Tag: Kestone

Business World

Kestone Endeavors to Make Virtual Events Equally Immersive Even for the Differently Abled; Adds Accessibility and Interactivity Features for the Dyslexic & Visually Impaired

May 25, 2021 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #Kestone, #Piyush Gupta, #President

25 May 2021, New Delhi, India: Kestone, India’s leading data-driven integrated sales and marketing services company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Career launcher (NSE, BSE: CLEDUCATE), in an endeavor to support disability inclusion at virtual events, today announced adding assistive tech/ high-tech accessibility and interactivity feature to its platform for the dyslexic and the visually impaired. With this, regardless of the disabilities that some of the virtual event attendees might have (visual impairedness, dyslexia, etc.), Kestone would be able to provide them with an equally immersive digital event experience based on their unique accessibility needs. This step will empower corporates to add disability into their diversity and inclusion plan, widen access to more talent and skills at a time when hybrid working mode, knowledge sharing through virtual events is gaining mainstream significance due to COVID19 2.0 impact.

Speaking on the occasion, Piyush Gupta, President, Kestone said, “The need for a disability-inclusive business culture is highly critical to help voice the talent and skills of persons with disabilities (PWDs), the underrepresented community in the corporate world, which constitutes not even 0.5 percent of employees in India’s top companies. Social isolation, insufficient job opportunities, and financial uncertainty have already taken a major toll on them during the pandemic. Kestone has always assessed and added new-age tech features on its virtual event platform. The addition of Assistive Tech will help the dyslexic and the visually impaired gain more immersive experience, navigate the event schedule with more ease, and make corporate virtual events more inclusive. The presence of such disability-friendly virtual events will surely encourage innovation, talent, and a sense of equality across industries”.

Digital tech innovation has never been more significant than it is today. With only 1 in 10 PWDs having access to the virtual technologies according to the WHO and the pandemic protocols impacting their lives and mental health all the more, India needs to accelerate technology adoption in its disability inclusion road map. Considering that flexible and disability-inclusive work policies benefit employees across the board and boost an organization’s resilience, communication, and knowledge sharing through virtual events will need to have such assistive technology at its base. As companies rethink their business models and work environments to adapt to the pandemic, disability inclusion will take a vital significance.

The future will need the marketing tech world to innovate around designing content solutions that ensure accessibility, inculcate thoughtful adjustments, support inclusivity, and remove disability discrimination within information and communication technologies. With Govt.’s Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) that aims to achieve universal accessibility for PWDs and the corporate world endeavoring to adopt remote working, touchless technology due to the pandemic impact, India is sure to embark on a promising start and the role and contribution of virtual tech designers will become more integral.

About Kestone:- Kestone, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Career Launcher (NSE, BSE: CLEDUCATE) and India’s leading data-driven integrated sales and marketing services company, founded in 1997, is the player behind India’s first, entirely home-grown, experiential “virtual platform”. Replicating every element of an offline events experience i.e. unlimited customizable virtual environments, gamification to ensure active user engagement, interactivity to ensure in-person meetings/conversation experience, or the marketers’ need for real-time data and analytics to arrive at a performance index, coupled with multilingual functionality, 3D environments, LIVE video streaming, audience engagement interventions with polls, quizzes, real-time reporting, etc., data privacy and security encryptions, Kestone offers limitless possibilities for businesses to collaborate, communicate and grow across sectors. In 2021, they introduced VIRSA BOT – India’s first AI-powered Virtual Event Smart Assistant whose intelligent make and analytic capability could spike average audience engagement time at virtual events by 5 times. Kestone has aced 15K+ hours of streaming and engaged over a 10Mn audience. Headquartered in New Delhi, it has a presence in 250+ Indian Cities, and 15+ International destinations including Singapore, Dubai & the US. The INR. 130 Cr firm counts Dell and Cisco as among its longest-serving clients and has strategized & executed several campaigns for 100+ orgs including NASSCOM, SAP, TiE, Wipro, Airtel, 3M, Amazon, etc., across IT, ITES, FMCG, travel, transport, automotive, and real estate. It has built a portfolio of successful IPs – Melting Pot, Inquizitive Minds, Pocket Events, and Axis and won ACEF Global Customer Engagement Awards in 2018, 2019 & 2020, WOW Awards, Lighthouse Insights Best Mobile Marketing 2018, and Marketing Excellence Awards 2017 among other accolades. For more info, visit https://kestoneglobal.com/

Business World, News

Kestone’s Virsa BOT – India’s first AI powered Virtual Event Smart Assistance to increase audience average engagement time by 5x

Feb 24, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Kestone, #Piyush Gupta, #President

New Delhi, India: Kestone, India’s leading data-driven integrated sales and marketing services company, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Career Launcher (NSE, BSE: CLEDUCATE),  announced the launch of VIRSA BOT – India’s first AI powered Virtual Event Smart Assistance whose intelligent make and analytic capability can increase average audience engagement time at virtual events by multi-fold.

