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BENGALURU: Hardware & networking, software & IT services, and the old favourite, the consumer sector, are the three highest paying industries in India, according to LinkedIn, which has just done a salary study for the first time in the country based on data on its platform. By city, Bengaluru pays the highest salaries - which goes with the fact that technology industries pay the most - followed by Mumbai and Delhi. Hardware & networking jobs fetch about Rs 15 lakh per annum (weighted average), software jobs fetch about Rs 12 lakh, and consumer jobs Rs 9 lakh. 3 (3) The hardware jobs being paid highly are not the traditional ones, but those in the area of chip design and new-age networking, experts said. Shivananda Koteshwar, head of design R&D at semiconductor tools company Synopsys India, said in the area of VLSI (very-large-scale integration), salaries have exploded because a lot of chip design implementation has moved to India. VLSI is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining hundreds of thousands of transistors or devices into a single chip. He said this was particularly true for physical design engineers. "Just two years ago, their salaries were 3-times their years of experience, today it is 4.5 to 5 times the experience," Koteshwar said. On networking, VC Gopalratnam, CIO (international), Cisco, said the network is at the centre of a maelstrom of change taking place in enterprises and forms the foundation of digital transformation. "As massive amounts of data continue to be distributed ever more widely, customers are facing challenges around complexity and security. To address this, there is a lot of innovation happening in the networking space and it is increasingly becoming more sophisticated. And as the sophistication of networks increase, the demand for networking roles and skills are increasing," he said. 2 (3) In software, new digital technologies are once again creating a fresh spiral of salary increases. AI and machine learning salaries are exploding. Viral Shah, co-founder and chief executive of Julia Computing, said bilingual programmers - those who are not only good at programming, but also understand a domain deeply - are also being paid handsomely. "The domain expertise may be business, engineering, finance, scientific, or medical. As an example, an AI programmer who has a biomedical engineering background is more likely to build the next generation medical device," he said. The consumer packaged goods industry, including those like Hindustan Unilever, P&G and Britannia, may not where it once used to be. But Ritesh Rana, vice president HR of Britannia, told TOI that leading companies in the segment typically hire from top-tier B-schools, and are still amongst the most sought after employers on campus. "The growth opportunities and span of control offered by this sector are typically way more intense, exciting and broader than any other sector. As a result, the sector forms an attractive talent pool and a poaching ground. So maintaining a competitive compensation structure becomes imperative," he said. In the LinkedIn study, Bengaluru emerged as the city where the weighted average compensation was the highest, at Rs 12 lakh, followed by Mumbai and Delhi-NCR at Rs 9 lakh each. Hyderabad stood at about Rs 8.5 lakh and Chennai at Rs 6.3 lakh. Based on submissions on the platform, the highest paying titles in the country are director of engineering, chief operating officer, executive director, vice president sales, and senior program manager. TOP COMMENT Bengaluru has everything going its way except the traffic. Bengaluru''s traffic is one of the worst in the country. ps murthy SEE ALL COMMENTSADD COMMENT LinkedIn has launched a salary insights tool on its platform in India, where it has more than 50 million users, the second highest in the world after the US. It has been collecting data through this over the past two months. As more users provide data, the insights will become better. "In India's competitive jobs market, LinkedIn Salary will help create salary transparency and empower our members with reliable data on what companies are paying today, what kind of compensation packages to expect, and how salaries vary as per industries and educational qualifications," LinkedIn India products head Ajay Datta said.
