TCS Becomes Title Sponsor and Technology Partner of Toronto Waterfront Marathon Through 2026
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS) has partnered with Canada Running Series (CRS) to become the new title sponsor and official IT services and technology consulting partner of the Toronto Waterfront Marathon and Virtual Race through November 2026.
This news follows TCS’ renewal of its title and technology sponsorship of the TCS New York City Marathon, as well as becoming the new title and technology sponsor of the TCS London Marathon this year.
Soumen Roy, Executive Director and Country Head, TCS Canada, said, “Running a marathon makes you believe that you can accomplish anything. We can’t wait to channel the spirit of building on belief by enhancing the Toronto Waterfront Marathon experience with innovative technology and trailblazing sustainability initiatives in our local communities.”
TCS and CRS aim to modernize marathon running in Canada through a new official race app. It will offer a first-of-its-kind environmental impact calculator that will enable runners and spectators to track and offset their environmental impact. TCS will also work with CRS to create a hybrid and immersive race experience for all runners and spectators around the globe.
The official race app will offer unlimited tracking of both in-person and virtual runners on the same racecourse map and let spectators create digital cheer cards to share messages of encouragement on social media. Runners will be able to share a link to friends and family that automatically initiates the app download with them already selected to be tracked. In addition, the app will incorporate augmented reality features that became popular during the pandemic to support both in-person and virtual runners, along with offering surprise-and-delight experiences.
“We're excited to begin our partnership with TCS and join a family of global, leading-edge marathons,” said Charlotte Brookes, Event Director of CRS & the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. “It’s a unique opportunity to take our World Athletics Gold Label event to the next level and beyond, to greatly enhance the runner experience though innovative technology, to showcase athletic excellence, and to have a broader impact in building a healthy, caring, and sustainable Toronto. The new TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon race app will be a symbol of our collaboration that will connect, sustain and inspire us all whether we are participating in-person or virtually, from anywhere around the globe.”
TCS will also donate 32,000 person-hours toward helping the TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon become the most sustainable race in Canada. CRS’ goal is to achieve Evergreen Certification by 2022. When achieved, it will be the only race in Canada to attain this level of environmental certification from the Council of Responsible Sport.
Expanding on this commitment to technology and sustainability, TCS and CRS will be adding two new Charity Partners: Trans Canada Trail and Trees for Life Canada. Runners will have the opportunity to donate money towards Trans Canada Trails’ new AccessNow partnership that is creating accessibility mapping across its more than 28,000 km of National Trails, or Trees for Life’s tree planting projects along the TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon racecourse.
“It is great news that the Toronto Waterfront Marathon will be greener next year,” said David Piccini,
Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. “New tools will help participants to quantify and reduce their environmental impact while getting outside and enjoying the shores of Lake Ontario, and I
commend TCS for their commitment to reducing the footprint of this flagship event.”
Registration for the 2022 TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon will open January 25, 2022.
Tata Elxsi delivers another quarter of strong and consistent growth, with revenue growth of 33.2% YoY and PAT growth of 43.5% YoY
Tata Elxsi (BSE: 500408 | NSE: TATAELXSI), amongst the world’s leading providers of design-led technology services, announced its results for the third quarter of FY 2021-22 ended December 31, 2021.
The company reported ₨ 635.4 Cr of revenue from operations for Q3 FY22, registering a growth of 6.7% QoQ & 33.2% YoY. EBITDA for the quarter grew 14.8% QoQ and 46.8% YoY to 210.8 Cr, while PBT grew 17.1% QoQ and 36.9% YoY to 200.3 Cr. Company’s net profit for the quarter stood at Rs 151 Cr, reporting a growth of 20.4% QoQ and 43.5% YoY.
The company delivered industry-leading bottom-line performance and crossed the 200 Cr PBT and 150 Cr PAT milestones for the first time in its history
Nazara acquires majority in ad tech company Datawrkz
Nazara Technologies Limited (BSE: 543280) (NSE: NAZARA) an India based, diversified gaming and sports media company today announced that it has entered an agreement to acquire a 55% stake in programmatic advertising and monetization company Datawrkz valuing the company up to INR 225 Cr (approx. USD 30M) linked to CY 22 EBITDA performance.
Nazara will acquire a 33% stake (INR 60 crores payable of which INR 35 crores is partly payable in cash and the balance consideration of INR 25 crores will be paid either in cash or swap of shares) in the first tranche by April 22. Nazara reserves an option to acquire an additional 22% in the second tranche that is expected to close in Q4 FY23
Founded in 2013 by Senthil Govindan, IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, Datawrkz is a global advertising technology firm focused on accelerating user and revenue growth for clients through highly optimized digital advertising. With offices in the US, Singapore, and India, the firm functions as an Independent Trading Desk to power digital media strategy, planning and execution. Datawrkz’s self-serve product suite for advertisers - Vizibl, includes a Demand Side Platform as well as a Customer Data Platform. On the supply side, Datawrkz generates higher revenue for publishers through AdPrimus, its Supply Side product set that drives higher user engagement, mediates between demand sources, and enables audience segmentation. For the calendar year 2021, Datawrkz posted a combined revenue of INR 90.7 Cr (approx. USD 12.1M) and EBIDTA margin of 12% with around 70% of its revenue coming from the US as per CY 2021 unaudited financial statements.
Datawrkz tech offerings will enhance in-house capabilities of Nazara for optimizing its customer acquisition spends as well as enhance yields on ad monetization of its large consumer base. This ad revenue monetization is expected to assist many of the companies in the ‘Friends of Nazara’ network.
Further, there is an increasing symbiotic relationship between gaming companies and ad tech companies worldwide as a combination of the two will be value accretive for both businesses. With this transaction, Datawrkz aimsto establish itself as a key player in gaming, covering both demand and supply side offerings for the gaming ecosystem in the US and India.
Said Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal, “We, at Nazara, are looking to build strong gaming ad tech offerings globally with the partnership with Datawrkz. We strongly believe that growth of gaming focused ad tech will be exponential in the coming decade across geographies with the growth of gamers and game publishers across freemium, web3.0 and skill based real money gaming.” He further adds, “Ad tech companies with deep data processing capabilities and first party data ownership will emerge as winners in gaming focused ad tech and will help Datawrkz to create value for itself as well as for Nazara shareholders.”
Nitish Mittersain, Founder & Joint MD of Nazara Technologies said, “As always, it’s a great moment for us to welcome a new friend to our ‘Friends of Nazara’ network and I believe Senthil and the entire Datawrkz team will add great value to what we are building at Nazara over the next few years”
Datawrkz founder Senthil Govindan said, “We had started this company with a vision to disrupt the digital advertising space. Datawrkz was already on a fast track to achieve our objective with rapid growth and satisfied clients around the world. Through our partnership with Nazara, I see our pace accelerating further. While Datawrkz will be able to immediately bring our natural strengths to bear within the existing Nazara fold, this also gives both sides a tremendous opportunity to build global advertising and publisher monetization products with a sharp focus on the gaming vertical.”
Having acquired multiple companies over the past few years, Nazara has placed itself in a leading position in esports, interactive gaming and gamified early learning space with the ‘Friends of Nazara’ network. Nazara has acquired a majority stake in Nodwin Gaming Pvt. Ltd (57.05%); Next Wave Multimedia Pvt. Ltd. (52.38%), which operates World Cricket Championship (WCC), the largest mobile-based cricket simulation game, in addition to investment in Absolute Sports Private Limited, which operates Sportskeeda (63.90%) and Paper Boat Apps Private Limited (50.91%) - gamified early learning subscription app and OpenPlay - Skill Gaming (100%).
Mastek accelerates its expansion in Europe and open a nearshore center in Romania
Mastek, a global digital engineering & cloud transformation specialist, has announced the opening of its new office in București, Romania under the name of Evolutionary Systems B.V. Amsterdam - Sucursala București
Mastek’s move to this new location will support the organization’s efforts to ensure success for its clients, employees, and society as a whole. With more than 30 universities and IT talent pool in excess of 0.17 million, the Romania center will play a significant role in expanding Mastek’s strategic growth plans in Continental Europe markets.. The new office location will also serve as a hub for our Oracle business’ nearshore and offshore developments in the EMEA regions.
“Our Romania center will serve as nearshore capacity for Oracle Cloud and Digital Services to support the demand in Europe and UK markets. This is a foundational step towards opening more nearshore delivery centers globally closer to the market where we serve our clients.”- Arun Agarwal, Global CFO- Mastek
Mastek’s new office located at the Impact Hub Equilibrium Building, Floor 1&2, Strada Gara Herăstrău Nr. 2, București 020334, Romania, is all set to offer complete new-age technological support and cloud expertise to European clients citing growth in the digital domain. Romanian universities are also known for collaborating with various IT industries. Mastek further has plans to recruit skilled talent into their new office including cloud experts, business analysts, & digital consultants.
HCL Technologies Launches Dedicated Intel Ecosystem Unit to Further Boost Customer Service Strategy
HCL Technologies (HCL), a leading global technology company, has launched a dedicated Intel Ecosystem Unit to help build focused, innovative and industry-tailored solutions for Intel clients. The new unit will focus on increasing the creation and adoption of state-ofthe-art technologies while developing an accelerated technology roadmap for enterprises on cloud, enduser computing, network and edge, and AI.
HCL and Intel have a long and successful partnership that has helped enterprises accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Both companies have collaborated to invent and innovate on key projects by leveraging advanced hardware and software technologies from Intel and high-end engineering and services capabilities from HCL.
This Intel Ecosystem Unit in HCL will bolster its ecosystem strategy by curating interdependent, synergistic collaborations with other strategic partners. Cutting across all hyperscalers and technology original equipment manufacturers, this unit will complement them and strengthen service delivery by integrating cloud with analytics workflows and enabling disruptive new digital models to emerge.
Intel is a leading technology builder for rapid acceleration in the cloud and cloud-native space, along with modernization of personal computing devices. HCL’s Intel Ecosystem Unit will build on the joint investments made over the last decade – across technologies with specialized engineers, technical showcased frameworks and driven through centers of excellence, offshore development centers, and cloud native labs in the U.S., EMEA and Asia
The unit will align with the #HCLCloudSmart strategy as a key pillar of its ecosystem operating model to help customers make intelligent choices for building a resilient and sustainable digital foundation that leverages Intel’s multiple products, platforms, tools and solutions.
“The business challenges our customers face today require technology solutions across a range of segments, from cloud-to-edge infrastructure and AI to pervasive connectivity and require increasingly collaborative solutions to deliver value,” said John C. Kalvin, Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Communications Group and General Manager, Global Partners and Support Organization, Intel. “Building on our legacy as an enabler for the ecosystem, partners like HCL are leveraging Intel technology to help companies accelerate their digital transformation journeys.”
“We have a long relationship with Intel and this dedicated unit will reorganize our partnership into a single focused business unit,” said Kalyan Kumar, Chief Technology Officer and Head, Ecosystems, HCL Technologies. “It expands on our ecosystem strategy, building a #HCLCloudSmart layer to our existing partnerships, while allowing us to deliver composite solutions to our clients.”
EaseMyTrip and Flybig announce India’s first-ever exclusive partnership in the scheduled commuter airline category
EaseMyTrip, India’s second-largest online travel platform has announced an exclusive partnership with Flybig, India’s newest regional airline. Through this partnership, Flybig’s airline tickets will be exclusively sold by EaseMyTrip. The partnership marks the first time that a Scheduled Commuter Airline (SCA) is exclusively partnering with an online travel platform, for flight bookings, making EaseMyTrip India’s first online travel company become a general sales agent (GSA) for a domestic airline. All the bookings of Flybig by any other online travel portals will also go through and be processed by EaseMyTrip.
Speaking about the partnership, Nishant Pitti, CEO & Co-Founder, EaseMyTrip stated, “Air travel is witnessing a major boom across Tier 2 and 3 cities, and we are delighted to partner with Flybig during such a critical juncture for the industry. Our unique range of services across the travel segment along with Flybig’s air connectivity across remote destinations will add immense value for both brands. Through this partnership, we aim to bring more destinations within the reach of our growing customer base, and we will be providing a hassle-free booking experience and the best-in-class services, for Flybig customers. We are excited about the opportunities that this opens up and we look forward to scaling greater heights in the segment with this partnership.”
According to Flybig’s CMD Capt. Sanjay Mandavia, “Online travel platforms like EaseMyTrip controls over a 50% market share in the air segment, and we are proud to share that EaseMyTrip has chosen Flybig as its partner. Amid pandemic, this is the best opportunity for Flybig to control its cost, improve sales and increase profitability. Combining our local presence and EaseMyTrip's market coverage, we are sure to redefine the travel experience for travellers. With this partnership, we hope to explore new avenues for growth, widen our network and flight options, and allow our customers to experience the best-in-class services.”
Flybig is also looking for a progressive 2022 with 5 aircraft induction by end of march 2022, 75000 seats to offer with over 35 departures in a day. It will operate mainly under UDAN connecting the Northeast and Central East part of India
EaseMyTrip is one of the very few e-commerce platforms in the world that bootstrapped itself to the IPO. In the last 13 years of its existence, EaseMyTrip has never raised capital from any external sources and has grown market-share via profits and internal accruals. The company, which has been profitable since inception, provides its customers with the options of zero convenience fees* and full refunds*.