In a spectacular ceremony held at lower Manhattan’s Cipriani on Tuesday, October 9th, Asia Society recognized Indra Nooyi, chairman and former CEO of PepsiCo for her extraordinary tenure at the helm of the iconic American corporation. Introduced by former U.S. President Bill Clinton — who called her “the real deal.”
The India-born Nooyi delivered an acceptance speech that cited her pride in running an enterprise championing women, sustainability, health, and wellness. “I believe that a company has to be more than creating value for shareholders, but for society as a whole,” she said.
In addition to Nooyi, Asia Society honored eight other individuals and groups: Wang Shi, the Chinese real estate developer and advocate for environmental sustainability; Mira Rai, child soldier turned champion distance runner from Nepal; Munjed Al Muderis, a doctor who fled Iraq only to become a pioneering surgeon in Australia; the founders of Koolulam, a musical initiative buildings bridges through song in Israel; the remarkable, award-winning Afghan Girls Robotics Team; heroes who saved lives during Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster; the incomparably brave and determined White Helmets of Syria; and, in their first-ever appearance on American soil, survivors from this summer’s incredible rescue at Thailand’s Tham Luang caves.
The fifth annual Asia Game Changers awards were a celebration of remarkable people from a vast array of ages, professions, and nationalities. But, as President Clinton said: “Our differences ma
PepsiCo reported better-than-expected earnings Tuesday, with the company’s 16 percent boost in profits signaling a strong sendoff for chief executive Indra Nooyi on her last day in the position. Core earnings per share came in at $1.59, an increase of 7 percent. The company reported third-quarter net income of $2.49 billion, a 16 percent bump from $2.14 billion the year before. The company said it expects at least 3 percent organic revenue growth for the full year.
Nooyi announced in August that she would step down after 12 years at the helm of the food-and-beverage giant and will stay on as chairman until early 2019. During her tenure, Pepsi reached into snack categories offering organic, healthful alternatives to colas and chips, including Sabra hummus and Bare Foods, a maker of fruit and vegetable snacks. Nooyi’s departure also highlighted the relative lack of female leaders — and particularly women of color — at the top of major corporations.
Nooyi was succeeded by Ramon Laguarta, who has been Pepsi’s president since last year and has been with the company for 22 years.
In a twitter post, Nooyi said: “I will continue to love this company even after I pass the baton tomorrow to @ramonlaguarta, a terrific leader who cares deeply about our business and our people. Thanks to our amazing team for propelling us forward these past 24 years. I can’t wait to see what’s next!”
Through a LinkedIn post, Nooyi offered some parting words to her staff. “As I sat down to write this note—my last as CEO—I felt a surge of emotions. All of you—my PepsiCo family—have held a special place in my heart since the day I joined this company 24 years ago. In the weeks since my departure was announced, I’ve heard from so many of you in so many different parts of the world. And while I haven’t had time to respond to all your messages, I’ve read each and every one, some with tears in my eyes. There are no words to describe how much they mean to me, how deeply I’ve been moved by the outpouring of love.
“So, while I will remain on as chairman until early next year, I’ve been in a reflective mood lately, and recently re-read my very first letter to you all, from the summer of 2006. ‘We face an ever-more-challenging business environment,’ I wrote. ‘And we need to get out in front of events and shape them, rather than to wait and be buffeted by them. This means we will have to be bolder and more creative than ever before.’
“And over the last 12 years, that’s exactly what we’ve done. That’s exactly what you’ve done. You have helped make this company the icon it is today, and you have taught me so much through your ingenuity, commitment to excellence, and passion for serving your communities.
“So, while I know this is the moment I’m supposed to gently lay down the reins, I hope you will indulge me one last time as I share some reflections, some lessons, on what I’ve learned during my tenure—lessons that have guided me throughout my career, and that I hope may be of use to you in the years to come.
“First, whether you work in operations, sales, R&D, or any of our functions, always have a clear, compelling vision for what you want to accomplish. As it is written in the Book of Proverbs, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’ And I’ve found that to be true for all of us, no matter our role in the company.
“Second, focus on the short-term and the long-term. Yes, you need to hit your short-term targets, but always try to do so in a way that’s sustainable over the long haul, a way that balances the company’s level — and duration — of returns, a way that generates a profit while also making a difference, always advancing the values of Performance with Purpose.
“Third, bring people along with you. No matter how smart your strategy, success or failure usually comes down to one thing: the team. In everything you do, find teammates who can help execute your vision and empower them to succeed.
“Fourth, be good listeners. When someone gives you feedback, assume positive intent. Assume they’re genuinely trying to help. Think their words over, and be willing to challenge your assumptions. I promise, it will make you better associates and better people.
“Fifth, be lifelong students. Our world is changing rapidly all around us, and if you want to continue to thrive in the years ahead, you’ll need to continually educate yourself. Visit our Lifelong Learning Library in Purchase, take a course at PepsiCo University, listen to podcasts or search Google—however you do it, make your ongoing education a priority.
“Finally, think hard about time. We have so little of it on this earth. Make the most of your days, and make space for the loved ones who matter most. Take it from me. I’ve been blessed with an amazing career, but if I’m being honest, there have been moments I wish I’d spent more time with my children and family. So, I encourage you: be mindful of your choices on the road ahead.
“Looking to the future, I have no doubt that PepsiCo’s best days are still to come. Ramon is a great executive and one of the hardest-working, most humble people I know. A global leader who knows our business inside and out, he is exactly the right person to lead PepsiCo at this moment. And he is taking over a team that is one of the strongest, most tightly-knit in our industry or any industry.
“Serving as your CEO has been the honor of a lifetime. Now it’s on to the next adventure—for us all. Thinking about my life beyond PepsiCo, I’m reminded of the words of the great Sufi mystic Rumi. ‘Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes,’ Rumi teaches. ‘Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.’
“To all my colleagues, friends, and family, thank you for making the last 24 years special beyond words. Though I will no longer be in the office every day, I take comfort knowing that we will never truly be apart, because I have loved this company, and each of you, with all my heart and soul. And I always will. With deepest affection, Indra. Nooyi will remain the chairman of the company until early 2019.”
Nooyi said that over the past three years, Pepsi has seen consumers increasingly push for health and wellness options, including whole grains or zero-calorie flavored waters. Even while there can be varying opinions on artificial sweetness or high-fructose corn syrup, millennials are clearly driving a trend toward healthier foods and beverages, she said, adding that prepared meal options or home delivery has also helped remove barriers to healthier products.
Asked on an earnings call what she views as Pepsi’s biggest opportunities and challenges ahead, Nooyi said there was more opportunity to explore how snacks can act as mini-meals. That can include snacks paired with dips or sports beverages that can be framed as more holistic, nutritional meal options.
In her final remarks, Nooyi said that “even though I still have a lot of fuel left in my tank,” she was ready to finish out her years as chief executive. Nooyi praised the company’s achievements, ranging from investments in human rights and clean drinking water to nutritious retail options, and said that between 2006 and 2017 the company’s net revenue grew by more than 80 percent. Pepsi added a new billion dollar brand almost every other year, she said.
Indian American Cardiologist and entrepreneur Dr. Kiran Patel has invested $60 million in a medical device company whose headquarters will move from Miami to Tampa.
The investment in Concept Medical Inc. will pay for clinical studies on cardiac devices coated with a substance that reduces the risk of heart blockages and the length of time a patient needs to take blood thinners.
“Cardiovascular diseases are the No. 1 cause of death globally, representing 31 percent of all global deaths, and it is increasing due to changes in lifestyle and the increase in hypertension amongst the young and old,” Patel said in a release. “This venture enables me to contribute to the millions of hearts beating around the world.”
Concept Medical and its manufacturing subsidiary in India have developed new technologies in which stents and balloons used to open blocked coronary arteries are coated with Sirolimus, a substance that reduces the risk of rejection.
With conventional stent or balloon treatments, the risk of restenosis — renarrowing of the arteries — “is 8 to 10 percent,” Patel said in a phone interview. “Ours can bring it down to 3 percent. We will also be able to decrease the need to take blood thinners.”
Concept Medical already sells the Sirolimus-coated devices in Europe and parts of Asia but they cannot be sold in the United States without costly testing required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The $60 million “will be primarily to ensure we can get the FDA approvals and further studies in Europe to establish the requirements,” Patel said.
The Indian subsidiary will continue to produce the devices, but Concept Medical’s headquarters and about five employees will move to Tampa, where Patel lives. The most significant employment gains, though, will be from the clinical studies to assess the safety and effectiveness of the devices, Patel said.
“The places where we will be executing the animal studies (and) the human studies will be at renowned institutions throughout the country,” he said. “They are just launching.”
Patel helped transform a struggling New York health maintenance organization and merged it with a Florida HMO to form WellCare Management Group, which he sold in 2002 for a reported $200 million. Until recently, he was chairman and president of Tampa-based Freedom Health and Optimum Healthcare, which he also sold. Patel is also among the investors in the Tampa Bay Times.
Born in Zambia to Asian-Indian parents, educated in India, Dr. Kiran Patel arrived in the United States Thanksgiving Day, 1976. He returned home to attend medical school, where he met his wife, Pallavi, a fellow student, but ultimately decided to return to the U.S. permanently. “I wanted to make sure my children had a better future, and the political climate in Africa at the time was a bit challenging,” he says.
Dr. Patel was educated in Zambia and then got his diploma in Cambridge University and The University of London. He came down to India to study medicine in Gujarat University in India and did his Internship in Africa. Dr. Patel did his residency in Internal Medicine in New Jersey in 1980. He completed a fellowship in the Cardiology program affiliated with the Columbia University of New York in 1982.
Dr. Pallavi Patel did her undergraduate degree from M.G. Science College, Gujarat University, and attended Municipal Medical College of Gujarat University in Ahmedabad. She did her internship from St. Barnabas Hospital in New Jersey, School of Medicine Dentistry of New Jersey and Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, in affiliation with Columbia University in New York. She started her private practice in Kabwe, Zambia, from 1974 to 1978 and worked as a part-time consultant physician from 1974 to 1978 for Kabwe Industrial Fabrics, Ltd. and Kapiri Glass Products, Ltd.
The Patel family moved to Tampa, Florida in 1982 and Dr. Kiran Patel began his practice in Cardiology. His dedication, compassion, and skills made him very successful at the very early stage of medical practice, and was soon a distinguished cardiologist in that area. He developed a physician practice management company and expanded to places adjoining Tampa Bay area diverging into 14 practices including Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Cardiology.
Dr. Patel was also in partnership with several point-of-service locations to form multi-specialty networks. This network helped patients to access most medical services conveniently. He has actively engaged himself in managed care contracts and has expanded so much that it provides care for more than 80,000 patients annually. Apart from this, he has developed good associations with several HMOs and hospitals. His success in managed care contracts led a group of doctors to seek his services to help them with an HMO in New Port Richey, Florida.
Dr. Patel’s investment will pay for clinical studies on cardiac devices coated with a substance that reduces the risk of heart blockages and the length of time a patient needs to take blood thinners.
“Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the number 1 cause of death globally, representing 31% of all global death and it is increasing due to changes in lifestyle and increase in hypertension amongst the young and old,” Patel, a cardiologist and serial entrepreneur, is quoted saying in a press release. “I am excited to be a part of CMI whose research & innovative technologies will meet a major unmet need in patients with diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. This venture enables me to contribute to the millions of hearts beating around the world.”
The investment “will be primarily to ensure we can get the FDA approvals and further studies in Europe to establish the requirements,” Patel added. A portion of the funds will also be utilized to bolster the manufacturing operations to meet the increasing demand for their products globally.
Both companies were established about 10 years ago and have developed innovative and disruptive platform technologies in drug-delivery systems to address the unmet medical needs in interventional cardiology.
“We want to make a world of difference to the way medical devices companies operate globally. We are a young organization and innovation runs in the soul of our entire organization. This investment enables us in advancing our innovation platforms vigorously. Besides the investment, Dr. K brings a serious value-add with his vast experience which is synergistic,” Manish Doshi, founder and managing director of the company, is quoted saying in a press release.
Indian tech giants Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys have been sued in the U.S., over wage discrimination and unfair hiring practices, media reports here stated. These cases in US Courts follow an earlier lawsuit filed Aug. 15 against TCS and HCL Technologies, which alleged that the Indian multinational giants unfairly favored Indian Americans in its hiring practices.
A lawsuit against TCS filed in August by three U.S. citizens, who allege that the company prefers to bring in Indian H-1B workers even when there are trained U.S. citizens who could fill the positions. The lawsuit in the District Court of New Jersey alleged that TCS also discriminates when it hires locally, disproportionately favoring Indian Americans and South Asian Americans.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that Surya Kant, TCS’ president for North America, and Narasimhan Srinivasan, vice president and head of human resources, devised and implemented a nationwide ‘leadership directive’ to utilize TCS’s visa-ready South Asian employees to the ‘maximum extent’ when filling U.S. positions.”
Anuj Kapoor, a former employee on a CVS project in Rhode Island, filed the suit against Infosys in June, alleging the company made him work more than 1,000 hours of overtime without pay. The company responded in August, stating that the employee was an ‘hourly’ worker on an H1-B visa even though Infosys had listed him as a salaried employee in an application with the Department of Labor, a potential reason for its Wage and Hour Division to look into the case.
Anuj Kapoor alleged that Infosys threatened to send him back to India if he persisted with his wage claim. Kapoor said in his lawsuit that he worked more than 1,000 hours of overtime for which he was not paid. His attorney Thomas Enright told the Providence Journal that the Bangalore-based company has a pattern of ill-treating H-1B workers and foreign-born employees. “Foreign-born workers will consider themselves lucky to be working in the United States,” Enright said, adding, “It’s difficult to get people in that position to step forward.”
Infosys denied Kapoor’s allegations in its response to the lawsuit, saying it had paid the hourly worker the “complete, correct and proper” wages he was due.
According to the lawsuit, Kapoor worked at CVS for 40 hours a week, five days a week. Infosys, however, would require employees to participate in mandatory conference calls and trainings with team members in India after midnight or in the early-morning hours, the suit says.
Kapoor alleged that two managers instructed him not to submit for overtime on his timecard, despite forcing him to work extra hours. One often remarked that the reason a company such as CVS contracted with Infosys was that no American worker would agree to employment that required them to work overtime without compensation, and that Infosys hoped to replace CVS’s primary software vendor, according to the suit.
In 2013, Infosys agreed to pay $34 million to settle a case with the U.S. Justice Department to end an investigation into the widespread practice by Indian firms of flying workers to client sites in the United States on temporary visas, according to Reuters. Infosys agreed in the settlement that it committed civil violations of U.S. employment law, but was not required to admit and did not admit widespread further wrongdoing, according to the news agency.
Indian IT companies have faced lawsuits from employees before. WiproNSE -0.28 % was sued by an employee for unpaid overtime. However, the current regulatory environment in the US makes lawsuits and complaints raise concerns. “As long as companies have followed the applicable laws and terms of the labor condition application (LCA) for H-1B workers, they will have no problem but would, of course, have to incur expenses to defend the cases in court. Further, even if there is even a slight grey area about the issue then it could be more complicated,” said Poorvi Chothani, managing partner at immigration law firm LawQuest.
Indian-American, Dhivya Suryadevara has successfully entered the predominantly male bastion of the auto industry by being appointed as the Chief Financial Officer of American automaker, General Motors (GM).
Suryadevara who has been with GM since 2005, has been responsible for corporate financial planning, investor relations and special projects. She played an integral role in the divestiture of its European arm, Opel and the acquisition of the self-driving vehicle startup, Cruise. Recently, she also helped to secure a $2.25 billion investment in GM Cruise by Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group Corp.
She has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Commerce from the University of Madras, Chennai and an MBA from Harvard University. Before joining GM, she worked at UBS and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Suryadevara has quickly climbed GM’s ladder since she began working there 14 years ago, and her appointment as CFO is significant: She is the first female CFO in the automaker’s 110-year history and makes GM one of only two Fortune 500 companies that have both a female CEO and CFO. Hershey, led by CEO Michele Buck and CFO Patricia Little, is the other company holding that distinction.
GM CEO Mary Barra, who has made significant strides to increase female leadership in the company, says Suryadevara is ready.
“Dhivya’s experience and leadership in several key roles throughout our financial operations positions her well to build on the strong business results we’ve delivered over the last several years,” Barra said.
Although Suryadevara never imagined going into the automotive industry, she told Real Simple that she’s always enjoyed anything “challenging and complicated.”
That was the theme of her upbringing in Chennai, India. After her father passed away when Suryadevara was young, all parenting duties fell onto her mother.
“My mom had to raise three children on her own, which is difficult to do anywhere, let alone in India,” she said. “She wanted to make sure there were no corners cut when it came to our education and to prove that we could have the same resources as a two-parent household.”
Her mother’s high expectations stayed with Suryadevara as she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degree in commerce at the University of Madras. When she was 22, Suryadevara traveled to the U.S. for the first time to attend Harvard Business School, where she got an MBA.
The International Monetary Fund has appointed Gita Gopinath as economic counsellor and director of the IMF’s Research Department on October 1st. Managing Director Christine Lagarde made the announcement, the fund said in a news release.
Gopinath, currently the John Zwaanstra professor of international studies and economics at Harvard University, will succeed Maurice Obstfeld, who announced in July that he would retire at the end of 2018.
“Gita is one of the world’s outstanding economists, with impeccable academic credentials, a proven track record of intellectual leadership, and extensive international experience,” Ms. Lagarde said. “All this makes her exceptionally well-placed to lead our Research Department at this important juncture. I am delighted to name such a talented figure as our Chief Economist.”
Ms. Gopinath is co-editor of the American Economic Review and co-director of the International Finance and Macroeconomics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She is co-editor of the current Handbook of International Economics with Former IMF Economic Counsellor Kenneth Rogoff. She has authored some 40 research articles on exchange rates, trade and investment, international financial crises, monetary policy, debt, and emerging market crises.
Gopinath was born and grew up in India. She is a U.S citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 2001 after earning a B.A. from the University of Delhi and M.A. degrees from both the Delhi School of Economics and University of Washington. She joined the University of Chicago in 2001 as an Assistant Professor before moving to Harvard in 2005. She became a tenured Professor there in 2010.
Google chief executive Sundar Pichai paid a rare visit to Washington on Friday to defend the search giant against allegations that it silences conservatives online, part of an effort to defuse political tensions between the company and Congress ahead of a hearing later this year.
At a gathering with a dozen Republicans, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy of California stressed to Pichai that party lawmakers are concerned about “what’s going on with transparency and the power of social media today,” particularly given the fact that Google processes 90 percent of the world’s searches.
Google long has denied that it censors conservatives. Pichai explained during the roughly hour-long private meeting how the company sets up its teams and codes its algorithms to prevent bias, according to a person who attended the meeting but spoke on condition of anonymity.
Pichai’s trip to Capitol Hill comes in anticipation of his appearance at a hearing later this fall, where lawmakers stressed they would press him not only on charges of censorship but other issues facing the company — including the privacy protections it affords users and its ambitions to relaunch its search engine in heavily censored China.
Exiting the meeting, Pichai described it as “constructive and informative,” adding in a statement that Google is “committed to continuing an active dialogue with members from both sides of the aisle, working proactively with Congress on a variety of issues, explaining how our products help millions of American consumers and businesses, and answering questions as they arise.”
Pichai’s personal outreach – the beginning of more to come – caps off a bruising month for Google in the nation’s capital. It’s been dogged by a series of recent mishaps in the way it presents search results, which Trump has claimed are “rigged” against him. Fears about the tech industry’s size and power also dominated a meeting this week between the Justice Department and state attorneys general, where some officials expressed an openness in investigating Google and its tech industry peers on privacy and antitrust grounds.
Others in Washington question whether Google and the rest of the tech industry are prepared to stop foreign governments, like Russia, from spreading propaganda online ahead of the 2018 election. Yet Google infuriated lawmakers when it opted against sending Pichai or Larry Page, the chief executive of parent-company Alphabet, to testify at a Senate hearing in September on the matter. Instead, lawmakers left an empty chair at the witness table to reflect Google’s absence and pilloried the company anyway on a range of issues.
In a sign that some Democrats and Republicans remain miffed at Google, GOP Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia – the leaders of the panel that had asked Google to testify – declined to meet with Pichai this week, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak on the record. Burr’s office declined to comment; a spokesperson for Warner confirmed the matter.
Instead, Pichai huddled beginning Thursday with lawmakers like House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, spokespeople confirmed. Schatz used the opportunity to press Google on its privacy practices, his aide said, as he and other lawmakers continue to weigh whether they should pass new regulations restricting the way tech giants collect and monetize users’ data.
At Friday’s meeting, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he and his peers had “served notice” to Pichai to expect questions on everything from “antitrust issues” to allegations of conservative bias. The date of the hearing in front of the panel has not been announced.
“There’s a lot of interest in their algorithm, how those algorithms work, how those algorithms are supervised,” Goodlatte said.
Some Republicans also pressed Pichai on Google’s ambitions in China, though Pichai stressed that Google is far from a final decision on whether to launch a censored version of its search engine there, according to Goodlatte.
Later, Pichai was expected to shuttle over to the White House for a meeting with Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser, according to three people familiar with his schedule but not authorized to discuss it publicly. Previously, Kudlow had signaled an openness to regulating Google search results in response to allegations of anti-conservative bias.
Amazon.com Inc., has rolled out Hindi language support for its Android app and website users as the e-commerce giant aims to become the No. 1 player in the huge untapped Indian e-commerce market.
Although only 10 percent of India’s huge population of 1.3 billion people know English, most of the e-commerce services, including Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm Mall, are only offered in English. Amazon aims to break this language barrier for Hindi-only speaking internet users and tap the huge e-commerce potential.
Amazon is the second largest e-commerce company in India, a market worth $33 billion. Morgan Stanley expects India’s e-commerce market to grow to $200 billion in a decade.
“The next 100 million customers will have to be in the vernacular language,” said Kishore Thota, director of customer experience and marketing for Amazon India.
The company has about 150 million registered users in the country. Flipkart, along with its subsidiaries Myntra and Jabong, is ahead of Amazon in India’s online retail market.
Amazon says that its research found that eight out of 10 Indian customers preferred to shop in a language other than English. “The level of trust increases when they see something in their own language,” Thota said in an interview at Amazon’s India headquarters in Bangalore, NY Times report.
Amazon also plans provide support for more local Indian languages, including Bengali, Tamil and Telugu, and will also extend the services to other mobile platforms as well.
The site is a bid to make deeper inroads into India’s fast-growing e-commerce market, stepping up its battle with Walmart’s Flipkart unit, Reuters reported.
“What we believe is, Amazon.in in Hindi is a critical step to actually address the next 100 million customers,” Manish Tiwary, vice president of category management at Amazon India, told reporters at a news conference, the report said.
Amazon is looking to win over the next 100 million customers in the country, its India head Amit Agarwal told Reuters in April. The country’s e-commerce market is tipped to grow to $200 billion in a decade, according to Morgan Stanley, it said.
Flipkart, along with its fashion units Myntra and Jabong, is slightly ahead of Amazon in India’s online retail, according to Forrester estimates, the report added.
Amazon also has plans to support more local Indian languages on its shopping app and mobile website and will also extend the service to mobile platforms beyond Android, said Kishore Thota, Amazon India’s head of customer experience and marketing, without giving a timeline, it said.
President Trump’s controversial trade war with China is heating up. That means consumers may soon have to pay more for goods ranging from furniture to electronics to food and clothing.
It started on Monday, when the Trump administration announced new tariffs of 10% on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods that will go into effect on Sept. 24 and climb to 25% by Jan. 1. The latest round of tariffs means that nearly half of all Chinese imports into the U.S. will soon face levies.
Beijing retaliated on Tuesday with tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods, prompting Trump to up the ante yet again, renewing a threat to slap taxes on another $267 billion of Chinese products. Including an initial $50 billion round of tariffs that went into effect over the summer, Trump has enacted or threatened to tax more than $500 billion worth of Chinese goods.
“That’s going to hit the pocketbook of every American family in 2019,” says David French, senior vice-president for government relations at the National Retail Federation, a trade group.
The latest round of levies includes all but 300 items originally proposed by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative before it held a public comment period over the summer.
Some politically sensitive products were able to dodge the new tariff. Apple gadgets, whose prices are widely followed by the tech press were left off the list, as were goods like bicycle helmets and child safety seats.
Here are the products that will cost you more:
Home Décor and Appliances
Tariffs will hit numerous home appliances, including refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and cooking appliances like plate warmers. Home decor such as lamps and lighting parts as well as wooden furniture, including baby cribs, have also been targeted. Overall prices for furniture are likely to increase 2% to 4%, according to a NRF report, as manufactures eat part of the new tax and pass part on to consumers.
Electronics
While some popular Apple devices were spared, other telecommunications and computer equipment were targeted, including so-called connected devices like modems, internet routers, and smart speakers. A recent Consumer Technology Association study estimated that tariffs on circuit board assemblies and connected devices could result in price increases of as much as 6%, costing overall American shoppers up to $3.2 billion extra each year.
Clothing
Certain types of hats, as well as furs, and many popular clothing fabrics fall under the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s Sept. 18 list. Given the already tight profit margins on low-end clothing, this could be one of the first product categories to see price increases, says Simon Lester, associate director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the CATO Institute.
Travel Goods
Products like backpacks, luggage, wallets, phone cases, handbags, and similar items are included and could see prices increase by 5% to 10%, according to the NRF report.
Food & Beverages
Fruits, nuts, grains, flours, vegetables, and other products like soy sauce, will all face new taxes. The tariffs could notably increase prices for seafood, since they already have low margins. Seafood company Chicken of the Sea “cannot absorb the costs of tariffs and must pass them on to consumers,” Chief Executiv Auto parts
Auto & Parts
The new tariffs target more than 100 different auto parts, according to the Detroit Free Press. “Raising the prices of vehicles is a real concern,” Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder told the media.
Paper, Personal Care Products, and Just About Everything Else
Personal care and beauty products (make-up, shampoo) are also on the list. Other assorted items – dog leashes, calculators, sporting goods, paper, and pet products are all covered in the latest round of tariffs too.
Apple has long had a playbook for iPhones, its most important product: Keep rolling out bigger, faster and more expensive models. On Wednesday, September 12th, it repeated that strategy by introducing another round of iPhones that are — you guessed it — bigger, faster and more expensive.
According to The New York Times, the model with a 6.5-inch screen, the iPhone XS Max, is Apple’s biggest iPhone ever and will start at $1,100. (And, yes, its name is a mouthful.) Last year when Apple debuted its iPhone X, the starting price was $1,000.
More notable, perhaps, was how much Apple is now evolving its smart watch into a clearly health-related device. The company showed off a new Apple Watch with an electronic heart sensor approved by the Food and Drug Administration. That could lead to new implications for health care — and prove to be a major selling point for a device that has played second fiddle to the iPhone.
Apple on Wednesday unveiled the iPhone XS, a premium model with a 5.8-inch screen, and the iPhone XS Max, with a 6.5-inch screen, its biggest-ever smartphone. The company also showed the iPhone XR, an entry-level model with a 6.1-inch screen.
The XS models are generally sped-up versions of last year’s iPhone X. Apple emphasized the phones’ advanced processor, durable glass and so-called Super Retina OLED display with a wide color gamut.
The iPhone XR will come in white, black, red, blue and yellow, and is just as fast as the XS models. It has a single-lens camera, unlike the XS models, which have dual-lens camera systems. And it uses LCD, a less expensive screen technology than the OLED used for the XS, and the casing is made of aluminum, unlike the stainless steel that the premium phones are composed of.
It’s obvious why Apple and other phone makers like Samsung keep enlarging their phones: Phones with bigger screens are selling well. When presented with the choice between a small phone and a bigger one, most people will go with the latter. That’s similar to how just about everyone wants a big-screen TV.
But for mobile phones, there are trade-offs. For one, the larger phones are more difficult to use with one hand. With last year’s 5.8-inch iPhone X, it was difficult to reach your thumb across the screen to type a keystroke or hit a button inside an app.
The larger screens raise an important question about design. Will Apple do much in the near future to improve one-handed use?
When Apple’s screen sizes started growing with the iPhone 6 in 2014, the company released a software shortcut, called Reachability, through which users can tap the home button twice to lower the top of the screen and make it easier to reach buttons up there. That feature still exists for the new iPhones, but the lack of a home button makes it more difficult to use — instead of double tapping the home button, now you swipe down from the bottom of the screen.
Bigger, faster and pricier. Where have we heard that before?
As Apple has made its phones larger and faster, it is also charging more for them. The company said the new iPhones would start at $750, $1,000 and $1,100. The starting prices last year were $700, $800 and $1,000.
It’s a tried-and-true strategy for the company to milk a product line that has saturated the market; Apple said Wednesday that it had shipped nearly two billion iPhones and iPads.
Unit sales of the iPhone were about flat in the latest quarter compared with a year earlier, but iPhone revenue rose 20 percent, to $29.9 billion. Something else that rose 20 percent? The average selling price of the iPhone.
By going bigger, Apple is trying to grow not just by raising prices but also by getting customers to use their devices even more. Research shows people with larger smartphones use them more, particularly to watch movies and play games.
That’s good for Apple. A central part of its strategy is to get existing iPhone owners to pay for more services on their phones, like Netflix and HBO. For each subscription bought via its App Store, Apple takes a 30 percent cut for the first year and 15 percent for each subsequent year. That bet seems to be working: Apple’s services revenue rose 31 percent to $9.55 billion in the latest quarter.
The iPhone is old enough now that figuring out what to call the new versions each year has become tricky. Last year, on the device’s 10th anniversary, Apple skipped the iPhone 9 and went straight to the iPhone X. (But it pronounced the model “ten” and not “X.”)
That X has now created an awkward situation for Apple. The company has typically appended an S to the name of the second iteration of each generation of phones, like the iPhone 5S, 6S and so on.
But this year, that meant calling it the iPhone XS. Never mind that XS is the abbreviation for extra small — not an adjective Apple wants for its $1,000 phones — but say “XS” out loud. In the age of smartphone addiction and devices that cost as much as some refrigerators, “iPhone Excess” may not be great for branding.
Instead, the new iPhone XS is pronounced “iPhone 10S,” or as the audience at the Apple event quickly realized, “iPhone Tennis.” Add the new iPhone XS Max to the mix and you’ve got “iPhone Tennis Match.”
Apple Watch becomes more of a health device
Apple introduced the Apple Watch Series 4, which it has designed to be more of a health aid. It’s the first redesign of the company’s smart watch since it was introduced in 2015. The new watch is slightly thinner, but the black frame around the screen — what is known as the bezel — has been removed to create a larger display area.
Significantly, Apple said the new watch had a faster processor and better health and motion sensors. For instance, the watch can detect when a wearer has fallen down, a leading cause of injuries. If you have fallen, the watch is designed to prompt you to alert emergency services; if it detects no motion by the wearer after a minute, it calls automatically. The watch can also perform a electrocardiogram, alerting you to worrisome heart rhythms.
Apple said that the new watch would be the first over-the-counter ECG device offered to consumers and that it had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. (Apple may want to check its claim of being first, as other companies said they had been ahead of it with the agency in this regard.)
The device’s new health features are sure to increase Apple’s dominance of the smart watch category — and they underscore the company’s focus. When the watch was first released, critics and consumers were confused about its utility. Over time, Apple has refined the device to focus on its health and fitness capabilities. Now the narrative is clear: Get this watch, if you want to live.
The Apple Watch will be available in several colors and band styles; watchbands from older models will work on the new model. The Watch starts at $399. It will begin shipping on Sept. 21.
The new Apple Watch ushers Apple into the realm of selling bona fide medical devices, complete with a shout-out from the F.D.A.
“The F.D.A. worked closely with the company as they developed and tested these software products, which may help millions of users identify health concerns more quickly,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the F.D.A. commissioner, said in a statement.
Apple’s formal entrance into medical devices brings heft to the idea of tracking health with consumer wearables. Until now, they were largely limited to the casual counting of steps or watching heart rates climb at the gym. At Wednesday’s event, Apple featured remarks from Dr. Ivor Benjamin, the president of the American Heart Association, who described the ability of wearable devices to measure heart rhythms as “game-changing, especially when evaluating atrial fibrillation — an irregular and often rapid heart rate that can increase a person’s risk of stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.”
Even Vic Gundotra, the chief executive of AliveCor, which sells a wearable device with similar heart-testing capabilities, said Apple’s decision to enter the market would make consumers’ use of electrocardiograms take off.
The F.D.A. warned that the Apple Watch was not meant as a substitute for traditional diagnosis, and it said the device was not intended for people under 22 or those with a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation.
The readings may not always be helpful, and doctors are advised not to use electrocardiograms as a screening tool for someone without symptoms, said Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. “People are going to start looking at their watch as if something is wrong,” she said.
Entry India LLC in association Consulate General of India, New York and GOPIO International Chamber of Commerce (GICC), launched its Guide ‘ENTRY INDIA’ on September 5th at the Indian Consulate in New York. Over 100 businesses, investors and trade professionals participated in the event which also hosted a panel discussion on ‘Doing Business in India’.
At the start of the event, Dr. Thomas Abraham, Chairman of GOPIO international (the largest association of PIOs and NRIs across the globe) provided opening remarks and noted Entry India’s commitment to position India as a business and investment destination of choice among US based manufacturers and investors.
Dr. Abraham said, “Entry India’s guide [ENTRY INDIA] is indeed a first-of-its-kind publication ever to be introduced with such practical resources necessary for successfully launching new products and ideas in the Indian market”. He further said, “With the 5 panelists soon to talk on topics related to doing business in India, the insights available here offers tips and insights into creating business success in India.”
Devi Prasad Misra, Consul Trade at the Consulate General of India NY, in his keynote address said, “With India’s GDP growth in the proximity of 7.5%, ENTRY INDIA guide is very timely for the businesses looking at India for their business expansion.”
Entry India’s Senior Partner, Navin Pathak, also the Managing Editor of the ENTRY INDIA guide, talking about the business opportunities in India called India ‘The Galapagos of the Modern World’. He said,
“People, especially college students, are ready to take risks with their ideas, ready to partner for new possibilities”. Adding further to the value proposition that the guide offers, he said, “It is the timely access to the reliable resources that yields business success in India and that is the purpose of the guide.” The printed copies of the guide will be made available through many business associations whereas the online version of the guide is available for download from Entry India’s portal, http://entryindia.com/India_Business_and_Travel_Guide. The guide will soon be available on mobile app.
Navin, from his first-hand experience, also touched upon how he found a partner in India, Baldeep S. Kwatra, and personally invested in and launched DRIKU – a mobile app for getting qualified drivers-on-demand – in Delhi, India. Dr. Mahendra Pratap, Senior Partner at Entry India LLC, shared about the technological strength of the DRIKU App – an Indian product – and how it will soon be launched in U.S.
Further, in support to Entry India’s goal of connecting US businesses and NRIs with opportunities in India, Navin shared about two other initiatives by Entry India:
1) Business Projects: Here, a US based manufacturer, for example, who is looking for distributors in India, can post about its product/s on Entry India’s portal which has over 35,000 comments by distributors, investors presenting their interest.
2) Internship Projects – ‘Apprentice’: Here, foreign companies especially owned by NRIs (Non-Resident Indians), who wants to give back to India, can submit projects on Entry India’s portal for students in Indian colleges.
The event concluded with the captivating panel discussion, ‘Doing Business in India’, which focused on topics related to selling US manufactured products in India, bringing Indian brands to the US market, role of Invest India’s team in assisting companies that want to manufacture their products in India and the ways in which Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) can benefit from India’s growth story. Panelists included Devi Prasad Misra (Consul Trade at Consulate General of India NY), Gaurav Verma (COO, USISPF), Ali Hirji (Senior Vice President, Citibank), Melissa Hill (Senior International Trade Specialist, U.S. Department of Commerce) and Prakash Shah (CEO, First Growth Mortgage and Realty Group).
The next Doing Business in India event will be hosted in the city of Edison, New Jersey in the month of November 2018. Dates and Venue will soon be announced on Entry India’s portal.
Entry India is a New Jersey, USA based LLC founded in 2006 with the purpose of connecting small businesses world-wide to opportunities in India. Entry India helps you prepare with all aspects of doing business with India before, during, and after your India initiative.
Entry India is well-positioned to provide its clients the real business value, that is created through:
– Our knowledge of India business, cultural and socio-economic environment, and strong collaboration with local service providers.
– Entry India’s team which consists of both US and India based experienced R&D Staff, Entrepreneurs and Strategic Partners (including Industry Associations) who have experience in expanding business in India.
A coalition of civil rights and Asian-American advocacy organizations, led by the former head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights, Vanita Gupta, have slammed the amicus brief filed by the department in support of the lawsuit filed by Asian-American students and parents against Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy.
Harvard is being sued by a group calling itself Students for Fair Admissions which is working to have the school dismantle its race-conscious admissions policy, which it said discriminates against Asian-American students.
The Justice Department on Aug. 30 in its amicus brief, said that Harvard has “failed to demonstrate that it does not discriminate on the basis of race,” siding with the Asian-American students, including some Indian-Americans suing the Ivy League school’s race-based admissions policy as discriminatory. The brief said, “Harvard is engaging in outright racial balancing.”
Last year, the DOJ opened a Title VI investigation into Harvard’s admissions process, based upon a complaint filed by several Asian-American organizations that also included some Indian-American organizations, arguing that admissions should be based strictly on merit.
Some reports have suggested that if Harvard and other institutions that have a race-conscious admissions policy eliminate these policies, the Asian-American student population would rise to as much as 40 percent for a population of approximately 6 percent in the U.S. while the African-American and Hispanic-American students admitted could drop drastically with the African American students admissions being reduced to less than 2 percent.
“Despite a lot of these programs, blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented in colleges and universities today even more so than they were in 1980,” Gupta said.
The Supreme Court has upheld use of race as a factor in college admissions as recently as 2016.
“The Justice Department’s investigation is unprecedented,” Vanita Gupta, who had led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Obama, had said in 2017. She is now president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “The Justice Department has never been a party in these cases directly investigating an institution.”
Gupta has filed an amicus brief opposing Harvard’s motion for summary judgment in the case. Gupta’s filing argues that the Justice Department, under Jeff Sessions, “opposes constitutionally sound strategies that colleges and universities are using to expand educational opportunity for students of all backgrounds.” The Justice Department recently filed a statement of interest in the lawsuit which has called Harvard’s affirmative action policy discriminatory against Asian-Americans.
