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Technology

3 Technological Trends that will define the future!

Hijacked by a pandemic that affected millions, 2020 has been quite a year. The world has experienced a lot of uncertainty and some of the most devastating moments.

But as every challenge brings an opportunity within itself, this global pandemic also brought impressive future technology trends. There have been leaps and bounds in innovation as the organizations are accelerating their initiatives at breakneck speed.

For better as well as for the worse, we can all agree that the past year will be memorable. As we all have entered 2021, here are 3 top future technology trends that are going to define the next normal:

Cloud Technology

Even before the COVID-19 could strike us, the ‘cloud technology’ had established its value. Be it a small business or giant companies, it provided scalability, agility, and enhanced cost efficiency across multiple industries.

According to a report by ‘business today’, the cloud computing industry is expected to grow from $371.4 billion in 2020 to $832.1 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 17.5%.

In the changed scenario, where employees are working from home, cloud technology has emerged as one of the future technology trends. This sudden shift in working habits has made cloud`s place an integral part of every enterprise.

Artificial Intelligence

With speech and image recognition, personal assistants in smartphones, navigation apps, ride-sharing apps, etc, Artificial Intelligence or AI, has already created a lot-of-buzz. However, this technology trend will remain one of the most popular future software technology. Due to the effects, AI has on how we live, work, play, and think, it will continue to evolve.

Machine Data Revolution

As consumer behavior has changed drastically, for the companies who are trying to keep up with this sudden shift, the stakes are high.

According to a Deloitte report, ‘the end-users have less and less patience for the kind of latency that legacy systems and data models often deliver. The optimum latency time between click and desired response is less than 50 milliseconds—any longer and users become irritated by the delay and make “executive decisions” themselves.’

Hence, to achieve the benefits of implying AI, data must be generated for machine consumption, and not humans, to increase their competitive advantage.

The year 2021 is going to be the year of constant learning, unlearning, and relearning with these tech trends that will grow exponentially. So what does this mean for you? It means you will have to stay abreast with these innovative future technology trends for a safe and better tomorrow. Make the most of today by upgrading yourself to mint the growing job opportunities or scale-up your business with these tech trends.

Learn some of the most effective strategies from leaders on the front line with our online business training courses. To know more visit https://www.badabusiness.com/psc?ref_code=ArticlesLeads

Categories
Startup Technology

4 Ways to Grow Your Business Online Without Spending a Lot of Money

Going digital is the trend today, so if you have an online business, it will surely grow over the time without any doubt. If you are planning to  start an online business, then you cannot afford to waste money at the initial stage. You don’t have to put in a lot of money into growing an online business. In reality, there are certain things that you can do  without spending any money at all. It just takes little creativity, effort and imagination. Take a look at these 4 ways to grow your business online with a small budget.

Create Rich Content Online

Rich content will always attract readers. Whether it’s a company blog or a product description, Creating high-quality content should be the main focus. For this, you need to really think out of the box and be creative enough to lure the readers with you writing skills. Use facts appropriately and try and engage the readers so that they are engrossed in the write-up. Only if this happens, your online business. In short, it is all about how well you can manage to engage the audience with what they need.

Design Layout and Presentation

The first thing about online content is how it looks when the reader sees it. The layout of the firm, be it any firm, should be appealing to the eye. It shouldn’t be tacky and haphazardly presented. You need to understand your target audience first- youngsters, middle-aged or any other category, and choose colours and layouts accordingly. You should remember that more than one-third of visitors will leave a site if the layout is poor. All that you should keep in mind is the choice of the colour, graphics and even the overall layout of the site. Your aim should be to deliver a pleasant visual and functional experience to people visiting the website.

Watch: Low Investment | Business Idea | Dr Vivek Bindra 

Be Mobile-Friendly

Not everyone carries a laptop or a tab everywhere they go, right? So the basic thing that one should keep in mind is to have a mobile-friendly website. Most people these days surf online from their smartphones. Your website should have a mobile variant like an app so that it becomes hassle-free for your customers.

