1. Interoperability of digital wallets by April?
What's the news?
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely to stick to its target of making digital wallets interoperable by April despite allowing payment companies two additional months to comply with its customer verification requirement, said two bankers aware of the matter.
RBI extended its deadline to February for digital wallet providers to meet its full know-your-customer (KYC) norms, which it deems as necessary to eliminate any potential for misuse before allowing people holding different wallets to transact.
What will this mean for the customer?
As per RBI’s master direction released in October, digital wallets were to become interoperable within six months. This would allow users of mobile wallet ‘A’ to make payments to users of mobile wallet ‘B’ and subsequently to bank accounts as well.
This will not only improve user convenience but also increase wallet payments to offline merchants as digital wallets would then operate almost like a payments bank account. Prepaid cards are also expected to be made interoperable as part of this process.
2. Rivigo faces management crisis
What's the news?
Rivigo is facing a management crisis with more than a half dozen c-suite, senior and mid-level executives leaving the logistics startup recently, according to four people familiar with the developments.
Chief financial officer Pramod Gupta, who joined Rivigo in July 2017 from Microsoft, is serving notice while industry veteran Bablu Tewari, who joined from courier company Gati in May 2016 to head Rivigo’s express vertical Zoom, has already quit.
What else is happening at Rivigo?
Others exiting the company are chief people officer Nitin Sethi; chief technology officer Hemant Khandelwal; Reet Mohinder Singh, business strategy head of Rivigo’s marketplace for trucks, Vyom; enterprise account managers Piyush Gupta and Aditya Nagpal; and Abhishek Mohan from the client services division.
Co-founder Gazal Kalra said a clutch of senior executives recently joined or are in the process of joining Rivigo.
Among them are Dhruv Bhagat from Tata Sky who has joined as chief revenue officer; Carnegie Mellon University professor Vibhanshu Abhishek, who will be joining as head of data and artificial intelligence; ITC Foods’ former head of operations Anal Jha; and Pradeep Krishnamurthy from Reckitt Benckiser.
3. BSNL intranet hacked; company fixes leak after alert by researcher
What's the news?
An anonymous French security researcher has claimed to have gained access to the private database of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) that contains details of more than 47,000 employees.
The state-owned telecommunications company has acknowledged and fixed the issue after it was reported, the researcher tweeted on Sunday afternoon.
How did this hack happen?
The researcher, whose Twitter handle identifies as Eliott Alderson -- the protagonist hacker in a US TV show Mr. Robot, gained access by breaking into the system and embedding a malicious code into the BSNL intranet application. This helped to source the entire database of employees, both present, and past, of the telecom company.
The researcher said he reached out to BSNL via Twitter through his handle - @fs0c131y - and informed them about the vulnerability.
4. Recruiterbox acquired by Turn/River Capital
What's the news?
HR technology platform Recruiterbox has been acquired by San Francisco based private equity firm Turn/River Capital in an undisclosed all-cash deal. Recruiterbox will merge under the Applied Training Systems Inc (ATSI) banner of Turn/River.
Turn/River specialises in growth capital investment, acquisition, and recapitalisation of web and SaaS companies. The PE firm has previously acquired other HR tech companies like ReviewSnap and Trakstar under the ATSI banner.
Recruiterbox's acquisition will help Turn/River's strategy to build a suite of HR Technology products.
What does the company do?
The bootstrapped Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company Recruiterbox was founded in 2011 by Redekar, Raghuveer Kancherla, and Raj Sheth. Bengaluru based Recruiterbox makes an applicant-tracking-software (ATS) that helps HR departments manage their hiring.
It ensures that no candidate falls through the cracks, and gives the company team all hiring related information in one central place like who had applied for a certain opening, stage of the interview process he/she was in, etc.
It is often difficult for big companies to keep a track of all candidates who apply for jobs across various strata of the organisation.
5. Enterprises are now adopting deep tech for large projects
What's the news?
After conducting various pilots in 2017, enterprises are adopting deep technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence for larger projects this year, Dr. Prashant Pradhan, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Developer Advocate, IBM India/South Asia, told ETtech.
Which sectors are these enterprises from?
Sectors such as financial services, telecom, and retail including supply chain intelligence, fulfillment and inventory management are among the key sectors primed for the adoption of these technologies.
In January, IBM formed a consortium with around 15 Indian insurance companies including ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, HDFC Life, SBI Life Insurance and Canara HSBC OBC to start a blockchain project that helps participants access information like customer KYC, claims history, medical records, and agent track records from each other in a secure manner. This helps companies save costs by not spending money on multiple medical examinations for a single person. IBM also has a similar blockchain-based trade finance platform catering to India and South Asia.
