Razorpay and PayPal Partner to Help Indian MSME’s and Freelancers go Global
The partnership will make international payments seamless and safer
Razorpay is the first payment gateway to offer an integration with PayPal without code
Mumbai, 2nd December: Continuing its efforts to empower businesses with easy access to digital payment technologies, Razorpay, India’s leading full-stack financial solutions company, today announced a partnership with PayPal, a global leader in digital payments to enable seamless international payments for MSMEs and Freelancers. The company’s partner businesses can now integrate with PayPal and accept payments from international customers from across 200 markets in a convenient and secure manner, reducing wait time from days down to minutes.
After having faced stiff challenges due to the ongoing pandemic, Indian SMEs are hoping to bounce back by leveraging digital technologies as they believe it’ll help them increase their revenues. Even the freelancer economy is flourishing, a recent study revealed that India saw a 46% increase in new freelancers. While the potential for MSMEs and freelancers continues to grow, businesses still lose out on prospective global clients due to highly complex payment and banking infrastructure, processes and systems in place that lack seamless integration. Traditionally, micro-entrepreneurs have found it difficult to accept international payments on cards via payment gateways as many of them could not pass the eligibility checks at the banks’ end. By integrating PayPal into Razorpay’s payment platform, freelancers and MSMEs will now be able to accept international payments without having to write a single line of code. Having heavily-reduced wait-times for statutory approvals, this new service will be one of the fastest ways to accept digital payments, a boon for Indian entrepreneurs.
Commenting on the partnership, Amitabh Tewary, Chief Innovation Officer, Razorpay, said, “MSMEs have been impacted the most by disruptions caused by the ongoing pandemic. While they are making their best efforts to adapt to the changes and embrace a digital way of doing business, we at Razorpay are striving to help them overcome their payment and banking-related challenges to accelerate the pace of adoption of digital. Our association with PayPal is an important step towards realising that goal. Partnering with a globally recognized organization like PayPal with the expertise and experience of enabling digital payments for SMEs and Freelancers will allow us to further empower our partner businesses and open new growth avenues for them not just within India but internationally. We hope this partnership will help us serve our resilient MSME customers better and enable them to gear up for the new normal.”
Speaking on the partnership, Ashish Tandon, Director, Channel Partners said, “MSME’s form the backbone of the Indian economy. At PayPal our focus has been to help these businesses leverage the global opportunity and in light of the current pandemic, our cross border business has become even more relevant. We firmly believe in the power of partnerships to serve our consumers and merchants and our partnership with Razorpay will be instrumental in enabling Indian small businesses and freelancers to go global and tap into our 333 million consumer base across 200 markets.”
Last year, Razorpay launched its support for 100 International currencies via Internationally issued Credit and Debit cards - including all popular currencies such as USD, EUR GBP, CAD and SGD. Razorpay’s International payments are integrated across its product offering including Payment Gateway, Payment Links, Payment Pages, Subscriptions and Invoices. With the PayPal integration, businesses of all sizes can enable over 333mn PayPal users across 200 markets world-wide through the PayPal wallet.
The leading full-stack financial solutions company is witnessing a 40-45% month-on-month growth. This newly crowned FinTech Unicorn currently powers payments for over 8 Million businesses including the likes of Facebook, Airtel, BookMyShow, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred, ICICI Prudential among others and is all set to reach 10 Million businesses by the end of this year.
About Razorpay:
Razorpay, a full-stack financial services company, helps Indian businesses with comprehensive and innovative solutions built over robust technology to address the entire length and breadth of the payment and banking journey for any business. Established in 2014, the company provides technology payment solutions to over 5Mn businesses. Founded by alumni of IIT Roorkee, Shashank Kumar and HarshilMathur, Razorpay is the second Indian company to be a part of Silicon Valley’s largest tech accelerator, Y Combinator. Marquee investors such as Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners, Y Combinator and MasterCard have invested a total of $206.5 Mn through Series A, B, C & D funding. Around 33 angel investors have invested in Razorpay’s mission to simplify payments and banking and redefine how finance works in India.
About PayPal
PayPal has remained at the forefront of the digital payment revolution for more than 20 years. By leveraging technology to make financial services and commerce more convenient, affordable, and secure, the PayPal platform is empowering more than 350 million consumers and merchants in more than 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. For more information, visit paypal.com.
Fourteen healthcare start-ups win the prestigious innovation challenge by India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre
Winners were announcedduring theSweden-India Nobel Memorial week, at theinaugural ceremony of the ‘Health Talks’ - the AnnualConference of The India-Sweden Innovation Centre
Mumbai, 02nd December 2020: India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre virtually announced the winners of the Innovation challenge, that aimed to identify and support innovative solutions that can impact the treatment of non-communicable and communicable diseases and help regress critical problems in the healthcare delivery landscape of India. These winning solutions were announced through a web conference byHon’ble Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, today. Representatives from the 14 winning start-ups were also present at the inaugural event to exchange their vision that could improve the healthcare ecosystem in the country.
