Archive: July 1, 2022

Supertalent Puts Talent First in the Recruitment Process Using Behavioral Assessments and Anonymized Profiles

A personality-driven approach to hiring new candidates

supertalent is a modern data-driven talent portal that uses artificial intelligence and behavioral analysis to connect qualified talents to organizations with the right work values and personality fit. The startup takes a nontraditional approach towards talent acquisition, putting the talent at the center stage.

Today, more than 50% of working people are dissatisfied with their jobs. The market has seen a significant number of resignations lately, and the most prominent reason for leaving the job is the cultural mismatch between the employee and the employer. Individuals are looking for jobs that not only fulfill their monetary requirements but also align with their cultural and value expectations.

Tom Zrubecky founded supertalent to bridge this gap between individual expectations and company fit. The portal uses a combination of behavioral assessments and anonymized profiles to find the right talent for the company. This new-age approach gives less importance to an individual’s previous experience and more to the right personality fit with the team and the company.

supertalent utilizes behavioral assessments for both the individual and the company looking for the talent. In the last four months, the startup has assessed more than 25,000 individuals and companies that answered more than 1,000,000 unique questions. The algorithms based on these answers are able to find the most relevant experience of the candidate. It also takes into account the future potential of a candidate instead of just considering their previous experience.

The portal also removes the information imbalance between companies and candidates. It shows candidates their personality fits with the company they are applying to. This adds another dimension to the application process, providing candidates with more information than just a plain job description.

To ensure candidates are more comfortable applying for jobs using its portal, supertalent completely anonymizes personal candidate information. Details like picture, name, age, or gender are hidden from the company. Candidates have the power to decide when and how their true identity is revealed. This removes any potential cognitive biases in the recruitment process.

Companies are also asked to complete value fit tests. This helps the portal match the candidate to the company with the right fit. In addition to hiring new talents, companies can also use supertalent’s behavioral assessments to test their teams and drive personal development and company values.

“Everyone claims these days that there is almost no available talent on the market. Although it’s generally true, we disagree. Based on our research, we know that there are many people off the market who are willing to change jobs. They just want to make sure that the new job will be better than their current one. And it’s no longer primarily about the money, but about their personal fit with company values and culture. And we offer them exactly this information.

To know beforehand if their personal settings would fit with company values and culture.” reveals Zrubecky, co-founder of supertalent. supertalent believes in giving back to the environment. It has partnered with One Tree Planted, which plants trees all over the world. The startup will plant one tree for every successfully hired talent via supertalent and aims to plant 1,000,000 trees over the next ten years.

Study Group appoints new Chief Product Officer to drive growth and innovation in high-quality international education solutions

1st July 2022: Study Group is delighted to announce the appointment of Steve Pinches to the new role of Chief Product Officer, effective 27 June.

The role has been established to accelerate Study Group’s work with university partners on strategic innovation, developing new programmes and services for international students in addition to current pathway programmes.

Steve is a highly experienced leader with an extensive background helping organisations across the publishing, EdTech and media industries to maximise the opportunity of digital and blended approaches to growth, having held key roles at the Financial Times, Pearson, the Hyve Group and Tes Global.

Steve’s career began with education, and opening opportunities to students from around the world is a thread which runs throughout his working life. After working as an English language teacher in the Americas and Europe, he spent over 10 years launching a raft of award-winning digital products and services for the Financial Times and managing their transition to subscription-based digital revenue.

Steve then moved back to education, heading up digital development for Pearson ELT and developing blended solutions to learning for Pearson’s audiences globally. Next, he joined the privately-owned education group Tes Global, where he established the Tes Institute, a pioneering teacher qualification and training organisation.

After building the Tes Institute and successfully launching it globally, Steve was made Chief Operating Officer at Tes, overseeing a portfolio of teacher development and EdTech businesses as well as Tes’s product, design, data and operations teams. More recently Steve has worked with Hyve Group plc, one of the largest exhibitions organisations in the world, helping them build new digital and blended revenue streams around their entire portfolio of shows, including the Bett education show in London.

Steve is committed to leading and motivating cross-functional teams to build exciting new businesses and products that make a positive impact on society. In his spare time, he enjoys cycling, tennis and playing the piano, as well as spending time with his two children.

Commenting on his appointment, Steve said: “It is thrilling to be joining international education leaders Study Group at such an exciting time in the company’s development, and I am very much looking forward to working with its excellent team to help develop the programmes and opportunities we know will be really valuable to our university partners and students. As we come out of the pandemic and look to the potential of new services and markets, as well as digital innovation, I have confidence that Study Group will be a sector leader in the highest quality international education, and I am really looking forward to delivering that.” 