Gaining in-depth accurate behavioral insights and comprehending the audience psyche will no longer be a pain point for marketers now. Designed exclusively to interpret data rightfrom the registration process, VIRSA with AI driven algorithms can not only provide personalized recommendations to the event organizer about content choice and sessions topics assessing the attendees’ business profile for improved event strategy, but also is fully empowered to filter and recommend sessions, resources and indicative business contacts for interaction for the attendee once he/she logs in. Discovering relevant content, speakers and sessions and connecting to peers and business leads will be easier. Another great feature of VIRSA is speech-text conversion, known as Virsa Notes. VIRSA listens to all the sessions and takes a note of every aspect of the deliberation. So, in-case anyone misses a particular session, Virsa will convert that session into text with 85% accuracy.

Speaking on the occasion, Piyush Gupta, President, Kestone said, “Assessing market needs early and innovating ahead to deliver solutions that are long terms and effective have been our key goal. The pandemic has given virtual communication a whole new chapter and opportunities to advance newer concepts into the market. Audience engagement and interactivity were major challenges for virtual marketers ever since its start and our VIRSA bot – India’s first AI powered Virtual Event Smart Assistance, will be the most cost-effective, intuitive, personalized concierge for both marketers and audiences. VIRSA will change the event industry’s marketplace for good and we expect a minimum of 3-fold increase in their conversion rates and revenue by increasing audience average engagement time by 5x. There are no bandwidth concerns for VIRSA and hence no capping to the number of calculations the bot can make every second, irrespective of the event size.”

He also added, “Virsa has an extensive potential to activate wider reach for multi-lingual events, which will be the new flavor for brands as more local brands and marketers embrace virtual technology. For all those unfamiliar-new-audience attending such event, whose typical inhibitions could be their comfort and conversance level with a ‘tech’ platform and the sense of being ‘lost’ once they login, VIRSA can be their virtual concierge.”

Kestone’s virtual event platform which is India’s first, entirely home-grown, experiential “virtual platform” with a 360-degree integrated marketing and branding assistance has replicated every element of an offline events experience into it, offering limitless possibilities for businesses to collaborate, communicate and grow across sectors. Kestone has already done more than 10000 hours of streaming and engaged over 5million audience over a span of 8months in the virtual space.With 94% brands aiming at exploring digital IPs for improved consumer attraction and retention in the new normal, Hybrid events will be the future for event industry. Tech innovation under ‘Virtual’ and ‘Hybrid’ models is redefining the industry. For India, which ranks 63rd in Global Ease of Doing Business 2020 and 68th in Global Entrepreneurship Index; post pandemic business engagements and communication will be driven virtually, upping the market potential of VIRSA in terms of the growing market demand extensively.

Business World

Kestone partners with Give India to present Imagine, The Largest 24-hour Virtual Global Fundraiser Connect on 10th Oct 2020

Oct 8, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #BSE: CLEDUCATE), #Career Launcher (NSE, #Give India, #Kestone, #Piyush Gupta, #Priyanka Prakash

Kestone, among India’s leading integrated marketing services company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Career Launcher (NSE, BSE: CLEDUCATE) and Give India, India’s most trusted platform for donors, present Imagine, India’s largest 24-hour Virtual Global Fundraiser Connect from 10-11 Oct 2020.

Imagine in its 24 hrs of content will bring together Arunachalam Muruganantham – Padman of India, Atul Khatri – an Indian stand-up comedian, Dharmendra Rai – Mind Map Trainer, Dr. Mickey Mehta, Global leading holistic health guru and corporate life coach, Jessie Paul, CEO, Paul Writer, Anand Neelakantan, well-known author & screenwriter, C. K. Kumaravel, Co-founder of Groom India Salon & Spa, Sourabh Kaushal, Internationally Acclaimed Entrepreneur and over 50+ other artists, influencers, business leaders, thought leaders and social change-makers from across the globe to connect, collaborate and contribute to support the noble cause of enabling uninterrupted education in the post-COVID world, through inspiring sessions, workshops and performances.

