Department of Heavy Industry (DHI), Govt of India, has embarked on a mission to promote innovation, R&D, and product development in India for various sectors. With the vision of ‘AatmaNirbhar’ Bharat, the step towards this is creating technology platform e-portals where such technology development, information exchange, and innovation are facilitated.

Five portals were developed for specific sectors by different organizations: BHEL for power sector equipment, HMT for machine tools, CMFTI for manufacturing technology, ICAT, and ARAI for the automotive industry. The portals aim to create an ecosystem to bring together solution-seekers and problem-solvers. These include industry, academia, research institutes, start-ups, professionals, and experts.

International Centre of Automotive Technology(ICAT) developed a technology platform for the automotive industry called ASPIRE. Automotive technology e-portal, as a one-stop solution for the Indian automobile industry. It made its initial version on July 15, 2020, as Phase I of an Automotive Solutions Portal for Industry, Research, and Education. This phase includes connecting the users and experts on the portal for functionality assessment.

Phase II of the portal is expected by August 15, 2020. It would include posting domain-specific challenges, team formation, and finalizing the milestones for the execution of projects for the said challenges and industry problems. The portal is expected to be fully functional, hosting the Grand Challenges and providing an elaborate resource database and project monitoring and execution by September 15, 2020.

A technology platform that will help bring together the various stakeholders from the Indian auto industry, providing the necessary impetus for ushering the industry into the future with combined efforts. It includes bringing together the automotive OEMs, Tier 1, Tier 2 & Tier 3 companies, R&D institutions, and academia (colleges & universities) on matters involving technology advancements.

The key objective is to facilitate the Indian automotive industry’s becoming self-reliant by assisting in the innovation and adoption of global technological advancements and bringing together stakeholders from various associated avenues.

The activities include Research and Development, Product Technology Development, Technological Innovations, Technical and Quality Problem Resolution for the industry, Manufacturing and Process Technology Development, hosting Challenges for Technology Development, and conducting Market Research and Technology Surveys to identify the trends in the Indian auto industry.

Apart from acting as a solution and resource platform, the portal will also host grand challenges in line with the industry’s needs, as will be identified occasionally for developing vital automotive technologies.

The measures developed to develop a solid and self-reliant automotive industry in India, which is in tune with the vision of Make in India and the Atma-Nirbhar vision of India’s government.

Date: July 17, 2020
Press Release ID: 1639395
PIB Delhi

Given the enthusiastic response from tech entrepreneurs and Startups across the country to the Aatma Nirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge, the Government is extending the last Date for Aatma Nirbhar App Innovation Challenge entries to July 26, 2020. The 2353 entries have been received across the eight categories identified.

The category-wise breakup of the Apps submitted includes 380 under Business, 286 under Health & Wellness, 339 under E-Learning, 414 under Social Networking,136 under Games, 238 under Office & Work from Home, 75 under News and 96 under Entertainment, around 389 Apps were submitted under the ‘others’ category.

Total entries include 1496 from individuals and about 857 from organizations and companies. Amongst those received from Individuals, around 788 applications are ready to use, and the remaining 708 are under development. For the Apps submitted by organizations, 636 Apps have already been deployed, and the remaining 221 are under development.

On July 04, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge Modi. The Challenge is hosted on the Innovate Portal of MyGov, and to participate, one can log in to https://innovate.mygov.in/app-challenge/.

Around 100 of these Apps have more than 100,000 downloads. The applicants are from all over the country, including remote and small towns. It shows the talent in our country, and this App Innovation Challenge is the right opportunity for Indian Tech Developers, Entrepreneurs, and companies to build for India at an unparalleled scale anywhere in the World. The real Challenge will be identifying robust, scalable, secure apps with an easy-to-use interface and giving users an experience that will make them return to the app.

The AatmaNirbhar Bharat App ecosystem can unlock value for Indian tech startups and help them get a piece of the multi-trillion-dollar app economy. This year, the top 3 companies with the maximum downloads of Apps have a total market cap of almost 2 trillion $s and are growing very fast.

The startups’ capability to build innovative solutions also proved with the enthusiastic response received for the Video Conferencing Innovation Challenge launched last month, which saw over 2000 applications, out of which 12 were shortlisted to make prototypes. Given the quality of solutions submitted, the Jury had to expand the list from 3 to 5, as all of them were found to have the skill set to build full-scale solutions.

