been discovered that fake emergency demands for data extraction from businesses have been going on for quite some time. According to Bloomberg, Apple and Meta, Facebook’s parent corporation, provided hackers with information such as a user’s address, phone number, and IP address. As a result of the faked requests,…

Read More