Be an Active Participant in Online Communities and Use social media

Social media can help your business reach more than lakhs of people in single day. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms have highly engaged users and can help you fetch business and establish your brand identity. Moreover, be active in online communities where people go to post their questions, find content, and explore. Top communities on the internet that are really popular include Reddit, Quora, TripAdvisor among others.

 

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Technology

‘Nayi Shuruaat’, a Campaign Launched by Facebook to Celebrate the Success of Small Businesses in India Amid Crisis; All You Need to Know

In a bid to spread the success of the small business and their growth in India, social media giant Facebook on Tuesday launched ‘Nayi Shuruaat’. The newly launched campaign celebrates the small businesses of across the country. The campaign will help these businesses crawl back to normalcy and make a new start or a ‘Nayi Shuruaat’ amidst the deepest crisis the world has seen in recent times. The campaign by Facebook celebrates many such real stories of optimism, strength, and economic recovery from across the country. Facebook on Tuesday said that it is committed to help India quickly recover economically and socially in 2021 from the pandemic-hit year, by deepening support for small businesses and test and roll its new features from the country to the rest of the world.

About ‘Nayi Shuruaat’ campaign:

  1. The ‘Nayi Shuruaat’ campaign was launched during Facebook’s ‘Fuel for India’ event. It is an ode to the resilience of small businesses amid crisis.
  2. Nayi Shuruaat celebrates many such real stories of optimism, strength, and economic recovery from across the country
  3. Several such stories were also be unveiled during the upcoming Facebook Fuel for India virtual event on December 15 and December 16.
  4. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg via a virtual address during the event said that India’s building local capabilities and tech capacity to power innovative new business models and provide the citizens access to digital financial inclusion.

Facebook said it will continue to work closely with key partners to build a stronger ecosystem for small business growth in the country by investing in skilling programmes such as Boost with Facebook, entering in key partnerships such as with venture capital funds for the VC Brand Incubator program, and by giving people new ways to support small businesses such as the Instagram Food Stickers.

Zuckerberg on Tuesday said its partnership with Jio Platforms will help support millions of small businesses in India. Zuckerberg made the remark during a conversation with Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries at the first Facebook Fuel for India 2020 event.

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Technology

Eric Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom, Named ‘Businessperson of Year 2020’ by TIME Magazine

Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, has been named the ‘Businessperson of the 2020’ by TIME Magazine for the growth of his video conferencing platform amid the coronavirus pandemic. Yuan, who began at WebEx as a coder, soon became integral to the creation of his video-conferencing platform that served as a communication medium for millions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The birth of Zoom by the 50-year-old founder and CEO became successful after he struggled for a decade to build the no-frills, highly functional conferencing platform for businesses. With his determination and hardwork, Zoom was now being used in all sorts of unexpected places, from delivery rooms to grade schools.

Zoom’s popularity grew in 2020 as the world was hit with the pandemic at start of the year, which forced people to stay indoors, maintain social distancing and work from home. With the pandemic spreading its arms over the world, Zoom started growing with leaps and bounds, helping people to continue with the work through online mode. The video conferencing platform allows individuals to communicate virtually face to face. Zoom is now in the business of connecting everybody, originally intended for businesses and universities. Business Ideas For 2021: Here Are 4 Business Ideas Which You Can Start Next Year.

“We never thought about consumers or K-12 schools when we started planning the year 2020,” Yuan was quoted by TIME while speaking over Zoom from his home in the Bay Area. He had ordered employees to work from home in early March, but it wasn’t until weeks later—around when U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted a photo of a Cabinet meeting over Zoom—that it dawned on Yuan that his company might play a major role in this new virtual world order.