The top 3 companies include Sarv Webs from Jaipur, PeopleLink from Hyderabad, and Techgentsia from Alappuzha. They have been rewarded with a grant of Rs 20 lakhs each to build the full-scale solution. The two companies ranked 4th and 5th by the Jury include Soulpage from Hyderabad and Hydrameet from Chennai. They were given a grant of Rs 15 lakhs each and are also building a full-scale solution. Four companies, namely Aria Telecom from Ghaziabad, VideoMeet from Jaipur, VacSetu from Delhi, and Zoho from Chennai, were also considered to have significant potential by the Jury. This Challenge has proved that our tech companies can build world-class solutions given the right push. Source: Press Release ID: 1639371 Date: July 17, 2020 PIB Delhi

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the launch of the agency’s Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology (FinHub). The FinHub will serve as a resource for public engagement on the SEC’s FinTech-related issues and initiatives, such as distributed ledger technology (including digital assets), automated investment advice, digital marketplace financing, and artificial intelligence/machine learning. The FinHub also replaces and builds on several internal working groups at the SEC that have focused on similar issues.
The FinHub will:

• Provide a portal for industry and the public to engage directly with SEC staff on innovative ideas and technological developments;
• Publicize information regarding the SEC’s activities and initiatives involving FinTech on the FinHub page;
• Engage with the public through publications and events, including a FinTech Forum focusing on distributed ledger technology and digital assets planned for 2019;
• Act as a platform and clearinghouse for SEC staff to acquire and disseminate information and FinTech-related knowledge within the agency and
• Serve as a liaison to other domestic and international regulators regarding emerging technologies in financial, regulatory, and supervisory systems.

The SEC’s FinHub will be led by Valerie A. Szczepanik, Senior Advisor for Digital Assets and Innovation and Associate Director in the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, and staffed by representatives from the SEC’s divisions and offices who have expertise and involvement in FinTech-related issues.

“The SEC is committed to working with investors and market participants on new approaches to capital formation, market structure, and financial services, to enhance and reduce investor protection,” said SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. “The FinHub provides a central point of focus for our efforts to monitor and engage on innovations in the securities markets that hold promise, but also require a flexible, prompt regulatory response to execute our mission.”
“SEC staff across the agency have been engaged for some time to understand emerging technologies, communicate the agency’s stance on new issues, and facilitate beneficial innovations in the securities industry,” said Ms. Szczepanik. “By launching FinHub, we hope to provide a clear path for entrepreneurs, developers, and advisers to engage with SEC staff, seek input, and test ideas.”

Source
Date: Washington D.C., Oct. 18, 2018
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

U.S. Attorney Peter G. Strasser announced that CARLOS DAVID IRIAS, age 47, a Cutler Bay, Florida, resident, pleaded guilty before United States District Judge Greg G. Guidry to a one-count bill of information. He was charged with intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization and recklessly causing damage, resulting in loss to Company A in New Orleans, Louisiana.

According to court documents, IRIAS employed from about 2012 until August 14, 2017, for more than $5,000 for one year, in violation of 18 U.S.C.” 1030(a)(5)(B) and 1030(c)(4)(A).
The company develops and distributes specialized urological medical devices, including scopes and laser fibres.

IRIAS was responsible for designing marketing templates, coordinating sales, and developing client contacts. IRIAS terminated his employment with Company A on August 14, 2017. After that time, he was no longer authorized to access Company A’s cloud-based server, which handled marketing-related functions, including storing email contact lists and marketing templates and brochures.

On November 2, 2018, IRIAS accessed Company A’s secured cloud-based computer system from his Cutler Bay, Florida home without authorization. After that, he exported the contents to a server under his control. He then deleted the information from the cloud-based system. As a result of the unauthorized intrusion, Company A could not conduct marketing campaigns from about November 2018 until October 2019.

Company A was also unable to contact and communicate with its customer base for approximately two or three months, jeopardising its reputation in the specialized field in which it operated. As a result of such conduct, IRIAS recklessly caused damage to Company A for approximately $14,593.

IRIAS faces a maximum term of five (5) years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000.00, up to three (3) years of supervised release after imprisonment, and a mandatory $100 special assessment. Sentencing before Judge Guidry has been scheduled for October 15, 2020, at 2:00 pm.