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Don't try to compete with machines to save jobs, but people have to adapt themselves to new skill sets that are relevant to the changing times, and adapt to machines and new technologies for making life better, said Mr Uday Kotak, President-Designate of CII and Managing Director and CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank at the National HR Conclave organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). "We all know that computer beats a chess champion. But recently I was reading an article that Google artificial intelligence (AI) programme has beaten the world champion in chess. So, let's not waste our time trying to compete with technology in order to save jobs. I don't think we will win that battle," Mr Kotak said, while adding that however, the relevance of human skill sets will never cease to exist. Exuding confidence that human brain can be stretched beyond what we can imagine, even much ahead of machines and other processes, Mr Kotak emphasised the importance of maintaining the emotional quotient of employees, which is the key driver of enjoyment and happiness. Though different studies are going on the skill sets that may be needed in future, there are some critical trends, on a day to day basis, like "protection of privacy, which is a big one, followed by leisure, sport and entertainment, which will be job creators of the future. Though security is also an issue, privacy will take precedence in the coming years," Mr Kotak added. However, such jobs may not be sustainable for a long term as the lag for technology changes has shrunk from 10-15 years a century ago to just 3-4 years now. Only people are the constant, while everything around them is subject to change. Mr TV Narendran, Chairman, CII National Committee on Leadership & HR and CEO & Managing Director of Tata Steel Ltd, said that Business leaders are grappling with the critical challenges of redefining work in terms of analytics-based decision making, human machine collaboration and gamification, and re-skilling of employees at all levels to prepare the organization to brace for this change is the need of the hour. He also stressed on the vital role of the HR function in this journey. "There is a need for defined institutional methods of Integration of the HR Processes with the organization's overall aspirations be it in terms of growth, sustainability and others. In this context, a growing debate is emerging on the need for improving company board oversight on HR and people matters," Mr. Narendran added. Mr. Narendran is of the view that in the new world of work, the traditional concepts of employee engagement, learning and development and performance metrics are changing drastically and the importance of delivering a differentiated experience to keep employees happy, engaged and productive is coming to the fore.
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India's punishing work culture is taking a toll on employees. This year, up to 75% of Indians surveyed by the US-based travel agency Expedia said they were vacation-deprived. This is the highest in the world and also significantly more than last year's 60%. In comparison, in the least vacation-deprived countries, Spain, followed by the UK, only 47% and 48%, respectively, felt they were missing out on holidays. Expedia's annual survey of vacation habits covered 11,144 adults in 19 countries. About a third of Indian respondents said they typically go six months to a year without a holiday, and most (41%) said they had taken between one and 10 days off this year. In comparison, most respondents in Spain (64%) said they had taken between 21 and 30 days off, while in the UK over half had done the same. The usual culprits were to blame for the sorry state of Indian workers: too much work and not enough money. But there's more to the story. Many of the Indians surveyed worried about missing important work decisions or being seen as less committed to their jobs if they went on a holiday. And 18% of the respondents believed successful people simply don't take vacations at all. Why don't Indians use their vacation days Percentage I save them in case something comes up in future 46 Work schedule does not allow for vacation/not enough staff to cover 35 It is difficult to coordinate time to take a vacation that works for me and my spouse/partner/family 33 Personal schedule does not allow for vacation 31 I can get money in exchange for my unused vacation days 31 I want to bank them/carry them over to next year for a longer vacation 28 I fear that important work decisions will be made without me 25 Lack of money/cannot afford to take holidays/vacation 24 I fear I will be seen as less committed/dedicated to my job 19 I feel like those who are successful at my job can't/don't take vacation days 18 I don't have anyone to go with 10 Other 1 Not applicable, always use all my vacation days 6 What's worse is that there's little escape from work for most Indians, even when they are on a break. "We dug deeper to understand reasons which are keeping Indians away from taking vacations and realised that Indians are the least to get a free pass while vacationing," Manmeet Ahluwalia, marketing head of Expedia, said in a statement. "They are expected to be available to their colleagues (34%) and supervisors (32%), making 34% (of) Indians check their mails at least once per day." As a result, up to 40% of Indian respondents strongly agreed they had a hard time leaving work behind and a majority tended to carry work along on a holiday. Perhaps, all this is no surprise in a country where only a fortunate few can claim any work-life balance. Though employers are slowly becoming more considerate, the vast majority of employees are still trapped working thousands of hours a year, including over the weekend, all while struggling with long, stressful commutes and household responsibilities in the few spare hours they have left.
