Tag: Chief Technology Officer

Education

Virtusa enables 2500+students across 58 colleges to be industry ready

Nov 27, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Chief People Officer, #Chief Technology Officer, #Ram Meenakshi, #Sundar Narayanan, #Virtusa

 Chennai: Virtusa Corporation, a global provider of digital strategy, digital engineering, and IT services and solutions that help clients change and disrupt markets through innovation engineering, held its seventh annual Engineering Academia Connect program, “HeadStart 2021,” in Chennai. This year’s HeadStart event attracted more than 200+ educators from 100universities who discussed the current industry requirements around re skilling and training, highlighted opportunities and challenges to equip students to be industry-ready. Ashish Vidyarthi, noted Actor, Scriptwriter, Director, and Inspirational Speaker delivered the keynote address speaking on ‘How to find your potential’

The Panel discussion on “Preparing for the Future of Work post Covid-19 Crisis” will see Ram Meenakshi – Chief Technology Officer, Venkatesh DK – Sr Vice President, Virtusa (HLS), Dr. AV Patil – Principal DY Patil institute, Mr. Raman Batra – Executive Vice President Noida Institute of Engg & Tech and Ms Purnima Venkat, Professor TA Pai Management Institute deliberate on the future of workplace and key talent trends, addressing over 5000 students in addition to Virtusa employees.

Lighting the lamp as he welcomed the participants, Sundar Narayanan, Chief People Officer, Virtusa said “We recognize that as companies lay increased focus on balancing innovation and controlling costs, a continuous process of upskilling the employees is of utmost importance and a pressing need. Keeping this in mind, Virtusa instituted hands-on exposure and training to the students on these technologies under the Graduate Talent Program, and organizing CoEs (Centres of Excellence) at leading engineering colleges through our Campus Connect program called HeadStart.”

A panel discussion at the event had Dr AV Patil, Principal, DY Patil Institute, Mr Raman Batra, EVP, Noida Institute of Engineering & Technology and Purnima Venkat, Professor, TA Pai Management Institute along with Virtusa senior management discuss and debate their expectations on the future skills and qualities the next generation of the corporate workforce, especially in the post covid era will need to be competitive in this ever-changing corporate world.

“In today’s dynamic industry environment students must be equipped with extensive knowledge about the new technologies which are gradually changing the way IT industry is functioning leading to an industry ready, skilled workforce. Virtusa’s technical competencies with leading universities across India and our CoE (Centers of Excellence) program is helping us hire top talent and prepare them to succeed. This focus on talent will lead to an overall improvement in the team member experience” added Ram Meenakshi, Chief Technology Officer, Virtusa.

Health

HealthCube Wins the Prestigious “ Startup of the Year” Honour at Smart Bio Awards, Bengaluru Tech Summit 2021

Nov 19, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Chief Executive Officer, #Chief Technology Officer, #Dr Radha Rangarajan, #HealthCube, #Ms Runam Mehta

HealthCube, a healthtech and point-of-care diagnostics company, has been named as the Startup of The Year’ at the Smart Bio Awards during the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2021. The event, attended by luminaries and distinguished personalities from 30 countries, was held at Bengaluru on 18 November. Axio Biosolutions, Biocon Academy, Biomoneta and NeoDx Biotech Labs also received recognition in different categories.

Naftali Bennett, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister of Australia, were some of the dignitaries who attended the event virtually. Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka Basavaraj Bommai; and Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot were present at the global event. South Africa, Vietnam, and UAE were some of the countries that participated.

Selection for the coveted awards was conducted by an eminent jury chaired by the President of the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE). The Startup of the Year’ award is a distinguished felicitation awarded to the most promising startups in the domain. Introduced by the Department of Electronics, IT, BT, and S&T, Government of Karnataka, the Smart Bio Awards honor path-breaking biotech firms that display dynamic leadership and cutting-edge innovation to make outstanding contributions in their respective biotech verticals.

Speaking about this, Ms Runam Mehta, Chief Executive Officer, HealthCube said, “We, at HealthCube, are solving the problem of access to diagnostics using a combination of our proprietary devices and digital health tools. These integrated point-of-care devices can be used in a range of clinical and non-clinical settings.