Emma Lancaster, Study Group CEO, commented: “Our global reorganisation last year laid the foundations for us to work more closely with our university partners on growth and innovation in high quality international education. Steve’s appointment is a key next step in accelerating our delivery of new solutions designed for a changed and continually changing world. We’re delighted he’s joining us at this pivotal moment.”

Impact of Deficient Monsoons on Real Estate

By Akash Pharande, Managing Director – Pharande Spaces

In India, the monsoon season is invariably seen as a blessing to the villages and the bane of city dwellers. Agriculture depends on a good and dependable rainy season – but in the cities, all anyone can see is clogged drains causing flooded streets. Of course, we know that all of India’s economy depends heavily on a timely monsoon season. In cities like Pune, catchments have almost dried up this year, and we are again staring at water shortages.

While the ill effects of a deficient monsoon are apparent, how does it affect real estate? Is the performance of the Indian real estate market somehow linked to the monsoon in critical but less obvious ways?

Impact on Economic Performance – First of all, the healthy performance of the property market has direct linkages to how well the overall economy is performing. In other words, whatever affects the economy will also have a fallout on the real estate market. Agriculture only accounts for about 16-17% of the country’s GDP, but more than 50% of India’s population depends on the farming sector directly or indirectly.

Currently, India is forecast to attain a 7-7.8% GDP growth. However, whether or not this will happen depends on how well the metro cities – particularly the financial capital Mumbai and its prosperous neighbour Pune – perform. While the global economy has been racked by the Russia-Ukraine war and the supply chain disruptions and inflation it has caused, India banks on its domestic economy to beat the headwinds over the mid-to-long term. This will be a difficult feat to achieve if the monsoon fails.

Impact on Disposable Income – The stock markets clearly react to monsoon predictions and the on-ground performance of the agriculture sectors. Most middle-class Indians depend on the stock market to create disposable income, which they can use to buy homes and other assets.

Moreover, inflation affects the overall cost of living, again causing consumers to have less disposable income to invest in real estate. Inflation also puts pressure on commercial spaces leased out to entertainment and retailers, which witness fewer consumer footfalls even as the rentals they pay for their real estate do not reduce.

Impact of Increased Rural-to-urban Migration – There are also other impacts of a deficient monsoon. Many farmers will be unable to sustain themselves in their villages and will come to the cities to try and get work there. This adds more strain on the cities’ civic infrastructure, and there is an acute shortage of affordable housing there. Such migrant farmers eventually wind up in slums because they cannot afford to rent ‘pukka’ homes, especially when urban rentals are set to rise by more than 10% this year.

The Impact of Reduced Green Cover – Unfortunately, rapid deforestation has reduced the city’s green cover, affecting rains. Contrary to a popular notion, trees and vegetation do not directly attract rain. However, they create favourable conditions for showers as they expel water vapours, which then accumulate and create condensation that leads to rainy conditions.

The rainy season is an excellent time for homebuyers to inspect housing options, as they can detect leakages within the flats and the state of traffic in the location during the most challenging time for vehicular movement in the entire year. While developers usually see fewer footfalls at their sites during the monsoons, the conversion rate tends to be quite healthy because buyers do additional research on the projects of their choice before visiting the sites.

All in all, the real estate sector depends on the monsoons in many ways. Like most other businesses, real estate developers send earnest prayers to the rain gods to ensure a healthy rainy season. This is even more true for a city like Pune, located in a rain shadow created by the surrounding Sahyadri mountains

All this being said, the housing market is still riding on a wave of renewed homebuyer enthusiasm. While factors like deficient monsoon do affect housing market performance in the short-term, healthy demand will ensure that sales will continue.

Of course, it always rains eventually. But the longer the delay of monsoon arrival, the longer it will take for housing demand to return to normal again.

Comment by Mr. Rohan Pawar, CEO of Pinnacle Group on Pune Property Sales’ REA Report

“This quarter has been witnessing a surge in property registrations and that’s great news for the Pune real estate market. Despite of the rise in the property prices due to 1% metro cess, the demand continues to be robust. Consumers are rushing to invest in properties as the prices are still attractive but there is a lingering fear of further rise in the interest rates causing home prices to remain on the upward trajectory. Additionally, reduction in stamp duty, all-time-low home loan rates and payment flexibility has helped Pune real estate market to grow stronger in the past two years. Today, homebuyers are also willing to buy a second home in Pune in light of the current real estate development rate. The year 2022 is likely to break several existing records in the Pune housing market. There will be newer benchmarks in terms of connectivity, infrastructure, locality, projects, neighborhood, amenities, configuration and more such important factors that buyers consider before making the purchase decision. That being said, there might be a substantial impact on property registrations should the interest rates go higher.”