Gupta called justice officials’ action one more example of “the administration’s contempt for efforts to build a more inclusive, just society. It is now backing Edward Blum’s longstanding political agenda to undermine diversity in education and opportunity for millions of young people.”
Blum, a financial adviser considered the leading force behind Students for Fair Admissions, had filed the lawsuit charging Harvard with discrimination against Asian-Americans in its admissions practices. Gupta said that Sessions’ recent action shows his department “has once again abdicated its responsibility to enforce the law and protect the civil rights of all people in America.”
Sessions’ office, however, stands by its filing. “The Department of Justice has the responsibility to protect the civil rights of the American people. This case is significant because the admissions policies at our colleges and universities are important and must be conducted lawfully,” Sessions said in a press release. The DOJ press release said that “Harvard admits that it uses race to decide whether to admit certain applicants to the college. Under Supreme Court precedent, Harvard must demonstrate that its use of race does not result in illegal discrimination.” The department said that Harvard has failed to do so and plaintiffs should be allowed to proceed to a trial.
“No American should be denied admission to school because of their race,” said Sessions. “As a recipient of taxpayer dollars, Harvard has a responsibility to conduct its admissions policy without racial discrimination by using meaningful admissions criteria that meet lawful requirements.”
“The Justice Department clearly seems to be trying to tee up another case for the Supreme Court. It looks like right now that they are looking for a sympathetic, attractive group of plaintiffs — here it’s Asian-Americans students who’ve been denied admission at Harvard — and to try to drive a wedge among communities of color by kind of pitting Asian-Americans against African-American and Hispanic students,” Gupta had said.
National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA) agreed with Gupta. Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which also represents over two dozen Asian-American groups, joined by some senior education faculty at leading universities, for its part, filed an amicus brief in support of Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy.
The Washington Post has hired award-winning journalist and veteran audio storyteller Madhulika Sikka as an executive producer on The Post’s audio team. Sikka will hire a team and oversee the creation of a new flagship podcast set to launch later this year.
Madhulika Sikka, who begins her new assignment Sept. 10, is also a former senior producer of Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” on ABC News and most recently served as public editor at PBS. The podcast is expected to launch later this year.
“The Post is making a major investment in audio following the tremendous success of podcasts like “Can He Do That?” and “Presidential,” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, managing editor at The Washington Post. “Madhulika brings to this role incredible news judgment and deep knowledge about the medium, positioning her to develop a show that aligns with The Post’s commitment to high-quality journalism and innovation.”
Sikka joins The Post from PBS where she served as Public Editor. Previously, Sikka was Executive Editor at NPR News where she worked for nine years and also served as the executive producer of “Morning Edition,” the most listened-to radio news broadcast in the country. Prior to that she was a television producer at ABC News for 13 years including senior producer at Nightline with Ted Koppel.
She is a recipient of multiple awards for her journalism including Emmys, duPonts, Peabodys, as well as from NABJ, SAJA, the RTNDA and the RTCA. She is also a writer and author of the book A Breast Cancer Alphabet. Sikka holds an undergraduate degree from the University of London and a master’s of philosophy in Economics and Politics of Development from Cambridge University (U.K.).
The Post’s managing editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, said that the paper “is making a major investment in audio following the tremendous success of podcasts like ‘Can He Do That?’ and ‘Presidential.’ “ He said “Madhulika brings to this role incredible news judgment and deep knowledge about the medium, positioning her to develop a show that aligns with the Post’s commitment to high-quality journalism and innovation.”
During her time with “Morning Edition,” Sikka was “credited with revitalizing the show and making it more relevant and lively,” said the press release. “She was then promoted to run the NPR newsroom as executive editor, where she helped integrate audio and digital and led cross-newsroom coverage, including the Peabody Award-winning coverage of the Ebola crisis,” said the press release. Sikka told India Abroad she was looking forward to the new challenge to “create something from scratch.” Earlier, in a Facebook post she noted that while it had been quite some time since she’d been in a daily newsroom, if she was going to work in one “The Washington Post seems like a good one!”
Apple and Amazon are as different from each other as apples and oranges. Apple is a tech company that is also a trendy consumer brand. Its computers and devices have often been must-have gadgets, and customers are willing to pay far more for their products than cheaper alternatives.
On the other hand, Amazon is where people go when they want to get a product more cheaply, more easily, or more quickly. Since the iPhone first went on sale in 2007, Apple shares have soared by 1,100% and have jumped almost a third in the past year.
As for Amazon, the internet retail giant has seen a steady, yet speedy rise in its share price, with its market value jumping from $600bn to $700bn in just 16 days. In contrast, the same feat took Apple 622 days. Amazon.com Inc. shares rose as much as 1.9%, pushing the company briefly beyond a market value of $1 trillion, a milestone Apple Inc. reached last month.
It’s a historic accomplishment for Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, who founded the company in his Seattle garage in 1994 as a small online book seller. Now Bezos is the world’s wealthiest person, running a diversified global enterprise with more than $200 billion in annual sales and more than 575,000 employees.
While Amazon has come a long way from its humble beginnings, things moved fast particularly in the past few years. The shares have more than tripled since 2015, reaching a high of $2,050.50 Tuesday. After crossing the $1 trillion mark, Amazon’s valuation slipped to $988.8 billion at 12:27 p.m. in New York. Tech competitors Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are closing in on the mark, too.
Apple and Amazon aren’t the first trillion-dollar corporations. Energy company PetroChina Co. briefly crossed that valuation in late 2007 but slumped quickly as oil prices collapsed in the financial crisis. Still, the online retailer is among the most feared and menacing competitors across a broad swathe of industries. Just a hint of Amazon’s potential interest in a new business can send stocks tumbling.
Moving well beyond books, Bezos re-imagined the retail experience, seeing early on how the internet could connect shoppers with a selection of goods far larger than they’d find on shelves in nearby stores. He expanded the business from books to music and movies, then added toys and electronics.
In 2001, Amazon launched an online marketplace, looking to expand inventory more quickly by inviting independent merchants onto the site and charging them a commission on each sale. The marketplace now accounts for more than half of all goods sold on the site, and many of the merchants pay Amazon additional fees for warehouse storage, packing and delivery.
This also lets Amazon offer a tremendous inventory without having to buy anything, a key competitive edge over retail competitors like Walmart Inc., which is now building its own marketplace.
Bezos again displayed his forward-looking prowess in 2006 with the launch of cloud-computing division Amazon Web Services. Just like shoppers shifted spending from stores to websites, businesses are now changing their technology operations.
Rather than buying and maintaining their own servers, they rent computer power and data storage from centralized data centers run by Amazon and pay for it depending on how much they use like an electric bill. Cloud computing gives businesses greater flexibility to experiment since they can dial up computing power when they need it and scale back when they don’t, converting long-term investments like building their own data centers into a variable cost that’s easier to manage. Amazon now leads the cloud-computing market and Amazon Web Services provides more than half the company’s profit.
“This day would have either never come or not happened so soon were it not for the company’s cloud computing efforts, which have been a godsend for the company’s profitability and, ultimately, its share price,” said Tom Forte, an analyst at DA Davidson & Co. “The fact that its fastest growing business is also its most profitable is why we are celebrating this landmark achievement today. Were Amazon a money losing e-commerce company we would not be here today.”
It took investors a while to fully appreciate Bezos’ long-term strategies. The stock has surged in recent years, largely based on bets he made more than a decade ago.
“If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people,” Bezos told Wired magazine in 2011. “But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that.”
There were concerns that Amazon was a “nonprofit” because Bezos invested so heavily in growth there were often money-losing quarters or results with razor-thin margins. The failed Fire smartphone in 2014 was perhaps the company’s biggest flop. But Amazon came roaring back later that year with its Echo voice-activated speaker and Alexa digital assistant — a surprise runaway hit that lets users dim lights, stream music and order pizza via voice commands.
The biggest contributor to Amazon’s success is the Prime membership, launched in 2005. Bezos borrowed a page from discount warehouse shopping clubs and offered cheaper shipping rates to customers paying an annual membership fee that is now $119 in the U.S. Membership converts the occasional online shopper into an Amazon devotee eager to get their money’s worth on shipping. And Amazon keeps adding more perks, like video streaming, online photo storage and most recently discounts at Whole Foods Market, which Amazon acquired last year for $13.7 billion to jump-start its grocery business.
Amazon now has more than 100 million Prime members, which it uses to lure more inventory to its web store, where competition among merchants keeps prices low. Its annual Prime Day sale, sometimes called Christmas in July, generates tremendous publicity and helps attract new members seeking discounts. The latest offshoot of all the customers and products is a fast-growing and profitable advertising business.
For all of its strengths, there are a limited number of foreseeable threats to Amazon’s unstoppable march: Antitrust concern percolating in the U.S., and a proven strategy to replicate its U.S. success abroad. Amazon’s reputation as a job-creation machine has helped keep U.S. politicians in check so far. A public-bidding process to be home to Amazon’s second headquarters has only further motivated policy makers to be nice. And investors now mostly shrug off Twitter broadsides from the company’s highest-profile critic, U.S. President Donald Trump.
Harssh Madhok is a Manhattan based businessman and investor who has begun a mission to raise awareness of the injustices in India’s business practices. His journey began when his business fell prey to bureaucratic forces despite his best intentions to invest in India’s economy and help it flourish. Rather than give up, Madhok took action.
Multiple media outlets, community leaders, and local activists gathered on September 6th to hear Madhok. Madhok shared his painful experience which he has shared prior with his friends and family repeatedly since his return to the United States. This was his first time sharing this in a public setting. In 2017, Mr. Madhok opened a state of the art Volkswagen showroom in Thane, Mumbai with the vision of opening 100 more over the next ten years creating over 20,000 jobs.
A vision inspired by Prime Minister Modi’s initiative, “Make In India”, urging Non-Resident Indians to invest in India. In his case, this pursuit turned ugly quickly as his business was illegally hijacked and he was denied access to his leased space. Even worse, when he tried to seek justice and investigate the matter he was met with threats from his landlord, the police department, and local officials. His frustration reached the ceiling when he got no response or acknowledgement after repeated attempts to contact CM Fadnavis office.
Fighting threats and constant pushback, Madhok returned to the United States and after consideration has decided to stand up and fight for his rights. Nonprofit Organizations and media outlets such as Asian Indian Chamber Of Commerce, Society & Diplomatic Review, Federation of India Associations (FIA), TV Asia, were at the event. Community leaders resonated with Madhok’s message that the Indian diaspora at large here cannot play bystanders and allow this injustice to occur. It has unfortunately become commonplace to allow corrupt officials to abuse the broken legal system while making our overseas diaspora their prey. Madhok is committed to further this movement and to stand up to push back and injustice he has faced. He is appealing to his community to stand behind him in ensuring justice prevails.
ITConnectUS & Law Offices of Mary Kennedy held the ITServe Chicago monthly event at Hoffman Estates, IL. With over 200 prestigious businesses as attendees, the formal event was marked with cocktail and networking before presentations from the sponsors followed by dinner. The American IT consulting company, ITConnectUS releases their first of its kind web application, Xoomatic, an empowered staffing tool designed for customizable recruitment needs.
Xoomatic is an automated workflow management system for vendors, clients, recruiters and managers to handle the entire hiring process all in one easy to use platform. Xoomatic runs on your secured domain to build applicant databases for your organization, so you don’t have to.
Unlike traditional recruitment solutions portals, Xoomatic offers real time status updates for clients and applicants to find out the status of their application. It is designed to be concise and provide a simplistic interface behind a robust automated tool. With 24/7 technical support, Here at Xoomatic we will help automate your entire workflow.
Within Xoomatic’ s user experience we offer a Staffing Solution and Pre-screening Service All in one. Our Xoomatic’ s Prescreening services offer any organization the unique opportunity to received only verified, genuine candidate profiles, eliminating falsified and spam profiles. These candidates can then be tracked and managed through the Pre-screening Module within the Xoomatic portal. The overall result is speed and accountability, increasing the probability by simplifying your pre-screening step of any organizations hiring process.
12 individual modules makeup the Xoomatic sphere, with their own specializations for account management, recruiting, pre-screening, vendor management, team leader, client, legal & finance, consultant and vendor submission module. A super admin module includes the ability to manage all other modules with admin level control, which is ideal for any size organization.
Xoomatic offers packages for every company size and offers the ability to customize your package to fit your exact company need.
ITConnectUS was established in 2016 with offices in Chicago (United States), Mohali and Bangalore (India) and Singapore. ITConnectUS’s latest tool Xoomatic is offered for a 14 days trial purposes absolutely free. Please do not hesitate to contact us for more explanation or a detailed demonstration. Visit us at www.xoomatic.com
The International Leaders Summit’s leadership groups including the executive committees of The Jerusalem Leaders Summit and the India-US Institute welcome Dr. Sampat S. Shivangi, a leading American conservative, dedicated physician and philanthropist to the independent think tank dedicated to advancing principled solutions.
“We are honored to welcome Dr. Sampat S. Shivangi to the think tank’s Executive Advisory Board,” said Natasha Srdoc, co-founder of the International Leaders Summit. “We welcome Dr. Shivangi’s leadership in the organization’s continued growth and its strategic work within America and through its allies India, Israel, and other trusted partners. Dr. Shivangi brings his unique experiences in addressing the vital public policy issues of the day which impact America and the world.”
In a statement issued here, Dr. Sampat S. Shivangi, America’s leading conservative, leader in the healthcare arena and philanthropist, said, “I am much grateful for the opportunity to advance International Leaders Summit’s mission and vision, a great organization that Natasha Srdoc and Joel Anand Samy co-founded in 2004. It has been an amazing task to assemble such stalwarts including America’s 75th Attorney General Hon. Edwin Meese III, cabinet members, ambassadors, US members of Congress and members of the European Parliament to strengthen the rule of law, advance economic freedom and secure peace through strength.
“I look forward to working with the great team they have put together, to provide and create better understanding in international relations with elected leaders and other major international organizations in India, US, UK and Israel. I had a wonderful opportunity to be a goodwill Ambassador to Israel few years ago and interact with the Israeli government and the community leaders of Israel, which was memorable experience. It is an honor to have great relations with the present Indian Leadership. Once again thank you for the opportunity to serve the world at large through the International Leaders Summit as a member of the Executive Advisory Board,” he added.
Dr. Sampat S. Shivangi is a conservative life long member of the Republican party and hails from the strong Republican state of Mississippi. Dr. Shivangi is the National President of the Indian American Forum for Political Education, one the oldest Indian American associations. For the last three decades, he has advocated for bills in the US congress on behalf of India through his close relationships with US Senators and members of Congress.
He is the founding member of the Republican Indian Council and of Republican Indian National Council which aims to work to help and assist in promoting President Donald J. Trump’s agenda and supporting his strategic initiatives. Dr. Shivangi has worked enthusiastically in promoting the India Civil Nuclear Treaty and the US-India defense treaty that was passed in the US Congress.
Dr. Shivangi has held high offices in USA including as an advisor to US Health & Human Services appointed by the President George W. Bush, a member of the Mississippi State Board of Health by Governor Haley Barbour, then a Chair of the State Board of Mental Health, now by Governor Phil Bryant.
For his significant contributions to strengthening India-US relations, Dr. Shivangi was honored with India’s highest civilian award by the President of India, with the Pravasi Bharathiya Sanman award in 2017. Dr. Shivangi was also honored with Ellis Island Medal of Honor in New York in 2008.
His many philanthropic activities include serving with the Blind Foundation of MS, Diabetic, Cancer and Heart Associations of America. Dr. Shivangi has number of philanthropic work in India including primary & middle schools, Cuturral Center, IMA Centers that he opened. He brought the first-ever US Congressional grant to AAPI to study Diabetes Mellitus among Indian Americans.
“It has been an honor to work with Dr. Sampat S. Shivangi over the span of the last decade through partnering organizations including the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) in strengthening the US-India partnership and engaging Indian Americans on the public policy front,” said Joel Anand Samy, co-founder, International Leaders Summit. “Dr. Shivangi’s commitment to advancing America’s first principles, his distinguished career as a physician, and a leader at the state and national levels has made a profound difference in the lives of many. We look forward to working with Dr. Shivangi in his new capacity as an Executive Advisory Board Member of ILS in advancing principled policies in America and strengthening the US-India ties on the healthcare, economic and security fronts.”
The International Leaders Summit’s Executive Advisory Board includes distinguished members such as the Honorable Edwin Meese, III, America’s 75th Attorney General, Honorable Maurice McTigue, QSO, New Zealand’s former cabinet minister and Ambassador to Canada, Honorable Mart Laar, former prime minister, Estonia, Honorable Dr. Shanti Gandhi, former state representative of the Kansas Legislature and retired cardiovascular surgeon and other key leaders.
The International Leaders Summit is an independent think tank dedicated to strengthening the rule of law, advancing economic reforms, committed to expanding trade and presenting new security strategies for the 21st century. In light of the challenges and opportunities, the founding leadership members of the ILS conference platform have expanded its efforts and created a unique network of reform leaders and proponents of the rule of law in addressing the market economy, free and fair trade, peace through strength and strengthening America’s ties with India, Israel, Britain and other sovereign rule of law nations. It holds Summit events in America, Britain, continental Europe, India and Israel with the strategic Jerusalem Leaders Summit.
Indra Nooyi has been chosen to receive the Asia Society announced this year’s recipients of the Asia Game Changer Awards on August 23, 2018, which recognize those making a transformative and positive difference for the future of Asia and the world. Asia Society is proud to partner with Citi to honor these extraordinary individuals and groups, continuing a tradition begun with the inauguration of the Asia Game Changer Awards five years ago.
The honorees this year include Thai rescuers who saved a squad of teenage soccer players trapped in a flooded cave, a team of Afghan girls who successfully competed in a U.S. technology competition, a record-breaking star runner from a small village in Nepal, and a group of Japanese volunteers working to secure the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant following a tsunami. Indra Nooyi, the remarkable president and CEO of PepsiCo, will receive the Game Changer of the Year Award. Honorees are nominated and selected by members of Asia Society’s global network.
Indra Nooyi is chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo. PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world and generated more than $63 billion in net revenue in 2017. With a product portfolio that includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages such as Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker, and Tropicana, PepsiCo generates more than $1 billion in estimated annual retail sales in 22 brands.
Mrs. Nooyi is the chief architect of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo’s pledge to do what’s right for the business by being responsive to the needs of the world around us. As part of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo is focusing on delivering sustained growth by making healthier and more nutritious products, limiting our environmental footprint and protecting the planet, and empowering our associates and people in the communities we serve.
Mrs. Nooyi was named President and CEO on October 1, 2006, and assumed the role of chairman on May 2, 2007. She has directed the company’s global strategy for more than a decade and led its restructuring, including the divestiture of its restaurants into the successful YUM! Brands, Inc. She also led the acquisition of Tropicana and the merger with Quaker Oats that brought the vital Quaker and Gatorade businesses to PepsiCo, the merger with PepsiCo’s anchor bottlers, and the acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann, the largest international acquisition in PepsiCo’s history.
Prior to becoming CEO, Mrs. Nooyi served as president and chief financial officer beginning in 2001, when she was also named to PepsiCo’s board of directors. In this position, she was responsible for PepsiCo’s corporate functions, including finance, strategy, business process optimization, corporate platforms and innovation, procurement, investor relations and information technology. Between February 2000 and April 2001, Mrs. Nooyi was senior vice president and chief financial officer of PepsiCo. Mrs. Nooyi also served as PepsiCo’s senior vice president, corporate strategy and development from 1996 until 2000, and as PepsiCo’s senior vice president, strategic planning from 1994 until 1996.
Before joining PepsiCo in 1994, Mrs. Nooyi spent four years as senior vice president of strategy and strategic marketing for Asea Brown Boveri, a Zurich-based industrials company. She was part of the top management team responsible for the company’s U.S. business as well as its worldwide industrial businesses, representing about $10 billion of ABB’s $30 billion in global sales.
Between 1986 and 1990, Mrs. Nooyi worked for Motorola, where she was vice president and director of corporate strategy and planning, having joined the company as the business development executive responsible for its automotive and industrial electronic group. Prior to Motorola, she spent six years directing international corporate strategy projects at The Boston Consulting Group. Her clients ranged from textiles and consumer goods companies to retailers and specialty chemicals producers. Mrs. Nooyi began her career in India, where she held product manager positions at Johnson & Johnson and Mettur Beardsell, Ltd., a textile firm.
In addition to being a member of the PepsiCo Board of Directors, Mrs. Nooyi serves as a member of the boards of Schlumberger Limited, The Consumer Goods Forum, Catalyst, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Tsinghua University. She is also a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
She holds a B.S. from Madras Christian College, an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, and a Master of Public and Private Management from Yale University. Mrs. Nooyi is married and has two daughters.
Warren Buffett is gearing up to invest in India’s top mobile payments firm. The renowned investor’s company, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), is set to pick up a stake in Paytm, a source familiar with the deal told CNNMoney on Monday.
The two companies have been discussing for several months an investment of about 25 billion rupees ($360 million) that would value Paytm at around $10 billion, the source said, adding that the deal could be announced as soon as this week.
Paytm declined to comment, while Berkshire Hathaway did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
Buffett’s first investment in an Indian company will see him enter a fast-growing market where some of Silicon Valley’s top players are already looking to make a mark.
“There is a lot of traction,” said DD Mishra, a research director at Gartner. “This market is going to be very competitive, and you need deeper pockets to survive for a long time,” he added.
Indians love to do business in cash, and most transactions in the country are still conducted in rupee notes and coins.
But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock decision to ban 86% of India’s cash in November 2016 gave a big boost to online wallets such as Paytm, which signed up around 10 million new users within a month.
It is the market leader in mobile payments, with more than 300 million users, and has also started an online retail platform called Paytm Mall to take on Amazon (AMZN) and Flipkart, which was bought by Walmart (WMT) earlier this year.
India’s large young population with growing disposable incomes make it a hugely promising market for mobile payments and online shopping, said Kenny Liew, an analyst at research firm Fitch Solutions.
“This will be translated into more spending, leading to increased volumes of e-commerce sales and payments for Paytm to capture,” Liew added.
Buffett has spoken previously about his bullishness on India, saying in an interview with a local TV channel last year that the country had “incredible” potential as a market.
“If you tell me a wonderful company in India that might be available for sale, I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said.
An investment by the Oracle of Omaha, as he is popularly known, will make people sit up and take notice. Berkshire Hathaway will join Chinese tech giant Alibaba (BABA) and Japanese conglomerate SoftBank (SFTBF) as big name investors in Paytm.
“Given that Buffett is a fundamental investor and most of his investments last at least a decade, it is an unambiguous signal that Paytm would be relevant over such a long time horizon,” said Vaidyanathan Krishnamurthy, a professor of finance at the Indian School of Business.
“The fact that he is investing in an Indian tech company is a big moment for all Indian tech startups.”
The Trump administration’s “inconsistent” immigration policies, including on the H1-B visa for professionals, could “disrupt” operations of American firms and inflict “substantial harm” on their competitiveness, CEOs from top US companies have warned.
In a letter to US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, members of the Business Roundtable, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi, President and CEO of Mastercard Ajay Banga and Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems Chuck Robbins said that confusion around US immigration policy “creates anxiety for employees who follow the law.”
The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of America’s leading companies, told Nielsen yesterday that “inconsistent government action and uncertainty undermines economic growth and American competitiveness.”
Due to a shortage of green cards for workers, many employees find themselves stuck in an immigration process lasting more than a decade, they said.
To avoid unnecessary costs and complications for American businesses, the US government should not change the rules in the middle of the process, the CEOs said, pointing out to the several policy memoranda over the past year by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued that has resulted in “arbitrary and inconsistent adjudications”.
“Companies now do not know whether a work visa petition that was approved last month will be approved when the company submits the identical application to extend the employee’s status,” they said.
In particular, the CEOs said they are worried about changes to the review process for H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, expected changes to the rules for spouses of H-1B employees and planned changes to certain deportation rules.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
Employees who qualify for H-1B jobs often hold degrees in science, tech, engineering or math, and are highly sought after by employers, the CEOs said.
The Roundtable members said that a confusing immigration system in the US which threatens to split their families apart, could encourage them to seek employment in a different country. That would put the American economy at a disadvantage.
They also noted that in many cases, the US Labor Department has determined that “no qualified US workers are available to do that person’s job.”
President Donald Trump has said that some IT companies were abusing the US work visas to deny jobs to American workers.
“As the federal government undertakes its legitimate review of immigration rules, it must avoid making changes that disrupt the lives of thousands of law-abiding and skilled employees, and that inflict substantial harm on US competitiveness,” the CEOs noted.
The Business Roundtable will continue to work with Congress to reduce the Green Card backlog, they said.
In the interim, inconsistent immigration policies are unfair and discourage talented and highly skilled individuals from pursuing career opportunities in the United States, they said.
The reality is that few will move their family and settle in a new country if, at any time and without notice, the government can force their immediate departure–often without explanation.
“At a time when the number of job vacancies are reaching historic highs due to labour shortages, now is not the time restrict access to talent,” the CEOs said.
The group has called for increasing the number of H-1B visas and letting people with advanced STEM degrees from American universities qualify for a green card immediately.
Meanwhile, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a statement the “administration has been relentlessly pursuing necessary immigration reforms that move towards a merit-based system.”
“USCIS is committed to reforming employment based immigrant and non-immigrant immigration programs so they benefit the American people to the greatest extent possible,” CNN quoted spokesperson Michael Bars as saying.
It was late one night in 2013 when professor Sanat Kumar Roy was woken up by the shrill ringing of his phone. A journalist from the US wanted to know something about a person he insisted was a former student of his. “It was only after some enquiries that I realised that the person he was referring to as Sundar Pichai, then a senior vice-president in Google, was ex-student Pichai Sundarajan,” says the retired IIT Kharagpur professor, with a laugh.
That’s how IIT Kharagpur remembers one of their most famous alumni – Sundar Pichai, current Google CEO – who graduated from the premier institute’s metallurgical engineering department in 1993, 25 years ago. The list of toppers that hangs on one of the walls in the department, bears his name as the topper of his batch. Indranil Manna, who had been Pichai’s B.Tech thesis guide, still has a copy of his work.
Both professors remember Pichai as “shy, quiet, but extremely intelligent” in class. “He was not diffident, just very focussed, Whenever he was asked something, he was never found wanting. He was always willing to participate in various student activities, especially within the department,” says Manna.
Manna also remembers his “big handwriting”. “If you ask me today whether I had known then that he would be the Google CEO one day, I will say a leader for sure, a thinking man… He was bright, had a star in his eyes,” says Manna.
Manna was in contact with Pichai till he finished his masters from Stanford. “I had expected him to go in for a PhD …” He adds: “If I remember right, he didn’t have beard while he was here. But that apart, he hasn’t changed much.” Over the years, Manna lost touch with Pichai. His next conversation with Pichai was after he had become the Google CEO. “I met another former student, a batchmate of Pichai’s and was enquiring about him and he encouraged me to write to him and assured me he would reply. I was at IIT Kanpur at the time and the students were also keen to have him on the campus for some event. Pichai did reply to my mail, but did not say anything about visiting the campus,” says Manna with a laugh.
Manna was not at IIT Kharagpur when Pichai visited the campus last year. But boarders of Nehru Hall of Residence – the hostel where Pichai had lived as a student – remember the visit well, as do most of those present on campus at the time.
“None of us could interact with him because there was a big crowd surrounding him. But we stood on the stairs and watched him go to his old room,” says third-year civil engineering student Pinaki Mishra. Dulal Kumar Chandra, the librarian at the hostel library, remembers both the visit and Pichai as a student. “As a student, he was always busy with books. You could see that he was intelligent, a good student. When he visited the campus last year, he came to the hostel library too and was happy at the way its been maintained,” says Chandra. From the owner of a store within the hostel to the person who mans the cycle stand there, last year’s visit has refreshed everyone’s memories about the “quiet and well-behaved” former student .
P Simalu, a former member of the mess staff, who retired a few months back, has a treasured memento from that visit hanging on his drawing room wall — a photo with the Google CEO. “He smiled when he saw me and hugged me. I couldn’t understand what he said. He is Tamil and I am Telugu. As a student he knew some Hindi, but I think he has forgotten it now,” he says. “He was a nice boy. He was vegetarian and like food a little sour. He was happy when we served dosa or some other south Indian dish at the mess. He didn’t like things like chana curry too much,” he says with a chuckle.
Neither the professors, nor any of the staff though, remember Pichai’s romance with fellow student Anjali (now his wife), which the Google CEO revealed during his visit last year. But that would be characteristic of the relationship the shy student had with his professors. “Maybe his friends knew,” says Manna, with a smile.The current occupant of Pichai’s old hostel room, Aditya Buridi, says he texted his friends to tell them when it was allotted to him. “They asked me for a treat,” he says with a laugh. The corridors outside have received a fresh coat of whitewash since Pichai’s visit last year. Some of the paint covers the room number painted on the door frame – 309 – in front of which Pichai had so happily posed for photos.
It had become an article of investor faith on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley: Quarter after quarter, year after year, the world’s biggest technology companies would keep raking in new users and ever-higher revenue. And with that, their share prices would continue to march upward, sloughing off any stumbles.
Last month, that myth was shattered. And investors responded by hammering the stock of Facebook, one of the world’s most valuable companies. Shares of the social media giant fell 19 percent, wiping out roughly $120 billion of shareholder wealth, among the largest one-day destruction of market value that a company has ever suffered.
Investors dumped Facebook shares after the company reported disappointing second-quarter earnings, in which the company warned of a sharp slowdown in sales growth in coming quarters along with rising spending on security and privacy enhancements.
The sudden drop also amounted to a test of the giant, technology-focused stocks that have carried the market for much of the year. Before Facebook’s tumble, more than half the returns in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index this year had been provided by just a handful of technology-related stocks, said Savita Subramanian, an equity strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
In recent years, investors — from individual traders to the world’s largest hedge funds — have snapped up shares in these companies, which include Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google’s parent company, Alphabet. These tech giants were viewed as having nearly unassailable revenue streams that could deliver profit growth regardless of economic conditions.
As a result, their share prices soared. This year alone Apple is up some 15 percent; Alphabet has gained more than 20 percent; Amazon has surged more than 50 percent; and Netflix is up nearly 90 percent.
Facebook’s stumble suggests that some of these stocks — as well as the broader market — could be particularly vulnerable if their financial results don’t live up to investor expectations.
Until Thursday, Facebook was enjoying enormous gains. The stock was up more than 23 percent for the year, before it reported earnings after Wednesday’s close. By Thursday afternoon, all of its gains for the year had vanished.
It was the details of Facebook’s report that seemed to spook investors. The company’s quarterly revenue fell slightly short of meeting the expectations of Wall Street analysts. And executives warned that the company would invest heavily in privacy and security, and that revenue growth would most likely slow in coming quarters.
Still, Facebook’s sharp drop seems to have had a limited effect on the broader market, which has shown signs of gaining traction in recent weeks as companies largely reported strong second-quarter earnings.
It’s quite possible that Facebook’s shares could recover and continue to climb. In March, the company’s handling of user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal contributed to a backlash against the size and reach of the biggest tech businesses and raised concerns that regulators may soon crack down on these firms. Shares of Facebook fell 17 percent in the days after news broke. By May, the company had erased those losses.
Still, the sheer size of Facebook’s fall on Thursday became a focus for investors. The decline in Facebook’s market value was roughly equivalent to the entire value of some of the country’s best-known companies, including McDonald’s, Nike and the industrial conglomerate 3M.
There are few examples of single-day losses so large. In September 2000, as the tech stock boom turned to bust, the chip maker Intel warned that its sales could slow, sending its stock price down by more than 20 percent. The rout knocked $91 billion off its market value in a day. Adjusted for inflation, that loss would be more than $130 billion in 2018 dollars, greater than the value Facebook lost on a single day last month. But given the vast market value of today’s tech giants, and the fact that 20 percent declines in share prices are not unheard-of, the size of the losses shouldn’t be surprising.
Apple has become the first US company with a market cap of over $1 trillion. This follows a jump in its stock after reporting strong Q3 earnings that saw the iPhone maker surpass both its own projections and analysts’ estimates, while also making a strong forecast for its upcoming Q4 earnings.
Apple hit the $1 trillion mark early morning on August 2nd when its stock crossed $207.05 per share at 11:48am ET (the stock has since dropped back down slightly). Given the volatile nature of the market, however, it’s possible Apple may not stay a $1 trillion company for very long, or it could bounce back and forth over the $1 trillion mark in the coming days. It technically also isn’t the first to hit $1 trillion, either — PetroChina briefly reached $1 trillion back in 2007, although the stock soon fell below that mark.
“Apple’s $1 trillion cap is equal to about 5 percent of the total gross domestic product of the United States in 2018,” said David Kass, professor of finance at the University of Maryland. “That puts this company in perspective.”
Apple closed Thursday above the $1 trillion mark, finishing the day up 2.92 percent at a share price of $207.39. The price gave the stock a market value of $1,001,678,000,000 — or $1.002 trillion rounded up
But for all intents and purposes, Apple is the first US-based (and, for now, the only) trillion-dollar company on the market. It likely won’t be there alone for long, though: Amazon is also on the verge of hitting the $1 trillion mark after its own positive Q3 results.
Of course, all of this is an arbitrary milestone based on humans’ general tendency to put more weight on nice-looking round numbers as some kind of goal. There’s really no practical difference between Apple’s worth of $999 billion and $1 trillion since it’s still an almost impossibly wealthy and influential company beyond the comprehension of individual people.
Apple is among the most widely held stocks in the world. It makes more money and pays its owners — the shareholders — more than any other public enterprise on the planet.
Because of its size and value, the health of Apple ripples through the U.S. economy and its markets. It pays dividends to tens of millions of investors who own Apple stock directly or indirectly, from pension funds to individuals.
“It’s probably the most popular equity investment anywhere,” Kass said, “and as it reaches new heights, it is taking consumers, investors and others along with it.”
If you invested $10,000 in Apple when it first sold publicly traded stock at its initial public offering price of $22 in December 1980, it would now be worth around $6.3 million, including reinvested dividends.
A global trade war has broken out. The United States fired the first salvo and there has been retaliation by the European Union, Canada, China and even India. Tariffs on certain imported goods have been increased in a tit-for-tat reaction.
Analysts see it as a limited war in the understanding that Donald Trump is all for “free-trade”. But this view denies the fact that a tectonic shift is taking place in the world. It is a war for ascendency to global leadership; a contest between the US and China.
China is heaving its might on the world. President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative is an open call for its global influence. In July 2017, China launched the ambitious plan to invest in the technology of the future—artificial intelligence.
There are dark (unconfirmed) whispers about how it is going about acquiring many new-age technologies by rolling over western companies operating in vast markets.
The last century belonged to the US and Europe with Russia as the communist outlier. China became mighty all because of the emergence of the free trade regime in the world. Just some 35-odd years ago, it was behind the iron curtain.
But then the World Trade Organization (WTO) was born in January 1995. China’s trade boomed. It took over the world’s manufacturing jobs. India, too, found its place by servicing outsourced businesses like telemarketing. “Shanghaied” and “Bangalored” entered the lexicon—as jobs (and pollution) moved continents. This way, globalization fulfilled its purpose to usher in a new era of world prosperity. Or so, we thought.
Instead, globalization has made the world more complicated and convoluted. In early 1990s, when the discussions on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were at its peak, there was a clear North-South divide.
The then-developed world pushed for opening up of trade. It wanted markets and protection through rules on “fair” trade and intellectual property. The then developing world was worried what the free trade regime would do to its nascent and weak industrial economies.
More importantly, there were fears of what these new open trade rules would do to its farmers, who would have to compete with the disproportionately subsidised farmers of the developed world.
In 1999 tensions flared up at the WTO ministerial meet in Seattle. By this time, reality of globalisation had dawned and so it was citizens of the rich world who protested for labour rights, worried about outsourcing of their jobs and environmental abuses.
But these violent protests were crushed. The next decade was lost in the financial crisis. The new winners told the old losers that “all was well”.
Today Trump has joined the ranks of the Leftist Seattle protesters, while India and China are the new defenders of free trade. The latter in fact want more, much more of it.
But again, is it so straightforward? All these arrangements are built on the refusal to acknowledge the crisis of employment. The first phase of globalisation led to some displacement of labour and this is what Trump is griping about.
But the fact is that this phase of globalisation has only meant war between the old elite (middle-classes in the world of trade and consumerism) and the new elite. It has not been long enough or deep enough to destroy the foundations of the livelihoods of the vast majority of the poor engaged in farming. But it is getting there.
But this is where the real impact of globalisation will be felt. Global agricultural trade remains distorted and deeply contentious. The trade agreements targeted basics like procurement of foodgrains by governments to withstand scarcity and the offer of minimum support price to farmers.
Right now, the Indian government is making the right noises that it will stand by its farmers. But we will not be able to balance this highly imbalanced trade regime if we don’t recognise that employment is the real crisis.
It is time that this round of trade war should be on the need for livelihood opportunities. Global trade talks must discuss employment not just industry. It must value labour and not goods.
This is what is at the core of the insecurity in the world. It is not about trade or finance. It is about the biggest losers: us, the people and the planet. The link to the original article follows: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/
Indra Nooyi is stepping down as chief executive officer of food and beverage giant PepsiCo Inc., handing the reins to a top lieutenant in a transition that will draw attention to the dearth of prominent female CEOs in corporate America.
Nooyi, 62, will leave the role in October and remain chairman until early 2019. Ramon Laguarta, 54, who has been a candidate to take over since a promotion last year to president, will be just the sixth CEO in the 53-year history of the company.
Nooyi, who is from India, is the first foreign-born CEO of Pepsi and the first woman to lead the chips-and-soda behemoth, whose revenue topped $63 billion last year. Her departure thins the ranks of female CEOs running S&P 500 companies and comes at a time when Pepsi’s North American beverage unit is stagnating amid a general decline in soda consumption. In 24 years at Pepsi, including 12 as chief executive, she has helped the Frito-Lay unit grow in a challenging industry and added healthier drinks and snacks to a portfolio that includes Cheetos and Mountain Dew.