The event is a celebration of the human spirit and a demonstration of the power of technology to bridge physical boundaries and barriers to provide a platform for people to come together from across the globe. Now more than ever is the time for us to reimagine the world as we know it and look beyond the constraints of the current reality that we are faced with. While we have already witnessed a sea change through a technological transformation in every aspect of our life, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is time for us to leverage technology in novel ways to stay connected, keep our social accountability alive, innovate and build new communities as we navigate this new normal.

Speaking on the occasion, Piyush Gupta, President, Keystone said, “While we settle into the new normal and stay connected using newer technologies, we can’t ignore that a sizeable population of India is still deprived of the basic necessities required to be part of the online learning modes in this pandemic impacted the world. Social responsibility in education is critical now. The shift from physical to online has its own challenges and the lesser privileged children are the ones who are suffering the most with no access to digital means of modern education. Imagine – India’s 24-hour Virtual Global Fundraiser Connect is our humble attempt to rekindle this sense among all and bring together known and unknown personalities from across the world to collaborate for a single cause that has the power to change the world.”

Priyanka Prakash, Head-Online Giving, Marketing & Partnerships, GiveIndia:- further added “We are happy to partner with Kestone for Imagine, the 24-hour virtual connect for a cause. At GiveIndia, we have always been keen to collaborate with prospects that aim for a heightened social impact. With Imagine, we intend to support children’s education by making them access e-learning in these curtailed times”

Technology

Kestone’s Virtual Events Platform 2.0 Takes The Experiential Game a Notch Higher

Sep 1, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #BSE: CLEDUCATE), #Career Launcher (NSE, #Kestone, #Piyush Gupta, #President, #Version 2.0 of Kestone Virtual Events platform

New Delhi, 1st September 2020: Kestone, among India’s leading integrated marketing services company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Career Launcher (NSE, BSE: CLEDUCATE), today introduced an advanced version of their Virtual Events platform which promises to take the user experience multiple notches up. Version 2.0 of Kestone Virtual Events platform comes with a host of advancements including an overhauled User Interface (UI), support for multiple languages and advanced audience engagement and gamification features.

Speaking about the enhancements, Piyush Gupta, President, Kestone said, “Providing an immersive user experience has been one of the key pillars of Kestone Virtual Events platform, besides its ability to drive user engagements and compute deep data analytics. While a lot of us are conversant with conventional web conferencing solutions such as webinars, we need to be cognizant of the fact that there any many users who are experiencing virtual events for the first time. It is like graduating from wearing 3D glasses to using AR/VR solutions. Any good technology solution must handhold such graduations carefully keeping the end user in mind. Our UI enhancements try to aim just that by making the platform intuitive and extremely user friendly even for the first-time users.”

With second version of its Virtual Events platform, Kestone also introduces support for multiple languages. This means that now beyond English, the platform can also be offered in regional and foreign languages. Commenting on the upgrade, Piyush said, “Both content delivery pattern of brands and content consumption behaviour of consumers have seen tectonic shifts in recent times. Nowadays, just having a device-agnostic design isn’t enough for a digital product and one needs to look deeper into demographical attributes as well. Therefore, for our Virtual Events platform to be a truly global product, providing support for content delivery in the language-of-choice was both aspirational and inevitable for us.”

Kestone believes that these product upgrades will make its platform accessible to larger markets transcending geographical and demographical boundaries. Now the platform comes loaded with a host of features including 3D environments, LIVE video streaming, audience engagement interventions with polls & quizzes and real-time reporting while being compliant with international norms for data privacy and data security. Within 90 days of its’ initial launch, successful virtual conferences have already been hosted on the previous version of the platform for Google, Redington, in partnership with Dell Technologies, Strategink, in partnership with IBM and, CNBC-TV18, engaging 40,000+ CXO level visitors, 75,000 students, with 60,000+ social media interactions and 50,000+ exhibitor booth & product demo zone visits.

Talking further about the platform, Piyush said, “COVID-19 is a black swan moment for the events industry during which we saw up close, how, many businesses for whom events have been the lifeline, have suffered. With this product we aspire to set benchmarks for delivering exceptional customer experiences in the virtual world which are as good as physical events. That is where we have ploughed all our learnings from over two decades of event management experience into building this platform. The response to the initial version of the platform has been encouraging both in India and in the global markets of Canada, Dubai, Singapore and US.”

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