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The trend of sharing how the world's most successful people spend their mornings has swept across the internet, as eager readers hope to glean insight into how they, too, can seize the day. Actor Mark Wahlberg wakes up at 2:30 am to pray. Comedian Melissa McCarthy wakes up at 4:30 am to watch reruns on TV. And Apple CEO Tim Cook wakes up at "a little before 4 am" to. read user feedback on Apple products. It might be difficult for the CEO of a (nearly) trillion-dollar company to find time throughout the day to hear directly from his customers, but doing so at the crack of dawn seems a bit extreme. What humanizes the ritual is what he does afterward. "I like to take the first hour and go through user comments and things like this that sort of focus on the external people that are so important to us," Cook shared in a recent interview with Axios. "And then I go to the gym and work out for an hour because it keeps my stress at bay." It's not exactly "hustle porn," Reddit and Initialized Capital co-founder Alexis Ohanian's brilliant term for the examples of leaders-especially in the tech industry-who never seem to stop pushing themselves. "This idea that unless you are suffering, grinding, working every hour of every day, you're not working hard enough . this is one of the most toxic, dangerous things in tech right now," Ohanian said at Web Summit, one of Europe's largest tech conferences, last week. Reading customer comments in the pre-dawn hours, followed by some stress-relieving exercise, isn't the worst example to be setting for Apple's employees. But it isn't the best, either. Though morning rituals can help workers start the day on the right footing, it's sleep that's the ultimate productivity hack.
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Changes in regulatory landscape are making it unviable to operate ATMs, and may lead to the closure of half of the 2.38 lakh machines in the country by March 2019, the Confederation of ATM Industry (CATMi) warned. Closure of the ATMs will impact thousands of jobs and also the the financial inclusion efforts of the government, the industry body said in a statement. "Service providers may be forced to close down almost 1.13 lakh ATMs across the country by March 2019. These numbers include approximately one lakh off-site ATMs and a little over 15,000 white label ATMs," it said. The industry has reached a "tipping point", the body added. A majority of the ATMs which can be shut down will be in the non-urban areas, it said, underlining that this can impact the financial inclusion efforts as beneficiaries use the machines to withdraw government subsidies. The industry body said that recent regulatory changes, including those on hardware and software upgrades, coupled with mandates on cash management standards and the cassette swap method of loading cash, will make ATM operations unviable, resulting in the closure. The new cash logistics and cassette swap method will alone result in costs of Rs 3,000 crore for the industry, it estimated. It added that the ATM industry, including managed service providers, brown-label ATM deployers and white label ATM operators (WLAO), is still reeling under the shock of demonetisation. "The situation has further deteriorated now due to the additional compliance requirements that call for a huge cost outlay. The service providers do not have the financial means to meet such massive costs and may be forced to shut down these ATMs," it said. The only way to salvage the situation for the industry, according to the body, is if banks "step in to bear the load of the additional cost of compliances". "Unless ATM deployers are compensated by banks for making these investments, there is likely to be a scenario where contracts are surrendered, leading to large scale closure of ATMs," it said. Revenues for providing ATMs as a service are not growing at all due to very low ATM interchange charges and ever-increasing costs, it said, adding that such changes in the landscape were not anticipated while signing contracts with the banks. The WLAOs have accumulated losses and the compliance costs can result in over 15,000 machines run by them shutting down, the industry body added.
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In a tepid job market for senior talent, the ecommerce and startup sector is where the action is. An uptick in the sector led by a combination of factors including an improved funding scenario, increased M&A activity, skyrocketing mobile data usage and the coming-of-age of ecommerce and transaction models have driven companies to embark on bolstering their top decks with senior talent. Be it Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, Paytm, OYO, Ola or Zomato at one end or startups that have just bagged their Series A, Series B rounds of funding at the other, search firms say they are seeing a 40-100% increase in such mandates over last year. "Online sector hiring has picked up big time," says Anuj Roy, managing partner, FIDIUS Advisory, adding his firm is currently running 13-14 mandates for senior talent, compared to seven-eight last year. At Bengalurubased Longhouse Consulting, mandates have doubled. From 30 in a quarter, they are now doing about 75, of which the bulk is from ecommerce. The surge reflects the upswing in the domestic startup system, says Roy. "Sentiments are up," he says. Hiring has shot up in the last 6-7 months, with rough estimates suggesting nearly 350-400-plus senior hires across the ecommerce and startup