Artificial Intelligence creeps into the world of MBA Career Advisers

By Aashi Sehrawat

Technology is changing how business school grads get a job. Start-ups are pitching their administrations to grounds vocations divisions — and many were established by MBA alumni.

One popular example is Vmock, a CV feedback company which is based on machine learning, predictive analytics and Artificial Intelligence techniques. It helps MBA students to write their resumes more effectively. Its algorithm compares students' CVs with those created  by thousands of successful job hunters. Each is awarded a percentile score for its perceived effectiveness and suggestions of possible improvements, such as rephrasing bullet points and grammatical corrections. Vmock identifies core competencies reflected in their profiles, and helps them optimize their skills. The company was founded by Chicago-based Salil and Kiran Pande in 2009. They met after Salil graduated from the city's Booth School of Business and Kiran was about to start at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.

More than 100 higher education institutions, including 17 of the top 20 business schools on the FT MBA ranking list, pay an annual subscription for Vmock’s software, starting at $19.95 per student user. First analysis of the CV is free of cost and more than 1 million CVs have been uploaded.Their first plan was to enable students to test interview techniques with a virtual reality interview service, but they pivoted to CV feedback after talking to business school careers advisers. The product is one of several online services used by London Business School’s career department.

Another management based system developed by LA-based start-up, 12Twenty helps the school's careers team track MBA hiring activity and provides students with data on salaries and interview processes for the companies they hope will hire them.

TransparentCareer provides personalised salary and career data for MBA students and professionals to find and evaluate opportunities. It was founded by Kevin Marvinac and Mitch Kirby. They met as MBA students at Booth School of Business. The company claims to be the largest source of MBA pay and culture data, used by nearly half of all MBA students in the US. Like Vmock, TransparentCareer was born out of a frustration the founders felt as MBA students themselves. “Our biggest pain point was that we couldn’t get precise details about salary levels from companies,” Mr Marvinac explains.

Titan partners with Amazon to foray into US market

By Aarushi Singh

India's iconic watch seller Titan will go to the United States tagging along with the E-Commerce retailer Amazon offering 500 models, some of them exclusive. Under the partnership, Amazon through its 'Global Selling Programme' will enable Titan take its vast range of watches to millions of global customers across ethnicities on Amazon.com in the US and eventually across other Amazon marketplaces.

Announcing the partnership on 8^th august, Titan CEO for watches and accessories Ravikanth said this would be maiden foray into the US market with Titan already present in over 30 countries, mostly in the Asian and African continent with exports contributing to ten per cent of the top line.Titan’s collaboration with Amazon will now help them foray into the US market and reach out to Amazon’s wide and loyal consumer base internationally he said.

“We are very excited to take Titan to US and soon to all market places and Titan will be using our flagship product 'Fulfillment by Amazon' so that Titan can sell all their products to our FC (Fulfillment Center) and it is available for one day or two day shipping in US," Amazon India Director & GM- Seller Services Gopal Pillai told reporters here. He said Amazon would also look at expanding the partnership to other markets like U.K., Germany and other European Union countries, as also Japan.

Titan said as the first step it would enter the U.S. market with about 500 handpicked models from its Titan and Fastrack brand of watches, with the price range of USD 30 to USD 300.

Stating that there has been no formal discussion on exclusivity with Amazon, the company officials said Titan has no stand alone brick and mortar store in the US.

Noting that e-commerce is the fastest growing channel for Titan and US is a very matured market, he said "we have also been receiving enough signals in the last few years of people in US, not just NRI's wanting to buy Titan." Titan has over 200 million customers and 7,000 retail stores spread over 30 plus different countries. Titan officials also said it has plans to sell accessories and jewelries over a period of time, once they study the market.

Launched in India in May 2015, Amazon's Global Selling Programme facilitates easy, simple and convenient access for all Indian sellers - including entrepreneurs, SMEs, manufacturers as well as large brands - to sell their products to consumers across the globe. Amazon said its Global Selling Programme is getting a lot of momentum, having started the programme two years ago with few hundred sellers; today it has more than 23,000 sellers listing 65 million products in 10 different market places.

Farming - A Risky Business, says Economic Survey 2016-17

By Shivam Saklani

From planting crops, to finding a market for their produce, farmers in India Encounter a plethora of risks, observed the second volume of the Economic Survey 2016-17 released this Friday. 

The Survey’s focus on risks comes against the backdrop of protests by farmers since June, demanding

loan waivers to which many states’ government have agreed (State government is being referred since Agriculture is a state subject).  