Yuan soon found himself serving as the world’s relationship liaison, social chair, principal, convention-center host, chief security officer and pallbearer. Despite competition from corporate behemoths like Google, Apple and Microsoft, Zoom jumped out in front of the video pack, catapulting from 10 million daily meeting participants in December to a staggering 300 million in April. Zoom became a verb and a prefix, a defining syllable of a socially distant era. As his company’s valuation soared, Yuan crashed into the Forbes billionaires list.

Zoom’s software was released in 2013, promoting a free basic service for different-size organisations along with many paid levels. Although many other startups relied heavily on free goods to cause widespread saturation, Zoom targeted modest school and company networks that would pay year after year for subscriptions.

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MSME Technology

Paytm to Double Loan Disbursement for MSMEs From Rs 550 Crore in Last Fiscal Year to Rs 1,000 Crore by March 2021

New Delhi, November 9: In a major boost to the micro- and small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), financial services platform Paytm on Monday announced to double its loan disbursements for the MSMEs from Rs 550 crore in last fiscal year to Rs 1,000 crore by March 2021. The firm said that it has company expanded collateral-free loans of up to Rs 5,00,000 at a low-interest rate and unique daily EMI product customised for micro-merchants.

Paytm continues to lead the offline payments (P2M) segment with over 50 percent market share by offering all digital payment methods. Bhavesh Gupta, CEO, Paytm Lending was quoted by IANS saying that with the firm’s collateral-free instant loans, it is trying to help kirana stores and other small business owners who have been left behind by the traditional banking sector and do not have easy access to loans and credit.

According to a report by IANS, the company informed that the recently launched Paytm All-in-One Android POS device has enabled over two lakh MSMEs to accept all payment modes. The company said it will continue to offer collateral-free loans under the ‘Merchant Lending Programme’ in Paytm for Business app. The firm said it has digitised the entire process starting from the loan application, approval to disbursal with no additional documents required in partnership with NBFCs and banks.

Rrports inform that in the last financial year, the company processed loans worth Rs 550 crore, benefiting over a lakh merchant partner. “Going forward, we will especially focus on EDC merchants and provide higher loan amounts based on their EDC transactions,” Gupta said.

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Technology

Facebook Rolls Out ‘SMB Guide’ to Help 9 Million Indian SMBs in Building Digital Presence and Reaching Potential Customers Online

New Delhi, November 4: With an aim to help the micro and small businesses in India to limp back to normalcy, social media giant Facebook on Wednesday rolled out a dedicated offline to online ‘SMB Guide’. In order to help these businesses recover from the pandemic-induced crisis, Facebook has come up with new resources to help make this journey frictionless for them. Reports inform that this offline to online SMB Guide for India is free and publicly available. However, the social networking giant is also proactively reaching out to nine million small businesses across the country to ensure it reaches the businesses who need it the most.

The SMB Guide is available in Hindi as well as in English in order to support a large number of businesses across distinct geographies. Archana Vohra, Director Small and Medium Businesses, Facebook India, said in a statement said that the new resources are geared to helping the smallest of businesses across geographies to move from offline to online with minimum effort. “”While the offline to online SMB Guide is publicly available, we are proactively reaching out to 9 million small businesses across India to ensure timely support”, she said.

The SMB Guide:

According to a report by IANS, the SMB Guide has been designed to provide a step-by-step direction on how the smallest of businesses can build a digital presence quickly, and reach potential customers online. The guide covers Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and key themes such as building an online presence, mobile storytelling, social media advertising, and creative and performance strategies.

The social networking giant said it is also rolling out the next leg of ‘Boost with Facebook’, a skilling and learning programme for scaling young businesses. The programme went virtual earlier this year, and is now going vernacular, and will be delivered primarily in Hindi through Facebook Live sessions. One of the key themes discussed during Boost with Facebook will be how small businesses can build for Diwali and the festive season beyond it, the company said.