ecosystem, say consultants. In the last week alone, OYO Hotels has appointed ex-IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh as CEO for India and South-Asia; Flipkart hired Smriti Singh as human resources head; MakeMyTrip got Vipul Prakash as chief operating officer (COO); InCred hired Rahul Bhargava as chief technology officer (CTO), Freshworks made two senior appointments while even smaller startups such as Doodhwala and Sattviko hired for CXO roles. Untitled-1 Everyone - from seed-funded companies to the unicorns - is on the prowl for top talent, say consultants. On the one hand, the likes of Flipkart, Amazon and Swiggy are hiring aggressively. On the other, the number of companies that have raised upwards of $50 million has gone up significantly. "A lot of such companies are now building their teams because once you raise that much capital, you move from a startup culture to a professional-led one," says Roy. There are also smaller startups who've raised their Series A, Series B rounds of funding and are confident of raising the next round. Swiggy, which hired Vivek Sundar, its first COO and ex-Amazon employee Dale Vaz as head of engineering and data sciences in July, said it has scaled to support and enable its growth and expansion. "In the coming months, we will be doubling down on hiring the sharpest minds in the industry for senior roles in departments such as business, sales and technology, and for highly specialised roles in areas such data sciences and AI," said Girish Menon, VP, HR at Swiggy. An Amazon spokesperson said its hiring strategy continues to be robust across all levels and businesses. A recent ET story highlighted how Flipkart was planning to hire senior talent in domains such as supply chain management, technology, marketing, human resources and product, notwithstanding the recent turmoil at the group, including Binny Bansal's exit. Fintech startup Lendingkart Technologies, which raised over $87 million in equity funding in February, hired Paroma Chatterjee as its chief business officer and Abhijit Jadhav as the VP of supply chain finance in October. "As companies scale up their business, there is a need to have a sturdy and future-focused leadership team. Today, startups are growing at a massive pace and thus it becomes relevant for them to have a leadership team that aligns with their vision, culture and goals so that they can together work towards achieving it," said Harshvardhan Lunia, CEO at Lendingkart Technologies. Anant Goel, CEO of grocery delivery platform Milkbasket, which raised $3 million in Pre-Series A round led by UnileverNSE -1.06 % Ventures in January, concurs. "As an organisation grows, each vertical demand has to be overseen and managed by a senior representative," says Goel, adding they are on the lookout for senior resources across operations, marketing and engineering.
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BENGALURU: Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru are homes to the richest real estate entrepreneurs of the country, accounting for 78 of the top 100 tycoons, as per the Grohe Hurun India real estate rich list. While Mumbai tops with 35, New Delhi and Bengaluru stand neck to neck with 22 and 21 respectively, showing how heavily the property boom in these cities, both commercial and residential, have shaped the fortunes of the promoters. aa Three of the top 10 richest such individuals are from Bengaluru, 5 from Mumbai and one each from New Delhi and Singapore. The three from Bengaluru are Jitu Virwani of Embassy Group, and Raj and Manoj Menda of RMZ. Embassy and RMZ are both primarily commercial office space builders, and their position reflects the boom in business in the city. Both the companies have huge office parks spreading across millions of sqft and housing clients such as JP Morgan, Accenture and Facebook. Mangal Prabhat Lodha, chairman of the Lodha Group, is the richest builder with a total worth of Rs 27,150 crore, while Jitu Virwani, who heads Embassy, comes second with Rs 23,160 crore. Rajiv Singh of DLF is third with Rs 17,690 crore. The total wealth of the top 100 Indians in the property sector was up 27% to $32 billion this year, compared to last year. "Real estate sector in India has always been among the key wealth creators in the country...It is also an industry that demands patience and persistence - with average age of the participants on the list hovering around 59 years," Anas Rahman Junaid, MD of Hurun Report India, said. About 59% are firstgeneration entrepreneurs. Lodha and Virwani climbed up a spot compared to last year. DLF's KP Singh, who was the real estate king of India last year with a total worth of Rs 23,460 crore, was not in the list this year. His son, Rajiv Singh, with a net worth of Rs 17,690 crore, occupied the third spot. TOP COMMENT Most of the real estate builds are fraud, they.. make easy money.. get land for peanuts.. with the help of politicians.. and they sell for 1000% returns. SriSri SEE ALL COMMENTSADD COMMENT The Menda's of RMZ, ranked jointly 9th in the list, are worth Rs 5,300 crore each, with their wealth up 122% compared to last year. They did not feature in the list last year. Virwani's is up 38%. Also in the list of under 40 real estate entrepreneurs were Kunal and Sidharth Menda, the next generations of the Menda family. Both are worth Rs 530 crore. Sidharth, who is 29, heads coworking space provider CoWrks. Hurun is a London-based publishing and events group and Grohe, a Dusseldorf-headquartered bathroom solutions and kitchen fittings firm.