This award is an affirmation of our mission to improve health through the early detection of disease.”

Adding further, Dr Radha Rangarajan, Chief Technology Officer, HealthCube said, “We are privileged to receive this award and be counted among the most innovative startups in Karnataka. Our devices enable the easy testing and monitoring of key health parameters. Versatile and easy to operate, our products are positively impacting under-served communities.”

HealthCube’s best-in-class products provide results in 1 to 15 minutes for over 30 tests across various parameters. The results are saved electronically on the cloud with the help of an Android-based application and accessed easily on mobile phones and laptops. The devices can be used in the absence of electricity or internet, so they are ideally suited for remote, far-flung locations which lack access to doctors and diagnostic labs. By providing rapid and accurate results, HealthCube is enabling positive patient-centric interventions, saving time and cost. Over 2.5 million tests have been conducted and more than a million lives have been touched so far

HealthCube has been consistently winning accolades on the national as well as international front since its inception. It was among the final four in the telemedicine segment at the UCSF Health Awards 2019, and was awarded 2nd place in the ‘Innovation’ category at the first edition of the Fair of Ideas, Inventions, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Technology – FIEBaT organized by The Angola Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation during the 6th National Conference on Science and Technology held in 2019.

HealthCube designed and implemented a COVID-19 screening solution that saw its partner, Tech Mahindra receive the ‘Best Technology Solution for COVID19’ felicitation at ET HealthWorld Intelligent Health & Tech Awards 2020. The company also received the SKOCH order of merit in 2021. In collaboration with CDDEP, HealthCube competed for the “Trinity Challenge Award” by MIT Solve where it was among the top 16 out of 380 applications in 2021.

Business World

Piramal Appoints Saurabh Mittal as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of its Retail Finance Business

Mar 2, 2021 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #Chief Technology Officer, #Piramal Capital and Housing Finance Ltd., #Piramal Retail Finance, #Saurabh Mittal

Mumbai: Piramal Capital and Housing Finance Ltd. (PCHFL), a subsidiary of Piramal Enterprises Limited (‘PEL’, NSE: PEL, BSE: 500302) today announced the appointment of Saurabh Mittal as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of its Retail Finance business. In this role, Saurabh will lead technology strategy towards building a world-class Tech and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-led lending business, creating a cloud-native cutting-edge tech-stack. He will also be responsible for building a robust engineering team focussed on developing and managing technology for both customer and partner-facing business platforms of Piramal Retail Finance.

Saurabh brings with him, close to two decades of experience in building and scaling innovative consumer products across e-commerce and telecom domains. In his most recent role, at Amazon India, Saurabh led a team that engineered software systems for one of its fulfilment channels. Earlier, he was CTO at Medlife, where he played an instrumental role in defining, developing and evolving the company’s product portfolio, and enabling business growth from scratch to a revenue of over US$ 100 million. Before joining Medlife, Saurabh headed the server development group at Nokia Life, a Value Added Services (VAS) division of Nokia; prior to which he held entrepreneurial roles at various start-ups where he built VAS for telecom operators.

Commenting on the appointment, Jairam Sridharan, Chief Executive Officer, Piramal Retail Finance said, “We are delighted to welcome Saurabh Mittal to Piramal Retail Finance. Our Retail Finance business aims to become the lender of choice to small businesses and budget customers of Bharat through a business model that is ‘Digital at its Core’. Saurabh’s deep technology expertise will help Piramal build a new-age, innovative, multi-product retail lending platform. Through a phygital strategy, differentiated product and distribution, Piramal aims to serve Bharat at scale.”

Saurabh Mittal, Chief Technology Officer, Piramal Retail Finance said, “I am excited to join Piramal’s Retail Finance business and look forward to driving disruptive innovation in lending technology, enabling hyper-personalized experiences for customers and businesses, and transforming the way lending works for the unserved customers in Bharat.”

Saurabh holds a Master of Technology (M.Tech) Degree and Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) Degree in Electrical Engineering under the Dual Degree Program from IIT Bombay.