The innovation challenge included arigorous evaluation process by a panel of experts from AIIMS Delhi, AIIMS Jodhpur, ICMR, The Swedish Trade Commissioners office to India, AstraZeneca, AIM, C-CAMP andother partners. This committee had shortlisted 14 compelling solutionsincluding that of Dr.Aakash Kohli, Aarogya AI innovations, Adiuvo Diagnostics, Dr. Amit Goyal, Dr. Bharat Choudhary, Biofi Medical Healthcare India, Blackfrog Technologies, Dozee (Turtle Shell Technologies), Dr.Gautam Ram Choudhary, Janitri Innovations, Jeevtronics, Qritive, Qure.ai Technologies, and ThermaiScan Technology AB.
The India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre is a collaboration between the Swedish Trade Commissioner’s Office, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi (AIIMS Delhi) and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur (AIIMS Jodhpur). It is designed to enable and implement the shared vision of developing innovative solutions aiming to solve various healthcare problems that exist in the country. As a part of the initiative, the start-ups as well as the partner organisations will work towards the shared vision of propelling and integrating innovative healthcare solutions into the ecosystem to bring about progress in the way healthcare is delivered or managed currently.
Anders Tofte, Swedish Trade Commissioner to India said,“Through this initiative, we aim to enable cross country collaboration between innovators for effective exchange of knowledge and best practices between both the countries. Through the India Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre, start-ups will be able to co-create, explore solutions from multiple angles and be able to scale-up across borders".
The winning start-ups will now work with the India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centreplatform which will enable faster scale-up, by providing them access to cross-country mentorship, guidance on funding, and ability to ideate with like-minded innovator, access to state-of-the-art incubation centre located within AIIMS Jodhpur campus, their lab facilities and beyond. On boarded start-ups can also avail the incubation facility at NASSCOM, Bengaluru. The challenge focused on innovative solutions in 8 challenge areas including Digital Tools/Platforms - Med-Tech, Tele-Medicine, and Artificial Intelligence backed solutions to support new ways of workingto improve the efficiencies of healthcare systems as they manage the pandemic.
Speaking on the occasion of the announcement of the Innovation challenge winners, Dr.RandeepGulleria, Director, AIIMS Delhi said, “Local innovation combined with global experience is very important to develop effective and scalable innovations in healthcare. We are confident that the holistic approach of India-Sweden Healthcare innovation centre will enable an impactful engagement with the winners announced today”.
Dr. Sanjeev Misra, Director, AIIMS Jodhpur said,“The new normal we have experienced over the past months have shown that innovative thinking is more needed than before, and this innovation challenge has come at an opportune time. Jointly with Sweden we aim to provide high quality mentorship towards ideation, development and state of the art incubation and testing facilities to the 14 start ups identified from the Innovation Challenge. We are also very excited about the Centre of Excellence that we will develop in Oncology through this innovation partnership”.
Leif Johansson, non-executive Chairman, AstraZeneca PLC said,“There is a requirement to establish an incubation of providers with diverse expertise who can bring relevant, meaningful innovative solutions that can foster holistic management of non-communicable diseases. We are pleased to announce the winners today and will continue to support companies that contribute to the healthcare ecosystem. With its vast array of innovation centres across the globe and experience of working with innovators in India, AstraZececa as knowledge partner to this collaboration will bring experience and expertise that start-ups can leverage for faster scale-up".
About India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre
The India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre is a tripartite collaboration between AIIMS Delhi, AIIMS Jodhpur and Swedish Trade Commissioner’s office. The platform is envisioned to develop an ecosystem of open innovation that start-ups and the healthcare delivery stakeholders can use to collaborate and address current and future challenges in the healthcare sector in India. This platform will enable development and scale up of solutions through frugal innovation for affordable and accessible healthcare in line with the objectives of the Government of India.
The Innovation Centre is aninitiative under the MOU of Health between India and Sweden and works under strategic guidance from Government of India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Government of Sweden’s Ministry of Health and Social Affairs and Embassy of Sweden in India. It also has a strong network of ecosystem partners - Atal Innovation Mission, Invest India, AGNII, Start-up India, and, knowledge partners – AstraZeneca, NASSCOM and VINNOVA.
For more information, please visit: indiaswedenic.com
Educational Initiatives appoints Poornima S P as its Vice President of Human Resources
Educational Initiatives appoints Poornima S P as its Vice President of Human Resources
Seasoned HR professional to drive operational excellence with a strong foundation of best-in-class people practices
Mumbai, December 01, 2020: Educational Initiatives (EI), India’s leading edtech company, announced the appointment of Poornima S P as its Vice President of Human Resources.
As part of the senior management team of Educational Initiatives, Poornima will be responsible to design and implement holistic HR policies to meet short & long-term business requirements, focusing on talent management and development, managerial and leadership capability development, and domain-oriented expertise. An alumnus of IIM Bangalore and XLRI Jamshedpur, Poornima specialises in Talent Attraction, Talent Management and Employee Engagement.