What's the news?
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely to stick to its target of making digital wallets interoperable by April despite allowing payment companies two additional months to comply with its customer verification requirement, said two bankers aware of the matter.
RBI extended its deadline to February for digital wallet providers to meet its full know-your-customer (KYC) norms, which it deems as necessary to eliminate any potential for misuse before allowing people holding different wallets to transact.
What will this mean for the customer?
As per RBI’s master direction released in October, digital wallets were to become interoperable within six months. This would allow users of mobile wallet ‘A’ to make payments to users of mobile wallet ‘B’ and subsequently to bank accounts as well.
This will not only improve user convenience but also increase wallet payments to offline merchants as digital wallets would then operate almost like a payments bank account. Prepaid cards are also expected to be made interoperable as part of this process.
2. Rivigo faces management crisis
What's the news?
Rivigo is facing a management crisis with more than a half dozen c-suite, senior and mid-level executives leaving the logistics startup recently, according to four people familiar with the developments.
Chief financial officer Pramod Gupta, who joined Rivigo in July 2017 from Microsoft, is serving notice while industry veteran Bablu Tewari, who joined from courier company Gati in May 2016 to head Rivigo’s express vertical Zoom, has already quit.
What else is happening at Rivigo?
Others exiting the company are chief people officer Nitin Sethi; chief technology officer Hemant Khandelwal; Reet Mohinder Singh, business strategy head of Rivigo’s marketplace for trucks, Vyom; enterprise account managers Piyush Gupta and Aditya Nagpal; and Abhishek Mohan from the client services division.
Co-founder Gazal Kalra said a clutch of senior executives recently joined or are in the process of joining Rivigo.
Among them are Dhruv Bhagat from Tata Sky who has joined as chief revenue officer; Carnegie Mellon University professor Vibhanshu Abhishek, who will be joining as head of data and artificial intelligence; ITC Foods’ former head of operations Anal Jha; and Pradeep Krishnamurthy from Reckitt Benckiser.
3. BSNL intranet hacked; company fixes leak after alert by researcher
What's the news?
An anonymous French security researcher has claimed to have gained access to the private database of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) that contains details of more than 47,000 employees.
The state-owned telecommunications company has acknowledged and fixed the issue after it was reported, the researcher tweeted on Sunday afternoon.
How did this hack happen?
The researcher, whose Twitter handle identifies as Eliott Alderson -- the protagonist hacker in a US TV show Mr. Robot, gained access by breaking into the system and embedding a malicious code into the BSNL intranet application. This helped to source the entire database of employees, both present, and past, of the telecom company.
The researcher said he reached out to BSNL via Twitter through his handle - @fs0c131y - and informed them about the vulnerability.
4. Recruiterbox acquired by Turn/River Capital
What's the news?
HR technology platform Recruiterbox has been acquired by San Francisco based private equity firm Turn/River Capital in an undisclosed all-cash deal. Recruiterbox will merge under the Applied Training Systems Inc (ATSI) banner of Turn/River.
Turn/River specialises in growth capital investment, acquisition, and recapitalisation of web and SaaS companies. The PE firm has previously acquired other HR tech companies like ReviewSnap and Trakstar under the ATSI banner.
Recruiterbox's acquisition will help Turn/River's strategy to build a suite of HR Technology products.
What does the company do?
The bootstrapped Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company Recruiterbox was founded in 2011 by Redekar, Raghuveer Kancherla, and Raj Sheth. Bengaluru based Recruiterbox makes an applicant-tracking-software (ATS) that helps HR departments manage their hiring.
It ensures that no candidate falls through the cracks, and gives the company team all hiring related information in one central place like who had applied for a certain opening, stage of the interview process he/she was in, etc.
It is often difficult for big companies to keep a track of all candidates who apply for jobs across various strata of the organisation.
5. Enterprises are now adopting deep tech for large projects
What's the news?
After conducting various pilots in 2017, enterprises are adopting deep technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence for larger projects this year, Dr. Prashant Pradhan, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Developer Advocate, IBM India/South Asia, told ETtech.
Which sectors are these enterprises from?
Sectors such as financial services, telecom, and retail including supply chain intelligence, fulfillment and inventory management are among the key sectors primed for the adoption of these technologies.
In January, IBM formed a consortium with around 15 Indian insurance companies including ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, HDFC Life, SBI Life Insurance and Canara HSBC OBC to start a blockchain project that helps participants access information like customer KYC, claims history, medical records, and agent track records from each other in a secure manner. This helps companies save costs by not spending money on multiple medical examinations for a single person. IBM also has a similar blockchain-based trade finance platform catering to India and South Asia.