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BENGALURU: Hardware & networking, software & IT services, and the old favourite, the consumer sector, are the three highest paying industries in India, according to LinkedIn, which has just done a salary study for the first time in the country based on data on its platform. By city, Bengaluru pays the highest salaries - which goes with the fact that technology industries pay the most - followed by Mumbai and Delhi. Hardware & networking jobs fetch about Rs 15 lakh per annum (weighted average), software jobs fetch about Rs 12 lakh, and consumer jobs Rs 9 lakh. 3 (3) The hardware jobs being paid highly are not the traditional ones, but those in the area of chip design and new-age networking, experts said. Shivananda Koteshwar, head of design R&D at semiconductor tools company Synopsys India, said in the area of VLSI (very-large-scale integration), salaries have exploded because a lot of chip design implementation has moved to India. VLSI is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining hundreds of thousands of transistors or devices into a single chip. He said this was particularly true for physical design engineers. "Just two years ago, their salaries were 3-times their years of experience, today it is 4.5 to 5 times the experience," Koteshwar said. On networking, VC Gopalratnam, CIO (international), Cisco, said the network is at the centre of a maelstrom of change taking place in enterprises and forms the foundation of digital transformation. "As massive amounts of data continue to be distributed ever more widely, customers are facing challenges around complexity and security. To address this, there is a lot of innovation happening in the networking space and it is increasingly becoming more sophisticated. And as the sophistication of networks increase, the demand for networking roles and skills are increasing," he said. 2 (3) In software, new digital technologies are once again creating a fresh spiral of salary increases. AI and machine learning salaries are exploding. Viral Shah, co-founder and chief executive of Julia Computing, said bilingual programmers - those who are not only good at programming, but also understand a domain deeply - are also being paid handsomely. "The domain expertise may be business, engineering, finance, scientific, or medical. As an example, an AI programmer who has a biomedical engineering background is more likely to build the next generation medical device," he said. The consumer packaged goods industry, including those like Hindustan Unilever, P&G and Britannia, may not where it once used to be. But Ritesh Rana, vice president HR of Britannia, told TOI that leading companies in the segment typically hire from top-tier B-schools, and are still amongst the most sought after employers on campus. "The growth opportunities and span of control offered by this sector are typically way more intense, exciting and broader than any other sector. As a result, the sector forms an attractive talent pool and a poaching ground. So maintaining a competitive compensation structure becomes imperative," he said. In the LinkedIn study, Bengaluru emerged as the city where the weighted average compensation was the highest, at Rs 12 lakh, followed by Mumbai and Delhi-NCR at Rs 9 lakh each. Hyderabad stood at about Rs 8.5 lakh and Chennai at Rs 6.3 lakh. Based on submissions on the platform, the highest paying titles in the country are director of engineering, chief operating officer, executive director, vice president sales, and senior program manager. TOP COMMENT Bengaluru has everything going its way except the traffic. Bengaluru''s traffic is one of the worst in the country. ps murthy SEE ALL COMMENTSADD COMMENT LinkedIn has launched a salary insights tool on its platform in India, where it has more than 50 million users, the second highest in the world after the US. It has been collecting data through this over the past two months. As more users provide data, the insights will become better. "In India's competitive jobs market, LinkedIn Salary will help create salary transparency and empower our members with reliable data on what companies are paying today, what kind of compensation packages to expect, and how salaries vary as per industries and educational qualifications," LinkedIn India products head Ajay Datta said.