A large part of Poornima’s career spanning over two decades, was with Tejas Networks focusing on organisation effectiveness, operational excellence, and driving HR programmes. Poornima’s earlier stints were with Cisco and Intuit in their formative years in India. Prior to joining EI, Poornima worked as a Senior HR Consultant with Rapido.
Speaking on Poornima’s appointment, Srini Raghavan, Co-Founder and CEO, Educational Initiatives said, ‘’I am pleased to welcome Poornima as part of our senior management team. Poornima’s extensive expertise in the human resources domain will play a critical role in shaping EI’s 21st Century culture mindset and establishing a strong foundation to drive productivity through effective resource planning. I look forward to Poornima strengthening the people strategy at EI as we continue to position ourselves to lead an exciting industry transformation.”
Commenting on her new role, Poornima said, “Educational Initiatives is a pioneer in the edtech sector and I am excited to work with a highly committed team. I am eager to build a strong pipeline of inspired and passionate individuals capable of supporting the demanding and ever evolving dynamics of the K-12 business ecosystem.”
As a leader in the K-12 education space, EI leverages cutting-edge research along with tech-based solutions to revolutionise the way children learn. Poornima’s hiring will further help EI fulfil its vision of creating a world where children everywhere learn with understanding.
About Educational Initiatives (EI)
Educational Initiatives (EI) is an edtech company that leverages the twin levers of cutting-edge research and technology-based solutions approach to revolutionise how children engaged in the K-12 education space learn. Our vision is to create a world in which children everywhere learn with understanding. Our goal is to reach a multitude of children across different strata of society, irrespective of the kind of education they are receiving today or the curriculum they are following. We achieve this goal by building products that focus on diagnostic assessment and personalised learning. Our platforms cull relevant and customised intelligence from over five billion data points to deliver content in the form of questions, activities, games and videos to assess students‘ learning levels and provide explanations, feedback and learning inputs for all stakeholders. This data treasure has been built over two decades and is one-of-its-kind in the education industry.
We believe in a scientific approach to conceptualising, designing and building our products. This stems from a dream to discover SCIENCE OF LEARNING that can systematically be made available to teachers. EI's mission is to build this ‘Science of Learning’ which provides a repository of data and techniques that can be used by teachers to help children learn better - a big improvement over today's situation where teachers struggle alone to help students learn. EI's work on assessment and learning has already helped create banks of misconceptions, common student errors and the like and these are being shared as usable insights.
Department of Posts has decided to deliver Sabarimala ‘SwamyPrasadam' to devotees across the country at their doorstep. Keeping in view devotees across the country, Department of Posts conceptualized and developed a comprehensive booking and delivery package for the delivery of “Swami Prasadam” of Sabrimala Temple at the doorstep of the devotees using the vast network of postal department covering every nook and corner of the country. Kerala Postal Circle entered into an agreement with Travancore Devaswom Board for this purpose creating a tailor made product. The devotees can now book the Swami Prasadam from any post office in India by paying only Rs. 450/- (Four hundred and Fifty) for each packet of prasadam. The packet contains one packet of Aravana, AadiyaSishtam Ney (ghee), Vibhooti, Kumkum, Turmeric and ArchanaPrasadam. A devotee can book upto ten packets at a time. As soon as Prasadam is booked under speed post, a message with the speed post number will be generated and intimated to the devotee via SMS. The devotee can track the movement of the Prasadam by logging in to India Post website.
This service was launched all over India with effect from 6th of November 2020. There has been tremendous response from the public for this service. Around 9000 orders have already been booked all over India till date and the same is increasing day by day.
Sabarimala temple has been opened to the devotees, for this year’s “Mandalam season pilgrimage” from 16th November, 2020. Due to the prevalent COVID -19 pandemic situation the pilgrims had to follow strict protocols for visiting the shrine. Only very limited number of devotees were allowed per day to visit the shrine this season. A substantive number of devotees were not able to fulfil the COVID protocols for getting the darshan of Lord Ayyappa due to the strict restrictions imposed for pilgrimage during this season.
BrahMos Supersonic Cruise Missile in Anti-Ship mode was successfully test fired today at 0900 hrs against a decommissioned Ship. The test firing was carried out by Indian Navy. The missile performed highly complex manoeuvres and hit Bull’s eye of the target.
BrahMos is the supersonic cruise missile jointly developed by DRDO and NPOM of Russia as a Brahmos Aerospace joint venture, which became Brahmos Aerospace Private Limited. The missile has established itself as a major force multiplier in modern-day complex battlefields with its impeccable anti-ship and land-attack capabilities with multi-role and multi-platform abilities and has been deployed in all the three wings of the Indian Armed Forces.
The first launch of Brahmos took place in 2001 and till date numerous launches have taken place from various ships, Mobile Autonomous Launchers and Su-30 MKI aircraft, making it a versatile weapon.
Secretary DDR&D & Chairman DRDO Dr G Satheesh Reddy congratulated Indian Navy for the successful test.
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