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Technology

‘MSME Prerana’, an Online Business Mentoring Programme Launched for MSMEs; Here’s All You Need to Know

Chennai, October 7: ‘MSME Prerana’, an online business mentoring programme for MSMEs by state-run Indian Bank has been launched. The initiative was launched by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on October 6. The online programme will be made available in local languages and is aimed at empowering entrepreneurs through skill development and capacity building workshops. Sitharaman launched the initiative at the Indian Bank’s corporate centre in Chennai.  During the launch, Sitharaman said Indian Bank has taken an out-of-the-box initiative in launching MSME Prerana which will handhold the entrepreneurs through a mentoring program.

The Finance Minister added saying that this novel initiative shall further inspire others in the banking sector to adopt similar measures. Financial Services Secretary Debashish Panda, who also participated in the launch event through video conferencing, delved on the various initiatives taken by the government to support MSMEs.

About ‘MSME Prerana’ Programme:

  1. The ‘MSME Prerana’ initiative is in collaboration with Poornatha & Co, a firm that designs entrepreneurial development programs in vernacular languages using online web-based interactive sessions and case studies.
  2. The first two programs will be in Tamil for the Coimbatore clusters of Indian Bank. It will then be scaled up across the country in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali and Gujarati, the Bank statement said.
  3. Spread over 12 sessions, the program enables MSME entrepreneurs to acquire expertise in handling finance and managerial skills, capacity to handle crises in business, understand the dynamics of credit rating and risk management.
  4. While the sessions on managerial and financial skills will be conducted by Poornatha & Co, the banking related topics will be handled by Indian Bank.
  5. MSME Prerana is our effort to bridge this gap in the skill sets. It is a business mentoring program that gives inputs in simple terms (no jargon) and in the local vernacular.
  6. On successful completion of the online programme, all participants would get a certificate, issued jointly by Indian Bank, Poornatha & Co and MADE (Michigan Academy for Developing Entrepreneurs), USA.

The lender’s Managing Director and CEO Padmaja Chunduru said during its outreach programs, webinars and interaction with the bank”s MSME units, one main takeaway was that there is still a lot of dependence on chartered accountants or agents to access bank loans.

Chunduru added that the barriers these MSMEs face include language, confusion about what the bank looks for when they approach for loans, how to manage cash flows, which government schemes are available and suitable for them and how to register themselves for these schemes.

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Technology

Microsoft to End Its 20-Year-Old Open License Programme for SMBs From January 1, 2022

New Delhi, October 2: In a bid to help small and medium-sized  businesses (SMBs), Microsoft has announced to end its 20-year-old Open License programme from January 1, 2022. The SMBs organisations can continue to renew and purchase new software licenses, software assurance and online services through the Open License programme until December 31, 2021. In an update on Friday, the tech giant said, “As of January 1, 2022, commercial customers won’t be able to buy new or renew software licenses or online services through the Microsoft Open License programme”.

Microsoft added that new license-only purchases should be transacted through partners in the Cloud Solution Provider programme. The Microsoft Open License programme was created over 20 years ago for small and midsized customers to buy multiple perpetual software licenses at a volume price. According to a report by IANS, Microsoft said it is taking a significant step to simplify licensing by introducing perpetual software license purchases through the new commerce experience, as part of its Cloud Solution Provider programme for partners, with a target availability date of January 2021.

“Small and midsize customers will benefit from a simplified approach and greater flexibility in how you purchase software licenses in a way that’s easy to understand, that directly improves licensing asset management, and with predictable costs,” the company said. Some companies may have purchased “tokens” to use Microsoft’s online services. Those tokens will remain “active for five years from the purchase date,” Microsoft said. The firm added that it is committed to support every organisation wherever they are in their digital transformation journey.

Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners will offer perpetual licenses after the end of the Open License programme. Perpetual licenses are pay-once, non-subscription licenses that don’t expire.