News

Shaadi.com’s Ex-CTO, Siddharth Sharma joins InVideo

Dec 16, 2020 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Anupan Mittal, #CEO, #Chief Technology Officer, #Founder, #Mr Siddharth Sharma, #Mr. Sanket Shah, #People Group

National: Popular online video editing platform InVideo has appointed dynamic professional Mr Siddharth Sharma as its new chief technology officer. An IIM alumnus, Sharma, has contributed to the growth of several start-ups and big brands in his illustrious career. His latest stint was in popular matchmaking platform Shaadi.com.

Mr Sanket Shah, CEO of InVideo, said, “We are building the best tech team in India. With SVS coming in, I’m looking forward to a rock solid tech team + culture.”

Mr Siddharth Sharma, new CTO of InVideo, said, “I am really excited to become a part of this team. InVideo is solving a very hard technical problem in a blue ocean space. The startup energy is unbeatable and coupled with the rigor of the process, it makes for very thrilling engineering and to lead this team is a great privilege. I am humbled with this opportunity and look forward to contributing to InVideo’s skyrocketing growth.”

Commenting on his responsibilities as the CTO of InVideo, Mr. Sharma said, “I’ll balance building the right product and building the product right, along with building the product right now!” He added, “I believe that people in the trenches should be fully autonomous, able to take decisions that align with the company’s goals by serving the user better. And it’s the job of leadership to set the context, the guardrails, and then get out of the way.”

Mr. Sharma took it to Twitter to announce his joining. Interestingly, Anupan Mittal, founder of People Group, joined in the conversation and wished him luck for a new journey. Take a look here – https://twitter.com/AnupamMittal/status/1338507826776268802

The development comes after the brand launched a unique hiring initiative and rolled in popular stand-up comic Rahul Subramanian for the campaign. In probably a first, InVideo leveraged LinkedIn’s algorithm to reach out to engineers from all over the country.

Business World

Network18 selected to be a part of the GNI YouTube Sustainability Lab

Dec 4, 2020 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #Chief Technology Officer, #Google News Initiative, #Network18 Digital, #Pandurang Nayak

Mumbai: Network18, India’s most diversified media conglomerate today announced that it has been selected by the Google News Initiative (GNI) for funding as part of the YouTube Sustainability Lab. The fund will support innovation in the area of financial sustainability for video news.

Earlier this year, the GNI YouTube Sustainability Lab invited media companies around the world to submit proposals for selection into the year-long program. Through the lab, YouTube and the GNI teams will work closely with selected news organizations around the world to accelerate innovative ideas related to financial sustainability for video news in the areas of advertising revenue, user revenue, and cost savings. Network18 submitted a proposal for an innovative cost-savings model that employs a nationwide network of reporters who will leverage AI & ML technology and develop a cutting-edge mobile journalism platform that will enable much higher volumes of video news with lowered costs of production. Network18 is one of 20 media houses internationally that have been selected for the program.

Network18

Due to the low shelf-life of news, and the limited window of news on television, video news publishers always had the challenge of increased production costs with a very small window to monetize content. In addition to this, the speed of publishing content is vital to maximize viewership for such content. The proposed solution builds on a platform, called File18, that Network18 launched last year to leverage its nationwide network of 1,200+ reporters to file text stories and takes it further to provide a platform to file videos with great speed, high quality and with controls around copyright checks, content moderation, etc. This provides a starting point for the digital transformation of a large network of traditional broadcast news to digital-first, social-ready content that can benefit with a larger audience across our digital platforms and social media channels.

Commenting on the selection, Pandurang Nayak, Chief Technology Officer, Network18 Digital said, “We appreciate the GNI’s effort to work with the news industry to help journalism thrive in the digital age and are delighted to have been selected to work on this initiative. We believe that financial support and peer interactions with media companies around the world will enable us to do greater innovation to deliver a world-class product that’s focused on India. We are committed to forging greater integration between TV & Digital, and pivoting our philosophy to ‘TV first, digital always’, thereby mobilizing our strength of 1200+ reporters, contributing daily in 13 different languages, to do mobile journalism using AI/ML-powered tools and make it faster and efficient to publish premium news content on our websites, apps, and social media properties.”