U.S. Attorney Strasser praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in investigating this matter. Assistant United States Attorney Jordan Ginsberg, Supervisor of the Public Corruption Unit, is responsible for the prosecution. Source: Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of Louisiana FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, July 9, 2020

Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) launched an Artificial Intelligence-based platform ‘Aatamanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping’ (ASEEM)’ digital platform, to improve the information flow and bridge the skilled workforce’s demand-supply gap market across sectors. ASEEM https://smis.nsdcindia.org/, also available as an APP, is developed and managed by the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) in collaboration with Bengaluru-based Betterplace, specializing in blue-collar employee management.

The portal would help recruit a skilled workforce that spurs business competitiveness and economic growth to find sustainable livelihood opportunities. The platform envisioned strengthening their career pathways by hand-holding them through their journeys to attain industry-relevant skills and explore emerging job opportunities, especially in the post-COVID era.

Aatamanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping (ASEEM) portal uses a match-making engine to map skilled workers’ details based on regions and jobs available in the local industry. The portal and App would provide registration and data upload for workers across job roles, sectors, and geographies. The skilled workforce can register their profiles on the App and search for employment opportunities in their neighbourhood. Through ASEEM, employers, agencies, and job aggregators looking for skilled workforce in specific sectors will also have the required details. It will also enable policymakers to take a more objective view of various industries.

The portal aims to support decisions and policymaking via trends and analytics generated by the system for programmatic purposes. It describes the workforce market and maps the demand for skilled workforce supply. It helps provide real-time data analytics to NSDC and its Sector Skill Councils about the demand and supply patterns, including – industry requirements, skill gap analysis, demand per district/ state/cluster​​, key workforce suppliers, critical consumers​, migration patterns​ and multiple potential career prospects for candidates.​ The portal consists of three IT-based interfaces –
Employer Portal – Employer onboarding, Demand Aggregation, candidate selection ​
Dashboard – Reports, Trends, analytics, and highlight gaps ​
Candidate Application – Create and track candidate profile, furthermore share job suggestions. ​

It will provide real-time granular information by identifying relevant skilling requirements and employment prospects. Envisaging the rapidly changing nature of work and its impact on the workforce is crucial in restructuring the skilling ecosystem with the new normal settling post-pandemic. Besides identifying the significant skills gap in the sectors ​and reviewing global best practices, ASEEM will allow employers to assess the availability of a skilled workforce and formulate their hiring plans.

A database of labour migrants in Indian states and overseas citizens who returned to India under the Vande Bharat Mission and filled out the SWADES Skill Card has been integrated with the ASEEM portal.

Candidate data coming to the Skill India Portal from various state and central skilling schemes will be integrated, including PMKVY, Fee-based Programs, National Urban Livelihoods Mission, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana, and ‘Seekho aur Kamao’.

Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey, Hon’ble Minister of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, launched the ASEEM portal. He said, “Driven by Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Aatamanirbhar Bharat’ and his assertion of ‘India as a talent powerhouse’ India Global Week 2020 Summit. The ASEEM portal is envisioned to give an enormous impetus to our persistent efforts to bridge the demand-supply gap for skilled workforce across sectors, bringing limitless and infinite opportunities for the nation’s youth. The initiative aims to accelerate India’s recovery by mapping the skilled workforce and connecting them with relevant livelihood opportunities in their local communities, especially in the post-COVID era. The increasing use of technology and e-management systems assists in bringing in processes and intelligent tools to drive demand-driven and outcome-based skill development programs. This platform will ensure close convergence and coordination across various schemes and programs operating in the skill ecosystem. It will also ensure that we monitor any data duplication and further re-engineer the country’s vocational training landscape, ensuring a skilling, up-skilling, and re-skilling in a more organized set-up.”