The Survey notes that recent farm loan waivers will be deflationary since states which are waiving loans will either have to cut expenditure or raise taxes, both of which will reduce the demand in the economy. Such loan waivers, the survey said, could reduce aggregate demand by as much as 0.7% of the GDP, imparting significant deflationary shock to economy. 

To prevent these situations from reappearing, the current government schemes are sufficient, only the

ground work in terms of educating farmers needs to be done thoroughly, so that the benefit of the schemes such as the Crop Insurance Scheme, National Agricultural Market, PMKSY etc. may reach even to the humblest farmer. 

Dealing with E-Waste

By Himani Gandhi

There is a need for electronics consumers to become conscious users of their gadgets, and for the govt to take a more proactive role in ensuring that e-waste is recycled under proper international guidelines.

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a term for electronic products that have become unwanted, non-working or obsolete, and have essentially reached the end of their useful life.

Enter the narrow and congested lanes of Seelampur in North-East Delhi, and you are greeted by a strong, pungent smell of burnt aluminium and metal. It’s almost unbearable for “outsiders” to breathe in this area but there’s no sign of discomfort on the faces of the people on the streets, those who lean against the wall on the pavement or sit amid a pile of metal scrap. The “insiders” have become immune to the odour and care little about the health hazards that hang over their heads. These insiders work amid the same dump of metal scrap that reeks of chemicals.

As much as 90% of e-waste in the country is dismantled and recycled in unorganized hubs like Seelampur in Delhi and Andheri in Mumbai, where the efficiency of extracting metals is extremely poor due to lack of equipment and unskilled staff, according to a research by the Centre for Science and Environment.

With this increasing interest and concern about how to best deal with our electronic leftovers here are three of the best ways to get rid of them.

·       

        Buy-Back

The one way to deal with the problem is to see if anyone wants to buy your old tech toys.

·       

        Taking Back the Junk

This is probably the simplest program but it requires that the stores you deal with have a take-back program. In the majority of cases you won’t receive any money in exchange for your old equipment.

   

   Recycling those old electronic goodies

This is probably the one method of getting rid of our old electronics that is the most fraught with problems. While recycling old electronics may seem like the best way to deal with the problem it is also as we saw in the 60 Minutes show the one with the most potential to cause a lot of harm – both to people and the environment.

Reliance playing mentor to the Young Entrepreneurs

By Anjali Gupta

Mukesh Ambani revealed his next dream at the recent annual meeting of shareholders of Reliance industries ltd. Ambani is now looking to back the new startups and entrepreneurs.  “It (RIL) will be known in the coming decade as an enterprise with lakhs of partners, supporting the small and young entrepreneurs and an enabler of a large ecosystem of entrepreneurs in India,” he told shareholders at the 40th AGM. 

Ambani did not elaborate much about it but the entrepreneurs can always get their hopes high. The development of a system for the same is taking place in the outskirts of the Mumbai city .In the 100-acre reliance corporate park, the nerve centre of the Rs 3,39,000 crore enterprise, a non-descript, two-storey structure called the MAB, or the Main Administrative Building, is home to a batch of 20 entrepreneurs testing products and honing business plans. Reliance has been mostly involved in the telecom ventures but now they have opened their arms to some new ventures as well.

In recent times, RIL has picked up stakes in six startups. In the public domain are investments it made in Netradyne, Videonetics and Edcast, startups in segments as diverse as artificial intelligence and video analytics. The gen next project, though, goes way beyond just investing. The startup culture has now entered the fourth phase, where big corporates are facilitating their domain knowledge to nurture startups. Abroad, this trend is called the corporate garage. 

"Uberisation of Workforce" by various IT Companies

By Yusuf Firoz

Many IT companies such as Wipro, Infosys etc recently broke away from traditional practices by including several freelancers and consultants in a team that worked on a short-term project, a relatively new idea that's steadily gaining popularity in the global technology services space.

It's called the 'gig economy' or 'Uberisation' of the workforce, where talent works on a demand-supply model, moving across projects and organisations as per the demand and their interest areas and it’s starting happening in many service industries.

Other Indian IT companies, including Infosys and Wipro, are exploring the idea of an 'Uberised workforce'. What is driving this trend is the changing preference of the young workforce more than the market uncertainty and political situation in their largest market, the US.