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Technology

Google India to Launch ‘Namaste Digital’ Show on Doordarshan to Empower SMBs by Helping Them to Use Internet to Grow Their Business

New Delhi, October 1: As a part of its new multi-pronged effort to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Google India said that it will launch a new show in partnership with Doordarshan called ‘Namaste Digital’ to navigate the challenging economic environment. The ‘Namaste Digital’ show aims to serve as a mass media programme for SMBs to learn about the Internet and help them grow their business. According to a report by IANS, the tech giant’s the new initiative will focus on accelerating the efforts to help businesses build digital presence in partnership with software development company Zoho and payment gateway Instamojo.

Building on its effort to help consumers discover small businesses on Google search and maps and keeping the needs of different businesses in mind, Google has also partnered with delivery services providers Dunzo and Swiggy to fast track the on-boarding process. Both partners have committed to provide additional support to small businesses to start accepting orders online and enable delivery logistics. Under the new initiative, small businesses will be able to create business websites using Zoho inventory and sell online through Zoho Commerce for free till March 31, 2021. Instamojo on the other hand is offering a six-month free subscription to its “Premium Online Store Solution.”

SMBs can also avail Dunzo’s 24×7 merchant support for free with zero sign-up fees and instant registration and can make use of Swiggy’s seven days “Fast track Onboarding”. All these will be available for SMBs on “Grow with Google Small Business” hub in India which was launched in July this year.

Shalini Girish, Customer Solutions Director at Google India, said in a statement that today, the need to go digital is a necessity and SMBs are hard-pressed to digitise fast. “We need to do everything we can to handhold millions of small businesses in their digital-transformation journey and support business recovery during the current crisis”, she added. Adding further, she said that the needs of small businesses differ across the country and we are partnering with the industry leaders to offer more support to help small businesses go digital.

The ‘Namaste Digital’ Initiative:

  1. The new initiative builds on the “Grow with Google Small Business hub” effort. It is in direct response to the feedback received from small medium businesses captured in the Google-Kantar small business tracker research conducted in July.
  2. According to the report, customer related challenges tops the list for small businesses, with 92 per cent businesses facing customer related challenges, revenue loss due to low demand and payment of fixed costs are the other most severe challenges among businesses.
  3. The report also highlights that businesses are seeing the benefits of going digital, and today 5 out of 10 businesses are using digital channels to engage their customers compared to just 4 in 10 in April.
  4. In addition to providing support to go digital, Google India is also investing in efforts to scale its outreach to help small businesses learn to use digital tools in local Indian languages.

As part of this effort, Google has worked closely with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) to drive an industry wide skilling program which has already trained 1.2 million individuals.

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Technology

V-Enhance E-Training Programme Launched by Vestige to Empower Hearing and Speech Impaired Entrepreneurs in India

New Delhi, September 28: In a bid to empower the hearing and speech impaired entrepreneurs in India, Vestige, India’s leading home-grown direct selling company, has launched a custom-built e-training programme called V-Enhance. The special training programme aims to help distributors with hearing and speech impairment to augment their understanding about Vestige Marketing’s health and wellness products and their benefits through sign language.

According to a report by IANS, the aim of the V-Enhance E-Training Programme is to empower and support them to sell products with utmost confidence and build a rewarding and sustainable career with Vestige. This is a unique initiative taken by the firm which will help them realise their own potential to become successful and self-reliant entrepreneurs in the future.

Gautam Bali, the company’s founder and Managing Director said Vestige has provided equal opportunity to a diverse range of people globally and there are thousands of extraordinary success stories that highlight the the same. “For us, each distributor joining the system is a valued partner in our business. So, we feel that it is our duty to provide the differently abled a platform where they can equally grow. V-Enhance has been conceptualised with that very idea of providing equal opportunity to everyone.”

V-Enhance E-Training Programme is a two-month-long training programme. It covers the various health and wellness product categories offered by Vestige. It must be noted that there are multiple trainings every week covering topics like women’s health, immunity, detoxification & rejuvenation, glycemic health, fitness and diet and many more.