Shri AM Naik, Chairman, NSDC, and Group Chairman, Larsen & Toubro Limited, highlighted how ASEEM would bridge the demand-supply gap in the skilled workforce market. He said, “Migrant labor has been severely impacted by the socio-economic fallout of the COVID pandemic. In the current context, NSDC has taken up the responsibility of mapping the dispersed migrant population around the country and providing them the means to re-build their livelihood by matching their skill-sets to available employment opportunities. The launch of ASEEM is the first step on that journey. I am confident that the real-time information ASEEM provides to both employer and employee will add value to the labor ecosystem and contribute to building the trust among the workforce, which is essential for the recovery of the economy.”Source: Date: July 10, 2020 PIB Delhi

The hosting industry wholly transformed in a decade. Almost every hosting company started offering unlimited resources while keeping the subscription cost low, with that burden to keep every customer happy. It is no surprise that this approach has done maximum sabotage to the web hosting industry. With the increasing pricing for human resources, maintenance, and providing utmost security to customer accounts, most hosting companies started struggling. Keeping the business sustained and thriving seems unrealistic to them.

The online identity of a business is its website, and an online business is growing; companies want 100% assurance of the website availability 24/7. The hosting provider support team’s expectation is around 100%, high availability of human resources, less wait time, and fast action on issues. These customer expectations are hosting business requirements. It leads to the minimum attraction of hosting companies running on reseller hosting plans. It is the business where the companies running it must understand the underlying technology that supports its processes.

The core/parent hosting companies sell their reseller plans with the concept that resellers must focus only on marketing; the rest will take care of it. Hence, most resellers don’t know what their system is and its capability is. The parent company sells reseller-plan to anyone without justifying whether the customer is the right person. Wrong assumptions burn most reseller hosting businesses. They took it easy to run with their present setup or existing business.

Every business needs time, resources, dedication, planning, and execution. The reseller hosting providers lure the young with unrealistic propositions. They say running the hosting business is easy, but they don’t discuss its complexities. Hence, losers like Ananova.com find such hosting providers come and go without achieving the promised results. The customers’ issues are always honest and need to be resolved. The companies that don’t resolve customer issues are unsuccessful and won’t be around in the future.
Although it is the reseller hosting business’s beauty, the entrepreneur does not need to understand the embedded processes deeply. They are free from all underlying details and focus only on selling products or services. Hence, these resellers’ status quo is to approach the parent providers for all constraining challenges and do not want to hear more about the problems.

Mostly, designers and developers go for reseller hosting plans. With their background and experience, they make a sustainable change that is meaningful and has an impact on eir customers.

After installing WordPress into the Website, one has to look for an efficient SEO tool on WordPress, an instrument capable of dragging the site up to the higher ranks. Online marketing has become a very competitive market, so the requirement for efficient tools is high. A proper WordPress SEO tool can help a lot in the website growth and development process.

While installing an SEO tool on WordPress, consider the different aspects of the service that the device should serve, and only then should he purchase it. A proper SEO tool will be the assimilation of all the instruments, starting snippet previews to sitemaps. There should also be user-friendly features that will help the user analyze the website standard.

Template setting is a vital work for the WordPress. The SEO tool, if efficient, will be a complete guide in the user’s choice of the teme. The class should show the user the proper model according to the page type. It makes the entire model-choosing process incredibly easy for the user.

Also, the text box stays in these types of tools, which helps make marvellous titles that match the models. With the snippet preview, the user can get an idea of how his web page should look and likewise can make the alterations. These two applications make it easy for the users to have a soothing and appropriate web page look.

The plug-in used in WordPress determines the future of the internet page. It defines the keyword after properly checking all the essential aspects of the web page. So, before the optimization process, only the users get a total view of the areas that need improvement. The changes are made, and the optimization process increases the web page.

In some cases, organizations, whether private organizations or large business groups prefer some specific parts of their sites. At the same time, they wanted to ensure this would not affect the optimization process of their websites. The SEO tool can make it possible.

The other factors the SEO tool on WordPress can solve are the following. Firstly, it determines which is the home page and which is the derivative page. According to this segregation, they make the changes that attract the search engines—all the corrections regarding the page elements and decisions are made by this SEO tool.

Also, the tool helps the users eliminate any undesirable links on the site. Many links are annoying and objectionable and may harm the web page’s reputation. According to the user’s decision, this tool can quickly delete or set aside all these links. All these parts of the task make the SEO tool on WordPress the most helpful in creating a fast-growing and successful website.