-Mr. Rohan Pawar, CEO of Pinnacle Group

 

IG International’s near term carbon commitment goals validated by SBTI

IG International, one of the leading fresh fruit importers, has recently submitted their carbon reduction targets to the independent Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a partnership between the UN Global Compact, the World Resources Institute (WRI), CDP, and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). The SBTi assessed IG International’s near-term carbon commitments, the applied methodology and target setting against the Paris Climate Agreement—aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. After a meticulous review, SBTi has affirmed and validated the behemoth fruit importing brand’s near-term goals.

IG International has committed to improving various parameters mentioned in the SBTi criteria and recommendations version 5.0. In its near-term goals, IG International will focus on operating efficiently and keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. The comprehensive set of commitments also includes 23% reductions in scope 1 and scope 2 from the base year. The company has assiduously mapped and followed the Greenhouse Gas (GHC) protocol in conformity with the corporate standards and Scope 2 guidance (Scope 2 Guidance standardizes how corporations measure emissions from purchased or acquired electricity, steam, heat, and cooling) to estimate and report GHG emissions. The plan for the future is to reduce scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by 90% by the year 2050.

In accordance with climate science, the Science Based Objectives initiative (SBTi) defines and supports best practices in carbon reductions and net-zero targets. It provides corporations with strategies and support for establishing science-based objectives in accordance with the most recent climate insights. These science-based targets are the touchstones and show companies and financial institutions how much and how quickly they need to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

Acclaimed as the leading fresh fruit importer in India, IG International is entrenched with a renowned reputation for more than 50 years in this market segment. The company’s organized and strategic sourcing system, augmented by a seamless supply chain with a well-connected overseas procurement network, enables them to import best-of-breed fruits from 22 different countries.

Mr. Tarun Arora, Director single family office, IG International was quoted on this recent development, he said, “The fruits that we nurture and grow give us business and use the resources of nature and the environment. By conforming to environmental sustainability parameters adjudicated by the SBTi, we are committing to the persistent opportunities for our growth, the amelioration of the environment, and, above all, a better world for the future. A climate that favors the growth of fresh fruits, healthy soil, and organic biodiversity are all that is required for us and we are taking a step towards enhancing the same.”

Toyota Forays into the Coveted B-SUV Segment in India with The Urban Cruiser Hyryder

Bengaluru, 1st July 2022: Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) today unveiled the new Urban Cruiser Hyryder, Toyota’s first Self-charging Strong Hybrid Electric SUV and the first of its kind, in the B SUV segment in India. As one of Toyota’s sustainable mobility offerings, the Urban Cruiser Hyryder inherits Toyota’s global SUV lineage with its bold and sophisticated styling and advanced tech features, making it a perfect choice in the segment. The new model delivers top performance and best-in-class fuel efficiency along with a luxurious quiet cabin, the new SUV a perfect match for the diverse needs of the Indian car buyer.

Based on the Advanced Body Structure, the Urban Cruiser Hyryder has been designed for a greener future, delivering a unique combination of exemplary dynamic performance, best-in-class fuel economy, quick acceleration, lower emissions, and a smooth drive.

Powered by e-drive transmission with 2WD and being a Self-charging Strong Hybrid Electric Vehicle, the Urban Cruiser Hyryder is capable of running 40% of distance and 60% of time on electric (EV) or zero-emission mode*. The new model is also available with a 1.5-liter K-series engine with Neo Drive (ISG), 5 Speed Manual Transmission & 6 Speed Automatic Transmission with 2WD & 4WD options.

Over the years, Toyota has constantly worked towards advancing electrified vehicle technologies in India with a focus on local procurement of electric powertrain parts, aligning with the “Make in India” initiative promoted by the Government. The company has a strong focus on rapidly embracing the shift towards sustainable mobility by bringing practical solutions, that best meets the customer needs and energy mix of the country. This in turn can result in the widespread acceptance of environment-friendly technologies to create a positive impact and enhance energy security of the country.

Present at the occasion of its unveiling in New Delhi, Mr. Vikram Kirloskar- Vice Chairman, Toyota Kirloskar Motor said, “Toyota has always been guided by the strong commitment to build a sustainable community, living in harmony with nature. One of our key focuses is to shift towards low-carbon energy sources and provide practical and sustainable mobility solutions, in support of various ambitious national goals. We believe in collectively owing the responsibility towards creating a cleaner and greener future, with a vision to realize a ‘Carbon Neutral Society’. In line with these goals, we are very happy to introduce the Urban Cruiser Hyryder, which will give a substantial boost to ‘Make in India’ and ‘Mass Electrification’ initiatives and thereby providing further impetus to ‘Atamanirbhar Bharat’.”

