Mindtree founder Rostow Ravanan plans SaaS startup; Flipkart targets next 200 mn consumers with new feature

Rostow Ravanan, co-founder of Bengaluru headquartered information technology firm Mindtree, plans to start up with a SaaS venture, The Economic Times reported on Wednesday. The company will focus on the healthcare and manufacturing sectors, the report said. Ravanan told the newspaper that he wants to understand a different market in the area of SaaS. He quit Mindtree in July this year after engineering giant Larsen and Toubro acquired a controlling stake in the company.

India has lately emerged as a hotbed for SaaS startups and several have found significant success globally. Notable among those are Bengaluru and San Mateo, California headquartered Freshworks and Pune-born Druva. Early this month, Freshworks saw its valuation soar to $3.5 billion when it raised its largest funding round at $150 million. 

Also read: From Pune to Sunnyvale: The Druva template for building a global SaaS leader

CERT-In advisory for OnePlus smartphone users

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the country’s nodal agency for cybersecurity, issued an advisory for OnePlus smartphone users in the country, asking them to change their account passwords, The Economic Times reported. The advisory revealed that around 3,000 customers' orders were exposed during the recent global system breach. No payment card, bank account details or passwords were breached and all affected users had already been notified by email, OnePlus said.

Dell Technologies expands Edge platform

Texas headquartered technology giant Dell Technologies has rolled out a new solution, Dell EMC VEP1405 Series to help customers adopt the software-defined networking at the Edge while controlling costs and enhancing productivity. The new solution is ideal for organisations and service providers who are looking to modernise operations for connecting branch locations to the WAN, as it reduces complexity and fosters business impact, the company said in a statement.   

Flipkart adds smart assistive interface 

Walmart-owned ecommerce company Flipkart has added a smart assistive interface feature, dubbed Flipkart Saathi, to help first-time users on the platform and make them comfortable with the overall shopping experience. The feature is available in Hindi and English to start with and is Flipkart’s attempt towards further humanising ecommerce, it said in a statement. With the new feature, the company aims to reach consumers across Tier II and III cities and beyond in rural India, as it aims to bring the next 200 million consumers online.

Nasscom, Vellore Institute of Technology sign MoU 

New Delhi-based IT industry lobby National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Tamil Nadu-based Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) Tamil Nadu. The aim of this partnership is to showcase the conduct of assessments and certification on qualification packs (QP) and national occupational standards (NOS), Nasscom and VIT said in a joint statement. VIT has also signed up for 7500 licenses under Nasscom’s FutureSkills platform along with three QP adoptions, the statement said.