IIT Hyderabad uses artificial intelligence to study supply chain network of biofuels

Dr Kishalay Mitra: “In India, biofuels generated from non-food sources are the most promising source of carbon-neutral renewable energy

Bio-derived fuels are gaining widespread attention among the scientific community across the world. The work on biofuels is in response to the global call for reducing carbon emissions associated with the use of fossil fuels. In India, too, biofuels have caught the imagination of researchers.
For instance, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad have started using computational methods to understand the factors and impediments to incorporating biofuels into India’s fuel sector.
A unique feature of this work is that the framework considers revenue generation not only as an outcome of biofuel sales but also in terms of carbon credits via greenhouse gas emission savings throughout the project lifecycle.

The model has shown that if bioethanol is integrated with mainstream fuel, its costs are as follows: production cost 43 per cent, import 25 per cent, transport 17 per cent, infrastructure 15 per cent, and inventory 0.43 per cent. The model showed that the feed available to at least 40 per cent of the capacity is needed to meet the projected demands.

Dr Kishalay Mitra, lead researcher, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Hyderabad, said, “In India, biofuels generated from non-food sources is the most promising source of carbon-neutral renewable energy. These second-generation sources include agricultural waste products such as straw, hay, and wood, among others that do not intrude upon food sources.”

The team has considered multiple technologies available for bioenergy generation across several zones in the country and performed a thorough feasibility study using suppliers’ data, transport, storage, and production, among others, published by the Indian Government.

Regarding this research, Kapil Gumte, a Research Scholar at IIT Hyderabad, said, “We use machine learning techniques to understand the supply chain network. Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence in which the computer learns patterns from available data and updates automatically to produce an understanding of the system and predictions for the future.”

“The techno-economic-environmental analysis on country-wide multi-layered supply chain network and the use of machine learning techniques have helped us capture the uncertainty in forecasting demands and other supply chain parameters and their effects on the operational and design decisions in the long run,” added Dr Mitra.

The results of this work were published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

(PIB Release ID: 1636107 Posted By Jyoti Singh)

Indian PM urges tech community to participate in Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge

In a post published on LinkedIn, the Indian Prime Minister mentioned India’s vibrant tech and startup ecosystem and how youngsters have excelled in providing tech solutions across sectors. He said there is a lot of enthusiasm among the startup and tech ecosystem to innovate, develop, and promote homegrown apps. It adds that while the nation is working towards creating an Aatmanirbhar Bharat. It is an excellent opportunity to give direction and momentum to evolve apps that can satisfy our market and compete with the world.

With this objective in mind, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and the Atal Innovation Mission have developed the Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation challenge, which will run in two tracks: promoting existing apps and developing new apps. The Government and tech community members will jointly host this challenge to make it more holistic.

The Government will provide mentoring, hand-holding, and support for promoting existing apps and platforms across e-learning, work-from-home, gaming, business, entertainment, office utilities, and social networking. Track-01 will work in mission mode to identify useful quality apps for the leaderboard and shall be completed in around a month. For incubating new apps and platforms, the Track-02 initiative will help create new champions in India by providing support in ideation, incubation, prototyping, rollout, and market access.

The Prime Minister wrote that this challenge will give better visibility and clarity to existing apps to achieve their goals and create tech products to find solutions to tech puzzles with the help of mentorship, tech support, and guidance during the entire life-cycle.

The prime minister shared ideas and asked if technology can help make traditional Indian games more accessible. If apps are developed to help people in rehabilitation or get counselling or with targeted and intelligent access to the suitable age group for learning, gaming, etc., can be developed. He urged the tech community to participate and help create an Aatmanirbhar App Ecosystem.

Startup India initiative aims to foster entrepreneurship and promote innovation by creating an ecosystem that is conducive to the growth of Startups. The objective is that India must become a nation of job creators instead of job seekers. The Prime Minister of India will launch the initiative on January 16, 2016. The event was attended by many young Indian entrepreneurs (over 2000) who have embarked on entrepreneurship through Startups. As a vital component of this “Startup India” launch, the Government of India is organizing a global workshop on “Innovation and Startups” on January 16, 2016.

Shri Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, will occasionally be the Chief Guest. This workshop aims to provide a platform for all stakeholders, stimulate dialogue on key challenges that the Indian innovation ecosystem currently faces, and provide potential solutions to address them. Fostering a fruitful culture of innovation in the country is a long and remarkable journey. This initiative will significantly reinforce India’s commitment to making India the hub of innovation, design, and Startups. (Press Release ID: 1636428 – PIB – India)