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Don't try to compete with machines to save jobs, but people have to adapt themselves to new skill sets that are relevant to the changing times, and adapt to machines and new technologies for making life better, said Mr Uday Kotak, President-Designate of CII and Managing Director and CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank at the National HR Conclave organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). "We all know that computer beats a chess champion. But recently I was reading an article that Google artificial intelligence (AI) programme has beaten the world champion in chess. So, let's not waste our time trying to compete with technology in order to save jobs. I don't think we will win that battle," Mr Kotak said, while adding that however, the relevance of human skill sets will never cease to exist. Exuding confidence that human brain can be stretched beyond what we can imagine, even much ahead of machines and other processes, Mr Kotak emphasised the importance of maintaining the emotional quotient of employees, which is the key driver of enjoyment and happiness. Though different studies are going on the skill sets that may be needed in future, there are some critical trends, on a day to day basis, like "protection of privacy, which is a big one, followed by leisure, sport and entertainment, which will be job creators of the future. Though security is also an issue, privacy will take precedence in the coming years," Mr Kotak added. However, such jobs may not be sustainable for a long term as the lag for technology changes has shrunk from 10-15 years a century ago to just 3-4 years now. Only people are the constant, while everything around them is subject to change. Mr TV Narendran, Chairman, CII National Committee on Leadership & HR and CEO & Managing Director of Tata Steel Ltd, said that Business leaders are grappling with the critical challenges of redefining work in terms of analytics-based decision making, human machine collaboration and gamification, and re-skilling of employees at all levels to prepare the organization to brace for this change is the need of the hour. He also stressed on the vital role of the HR function in this journey. "There is a need for defined institutional methods of Integration of the HR Processes with the organization's overall aspirations be it in terms of growth, sustainability and others. In this context, a growing debate is emerging on the need for improving company board oversight on HR and people matters," Mr. Narendran added. Mr. Narendran is of the view that in the new world of work, the traditional concepts of employee engagement, learning and development and performance metrics are changing drastically and the importance of delivering a differentiated experience to keep employees happy, engaged and productive is coming to the fore.
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India's punishing work culture is taking a toll on employees. This year, up to 75% of Indians surveyed by the US-based travel agency Expedia said they were vacation-deprived. This is the highest in the world and also significantly more than last year's 60%. In comparison, in the least vacation-deprived countries, Spain, followed by the UK, only 47% and 48%, respectively, felt they were missing out on holidays. Expedia's annual survey of vacation habits covered 11,144 adults in 19 countries. About a third of Indian respondents said they typically go six months to a year without a holiday, and most (41%) said they had taken between one and 10 days off this year. In comparison, most respondents in Spain (64%) said they had taken between 21 and 30 days off, while in the UK over half had done the same. The usual culprits were to blame for the sorry state of Indian workers: too much work and not enough money. But there's more to the story. Many of the Indians surveyed worried about missing important work decisions or being seen as less committed to their jobs if they went on a holiday. And 18% of the respondents believed successful people simply don't take vacations at all. Why don't Indians use their vacation days Percentage I save them in case something comes up in future 46 Work schedule does not allow for vacation/not enough staff to cover 35 It is difficult to coordinate time to take a vacation that works for me and my spouse/partner/family 33 Personal schedule does not allow for vacation 31 I can get money in exchange for my unused vacation days 31 I want to bank them/carry them over to next year for a longer vacation 28 I fear that important work decisions will be made without me 25 Lack of money/cannot afford to take holidays/vacation 24 I fear I will be seen as less committed/dedicated to my job 19 I feel like those who are successful at my job can't/don't take vacation days 18 I don't have anyone to go with 10 Other 1 Not applicable, always use all my vacation days 6 What's worse is that there's little escape from work for most Indians, even when they are on a break. "We dug deeper to understand reasons which are keeping Indians away from taking vacations and realised that Indians are the least to get a free pass while vacationing," Manmeet Ahluwalia, marketing head of Expedia, said in a statement. "They are expected to be available to their colleagues (34%) and supervisors (32%), making 34% (of) Indians check their mails at least once per day." As a result, up to 40% of Indian respondents strongly agreed they had a hard time leaving work behind and a majority tended to carry work along on a holiday. Perhaps, all this is no surprise in a country where only a fortunate few can claim any work-life balance. Though employers are slowly becoming more considerate, the vast majority of employees are still trapped working thousands of hours a year, including over the weekend, all while struggling with long, stressful commutes and household responsibilities in the few spare hours they have left.