Nooyi attended graduate school at Yale University and joined Purchase, New York-based Pepsi in 1994 as head of corporate strategy, rising to the CEO job in 2006. At the time only a handful of women ran major U.S. companies, and there are still fewer than 30 female CEOs in the S&P Nooyi faced down activist investor Nelson Peltz, repelling a bid to break up the company, and has guided Pepsi through a tricky stretch as shifts in how U.S. consumers eat and shop have bedeviled the largest food and beverage companies in the world.
“Indra’s legacy is that she’s figured out in a difficult environment that she could run a great company and drive great results and do good at the same time, while having long-lasting impact as a leader and global icon,” said Blair Effron, co-founder of Centerview Partners, an investment bank and advisory firm that’s worked with a range of consumer giants including Pepsi.
As she ponders her next chapter, Nooyi said she’ll possibly take a vacation, in addition to watching the New York Yankees baseball team, and, she quipped, “listen to some music, take a walk in the woods.” She hasn’t thought through potential next steps, but at a time when global progress on promoting more women to CEO positions appears to have stalled, she plans to help develop more talent to ensure that women are represented in the top ranks of corporate America.
“I think people like me, after we leave privileged CEO jobs, I don’t think we can go silent,” she said. “We have to keep fighting the good fight to develop women, to mentor them, to support them, so that we can get more highly qualified women — and there’s plenty of them — into the boardroom, into C suites and into the ultimate CEO job. My job is in fact just beginning once I leave PepsiCo because I can do things now that I was constrained to do when I was CEO of the company.”
Like many CEOs in a divisive political era, Nooyi has found herself a part of political discussions. She described herself at a conference as a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election but congratulated Donald Trump for his victory and was part of his short-lived business advisory council.
During an era when a businessman occupies the White House and corporate leaders including Mark Cuban and Howard Schultz are mentioned as potential presidential candidates, Nooyi said she doesn’t see a future for herself in politics.
“I think there are business leaders who like politics and there are business leaders who’d be lousy at politics,” she said. “I happen to be in the second group, and so I just want to make sure that whatever I can do behind the scenes to help any cause, I will — that makes sense for me. But politics no, not for me.”
“I’ve had a wonderful time being CEO, but at some point you sit back and say, look, it’s a responsible move to effect an orderly transition and to have somebody else take over the leadership of this company,” she said in an interview. “Being a CEO requires strong legs and I feel like I ran two legs of a relay race and I want somebody else with nice strong legs and sharp eyes to come and lead this company.”
Syntel Inc., a global provider of integrated information technology and knowledge process services, July 22 announced that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement with Atos S.E. The owner of a couple of IT Services Company, Syntel has sold their company. Bharat Desai and his wife Neeraj Sethi sold it to French IT major Atos for $3.4 bn in an all-cash deal.
As part of the agreement, Atos will acquire all of Syntel’s outstanding shares at $41 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $3.57 billion, including Syntel’s net debt, Syntel said in a news release. The transaction was unanimously approved by the full Board of Directors of Syntel based on the unanimous recommendation of a Special Committee of the Board, it said.
Syntel declared, “it has entered into a definitive merger agreement with Atos S.E. under which Atos will acquire all outstanding shares of Syntel for $41.00 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $3.57 billion, including Syntel’s net debt. The deal was unanimously approved by the full Board of Directors of Syntel based on the unanimous recommendation of a Special Committee of the Board.”
“This is a very exciting development for Syntel. The Syntel board is committed to maximizing shareholder value and believes that the agreement with Atos achieves that objective and delivers a win-win proposition to our customers and employees,” Syntel co-chair Bharat Desai said in a statement. “Our focus at Syntel is to help customers transform and succeed in the digital economy. Since its founding, our ‘Customer for Life’ ethos has guided our investments in high-impact, domain-led services and intellectual property,” the Indian American entrepreneur said.
“I am grateful for the trust and confidence of our customers and the passion, commitment and innovative spirit of our employees.” Desai added. “Together they have enabled Syntel to achieve great heights. I am confident that this combination will deliver significant value to all stakeholders.”
Completion of this transaction is subject to regulatory approvals, approval of Syntel’s shareholders and other customary closing conditions. The deal is expected to close later this year.
Earlier this month, Neerja Sethi made Forbes’2018 “America’s Richest Self-Made Women” list. Sethi, the vice president of Syntel, co-founded the company with her husband Bharat Desai in 1980 in their Troy, Mich., apartment.
The 63-year-old executive who resides in Fisher Island, Fla., has a net worth of $1 billion. She started out with an initial investment of a mere $2,000 which resulted in first-year sales of $30,000.
In 2017, Syntel, which now employs roughly 23,000 individuals globally – 80 percent of whom are in India – made $924 million in revenues. (See India-West story here.)
And earlier this year, Bharat Desai was named among the ‘2018 World’s Billionaires’ by Forbes. He made the list at No. 1,999 with his $1.1 billion net worth.
It had become an article of investor faith on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley: Quarter after quarter, year after year, the world’s biggest technology companies would keep raking in new users and ever-higher revenue. And with that, their share prices would continue to march upward, sloughing off any stumbles.
This week, that myth was shattered. And investors responded Thursday by hammering the stock of Facebook, one of the world’s most valuable companies. Shares of the social media giant fell 19 percent, wiping out roughly $120 billion of shareholder wealth, among the largest one-day destruction of market value that a company has ever suffered.
Investors dumped Facebook shares after the company reported disappointing second-quarter earnings, in which the company warned of a sharp slowdown in sales growth in coming quarters along with rising spending on security and privacy enhancements.
The sudden drop also amounted to a test of the giant, technology-focused stocks that have carried the market for much of the year. Before Facebook’s tumble, more than half the returns in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index this year had been provided by just a handful of technology-related stocks, said Savita Subramanian, an equity strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
In recent years, investors — from individual traders to the world’s largest hedge funds — have snapped up shares in these companies, which include Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google’s parent company, Alphabet. These tech giants were viewed as having nearly unassailable revenue streams that could deliver profit growth regardless of economic conditions.
As a result, their share prices soared. This year alone Apple is up some 15 percent; Alphabet has gained more than 20 percent; Amazon has surged more than 50 percent; and Netflix is up nearly 90 percent.
Facebook’s stumble suggests that some of these stocks — as well as the broader market — could be particularly vulnerable if their financial results don’t live up to investor expectations.
Until Thursday, Facebook was enjoying enormous gains. The stock was up more than 23 percent for the year, before it reported earnings after Wednesday’s close. By Thursday afternoon, all of its gains for the year had vanished.
It was the details of Facebook’s report that seemed to spook investors. The company’s quarterly revenue fell slightly short of meeting the expectations of Wall Street analysts. And executives warned that the company would invest heavily in privacy and security, and that revenue growth would most likely slow in coming quarters.
Still, Facebook’s sharp drop seems to have had a limited effect on the broader market, which has shown signs of gaining traction in recent weeks as companies largely reported strong second-quarter earnings.
It’s quite possible that Facebook’s shares could recover and continue to climb. In March, the company’s handling of user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal contributed to a backlash against the size and reach of the biggest tech businesses and raised concerns that regulators may soon crack down on these firms. Shares of Facebook fell 17 percent in the days after news broke. By May, the company had erased those losses.
Still, the sheer size of Facebook’s fall on Thursday became a focus for investors. The decline in Facebook’s market value was roughly equivalent to the entire value of some of the country’s best-known companies, including McDonald’s, Nike and the industrial conglomerate 3M.
There are few examples of single-day losses so large. In September 2000, as the tech stock boom turned to bust, the chip maker Intel warned that its sales could slow, sending its stock price down by more than 20 percent. The rout knocked $91 billion off its market value in a day. Adjusted for inflation, that loss would be more than $130 billion in 2018 dollars, greater than the value Facebook lost on Thursday.
But given the vast market value of today’s tech giants, and the fact that 20 percent declines in share prices are not unheard-of, the size of the losses shouldn’t be surprising.
Apple is now worth more than $950 billion. Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft are not far behind, with market values of more than $800 billion. Even after the drop Thursday, Facebook is the fifth-largest publicly traded company, by market value, at more than $500 billion.
State-owned carrier Air India has sought Rs 2121 crore ($309 million) of additional equity from the government for the fiscal year 2018-19 to make pending payments to its vendors, a source at the airline told Reuters on Monday.
Air India owes about Rs 1800 crore to its vendors, including lessors and banks that have demanded payment from the beleaguered airline, after the government’s unsuccessful efforts to find a buyer for its 76% stake.
The airline expects to receive the additional equity within the next 7 to 10 days after which it will be able to clear all dues, the source said, adding that this is above the 6.5 billion rupees it has already received for the year.
India last month shelved a plan to sell a majority stake in Air India due to lack of interest from bidders, in the latest setback in its ambitious efforts to rescue the ailing airline that has survived for years using taxpayer funds.
The government will continue to support the loss-making airline’s financial requirements while it works on alternatives, Junior Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha had said, without giving a specific timeline for a new plan.
Three banks and two aircraft leasing firms have served default notices on Air India over the last few weeks, the Business Standard newspaper reported earlier on Monday, raising concerns about the state-owned carrier’s finances and credit-worthiness.
San Francisco, United States-based Wells Fargo Trust Services and UAE’s state-owned Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) have sent letters of demand for pending rental payments, the newspaper said, citing sources
A DAE spokesman told Reuters that they were not owed $10 million by Alliance Air, and that they had not issued a notice of default to Alliance. Alliance Air is a unit of Air India that operates regional flights to smaller towns and cities in India. Wells Fargo could not be reached outside usual US business hours.
Three lenders from a 22-bank consortium have also written to Air India raising concerns that the company is turning into a non-performing asset, Business Standard said. The three banks are Standard Chartered Bank, Dena Bank and Bank of India Ltd.
The airline has received a notice from banks for non-payment of dues that is being looked into by the government, the source confirmed. A Standard Chartered spokesman in India declined to comment. Bank of India and Dena Bank did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trisha Shetty, founder and CEO of SheSays, a nonprofit that provides Indian women with the resources to act against sexual violence, is among the 12 rising social change-makers from around the world selected as the first class of Obama Foundation Scholars at Columbia University in Manhattan.
The university said in a release June 28 that the scholars from Asia, Africa, South America, South Asia, and Europe, have each shown a commitment to finding practical solutions to complex challenges facing society.
“When President Obama left office, he challenged us to believe — not in his ability to bring about change, but ours,” said Obama Foundation CEO David Simas. “Through our partnership with Columbia with this new scholars’ program and through all of the foundation’s work, we are living this call to action. I am incredibly impressed with the talented young leaders who will be joining Columbia and the Foundation this fall and looking forward to helping support and scale their work,” Simas said.
According to its website, SheSays aims to end gender based discrimination and advance women’s rights in India by engaging with the youth and activating them as agents of social change to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“Equality, Safety and Autonomy should be a guaranteed right and reality for women around the world,” the organization says. Shetty holds India’s leaders to account as evident from a SheSays post on Facebook post April 15, which read – “”We are asking for accountability. We are asking for answers.” Our Founder, Trisha Shetty vehemently condemns all politicans who have failed the girls and women of this country.”
Portraying an activist grassroots agenda, the Facebook post goes on to say, “We cannot be mere bystanders anymore. We cannot let politicians get away with making abhorrent statements. We deserve more from our representatives. Speak up. Take to the streets. Find out where protests are taking place in your area and lend your voice and your support.”
The new, year-long academic program based at Columbia hopes to strengthen the expertise and knowledge of individuals who have demonstrated the ability to be transformative leaders in their communities, nations, and the world. The goals are consistent with the Obama Foundation’s mission to inspire, empower, and connect the next generation of civic leaders, the University says.
“When President Obama left office, he challenged us to believe — not in his ability to bring about change, but ours. Through our partnership with Columbia with this new Scholars program and through all of the Foundation’s work, we are living this call to action. I am incredibly impressed with the talented young leaders who will be joining Columbia and the Foundation this fall and looking forward to helping support and scale their work,” Obama Foundation CEO David Simas is quoted as saying in the press release.
The 12 Obama Foundation Scholars at Columbia University will have the opportunity to interact with the separate but affiliated Obama Foundation Scholars cohort based at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.
The program will include a core seminar led by Columbia faculty that will run the length of the academic year, an experiential learning component that will engage the Scholars in the work of policy development and implementation, involving the Obama Foundation and Columbia World Projects, an initiative designed to apply the best evidence-based academic research to the creation and application of practical solutions to real-world challenges and a non-core seminar coursework that will provide Scholars with the flexibility to select one or two courses at Columbia, according to the press release.
A global trade war has broken out. The United States fired the first salvo and there has been retaliation by the European Union, Canada, China and even India. Tariffs on certain imported goods have been increased in a tit-for-tat reaction.
Analysts see it as a limited war in the understanding that Donald Trump is all for “free-trade”. But this view denies the fact that a tectonic shift is taking place in the world. It is a war for ascendency to global leadership; a contest between the US and China.
China is heaving its might on the world. President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative is an open call for its global influence. In July 2017, China launched the ambitious plan to invest in the technology of the future—artificial intelligence.
There are dark (unconfirmed) whispers about how it is going about acquiring many new-age technologies by rolling over western companies operating in vast markets.
The last century belonged to the US and Europe with Russia as the communist outlier. China became mighty all because of the emergence of the free trade regime in the world. Just some 35-odd years ago, it was behind the iron curtain.
But then the World Trade Organization (WTO) was born in January 1995. China’s trade boomed. It took over the world’s manufacturing jobs. India, too, found its place by servicing outsourced businesses like telemarketing. “Shanghaied” and “Bangalored” entered the lexicon—as jobs (and pollution) moved continents. This way, globalization fulfilled its purpose to usher in a new era of world prosperity. Or so, we thought.
Instead, globalization has made the world more complicated and convoluted. In early 1990s, when the discussions on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were at its peak, there was a clear North-South divide.
The then-developed world pushed for opening up of trade. It wanted markets and protection through rules on “fair” trade and intellectual property. The then developing world was worried what the free trade regime would do to its nascent and weak industrial economies.
More importantly, there were fears of what these new open trade rules would do to its farmers, who would have to compete with the disproportionately subsidised farmers of the developed world.
In 1999 tensions flared up at the WTO ministerial meet in Seattle. By this time, reality of globalisation had dawned and so it was citizens of the rich world who protested for labour rights, worried about outsourcing of their jobs and environmental abuses.
But these violent protests were crushed. The next decade was lost in the financial crisis. The new winners told the old losers that “all was well”.
Today Trump has joined the ranks of the Leftist Seattle protesters, while India and China are the new defenders of free trade. The latter in fact want more, much more of it.
But again, is it so straightforward? All these arrangements are built on the refusal to acknowledge the crisis of employment. The first phase of globalisation led to some displacement of labour and this is what Trump is griping about.
But the fact is that this phase of globalisation has only meant war between the old elite (middle-classes in the world of trade and consumerism) and the new elite. It has not been long enough or deep enough to destroy the foundations of the livelihoods of the vast majority of the poor engaged in farming. But it is getting there.
But this is where the real impact of globalisation will be felt. Global agricultural trade remains distorted and deeply contentious. The trade agreements targeted basics like procurement of foodgrains by governments to withstand scarcity and the offer of minimum support price to farmers.
Right now, the Indian government is making the right noises that it will stand by its farmers. But we will not be able to balance this highly imbalanced trade regime if we don’t recognise that employment is the real crisis.
It is time that this round of trade war should be on the need for livelihood opportunities. Global trade talks must discuss employment not just industry. It must value labour and not goods.
This is what is at the core of the insecurity in the world. It is not about trade or finance. It is about the biggest losers: us, the people and the planet. The link to the original article follows: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/
Talk about one industry that’s growing by leaps and bounds in India, aviation gives a tough beating to most others. The market is expected to cater to 478 million passengers by 2036. * And India seen as the third largest aviation market by 2025. According to global airlines’ body IATA, India has been successfully winning the crown for being the world’s fastest growing domestic aviation market for the three straight years till 2017. **
An important factor behind this burgeon is government schemes like UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) and NABH Nirman. While the first aims to connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads across the country, the latter targets to expand airport capacity by more than five times to handle a billion trips in a year.
What does this massive expansion translate to? Well, to start with, there are going to be an enormous number of jobs – almost 2.5 to 5 lac job opportunities are being created by the aviation sector. As planned under UDAN, leading airlines such as Vistara & Indigo are procuring more aircraft to fill the supply & demand gap in tier 2 & 3 cities. This will give a major boom to jobs in customer service, operations, logistics, airport management, retail, medical tourism, and many more sectors. If the aviation market excites you, you could easily pursue it. The best way is to get your undergraduate & postgraduate degree in aviation.
It is a thing of the past when the Indian aviation industry was a government-owned industry; it is privately held today. With approximately 15 domestic airlines & above 60 international airlines being operating in India and up to 100% foreign equity allowed by the means of automatic approvals pertaining to the establishment of Greenfield Airports and up to 74% to the existing airports, getting trained in aviation management is a smart move. A BBA in aviation management teaches 12 pass students the fundamentals of Aviation, Travel, and Tourism industry functions, basics of business communication and economics, Aviation Operations, Safety and Security and role of human resource in the aviation industry.
With Indian companies intending to buy 2100 new planes worth US$ 290 billion, and factors such as infrastructure modernization, huge investment, expanding air fleet and an ever-growing economy making aviation the hottest sector in terms of career, you might want to join the party sooner than later. Getting a unique and well-structured MBA programme in aviation management is the cornerstone promising a great career graph. You are not only trained with a specialized domain, providing specialized knowledge and training of areas to be served in the aviation industry – fleet management, ground handling, cargo, safety & security, customer service, medical tourism, crew scheduling, and ticketing.
The Institute of Logistics and Aviation Management (ILAM), with its state-of-the-art campuses in major metro cities, offers competitive and specialised BBA &MBA aviation programs in partnership with companies such as Indigo, Spicejet, Jet Airways as its recruiters. These programs are not only unique but also come with inbuilt live practical sessions pertaining to emergency exit of the Airbus 320, aircraft ground handling and safety training, and Galileo software training to name a few. It is amazing to see how this course can provide a blend of practical and classroom teaching which makes you a preferred candidate for your future employer. If you were to count the benefits of pursuing a career in the aviation industry, bright professional opportunities, a rewarding salary package, the chance to travel around the world, are some attractive factors. To know more, visit ILAM’s website here.
There are four Indian American-led companies that are among the World Economic Forum’s 2018 cohort of Technology Pioneers, that have been chosen among the group of 61 early-stage companies from around the world, including Cohesity, CognitiveScale, ThoughtSpot and Drive.ai.
The cohort of companies, according to WEF, are pioneering new technologies and innovations ranging from the use of artificial intelligence in drug discovery, the development of autonomous vehicles, advancing cybersecurity and reducing food waste, to applying blockchain to a decentralized engagement platform.
“Innovation comes from all corners of the earth and from a very diverse group of entrepreneurs, and with this selection we recognize that,” said Cheryl Martin, head of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and member of the managing board at the World Economic Forum. “The next step is to help these pioneers bring their solutions to complex world-critical problems to global markets and to take action for the public good.”
In joining this community and the two-year journey where they become part of the forum’s initiatives, activities and events, they bring cutting-edge insights and novel perspectives to world-critical discussions, WEF said.
“Technology and start-ups are not just about computer software, consumer apps and social networks,” said Fulvia Montresor, head of Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum. “Technology Pioneers 2018 are tackling complex challenges such as environmental sustainability, efficient energy use and access to healthcare.”
Cohesity, founded in 2013 in San Jose, Calif., is led by founder and chief executive officer Mohit Aron. The company is an industry-leading platform for hyperconverged secondary storage solutions. Cohesity offers native copy data management on intelligent web-scale storage, end-to-end data protection, and in-place analytics, all on one data platform, WEF said.
“Cohesity is transforming the way organizations manage and extract value from their secondary applications and data by revolutionizing modern data center and cloud operations with a hyperconverged, web-scale, data platform,” Aron said in the company’s bio.
Aron was recently named a finalist in Ernst & Young’s U.S. Entrepreneur of the Year competition. The 2014-founded Austin, Texas-based CognitiveScale, led by chief executive Akshay Sabhikhi, is developing a new generation of augmented intelligence cloud software powered by artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
“CognitiveScale pairs humans and machines to augment and extend human ingenuity. AI has the potential to transform the economy and society by unlocking human potential and creating new opportunities, and we are on a mission to make it happen,” Sabhikhi said in the company bio page on the WEF website.
It makes sense of unstructured data by emulating cognitive functions like perception, abstraction, reasoning and learning. It finds hidden meaning within all available data to ensure enterprises and their customers have the right answers to and advice for problems they want to solve, WEF said.
Drive.ai develops AI software for autonomous vehicles using deep learning. The Calif.-based company, founded in 2015 and led by CEO Sameep Tandon, designs retrofit kits that are integrated software and hardware solutions, which includes sensors such as radar, high-definition cameras and light detection and ranging, its bio said.
It has developed custom sensor locations enabling a vehicle to gain a full 360 degree understanding of its environment and enabling sensor redundancy to ensure safety.
Drive.ai’s custom sensor locations maintain high fidelity in all data collected as the vehicle drives autonomously and optimizes the performance in Drive.ai’s proprietary deep learning algorithms.
“Drive.ai uses artificial intelligence to create self-driving systems that improve the state of mobility today. We work with public and private partners to solve transportation challenges quickly and safely, with geofenced self-driving solutions,” Tandon said in the bio.
Founded in 2012, ThoughtSpot, a search and artificial intelligence-driven analytics platform, is based in Palo Alto, Calif. It was co-founded by Ajeet Singh, who serves as the company’s CEO.
ThoughtSpot is helping companies succeed in the digital era by putting the power of a thousand analysts in every business person’s hands, its bio said.
Businesses can take advantage of Google-like search to automatically analyze billions of rows of data and gain insights based on this data – all with a single click. The platform connects with any on-premise, cloud, big data or desktop data source, deploying 85 percent faster than legacy technologies.
“With ThoughtSpot’s search and AI-driven analytics, the world’s one billion knowledge workers each have the power of 1000 analysts in the palm of their hands, allowing them to search data in the same way they use Google to search the internet,” Singh said.
The newly selected Technology Pioneers will meet at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2018 in Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, on Sept. 18 to Sept. 20.
Some of them will also participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, in January. As leaders of innovation, they will be supported by the Forum’s new Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and contribute to fostering the innovation ecosystem and delivering critical mass to solve global challenges, WEF said.
Amazon.com’s stock market value reached $900 billion on Wednesday for the first time, marking a major milestone in its 21-year trajectory as a publicly listed company and threatening to dislodge Apple as Wall Street’s most valuable jewel.
After Jeff Bezos founded the online book-selling company in his garage in 1994, Amazon survived the dot-com crisis and then expanded across the retail industry, altering how consumers buy products and setting off a Darwinian struggle among brick-and-mortar stores.
After announcing on Wednesday that it sold more than $100 million products during its annual Prime Day sale, the Seattle, Washington company’s stock briefly touched $1,858.88, giving Amazon a stock market value of $902 billion. It later reversed, trading down 0.16% for the session.
Amazon’s stock has surged more than 57% in 2018, bringing its increase to over 123,000% since it listed on the Nasdaq in 1997. An investor who bought 1 share of Amazon for $18 in the IPO would now have an investment worth more than $22,200, including three stock splits in the 1990s.
Amazon, video streaming service Netflix and a handful of heavyweight technology companies have fueled Wall Street’s rally in recent years and they remain key parts of portfolio managers’ portfolios.
Apple replaced Exxon Mobil in late 2011 as the US company with the largest stock market value. The Silicon Valley company’s shares have risen 12 percent in 2018, bringing its stock market value to $935 billion.
The calculations for Apple and Amazon’s market capitalizations are based on the number of shares outstanding in their March-quarter reports. Amazon has increased its share count by over 1 million shares per quarter in recent years, and if it continued that in the June quarter, its stock market value may already have exceeded $900 billion.
Amazon reports its results on July 26 and Apple, which has been reducing its share count through buybacks, reports its June-quarter results on July 31.
As Amazon expands into grocery retail through its acquisition of Whole Foods Market last year, and as more businesses move their IT departments onto the cloud, its stock price has been red hot, recently trading at 111 times expected earnings, compared to more-profitable – but slower growing – Apple’s valuation of 15 times earnings.
Amazon dislodged Microsoft Corp as the No. 3 US company by market capitalization in February. Since then, Microsoft has been overtaken by Google-owner Alphabet.
AAHOA, the largest hotel owners association in the world, proudly announced a strategic partnership with GlobalHotelNetwork.com, a highly-respected global media brand and resource for the hospitality industry. The partnership will focus on content development and sharing for both GlobalHotelNetwork.com and AAHOA’s members and facilitating a discussion on topics such as domestic implications of global hospitality trends and the industry’s issue advocacy at the state and national level.
AAHOA President and CEO Chip Rogers said, “GlobalHotelNetwork.com is an excellent channel for hotel industry professionals to get timely, relevant, and dependable information on trends and ideas that develop in the hotel industry around the globe. We look forward to working with them and connecting them with AAHOA’s members to facilitate a dialogue about where our industry is headed.”
GlobalHotelNetwork.com CEO and Publisher Robert Harp said, “AAHOA is an industry-leader when it comes to advocacy and organizing its membership to promote policies that support all hoteliers. I am pleased that Chip Rogers will share his insight into advocacy-related issues with GlobalHotelNetwork.com’s readership, and I look forward to providing AAHOA’s members with ideas from some of the influential thought leaders that help shape the global travel and tourism industry.”
Founded in 2000, GlobalHotelNetwork.com (GHN) provides actionable Market Insights and Thought Leadership to CEOs, presidents and decision makers in the global travel and tourism industry. GHN’s Advisory Board consists of 25 hotel company presidents & CEOs. GHN has established a global network of 100+ industry Thought Leaders and is a Sponsor/Supporter of 50+ industry conferences worldwide.
AAHOA is the largest hotel owners association in the world. The nearly 18,000 AAHOA members own almost one in every two hotels in the United States. With billions of dollars in property assets and hundreds of thousands of employees, AAHOA members are core economic contributors in virtually every community. AAHOA is a proud defender of free enterprise and the foremost current-day example of realizing the American dream.
Kavita Rai, Anusha Tandon, and Ina Bhoopalam, three Indian American teens, are among the 24 teenage girls selected as “Girl Up” advisers heading to Washington, D.C., for the upcoming United Nations Women Empowerment Summit. Rai, of Camillo, Calif.; Tandon, of Acton, Mass.; and Bhoopalam, of Lincoln, Neb., will join the 21 other teen advisers for the summit July 8 through July 11.
The purpose of the summit is to improve the lives of other girls, and Rai is hoping she can play a part in achieving that goal, according to a Camarillo Acorn report. “It’s important not to live in a bubble,” the 16-year-old daughter of Rajinder and Mukesh Rai said in the report. The teens were selected to head to the summit by Girl Up, an empowerment campaign of the United Nations Foundation, to speak at the organization’s annual summit on issues facing girls and women, the report said.
Some 400 girls from 17 states and five countries who are active in the Girl Up campaign in their communities applied to be teen advisers, the publication added. The advisers who were selected “share the common goal of supporting girls around the world and achieving global gender equality,” spokesperson Beth Nervig said. Along with several adult speakers scheduled to appear at next month’s summit, the teen advisers will share their stories with about 400 other girls expected to attend, the report added.
Tandon, 17, is a senior at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in Acton, Massachusetts and she first joined Girl Up in sixth grade because she wanted to use her voice to help people around the world, according to the Girl Up website.
“I was enticed by Girl Up’s unique format that allows girls to be at the forefront of change, because I had never seen a campaign that was basically run by girls. I helped found a club in my middle and high school, and have taken leadership roles ever since. I feel like I have grown so much over the years and I’ve loved seeing the amazing women in my club grow up along with me,” Tandon stated on the website.
Bhoopalam is a student at both East High School in Cornhusker State, Nebraska and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“My experience with Girl Up starts a little over a year ago, when I made a promise to myself that I would no longer stay silent in the face of so many problems. It was around that time when I heard about Girl Up from a friend and was immediately hooked,” Bhoopalam stated on the website.
Rai is a senior at Newbury Park High School in California and she started a Girl Up chapter at her school, two years ago. “My advocacy for women’s rights has been a passion of mine for years now,” she stated on the Girl Up website. Rai is involved in YMCA Youth & Government where has discussions on prison reform, gun control and women’s reproductive rights.
According to their website, since its launch in 2010, Girl Up has been partnering with the United Nations to support comprehensive programs that give adolescent girls in six developing countries including India, an equal chance for education, health, social and economic opportunities, and a life free from violence.
India and the United States will hold the inaugural 2+2 meeting of their defense and foreign ministers in Washington on July 6, the US state department announced Thursday, ending months of uncertainty dogged by postponements and cancellations over scheduling and personnel changes.
US secretary of state Michael R Pompeo and secretary of defense James Mattis will host external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and minister of defence Nirmala Sitharaman for the first meeting. The two sides are expected to share perspectives on strengthening their strategic and security ties and exchange views on a range of bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement.
This will be the first simultaneous meeting of the Indian defence and external affairs ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Sushma Swaraj and their US counterparts James Mattis and Mike Pompeo in a format announced last August after a call between Prime Minister Narendra modi and President Donald Trump.
The dialogue is seen as a vehicle to elevate the strategic relationship between the two countries. And in the subsequent weeks, the US was focussed solely on President Trump’s meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. India has proposed July 6, as reported by Hindustan Times earlier, but had to wait for a confirmation from Washington DC, which finally came through.
The two sides will be expecting to discuss a whole range of issues in defence and external affairs such as cooperation on counter-terrorism, which is always accorded high priority by the countries, and Afghanistan, which received a significant pitch in President Trump’s new South Asia strategy.
At the July meeting, officials will “focus on strengthening strategic, security, and defense cooperation as the United States and India jointly confront global challenges”, said the state department in a statement. Officials expect to discuss, specifically, the indirect impact of US sanctions on Russia and Iran. A major Indian defence deal for the Russian S-400 air defence systems is at risk of attracting secondary sanction from the US unless an exception was made, as proposed and backed by Mattis and Pompeo.
The meeting will take place among growing defense and diplomatic ties and convergence but increasing trade differences caused by President Trump’s decision to slap a tariff of 25% and 10% on steel and aluminium imports. India has retaliated with its own tariffs on imports from the US and has also challenged Trump’s tariffs at the World Trade Organization. Trade is a separate discussion but and new and continuing issues are being thrashed out by the two countries in other forums.
Earlier this year, the ‘2+2 dialogue’ had been postponed due to uncertainty over the confirmation of Mike Pompeo as President Donald Trump’s new Secretary of State. Pompeo was later confirmed as Secretary of State in April.
“I think it is a dramatic signal suggesting that DOD (department of defense) is taking the challenges of managing the unified Indo-Pacific space seriously,” Ashley Tellis, a leading US expert on South Asia and Asia had said at the time. “It is a task well begun but far from finished,” he had added.
The Maharashtra government and a U.S.-India panel have announced three new projects in the state, an official said June 18. The state will sign an agreement with the Network for Global Innovation to develop a clean tech incubator ecosystem in Maharashtra to accelerate adoption of sustainable technologies and encourage trade and investment in these sectors.
The announcements were made during Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ visit to Washington D.C. last week at a public forum co-hosted by the CSIS Wadhwani Chair and India Initiative at Georgetown University, which he addressed.
Fadnavis spoke about his goals to make Maharashtra the first trillion-dollar economy across India, which he will do by leveraging foreign investments in various sectors, the news release added. “We have focused on building infrastructure, which has subsequently opened up lot of opportunities for international investors in the state,” the chief minister said at the forum.
Along with the U.S.-India State and Urban Initiative, it will collaborate on the development and implementation of a ‘High Performance Innovation Ecosystem’ including planning, funding, build-out and ongoing operations, with plans to invite a state-based nominee organization to become a member of the NGIN.
The Georgia Institute of Technology will launch a new pilot research project to understand the consumer dynamics and responsiveness to adoption of new technologies in the state electricity sector. The project, “The Impact of Consumer Behavior on Efficiency and Sustainability in India’s Power Sector,” will be led by Georgia Tech Indian American professors — assistant professor Anjali Thomas Bohlken and associate professor Usha Nair-Reichert — with support from the Strategic Energy Initiative.
Finally, the Pune Municipal Corporation will host an Urban Mobility Lab in August as part of the Lighthouse City initiative launched after a competition last year, jointly with NITI Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute, Colorado.
The Urban Mobility Lab will advance the design, integration and implementation of new solutions for complex transportation challenges and how these ideas can be replicated and scaled. The goal would be to upgrade transportation services to cater to the needs of rapidly growing cities, with operational efficiency, and simultaneous reduction of pollution, congestion and petroleum demands.
Funded by the Department of State, the U.S.-India State and Urban Initiative promotes energy security and energy sector reform through direct engagement between Washington and Indian sub-national entities.
It builds productive partnerships that can help India achieve its energy goals; and establish close, sustainable working relationships among Indian sub-national officials with their US counterparts and other civil society organizations working in the areas of governance and energy, besides roping in the private sector.
The U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum hosted Fadnavis during his trip to the United States, the forum announced in a June 15 news release. The Forum kicked off the chief minister’s roadshow with U.S. investors at a roundtable in New York City, and hosted him the next day at an event with member companies in Washington, D.C., it said.
The state of Maharashtra, with its progressive measures to facilitate investments and investors, has worked towards the goals it had announced during the “Make in India” initiative in 2014, USISFP said.
To continue to be the preferred business destination for foreign investors, Fadnavis has supported private-public partnerships to promote growth through foreign investments across all sectors. He asked USISPF and Friends of Maharashtra in the U.S. to serve as one nodal point for all U.S. investments into Maharashtra. Both organizations will coordinate and liaise with the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, the USISPF added.
With an emphasis on further development of Mumbai and other townships, Fadnavis has supported private-public partnerships to promote this growth, and insisted that his state’s objective of job growth, along with economic development, will be fulfilled through investments across sectors, according to USISPF.
“Maharashtra is growing at a rapid pace and the state is the first choice for many of our U.S companies that manufacture in India,” USISPF president and CEO Mukesh Aghi said.
The government’s top ethics official said some of President Trump’s business dealings “raise serious concerns” but that the office lacks the authority to launch an investigation requested last month by congressional Democrats.
More than 60 Democrats, led by Rep. David N. Cicilline of Rhode Island, had written to the Office of Government Ethics in May asking that the agency investigate reported Chinese government support of an Indonesian real estate development that will include several Trump-brand properties.
David J. Apol, acting director and general counsel at the ethics office, responded last week that he thought concern was warranted. But because the president is not bound by the same conflict-of-interest laws as most federal employees, he said, Congress is responsible for holding the president in check.
“Under the Constitution, the primary authority to oversee the President’s ethics rests with Congress and ultimately, with the American people,” Apol wrote in his Monday response.
At issue is a report in the South China Morning Post saying the Chinese government is issuing $500 million in loans for the project in Jakarta, Indonesia. Days later, Trump announced his support for Chinese-backed telecommunications firm ZTE, a departure from his previously aggressive stance toward Chinese industry.
There is no evidence the two issues are linked. However, the Democrats raised concerns about the deal that amplify arguments being made against the president and his company, the Trump Organization, in a series of court cases.
In their letter, they argued that the loan may be a violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses that forbid the president from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments.
The Trump administration has “completely failed to address the suspicious timing between this policy reversal and the Chinese government’s loan to a Trump-backed project,” they wrote. Language in a recently introduced appropriations bill would place restrictions on the use of government funds to purchase equipment produced by ZTE.
“At the outset, I agree that the information cited in your letter raises serious concerns,” Apol said. However he said the agency had “no authority to opine on Emoluments Clause issues.” The office declined to comment further.
Neither White House nor Trump Organization officials responded to requests for comment. Trump resigned his positions with the company upon entering office but retained his financial stake in the business, which includes office buildings, hotels and residential properties in America and abroad.
This is not the first time congressional Democrats have urged the ethics office to take action, and they have received similar rebuffs previously.
A year ago, Democrats, led by Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pa.), made a similar request of the ethics office, only to be told by then-Director Walter M. Shaub Jr. that it was outside his purview.
Shaub, now working for the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, has become a fierce critic of the president. “Unless the Department of Justice decides to pursue this as a criminal matter, only Congress has jurisdiction to conduct oversight here, and the Congressional majority has made clear that it’s out of the business of conducting meaningful oversight of the executive branch as long as Trump is president,” Shaub said in an email.
The Trump Organization has retained an outside ethics adviser, Washington attorney Bobby R. Burchfield, to review new deals the company proposes to try to ensure that business partners aren’t seeking political advantage with the president and would pay a fair price in the transactions.
In comments published in the Texas Review of Law and Politics earlier this year, Burchfield compared Trump’s business activities to those of previous officials, including President George Washington, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. “President Trump has gone beyond the legal requirements to insulate himself and his businesses from ethical issues,” Burchfield wrote.
Atul Gawande, an Indian American surgeon, writer and public health innovator has been named as the CEO of a new U.S. employee health care company, in a joint venture between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. Gawande, 52, will start on July 9 and the new company will be headquartered in Boston, operating as an independent entity that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints, according to a PTI report.
“I have devoted my public health career to building scalable solutions for better health care delivery that are saving lives, reducing suffering and eliminating wasteful spending both in the US and across the world,” Gawande told media.
“Now I have the backing of these remarkable organizations to pursue this mission with even greater impact for more than a million people, and in doing so incubate better models of care for all. This work will take time but must be done. The system is broken, and better is possible,” he added.
Gawande, a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, is probably best known for his work writing about health care for The New Yorker and in books that include the influential Checklist Manifesto.
He was also the founding executive director of Ariadne Labs, a joint project between Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, that tries to put some of his ideas about improvingcare during critical moments, such as childbirth and surgery, into practice.
The three-company partnership was announced in January. At the time, the CEOs were short on details and long on ambition. The nonprofit venture was formed to figure out “ways to address healthcare for their U.S. employees, with the aim of improving employee satisfaction and reducing costs.”
In early June, CNBC reported that Dr. David Feinberg, CEO of Pennsylvania-based health system Geisinger Health System, was among the top picks to lead the health care venture. But he later said that he was staying put. CNBC said that during the CEO selection process, 10 candidates “were asked to write a white paper on how they would fix the health care system.” Three of them were interviewed.
Gawande has written four New York Times bestsellers: Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal and has received numerous awards for his contributions to science and health care. “All felt that better care can be delivered and that rising costs can be checked. Jamie, Jeff and I are confident that we have found in Atul the leader who will get this important job done,” Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said in a statement.
“Together, we have the talent and resources to make things better, and it is our responsibility to do so. We’re so grateful for the countless statements of support and offers to help and participate, and we’re so fortunate to have attracted such an extraordinary leader and innovator as Atul,” Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said in a statement.
“We said at the outset that the degree of difficulty is high and success is going to require an expert’s knowledge, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation. Atul embodies all three, and we’re starting strong as we move forward in this challenging and worthwhile endeavour,” Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, said in a statement.
The health firm will be independent from the three firms, whose leaders formed the group as a way of contending with what Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett called a “tapeworm” eating the U.S. economy, the report said.
Gawande is a prominent name in health-care policy circles, though he hasn’t run a major business. Many details of the new venture – its name, size, budget and authority — weren’t immediately available, Bloomberg added.
“Almost of the same import is who does Atul hire as his COO,” said Vivek Garipalli, the CEO of Clover Health, a closely held health insurer that serves Medicare patients, and has focused on coordinating their care to try and cut costs, according to the report. “That vision has to be translated by somebody who understands the nuances” of contracting with doctors and hospitals, health insurance markets and other details, it added.
Gawande, 52, rose to prominence among health-care policy experts with a 2009 New Yorker article, “The Cost Conundrum,” that examined why health care was vastly more expensive in some parts of the U.S. than others, despite little difference in the sickness or health of people getting it, Bloomberg reported. The piece focused on McAllen, Texas, and why the Medicare program spent $15,000 a year on the town’s older patients, thousands of dollars more than in other areas, it said.
At the time, the article also attracted the attention of Buffett and his business partner Charlie Munger. Gawande “had an article last summer that was absolutely magnificent,” Buffett told CNBC in March 1, 2010, according to a transcript of the appearance, the report went on.
“You have these enormous variances around the country. And, you know, if you had some really smart people running it that knew a lot about medicine, they’re going to — they could do a lot about it,” Buffett said in the appearance.
Munger thought the article was so socially useful that he blindly mailed Gawande a $20,000 check, Buffett told CNBC at the time, according to Bloomberg’s piece published June 20. Gawande donated the money to an international project to improve surgical equipment in developing countries, according to the report, citing the Huffington Post.
The Association of Indians in America, NY Chapter (AIA-NY), considered among the oldest Indian-American organizations in the country, during its annual fundraiser called, “Spread Hope,” raised over $50,000 towards projects in India. Held on June 9th at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, the event was organized by the philanthropic arm of AIA, which is committed to help meet the needs of the underserved in India.
The team behind Project India shared its evolution over the past 10 years with the 260 guests or so guests at the sold-out event: Project India was created in response to the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS in India. AIA has since partnered with Gujarat AIDS Awareness and Prevention, an NGO based in Ahmedabad and supported by a group of physicians from the Brooklyn Hospital. Their focus is rural areas, including tribal villages.
Programs evolved to eventually include comprehensive healthcare for women and children. More than 2,000 families are now served across 80 rural and tribal villages along the border of Gujarat and Rajasthan that have minimal access to medical care. Programs are monitored, evaluated and refined to align with the need and outcomes.
Gobind Munjal, president of the NY chapter, said key programs of Project India were highlighted in a visual presentation: annual medical camps, training for teachers, women’s health checkups, care for orphans living with HIV/AIDS and prevention of HIV from mother-to-child.
Event was sold out and was a huge success, organizers said in a press release. It was attended by more than 250 movers and shakers from the Tri-state area, including prominent individuals such as Dr. Dattatreyudu Nori, Kalpana and Amit Doshi, Dr. Sudha and Sudhir Parikh, Asmita and Arun Bhatia. India’s Consul General in New York Sandeep Chakravorty was the Chief Guest.
At the event, the Project India team shared the experiences of the last 10 years when it was launched as a response to the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS in India. Those attending were reminded that much work needed to be done and that every dollar raised goes directly to the help of the needy.
“In the past decade, AIA’s partnerships with a renowned NGO called Gujarat AIDS Awareness and Prevention (GAP), located in Ahmedabad, and supported by a group of Physicians of the Brooklyn Hospital, have made immense strides in making a measurable difference in the lives of thousands in rural and tribal villages,” organizers said. Programs have evolved as the Team gained more experience and the attention today is on comprehensive healthcare for women and children.
According to AIA’s Project India, more than 2,000 families across 80 rural and tribal villages along the border of Gujarat and Rajasthan, have been beneficiaries of its program. These areas have minimal access to medical care. Programs are monitored, evaluated and refined to align with the need and outcomes, the audience at the event was informed.
The programs resonated deeply with the night’s keynote speaker, Ambassador Sandeep Chakravarty, who engaged the crowd with his personal story and admiration for the Association of Indians in America and its efforts with Project India.
The evening also included a musical theater with its North American Premiere, called Three Women, written and directed by Isheeta Ganguly. The play was based on Rabindranath Tagore, showcasing the dilemma of women in the past and the present. All actors Avantika Akerkar, Mahima Saigal, Zayn Marie Khan; narrator Samrat Chakrabarti and musician Abhishek Chauhan got a standing ovation. The artists traveled from India, sponsored by Cheapoair and Turkish
Gobind Munjal, president of the NY chapter, said key programs of Project India were highlighted in a visual presentation: annual medical camps, training for teachers, women’s health checkups, care for orphans living with HIV/AIDS and prevention of HIV from mother-to-child.
Project India team member Asmita Bhatia said that the results are encouraging due to the dedication of trained workers, trust of the villagers and local panchayats and school authorities. The guests were reminded that much work is still needed and that every dollar raised goes directly to the help of the needy.
“The net amount from the fundraiser after paying all the expenses would be only about $40,000,” Munjal told India Abroad. He said the programs resonated deeply with the evening’s keynote speaker, Ambassador Sandeep Chakravorty who engaged the audience with his personal story and admired the AIA’s efforts for Project India. Chakravorty, consul general of India in New York, was chief guest.
The Association of Indians in America (AIA) is the oldest not-for-profit organization of Indian-Americans, founded on Aug. 20, 1967. It has chapters and membership spread across the United States. Airways. The AIA’s New York Chapter President, Gobind Munjal, invited all to the 31st Deepavali Festival scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 7 at South Street Seaport. For more information on Project India, visit projectindiaaia.org
In an industry not exactly known for its diversity, an iconic American carmaker has appointed its first female chief financial officer (CFO). And she’s from Chennai, India.
General Motors (GM), the maker of Buick, Cadillac, and Chevrolet cars, said in announcement on June 13th that the 39-year-old Dhivya Suryadevara will take over as CFO in September. Suryadevara joined the company in 2005, and has held various positions over the years. Since July 2017, she’s been serving as its vice-president for corporate finance.
With Suryadevara’s appointment, GM joins a handful of companies, including Hershey Co and Signet Jewelers, that have women serving as both CEO and CFO. In 2014, Mary Barra became the first woman to make it to the top of a major automobile company as CEO of GM.
“Any time a woman is added to the C-Suite it’s something that should be celebrated,” Anna Beninger, senior director of research at Catalyst, a non-profit that tracks women in leaderships positions, told Bloomberg. “Given that the rate of change for women into the C-suite and into the CEO level has been so slow, any time we see one, it is certainly progress.”
As the vice president of Corporate Finance, Suryadevara has been responsible for corporate financial planning, investor relations and special projects, and as the vice president of Finance and Treasurer, she helped achieve ratings upgrades from all three credit ratings agencies, completing $2B notes issuance to fund discretionary pension contributions and upsized and renewed GM’s $14.5B revolver.
As the CEO and Chief Investment Officer for GM Asset Management, Suryadevara was responsible for the management of business and investment activities of GM’s $85B pension operations. Suryadevara has also worked on other projects for the company, including Opel divestiture, Cruise acquisition, Lyft investment and SoftBank’s investment in GM Cruise. She joined GM in 2005.
The move shows how far Suryadevara, who holds an MBA from Harvard University, has come from her childhood in Chennai. Suryadevara received her bachelor’s and master’s degree in commerce from the University of Madras in Chennai, India.
She is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a Chartered Accountant. “Dhivya’s experience and leadership in several key roles throughout our financial operations positions her well to build on the strong business results we’ve delivered over the last several years,” Mary Barra, the chairman and CEO of GM, said in a statement.
Suryadevara will move into her new job in September. She replaces Chuck Stevens, 58, who plans to retire next year after more than 40 years with the carmaker. Stevens will remain with the company as an adviser until his retirement, it said.
Richard Verma, the first ever Indian-American U.S. ambassador to India, is joining a leading U.S.-based international investment advisory group. Paladin Capital Group is pleased to announce that Richard Verma, former U.S. Ambassador to India (2014-2017) and current Vice Chair at The Asia Group, will join Paladin’s Strategic Advisory Group (SAG). Ambassador Verma brings 25 years of experience across senior levels of business, law, diplomacy, and the military. “We are very excited to have Rich as part of Paladin’s strategic network,” said Lt. General (Ret.) Kenneth Minihan, Managing Director at Paladin. “Rich’s subject matter expertise and experience as a trusted advisor to senior leadership on critical security and intelligence policy issues will provide invaluable advice and guidance to Paladin and our portfolio companies.”
Nominated as U.S. Ambassador to India by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the Senate in December 2014, Ambassador Verma oversaw one of the largest U.S. diplomatic missions in the world and championed historic progress in U.S.-India relations, with critical evolutions to bilateral cooperation in defense, trade, and clean energy. The Ambassador also oversaw an unprecedented nine meetings between President Obama and Prime Minister Modi – leading to over 100 new initiatives and more than 40 government-to-government dialogues.
Ambassador Verma was previously the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, where he led the State Department’s efforts on Capitol Hill. He worked as Senior National Security Advisor to the Senate Majority Leader and also spent time in the House of Representatives. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, where he served on active duty as a Judge Advocate. His military decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal and Air Force Commendation Medal.
The Ambassador brings to bear a distinguished career in the private sector. He was a partner in a major global law firm for many years and led the South Asia practice of a Washington-based consulting firm. He is also currently a Centennial Fellow at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he supports the India Initiative, and co-chairs the Center for American Progress’ U.S.-India Task Force.
Ambassador Verma holds degrees from the Georgetown University Law Center (LLM), American University’s Washington College of Law (JD), and Lehigh University (BS). “I am delighted to welcome Richard Verma back to Paladin’s Strategic Advisory Group,” said Michael Steed, Managing Partner of Paladin. “Rich was integral member of the Strategic Advisory Group before being nominated and serving as Ambassador of India. He will further strengthen Paladin’s unique commitment and capability to add strategic value to its portfolio companies in accessing U.S. federal market opportunities as well as navigating the evolving security and compliance policy landscape in international markets.”
Paladin Capital Group was founded in 2001 and has offices in Washington DC, New York, London, Luxembourg, and Silicon Valley. As a multi-stage investor, Paladin focuses on best-of-breed companies with technologies, products, and services that meet the challenging global cyber security and digital infrastructure resilience needs for commercial and government customers. Paladin has over $1 billion in committed capital across multiple funds. Follow the firm on Twitter @Paladincap, visit their website at http://www.paladincapgroup.com
RealMe, the new e-commerce sub-brand of smartphone giant OPPO, announced the launch of its limited-edition Moonlight Silver variant that will be up for sale from June 18, 2018 on Amazon India. Last month saw the launch of RealMe 1 with two variants – the Diamond Black and Solar Red. This new variant will offer 4GB RAM and 64 GB storage at a pocket-friendly price point of INR. 10,990/-.
RealMe 1 is the first smartphone designed by OPPO that is focused on offering great designs with powerful specifications at a pocket friendly price. While the variants launched earlier offered storage capabilities of 3GB RAM and 32 GB ROM and 6 GB RAM and 128 GB ROM, the new edition will also offer an alternate 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM variant in 3 colors: Moonlight Silver, Solar Red and Diamond Black.
Speaking on the soon to be launched variant, Madhav Sheth, Chief Executive Officer of RealMe India said, “The response to RealMe 1 has been phenomenal. We sold lakhs of units only within our first two sales. Our phones were ranked as the Best Seller on Amazon India securing the top four positions. We are glad to announce a new Moonlight Silver edition to our range of phones. In line with the trend of reflecting effects in the industry, this limited-edition range offers shiny, reflecting glossy designs that cater to the needs of our customers. At the price point we are offering, we are hoping that this new variant will be equally well received by the audience.”
The 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM variant, that comes in Diamond Black, Solar Red and a limited-edition Moonlight Silver, allows users great multi-tasking capabilities at one go without hanging and provides uncompromised storage. RealMe1 has a phone’s screen body ratio of almost 85%, it comes with a 6-inch display bearing full-HD+ 1080×2160 pixels resolution. The RealMe 1 also has an impressive An Tu Tu score that can go up to 140,000. The Mediatek’s HelioP60 NeuroPilot AI technology, gives the device an enhanced edge, particularly in photography, real-time beautification, real-time video preview. The phone also has a dual-core AI-specific chip for providing AI-assisted features.
The phone’s 3410mAh battery + AI battery management promise + the sharp AI processor ensures that longer and higher usage doesn’t affect its performance or heat up the phone. The enhanced Facial Unlock function can accurately identify 296 facial points to provide better security and takes less than 0.1 seconds to unlock your phone, even in low-light conditions. The ColorOS 5.0 UI based on Android 8.1 has been completely revamped with a brand new and fresh interface design that is easy on the eyes. The 13MP rear camera with an LED flash and an 8MP selfie camera. Both the front and rear cameras also support AR stickers.
Manufactured by OPPO factories, RealMe also assures its users of superior quality through its stringent quality control measures that is executed around 10,000 drop tests, 100,000 button tests, 10,000 USB tests to ensure the durability of the Realme 1 smartphone. RealMe customers will also have access to over 500 OPPO service centers across India with guaranteed 90% of repair cases resolved within an hour. Along with online service supports, RealMe is offering a 360-degree customer service system.
People flying between India and the rest of the world through United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) mega hubs like Dubai and Abu Dhabi will soon be able to get a free transit visa to spend up to two days there. The UAE government has decided that to grant free transit visas for first 48 hours to transit passengers and this visa can be extended for up to 96 hours by paying 50 Dirham (about Rs 930). The date from which this will be allowed is yet to be announced, say Indian travel industry majors.
UAE is already the single biggest international destination for Indian travellers. Almost a quarter of all international travel to and from India happens on mega UAE carriers like Emirates, flyDubai and Etihad. Jet Airways, in which Etihad has a 24% stake, + also serves as a feeder to Etihad’s long haul flights to Abu Dhabi.
Anywhere up to 75% of people flying on Gulf, including UAE, carriers are only transiting through those hubs between India and rest of the world. So the decision to grant free 48-hour transit visas is expected to further increase the number of visitors to UAE.
Karan Anand of travel major Cox & Kings said: “The move by UAE to exempt transit passengers from all entry fees for the first 48 hours is significant. Travellers who have onward connections can now stay in the UAE and enjoy a range of attractions that the various Emirates have to offer. In fact, this will give a boost to Dubai and Abu Dhabi which are promoting its attractions aggressively in the Indian market. Many new attractions are opening up in these destinations and as Dubai gears up for the 2020 Expo, these measures will boost tourism inflows.”
Indian travel majors are awaiting the date from which this change will be implemented. In terms of flying people in and out of India, Emirates is the biggest international airline. The Jet-Etihad combine is the biggest airline in terms of international travel to and from India.
“According to Dubai Tourism statistics, Dubai attracted over 2.1 million Indian tourists in 2017 +— 15% more than the previous year. India is the number one source market for the emirate,” said a senior official of a travel major. “Similarly, in 2017 Abu Dhabi attracted over 3.60 lakh Indian tourists, 11% more than previous year 2016. Emirates such as Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah have also stepped up promotion in the Indian market. This is aided by more flight connections from India to the UAE,” said the official.
Gulf nations are going all out to woo Indian travelers and are relaxing visa norms. UAE grants visa on arrival to Indian Nationals with a valid US Visa. Oman will also do the same to Indians who reside in or hold an entry visa to US, Canada, Australia, UK, Japan and Schengen States. Last August, Qatar had allowed Indians and nationals of 46 other countries to stay for up to 60 days there without a prior visa.
PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi is the world’s highest-paid female CEO, with a compensation of $25.9 million, the Associated Press reports. Although women make up only 5 percent of the CEO ranks at S&P 500 companies, median compensation for a female CEO was valued at $13.5 million for the 2017 fiscal year, versus $11.5 million for their male counterparts, according to an analysis by executive data firm Equilar done for the AP.
The AP’s compensation study covered 339 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their respective companies, which filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30. Some companies with highly paid CEOs do not fit these criteria, such as Oracle. Debra Cafaro, CEO of real estate investment trust Ventas came in second at $25.3 million. And Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, wrapped up third.
Nooyi was named president and CEO on Oct.1, 2006 and assumed the role of chairman on May 2, 2007. She has directed the company’s global strategy for more than a decade and led its restructuring, including the divestiture of its restaurants into the successful YUM! Brands, Inc. She also led the acquisition of Tropicana and the merger with Quaker Oats that brought the vital Quaker and Gatorade businesses to PepsiCo, the merger with PepsiCo’s anchor bottlers, and the acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann, the largest international acquisition in PepsiCo’s history.
Actor Kal Penn will star in a new documentary, as yet untitled, about the global economy for Amazon, to be produced by Adam McKay, Will Ferrell and Adam Davidson (co-founder of NPR’s “Planet Money”), according to Variety. The docuseries will offer viewers insight into the global economy.
“Look, I’m terrible at math and really good at sophomoric humor, so the idea that we can explore economics around the world by visiting places like a dildo factory in California piqued my interest,” Variety quoted the Indian American actor as saying. “To have an opportunity to explore the world while we combine the serious with the bizarre with Adam and Will is super exciting.”
The untitled show will offer insight into the global economy and its “comedic eccentricities.” Amazon Studios is ready to explore the global economy with Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Kal Penn.
The retailer/streamer has handed out a straight-to-series order for an untitled docuseries examining the world’s finances. Penn will host the series, which is exec produced by Ferrell and McKay (The Big Short) as well as Adam Davidson (the co-founder of NPR’s Planet Money).
Amazon says the docuseries will offer “extraordinary insight into the global economy and its comedic eccentricities, all through a sardonic lens unique to McKay.”
“Adam Davidson is one of the more brilliant and funny minds out there. After collaborating with him on The Big Short, I jumped at the chance to continue trying to make economics and finance accessible to a wide audience,” McKay said.
Penn, the former White House associate director of public engagement, will invite viewers to meet the “geniuses, madmen and huskers” who make the decisions and investments that impact society. Topics to be explored include cryptocurrency, money laundering, death and corruption as the show sets out to explore how money, greed and power affect the hyper-connected world.
“Adam McKay is well known for finding the humor and absurdity in mind-blowing true stories, and we’re excited to bring that to Prime members with this series,” said Heather Schuster, head of unscripted at Amazon. “As with all of our unscripted series, we are committed to providing our customers with unprecedented access — this time to the fascinating and often illusive back rooms of global wealth and industry.”
Ferrell, McKay, Kevin Messick, Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman and Aliyah Silverstein exec produce the docuseries from Intellectual Property Corp. and Gary Sanchez Productions. Davidson will be credited as a co-EP, while Penn will consult.
Penn will take viewers around the world to meet the “geniuses, madmen and hucksters” who make the decisions—and investments—that change people’s lives. The series will reportedly cover a range of topics, including cryptocurrency, money laundering, death and corruption, to explore how money, greed and power affect the hyper-connected world.
Penn was last seen on ABC’s “Designated Survivor.” Previously, he served as the host of Fox’s one-hour unscripted competition series, “Superhuman,” that tested the abilities of ordinary people to use their extraordinary skills – in fields such as memory, hearing, taste, touch, smell and sight.
Anil D. Ambani owned Reliance Entertainment and one of India’s most celebrated filmmakers, Imtiaz Ali, today announced the formation of Window Seat Films, LLP, a 50:50 Joint Venture for production of movies. This is Reliance Entertainment’s 5th creative partnership with leading Indian filmmakers to form a production company.
An incredibly talented and successful writer, director, Imtiaz has received wide appreciation and acclaim from audiences and critics alike, in addition to blockbuster success at the box office. He has won several awards over the years since the release of his first film in 2005.
Starting with “Socha Na Tha” Imtiaz has made several films with newcomers and superstars alike. His filmography includes “Jab We Met”, “Love Aaj Kal”, “Rockstar”, “Tamasha”, “Highway” and “Jab Harry met Sejal”. Some of his films have achieved a sort of cult status with the youth in India and abroad.
This creative & business mix will benefit from the artistic abilities of Imtiaz, and the global marketing and distribution capabilities of Reliance Entertainment.
Amitabh Jhunjhunwala, Vice Chairman, Reliance Entertainment, said, “We are proud to have Imtiaz as our partner. He is a person of deep simplicity and humility despite his enormous successes, and we are looking forward to making great movies together.”
Commenting on the partnership, Imtiaz Ali said: “There is a common vision that Window Seat Films & Reliance Entertainment share in terms of the content that we’d like to make, the kind of stories we’d like to tell and the way we’d like to collaborate in running this partnership. Working under this partnership is like working for myself. ”
Reliance Entertainment has produced, distributed and released more than 300 films in multiple Indian languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, etc.
Reliance Entertainment already has creative partnerships with Phantom Films (Anurag Kashyap, Madhu Mantena, Vikas Bahl and Vikramaditya Motwane), Rohit Shetty Picturez, Plan C Studios (Neeraj Pandey) and Y NOT Studios (S. Sashikanth).
Reliance Entertainment is the media and entertainment arm of Reliance Group and is engaged in the creation and distribution of content across film, television, digital and gaming platforms. Internationally, Reliance Entertainment has partnered since 2009 with iconic film producer and director, Steven Spielberg, in the formation of DreamWorks Studios, and thereafter, Amblin Partners.
This relationship has produced several highly successful films such as The Help, War Horse, Lincoln, The Hundred Foot Journey, The Girl on the Train, A Dog’s Purpose, Bridge of Spies, and The Post.
Axovant Sciences (NASDAQ:AXON) has announced that Gavin Corcoran, MB BCh, FACP, will join the Company as Executive Vice President of Research & Development, and Michael Hayden, MB ChB, PhD, FRSC, has been appointed as a senior scientific advisor to the company and Chairman of Axovant’s newly established Scientific Advisory Board.
“I am pleased to welcome Gavin and Michael to the Axovant team,” said Pavan Cheruvu, MD, Chief Executive Officer of Axovant. “Since starting as CEO in February, I have been focused on transforming Axovant into a leaner organization, introducing heightened standards of quality and excellence throughout the business, and establishing a new pipeline strategy. We are now poised for growth, and I am excited to have Gavin and Michael join us as we look toward expanding our pipeline in the coming months.”
“I am very excited to join Axovant at this turning point,” said Dr. Corcoran. “I look forward to working closely with Pavan and the senior management team to bring new investigational medicines into the portfolio as we build upon Axovant’s capabilities in research and development. We have a wonderful opportunity to develop life-changing medicines for patients with CNS diseases. I am also eager to leverage the Roivant platform to accelerate the development of Axovant’s pipeline.”
“I share Pavan’s vision of rebuilding the company on a foundation of transformative science and I look forward to expanding Axovant’s Scientific Advisory Board,” said Dr. Hayden. “I have been very impressed with the caliber of the Axovant team and am excited about the future growth of the company.”
Dr. Gavin Corcoran has overseen successful drug development across multiple therapeutic areas including neurology and psychiatry. He currently serves as Chief Medical Officer at Allergan plc, and previously served as Chief Medical Officer of Actavis. Dr. Corcoran was Executive Vice President for Global Medicines Development at Forest Laboratories prior to the acquisition of Forest Laboratories by Actavis. In addition, Dr. Corcoran served as Head of Late Stage Clinical Development for Inflammation and Immunology at Celgene, and as Chief Scientific Officer and head of R&D at Stiefel Laboratories. Earlier in his career he held leadership roles in clinical development and regulatory affairs at Amgen, Schering-Plough, and Bayer. He received his MB BCh from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and completed his clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
Dr. Michael Hayden is one of the world’s leading experts in the genetic basis of movement disorders and CNS drug development. He recently served as President of Global R&D and Chief Scientific Officer at Teva. Prior to Teva, he founded multiple biotechnology companies, including Aspreva Pharmaceuticals. He currently serves as Killam Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia and Canada Research Chair in Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine. Dr. Hayden played a key role in the discovery and development of GLYBERA®, the first approved gene therapy product in the Western world, and has received numerous awards including the Order of Canada, granted for his contributions to the understanding of Huntington’s disease and other genetic disorders. In 2008 he was named Canada’s Health Researcher of the Year and in 2017 he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. Dr. Hayden received his MB ChB, PhD in Genetics, and DCH Diploma in Child Health from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and clinical genetics at Harvard Medical School.
Beginning in February 2018, Axovant initiated an organizational restructuring to simplify its organization, reduce costs, and streamline business processes in preparation for future business development activities.
As part of the restructuring plan, Axovant enhanced its capabilities in clinical research and business development, while reducing the size of its global commercial team. Overall, internal headcount has decreased by approximately 43%, and Axovant has increased its use of the Roivant platform to supplement internal capabilities. Forward-looking G&A expenses are expected to decrease in the current fiscal year. Most of the affected employees were transferred to roles within the Roivant family of companies.
“Roivant supports Axovant’s plans for pipeline expansion and organizational transformation,” said Vivek Ramaswamy, Chief Executive Officer of Roivant. “We are committed to hiring and developing high-caliber talent, and we were pleased to support many of Axovant’s employees in finding new roles within the Vant family. I am excited about the new direction that Axovant is taking.”
Axovant is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to advancing innovative treatments for patients with serious neurologic and neuropsychiatric conditions, and turning promising therapies into lasting solutions for patients. Axovant is committed to developing and commercializing a pipeline of product candidates by identifying and developing novel treatments for unmet needs in neurology and psychiatry.
Roivant Sciences is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on reducing the time and cost of the drug development process to improve the lives of patients and their families. Roivant partners with innovative biopharmaceutical companies and academic institutions to ensure that important medicines are rapidly delivered to patients.
The number of women leading the largest companies has always been small. This year, it got 25 percent smaller, according to Fortune magazine. The reversal is leading to a search beyond the usual explanations for why women don’t become chief executives — things like not being competitive enough, failing to chase opportunities for promotion and choosing work-life balance over high-powered jobs.
That’s because evidence shows that the obstacles for female executives aren’t just because of their individual choices. There are larger forces at work, experts say, rooted in biases against women in power, mothers who work or leaders who don’t fit the mold of the people who led before them.
The 25 percent decline is so large in part because women’s numbers are so small to start with. There’s also a phenomenon known as the glass cliff, in which women are more likely to be put in charge of failing companies. But in many ways, the reasons the number of female chief executives is falling are the same reasons there aren’t more of them in the first place.
For many years, it seemed as if the share of women at the top of corporate America would slowly increase over time. The number of women leading companies in the Fortune 500 had grown to 6.4 percent last year, a record high, from 2.6 percent a decade earlier.
After reaching an all-time high of 32 in 2017, the number of female Fortune 500 chiefs has slid back down to 24. That’s a one-year decline of 25%. The drop is due primarily to a number of powerful women leaving their corner offices. In the past year alone, more than a third of those women (12) have left their CEO jobs, including a few long-time veterans of the ranking.
As the Fortune 500 list went to print last week, Campbell Soup Co. CEO Denise Morrison announced she was retiring, effective immediately (thus, while Morrison appears on the June 2018 ranking, she is no longer in office). The company did not explain her abrupt departure and did not take questions from analysts on the matter. The 64-year-old had been at the helm since 2011; she was with the company for 15 years.
There were also some newcomers to the—far too exclusive—club this year: Ulta Beauty’s Mary Dillon, Kohl’s Michelle Gass, Yum China’s Joey Wat, and Anthem’s Gail Boudreaux. Dillon, who appeared on Fortune‘s list of Most Powerful Women for the first time last year at No. 48, has been running the cosmetics company since July 2013, though this is the first time that Ulta has appeared on the Fortune 500. The other three CEOs have been appointed in the past year.
Women in business start out equal to men in terms of jobs and pay. But at each level, they disappear. Only 22 percent of senior vice presidents are women. And of those, just 21 percent have roles related to generating revenue, which generally lead to C-level jobs, according to the annual Women in the Workplace study by Lean In and McKinsey. The drop-off starts with the first promotion to management: Women are 18 percent less likely to be promoted to manager than their male peers.
“Men and women are all going into high-powered jobs,” said Robin Ely, a professor at Harvard Business School and chairwoman of its gender initiative. “The question is what happens to them down the road, and that’s a messy story. People say they’re opting out, they want work-life balance, but we know from a lot of research that it’s not as simple as that. They’re not given opportunities.”
For 2018, the basic structure of Social Security is the same in terms of how workers are taxed and how benefits are calculated and paid. However, there are a few notable changes to be aware of, such as the gradually increasing full retirement age and several thresholds and other Social Security figures that adjust over time with inflation. With that in mind, here’s a rundown of eight 2018 Social Security changes that are set to go into effect.
Image source: Getty Images.
The full retirement age is increasing for some eligible seniors
The full or normal retirement age for Social Security benefits has been 66 years of age for some time now but is set to gradually increase to 67 for Americans born after 1954.
If you were born in…
Your full retirement age is…
1954 or earlier
66 years
1955
66 years, 2 months
1956
66 years, 4 months
1957
66 years, 6 months
1958
66 years, 8 months
1959
66 years, 10 months
1960 or later
67 years
Data source: Social Security Administration.
The reason this is important now is that the change has begun to affect people who are reaching the age of eligibility for Social Security benefits. Specifically, Americans who will turn 62 in 2018 (born in 1956) have a full retirement age of 66 years and four months, and those who will turn 63 in 2018 have a full retirement age of 66 years and two months.
Here’s why this is important. Since most Americans claim Social Security before they reach full retirement age, this means that early retirement will have a more dramatic reduction. For example, if a worker with a full retirement age of 66 claims at 62, he or she would face a 25% reduction. If their full retirement age is 66 years and four months, the reduction percentage would be 25.8%.
Finally, a decent cost-of-living adjustment for retirees
The Social Security Administration announced a 2% cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for beneficiaries, starting with the Dec. 2017 payment. This is the highest COLA in six years and is due to higher inflation — specifically, the rise in the CPI. However, this is still historically low. Social Security COLAs have averaged roughly 3.8% since the current method was implemented in 1975. Furthermore, for many retirees, this year’s increase could be consumed by rising Medicare Part B premiums.
Higher payments for beneficiaries
While many retirees will see some or all of their increase swallowed up by rising Medicare premiums, the COLA should produce higher checks for beneficiaries. The SSA estimates that the average retired worker will get a $27 raise to $1,404, and that the average couple receiving benefits will see their combined payments rise by $46 to $2,340.
Additionally, because of the higher taxable earnings cap from 2017, the maximum benefit is increasing significantly. The highest possible benefit payable to a worker retiring at their full retirement age is rising by more than $100 to $2,788 per month in 2018.
A slightly higher taxable earnings cap
Speaking of the taxable earnings cap, this is rising for 2018 as well. Each year, there is a maximum amount of wage income that is subject to Social Security tax. For 2017, this maximum was set at $127,200 — meaning that any amount of earned income above this threshold was not taxable for Social Security. In 2018, the maximum taxable earnings amount is rising by $1,500 to $128,700, meaning that high-income individuals will end up paying more in Social Security tax than they did in 2017.
Disability thresholds are rising
Social Security pays disability benefits to more than 10 million people, and there are maximum amounts of income that people can still earn while collecting disability benefits. For 2018, these monthly thresholds are rising slightly.
Type of Disability
2017 Threshold
2018 Threshold
Non-blind
$1,170
$1,180
Blind
$1,950
$1,970
Data source: Social Security Administration.
So are SSI payments
There are two Social Security disability programs — Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). SSDI payments are based on a beneficiary’s work record, just like retirement benefits.
On the other hand, SSI payments are based on a standard payment amount. For 2018, the SSI federal monthly payment standard is increasing.
Status
2017
2018
Individual
$735
$750
Couple
$1,103
$1,125
Data source: Social Security Administration. Table by author.
The earnings test limits are going up
If you claim Social Security before reaching full retirement age and are still working, the amount of money you earn could potentially reduce your Social Security benefits. This is known as the Social Security earnings test, and there are two different versions of the test, depending on your age.
If you will reach full retirement age after 2018, $17,040 in earnings ($1,420 per month) will be excluded from consideration. Beyond this threshold, your retirement benefits can be reduced by $1 for every $2 in excess earnings.
If you will reach full retirement age during 2018, $45,360 in annualized earnings ($3,780 per month) are excluded. Beyond this threshold, your retirement benefits can be reduced by $1 for every $3 in excess earnings. For this test, only the months before you reach full retirement age are considered. If your benefits are withheld because of the earnings test, it could permanently increase your benefit once you reach full retirement age, so this money isn’t necessarily lost.
Social Security “credits” represent more earnings
As a final Social Security change for 2018, the “credits” workers need to earn to qualify for benefits are getting a little more expensive.
Specifically, in order to be eligible for a retirement benefit, you need to earn 40 Social Security credits, up to a maximum of four per year. In 2018, each credit represents $1,320 in earnings, so you’ll need to earn at least $5,280 in order to earn the four possible credits for the year.
The 26th annual The Indus Entrepreneurs conference, TiE Inflect 2018, held from May 4 and May 5, and attended thousands of business leaders, entrepreneurs and investors at the Santa Clara Convention Center focused on artificial intelligence and featured 15 tracks all centered on the human impact of artificial intelligence.
TiE Silicon Valley board member Manish Gupta explained the change of name at the onset of the event, and the conference discussed on Artificial Intelligence: Executives from companies like Oracle, eBay, Capital One, Google, Cisco and more spoke about Artificial Intelligence and its impact on our daily lives; Internet of Things: VPs and managers from Trimble, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia and more spoke about Internet of Things and connect IoT with cars, daily living, and food. Yes, food!; TiE Women: One of the best tracks of TiE Inflect as it featured women executives from marketing and tech companies; and, TiE Youth: The TiE Youth track featured many young entrepreneurs with successful startups. The track will be hosted by Miss San Jose and there is a shift as we will see more female speakers in this track. Budding student entrepreneurs from Mission San Jose High School in Fremont, Calif., spoke in this track.
The two-day-long event, co-convened by Ravinder Paul Singh and Sandeep Vij and hosted by TiE Silicon Valley with a cohort of more than 350 volunteers, featured 275 speakers including several grand keynotes provided to the more than 5,000 event-goers, including many from the Indian American community. “The need for what TiE can do has changed, and the need to change the name is working towards the new entrepreneur to help inflect,” Gupta said.
Some of the prominent speakers included, Splunk chief executive Doug Merritt, former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka and SymphonyAI Group and Wadhwani Foundation founder Romesh Wadhwani. In citing his young life of moving 11 times by the time he was 13 years old, Merritt said he learned change is constant and led him to wonder how he could control the change. “The ability to imagine, conceive … is the core foundation why I got into tech,” Merritt added.
In advising the entrepreneurs in the crowd, the Splunk CEO said there is a need to adopt a growth mindset. “You’re either growing or you’re dying,” he said. “Data is the foundation of the future of economy, and it’s still in its infancy.”
Sikka, the former head of Infosys, focused on how AI, while it has grown leaps and bounds over the years, is still very far from being at a point where robots are superior to humans. Sikka said there needs to be more balanced research, better policy-making and regulatory work, better education, easier to use tools, and lots more applications. “We are either people that wait for people to tell us what to do, or we are people who use their imagination and see what isn’t there,” Sikka said. “(Our imagination) is the destiny that can keep us going in the long run.”
Like Merritt, other speakers gave advice on how entrepreneurs should be ever watchful over market changes. Delivering the grand keynote on the second day of the conference, Jay Chaudhry, founder and chairman of Zscaler, told the audience not to solely rely on feedback from their customers but to read the market and make decisions.
Wadhwani took the time to talk some sense into individuals who feel that AI and robots will take away jobs from humans. “At the end of previous revolutions (highlighting the industrial revolution and others) the economy was better and society was much better,” he said. “The claims of doom and gloom … I’m not a believer. It’s just the normal evolution of time.”
“My strong believe is that the next 10 years will be the golden age in AI,” Wadhwani said, stressing the importance to be bold and shoot for scalable companies rather than settling for creating a small company with intentions to be bought out. “I believe AI can be much more beneficial to helping underprivileged people across the world – more so than helping businesses.”
Three women – Madhura Konkar Belani, Shanthi Iyer and Julia Castro Abrams – in the “Road to Innovation Success: Journey, Advice and Collaboration Stories” session, discussed their careers to success. They offered insights to the more than 100 women in the crowd into their path to success and recommendations on how to move up the chain in any given company.
“Make sure not to just have a mentor, but have an advocate,” Iyer said to the crowd, citing a story about an advocate who pushed her to stick with her current position. “I think that changes the game. If everyone did it for one or two people, imagine the impact we can have.”
Building on the 25-year legacy of TiEcon, TiE Inflect 2018 was designed to focus on the business and human impact of AI, said Jay Visvanathan, executive director of TiE Silicon Valley, in his introductory remarks. A broad range of business-related topics was discussed at the event that drew about 5,000 people, including over 250 speakers.
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Suhas Patil, who co-founded TiE 25 years ago and is currently emeritus board member of TiE Global, observed that over the years TiE has given “startup guys” to make connections and keep pace with changing technologies. It also lets them know that “you don’t need a rich uncle to help you build a company.”
They came all spruced up, looking cool and “lit,”as they would say, to the TiE Youth Track on the second day of The Indus Entrepreneurs convention here, to show that despite their youth, they had a head start in the world of entrepreneurial leadership.
Nearly a dozen teenagers with titles adults traditionally have to earn through years of hard work — chief executive officer and president among them — strutted their business acumen and entrepreneurial achievements with aplomb. Many came dressed like pros. Nearly all of them had a philanthropic streak.
“We had decided to focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning at the conference this year, which is increasingly gaining currency in both tech-talks and laymen conversations these days and has become critical component of almost all industries. The importance that we attached to AI and machine learning or blockchain is evident from the title of the theme of this year’s conference: ‘Imagination AI,’ “said Ram Reddy, founder, chairman and CEO of Global Industry Analysts, Inc and president of TiE Silicon Valley.
“There needs to be more education on artificial intelligence as there are fewer than 250,000 people at present who could use machine learning tools,” he said. Earlier this year, Sikka exuded optimism about the future of AI saying, he is “personally extremely excited about doing something in AI, something that fundamentally improves the world.” That optimism reflected in his keynote at the conference.
The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley, seeking to create a bridge between budding entrepreneurs needing guidance for their ventures, and those who could offer that. While TiE continues to essentially pursue that mission of giving back to the community, 26 years later that goal has to some extent been adjusted keeping in consideration the needs of the present-day, young generation entrepreneurs. “So, our whole model has shifted to becoming mostly relevant to what is really happening out there, tailormade to the needs of people in our times,” Reddy said.
The Asian American Hotel Owners Association, AAHOA, kicked off its two-day Spring National Advocacy Conference as over 250 hoteliers from across the country visited Washington, DC on May 8th to meet with their legislators on Capitol Hill. They highlighted how the hospitality industry is a key economic driver in the United States, a press release said.
The Asian American Hotel Owners Association, whose members are mostly Indian-Americans, and which represents an estimated 50 percent of the U.S. hospitality industry, also launched a new digital training for members and their employees May 2, that focuses on raising awareness of human trafficking in the hospitality industry.
“America’s hoteliers create jobs, welcome guests into our communities, and provide a valuable service to travelers across the nation. AAHOA members are eager to share their knowledge of the hospitality industry with our congressional leaders. Whether its highlighting how they are reinvesting the tax savings generated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as they create new jobs, increase wages, and expand their properties, or discussing the important steps our industry is taking to combat human trafficking, AAHOA members are letting our lawmakers know about the issues that matter most to them,” said AAHOA Chairman Hitesh (HP) Patel.
The AAHOA Vice Chairwoman Jagruti Panwala testified before the House Committee on Small Business Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax, and Capital Access. Panwala focused on the impact of the travel and tourism industry on the American economy and highlighted the contributions of hotels and discussed the challenges the industry faces.
“It is a privilege to appear before the Congress and share the story of our industry and the important role that travel and tourism play in driving the American economy. This week, hundreds of AAHOA members are meeting with their elected officials and sharing their stories of small business success and helping our lawmakers understand how the policies they create are affecting their constituencies, Panwala said, according to an AAHOA press release.
“The economic indicators in America’s travel and tourism industry point to strong economic performance and a promising future. Unemployment is low, and business and consumer confidences are high. Hoteliers are increasing wages and workers are in demand,” said Panwala.
Earlier, in the May 2 AAHOA announcement of a joint partnership with Polaris, an organization that fights against ‘modern slavery’ the Indian-American hoteliers announced that the AAHOA Human Trafficking Awareness Training (HTAT) is available exclusively to AAHOA’s nearly 18,000 members and the over 600,000 employees at member properties at no cost, the news release said.
“Hoteliers have a moral imperative to prevent human trafficking at their properties,” AAHOA Chairman Hitesh (HP) Patel is quoted saying in the press release. “Unfortunately, the privacy and anonymity that are inherent in the hotel industry, as well as the frequent turnover of clientele, make hotels an attractive venue for criminals looking to exploit trafficking victims,” Hitesh Patel noted.
“With a membership that owns about one in every two hotels across the United States, AAHOA is capitalizing on that reach to promote education and awareness of human trafficking,” said AAHOA President and CEO Chip Rogers. “This important training not only focuses on sex trafficking, but also on labor trafficking, which can be difficult to spot,” Rogers added.
Being a conscientious employer means understanding how labor brokers and recruiters exploit workers and requesting supply chain transparency to ensure that no one is being forced to work against his or her will, Rogers said. “Hoteliers are uniquely positioned to disrupt the criminal networks and individuals that exploit society’s most vulnerable through human trafficking, and they can save lives in the process,” Rogers emphasized.
“This new training developed with Polaris will go a long way to help hoteliers and their employees identify the signs of sex and labor trafficking, assist victims, and work with law enforcement to keep this criminal activity out of our communities,” Hitesh Patel said speaking at a Houston, Texas roundtable discussion on the issue, hosted by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-TX. The roundtable also included representatives from the Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign, and Polaris.
“This training is a vital tool in the fight against sex trafficking and forced labor,” said Joe Racalto, director of Government Relations at Polaris said, adding, “Education is one of the keys to ending modern slavery and restoring freedom and dignity to survivors. By making it freely available to so many hoteliers and hotel workers, we can quickly raise awareness of the issue.”
AAHOA is the largest hotel owners association in the world, its website says. The more than 17,700 AAHOA members own almost one in every two hotels in the United States, with billions of dollars in property assets and hundreds of thousands of employees. “AAHOA is a proud defender of free enterprise and the foremost current-day example of realizing the American dream,” the website notes.
The Simon Business School at the University of Rochester announced the establishment of the Rajesh Wadhawan Chair for Development Economics, according to a report in BusinessWire. The investiture is in commemoration of the WGC Group’s Indian American founder and his vision of economic equitability.
Over the last three decades, the WGC Group has been at the forefront of developing solutions for financial inclusion of the marginalized sections. The Chair is a part of its social investments to enable opportunities for the transformative progress of these communities. It is aimed to be a critical driver of new insights and enabling wisdom in the understanding of development economics. The WGC Group will continue to support the Chair’s curriculum by offering internships and other associations to students across its Group companies’ offices in India and the UK.
“Through the investiture of the Rajesh Wadhawan Chair, the Wadhawan family and the WGC Group reinforce their commitment towards creating a more equitable society. Their generosity will enable us to channelize analytical research towards solutions for inclusive growth. Through this partnership, we are hopeful of deepening our participation in the global dialogue for financial inclusivity,” remarked Dean Andrew Ainslie of Simon Business School.
Kapil Wadhawan, chairman of the WGC Group, said, “The Rajesh Wadhawan Chair reinstates our founder’s legacy of doing business with purpose. As we take our partnership with the Simon Business School to the next level, we aim to shape a future of equitable progress and create a larger impact globally.”
The Wadhawan family, represented by Mrs. Aruna Wadhawan, wife of late Rajesh Wadhawan, and son Kapil Wadhawan, his wife Vanita and daughter Tiana and son Kartik, were present at the plaque ceremony at the campus.
Prof. Gregory H. Bauer, Associate Dean of Full-Time Programs, Simon Business School, has been nominated as the permanent faculty for the Chair. He was associated with the Bank of Canada as the Senior Research Director for Financial Markets. Bauer has taught at the Simon School for 22 years. He is a four-time winner of the Superior Teaching Award from the Simon MBA program and a multiple winner of awards from the Executive MBA program. His research concerns international capital flows and the origins of financial crises.
Simon Business School is the business school of the University of Rochester and one of the world’s top graduate business institutions. It offers an education that attracts students who value analytic bias. The school believes strongly in the value of economics and statistics in the analysis of all business problems, and it is reflected in its ranking as a top five school for economics and finance.
University of Rochester is one of the top-tier research universities in the US. The private, non-profit university was founded in June 1850. It offers undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and professional degree programs. University of Rochester Medical Center Rochester’s Headquarters are located at 601 Elmwood Avenue, Rochester, New York, USA 14642.
Wadhawan Global Capital is a leading financial services group head-quartered in India. The group manages $22 billion of assets through its lending, asset management and insurance businesses. WGC Group has partnered with leading financial institutions such as the International Finance Corporation, Washington, and Prudential Financial Inc., in transforming the lives of millions of customers.
WGC is the parent company for some of the top brands in India such as DHFL, Aadhar Housing Finance Company, Avanse Financial Services Ltd., DHFL Pramerica Life Insurance Company Ltd., Arthveda Finance, Wadhawan Wealth Managers, DHFL General Insurance and DHFL Pramerica Asset Managers Private Ltd. The company has a London-based wholly-owned subsidiary Wadhawan Global Capital (UK) Ltd.
While the Trump and his administration has been anti-immigrants, falsely accusing them of taking away the jobs in the United States, in yet another example of how immaigrants build and create jobs here in the US, the India-based Infosys, a consulting, technology and next-generation services firm, has announced the launching of a technology and innovation hub in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 26, declaring that it plans to establish a U.S. education center in the city as well as expand its hiring by 1,000 more jobs.
According to reports, Infosys has reached a deal to build a technology hub at the former Indianapolis International Airport terminal site, according to sources familiar with the plan. The development will include more than 120 acres and is expected to result in 3,000 new jobs — 1,000 more than previously announced. The Indianapolis Airport Authority, the city and the Indiana Economic Development Corp. reached terms on an agreement with the India-based technology company last week.
The center intends to train American workers and arm them with skills for the digital future. Additionally, the firm said in a news release it has expanded its hiring plans for the state from 2,000 to 3,000 new jobs by the end of 2023.
Infosys will provide an initial investment of $35 million to create the first 125,000 sq. ft. of development to transform the 70.5-acre site at the old Indianapolis airport terminal into its U.S. Education Center. Infosys will break ground on this initial phase before the end of 2018 and anticipates its completion by the end of 2020, it said.
The initial phase will comprise of a training center and will accommodate a 250-person residential facility. The center will also serve as a hub for development of next-generation digital technologies, according to the news release.
“We are excited to partner with Indiana to grow our U.S. presence by building our U.S. Education Center here, which is dedicated to continuous learning and incubating the skills of the future,” said Infosys president Ravi Kumar in a statement.
“At Infosys, we have always invested in advanced technology and skills and bring deep experience from running the largest corporate training facility in the world. Our new Indianapolis facility will prepare our American employees-and those of our clients-to master the kinds of advanced skills that are now required to succeed in our digital future,” Kumar said.
The state and Indianapolis are offering up to $101.8 million in incentives for the project, according to an IndyStar report. Infosys ultimately plans to build the $245 million, 141-acre campus in phases over several years, the report said.
Specifically, the state will offer Infosys up to $56.5 million in conditional tax credits and up to $1.5 million in training grants based on the company’s job-creation plans. The state also will offer up to $6 million in conditional tax credits for the company’s capital investment plans, the report noted.
Indianapolis is contributing $17.8 million in infrastructure improvements and real estate. The state is contributing an additional $20 million for infrastructure improvements, the publication said. The project far exceeds Infosys’ previous plans, both in real estate ambition and hiring, IndyStar added.
The company’s grander plan attracted the attention of Vice President Mike Pence, who changed his schedule to appear at the whirlwind announcement that came together so quickly it caught some state and city officials off guard. Mayor Joe Hogsett also attended the announcement, which culminates a year of negotiations with Infosys, the report said.
Infosys’ initial plan already stood as the second-largest jobs announcement in Indiana, after Honda’s decision more than a decade ago to build a $578 million plant in Greensburg and hire 2,064 workers, it added.
Infosys’ vision for the finished site includes regeneration of the area to feature walkways, green spaces and recreational facilities, the news release added.
Using best practices from Infosys’ Global Education Center in Mysore, India, and partnerships with academia and education providers, the initial training programs at the U.S. Education Center will combine classroom-based and immersive, real-world learning focused on key competencies such as user experience, cloud, big data and core technology and computer science skills, it said.
“Today’s announcement with Infosys is a big win-not just for Indiana but for the nation as a whole, which is why I’m glad Vice President Pence was able to join us,” Indiana Gov. Eric J. Holcomb said in a statement.
“Infosys’ state-of-the-art training facility will teach thousands of folks across America right here on Indiana soil. And, it will help prepare more current and future Hoosiers for success in our rapidly evolving, global economy,” he added.
This announcement is part of Infosys’ commitment to hire 10,000 American workers over the next two years and invest in training to ensure that the U.S. workforce has the essential skills required for the digital economy, the company said.
A community activist & leader, a successful businessman, an industrialist, a scientist, a renowned musician, two young prodigies, an organ donor, and a journalist were honored at a colorful bi-annual NAMAM Excellence Award 2018 ceremony held at the Royal Albert Palace, Edison, New Jersey on April 28th, 2018.
What stood out at the long-awaited historic event was that among the 7 honorees, two are leaders of the Indo-American Press Club (IAPC). Dr. Babu Stephan, current Chairman, and Ajay Ghosh, founding President of IAPC, were the recipients of the NAMAM awards for their contributions and successes in the business and media world, respectively. IAPC, founded 6 years ao, has been serving as a platform to raise the voice of Indian Americans journalists in North America.
Dr. Stephen is the CEO of DC Healthcare Inc, and the president of SM Reality LLC in Washington, and has been politically well-connected in both Washington DC and Kerala. He has dabbled in media and having arrived in America almost 4 decades ago, and has been among the first generation of Indian community builders here. In his acceptance speech for the award for excellence in business, he recounted the Indian American community’s landmark achievements in all walks of life here – and we have only started!
Ajay Ghosh was chosen for his contributions in media. He has founded the Universal News Network (UNN), a news portal as chief editor, and has been associated with news publications including India Tribute, Indian Express (North American edition), NRI Today and Asian Era magazines. And since 2010, he has been the media consultant of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI). In addition, he has taught Social Work Seminar and guided students at the Graduate School of Social Work at Fordham University in New York City since 2006 and works as a Primary Clinician at Yale New Haven Hospital, serving patients with behavioral health issues. Mr. Ghosh dedicated his award to the journalists of Indian origin, who work tirelessly to inform, educate and create awareness on issues that affect the peoples of the world.
Other awardees included, a world renowned community leader and activist, Dr. Thomas Abraham; T. S. Nandakumar, a renowned and versatile Carnatic music percussionist; Ramadas Pillai, President/CTO of Nuphoton Technologies, Inc; Rekha Nair, who has been an advocate for organ donation; Tiara Thankam Abraham, a 12-year-old soprano prodigy and a child genius; and, Child Genius Tanishq Mathew Abraham, a 14-year-old senior completing his biomedical engineering degree at Univ. Of California, Davis. He will be the youngest engineer to graduate in June 2018.
Dr. Thomas Abraham highlighted the need for bringing together the Indian Diaspora under the banner of GOPIO and how it has become a powerful force in raising our voices against discrimination and injustice. In her acceptance speech, Rekha Nair, who stunned the world by donating one of her kidneys at a young age to save the life of a woman she barely knew at the time last year, made an impassioned appeal for organ donation and blood donation.
Of the two siblings, Tanishq, 14-year-old senior (4th year) completing his biomedical engineering degree, could not come down from California, so his younger sister Tiara, 12, accepted the award on his behalf too. She also gave a performance and showed why she is considered a prodigy soprano.
NAMAM, or the North American Malayalees and Associated Members, founded by Madhavan B. Nair, has been honoring its best and brightest at biennial events. Madhavan Nair, in his welcome address, described it as, “an unforgettable evening as we honor extraordinarily accomplished individuals, who have made valuable contributions to the Indian-American community with the NAMAM Excellence Awards.”
The evening program was studded with dance and live music performances, both Indian classical and contemporary/Bollywood. Among the 350 attendees at the event were many prominent members of the community and guests from India.
Founded in 2010, NAMAM has been reaching out to the community with cultural programs, social gatherings and humanitarian aid efforts. Madhavan Nair summed up the essence of the awards nite and the goals of NAMAM: “It is our priority to pass a deep awareness about our rich heritage, unique customs and eclectic culture of Kerala to the younger generation in the USA, so that they can appreciate and take pride in their genealogy.”
“In the Western imagination, India conjures up everything from saris and spices to turbans and, temples—and the pulsating energy of Bollywood movies,” the prestigious Smithsonian Institute stated recently. “But in America, India’s contributions stretch far beyond these stereotypes. From the builders of some of America’s earliest railroads and farms to Civil Rights pioneers to digital technology entrepreneurs, Indian Americans have long been an inextricable part of American life. Today, one out of every 100 Americans, from Silicon Valley to Small town, USA, traces his or her roots to India. Breakthroughs in business, the arts, medicine, science, and technology, and the flavorful food, flamboyant fashion and yoga of India have become a central part of our national culture.”
In 1997, when I had landed in Milwaukee, WI to pursue my journalism degree, it was rare to find Indian Americans in the city. Today, everywhere I go, at work, shopping malls, sports arena, theaters, churches, schools where my 3 daughters attend, and in my neighborhood where I live, there is a growing number of Indian Americans. There has been an influx of Indian Americans across the nation, especially in the past couple of decades.
According to The Economist, “Three-quarters of the Indian-born population in America today arrived in the last 25 years.” The present Indian population can be explained from the nearly 147,000 immigrants that India provides to the country on a yearly basis, reported Huffington Post.
In the early 20th century just a few hundred people emigrated from India to America each year and there were only about 5,000 people of Indian heritage living in the United States. Today Indian-born Americans number over 3.8 million and they are probably the most successful minority group in the country. Compared with all other big foreign-born groups, they are younger, richer and more likely to be married and supremely well educated.
The modern immigration wave from Asia is nearly a half century old and has pushed the total population of Asian Americans—foreign born and U.S born, adults and children—to a record 18.2 million in 2011, or 5.8% of the total U.S. population, up from less than 1% in 1965.
Pew Research study has found, “Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States. They are more satisfied than the general public with their lives, finances and the direction of the country, and they place more value than other Americans do on marriage, parenthood, hard work and career success.”
Indians have always been rising in America. As James Crabtree of Financial Times suggests, “More than any other group of outsiders, it was the Indians who figured out that, to make it in startup land, it helps to have a social network of your own.”
The less than four million Indian Americans appear to be gaining prominence and have come to be recognized as a force to reckon with in this land of opportunities that they have come to call as their adopted homeland. They are the most educated population in the United States, with more than 80 percent holding college or advanced degrees, as per a report by Pew Research Center. They have the highest income levels, earning $65,000 per year with a median household income of $88,000, far higher than the U.S. household average of 49,000, according to the survey.
Although disparities persist with nearly nine percent of Indian Americans live in poverty, they have made a mark in almost every field in the United States through their hard work, dedication and brilliance. Notching successes in fields as diverse as poetry and politics, the fast growing strong Indian American community packed more power and influence far beyond their numbers in the year gone by.
“While the Indian-American community has been the wealthiest, most-educated minority in the U.S. for some time now, they’re only more recently experiencing wide-scale recognition in public life,” Forbes magazine stated.
Indian Americans are just one percent of the American population, but 3 percent of its engineers, 7 percent of its IT force, and 8 percent of its physicians and surgeons. Some 10-20 percent of all tech start-ups have Indian founders. Indeed, a joint Duke University-UC Berkeley study revealed that between 1995-2005, Indian immigrants founded more engineering and technology companies than immigrants from countries like UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined. They have risen to the top ranks in major companies like Satya Nadella in Microsoft, Sundar Pichai in Google and Indra Nooyi in Pepsico.
Indians for decades have been playing an important role in global technology landscape. Indians, especially in Silicon Valley, are growing in prominence, influence, and sheer population. The fact that Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, and Nikesh Arora lead some of the most prominent tech world giants is an example of their importance to the larger world and the significant contributions they continue to make.
Rajeev Suri is leading Nokia. Hyderabad-born Shantanu Narayen is the leader of Adobe, while Sanjay Jha ids the CEO of Global Foundries. George Kurian became the CEO and president of storage and data management company NetApp in June 2015. Francisco D’Souza is the CEO, Cognizant, and Dinesh Paliwal is the president and CEO of Harman International, and Ashok Vemuri is the CEO, Conduent Inc, the Xerox’s sibling business services. These are only a few of the success stories of Indians in the US, leading the tech industry in the US.
The surge in Indians moving to America was intimately linked to the rise of the technology industry. In the 1980s India loosened its rules on private colleges, leading to a large expansion in the pool of engineering and science graduates. Fear of the “Y2K” bug in the late 1990s served as a catalyst for them to engage with the global economy, with armies of Indian engineers working remotely from the subcontinent, or travelling to America on workers’ visas.
Today a quarter or more of the Indian-born workforce is employed in the tech industry. In the Silicon Valley neighborhoods such as Fremont and Cupertino, people of Indian origin make up a fifth of the population. Some 10-20% of all tech start-ups have Indian founders; Indians have ascended to the heights of the biggest firms, too.
If Indians are a powerful force in the tech sector, they have also begun to show their power in the political arena. There have been several Indian Americans who have been elected and appointed to important positions at national, state and local level offices.
A record five Indian-Americans serve in the US Congress, scripting history for the minority ethnic community that comprises just one per cent of America’s population. Congressmen Ami Bera, Raja
Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 4/14/16 Dr. Vivek Murthy (U.S. Surgeon General) at The National Action Network Conference. (NYC)
Krishnamoorthy, Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal have been elected to the US Congress while Kamla Harris represents California in the US Senate.
Kamala Harris, a rising star, the first Indian American and first black senator from California, the Huffington Post has suggested Harris could be “the next best hope for shattering that glass ceiling=,” by becoming the first female President of the greatest democracy in the world. Pundits have compared her rise to that of former President Obama.
Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, a fast-rising Democratic star, has featured in the Politico magazine’s “Power List for the year 2018” for having assumed the mantle of a House “leader of the resistance.”
Over the past several months, there have been a number of articles in the national press, speculating whether former South Carolina Governor and the current US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley might consider a presidential run in 2020. Some say her efforts and clear leadership as governor and ambassador to the United Nations have put her in a strong position to possibly become this nation’s first female president.
In the most recent elections, Indian Americans made huge victories across the nation. Last November, Indian American politician Ravinder Bhalla made news by being the first Sikh mayor of the New Jersey city of Hoboken, as well as one of the first public officials in the US to wear a turban. The occupational profile presented by the Asian Indian community today is one of increasing diversity. Although a large number of Asian Indians are professionals, others own small businesses or are employed as semi- or nonskilled workers.
Forbes wrote recently about the new additions to the Trump administration: “two Indian Americans, Raj Shah and Manisha Singh, the latest instance of a relatively new, larger trend: the growing participation — and success — of Indian Americans in public service.”
Trump appointed Raj Shah principal deputy press secretary — who also continues to hold his post as deputy assistant to the president. US assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, Manisha Singh, 45, is a noted lawyer from Florida.
As the chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission, accomplished attorney Ajit Pai works on a wide variety of regulatory and transactional matters involving the cable, internet, TV, radio and satellite industries.
A respected legal scholar, Neomi Rao is the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the White House. Seema Verma is the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Vishal Amin is Trump’s intellectual property enforcement coordinator. Neil Chatterjee is chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
While several Indian Americans are now key players in pushing the Trump White House’s conservative agenda, the Indian-American community in general has long leaned left. Politically, they are more Democratic leaning than any other group as a whole in the nation. A whopping 84 per cent Indian-Americans voted for President Barack Obama in the general election in 2012. Compared with other US Asian groups, Indian Americans are the most likely to identify with the Democratic Party; 65 percent are Democrats or lean to the Democrats, 18 percent are Republicans.
In the Obama era, they were recognized by the Democratic Party with important jobs in Washington, DC as never been before. “It is very exciting to serve in an Administration that has so many great Indian-Americans serving,” said Raj Shah, former Administrator of USIAD, the highest ranking Indian-American in the Obama Administration.
In 2012, a record 30 Indian Americans fought to win electoral battle with Republican Nikki Haley and Democrat Kamala Harris handily winning back their jobs as South Carolina governor and California’s attorney general respectively. Amiresh ‘Ami’ Bera, the lone Indian American in the US House of Representatives, repeated history by winning a tight California House race.
Dr. Vivek Verma won an uphill battle against the powerful Gun Lobby and won the majority support at the US Senate. President Barack Obama appointed Richard Rahul Verma as the first envoy from the NRI community to India. Nisha Desai Biswal was heading the State Department’s South Asia bureau. Puneet Talwar took over as assistant secretary for political-military affairs to serve as a bridge between the State and Defense departments, while Arun Madhavan Kumar became assistant secretary of commerce and director general of the US and Foreign Commercial Service.
Subra Suresh was inducted into the Institute of Medicine (IOM), making him the only university president to be elected to all three national academies, while Sujit Choudhry, a noted expert in comparative constitutional law, became the first Indian American dean of the University of California-Berkeley, School of Law, a top US law school. Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe won the Scripps National Spelling Bee contest after 52 years and for just the fourth time in the contest’s history. Indira Nooyi, another person of Indian origin has been leading as the CEO of Pepsi, one of the largest corporations.
Former US attorney Preet Bharara made history by going after small and big law breakers in the nation. Among many judges of Indian origin, Sri Srinivasan stole the headlines with his unanimous support from the US Senate to the US Federal Court in DC.
In the glamor world of the nation, Indian Americans are not far behind. Aziz Ansari, the Master of None star won the Golden Globe this year for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy. Several others have found leading roles in the highly competitive Hollywood movies and on TV.
Priyanka Chopra has been voted the “Sexiest Asian Woman” in the world in an annual UK poll released in London last week. From splashes of red and black to purple velvet, with models that defied tradition both in size and age, Indian-American fashion designers showed their metal at the New York Fashion Week that was held in New York City in February this year. They included Bibhu Mohapatra, Prabal Gurung, Misha Kaura, Naeem Khan, Sachin & Babi, and the MacDuggal brand.
Like all immigrant groups, Indians have found niches in America’s vast economy. Half of all motels are owned by Indians, mainly Gujaratis. Punjabis dominate the franchises for 7-Eleven stores and Subway sandwiches.
Ten richest of all Indian Americans have made it to the Forbes List 2018, The World’s Billionaires on March 6th. The richest Indian American on the list is Rakesh Gangwal, the co-founder of the airline Indigo and is worth $3.3 billion, after he made an extra $1.2 billion in the past year. Romesh T. Wadhwani, an IT entrepreneur and philanthropist, closely follows him, with a net worth of $3.1 billion, who ended up topping the list last year. Forbes list this year has a record of 2,208 members including two new Indian Americans, Niraj Shah who is worth $1.6 billion and Jayshree Ullal who is worth $1.3 billion. Shah is the CEO and co-founder of Wayfair while Ullal is the CEO of Arista Networks.
Again, quoting Pew Research, Indian Americans are the highest-income and best-educated people in the United States and the third largest among Asian Americans who have surpassed Latinos as the fastest-growing racial group, according to a new survey. Seven-in-ten (70 percent) Indian Americans ages 25 and older, have obtained at least a bachelor’s degree; this is higher than the Asian-American share (49 percent) and much higher than the national share (28 percent), the survey found.
Indian Americans generally are well-off. Median annual household income for Indian Americans in 2010 was $88,000, much higher than for all Asian Americans ($66,000) and all U.S. households ($49,800). In 2010, 28% of Indian American worked in science and engineering fields; according to the 2013 American Community Survey, more than two-thirds (69.3%) of Indian Americans 16 and older were in management, business, science and arts occupations.
They are the largest segment of any group that entered the country under the H1-B visa program, which allow highly skilled foreign workers in designated “specialty occupations” to work in the U.S. In 2011, for example, 72,438 Indians received H1-B visas, 56% of all such visas granted that year.
Indian Americans have quietly permeated many segments of the American economy and society while still retaining their Indian culture. Most Asian Indian families strive to preserve traditional Indian values and transmit these to their children. Offsprings are encouraged to marry within the community and maintain their Indian heritage.
Indian Americans stand out from most other US Asian groups in the personal importance they place on parenting; 78 percent of Indian Americans say being a good parent is one of the most important things to them personally. Indian Americans are among the most likely to say that the strength of family ties is better in their country of origin (69 percent) than in the US (8 percent).
Nearly nine-in-ten (87 percent) adult Indian Americans in the United States are foreign born, compared with about 74 percent of adult Asian Americans and 16 percent of the adult US population overall. More than half of Indian-American adults are US citizens (56 percent), lower than the share among overall adult Asian population (70 percent) as well as the national share (91 percent).
More than three-quarters of Indian Americans (76 percent) speak English proficiently, compared with 63 percent of all Asian Americans and 90 percent of the US population overall. The median age of adult Indian Americans is 37, lower than for adult Asian Americans (41) and the national median (45).
Although over four fifths of Indians belong to Hindu religion in India, only about half (51%) of Indian Americans are Hindu, while nearly all Asian-American Hindus (93%) trace their heritage to India. 18% of Indian Americans identified themselves as Christians; 10% said they were Muslim.
More than seven-in-ten (71 percent) adult Indian Americans are married, a share significantly higher than for all Asian Americans (59 percent) and for the nation (51 percent). The share of unmarried mothers was much lower among Indian Americans (2.3 percent) than among all Asian Americans (15 percent) and the population overall (37 percent).
The first Asian Indians or Indian Americans, as they are also known, arrived in America as early as the middle of the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, about 2,000 Indians, most of them Sikhs (a religious minority from India’s Punjab region), settled on the west coast of the United States, having come in search of economic opportunity. Other Asian Indians came as merchants and traders; many worked in lumber mills and logging camps in the western states of Oregon, Washington, and California, where they rented bunkhouses, acquired knowledge of English, and assumed Western dress.
Between 1910 and 1920, as agricultural work in California began to become more abundant and better paying, many Indian immigrants turned to the fields and orchards for employment. For many of the immigrants who had come from villages in rural India, farming was both familiar and preferable. Some Indians eventually settled permanently in the California valleys where they worked. Because there was virtually no immigration by Indian women during this time, it was not unheard of for Indian males to marry Mexican women and raise families.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, about 100 Indian students also studied in universities across America. A small group of Indian immigrants also came to America as political refugees from British rule. The immigration of Indians to America was tightly controlled by the American government during this time, and Indians applying for visas to travel to the United States were often rejected by U.S. diplomats in major Indian cities like Bombay and Calcutta. The Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) was organized in 1907 to encourage the expulsion of Asian workers, including Indians.
In July 1946, Congress passed a bill allowing naturalization for Indians and, in 1957, the first Asian Indian Congressman, Dalip Saund, was elected to Congress. Like many early Indian immigrants, Saund came to the United States from Punjab and had worked in the fields and farms of California. He had also earned a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. While more educated and professional Indians began to enter America, immigration restrictions and tight quotas ensured that only small numbers of Indians entered the country prior to 1965. Overall, approximately 6,000 Asian Indians immigrated to the United States between 1947 and 1965.
From 1965 onward, a wave of Indian immigration began, spurred by a change in U.S. immigration law that lifted prior quotas and restrictions and allowed significant numbers of Asians to immigrate. Between 1965 and 1974, Indian immigration to the United States increased at a rate greater than that from almost any other country.
This wave of immigrants was very different from the earliest Indian immigrants—Indians that emigrated after 1965 were overwhelmingly urban, professional, and highly educated and quickly engaged in gainful employment in many U.S. cities. Many had prior exposure to Western society and education and their transition to the United States was therefore relatively smooth. More than 100,000 such professionals and their families entered the U.S. in the decade after 1965.
Almost 40 percent of all Indian immigrants who entered the United States in the decades after 1965 arrived on student or exchange visitor visas, in some cases with their spouses and dependents. Most of the students pursued graduate degrees in a variety of disciplines. They were often able to find promising jobs and prosper economically, and many became permanent residents and then citizens.
The 1990 U.S. census reported 570,000 Asian Indians in America. In general, the Asian Indian community has preferred to settle in the larger American cities rather than smaller towns, especially in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. This appears to be a reflection of both the availability of jobs in larger cities, and the personal preference of being a part of an urban, ethnically diverse environment, one which is evocative of the Indian cities that many of the post-1965 immigrants came from.
Indian Americans are more evenly spread out than other Asian Americans. About 24 percent of adult Indian Americans live in the West, compared with 47 percent of Asian Americans and 23 percent of the US population overall. More than three-in-ten (31 percent) Indian Americans live in the Northeast, 29 percent live in the South, and the rest (17 percent) live in the Midwest.
Despite their successes, they have been also subjected to discrimination and racist attacks. According to a recent report called “Communities on Fire” by the Washington, DC-based group South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), hate crimes against Indian Americans and other South Asian Americans surged 45% from November 8, 2016, to November 7, 2017. The group recorded 302 incidents during that period, 213 of them being direct physical or verbal assaults
The Indian American community continues to play an important role in shaping the relationship between India, the largest democracy and the US, the greatest democracy in the world. “The model minority stereotype stems from the “non-threatening nature” of the Indian immigrant — a label bestowed by the white counterpart. The Indian American community is seen as “successful” – a prototype to be followed by fellow minorities,” Huffington Post wrote.
“Indian-Americans are tremendously important and we hope they would be increasingly visible not only in the government, but also in all parts of American life,” said Maya Kassandra Soetoro-Ng, maternal half-sister of Obama, adding that the President was very proud of the community. “It is certainly a reflection of how important India is and how important Indian-Americans are to the fabric of the nation. I would just like to celebrate all of the contribution artistic, political and so much more of the community. It is time we come to recognize fully the contribution of the Indian-American community here,” said Maya.
Reliance Industries (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Architect Balkrishna Doshi, and human rights lawyer Indira Jaising have been featured in Fortune magazine’s 50 Greatest Leaders of 2018.
Fortune’s list “of the thinkers, speakers, and doers who are stepping up to meet today’s challenges” also includes Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Ranking Ambani at 24th place, Fortune said that he had “in less than two years, brought mobile data to the masses and completely upended the country’s telecom market”. “Since Ambani, chief of the $47 billion conglomerate Reliance Industries, launched Jio — the first mobile network in the world to be entirely IP-based — in September 2016, the company has signed up a staggering 168 million subscribers.
“The secret? Offering dirt-cheap data and free calls (and plowing billions of dollars into the infrastructure that transmits them). The effect, dubbed ‘Jio-fication’, has driven India’s higher-price carriers to drop costs (if not run them out of business), and it fueled a 1,100 per cent rise in India’s monthly data consumption,” it said.
Lawyers Collective Founder Indira Jaising has been ranked 20. “When the poorest in India need a voice, they find one in Jaising, a lawyer who has dedicated her life to battling injustice,” Fortune said. “She has fought on behalf of victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, helped Syrian Christian women in India win property rights equal to their male counterparts’, and helped draft India’s first domestic violence law. “Her work has recently led her to Myanmar, where she was appointed by the UN to lead an investigation into the persecution of Rohingya Muslims,” it added.
Ranking Doshi at 43, Fortune said he is the winner of architecture’s highest honour this year – the Pritzker Prize – and has spent the bulk of his 70-year career championing accessible housing, earning the nickname of “the architect for the poor”.
“His designs include the Aranya low-cost housing project in Indore, a labyrinth of homes and courtyards that provide around 80,000 residents with a balance of open spaces and communal living, and the mixed-income Life Insurance Corporation Housing in Ahmedabad, where several generations of a family can occupy levels of the same building.
“Underlying all his work is the ideal that all economic classes deserve good housing,” it said. The first rank in this year’s list goes to “The Students” of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and other schools in the US that suffered from gun violence.
This year’s list includes Bill and Melinda Gates, tennis star Serena Williams, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Tencent CEO Huateng ‘Pony’ Ma, Chinese environmentalist Ma Jun, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and Hollywood actor-producer Reese Witherspoon.
India’s financial inclusion efforts have won recognition from the World Bank, as their data indicates 55% of new bank accounts opened globally are from India, financial services secretary Rajiv Kumar said on Saturday.
“World Bank Global Findex Report recognises India’s Financial Inclusion efforts. Of the 51.4 crore bank accounts opened from 2014-17 globally, a whopping 55% from India” he said in a tweet.
The World Bank report released on Friday cited the success of the Jan Dhan Yojana — the government’s initiative aimed at bringing masses within the formal banking system.
The total number of Jan Dhan account holders has risen to 31.44 crore in March, 2018, from 28.17 crore a year earlier, according to the government data.
As per the World Bank Global Findex Report, the percentage of adult bank account holders in India increased to 80% in 2017 as compared to 53% in 2014 and 35% in 2011, he said.
Women at the forefront, he said, highlights a sharp fall in gender gap from 20% in 2014 to 6% in 2017 in bank accounts due to Government efforts.
The report acknowledges impact of government policy in reducing gaps in bank account ownership between rich and poor to 5% in 2017, down from 15% in 2014, he added. The Global Findex Report, 2017 released by the World Bank noted the rapid increase in financial inclusion that has taken place in India and how the number of account holders in the country has risen from 35% of the adults in 2011 and 53% in 2014 to 80 % in 2017.
This, it states, is comparable to 80% of adults in China who have an account. The Report also attributes this progress as being driven by the Jan Dhan Yojana policy which has used biometric ID to expand access to financial services.
It may be pertinent to note that the Report sources its data largely from surveys that were conducted in the summer of 2017.
Hundreds of business enthusiasts, including several Indian titans and entrepreneurs attended the 14th annual India Business Conference on Saturday, April 7th, at Columbia University, a day-long conference presented by the South Asian Business Association (SABA), discussing, ‘India: Unlocking the Growth Engine.’ Prominent among those attended the event at the heart of the world were, the Consul General of India in New York, Sandeep Chakravorty, Hikmet Ersek, the President, CEO and Director of Western Union; Salman Khurshid, the former Minister of External Affairs and Subramanian Swamy, the former Minister of Law, Justice and Commerce.
The India Business Conference is the premier India-focused forum that inspires thought-leadership and generates discussions around the business, social, political, and creative undercurrents that permeate Indian life. The conference brought together the nation’s most influential and insightful voices in analyzing India’s growth trajectory, discuss its economic and socio-political components and debate strategies for businesses to grow over the next decade.
Both Khurshid and Swamy spoke about the economic growth rate of India since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. “India is a remarkable destination for investment; India is on the move; India is an emerging economy and India has a bright future lying ahead,” Khurshid said in his opening remarks, talking about how the economy of India has grown in the areas of food, health, housing and education after the election of Modi as prime minister.
“The critical problem in our country was how we can integrate the rural economy with the urban economy. How do we change the terms of trade, how do we shift the industry to agriculture,” Khurshid asked the roomful of business enthusiasts, adding “we must not forget that India still has a huge number of people who live below the poverty line, who live without hope and aspiration to become a part of this ‘New India,’ the India of Narendra Modi.”
He also touched upon the fact that people in India have a mobile phone but don’t have the capacity to pay a doctor, send their children to school or even travel five to 10 kilometers. Khurshid concluded his remarks by stating that India is in a crisis due to the many social norms that the population of the country disagrees on and so now “we have to have faith in democracy. In democracy, you have to understand that the dialogue and conversations in a democracy are very critical. You cannot have a democracy based only on numbers; a democracy has to be based on communication. The trouble in India today is that we have forgotten that communication is an integral part of democracy and we have restricted ourselves to numbers only.”
Swamy focused his remarks on the development of India’s economy since May 26, 2014, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office, but touched upon issues like demonetization and GST. “First of all I would like to say that the BJP came to power after 33 years in full majority and it is not based only on the economic performance that we promised but we also made an appeal for the unity of nationalistic forces, which our critics define as ‘Hindutva,’ so that we can fight corruption,” Swamy said.
“It is our view, mine in particular, that past history shows that pure economic performance does not guarantee the ladder to success. In a brief period of two-and-a-half years, Morarji Desai produced one of the best economic situations particularly for the people because it controlled prices to such an extent that human ration cards became unfashionable. But he lost the election. Narsimha Rao produced a miracle of sorts; he abolished the soviet economic system and brought in a market economy. But he too lost,” Swamy added.
Swamy informed all the attendees that “during the last four-and-a-half years there has been an acceleration of growth of GDP” in India and that prior to 2014, those growth rates were decelerating.
It was within the first two years after the 2014 election that the growth rates started to increase again. However, they have been decreasing since the 2016-2017 financial year and have come down to six percent a year which is not enough because India needs to have at least a 10 percent growth rate each year for the next 10 years in order to solve the problems of unemployment and inequality, he said.
Along with mentioning the fact that the rate of domestic sales has declined in the past four years because of high interest rates and the labor laws need to be changed, Swamy announced that the idea of demonetization was his when he was the chairman of strategic action under Prime Minister Modi. Swamy concluded his remarks on a hopeful note about how the youngsters of India are the future of the country and will take India to a higher level.
In a fireside chat with Ersek and Columbia University professor Stephen P. Zeldes, Ersek said that Western Union has licenses to operate in over 200 countries and with 50 million customers, they are able to transfer a total of $150 billion worldwide each year with 31 transactions taking place every second. Ersek also talked about trust and how that has been the company’s strength for all these years when transferring money to India and other countries.
“More than 50 percent of the people who receive money through Western Union are female, mainly mothers who are worried about their children’s future and thus tend to spend their money more wisely than males,” Ersek said.
Now in the growing age of digitization, many are relying on sending and receiving money on their mobile devices through the Western Union app and Ersek reassured an audience member that there is no need to worry about crypto currencies because for Western Union it depends on the environment as “it occurs in closed environments” and Western Union customers are in a more open one, especially in India.
Others who spoke at the conference included: Francisco D’Souza, the CEO of Cognizant; Anjali Bansal, the former MD of TPG Private Equity; Gaurav Dalmia, the Chairman of Dalmia Group Holdings; Sheena Iyengar, a S.T. Lee Professor of Business; Ananth Narayanan, the CEO Myntra & Jabong; Shankar Narayanan, the former MD of Carlyle Group; Ashwini Tewari, the Country Head of the U.S. Operations at State Bank of India; Meera Vasudevan, Co-founder of Tasty Bite Eatables; Arvind Panagariya, the Ex Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog; Sanjay Nath, the Co-founder & Managing Partner of Blume Ventures; Deepak Ohri, the CEO of Lebua Hotels and Resorts; Kshitij Bhati, the former Warburg Pincus; and, Musthafa PC, the CEO & Co-founder of iD Fresh Food (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott met with the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, in New Delhi, March 28. During the meeting, Governor Abbott thanked the Prime Minister for his hospitality and spoke on the importance of continuing to grow Texas-India relations both economically and culturally. This marks the first time the Prime Minister has met with a United States Governor, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
“Texas is continuing to grow relations with India both economically & culturally. A productive meeting today in New Delhi with Prime Minister @narendramodi,” Gov. Abbott tweeted a few hours after the meeting. According to the Governor’s office, Texas is 2nd among all U.S. states for exports to India with exports valued at nearly $3.4 billion in 2017.
“I am extremely grateful to Prime Minister Modi for welcoming me to his country and for the opportunity to discuss the meaningful relationship between Texas and India,” Abbott is quoted saying in the release. “While Texas and India have long maintained an important economic relationship, this trip has also highlighted our commonly shared values of family, faith, community and hard work. These are the bonds that we will continue to build on, and I look forward to growing this partnership even more after this successful trip,” the Governor added.
The meeting which took place at the Prime Minister’s residence, lasted more than an hour. Among the topics the two leaders discussed were Hurricane Harvey relief efforts, the Indian-American community in Texas, healthcare, defense, their respective economies, and energy. The The Governor talked about how productive his trip has been and the potential it will have in creating more jobs and investment for the people of Texas.
The Governor and Prime Minister spoke on how they can continue to strengthen the strong bond between Texas and India and reaffirmed their commitment to continuing the successful partnership, the press release said.
The Governor also met with India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry and Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu the same day. “Texas is working to establish a direct flight from Texas to India,” and the meeting was held to further that goal, the Governor’s Facebook page said. The two also discussed mutually beneficial trade.
On March 26, while in Mumbai, Gov. Abbott closed a deal with JSW Steel to expand its operations in Baytown, Texas, that the governor’s office said, will create 500 new jobs and expand economic growth in Texas.
“The Memorandum signed by Greg Abbott and JSW USA is part of our long term strategy to enhance our U.S. footprint,” Parth Jindal of JSW Group is quoted saying in a press release. “It reiterates our commitment to stay invested and grow in the U.S. market. It also provides JSW USA an opportunity to participate in USA’s infrastructure development and job creation priorities,” Jindal added. “Access to natural gas at extremely economical prices and the abundant availability of scrap steel in Texas make conditions very conducive for manufacturing through the Electric Arc Furnace route,” Jindal said.
Earlier, on March 25, Gov. Abbott addressed the Rotary Club of Bombay, touting the Texas economy and the importance of strengthening the bond between India and Texas.
Governor Abbott also emphasized the importance of trade with India, noting that Texas is the 2nd largest exporter to India in the U.S., and the 4th largest importer of Indian goods in the U.S., a press release from his office said.
“It’s not just the exchange of goods that connects the people of India and Texas,” Abbott is quoted saying at the Rotary meeting. “The values that we share are founded on family, faith, commitment to our communities, and hard work.”
Following his address, the Governor participated in a question and answer session with members of the Rotary Club of Bombay which is one of the oldest rotaries in India founded in 1929.
Dallas News, which accompanied the Governor and his delegation to India, reported Abbott has 15 Texans in his delegation, including “some Indian American businessmen who have flown to India at their own expense to accompany him for part of his nine-day jaunt.”
The governor also visited the headquarters of the multinational Mahindra & Mahindra in south Mumbai, where he praised the company and its operations in Texas. Mahindra North America. donated $1.5 million in cash and kind after the disastrous Hurricane Harvey last September, according to Dallas News. “That shows us that you’re more than just a business operating in Texas. You are a genuine part of our community,” the Governor is quoted saying in the Dallas News report. He also praised Indian immigrants in Texas, describing them as “very productive, very hard-working, very committed to the ideals that … underlie both America and the American dream,” the news report stated.
The 910-carat Lesotho Legend was sold for $40 million in a tender in Antwerp, Gem Diamonds Ltd. said Tuesday. The company found the stone, which is about the size of two golf balls, at its Letseng mine in the African country this year.
While it’s the most Gem has yet received for a diamond, other companies have sold for more. Lucara Diamond Corp. got a record $63 million for an 813-carat stone last year and $53 million for the 1,109-carat diamond it found at the same time, which was the second-biggest in history.
And another 2 precious world biggest diamonds Niravmodi and Mehul choksi escaped out of India. The Letseng mine is famous for the size and quality of the diamonds it produces and has the highest average selling price in the world. Gem sold a 357-carat stone for $19.3 million in 2015 and in 2006 found the 603-carat Lesotho Promise.
So far this year, the company has found six diamonds bigger than 100 carats, putting it on track for its best year yet. Twitter Appoints ‘Distinguished Software Engineer’ Parag Agrawal as New Chief Technology Officer
Parag Agrawal appointed COO of Twitter
Twitter has appointed distinguished software engineer Parag Agrawal, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology at Mumbai, as its chief technology officer, according to an update at the micro-blogging site. The Indian American computer scientist takes the position most recently held by Adam Messinger, who left in late 2016, CNBC reported March 8.
The appointment of Agrawal, who completed his doctorate in computer science from Stanford University in 2011, was announced internally in October 2017. Agrawal joined Twitter in October 2011 as an ads engineer, and he most recently held the title of distinguished software engineer.
Before joining Twitter, he did research internships at AT&T, Microsoft and Yahoo. His contributions at Twitter include leading efforts to increase the relevance of tweets in Twitter users’ timelines using artificial intelligence. AI also helps Twitter in preventing abuse on the social network.
“In his capacity as CTO, he’s focused on scaling a cohesive machine learning and AI approach across our consumer and revenue product and infrastructure teams,” a Twitter spokesman told CNBC.
Twitter also announced this week that it intends to hire a director of social science in an attempt to “increase the collective health, openness and civility of public conversation” on its platform.
HAB BANK, nation’s oldest and largest South Asian American bank, hosted a dinner on Friday, February 16, for its Iselin Branch valued customers at The Marigold, Somerset, New Jersey. The event was organized by the Bank’s Iselin Branch to thank and pay tribute to the community that the Bank serve. Over 300 guests included successful entrepreneurs and professionals who attended the gala dinner. Mr. Girish Vazirani, Vice President & Branch Manager, Iselin Branch welcomed the guests and expressed HAB’s gratitude for their presence at the dinner.
In his welcome speech, HAB’s President & CEO Saleem Iqbal thanked the invited guests for taking time out from their busy schedule to be at the HAB’s Customer Appreciation Gala Dinner. The dinner coincided with HAB’s yearlong celebration of its 35 Years of service to the community. Mr. Iqbal devoted much of his speech highlighting the history of South Asian Community and presence in the United States, which dates back to 1820.
The origin was not without struggles and challenges. He pointed out that early migrants from South Asia paved the way to whole new generation of successful South Asians playing pivotal roles in a number of disciplines and industries. From software pioneers in Silicone Valley, mainstream politics, academia and to successful artists in TV and Films, South Asian community has made its mark. Mr. Iqbal highlighted some of the business leaders of South Asian origin that have become an integral part of American landscape and are contributing to our adopted home USA.
Since its charter in 1983, HAB has made great strides and is now the largest South Asian American bank in the United States. Mr. Iqbal highlighted that HAB’s success and progress is primarily because of its dedicated employees and customers at each and every branch.
Besides a large number of clients, HAB’s Imran Habib, Rizwan Qureshi, Zilay Wahidy, Girish Vazirani and several staff members and senior executives attended the event. Multiple media outlets such as ARY Digital, TV Asia, TV 9 and India Life & Times, and Desi Talk extensively covered HAB’s Gala Dinner.
HAB BANK was founded in 1983 and since its inception, it has played a key role in nurturing and strengthening the South Asian community with branch network located in New York, New Jersey and California. Through the years, the Bank has evolved in response to needs of its customers and maintains a close relationship with the community it serves.
The Bank’s core products are Commercial Real Estate Mortgages, International Trade Services, US Small Business Loans and a well-designed commercial banking products and services for small to medium sized businesses. The Bank also has a wide range of consumer products and services including personal checking, savings, CDs, and full-service online banking. The Bank is fully committed to remain engaged and pro-active in meeting the banking requirements of its customer and, above all, continues to work towards “Building Relationships”.
US President Donald Trump called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “fantastic” and “beautiful” man but ratcheted up the rhetoric on bilateral trade, saying he wasn’t impressed by the recent cuts in tariff on Harley-Davidson motorbikes sold in India.
“Now, the prime minister, who I think is a fantastic man, called me the other day. He said, ‘We are lowering it (the tariff on Harley-Davidson) to 50%.’ I said, ‘Okay, but so far we’re getting nothing.’ So we get nothing, he gets 50 (percent), and they think we’re doing — like they’re doing us a favour,” Trump said at a meeting with state governors at the White House.“
“He (Modi) said it so beautifully. He’s a beautiful man. And he said, ‘I just want to inform you that we have reduced it to 75, but we have further reduced it to 50.’ And I said, ‘Huh.’ What do I say? Am I supposed to be thrilled?”
Trump was referring to a phone conversation he had had with Modi on February 8, in which they had discussed Maldives, Afghanistan and a whole range of bilateral issues, including trade. India earlier used to levy a 100% tariff on motorcycles larger than 800cc, but as of this month, the rates have dropped down to a flat 50%. But the duty on Indian motorbikes sold in the US is 0%.
According to reports, Harley-Davidson India has an annual sale of 3,700, but Trump’s claims that Indian motorcycles sell by the “thousands and thousands” in the United States has been called an exaggeration — the US is not among major importers of Indian bikes.
Trump has publicly litigated his case against tariff rates on Harley-Davidsons and his despite his glowing references to Modi, his tone has grown sharper, even as his administration presses India to lower tariff on other goods and remove non-tariff trade barriers.
“So they have a motorcycle or a motorbike that comes into our country — the number is zero. We get zero. They get 100%, brought down to 75; brought down, now, to 50. Okay,” Trump told his governors.
Trump and Modi share a good working relationship, according to officials on both sides, but the US leader is not known to pass up an opportunity to speak his mind. He also likes to quote Modi’s remarks about Afghanistan — the Indian leader, visiting the White House last June, told him that “never has a country given so much away for so little in return” as the United States had in Afghanistan.
Apple has landed a series package from M. Night Shyamalan and British TV writer Tony Basgallop, which recently hit the premium/digital marketplace. The untitled half-hour psychological thriller has received a 10-episode straight-to-series order from the tech giant.
The streaming service has given a straight-to-series order to a psychological thriller series from writer Tony Basgallop (“24: Legacy”) that Shyamalan will executive produce, reports Variety. Plot details for the series are being kept under wraps. The half-hour series has received a 10-episode order, with Shyamalan also set to direct the first episode, adds the report.
Shyamalan’s Blinding Edge Pictures will help produce the untitled Apple thriller series, with Indian American Ashwin Rajan (“Split,” “Wayward Pines”) serving as executive producer. Jason Blumenthal, Todd Black and Steve Tisch of Escape Artists will also executive produce, with Taylor Latham co-executive producing.
Shyamalan, known for blockbusters like “The Sixth Sense,” and the more recent “Split,” is currently working on the post-production of “Glass,” a sequel which brings together the narratives of the 2000 film, “Unbreakable,” and the 2016 thriller, “Split.”
Actors Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, who played the characters of David Dunn and Elijah Price, respectively, in “Unbreakable,” will reprise their parts in “Glass,” which is expected to release in 2019.
This is the latest straight-to-series order for Apple which has been quickly building up its slate of originals. Over the last couple of months, Apple has ordered a Damien Chazelle drama series, Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories reboot, a morning show drama starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, a comedy series toplined by Kristin Wiig, a space drama from Ron Moore, and world-building drama series See from Steven Knight and Francis Lawrence. On the unscripted side, Apple has greenlighted docuseries Home from Matt Tyrnauer and Matthew Weaver.
Nirav Modi’s name is a stamp of corporate India’s growing global prestige. On Hollywood red carpets, his diamonds have sparkled on the necklines and dangled from the earlobes of actors and models like Kate Winslet, Dakota Johnson and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
Back in India, billboards above the traffic jams of New Delhi bear the image of Priyanka Chopra, a Bollywood star and former Miss World who is fast becoming a household name in the United States, also draped in Modi’s jewels.
Actress Priyanka Chopra, the global brand ambassador for Nirav Modi, is seeking legal opinion to terminate her contract now that the jeweler has been accused of committing a major banking fraud, her spokesperson said on Feb. 15.
Officials at the nation’s federal investigative agency announced it was looking for Modi as law enforcement officials fanned out to raid his jewelry stores and other businesses in Mumbai and New Delhi.
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials told reporters the agency had on Feb. 4 issued a lookout circular in the country for Modi, who they say had left four weeks earlier.
Modi has not yet responded to the allegations and could not be reached for comment. His flagship company, Firestar Diamond, has said it had no involvement in the case. The setback in Modi’s climb to fame and fortune was abrupt, even by the rough-and-tumble standards of one of the world’s fastest growing major economies.
Amid revelations that Nirav Modi was the prime accused in a Rs 11,515 crore fraud involving the Punjab National Bank, there was speculation that Chopra would sue the brand for non-payment of dues.
“There are speculative reports that Priyanka Chopra has sued Nirav Modi. This is not true. However, she is currently seeking legal opinion with respect to terminating her contract with the brand in light of allegations of financial fraud against Nirav Modi,” the spokesperson said in a statement. Nirav Modi’s name is a stamp of corporate India’s growing global prestige. On Hollywood red carpets, his diamonds have sparkled on the necklines and dangled from the earlobes of actors and models like Kate Winslet, Dakota Johnson and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
The news was a shock for the circles in which Modi moved. As recently as last month, he was at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Indian media carried a group photograph with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the foreground and Nirav Modi, who is no relation, grinning between rows of Indian business leaders behind him.
“Top industrialists invited him home to display his collections,” said a Mumbai investment banker at a U.S.-based firm who has worked directly with Modi’s company. “There was a personal touch in everything he sold. Nirav Modi is a brand.”
Firestar Group, the parent company Modi controls as a majority shareholder, saw its revenue grow over three years from 103 billion rupees (about $1.6 billion at current rates) to some 147 billion rupees ($2.3 billion) by the 2016-17 fiscal year, according to figures previously provided by the company.
In 2010, Modi launched an eponymous jewellery business branded NIRAV MODI, in capitals, with the tagline “Haut Diamantaire”. New boutiques in Las Vegas and Hawaii have since been added to a stable that stretches from New York to London to Beijing.
He became a man whose diamond necklaces were sold, with his name attached, by Sotheby’s: “pure feminine elegance,” says a Hong Kong auction catalogue note of one 85.33 carat diamond necklace.
The auction house posted an online slideshow of jewellery-on-stars at the 2017 Oscars and highlighted supermodel Karlie Kloss having “a major Nirav Modi moment with her diamond ‘Mughal’ choker.”
It takes a lot of hard work to get into places like Yale and Stanford. But once students make it to the Ivy League, many find that while they’re ready to tackle Shakespeare and comparative political systems, they’re lost when it comes to building emotionally rich, and balanced lives.
To that end, a growing number of top universities are offering courses that aim to put students on the happiness track. A week after Yale opened registration for its debut course “Psychology and the Good Life” this January, a quarter of the undergraduate population—more than 1,180 students—had signed up, making it the most popular course ever at the university. Meanwhile, one in six undergraduates at Stanford take a course that teaches students to apply design thinking to the “wicked problem” of creating fulfilling lives and careers. And at McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, students have flocked to “Lessons of Community and Compassion,” a course on social connectedness and belonging—precisely the things they may have sacrificed to get into one of Canada’s top institutions.
“I think students are looking for meaning,” Peter Salovey, president of Yale, told Quartz at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Salovey, an early pioneer in research on emotional intelligence, says that while students today are more sophisticated and worldly than previous generations, they seem to be much less resilient. Their sense of vulnerability is driving them to search for purpose, in academic courses and beyond.
Laurie Santos, the psychology professor teaching the Yale class, says the message behind her course—helping students figure out what it means to live happier, more satisfying lives, and teaching them scientifically-tested strategies to achieve that goal—resonates with kids who are only now realizing the toll that academic rigor has taken on their sleep, mental health, and sense of social connectedness.
“Our intuitions about what to do to be happy are wrong.” “Our intuitions about what to do to be happy are wrong,” she says. We think we want to achieve high-powered positions or make a lot of money, even if that means sacrificing the things that make us balanced and sane—human connection, exercise, rest, and activities that allow us to recharge. “This is a great moment when we have rigorous research on positive psychology—what makes us happy, but also on behavioral change,” says Santos. Her course covers practical topicsranging from the psychological benefits of charitable giving to how to pick a meaningful career. And because science shows that grade-seeking can undermine happiness, she encourages the students to take the course pass-fail.
Mental health issues among young adults are on the rise at universities around the world. “I was really surprised at the levels of anxiety and depression students face,” Santos says. A 2013 report by the Yale College Council found that more than half of undergraduates sought mental health services during their time on campus. A 2009 survey of 80,121 students, conducted by the American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment, showed that 39% of college students felt hopeless during the school year, and 25% felt so depressed they found it hard to function. Nearly half (47%) reported feeling overwhelming anxiety, and 84% said they felt generally overwhelmed by all they have to do.
Teaching students how to be happier isn’t just about helping them as individuals—it can also be about helping them be better citizens. In the course “Lessons of Community and Compassion: Overcoming Social Isolation and Building Social Connectedness through Policy and Program Development,” McGill University professor of practice Kim Samuel introduces students to some of the most socially isolated people on the planet—refugees and migrants, indigenous communities, families struggling with food insecurity; the displaced, disabled, and disconnected. One of the goals of her course, she says, is to teach students what it feels like to have a sense of safety and community in their own lives, so that they can help build connectedness in more disadvantaged populations. “All students have experienced some degree of social isolation in their lives,” she says, “and that recognition is the royal road to reciprocity.”
“We’re adding the ‘life’ component explicitly back to the college experience.” Many of her students say it’s a life-altering experience. Jeremy Monk, who took Samuel’s course and is now a graduate student at Columbia University, says, “I think a lot of us down the road, when we look back on where we started … this is going to be the place that we started, and where our ideas started to blossom, and where we really were given the chance to feel like we can make a difference and we are the leaders of change.”
Stanford’s “Designing Your Life” course, meanwhile, is taught by Bill Burnett, head of Stanford’s design program, and Dave Evans, who led the design of Apple’s first mouse and co-founded the gaming company Electronic Arts before becoming a lecturer in the design program.
Evans says everyone is trying to answer the question posed by poet Mary Oliver: “What is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” “None of us got the manual explaining how to figure out the answer,” he adds. Soon-to-be graduates are facing that question with immediacy, and under pressure. “They’ve been wonderfully trained to get into and attend schools for 22 years—but not how to live in the world and to determine what “a life” means to them,” Evans says. He notes that being good at school is not the same thing as being good at life.
The Stanford courses have been such a success that the university’s Life Design Lab, co-founded by Evans and Burnett, now helps other colleges and universities to develop their own versions of the program. Evans says similar courses are now being taught at Northwestern, University of Vermont, Dartmouth, University of Michigan and MIT. “We’re adding the ‘life’ component explicitly back to the college experience,” Evans says. “It’s attractive because the need is great, the priority is high, and there’s little offered to help.”
The pursuit of happiness is, of course, hardly a new development. “Plato was talking about this,” Santo says. Scores of people have bought best-selling books on achieving happiness, from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project to Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. And as the New York Times notes, courses on positive psychology are a popular draw for college students; 900 students enrolled in a Harvard lecture titled Positive Psychology in 2006.
What’s new is the growing body of scientific research on what actually makes people happy—and a sense from universities that today’s undergraduates are particularly in need of guidance.
Parents hold some responsibility for students’ lack of resilience, says Salovey. Parents’ laser-sharp, lifelong focus on getting their kids into top universities means that students are terrified of messing up. “It’s a kind of parenting that’s focused on college admissions and mitigating risks. We have to help students develop their own voice, to pick themselves up after failure.”
“We have to help students develop their own voice, to pick themselves up after failure.” There’s another advantage to offering classes on happiness: They underscore that mental health and emotional balance aren’t things that young people can afford to keep putting off. According to Sonja Lyuboirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside and author of the The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, 40% of our happiness is conscious, intentional, and under our control. “It takes the work you have to put in to be a great violinist, it takes work every day,” Santos says. Happiness is never a lost cause, but the science does suggests that becoming a happy person is not a quick fix. Taking a college course on the subject may be the best short cut there is.
Santos will only teach one semester of the Yale course. But a five-part seminar-style series, “The Science of Well-Being,” will be available in March, for free, on the online education site Coursera.
So far, Santos has taught five sessions of “Psychology and the Good Life.” She says the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “They are taking these ideas to heart in a way I did not expect,” she says. Alumni are already writing her to request a copy of the syllabus, as are kindergarten teachers and PTA heads. It’s not just young people who need help with happiness, she notes: “This is a human problem.”
Three men in India were arrested Monday night after police uncovered a huge scheme that targeted more than 11,000 people in the United States. Con men posing as officials from the Internal Revenue Service left thousands of voice messages claiming to have found irregularities in tax records of the targets. The messages instructed them to call back or face legal action. But the phone number they gave connected unsuspecting people in the United States to Indian con men sitting in a second-floor office in an upscale locality called Koregaon Park in the western Indian city of Pune.
India’s in-demand call center industry has contributed to the rapid development of sleepy cities such as Pune in the past three decades, drawing hundreds of thousands of ambitious job seekers to call centers for multinational firms. But in recent years, Indian con artists are using English accents and Americanized names, often utilized in call centers, for a different reason: to cheat unsuspecting foreigners.
Indian police officers have sent thousands of emails to victims in the United States asking for details about how they were cheated. Only three people have replied, said Assistant Police Inspector Sagar Panmand from Pune’s cybercrime branch, who raided the trio’s call center.
Indian investigators said they still don’t know how many people in the United States were affected by the scheme or how much money the scammers took. They also said it is unclear how the computer-savvy con men got the victims to transfer money to India but said it probably involved the use of gift cards from Target, iTunes and Walmart.
Panmand said early investigations suggest there are at least two similar call centers in Delhi and the state of Rajasthan that police are trying to trace.
Authorities learned about the Koregaon Park call center after they discovered another ring of scammers in January, who had targeted users of Apple products in the United States. At least 1,500 people in the United States received pop-up notifications on their iPhones, iPads or Macs saying their systems had crashed. The pop-up message also gave a phone number of an Apple service center – which was the phone number for a fake call center in India. The scammers then asked their targets to pay for the service of “fixing” their systems by buying iTunes credit that could be transferred to the con men and cashed in.
During the raid Monday night, police seized hard drives and laptops with the personal details of 11,000 people in the United States. “They had bank details, bank account numbers, phone numbers, addresses, everything,” Panmand said. “American authorities will need to do their own investigations to find out how all this data got out.”
He said Pune police are in contact with the Federal Trade Commission and will support U.S. authorities in their investigations. The FTC did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
Richmond Hill, New York. On Wednesday, July 7th, Chhaya CDC launched the expansion of its Free Tax Prep Services in the historically underserved area of Richmond Hill, Queens. Chhaya began to offer these services last year with the support of NYC’s Department of Consumer Affairs and helped nearly 100 families claim the powerful asset building tool of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). This year Chhaya continues to offer the tax preparation services in almost seven additional languages. By working with Queens Public Library at the Lefferts Branch, Chhaya’s program will be one of two NYC Free Tax Prep tax sites serving the communities of Richmond Hill, South Richmond Hill, Ozone Park, and South Ozone Park. One out of every five households in these neighborhoods live in poverty and could benefit from access to free, professional-quality tax preparation services.
Chhaya CDC is the only South Asian and Indo-Caribbean community development organization, whose mission is advocate for and build economically stable, sustainable and thriving communities. Tax preparation is often a daunting and expensive endeavor for low to moderate income individuals, and often not seen as an opportunity. NYC Free Tax Prep increases awareness about tax credits that put money back in the pockets of working New Yorkers. Far too many qualified individuals do not take advantage of the EITC, leaving thousands of dollars on the table that can be put to good use – whether it’s education, paying off a loan, upgrading a household appliance, moving, etc.
“Chhaya’s Free Tax Prep program will be the first of its kind in this community, “said Chhaya CDC’s Executive Director Annetta Seecharran, “Building on our other immigration and housing counseling services in this neighborhood, this is an important next step in expanding Chhaya’s programs to the Richmond Hill community, which is a desert when it comes to social services. Each tax prep client will be provided a list of wrap around services connected to Chhaya’s work in housing, financial capability, and immigration.”
“The reason why Queens Library is able to provide free, high-quality services such as free tax preparation is because of our partnerships with outstanding organizations such as Chhaya CDC and government agencies such as the Department of Consumer Affairs,” said Queens Library President and CEO Dennis M. Walcott. “They make it possible for us to meet our mission to build strong communities and give our customers the information and resources to help them grow personally and intellectually.”
“Since 2015 we have helped New Yorkers file more than 425,000 returns for free and claim refund-boosting tax credits that can be pivotal in helping them pay bills, get out of debt and save for their future,” said DCA Commissioner Lorelei Salas. “We are proud to be working with Chhaya CDC again this year to expand our trusted and professional free tax prep services to previously underserved communities. I encourage all New Yorkers to take advantage of this free program to ensure that their returns are completed accurately and that they are receiving every credit and deduction available to them, including the EITC.”
NYC Free Tax Prep is offered at Lefferts Library on Wednesdays: February 7, 21; March 7, 21; and April 4 at 11 AM. This free service is available for families or individuals who earned below $66,000 in 2017.
In the early 20th century just a few hundred people emigrated from India to America each year and there were only about 5,000 folk of Indian heritage living in the United States. Today Indian-born Americans number 2m and they are probably the most successful minority group in the country. Compared with all other big foreign-born groups, they are younger, richer and more likely to be married and supremely well educated. On the west coast they are a mighty force in Silicon Valley; well-off Indians cluster around New York, too.
Like all immigrant groups, Indians have found niches in America’s vast economy. Half of all motels are owned by Indians, mainly Gujaratis. Punjabis dominate the franchises for 7-Eleven stores and Subway sandwiches in Los Angeles. The surge in Indians moving to America is also intimately linked to the rise of the technology industry. In the 1980s India loosened its rules on private colleges, leading to a large expansion in the pool of engineering and science graduates. Fear of the “Y2K” bug in the late 1990s served as a catalyst for them to engage with the global economy, with armies of Indian engineers working remotely from the subcontinent, or travelling to America on workers’ visas, to make sure computers did not fail at the stroke of midnight on December 31st 1999.
Today a quarter or more of the Indian-born workforce is employed in the tech industry. In Silicon Valley neighbourhoods such as Fremont and Cupertino, people of Indian origin make up a fifth of the population. Some 10-20% of all tech start-ups have Indian founders; Indians have ascended to the heights of the biggest firms, too.
Indians for decades have been playing an important role in global technology landscape. Indian IT pros have been an important cog in the machinery running technologly behemoths across the world. In fact, two of the world’s biggest technology companies — Google and Microsoft — are led by Indian-origin CEOs. Other than these two, there are many others who have made an indelible mark on the world of technology.
Satya Nadella. After a 22-year stint with Microsoft, Nadella was appointed as the chief executive officer of the company in February 2014. He previously held the position of executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group.
India-born Sundar Pichai was named as Google CEO on August 10, 2015. The 44-year-old head of Google was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and pursued education at IIT Kharagpur (B Tech), Stanford (MS) and Wharton (MBA); at Wharton, he was named a Siebel Scholar and Palmer Scholar.
Rajeev Suri joined Nokia in 1995 and held various positions before being appointed as president and CEO in April 2014. Suri’s ascedancy to Nokia CEO’s position came after Microsoft acquired Nokia’s mobile phone business. Previously, he was the head of the services, Nokia Siemens Networks 2007-2009.
Born in Hyderabad, Shantanu Narayen joined Adobe in 1998 as the senior vice president of worldwide product research and became the COO in 2005 and CEO in 2007. He holds a Bachelor in Science from Osmania University, an MBA from University of California, Berkley, and an MS from Bowling Green State University.
Sanjay Jha, CEO, Global Foundries, took over as CEO of Global Foundries, a semiconductor foundry that produces chips for giants like AMD, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and STMicroelectronics, in January 2014; before that he has served as the CEO of Motorola Mobility and COO of Qualcomm. He joined Motorola as co-CEO in 2008, while serving simultaneously as CEO of Motorola’s Mobile Devices Business.
George Kurian became the CEO and president of storage and data management company NetApp in June 2015, after serving as its executive vice president of product operations for nearly two years. Prior to joining NetApp, George was vice president and general manager of the Application Networking and Switching Technology Group at Cisco Systems. His diverse background also includes the role of vice president at Akamai Technologies,
Among the youngest CEOs in the software services sector, Francisco D’Souza, CEO, Cognizant, is a member of the company’s board of directors. D’Souza joined Cognizant as a co-founder in 1994 and went on to become its CEO in the year 2007. During his tenure as CEO, Cognizant’s employee base has grown from 55,000 to over 230,000.
Dinesh Paliwal is the president and CEO of Harman International, a premium audio gear brand that owns the likes of JBL, Becker, dbx, among others. Born in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, Paliwal holds a BE from IIT Roorkee, and MS and MBA from Miami University.
Ashok Vemuri is the CEO, Conduent Inc, the Xerox’s sibling business services unit that spun off into a separate company recently. In June 2016, the 110-year-old document technology company Xerox named former iGate CEO Ashok Vemuri as the new CEO of its back-office outsourcing company. A former Infosys veteran, Vemuri became CEO of Xerox’s business process outsourcing.
Indians, especially in Silicon Valley, are growing in prominence, influence, and sheer population. The promotion of Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, and Nikesh Arora are just a few more recent examples. The fact is that Silicon Valley is the epicenter of the technology companies and people that run the world, and it just so happens that Indians have flocked to it with great success. And they’ve done this with much smaller numbers than most other ethnic groups in the United States have.
Indians have always been rising in America. As James Crabtree of Financial Times suggests, “More than any other group of outsiders, it was the Indians who figured out that, to make it in startup land, it helps to have a social network of your own.”
In spite of exceptions like Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Asians and Asian Americans are underrepresented in executive suites at Silicon Valley companies. In recent years, the American tech industry has struggled to overcome a perception that, for all its talk of diversity, it remains inhospitable to women and minorities. Asians and Asian Americans, well-represented in junior levels throughout Silicon Valley, have mostly been missing from this conversation. But new research shows that Asians and Asian Americans remain conspicuously absent in the executive suite: Equal Employment Opportunity data taken from 2007 to 2015 found that white men and women were two times as likely as Asians to become executives and held three times the number of executive jobs.
The record for the industry’s marquee companies was even more dismal. The same data reveal that inn 2013, Asians and Asian Americans were found to comprise 27 percent of the workforce at Google, Intel, Yahoo, Hewlett Packard, and LinkedIn but hold just 13 percent of executive jobs.
This discrepancy is not limited to Silicon Valley: An Asia Society corporate survey conducted earlier this year found that more than one in four U.S. corporations had no Asian or Asian American representation at all. But in Silicon Valley, an industry that prides itself on its progressive nature, the struggle of Asians and Asian Americans to ascend the corporate ladder is one that receives comparatively little attention.
MSNBC anchor Richard Lui delivers the keynote address at the 2017 West Coast Diversity Leadership Forum (23 min., 50 sec.)
These workers are getting their foot in the door. So why aren’t they moving up the ranks? The answer appears to be a combination of two factors. Asians and Asian Americans, like other minority groups, are subject to racial discrimination in an industry where white Americans — particularly white men — retain an entrenched advantage. But Asians are also victimized by their perceived success, a factor that has made their pursuit of equality and justice appear less urgent than that of other groups.
Conversations with Asians and Asian Americans who work in Silicon Valley, all of whom spoke with Asia Blogunder an alias, reveal a frustration with this paradox. “Asians tend to be left out of diversity conversations,” Jennifer, a Taiwanese-American veteran of several startups, said. “Companies will ask themselves if they have enough women, black, or Latino workers and they forget that Asians should be represented.”
“We’re in this weird position of being privileged,” Neil, a Chinese-American engineer, added. “So, obviously, we should be allies and supportive of other groups. But often I find that we’re stuck in between.”
In 1966, the sociologist William Petersen first coined the term “model minority” to describe Asian Americans, a group whose population was rapidly growing following immigration reforms enacted the previous year. The theory was tantalizingly simple: Because of characteristics like diligence, obedience, and deference to authority, Asians and their children in the United States were able to earn more money and obtain college degrees at rates higher even than that of whites. Soon, the term “model minority” became a tool for criticizing African American and Latino groups whose relative poverty and lack of success could be blamed on an absence of stereotypically “Asian” values.
More than 50 years after its origin, the concept of the model minority is still being used as a wedge in discussions of race. In a widely-discussed piece published this April in New York, Andrew Sullivan wrote thatAsian Americans are among the “most prosperous, well-educated, and successful ethnic groups” in the United States because they maintained “solid two-parent family structures, had social networks that looked after each other, and placed enormous emphasis on education and hard work.” Their success, he said, posed a problem for the “social justice brigade” who could not explain why Asian Americans were seemingly undiminished by racism.
But the “model minority” theory does not account for the enormous differences among the nations, ethnicities, and religious groups classified as “Asian,” a description so broad that it is virtually meaningless. A disaggregation of education data among Asians in the United States found a huge discrepancy between Taiwanese-Americans, of whom 75 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and Laotians, for whom the figure is merely 11 percent. And that Asians have acquired a reputation for skill in math and science derives less from innate characteristics than from the fact that the first group of Asians to move to the United States after immigration reform in 1965 were overwhelmingly scientists, engineers, and doctors.
Even still, the perception of the “model minority” has had a pernicious effect on Asians working in Silicon Valley by inculcating a belief that they lack leadership qualities. Denise Peck, a co-author of a new report on diversity from Ascend, a research organization that has published reports about racial discrimination in Silicon Valley, argues that the stereotypical qualities behind Asian success have hindered Asian Americans in seeking leadership roles. Diligence and deference to authority are useful skills for getting hired. But “as you move up the ladder,” she said, “soft skills like communication, networking, and influencing become more important.”
Cultivating these soft skills is an important aspect of any job, but Asian Americans remain burdened by a widespread perception that they’re unfit for executive positions. “If you mention, say, ‘Asian male’ as one sort of group, there are immediate assumptions of the personality and characteristics of that person before you’ve really gotten to know them,” said John, a Chinese-American engineer. “You always feel like you’re working from that stereotype.”
Jennifer added that “there are a lot of leadership positions, whether for executives, management, or lead technical roles, that are based on someone within the organization thinking, ‘Oh, we need someone to run this team, who do I think would be a good candidate?'” she said. “And then they mentally conjure up an image of someone who tends to be white, male, and confident.”
In an age in which Americans have reckoned with racial and gender equality to a degree unseen in decades, Silicon Valley has positioned itself as a meritocratic oasis, a place where the world’s most talented coders and designers and engineers propel the American technology industry forward. Many of these men and women are Asians and Asian American who, in spite of exceptions like Google’s Sundar Pichai, have found their upward trajectory dimmed by stereotypes so insidious that they occasionally fail to register in conversations about diversity and equality.
“There’s a sort of ‘oppression Olympics’ going on,” said Jennifer. “Black and Latino populations are much worse off than Asians, so there’s a desire to focus on them. It’s harder for people to be sympathetic to Asians.”
The world is rapidly “running out of computing capacity”, the head of tech giant Microsoft has warned. Satya Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that superfast quantum computers were needed to solve some of the most difficult problems.
Nadella cited the quest to create a catalyst that can absorb carbon, in order to help tackle climate change. This, he cautioned, would likely not be achieved without an increase in computer processing power.
“Moore’s Law is kinda running out of steam,” Mr Nadella told assembled delegates, referring to the maxim that the power of computer chips doubles every two years. The Microsoft chief executive also took aim at so-called “re-skilling programs”, calling them “one of the greatest wastes of money”.
Such schemes, which are designed to retrain those whose professions have been lost to globalisation or automation, are often “done without a true understanding of where the labour market is going,” Nadella argued.
Instead, the India-born chief executive, who took over at the helm of Microsoft in 2014, said that reforming school curriculums was of paramount importance. “We can with some certainty say that we will need more people graduating from our schools who will need to be comfortable with these augmented realities,” he predicted.
“The fact that most curricula in schools still don’t recognise computer science like they do maths or physics is just crazy.” Nadella added: “We need middle school teachers of computer science of the highest quality.”
He also emphasized that artificial intelligence, on which Microsoft is increasingly focused, could be a part of the solution to joblessness, rather than merely its cause. Earlier, Klaus Schwab, the man behind the World Economic Forum, called for leading tech executives to consider the disruption that their products may cause to economic, political and social life.
“If we act now,” Schwab said, “we have the opportunity to ensure that technologies – such as artificial intelligence – sustainably and meaningfully improve the lives and prospects of as many people as possible.”
While the Trump administration and the right wing Republicans continue to mount their attack against foreign workers in this country, a new report has found that Silicon Valley would be lost without foreign-born technology workers.
About 71 percent of tech employees in the Valley are foreign born, compared to around 50 percent in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward region, according to a new report based on 2016 census data.
Many foreign tech workers are employed under the controversial H-1B visa — intended for specialty occupations — which has become a flashpoint in the U.S. cage fight over immigration, with opponents claiming it lets foreigners steal American jobs. Several companies and UC San Francisco have been accused of abusing the visa program by using it as a tool to outsource Americans’ jobs to workers from far-away lands.
Although 2016 data released by the federal government last year showed that outsourcing companies — mostly from India — raked in the bulk of H-1B visas, Google took more than 2,500 and Apple took nearly 2,000 to hire foreign workers, about 60 percent of them holding master’s degrees.
“The H1-B process is not just complicated — it’s also quite expensive to sponsor an H1-B visa worker, a cost larger companies may be more willing to absorb,” the report pointed out. Legal blog UpCounsel puts the cost of the H-1B process at $10,000 to $11,000 per employee.
The report did not include a breakdown for Silicon Valley of how many foreign-born tech workers are U.S. citizens, versus visa holders. But the paper’s research indicated that 63 percent of Seattle’s foreign-born tech workers were not American citizens. Applications for foreign visas for work at other large American technology companies, according to a recent analysis of Department of Labor records covering eight major tech businesses between October 2015 and October 2016.
Applications submitted by contractors accounted for half of the H-1B visa applications for jobs at PayPal Holdings Inc.’s headquarters, 43 percent of those on Microsoft Corp.’s campus, 29 percent at EBay Inc.’s headquarters, and about a quarter of those at the Googleplex. At Facebook Inc., contracting companies submitted 12 percent of the applications for jobs at its headquarters. According to the analysis, Apple Inc. barely relies on contractors who employ workers through H-1B program to staff its headquarters, and Amazon.com Inc. doesn’t appear to use them at all. The contractors included Infosys and Wipro.
The H-1B visas are not only used in Silicon Valley. They are used across the nation. Several other large and small companies continue to use this program that allows 65,000 highly-skilled workers to be hired each year to fill the position that are not normally able to be filled by American workers.
The civil aviation ministry of the Indian Government has said it would invite expressions of interest in buying Air India Ltd after the budget. The government has relaxed FDI norms in various sectors such as single brand retail and allowed foreign airlines to invest up to 49% in Air India through approval route ahead of its proposed privatization.
In a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government, however, clarified that substantial ownership and effective control of Air India shall continue to be vested in Indian nationals. “Foreign investments in Air India including that of foreign airlines shall not exceed 49% either directly or indirectly,” the government said in a statement. Existing rules allow foreign airlines to own as much as 49% in an Indian airline, with the exception of Air India.
According to media reports, the Cabinet also approved 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in single-brand retail through automatic route. It also tweaked the local sourcing norm by allowing such entities to meet the mandatory 30% local sourcing norm incrementally within a period of five years of opening their first store in India.
The civil aviation ministry reported last wek that it would invite expressions of interest in buying Air India Ltd after the budget — indicating the government’s resolve to push the process even as a large section of the political class and stakeholders are opposed to it.
A parliamentary panel has asked the government not sell to Air India and recommended that the airline’s accumulated debt be written off and that it “function like a public sector undertaking with less government control.”
The transport panel of Parliament cited a report by the government auditor, the comptroller and auditor general (C&AG) that noted that Air India has been able to cut 10% of its variable cost between 2012 and 2016. It also argued that the airline pays Rs 4,000 crore as interest on an accumulated loss of Rs 40,000 crore.
The House panel, which asked the government to give five more years to the ailing airline for a turnaround, argued that it earns 60% of its revenue in foreign currency and that this money could end up going to foreign airlines of Air India is privatised. It also expressed concern about the possible job loss for 3.34 lakh people including 50,000 directly.
The panel also pointed out that three of the airline’s five subsidiaries (AI Express, the ground handling wing and the engineering branch) are making profits, and questioned the rationale for their divestment.
U.S. immigration agents, known as ICE agents went at 6 a.m. to 98 franchises of 7-Eleven around the country and arrested 21 people who were allegedly without immigration authorization. A significant proportion of franchises of this and other well known brands are owned by people of Indian origin. Several of those detained were of Indian descent, according to Srujal Parikh, president of the Federation of Indian Associations (FIA) for the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
ICE Homeland Security Investigations special agents served notices of inspection, also known as I-9 audit notices, to 7-Eleven stores in California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and Washington, DC. Indian Americans own many of the franchises across the country. Approximately two-thirds of America’s convenience stores are owned by Indian Americans and other South Asians, according to data from the American Petroleum and Convenient Store Association. APCA declined to comment on the Jan. 10 raids.
“Today’s actions send a strong message to U.S. businesses that hire and employ an illegal workforce,” ICE’s Acting Director Thomas D. Homan said in a statement. “ICE will enforce the law, and if you are found to be breaking the law, you will be held accountable.”
Homan did not say why ICE went after the Irving, Texas-based convenience store chain, which has 60,000 franchises worldwide and is famous for its Slurpee drinks. ICE hit stores in 17 states and Washington, D.C., and gave managers and franchise owners three days to provide the agency with the immigration status of their workers.
“Businesses that hire illegal workers are a pull factor for illegal immigration, and we are working hard to remove this magnet,” Homan said. “ICE will continue its efforts to protect jobs for American workers by eliminating unfair competitive advantages for companies that exploit illegal immigration.”
The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum and South Asian Americans Leading Together, released a joint statement condemning the ICE raids, adding, “It’s clear from the numbers that any large scale immigration raids, detentions and deportations deeply impact the South Asian community in the U.S. With 450,000 undocumented Indians …”
The 17 states where the 7-Elevens that were raided, are located included California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. According to ICE this was the largest such operation targeting a specific employer since President Trump took office, The Washington Post reported, adding that ICE agents went into the stores “to deliver audit notifications and conduct interviews.”
In its own statement, 7-Eleven said it was aware of the ICE raids and stressed that each franchise is run by “independent business owners” who are “solely responsible for their employees, including deciding who to hire and verifying their eligibility to work in the United States.”
“7-Eleven takes compliance with immigration laws seriously and has terminated the franchise agreements of franchisees convicted of violating these laws,” the statement read.
The New Jersey-based auditing giant, Price Waterhouse, which was auditor for Satyam computers, has been banned from serving Indian clients. The ban by Indian market regulator the Securities and Exchange Board (Sebi) will come into effect on March 31st. Price Waterhouse has said that it will appeal the decision in court.
Satyam was being audited by the US- company for several years, when company owner Ramalinga Raju admitted to inflating earnings.
Price Waterhouse’s Indian arm, PW Bangalore, was Satyam’s auditor during this period. The collapse of Satyam Computers in 2009 cost shareholders more than $2bn and rocked India’s IT industry. Analysts said it was the biggest fraud at a listed company in India.
The group’s audit functions are under the brand Price Waterhouse in India. The broader PwC entity handles consulting, tax advisory and other businesses. Auditing services constitute around 40% of its overall business in India.
It added that “there has been no intentional wrongdoing by [PwC] firms in the unprecedented management perpetrated fraud at Satyam”. In January 2009, Raju stunned the corporate world by admitting to accounting malpractices to inflate earnings and assets for years.
Analysts say the Sebi order is a big setback for the firm which never quite recovered from the fallout of the case. It could very well lead some of the firm’s 70-plus listed clients, which include corporate giants like Tata Steel, to shift their business.
That would mean not only a loss of revenues but it would also impact the jobs of some 2,500 workers. Price Waterhouse lost its leadership position in the Indian market soon after Raju’s confession and it has struggled to compete with other global companies like Deloitte.
Emerald Media, the Pan-Asia company backed by leading global investment firm KKR, today announced that it has acquired a controlling stake in Cosmos-Maya through a combination of primary and secondary stake acquisition. Based in India, Cosmos-Maya is the market leader in IP-led Indian kid’s animation content. The capital from this investment will help the company with strategic growth initiatives and creating global IPs to further increase its footprint across the world.
Promoted by internationally acclaimed Indian filmmakers Ketan Mehta & Deepa Sahi, Cosmos-Maya pioneered the art and technology of animation and visual effects in India. Over the last 5 years, the company has produced a record 1000+ half-hour segments of animated content. Today, it has multiple ongoing productions with major television and digital platforms, including Viacom18, Disney Networks, Turner International, Sony Pictures Network, Discovery Networks, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and ALT Balaji.
The creators of the Motu Patlu animation series, a popular Indian kids’ show, Cosmos-Maya has an impressive lineup of 9 TV shows on air including Shiva, Eena Meena Deeka, Kisna, ViR – The Robot Boy, Guru Aur Bhole, Chacha Bhatija, Tik Tak Tail and Selfie with Bajrangi. The company is also working on 3 international co-productions — Captain Cactus, Atchoo! and Help me Ganesha — in different stages of production and development. Cosmos-Maya targets audiences globally through its own YouTube channel, WowKidz, which has already become one of the fastest-growing channels for kids’ content with over 2 million active subscribers and over 2 billion cumulative views since its launch in 2016.
Ketan Mehta, Founder and Managing Director, Cosmos-Maya said, “The vision for Cosmos-Maya has always been to become a cutting-edge media technology company creating quality Indian content for the global market. The company will benefit greatly with a partner like Emerald Media which has a strong understanding of the entertainment, broadcast and OTT space. Through the capital infused, the company intends to develop international projects while leveraging the media relationships of Emerald to expand its global footprint.”
Rajesh Kamat, Managing Director of Emerald Media, said, “Cosmos-Maya has created and owns the content for some of the most popular kids’ shows and hence has its finger on the pulse of a very captive and influential audience. With the company now focused on the development of content, that crosses geographies, it is poised for growth on a global stage — not to mention the added opportunity of brand expansion and merchandising for its properties. This investment is a great addition to Emerald Media’s growing portfolio as it aligns with our vision of creating an ecosystem that caters to audiences of all age groups.”
Paul Aiello, Managing Director of Emerald Media, added, “Cosmos-Maya has made great strides in the animation space in the past few years. Their original shows have been huge successes and have paved the way for original Indian content to compete on a global platform. This investment will help Cosmos-Maya achieve its exciting growth potential.”
Anish Mehta, the CEO of Cosmos-Maya said, “With its successful and sizeable IP bank, strong business associations, a passionate team and the constant quest for quality — combined with the capital, domain knowledge and management bandwidth that Emerald Media brings on board — Cosmos-Maya is now poised for a global 360-degree approach to grow and monetize its brands through content, media, marketing, distribution, licensing and retail to markets, for kids across the world.”
Emerald Media is a Pan-Asian company backed by KKR to invest in the fast-growing media, entertainment, consumer tech and B2B industries across Asia for which KKR has committed up to $300mm from its KKR Asian Fund II. Emerald Media is led by industry veterans Rajesh Kamat and Paul Aiello, supported by an experienced team of investment and operating executives. Paul and Rajesh together have a combined experience of more than 40 years in the industry and bring a unique blend of operational and investment acumen to their business approach. Since inception, Emerald Media has made key investments in YuppTV, one of the world’s leading OTT video platforms for South Asian content, Amagi Media Labs, India’s leading targeted-TV advertisement solutions firm, aCommerce, Southeast Asia’s leading ecommerce enabler and e-distributor and Cosmos-Maya, one of the most successful animation content producers in Asia.
Emerald Media primarily focuses on providing growth capital to media, entertainment, consumer tech and B2B companies. The company looks to support growing public and private companies, by providing growth capital and strategic value add. For more information, please visit www.emeraldmedia.asia
Cosmos-Maya is Asia’s leading animation production studio that produces high-quality 3D as well as 2D animation content. Headquartered in Singapore, the company’s studio facility in Mumbai has 750 artists. The market leader in original Indian animation content production the company has worked on several IPR and commissioned projects for Television and Digital platforms including Viacom18, Disney Networks, Turner International, Sony Pictures Network, Discovery Networks, YouTube, Netflix, ALT Balaji & Amazon Prime Video.
The studio produces around 600 minutes (30 half hours) of animation on a monthly basis. Cosmos-Maya has produced over 20000 minutes of original animated content created in the last 5 years, (comprising of over 1000 half hour episodes) ready/currently on air. Launched in 2016, Cosmos-Maya’s YouTube channel WowKidz is one of the fastest growing kids’ platforms with an active subscriber base of over 2 Million and total view count of more than 2 Billion.
India’s Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. will have to defend itself at a U.S. trial over claims that it’s biased against American workers. A federal judge in Oakland, California, has rejected a request from the information technology outsourcing giant to dismiss a 2015 lawsuit accusing it of violating anti-discrimination laws by favoring South Asians.
In a further setback for the company, the judge also expanded the case into a class action on behalf of American workers who lost their jobs at TCS offices in the U.S. because they hadn’t been assigned to any of its clients.
“TCS will vigorously defend its position and expects positive outcome. There are no discriminatory practices in any part of the company and TCSBSE 0.30 % is confident that it will be able to defend its position at the Trial,” TCS said in a statement.
TCS was sued back in 2015 by a white, American IT worker named Brian Buchanan, who accused them of overwhelming favoritism toward Indian American workers, adding that he experienced “substantial anti-American sentiment” in his 20 months at TCS, and was ultimately terminated.
TCS has argued that Buchanan’s experience does not prove he was a victim of bias as “he has ‘no idea’ whether the application process was discriminatory because he did not attend any of the town hall meetings he was invited to during the Edison transition to learn about open positions with TCS and how to apply for them—and he did not apply for a specific job, the company said in a court filing.”
Another IT firm, Infosys also faced a similar lawsuit in Milwaukee four years ago and both the IT firms have come under pressure from President Donald Trump’s desire to hire more American locals and he is also wanting to decrease the amount of H-1B visa applications in a year.
New York, NY: Sandeep Chakravorty, Consul General of India in New York, will host a reception at the Consulate on Sunday, January 7th 2018, providing an elegant send-off for Battery Dance on the day before the lower Manhattan-based company begins a national tour of India, with performances and workshops in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata and New Delhi. The event will be an opportunity to obtain a sneak preview of the India tour.
Battery Dance, founded and directed by Jonathan Hollander in 1976, has been a cultural bridge-builder between the U.S. and India for the past quarter-century. Cross-cultural collaborations have included SONGS OF TAGORE that traversed 17 cities in the Indian subcontinent in 1997 during the 50th Anniversary of Indian Independence; and LAYAPRIYA, which toured six major metro cities in 2001. Hollander and Battery Dance have presented many of the foremost dancers and musicians of India in New York and on national US tours and annually at its Battery Dance Festival in conjunction with the Indo-American Arts Council, an institution that Hollander co-founded and on whose Board he serves.
The current India tour features SHAKTI: A Return to the Source, previously named The Durga Project, which was premiered as the centerpiece of the Company’s 40thAnniversary Season in New York in 2016 and which subsequently toured the U.S. and Sri Lanka. SHAKTI is a collaboration between Indian classical dancer Unnath Hassan Rathnaraju and the 5 principal dancers of Battery Dance – Robin Cantrell, Mira Cook, Bethany Mitchell, Sean Scantlebury and Clement Mensah. The work was inspired by the rendition of Raag Durga as recorded by the Hindustani master vocalists Rajan & Sajan Mishra who have given special permission to use their recording and who will attend the final performance of the tour in New Delhi.
The Consulate General of India, New York will be a co-sponsor in the company’s 37th Annual Dance Festival which is scheduled for August 2018 to be held in New York City where they will continue their tradition of presenting Indian dance with a special performance on India’s Independence Day, August 15th, 2018.
TiE-Boston, which celebrated its 20th anniversary at a black-tie gala attended by its founding charter members, past presidents and over 300 guests, bestowed its highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award, to entrepreneur and philanthropist Venkat Srinivasan, who has founded eight companies and is credited with creating 1,800 jobs and over $2 billion in value for shareholders.
TiE-Boston, which was founded in 1997 as TiE-Atlantic and is TiE Global’s second oldest and second largest chapter, also honored 13 other entrepreneurs in various categories. Eight entrepreneurs were awarded with the Entrepreneurial Achievement Award: Anil Agarwal, Veera Anantha, Nilanjana Bhowmik, Neil Chedda, Bhaskar Panigrahi, Ramji Raghavan, Jagat Sisodia and Satish Tadikonda.
The other awards were bestowed in the following categories: Distinguished Service to Philanthropy: Sekhar Naik; Health Innovator of the Year: Derek Haas; Rising Entrepreneur of the Year: Allis Tweed-Kent; Charter Member of the Year: Rishi Bhalerao; and Volunteer of the Year: Arjun Venkatachalam.
The gala also held a “Fireside Chat” between Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria and Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Venkat Srinivasan. The TiE-Boston Board awards the Lifetime Achievement Award when an individual has made a lasting impact in the business community, and a significant contribution to the success of TiE-Boston.
“Venkat embodies the true spirit of TiE by building good companies, empowering employees and entrepreneurs, and giving back to solve big problems and help society at large,” said TiE-Boston President Praveen Tailam. “He has been associated with TiE for a long time and has always inspired budding entrepreneurs by investing his time and capital, and is well-respected by fellow charter members for his philanthropic work.”
Santhana Krishnan, a fellow TiE-Boston Charter Member and Managing Partner of Om Ventures, introduced Dr. Srinivasan at the gala, saying that he admired him greatly for many things, including his passion to build companies with big disruptive ideas, commitment to giving back through mentoring entrepreneurs and philanthropy.
“Venkat has charted his own unique course all his life. He broke from traditional entrepreneurial paths and has had a very interesting and remarkable professional journey,” said Mr. Krishnan. “He came to the United States from India 35 years ago, to pursue his American dream.”
Mark Nunnelly, former Managing Director of Bain Capital and a close friend paid rich tribute to Srinivasan highlighting his many qualities as a remarkable entrepreneur who at the end has a deep desire to leave the world a better place than he found it. Ravi Ramamurti, a Northeastern University Professor and former colleague, observed how Venkat’s ability to work without functional boundaries was a key factor in his success.
Mr. Krishnan noted that Dr. Srinivasan received 3 professional degrees, spent 7 years in academics, becoming a tenured professor before he left Northeastern University. He wrote over 35 research papers, published three books, received seven patents, founded and sold four companies, and currently serves on the boards of six companies and three non-profit organizations. In addition, Venkat’s ventures have employed over 1800 people, and in the process, he has created a total value of over $2 billion for shareholders. Dr. Srinivasan has also recently founded EnglishHelper, KnowYourMeds and AIinGov, all of which are double bottom-line enterprises focused on education, health and the public sector respectively. He is a uniquely experienced individual with expertise in multiple functional areas. He is an expert in knowledge-based systems architectures, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, natural language processing, corporate finance and accounting.
Venkat and his wife, Pratima, are active in the community. He is a Vice-Chair of the American India Foundation (AIF), which is dedicated to catalyzing social and economic change in India. Srinivasan is also a Trustee of BUILD, a non-profit organization focusing on entrepreneurship to excite and propel disengaged, low-income students through high school to college success in the U.S. He is a member of the Boston Harbor Now’s Advisory Board.
“I am honored and humbled that TiE-Boston selected me for this award,” said Dr. Srinivasan. “I salute TiE and the many Charter members for fostering entrepreneurship so passionately. Entrepreneurship is a key solution to society’s many challenges.”
Since 1997, TiE-Boston has been supporting entrepreneurs by offering education, mentorship, networking, and funding opportunities. What makes TiE unique is that the organization connects entrepreneurs with each other and other stakeholders in the ecosystem, including seasoned serial entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, service providers, and early customers. TiE-Boston is a chapter of TiE-Global, the largest global not-for-profit organization fostering entrepreneurship. TiE-Boston members leverage the global network of members from 61 chapters in 18 countries. TiE has 12,000 members throughout the world, and has contributed over $250B in wealth creation. For more information, and to become a member of TiE-Boston, visit boston.tie.org.
Chicago IL: Association of South Asian Real Estate Professionals (ASARP) held its second annual gathering at this festive time of the year, on December 15th at The Meadows Club, 2950 Golf Rd, Rolling Meadows, IL from 5.30 to 9.30 p.m.
ASARP is a registered non-for profit reputable association to provide the leadership to South Asian community required in order to achieve the cherished objectives of property ownership in United States and India. Main purpose of the program was to provide a forum for interaction among South Asian Real Estate Professionals and the communities that they represent, with some degree of entertainment and education.
The event was attended by capacity crowd consisting of active members, MS. Neeta Bhushan (Consul General of India in Chicago), Erica Harold (running for State Attorney General in Illinois), Tim Schneider (Chairman of State’s Republican Party). Dr Sapan Shah (Nominated on republican ticker for US Congress for 10th District),
Mr. Nimesh Jani-Nimesh Jani (member of Schaumburg Township Board), Pam Krieter (Pam Krieter CEOs of the Real Estate profession), Nancy Suvarnamani (Past President of Chicago Association of Realtors and FIABCI International, founder member of AREAA), Thomas Krettler (Director of National Association), Donna Wilson (Director of Global and Commercial Business) and Brian Bernardino (Political coordinator for Chicago Association of Realtors and member of Federal Taxation Committee of NAR).
The principal purpose of gathering was to discuss new proposed tax reforms and its ramifications by reputed Legal and industrial professionals for their guideline, input, panel discussion, QA sessions and provide networking.
After lamp lighting ceremony, Mr. Pradeep B. Shukla gave starting speech “As we all acknowledge the US tax systems were revised in 1986. After sporadic modifying legislations and lapsed time, it needed massive overhaul and re-organization. Some of these regulations are regressive US corporate taxes which are one of the highest in the world, tempting US corporate giants to park the funds outside the country amounting to be in trillions of dollars along with revision of high Death tax of 45% at federal level with additional incidence of about 15 to 18% at the state level”.
“With this revision in mind, Trump administration introduced “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017”. Principal goals are simplicity and tax reduction while keeping mind the principle of neutrality. The bill passed in both houses with minor variations. Now in a proposed reconciled bill, there are some significant provisions that will affect real estate industry like capping property tax deduction to $10,000, restricting mortgage interest deduction to new loans of $500,000 as against current limit of $1 million, reducing marginal tax rates at all the levels of income, 100% write off of some business assets and significant reduction of corporate tax, etc. While there is overall tax deduction, what concerns our community as realtors, is dilution of Home Ownership Deductions. The stand taken by the National Association of Realtors is that homeowners must be treated fairly, must reverse decline in first-time home buyers as the home ownership level is 50 years low in 2016”.
Thereafter, Mr Shukla invited expert Panelists on stage to discuss their views in all these matter. The Panel Moderator was Al Haroon Hussain, Attorney. The other distinguished Panelists included Paul Chawala, Attorney, Director Brian Bernandoni, Realtor and member of Federal Taxation Committee at NAR and Tom Krettler- Realtor and also Director at NAR.
These panelists addressed the tax reforms congenial to the interest of the real estate community and how would these reforms affect the growth of GDP in USA in coming years.
QA session followed. Subsequently in his concluding remark Mr. Pradeep B. Shukla advised that Taxpayers should consider paying their 2017 state and local income taxes in 2017. This will allow the deductions to be preserved and applied against 2017 income. Since the application of the Alternative Minimum Tax might mitigate these benefits, please discuss your specific situation and any other questions you might have with your accountant.
President of ASARP Mr. Pradeep B. Shukla, in highlight of his remarks, pointed out that some of the important tasks undertaken at ASARP are educating our South Asian local real estate professionals on how to serve best interests in our community, all while keeping in mind the highest degree of professional standards. He also requested members providing effective outreach to these communities including guidance on EB 5 and other programs available to foreign investors. In addition he also requested to provide effective liaison to our communities and professionals He urged educating American real estate professionals dealing with specific needs of our community, and finally acting as an effective political arm for ASARP members.
By Ian Hathaway, Nonresident Senior Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program
As two critical immigration policy issues face Congress—the fate of 800,000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children (“DREAMers”), and the re-introduction of the bipartisan Startup Act, which among other things, provides 75,000 visas to entrepreneurs that come to this country to start high-potential companies—new evidence demonstrates yet again just how critical foreign-born entrepreneurs are to lasting economic prosperity in the United States.
The Center for American Entrepreneurship, a non-partisan policy and advocacy organization, published a study today on the founders of America’s most valuable companies—those in the Fortune 500. The results are striking—43 percent of companies in the 2017 Fortune 500 were founded or co-founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant, and among the Top 35, that share is 57 percent.
These 216 companies produced $5.3 trillion in global revenue and employed 12.1 million workers worldwide last year, spanning a wide range of industrial activities—though half are in the high-technology, wholesale and retail trade, and financial and insurance sectors.
These iconic immigrant-founded American companies come from a broad range of geographies, too. Sixty-eight metropolitan areas and five non-metropolitan areas spread across 33 states are headquarters to Fortune 500 firms founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.
The New York, Chicago, San Jose, Houston, and Dallas metropolitan areas are headquarters to the most, with at least eight such companies in each. On a population adjusted-basis, metro areas with the highest density include the Northern Chicago suburbs (Lake County-Kenosha County), San Jose, Cambridge, Bridgeport-Stamford, and Richmond.
Among states, New York, California, Illinois, Texas, and Virginia have the most, as each are home to at least 13 immigrant or child-of-immigrant founded Fortune 500 firms. Delaware, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and Illinois have the most on a population-adjusted basis.
Digging deeper into the numbers, 18.4 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants, and another 24.8 percent were founded by the children of immigrants—figures that are consistent with broader research literature. Though accounting for less than 14 percent of the population, immigrants found almost a quarter of all new businesses, nearly one-third of venture-backed companies, and half of Silicon Valley high-tech startups.
“America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.” –James Madison, Constitutional Convention (1787)
And, research has shown that the economic benefits of immigrants are lasting. U.S. cities and regions that welcomed more immigrants in the past have been linked with higher incomes, less poverty and unemployment, and greater educational attainment today. Immigrants also make outsized contributions to science and technology, whether measured as patent productivity or breakthrough discoveries—in recent years, U.S.-based researchers have been awarded with 65 percent of Nobel Prizes, though more than half of this group was born abroad.
43 percent of companies in the 2017 Fortune 500 were founded or co-founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant, and among the Top 35, that share is 57 percent.
But, the issue is much bigger than targeting only well-educated immigrants or those backed by venture capitalists. Many foreign-born founders of iconic American companies—those in the Fortune 500—wouldn’t have met such thresholds. They were poor, young, and fleeing harsh economic and political conditions. A recent Harvard Business School study found that among foreign-born entrepreneurs, those who come here as children have among the best business outcomes (growth and survival rates).
The evidence on immigrants, entrepreneurship, and economic growth is clear. Now it is up to Congress to take action—first by joining the rest of the advanced economies in creating a visa for high-potential entrepreneurs, and second by ensuring the safety and legality of DREAMers to stay and thrive in the only country they call home. During a period of slow growth, declining startup rates, and anemic productivity gains, the United States cannot afford not to.
Bangalore based startup first in the world to finish all 20 Facebook QA bAbi tasks with 100% accuracy DataVal Analytics Inc, a Bangalore and Chicago-based Artificial Intelligence – (AI) startup is the first in the world to successfully complete a difficult 20-part challenge in AI created by Facebook in 2015. The test, known as the (20) QA bAbi Tasks hosted by Facebook AI Research (FAIR), assesses the ability of AI based programs to perform text understanding and reasoning. To date, NO organization has been able to solve all the 20 tasks with 100% accuracy. However, using a unique approach, DataVal has successfully completed all 20 tasks with 100% accuracy. The DataVal approach focuses on the human way of understanding Language. It also has integrated multiple processes related to language pre-processing, word sense disambiguation, conjunction processing, preposition association, co-reference resolution and time and space analysis. DataVal focuses on a holistic view of the environment and the ecosystem to reason and understand the situation, an approach similar to the human approach to problem solving.
AI is the new frontier technology of the future with far reaching implications on social, economic and political activities across the world. It will have a significant impact at home, business, factories, banking, government, education, health and lot more. All major global companies and universities have been working on AI for decades. With advances in high speed computing, low cost storage, open source software, cloud computing and smart phones, AI is now in prominence. All leading companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, IBM and a handful of startups have substantial research and development underway on AI.
The success of DataVal in solving QA bAbI tasks offers hope to address a variety of AI applications related to intelligent personal assistance, search engine, voice command & control applications, social media content analysis, and expert systems in fields such as Education, Health, Energy, Environment, Transport, Finance, Manufacturing, Services and Government. DataVal Analytics Inc has offices in Bangalore, India and Chicago, USA with a small team of highly experienced data scientists and programmers focused on Natural Language Understanding technology & Big Data Analytics. The company has been founded by veterans from the Indian Army – Lt Col Shashi Kiran (Veteran) and Lt Col Naveen Xavier (Veteran). The team is mentored by the leading entrepreneur, innovator, policy maker and development thinker, Dr. Sam Pitroda as Chairman.
Indian international air traffic is booming, but much of the growth has been captured by the three big Gulf carriers including Etihad, which owns 24 percent of Jet. India’s Jet Airways and Air France-KLM announced a partnership to route more traffic through Europe and on to North America, in a potential challenge to Gulf carrier Etihad Airways that is a shareholder in Jet.
Indian international air traffic is booming, but much of the growth has been captured by the three big Gulf carriers including Etihad, which owns 24 percent of Jet. The “enhanced cooperation agreement” with Air France-KLM, signed on Wednesday in India’s financial capital Mumbai, is designed to route more traffic and expand the number of flights to Europe and then onwards to the United States.
The agreement also includes Delta Air Lines, with which Air France KLM has an existing partnership. International carriers are increasingly tying up on routes in the face of rising competition.
The Gulf will continue to be an important market and Jet will not reduce its operations there, Naresh Goyal, chairman of Jet, told reporters. He added that Jet had a “great relationship with Etihad” and that would continue.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and the University of Pittsburgh for the establishment of a Chair of Indian Studies at University of Pittsburgh. ICCR’s Director General, Riva Ganguly Das, and University of Pittsburgh’s Chancellor Emeritus, Mark Nordenberg and Vice Provost for Global Affairs, Ariel C. Armony, signed the MoU at New Delhi on 13 November 2017.
The ICCR Chair at the University of Pittsburgh is the second such Chair of Indian Studies in the USA, the first being the current Chair at Rutgers University. The academic partnership with the University of Pittsburgh has been signed for a period of five years.
Under the MoU, a distinguished visiting professor from India is to be hosted by the University of Pittsburgh for one semester each year to teach courses, conduct lectures, seminars and workshops on various subjects related to different aspects of India like sociology, economy, polity, art and culture. The MoU is another firm step towards deepening cooperation and further strengthening of relations between India and the United States.
Nishant Pandey, who has been the India Country Director for three years, has become the American Indian Foundation’s (AIF) CEO in New York, the high profile non-profit organization announced Nov. 1. He is expected to build on the important programmatic, institutional development and fund raising successes that he has achieved in India, a press release from AIF said, thus providing strategic leadership to AIF’s operations spanning the U.S. and India.
Pandey began his career as a banker but soon realized that the development sector was his calling. He joined the global charity, Oxfam, as the program officer for South India where he designed and developed value-chain programs on the theme of ‘power in markets’.
Subsequently, he moved to Oxfam’s global headquarters in Oxford to lead on program development and management in 12 countries including Russia, Tajikistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Albania, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Jordon, according to the AIF website. His ability to link high-level policy with projects on the ground during his work on the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area and its impact on small farmers in the European neighborhood, earned him the opportunity to lead the entire policy and campaigns portfolio for Oxfam in the region.
Before moving back to India with AIF, Pandey was based in Jerusalem where he led one of Oxfam’s most complex and challenging country programs in Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel as the Country Director.
“I am thrilled about the prospect and promise of taking AIF to greater heights and the opportunity for me to contribute to this journey. I am confident that working together, we will achieve our ambition of touching the lives of 5 million women, men and children over the next 5 years,” Pandey said in the press release.
“Nishant firmly believes in the power of win-win partnerships. In his career spanning 20 years, he has forged several multi-stakeholder initiatives involving civil society, governments and corporate partners, big and small, global and local,” AIF said. “He believes that in the history of humanity, we have never had so much resources, connectivity and promise to make a positive difference to the underprivileged and marginalized women, men and children,” it added.
Pandey has a Master’s degree in International Development & Finance from the University of Leicester in the U.K. after he won the British Chevening Scholarship. He also has a Master’s degree in Economics as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Economics.
With a net worth of $38 billion, Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani has topped Forbes’ annual list of India’s 100 richest tycoons of 2017, a statement said here on Thursday.
“Reliance Industries Ltd. chairman Mukesh Ambani has topped Forbes’s annual list of India’s 100 richest tycoons, with a net worth of $38 billion. To put it in context, this is equal to the entire GDP of the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, as per World Bank Data 2016 estimates,” the statement said.
Forbes India will release the 2017 India Rich List by way of a special issue that hits the stands on November 6, 2017. The richest newcomer in the list is Wadia Group of companies Chairman Nusli Wadia (No. 25, $5.6 billion).
At $19 billion, the net worth of Wipro’s Azim Premji — who jumped two places up over last year to become the second richest Indian on the list — is almost equal to Afghanistan’s GDP of $19.4 billion, the statement said.
The Hinduja family maintained the third position ($18.4 billion) in the list. Last year’s second richest Indian, Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharmaceuticals (No. 9, $12.1 billion) is the biggest dollar loser on the list as his net worth fell by $4.8 billion.
“The Indian economy is still grappling with the impact of demonetization and GST. This makes The Forbes India Rich List 2017 edition special since it features those who have faced the challenges head on and continued to deliver phenomenal results. The list has come to stand as a testament to brand India and also puts many emerging successful entrepreneurs on the global map,” said Forbes India CEO Joy Chakraborthy.
According to the list, the total wealth of India’s top 100 billionaires, which stands at a whopping $479 billion, is more than the country’s foreign exchange reserves estimated at $402.5 billion in September 2017. The entry point to the list is at its highest ever, at $1.46 billion. Last year, the minimum amount required to make the list was $1.25 billion, 17 percent lower than this year. The aggregate wealth of the top 100 has risen 26 percent over last year.
Dr. Kiran Patel, an Indian American cardiologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, has announced the sale of his Tampa, Fla.-based healthcare services company Freedom Health Inc. to Anthem Inc., the second largest health insurer in the United States.
Anthem did not disclose financial terms for the purchase of the company, which had combined revenues of $1.4 billion and net income of $10.1 million in 2016. The deal will close in the first quarter of 2018. This is Anthem’s second acquisition of a Medical Advantage company in Florida. Last month Anthem, which has a market cap of $54 billion, acquired HealthSun, which has 40,000 Medicare Advantage members in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. In acquiring America’s 1st Choice, Anthem said it had also scooped up the company’s Florida Medicare Advantage brands which include Patel’s Freedom Health as well as Optimum.
Patel told the Tampa Bay Business Journal: “In life, there comes a time where one has to decide personal capacity and capabilities. I’m an entrepreneurial type and the company has grown to a level where now, to grow to next level, you need a disciplined approach, a corporate type-approach and I don’t survive in that type of environment…. I like to grow things and then it’s time to pass it on to someone who has a more corporate structure.”
Patel, who said the sale process started about four months ago with several suitors, ended with Anthem winning out because it aligns properly with how he foresees his company heading. In a letter he wrote to more than 1,000 employees, Patel said, “Many corporations can provide the governance and capital but I wanted a partner that was philosophically aligned with my thoughts. After discussion with multiple players, I found Anthem to be uniquely aligned with my thoughts and visions.”
The Indian American entrepreneur said he is confident Anthem will take care of every employee who works hard and can adapt to Anthem’s culture. With this company sold, Patel told the Tampa Bay Times he hopes to shift his focus to philanthropic efforts.
In a company press release, Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish said: “The acquisition of America’s 1st Choice, which has strong technology tools and expertise designing and implementing engagement programs, fits well with our growth objective and will also enhance our ability to deliver a broad variety of cost-effective, high quality plans to meet the diverse needs of the Medicare population.”.
“I want to focus on the other things that I have started, from hospitality to different funds and technology companies,” Patel told the publication. “But more of my time will go to the philanthropic side.”
Patel and his wife Dr. Pallavi Patel have donated millions to philanthropic efforts across the Tampa Bay area and built hospitals in India and Zambia, according to a Tampa Bay Times report. Among their donations include $26 million to the University of South Florida, $5 million for a conservatory at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, and $3 million for a research institute at Florida Hospital Tampa, the report said. The couple recently announced they had made a $200 million commitment to Nova Southeastern University for a regional campus in Clearwater that would focus on medical education, the report added.
He is also starting a university in India, which is called the Drs. Kiran and Pallavi Patel University, with a medical school, and he hopes to exchange students between India and the U.S. He’s working on health care initiatives in Zambia and Jamaica, while “passing the torch” on other business involvement to his children.
World’s oldest scheduled airline, KLM Dutch Royal Airlines has reconnected with Mumbai with Mumbai –Amsterdam service from October 30, 2017. This move will further enhance the seamless air connectivity offered to flyers. GVK’s Mumbai International Airport Private Limited (MIAL), the company that operates Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA), welcomed the Dutch Carrier – KLM which touched down in Mumbai on Monday.
The airline will operate thrice weekly service with a 294-seater Boeing 787-9 aircraft with 30 World Business class, 45 Economy Comfort Class and 219 Economy Class. Earlier, Mumbai and Amsterdam route was served with daily services offered by Jet Airways. Now along with KLM, Mumbai-Amsterdam route will be served with a total of 10 services per week.
The start of operations by KLM is a manifestation of CSIA’s commitment to continuously strengthen the connectivity enhancing Mumbai’s rapidly developing trade and commerce relationship with Netherland and rest of the globe.
Last week, CSIA welcomed Thai Smile’s maiden flight on the Mumbai-Bangkok route, the second airline after Thai Lion to start services in the sector within a month. Mumbai International Airport serves as a key gateway to India and has 52 airlines operating to 100 destinations from the city to various parts of India and the World. In FY 2017, CSIA, Mumbai welcomed 45.2 million air travellers (12.4 million international passengers) registering an annual growth of 8 percent.
India jumped into 100th place on the World Bank’s ranking of countries by Ease of Doing Business for the first time in its report for 2018, up about 30 places, driven by reforms in access to credit, power supplies and protection of minority investors.
The report, based on data from the capital New Delhi and the financial hub of Mumbai, ranked India among the top 10 “improvers” globally, having done better in eight out of 10 business indicators.
“Today’s result is a very clear signal from India to the rest of the world that not only has the country been ready and open for business, as it has been for many decades, it is now competing as the preferred place to do business globally,” Annette Dixon, World Bank’s vice president for South Asia, told reporters in New Delhi.
“Starting a business is now faster,” Dixon said, adding that India had strengthened access to credit system and made it easier to secure to procure construction permits.
However, the agency noted that India lags in areas such as “starting a business”, “enforcing contracts” and “dealing with construction permits.”
The report excluded the impact of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock withdrawal of high-value banknotes last year and the implementation of a nationwide multi-rate goods and services tax (GST), steps that affected businesses and dragged the economy to a three-year-low in the April-June quarter.
“In the case of GST, we know that this is a very complicated reform,” Dixon said, adding that the agency would observe the GST for the next two or three years to see its full implementation.
This month Modi eased tax rules for small and medium-sized companies in a bid to address growing criticism of his stewardship of Asia’s third-largest economy.
The World Bank report, covering the period from June 2 last year to June 1 this year, ranked India top among the South Asian nations.
“This year’s remarkable results are the culmination of efforts that have taken place over the past three years, so you can extrapolate forward and see that steps that are taken this year may take 2-3 years to show up in the results,” Dixon said.
Rohit Chopra, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, is expected to be nominated by President Trump as the commissioner of the US Federal Trade Commission, according to an announcement by the White House on October 19th.
Interestingly, the Indian American resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., was part of Hillary Clinton’s transition team. A financial services expert, currently, Chopra is currently a Senior Fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, where he focuses on consumer protection issues facing young people and military families, the White House said in a press release. If confirmed, he would serve the remainder of a seven-year term that expires Sept. 25, 2019, according to the White House.
According to a report in Politico, Chopra was hired at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau early in Elizabeth Warren’s tenure when she headed that agency during the Obama administration. In an Aug. 30, 2016 report, the news outlet said, “Politico has learned that Hillary Clinton has named a progressive with close ties to Elizabeth Warren to her transition team in a move that seems aimed at mollifying liberals unhappy with earlier choices.”
The Secretary of the Treasury also appointed him as the agency’s student loan ombudsman. In 2016, Chopra served as special adviser to the Secretary of Education. Chopra it said, “battled for-profit colleges and loan servicers as the student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau…”
The FTC works with the Justice Department to enforce antitrust law and pursues companies accused of deceptive advertising. It is an independent agency that is headed by a chairman and four commissioners. No more than three commissioners can come from any one party.
The agency is currently headed by Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, with Democrat Terrell McSweeny the only other commissioner. The president has long been expected to name a permanent chair and fill the three empty commission seats, two Republican and one Democrat or independent, according to a zeebiz.com report.
Before he joined government service, Chopra was an associate at McKinsey & Company, where he served clients in the financial services and consumer technology sectors. Chopra holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s in business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship.
India is “one of the most significant and fastest growing markets” says the newly appointed head of the U.S. – India Business Council Nisha Desai Biswal, who took over as President of the organization on October 23rd. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had appointed Nisha Desai Biswal as the President of the U.S.-India Business Council.
“We are thrilled to welcome Nisha Biswal to the U.S.-India Business Council and to the U.S. Chamber team,” said Myron Brilliant, U.S. Chamber executive vice president and head of International Affairs. “She is a driven, visionary leader who has a strong record of advancing United States business across the growth markets of Asia and throughout India. Under her strong leadership, we’re confident the U.S.-India Business Council will play a critical role growing commercial partnership, investment, and innovation across the world’s oldest and largest democracies.”
Biswal served as Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs in the U.S. Department of State from 2013 to 2017, where she oversaw the U.S.-India strategic partnership during a period of unprecedented cooperation, including launching the U.S.-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue. In recognition of her efforts, Biswal was awarded the prestigious Bharatiya Samman Award by the President of India in January 2017. She previously served as Assistant Administrator for Asia at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Biswal also spent over ten years on Capitol Hill, serving as staff director on the State, Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee and the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives. Most recently, she was a senior advisor with the Albright Stonebridge Group, where she helped expand the firm’s India and South Asia practice.
“I am honored and excited by the opportunity to lead the U.S.-India Business Council and to join the leadership of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during a period of historic opportunity for both countries,” said Biswal. “As one of the most significant and fastest growing markets, India is an important economic partner for the United States. Likewise, Indian companies are investing in ever greater numbers here in the United States. I am proud to be part of an organization which will play such a critical role shaping U.S.-India relations, and I am thrilled at the chance to help our companies deliver a brighter, more prosperous future for the citizens of the United States and India.” Biswal has served on the board of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, and is a current member of the U.S. Institute of Peace International Advisory Council and the Institute for Sustainable Communities Board of Directors.
“UPS applauds Nisha being named as the new president of the U.S.-India Business Council,” said Jim Barber, president of UPS International. “At this critical time, she will bring dynamic leadership and well-established economic expertise to the mission of improving the U.S.-India relationship.” Biswal will join the U.S. Chamber beginning October 23, 2017.
Formed in 1975 at the request of the U.S. and Indian governments, the U.S.-India Business Council is the premier business advocacy organization, comprised of 350 top-tier U.S. and Indian companies advancing U.S.-India commercial ties. USIBC is the largest bilateral trade association in the United States, with liaison presence in New York, Silicon Valley, and New Delhi. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations. Its International Affairs division includes more than 70 regional and policy experts and 25 country- and region-specific business councils and initiatives. The U.S. Chamber also works closely with 117 American Chambers of Commerce abroad.
The USIBC went through an internal spat that culminated in June-July with a virtual walkout by top Indian-American and other CEOs from the organization, including former head of USIBC Mukesh Aghi, PepsiCo chief Indra Nooyi, Mastercard Worldwide chief Ajay Banga, and Cisco’s John Chambers, in a bid to form a separate organization. According to news reports those who quit the Council had differences with the US Chambers of Commerce and other members of USIBC who pushed for a stronger stance against India on trade and other matters. How Biswal tackles these differences will be a test for the new leader. Biswal has served on the board of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, and is a current member of the U.S. Institute of Peace International Advisory Council and the Institute for Sustainable Communities Board of Directors.
India’s Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal has donated $25 million to the prestigious Harvard University with an aim to increase engagement with South Asian countries, including India.
The donation will establish an endowed fund for the South Asia Institute at the university.
The institute spearheads Harvard’s engagement with South Asian countries, including India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as well as diaspora populations from these countries, the university said in a statement.
As a result of the endowment from the Mittal Foundation, Harvard’s South Asia Institute would be called as Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University, it said. Founded in 2003, the South Asia Initiative became a University-wide interdisciplinary institute in 2010 under the leadership of its current faculty director, Indian-American Tarun Khanna, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School.
“We are so grateful for the Mittal family’s support and what it will enable us to learn and share — across the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities — and the many people and institutions it will allow us to engage,” said Khanna.
“International centers like the South Asia Institute at Harvard University serve as a vital conduit between the University and the world we study,” said Harvard President Drew Faust.
“The generous support from the Mittal family is a testament to both the important work being done by this community of scholars and students and the continuing impact it will have in the region,” Faust added.
South Asia has played a dynamic and influential role in the development of our world since the very first civilisations, said 67-year-old Mittal, chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company.
“Ensuring that we fully understand its history and unique dynamics is a critical enabler in helping to shape a successful future,” he added. As someone who was born in India, the long-term prosperity of India and its neighbouring countries “matters a great deal to me and my family,” Mittal told Harvard Gazette in an interview.
“Harvard is one of the world’s greatest learning institutions, with a unique ability to facilitate dialogue and drive thinking and progress,” he said. The Mittal family has long supported educational endeavours and public policy development in India as a means of positioning the country — and the region — for future success, the university said.
India is on course to achieving universal access to electricity and clean cooking facilities by the early 2020s, a decade ahead of other developing countries, the International Energy Agency has said, indicating global recognition for the Narendra Modi government’s energy programme.
“Developing countries in Asia are making significant progress. Many countries in the region are well on track to reach universal energy access by 2030, while India is on course to reach that goal by the early 2020s,” the International Energy Agency has said in its latest report, ‘Energy Access Outlook: from Poverty to Prosperity’.
“Just look at India, which has provided electricity access to half a billion people since 2000. The government’s tremendous efforts over the last several years have put it on track to achieving one of the biggest success stories ever in electrification,” an IEA statement on Wednesday quoted its executive director Fatih Birol as saying.
According to Birol, the process of providing access to clean and affordable energy is being accelerated by the “convergence of political will and cost reductions”. Globally, this has brought universal energy access by 2030 within reach.
“The cost-effective strategy for providing universal access to electricity and clean-cooking facilities in developing countries is compatible with meeting global climate goals and prevents millions of premature deaths each year. It would also benefit women the most, as it would free up billions of hours currently lost to gathering fuelwood,” says the report.
In the Indian context, the report’s positive results towards universal energy access are a reflection of the bristling pace set by the Modi government to electrify all villages and rural households through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and providing free connections to poor households through the Subhagya scheme announced recently, besides bringing clean cooking fuel to poor homes through the Ujjwala scheme.
These schemes, clearly targeted at improving the lives of India’s poor, are at the core of the Modi government’s development plank. Together, they also form a key element of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s political outreach plan by lighting up homes and rid poor women from the scourge of smoky ‘chulhas’
So far 14,670 villages, or 80% of the unelectrified villages, have been electrified in the two years since the electrification drive was launched. Only 2,791 inhabited villages, marking 15% of the target, remain to be electrified. With the rapid progress in village electrification, the government earlier this month announced the Saubhagya scheme envisaging free connections to poor households. The Ujjwala scheme too has reached over 3 crore poor homes since it was launched in May 2016 against a target of 5 crore homes set for 2019.
Rutgers Business School students won the $1 million Hult Prize for social entrepreneurship last month, capping off 11 months of entrepreneurial effort with a polished, convincing pitch about the ability of its rickshaw transportation business to improve the lives of refugees overseas. The team made history with its win at the Hult regionals, becoming the first team from Rutgers to become a finalist in the competition – widely regarded as the Nobel Prize for student. The five finalists beat out 50,000 participants from more than 100 countries.
Senior Gia Farooqi, new graduates Hasan Usmani and Moneeb Mian, and alumna Hanaa Lakhani created the Roshni Rides startup as a way of answering the 2017 Hult Prize Challenge of developing a business capable of restoring the dignity of one million refugees by 2022. The company uses a pre-loaded transaction card, encourages ride-sharing and existing rickshaw drivers.
On a stage at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, the young executives of six start-up companies made their final, feverish bids to win the coveted Hult Prize. Each had formed and launched business ideas over the last year that would try to solve this year’s Hult Prize challenge – improving the well-being of at least one million refugees over the next five years.
The six finalists rose to the stage from a pool of 50,000 applicants. The judges are an illustrious bunch, including Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer, Earth Day Network president Kathleen Rogers and KIVA president Premal Shah. They decided who wins a big blue megaphone-shaped trophy — and a million dollars in startup capital. The money comes from the Hult family, whose patriarch, Bertil Hult, founded EF Education First. The Hult Prize was formerly associated with the Clinton Global Initiative. The Initiative has ended its annual conference, so the U.N. hosted the Hult Prize for the first time this year and plans to host again next year.
Their ability to persuasively pitch the idea to the Hult judges enabled them to beat out finalist teams from five other schools: Harvard University’s Kennedy School, the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, the University of Waterloo, the University of Calgary and York University.
Former President Bill Clinton, who announced the winning team, said that along with optimizing rickshaws to provide reliable transportation for refugees, Roshni Rides modeled their card transaction system after the New York City subway’s MetroCard. The team’s business idea, he said, advocates ride-sharing, keeping prices down – and fixed. “It will have a big impact,” he said.
The Rutgers team will use the prize money to continue to build Roshni Rides and explore the possibility of using rickshaws powered by electricity rather than natural gas. Listen to the team’s winning pitch at the Hult Prize Final.
Alok Baveja, a supply chain professor who advised the team, said “the Hult Prize honor is an unequivocal recognition of this team’s undying conviction that great ideas have an elegance in their simplicity, achieve scalable societal good and make good business sense, all at once.”
“True to their name, these young Rutgers entrepreneurs are bringing the light (Roshni) of new hope and optimism to millions of displaced refugees globally through an accessible, affordable and reliable rickshaw transportation system,” Baveja said.
From the start, the theme of the Hult Prize Challenge inspired and motivated the team, all of whom are Americans of Pakistani ancestry. “We are the sons and daughters of immigrants and refugees,” Farooqi said after the team won the regional competition in March. “This is very personal for us.”
Chicago IL: Chicago Chapter of Global Organization for People of India Origin (GOPIO) hosted 3rd Annual Business Convention & Gala on September 17th 2017 at Rosemont Hyatt Hotel. The event was attended by many corporate executives, State and local Government officials, Asian-American and small & minority business leaders and non-profit organization leaders. The objective of the event was to promote common cultural heritage and create binding relationship among business community.
Chairman and Founder of GOPIO Chicago Gladson Varghese welcomed all the Business Leaders, Political leaders and other esteemed guests. He also stated GOPIO is one of the largest Indian organizations outside India with Chapters in over 20 countries.
President and Founder Hina Trivedi in her Presidential address stated GOPIO Chicago is in the path of rapid Growth and invited all the business leaders to be part of the organization. Hon. D.B. Bhati, Consul of India, Chicago, in his inaugural address said Business Conference like this is a first step to bring Indian Business owners under one umbrella, Indian Americans should expand their businesses to India as well, since India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world’,
Raja Krishnamoorthi, US Congressman, who was the of the keynote speakers, congratulated GOPIO Chicago Leadership for hosting a Business Conference like this and he will support the Indian Community and GOPIO Chicago to create a business environment that will help to grow Indian businesses especially the startup companies.
State Representative Hon. Linda Chapa LaVia, said that businesses are failing mainly on account of lack of proper direction to grow and paucity of required funding to launch new technology products. She also Presented the Award to Lovely Varughese.
Mayor Mickey Straub said GOPIO Chicago created a platform for all the small and large Indian business owners to do business networking and grow their businesses. There are several awards were presented during the event, Business man of the year given to H.R Pundit Corporation CEO K.K. Reddy, Community leader of the year award was given to Dr. Bharat Barai, Student of the year award was given to Payal Patel.
U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi Presented the Leadership award to Gladson Varghese, State Representative Hon. Linda Chapa Lavia presented Mother’s Rights Award to Lovely Varughese, Community service Awards were given for the Excellent community service to Consul of India D.B. Bhati, Mayor Mickey Straub, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, Consul of India O.P. Meena, Humanitarian Award is given to Zahid Hameed, Sponsorship recognition is given to Lisa Victoria Waller, Syed Hussaini, Avani Trivedi, Abdul Gafoor, Manoj Kumar Singamsetti, Nick Gakhal and Nambirajan Vaithilingam.
The event was attended by the following Board members: SaviSingh, Vikrant Singh, Syed Hussaini, Hement Trivedi, Sharan Walia, Nambi Vaithilingam, Vinoz Chanamolu, Chandrasekar Reddy, Manoj Kumar Singamsetti, Hitesh Gandhi and Laddi Singh. The MC for the evening was Dr. Ajit Pant, President Hina Trivedi thanked all the dignitaries, GOPIO Board members, CEOs of various companies, Media, Sponsors and all the audience for their support for GOPIO Chicago.
The Business Conference ended with Bollywood style entertainment programs including Dances, Music and DJ. At the end of the program, Indian style Dinner and cocktails served to the guest.
Amazon has announced the expansion of its infrastructure footprint opening its largest fulfillment center in India. The 400,000 square feett center, located in Shamshabad, has roughly 2.1 million cubic feet of storage space. It is the fifth fulfillment center in Telangana and the largest in the country, Amazon said in a news release. In total, Amazon has upped its storage capacity to 3.2 million cubic feet in Telangana to enable faster deliveries to customers in the region, the company said.
“Amazon India’s latest investment … evidently signifies the growing interest of large global enterprises in the state,” K.T. Rama Rao of the government of Telangana said in a statement. “The (center) will enable thousands of small and medium businesses selling locally created products such as apparels, handlooms and handicraft to service customers seamlessly across the country and the globe,” he said.
“It will also fuel the growth of ancillary businesses such as packaging, transportation, logistics and hospitality across the state,” Rao added. “We are committed to enabling the ease of doing business and enabling companies like Amazon.in to expand their presence in Telangana.”
Added Amazon India vice president of India customer fulfillment Akhil Saxena, “Our vision is to transform the way India buys and sells. At Amazon, we have been consistently investing in our infrastructure and delivery network, so we can increase our speed of delivery and provide a superior experience to both – customers and sellers.
“With the launch of our largest fulfillment center here in Telangana, we strongly believe that we will be able to better serve our customers with one-day and two-day delivery,” Saxena added. “The (fulfillment center) will enable sellers to use local infrastructure, save capital and help them grow their businesses.”
Saxena noted that the center will work with the local communities to create many employment opportunities for the youth. Amazon continues to work with sellers in Telangana providing them with a marketplace to sell their products to millions of customers and scale their business to greater heights, he said. There are more than 10,000 sellers in Telangana, according to Saxena.
Leveraging its fulfillment centers with state-of-the-art infrastructure, Amazon provides a positive customer experience through its Fulfilment By Amazon program, the company said.
When using FBA, sellers across India send their products to Amazon’s fulfillment centers and once an order is placed, Amazon picks, packs and ships the order to the customer, provides customer service and manages returns on behalf of the sellers, it said. Orders fulfilled by Amazon are eligible for cash on delivery, guaranteed next-day, same day, release day, morning delivery and Sunday delivery, the company noted.
Sellers always have the flexibility to choose the number of products they want to have fulfilled by Amazon and scale according to their business requirements, it added.
HAB BANK IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH HABIB BANK LIMITED (HBL)
“In light of recent news regarding HBL, HAB Bank, strongly affirms it has no direct, indirect or any affiliation whatsoever or shared ownership with Habib Bank Limited, a Pakistan-based financial institution with an office in Manhattan”, as stated in a press release issued by HAB Bank, New York.
The release further stated that HAB Bank is a U.S.-based community bank headquartered in Manhattan with FDIC membership. HAB Bank has no operations outside the US. The institution has operated continuously and successfully since its original incorporation in 1983 and has branches in NY, NJ and CA.
“HAB Bank proudly serves our consumer and commercial banking customers in the New York Tri-state area and California for over three decades,” said Saleem Iqbal, President and CEO of HAB Bank.
We reached out to HAB Bank’s President & CEO Mr. Saleem Iqbal to seek clarification on the penalties assessed by the New York State against Habib Bank Limited. In an exclusive interview with this newspaper, Mr. Iqbal answered a series of questions clarifying HAB Bank’s position. on the whole matter and reiterated the fact that HAB Bank has no affiliation, direct or indirect, with Habib Bank Limited or HBL.
Reporter: What is the difference between HAB Bank and Habib Bank Limited or HBL?
Saleem Iqbal: HAB Bank is a US chartered, FDIC Insured bank with branches in three states. Our charter dates back to 1983. Habib Bank Limited on the other hand is Pakistan based foreign bank with a branch in New York City. As we have categorically stated over the last so many years, HAB Bank is not affiliated in any manner whatsoever with Pakistan based Habib Bank Limited or HBL.
Reporter: How does this action by the NY regulator impact you?
Saleem Iqbal: This has no impact on HAB Bank, we are two different banks.
Reporter: How do you safeguard and protect your bank from such matters?
Saleem Iqbal: HAB Bank, from day one of its inception, has built a strong culture of compliance. We recognize that banking industry in our country is highly regulated and there are number of federal as well as state laws that applies to us as a community bank. We have a top-down approach in complying with various regulations including Anti Money Laundering laws currently in place. Our frontline personnel are fully aware of such laws and trained by the Bank on an ongoing basis. Then there is active oversight by the senior management and the board of directors in addition to an extensive risk management framework.
Reporter: What does future hold for HAB Bank?
Saleem Iqbal:
The Bank has shown steady and consistent growth; we are one of the largest South Asian-American banks in the US with assets over $1.3 billion with branches in three states. We were one of the few community banks in the US which remained unscathed and actually grew during the Great Recession, which started in 2007. We will continue to grow and to serve the banking needs of the South Asian community in the US.
HAB BANK was incorporated in 1983 as a New York State Chartered Bank. HAB is a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and holds $1.3 billion in assets as of June 30, 2017. Headquartered in New York, the Bank and besides Manhattan maintains branches in, Jackson Heights, Richmond Hill, Hicksville in NY, Iselin in NJ, Artesia and Downtown Los Angeles in CA.
For further information, please visit HAB Bank’s website at www.habbank.com and Click on “Important Announcement”.
Olga Noskova, Russian Pastry Chef extraordinaire broke Instagram on May 2016 by gaining 300k followers overnight, a jump from her previous 34,000 followers, after sharing a few pictures of her eclectic cake which would go on to become her trademark “mirror glaze” technique. The internet drooled over every glamorous and blindingly shining masterpiece that she shared. Even as thousands of cake enthusiasts shared her cake designs praising it with words like “flawless”,”trippy and groovy”, “mesmerizing” and it was Britney Spears tweet: “This cake is too perfect to eat” that made the Russian Pastry Chef realize her own multimedia celebrity status.
A year into her phenomenal rise as the most sought after Cake designer and being in the spotlight has in no way dampened her ongoing passion to deliver the most perfect, glamorous and awe inspiring confection and her thriving Instagram account is proof of that
Currently she is gearing up for a Mega event where she will get to rub shoulders with the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Samuel L Jackson, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and many others at “The 9th Shorty Awards” to be held in October this year in New York City. She has bagged a prestigious nomination as a finalist in the “Food” category. The Shorty Awards annually honor the best of social media by recognizing the influencer, brand and organization on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, snapchat and others.
Ancy James got in touch with her to share with our viewers her inspirations and share some light on the creative process of making her gorgeous cakes. We asked her about her journey to the top and how much life has changed since 2016, between then and now and her plans for the coming years.
Ancy James:
You have to give yourself credit for making history in instagram by adding 300k followers in less than 24 hrs last year with your glamorous mirror cakes and being the inspiration for cake afficianados around the world. Even the DIY(Do it yourself) kitchen table entrepreneurs are trying their hand at replicating your mirror glaze technique. In less than a year you have been recognized as a social media influencer with your prestigious nomination in the food category this year at ‘the shorty awards thanks to your every increasing followers. How do you feel about your phenomenal path to the top?
Olga Noskova:
In cooking, as in the fashion industry has its own legislature, trendsetters. Most often, they are world-famous masters of their craft, working with well-known restaurants or influential persons. Perhaps ordinary people have never heard of them, but they are well known in their circles. However, sometimes previously unknown confectioner can surprise the world with any of his incredible technique and conquer it, becoming the progenitor of a new trend. This is what happened to me. Many manufactures made mousse cakes, but my style of mirror glaze helped me stand apart from the general mass, and now, many associate mousse cake with my name. It’s a big responsibility because, now the world, professionals and amateurs alike are watching me and my work, and I always must be at a decent level in representing this trend in the confectionery art.
Ancy James
Pl share a little bit of the journey to becoming a multimedia celebrity. How has life changed after becoming the most popular and followed cake artist on the net?
Olga Noskova:
All started with a dream. I was an economist but I wanted to find something that would bring me pleasure daily. Do you know the English say: “Water dripping day by day wears the hardest rock away”? So, every day I tried to create something so beautiful and lovely. And thanks to my unbelievable mirror and delicious cakes my popularity started to grow. The stars smiled at me. In my case, the first star who rated my talent is Britney Spears 🙂
The British “Independent” wrote my cake is “absolutely impeccably”. The BuzzFeed called my work is “absolutely flawless” and wrote that they are “too good to be eaten”.
One day I woke up famous in the world. My Instagram increased to 613K followers. I could not believe what had happened to me! Their comments, admiration, love – that’s what makes me understand that this is not a hobby and not a job. This is my life!
Ancy James
You have seen phenomenal success in an industry where it is very important to offer something unique and different. How have you kept yourself grounded and what is your strategy to keep the internet drooling over you flawless and incredible creations in the coming years?
Olga Noskova:
I do not follow trends; I try to develop myself in the direction I have chosen. I love to experiment and explore new design options, combinations of textures, fillings and colors. Minimalism in details, incredible play of colors and combinations, memorable taste – all part of my style. Therefore, throughout 2017. I plan to continue to develop in this direction. But that’s not all) To remain trendsetter, it is needed to look ahead of the curve. Therefore, I now firmly engaged in studying extremely difficult, but at the same time, incredibly beautiful and unique technology that will not leave anyone indifferent.
Ancy James:
What inspires you to work so hard to create new designs. How do you draw inspiration from your life?
Olga Noskova:
My cake for me is pure “art”. I’m a pastry chef and an artist. I’m inspired by paintings by Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin, Korovin. Their style and the transmission, infinite movement, fluidity of moment, a riot of colors – everything is so dynamic and passes you up a glimpse of the artist. The cake is my canvas. I paint my works in the soul and reproduce it. I strive to make every of my cake better than the previous. I guess what my followers want; I feel them and create for them. I draw inspiration from everywhere: from nature and its constant mutability, from the universe and its forces, from the world’s largest events. For example, when I think of infinity and majesty of the universe, I feel her strength and energy. I know that the universe helps, if you really want, and so always speak to her. I have a whole lot of cakes, dedicated to space, each of which is unique, as the universe itself. Every time it’s a new cosmic history, combining the incredible aureole, shine, color versatility, depth and power of outer space. As they say it is better to see once, so check my Instagram @olganoskovaa.
Ancy James:
Every month we see new and innovative tools and technology being introduced to the Cake decorating and Pastry world on some social platform or another. Which ones are your favorite?
Olga Noskova
To be honest, I like to do everything myself, using my hands. I do not have a large, mass production, which requires special equipment to accelerate the process.
I can afford to create. Sometimes ideas for cake decoration come during the actual creation process, and sometimes I ponder them in advance each detail, color. In each cake I put my love, happiness, and a piece of my soul. I think this is one of the secrets of the popularity of my cakes.
Ancy James:
How do you de-stress/let-off steam after a hard day at work?
Olga Noskova:
Orders are enough. Even if I’m not making cakes, I’m always looking for ideas. Now a lot of problems for the development of the brand, especially abroad. The Arab countries are showing great interest in my cakes and spent a lot of time to negotiate and discuss details.
But I always find time for family! It is very important for me to be there, do not miss any important moment. We like to spend weekends out of town, a break from the city bustle, enjoying nature and family gatherings.
And I love hockey! I try not to miss the games of Salavat Yulaev and root for them with all my heart. Now, I began to actively participate in the life of the club, most recently, my cake was put up for charity auction as a lot, and we helped to make this world a better place for special children.
Ancy James:
What advice would you give cake decorators who are flooded with new ideas but haven’t yet managed to develop their own style?
Olga Noskova:
Of course, in the beginning it is important to get the basic knowledge of the confectionery business in any kind of courses or workshops. This will be your foundation. I got my first experience from well-known foreign and Russian chiefs, absorbing like a sponge, their knowledge and advice. But if you want to become a true professional, stand out from the masses, you should not be afraid to take a chance. Begin to experiment, to try, to mix and find your perfect recipe. The true recipe can only be achieved by trial and error. Do not look at others, choose what you like, what you do best and take that route, developing and improving. Always keep learning, do not stop there.
Ancy James, after pursuing a career (16 years) as a television producer, at age 37, changed her life course by getting a Culinary and cake diploma and a few international cakes decorating certifications from international cake artists. Her stint of two years (2014-2016) running a small business in New Delhi, boosted her network with top notch cake aficionados and it got her thinking of writing a column with their views on global cake decorating trends. In 2016, she wrote columns for Indian top two bakery industry magazines, bakery biz and bakery review.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has emerged as the leading destination for Indians migrating to the Gulf in search of work, as per emigration clearance data for the first six months of 2017. The UAE has toppled, by a wide margin, Saudi Arabia which used to traditionally lead the pack.
Of the total emigration clearance of nearly 1.84 lakh, as many as 74,778 Indians (or 40.6%) obtained emigration clearances for the UAE during January-June this calendar year, while only 32,995 (or 18% ) migrated to Saudi Arabia.
Oman came a close third with 30,413 migrants, which is 16.5% of the total Gulf migration. In 2016, Kuwait was the third most popular destination. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is an alliance of six countries: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.
The other surprise in store is that Bihar edged Uttar Pradesh to occupy the top slot as the leading source state during the first half of 2017. Bihar contributed 35,807 (or 19.5%) of the total migrants to the Gulf. UP sent 33,043 migrants (or 18%).
Contrast this with 2015, when of the total 7.58 lakh Indian migrants to the Gulf, 31% hailed from UP and only 14% from Bihar. The main reason for this shift in ranking is a drastic fall in migration from UP to Saudi Arabia during the first half of 2017. Of the total migrant figure of 3.06 lakh to Saudi Arabia in 2015, 1.28 lakh migrants (or 42%) hailed from UP. The pan-India figure of migrants to Saudi Arabia dipped to 1.65 lakh in 2016 of which 36% were from UP.
Between January to June, only 1,179 workers from UP obtained emigration clearance for Saudi Arabia. This works out to a mere 3.57% of the total migration to this country. On the whole, emigration clearance statistics reflect a steady decline in migration to the Gulf, as per the statistics of the ministry of external affairs (MoEA). The pan-India emigration clearance during 2016, of 5.07 lakh, was a decline of 33% as compared to the previous calendar year.
While comparative six monthly figures of 2016 are not available, with only 1.84 emigration clearances during the first half of 2017, it shows that the falling trend will continue. Contrary to popular notions, Kerala doesn’t occupy the top slot of source states for Gulf bound migration. S Irudaya Rajan, professor at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), who spearheads the annual Kerala Migration Survey, says: “Historically, Kerala was the leading source state for migrants going to the Gulf countries. One out of every five migrants who left India in 2008 was a Keralite. After the global crisis that followed, this is down to one out of twenty in 2016.”
Kerala occupied eight slot in 2015, with 42,731 migrants (or 5.6%) of the pan- India total. Its eighth position continued in 2016 with 24,962 Keralities migrating to Gulf and its ratio to all-India migration was 4.9%. Kerala’s ranking was up to seventh in the first half of 2017, with 8,995 emigration clearances or nearly 5% of the pan-India emigration clearances (See graphic). Rajan explains: “The wage differential for unskilled labourers between Kerala and Gulf has narrowed, plus savings for Gulf workers are hit by the high cost of living.
Keralites are slowly vacating from Gulf and are replaced by people from UP, Bihar, and neighbouring countries such as Nepal and Sri Lanka. Unlike the rest of India, Kerala is experiencing an ageing population-—this too impacts migration.”
A study done by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 2016 illustrates that India has fixed the referral wage for carpenters and masons at Saudi Riyal 1,700 per month, which is 40% and 10% higher than that set by Nepal and Philippines “The higher referral wages may periodically reduce employers’ preference for Indian workers. But if this tendency continues for long, it may adversely impact migration outflows from India, which in turn will restrict livelihood options and dampen remittance inflows,” the report said.
Swati Dandekar – who served in the Iowa state legislature for nine years and then served as the U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank in Manila – has formed a new consulting group, Thirty-Ninth Street Strategies.
Dandekar is one of the first Indian American women to be elected to a statewide office. She was an Obama appointee to the Asian Development Bank and served in that role for 10 months until President Donald Trump took office and recalled all ambassadors appointed by the previous administration.
Swati Dandekar of Marion, Iowa, as United States Executive Director, Asian Development Bank, with the Rank of Ambassador. President Obama nominated Dandekar for the position. Sen. Chuck Grassley made the following comment on the confirmation. “Swati Dandekar has served Iowa in many ways over a long period of time. She’s shown her talent for building relationships that lead to productive dialogue and initiatives. Her enthusiasm for public service and willingness to take on new challenges and responsibilities are what the public deserves. The President and the Senate made a good decision in choosing Swati Dandekar to represent the United States in this capacity.”
At the ADB, Dandekar worked with 60 countries in Asia and the Pacific Rim on energy, telecom, water and transportation issues, as well as developing infrastructure projects.
Swati A. Dandekar is a former Iowa state legislator and member of the Iowa Utilities Board. Ms. Dandekar served on the Iowa Utilities Board from 2011 to 2013. Prior to joining the Utilities Board, Ms. Dandekar served in the Iowa State Senate from 2009 to 2011 and in the Iowa State House of Representatives from 2002 to 2008. From 2000 to 2003, she was a member of the Vision Iowa Board of Directors. Ms. Dandekar also served on the Linn-Mar Community School District Board of Education from 1996 to 2002 and was a member of the Iowa Association of School Boards from 2000 to 2002. Ms. Dandekar received a B.S. from Nagpur University and a Post-Graduate Diploma from Bombay University.
Dandekar formed Thirty-Ninth Street Strategies in July with veteran pollster Marc Silverman, who formerly served on the White House National Economic Council during the Clinton Administration. Silverman played a key role in helping to shape the administration’s policy process for energy, telecommunications, and environmental issues. Mark Pritchard, a member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, will serve as the group’s international advisor. Thirty-Ninth Street Strategies is working with U.S. companies aiming to do business in Asia.
“We’re hoping to get people focused on the Democratic message,” she said. The consultancy is already working with several Democratic congressional candidates, including Reps. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania and John Conyers of Michigan; and Danner Kline, who is running for a House seat in Alabama’s sixth congressional district.
Indian American Nikesh Arora, the former chief operating officer of SoftBank Group Corp., is in race among the individuals in the running to take over as Uber chief executive officer. The top job at the company was vacated by Travis Kalanick. Arora has been quietly advancing himself for the position, said a New York Times report.
Uber is making a pitch to potential CEO candidates after Kalanick, the firm’s co-founder was ousted last month. The company has received a flood of interest and Uber’s board has interviewed multiple candidates, says the newspaper, citing an anonymous source.
The company is pitching top bosses such as Susan Wojcicki of YouTube, Adam Bain, Twitter’s former CEO, David Cush, ex-CEO, Virgin America, and Marissa Mayer, ex-CEO Yahoo. The race also includes Disney’s ex-COO Thomas Staggs, added the report.
Kalanick’s resignation came after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder conducted an investigation into the company’s culture and practices, after a former female employee publicly accused it of promoting sexual harassment by often looking the other way.
Uber has also been in a legal tangle with Waymo, Google’s self-driving car unit, over intellectual property theft, according to reports. Waymo has accused Uber of stealing trade secrets and infringing on patents of its self-driving program, it said. Since February, Uber has lost or removed numerous senior executives including Indian American president of engineering Amit Singhal and finance chief Gautam Gupta.
Arora was on course to become the next CEO of Japan’s SoftBank, before stepping down in June 2016. The Times, citing unnamed sources, said that Kalanick, who remains on the company’s board, is actively involved in the search for his replacement. Arora was believed to be set to take over as SoftBank chair and CEO when Masayoshi Son retired, but eventually resigned amid allegations of his business acumen. During Arora’s SoftBank tenure, the company invested in a set of ground-breaking growth-stage companies in India like Snapdeal, Ola, Oyo, Grofers, Housing and extended its footprint in Asia successfully with the mobile e-commerce company Coupang in Korea and the ride-share player Grab in Southeast Asia.
Prior to joining SoftBank, Arora was a longtime executive at Google Inc., serving as the chief business officer. In addition to his role in revenue and customer operations, and marketing and partnerships, he served in several other positions, including development and management of Google’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Before that, he was chief marketing officer at T-Mobile Europe. Arora earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering at IIT Varanasi, a master’s from Boston College, and an M.B.A. and doctorate from Northeastern University.
You have to give yourself credit for making history in instagram by adding 300k followers in less than 24 hrs last year with your glamorous mirror cakes and being the inspiration for cake afficianados around the world. Even the DIY(Do it yourself) kitchen table entrepreneurs are trying their hand at replicating your mirror glaze technique. In less than a year you have been recognized as a social media influencer with your prestigious nomination in the food category this year at ‘the shorty awards thanks to your every increasing followers. How do you feel about your phenomenal path to the top?
You have seen phenomenal success in an industry where it is very important to offer something unique and different. How have you kept yourself grounded and what is your strategy to keep the internet drooling over you flawless and incredible creations in the coming years?
To be honest, I like to do everything myself, using my hands. I do not have a large, mass production, which requires special equipment to accelerate the process.