Also present at the occasion & speaking on TKM’s sustainable mission, Mr. Masakazu Yoshimura, Managing Director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor said, “We are proud to add another milestone product to our line-up of electrified vehicles in India. Over the last 25 years, Toyota in India has continuously worked towards meeting the mobility needs of consumers. Today, with over two million satisfied customers, our focus in India continues to be the introduction of advanced products that are safer and cleaner and a good match for the energy mix of the country. Achieving Carbon Neutrality has always been the biggest challenge before us. Towards which, fighting against carbon will require multiple technology pathways and our latest offering is another step in that direction. The Urban Cruiser Hyryder offers a Self-charging Strong Hybrid Electric powertrain which truly reflects Toyota’s advanced green technology. For the first time as a part of Toyota’s global alliance with Suzuki, this model will be manufactured at TKM’s plant in Karnataka. We strongly believe, this vehicle will provide a world-class motoring experience to all our customers.”

Speaking about the segment and Urban Cruiser Hyryder, Mr. Tadashi Asazuma – Executive Vice President, Sales & Customer Service, Toyota Kirloskar Motor said, “At Toyota, we always bring in models based on our studies on consumer preferences and industry trends. The Urban Cruiser Hyryder, the first of its kind Self-charging Strong Hybrid Electric Vehicle in the segment, is aimed at delivering exemplary performance, best in class fuel efficiency, quick acceleration, and a smooth drive. Over the years, Toyota’s share has grown substantially in the SUV segments. The dominance of our premium offerings like the segment leading Toyota Fortuner, the Legender, and good acceptance of the Urban Cruiser are due to their bold and sophisticated styling backed by design inspired by Toyota’s global SUV lineage. We are confident that the Urban Cruiser Hyryder will create substantial excitement and further reinstate our presence in the coveted B-SUV segment in India with its several best in segment features like the AWD (All Wheel Drive), Panoramic sunroof, 17” alloy, wireless charger, Heads Up Display (HUD) & 360-degree camera and connected DCM (Data Communication Module) making it the ideal choice of all the automobile enthusiasts.”

On the exterior, the Urban Cruiser Hyryder boasts of LED Project Headlamp, Twin LED Daytime running lamp, side Turn Indicator, Sporty Rear Skid Plate, Wide Trapezoidal Lower Grille, Dual Tone body Colour, Unique Crystal Acrylic Upper Grille with Chrome Garnish, Sleek& Dynamic R17 Alloy wheels and LED Tail Lamp. The Urban Cruiser Hyryder will be available in 7 monotone and 4 dual tone colours- Cave Black, Sportin Red, Speedy Blue, Enticing Silver, Cafe White, Gaming Grey, and Midnight Black. Dual tone colour option (with Black roof) is available with Cafe White, Sportin Red, Enticing Silver and Speedy blue.

The interiors are beautifully crafted to perfectly suit the bespoke experience offered by Toyota. The new SUV in Self-charging Strong Hybrid Electric grades has a stunning black and brown interior and Neo Drive grades has a full black interior which combine to provide a stellar experience.

The front interior features come with 9” smart play cast audio, drive mode switch, Wireless charging, Leather seats with Ventilation, 360-degree camera & view, Ambient Light, Door Spot + IP Line, Head-up Display, Cruise Control, Tilt and Telescopic Steering, Hello Google & Hey Siri Voice Assistant and a Soft Touch instrument panel with premium switch. Other additional features include Reclining Rear Seats, Rear AC Vents, 60:40 Seat Split and USB Rear Points. To make the ownership experience even more awesome, Toyota offers a customised range of 66 accessories designed exclusively for the Urban Cruiser Hyryder.

Furthermore, the Urban Cruiser Hyryder is bundled with unmatched value proposition in the segment. The new B SUV offers the renowned Toyota experience through a warranty of 3 years/100,000 kilometers and an option of extended warranty of upto 5 years/220,000 kilometers, 3 years free roadside assistance, attractive financial schemes and 8 yrs/160,000 kilometers warranty on Hybrid battery.

Bookings are to begin today. Customers can make their bookings online at www.toyotabharat.com/online-booking/ or also visit their nearest Toyota dealership. For more details, customers can simply log on to www.toyotabharat.com.

Under specific test conditions for SHEV

Overview of TKM

Overview of TKM 1st Plant:

Overview of TKM 2nd Plant: