Mumbai: India’s first and only Swadesi public cloud storage DigiBoxx™️ announced that it has acquired over 1 million users within six months of its launch. The platform witnessed over 16% users being active on a daily basis.

Launched in December 2020 by Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, the platform is an Indian digital file storage, sharing and data management SaaS product that provides storage options for individuals and SMEs who wish to store their personal and work data.

The easy to navigate and pocket friendly storage solution is available in monthly and yearly plans starting at INR. 30 per month. For individuals, there is a free account that comes with 20 GB storage, a 2GB maximum file size, and Gmail integration. For SMBs, the INR. 999 plan includes up to 50TB storage and a 10GB maximum file size. True to its ‘Swadesi’ philosophy, Digiboxx is available in Android, iOS and a desktop version currently supporting 8 Indian languages. Digiboxx also plans for launching in other regional languages in its efforts to cater to 700 Mn Indian Internet users across the nation.

Reports suggest that clicking selfies and taking videos are now considered a daily ‘ritual’ for the Indian youth with an average age of 23, they click a minimum of 7 selfies a day. The number can go up to even 100 during festive times and special occasions. Such drastic increases in mobile usage behavior have resulted in storage space becoming a real problem for smartphone users in India and the demand for free and reasonably priced space is ever increasing. With dominant players in the cloud storage services ending free storage for their customers, Digiboxx is the only platform that provides 100GB of storage at INR 1 per day and free storage for all users up to 20GB.

Commenting on the success, Amitabh Kant said, “Touching 1 million lives in just 6 months is a notable achievement, especially for a bootstrapped firm. DigiBoxx has progressed well and has taken calculative steps to reach this stage. India needs more such home-grown technologies to fulfil our vision of an ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat.’ As the global tech COS move away from providing the public cloud access for free, DigiBoxx is poised to step into this vacuum, with its aggressive pricing and free storage options for individuals, businesses and academics.”

On the occasion of hitting 1 MN subscribers, Arnab Mitra, CEO, DigiBoxx said, “Launched last year in December, Digiboxx is already being used by over a million users across the country. Together we want to build a Digital Storage facility for the people of our country. Our target is to provide a simple to use, comprehensive solution around storage in 8 Indian languages available in all devices especially to the Indian residents. We are confident of reaching 2 million by the end of this year and the discontinuation of free storage by the tech majors is an opportunity for us.”

Digiboxx offers intuitive services at a lower price, compared to the competition. The swadesi platform offers a search function by keyword, location, or name. Using the app is easy – just drag-and-drop files in, that is encrypted and uploaded on the go. It’s a relatively simple but effective service which makes cloud storage accessible and secure by syncing files between all the devices.

Apart from this, it’s possible to share important files with other people even if they aren’t DigiBoxx users. InstaShare™️, a file-sharing feature allows them to share large-size documents, high-resolution images, videos, PDFs in real quick time with anyone. It has free 2GB storage space and the file shared stays for 45 days in DigiBoxx.

About DigiBoxx™️

DigiBoxx™️ is an intelligent Indian digital file storage and sharing platform that’s secure, fast, intuitive, and easy on the pocket. With a goal to make digital asset management go vocal for local, we have built a robust technology that’s world-class and yet keeps in mind the flavors of India. DigiBoxx™️ is the first of its kind cutting edge indigenous digital asset management SaaS platform introduced in India. It is a tech startup founded and promoted by Arnab Mitra, MD, LIQVD ASIA along with Ashish Jalan and Vivek Suchanti, Concept Group.

New Delhi: A Tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed today between Department of Defence (DoD) Ministry of Defence (MoD), Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG) and Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK) in the presence of Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh and Minister of State (MoS) (Independent Charge) for Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, MoS for Prime Minister’s Office, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Department of Atomic Energy, Department of Space Personnel Dr Jitendra Singh. Both the Ministers expressed satisfaction over the signing of MoU.

A Tripartite MoU signed by MoD

The MoU envisages IIT Kanpur to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Techniques to conduct exploratory and predictive analysis of Public Grievances received on the web based Centralized Public Grievances Redress & Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) pertaining to the MoD. The DARPG, the nodal Department of Government of India in respect of policy initiatives on Public Grievances and custodian of data on web based CPGRAMS portal will provide the data dump on the Public Grievances pertaining to MoD to IIT Kanpur to facilitate their analysis.

The project is expected to help the MoD to identify the cause and nature of grievances and bring about systemic changes and policy interventions wherever required.

Varanasi: The Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) will play an important role in improving the quality of roads in India. The experts of the Institute will conduct a research work on the development of performance-based mix design process for bituminous mixtures.

For this purpose, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) has been signed between IIT (BHU) and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). This research work will be carried out under assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering Dr. Nikhil Saboo as the principle investigator and Dr. Ankit Gupta of as the co-principal investigator.

“This project is aimed towards construction of durable and long lasting roads in India. It will also help in reducing the life cycle cost by delaying the need of frequent maintenance. The outcomes of this project will be implemented through construction of test sections in collaboration with NHAI,” said Saboo adding that these roads will be evaluated periodically to understand the applicability of the developed methodology. This will help to gain more confidence in adopting the developed technology for construction of durable roads in India, he added.

IIT-BHU and NHI sign MoU

According to Saboo, the surface layer of the flexible pavement is the costliest component, which bears most of the vehicular loading in the highway. The current methods involved in the mix design of bituminous mixtures has certain deficiencies and cannot assure performance of the surface layers in terms of resistance to rutting and fatigue cracking.

He said that it is envisaged that this study will come up with more logical guidelines on rational practices for developing mixes which can sustain heavy vehicular loading in Indian highways. Such optimized mix design will reduce the variability associated with the performance of bituminous mixes and will serve as an economical guideline for the long-term performance of flexible pavements.

“This Industry-Academia relationship is anticipated to open further opportunities for exchange of ideas and expertise which will lead to sustainable development of infrastructure in the country,” he said.

Varanasi: Although the total lockdown to battle against COVID-19 has brought the entire nation at a halt, but it failed to make scores of young and energetic entrepreneurs to sit idle at their homes.

These entrepreneurs from diverse spheres have taken another route to carry on the promotional activities by holding meetings, not with physical presence but through online.

They are the members of the local chapters of BNI (Business Network International), an American franchised networking organization with around 254,206+ members in 8,968+ local chapters worldwide. BNI provides a structured and supportive system of giving and receiving business. It does so by providing an environment in which one develops personal relationships with dozens of other qualified business professionals. By establishing this “formal” relationship with other people, one will have the opportunity to substantially increase his business.

BNI India is believed to be the country’s largest and most successful business networking organisation. It offers its members the opportunity to share ideas, contacts, and most importantly, business referrals.

In Varanasi too, there many chapters of BNI including Innovate, Shine, Prosper, Abundance and Benchmark. “Well before the commencement of lockdown we started holding online meeting from March 17,” said Architect Rohit Gupta, the secretary of BNI INNOVATE. An online meeting of around 1500 members was held on Thursday.

Local BNI chapters arrange weekly meetings for people from various industries, in order to encourage the building of relationships and the passing of referrals. Members mostly consist of small business owners but medium and large organisations are also represented.

Functioning of BNI

In general, chapter meetings follow the same basic structure. Once the meeting is called to order by the Chapter President, initial announcements are presented by leadership, an educational piece is usually presented on how to improve networking and referral skills. Each member is then given between 45-60 seconds to present a weekly commercial for their business, in which they request referrals or otherwise discuss what sort of business they are looking for.
Guests and prospective members are then encouraged to tell the chapter about their business and what they do to provide value to the chapter. Frequently, chapters will either vote on the best commercial given that week, or permit the previous week’s winner to make the selection. Then one member each week gives a 10-minute presentation, which is a more in-depth version of the commercials, going into detail as to what services their business performs or what products they offer, their education, training & experience, and specific referrals they are looking for to help grow their business.

During the commercials and presentations, a binder filled with the business cards of current members is passed around, permitting current members to take cards and pass them to potential clients, and for guests & visitors to take as well. Only inducted members are permitted to place cards in the binder.
Once the presentation is completed, each member is then given a chance to pass out referrals, testimonials to other members of the chapter, and “Thank You For Closed Business”, in which a previously passed referral is concluded and has generated revenue for their business. These can be done either online via the BNI Connect app, the BNI website, or in person at the meeting. These are recorded to keep track of how many referrals are passed, and how much business the chapter has generated for its members throughout the year.

Visitors that wish to join are permitted to attend up to two meetings, after which they are required to submit a membership application if they wish to attend further meetings. Once they become a member, they are permitted up to three absences in a rolling six-month period. If a member obtains 4 or more absences during that time period, they are removed from the group, and the profession/category becomes open for new members to fill.

New Delhi: Recipient of the INSPIRE Faculty Award instituted by Department of Science & Technology,  Dr. Achintya Kumar Dutta from IIT Bombay along with his research group is working to develop new methods for quantum chemistry and implement them in efficient and free software to study electron attachment to aqueous DNA which has big implications in radiation therapy-based treatment of cancer.

Quantum chemistry is one of the new branches of chemistry which tries to understand the chemical properties of atoms and molecules without performing a lab experiment. Instead, in quantum chemistry, the Scientists try to solve the Schrödinger equation for the molecules, and it gives every measurable quantity about that particular molecule, without actually doing the measurement. However, the mathematical equations resulting from the application of the Schrodinger equation are very complicated and can only be solved using computers. Therefore, one needs to develop new theories and write efficient computer programs to solve these equations.

Indian scientists are at the forefront of the new theory development for quantum chemistry. However, the progress in translating those theories into practically useable computer software is somewhat limited. This is particularly surprising in the view of having a thriving Indian IT industry and extremely talented software professionals who are of global repute.

Dr. Dutta’s research group in IIT Bombay is a collaboration of chemists, computer scientists, and engineers who are united towards a common goal of development of efficient quantum chemistry methods and free software, which can be routinely used by scientists all over the globe to solve their chemistry problems.

“My inspire fellowship has allowed me to establish a state-of-the-art computing facility for developing and testing a new and efficient quantum chemistry software. It also allows me to train quality manpower from all over India who can contribute to the further progress of Indian science,” says Dr Dutta

The efficiency of these newly developed quantum chemistry methods allows the research group to solve the Schrodinger equation for the attachment of electrons to DNA in the presence of the bulk aqueous environment. The deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA is the carrier of genetic information in human body, and electron attachment to DNA is one of the crucial steps in radiation damage to human cells. His team has shown that the electron attachment to DNA solvated in bulk water happens through a doorway mechanism, and the presence of the aqueous environment allows this electron attachment to take place at an ultrafast time scale. This newly proposed mechanism of electron attachment to aqueous DNA has big implications in radiation therapy-based treatment of cancer.

This study can help in the development of a new class of radio-sensitizers, which makes tumor cells more sensitive to radiation therapy and thereby protects the normal cells. Computational modeling can greatly reduce the development cost of new radio-sensitizers, both in terms of money and time.

Dr. Dutta wants to use the inspire fellowship to further develop new quantum chemistry methods, benchmark efficient computational protocols to study radiation damage to genetic material and pursue science for the betterment of our society and humankind.