As per the opinion of HR head of Infosys Richard Lobo With a greater influx of millennial into the workforce, all previous assumptions of what works to keep employees engaged and motivated are breaking down and there is an increasing number of people who do not want to be employed full-time or want to work on different projects at the same time.

Already, more workers are part of the gig economy in the US than employed by the IT and IT services sectors combined. As per a study was done by Intuit and Emergent Research, the number of on-demand workers in the US in expected to double in the next four years to almost 9.2 million.

In India also many experts from IT sector believe that the future of work in the IT industry is going to get Uberised to some extent.

In India, the number of contract workers is currently pegged at 2.5 million and may go up to six million over the next decade, according to staffing firm TeamLease Services. 

Plethora of IPOs hit the Stock Market

By Harshit Sharma

The major indices in the market were at all-time highs in the initial few trading sessions of June. Nifty touched its record high of 10,006 level. Good market conditions attracted companies to enter the capital markets in this month.

Security and Intelligence Services (India) Ltd saw a strong investor turnout for its initial public offering with the issue covered almost seven times on the final day on Wednesday, while the share sale of Cochin Shipyard Ltd was covered three times on the second day of its offering. The Rs 1,468-crore initial public offering of Cochin Shipyard ended on a strong note on Thursday, with the issue being subscribed 76.1 times. The offer received bids for 258.69 crore shares compared to 3.39 crore shares offered (excluding the portion for anchor investors). 

The vigour in the primary market is likely to continue with at least a dozen more companies to hit the market. The government’s divestment plans in various state-owned companies would be also picking pace in the second half of 2017. New India Assurance, General Insurance and IRCTC.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has given its approval to:

(a) issue 13,90,00,000 fresh equity shares of Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) of Rs.10 each to the public on book-building basis through the IPO;

(b) issue shares to retail investors and IREDA employees at a discount of 5% on the issue price of each equity share on book-building basis, with cap of 0.5% on equity post issue for CPSE employees and the allocation to retail investors in the net offer will not be less than 35%, as per the ICDR, 2009.However, the number of shares proposed to be issued to employees and retail investors will be finalized in consultation with the lead managers and as per the SEBI regulations

The funds raised through initial public offers (IPO) have crossed Rs 10,000 crore in the first half of this year. The primary markets at are in a bullish mode as many IPOs are already through and many are in pipeline. Most of the newly listed companies have yielded great returns and overall optimism in the secondary markets are the drivers for record fundraising this year. The BSE IPO index has gained more than 30% this year.

Repo Rate cut by 25 bps

By Tabish Salam

The wise men of the Monetary Policy Committee slashed Repo rate by 0.25% to 6% as expected. The rate cut was supported by the decline in headline inflation, moderation in core inflation, smooth rollout of Goods and Service Tax, and a normal monsoon.

Four out of six members of the Monetary Policy Committee including the RBI Governor, Dr. Urjit Patel, voted for 25bps rate cut while Dr. Ravindra Dholakia voted for 50bps rate cut, and Dr. Michael Patra voted for a pause. 

RBI believes that from here on, retail inflation has only one direction, which is up. Going forward, there would be inflationary pressure from the increase in HRA, upturn in food prices, formalisation effect of GST, increase in rural wages and minimum support price for crops and also farm loan waivers.

The RBI has maintained its GVA forecast at 7.3%. The MPC growth outlook was rather muted and it noted that while the outlook for agriculture appears robust, underlying growth impulses in industry and services are weakening. The RBI noted risks to growth from slowdown in manufacturing activity, leveraged balance sheets of the private sector, regulatory challenges of the real estate sector, and constraints on capital expenditure by states on account of farm loan waivers. For the last one and half years, the central bank has been awfully off the mark as far as inflation is concerned. Is this the likely end of the easing cycle? The only time since 1970 that benchmark interest rates in India have been lower than 6% was between January 2009 and August 2010 following the 2008 global financial crisis. This time around, the global backdrop is far from similar. Interest rates across the developed world are being normalised, and with the US Federal Reserve expected to begin shrinking its balance sheet in the next few months, the room for manoeuvre by the RBI is limited. However, according to a few experts there is a room for the RBI to cut rates by another 0.25%. The onus will now be on banks to reduce the interest rate on outstanding loans, as the RBI noted that while interest rates on fresh loans based on

Marginal Cost of Lending Rate have fallen, the base rate has not declined as much. 

In future further lending rate cut by banks will largely be dependent on their ability to reduce deposit rates as banks remain focused on protecting their margins.