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The trend of sharing how the world's most successful people spend their mornings has swept across the internet, as eager readers hope to glean insight into how they, too, can seize the day. Actor Mark Wahlberg wakes up at 2:30 am to pray. Comedian Melissa McCarthy wakes up at 4:30 am to watch reruns on TV. And Apple CEO Tim Cook wakes up at "a little before 4 am" to. read user feedback on Apple products. It might be difficult for the CEO of a (nearly) trillion-dollar company to find time throughout the day to hear directly from his customers, but doing so at the crack of dawn seems a bit extreme. What humanizes the ritual is what he does afterward. "I like to take the first hour and go through user comments and things like this that sort of focus on the external people that are so important to us," Cook shared in a recent interview with Axios. "And then I go to the gym and work out for an hour because it keeps my stress at bay." It's not exactly "hustle porn," Reddit and Initialized Capital co-founder Alexis Ohanian's brilliant term for the examples of leaders-especially in the tech industry-who never seem to stop pushing themselves. "This idea that unless you are suffering, grinding, working every hour of every day, you're not working hard enough . this is one of the most toxic, dangerous things in tech right now," Ohanian said at Web Summit, one of Europe's largest tech conferences, last week. Reading customer comments in the pre-dawn hours, followed by some stress-relieving exercise, isn't the worst example to be setting for Apple's employees. But it isn't the best, either. Though morning rituals can help workers start the day on the right footing, it's sleep that's the ultimate productivity hack.
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Changes in regulatory landscape are making it unviable to operate ATMs, and may lead to the closure of half of the 2.38 lakh machines in the country by March 2019, the Confederation of ATM Industry (CATMi) warned. Closure of the ATMs will impact thousands of jobs and also the the financial inclusion efforts of the government, the industry body said in a statement. "Service providers may be forced to close down almost 1.13 lakh ATMs across the country by March 2019. These numbers include approximately one lakh off-site ATMs and a little over 15,000 white label ATMs," it said. The industry has reached a "tipping point", the body added. A majority of the ATMs which can be shut down will be in the non-urban areas, it said, underlining that this can impact the financial inclusion efforts as beneficiaries use the machines to withdraw government subsidies. The industry body said that recent regulatory changes, including those on hardware and software upgrades, coupled with mandates on cash management standards and the cassette swap method of loading cash, will make ATM operations unviable, resulting in the closure. The new cash logistics and cassette swap method will alone result in costs of Rs 3,000 crore for the industry, it estimated. It added that the ATM industry, including managed service providers, brown-label ATM deployers and white label ATM operators (WLAO), is still reeling under the shock of demonetisation. "The situation has further deteriorated now due to the additional compliance requirements that call for a huge cost outlay. The service providers do not have the financial means to meet such massive costs and may be forced to shut down these ATMs," it said. The only way to salvage the situation for the industry, according to the body, is if banks "step in to bear the load of the additional cost of compliances". "Unless ATM deployers are compensated by banks for making these investments, there is likely to be a scenario where contracts are surrendered, leading to large scale closure of ATMs," it said. Revenues for providing ATMs as a service are not growing at all due to very low ATM interchange charges and ever-increasing costs, it said, adding that such changes in the landscape were not anticipated while signing contracts with the banks. The WLAOs have accumulated losses and the compliance costs can result in over 15,000 machines run by them shutting down, the industry body added.
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In a tepid job market for senior talent, the ecommerce and startup sector is where the action is. An uptick in the sector led by a combination of factors including an improved funding scenario, increased M&A activity, skyrocketing mobile data usage and the coming-of-age of ecommerce and transaction models have driven companies to embark on bolstering their top decks with senior talent. Be it Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, Paytm, OYO, Ola or Zomato at one end or startups that have just bagged their Series A, Series B rounds of funding at the other, search firms say they are seeing a 40-100% increase in such mandates over last year. "Online sector hiring has picked up big time," says Anuj Roy, managing partner, FIDIUS Advisory, adding his firm is currently running 13-14 mandates for senior talent, compared to seven-eight last year. At Bengalurubased Longhouse Consulting, mandates have doubled. From 30 in a quarter, they are now doing about 75, of which the bulk is from ecommerce. The surge reflects the upswing in the domestic startup system, says Roy. "Sentiments are up," he says. Hiring has shot up in the last 6-7 months, with rough estimates suggesting nearly 350-400-plus senior hires across the ecommerce and startup ecosystem, say consultants. In the last week alone, OYO Hotels has appointed ex-IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh as CEO for India and South-Asia; Flipkart hired Smriti Singh as human resources head; MakeMyTrip got Vipul Prakash as chief operating officer (COO); InCred hired Rahul Bhargava as chief technology officer (CTO), Freshworks made two senior appointments while even smaller startups such as Doodhwala and Sattviko hired for CXO roles. Untitled-1 Everyone - from seed-funded companies to the unicorns - is on the prowl for top talent, say consultants. On the one hand, the likes of Flipkart, Amazon and Swiggy are hiring aggressively. On the other, the number of companies that have raised upwards of $50 million has gone up significantly. "A lot of such companies are now building their teams because once you raise that much capital, you move from a startup culture to a professional-led one," says Roy. There are also smaller startups who've raised their Series A, Series B rounds of funding and are confident of raising the next round. Swiggy, which hired Vivek Sundar, its first COO and ex-Amazon employee Dale Vaz as head of engineering and data sciences in July, said it has scaled to support and enable its growth and expansion. "In the coming months, we will be doubling down on hiring the sharpest minds in the industry for senior roles in departments such as business, sales and technology, and for highly specialised roles in areas such data sciences and AI," said Girish Menon, VP, HR at Swiggy. An Amazon spokesperson said its hiring strategy continues to be robust across all levels and businesses. A recent ET story highlighted how Flipkart was planning to hire senior talent in domains such as supply chain management, technology, marketing, human resources and product, notwithstanding the recent turmoil at the group, including Binny Bansal's exit. Fintech startup Lendingkart Technologies, which raised over $87 million in equity funding in February, hired Paroma Chatterjee as its chief business officer and Abhijit Jadhav as the VP of supply chain finance in October. "As companies scale up their business, there is a need to have a sturdy and future-focused leadership team. Today, startups are growing at a massive pace and thus it becomes relevant for them to have a leadership team that aligns with their vision, culture and goals so that they can together work towards achieving it," said Harshvardhan Lunia, CEO at Lendingkart Technologies. Anant Goel, CEO of grocery delivery platform Milkbasket, which raised $3 million in Pre-Series A round led by UnileverNSE -1.06 % Ventures in January, concurs. "As an organisation grows, each vertical demand has to be overseen and managed by a senior representative," says Goel, adding they are on the lookout for senior resources across operations, marketing and engineering.
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BENGALURU: Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru are homes to the richest real estate entrepreneurs of the country, accounting for 78 of the top 100 tycoons, as per the Grohe Hurun India real estate rich list. While Mumbai tops with 35, New Delhi and Bengaluru stand neck to neck with 22 and 21 respectively, showing how heavily the property boom in these cities, both commercial and residential, have shaped the fortunes of the promoters. aa Three of the top 10 richest such individuals are from Bengaluru, 5 from Mumbai and one each from New Delhi and Singapore. The three from Bengaluru are Jitu Virwani of Embassy Group, and Raj and Manoj Menda of RMZ. Embassy and RMZ are both primarily commercial office space builders, and their position reflects the boom in business in the city. Both the companies have huge office parks spreading across millions of sqft and housing clients such as JP Morgan, Accenture and Facebook. Mangal Prabhat Lodha, chairman of the Lodha Group, is the richest builder with a total worth of Rs 27,150 crore, while Jitu Virwani, who heads Embassy, comes second with Rs 23,160 crore. Rajiv Singh of DLF is third with Rs 17,690 crore. The total wealth of the top 100 Indians in the property sector was up 27% to $32 billion this year, compared to last year. "Real estate sector in India has always been among the key wealth creators in the country...It is also an industry that demands patience and persistence - with average age of the participants on the list hovering around 59 years," Anas Rahman Junaid, MD of Hurun Report India, said. About 59% are firstgeneration entrepreneurs. Lodha and Virwani climbed up a spot compared to last year. DLF's KP Singh, who was the real estate king of India last year with a total worth of Rs 23,460 crore, was not in the list this year. His son, Rajiv Singh, with a net worth of Rs 17,690 crore, occupied the third spot. TOP COMMENT Most of the real estate builds are fraud, they.. make easy money.. get land for peanuts.. with the help of politicians.. and they sell for 1000% returns. SriSri SEE ALL COMMENTSADD COMMENT The Menda's of RMZ, ranked jointly 9th in the list, are worth Rs 5,300 crore each, with their wealth up 122% compared to last year. They did not feature in the list last year. Virwani's is up 38%. Also in the list of under 40 real estate entrepreneurs were Kunal and Sidharth Menda, the next generations of the Menda family. Both are worth Rs 530 crore. Sidharth, who is 29, heads coworking space provider CoWrks. Hurun is a London-based publishing and events group and Grohe, a Dusseldorf-headquartered bathroom solutions and kitchen fittings firm.
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BENGALURU: Hardware & networking, software & IT services,