Office Buzz.

Knowledge exchange

Enterprise application software and cloud solutions company SAP has announced the launch of an Industry Knowledge Exchange (IKEX) aimed at driving the country’s digital transformation with sustainable development.

Launched in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the exchange will bring together enterprises, consulting firms, and academia across 25 industries enabling technological co-innovation, sharing of best-practices, and deliberation on regulatory policies to produce shared business value, accelerate growth, increase global competitiveness, and promote sustainability. “We want to enable corporates in creating business networks that allows various industries to interact and achieve uniform growth across the whole value chain,” said Kulmeet Bawa, President & Managing Director, SAP Indian subcontinent.

Optimistic CEOs

The KPMG 2022 India CEO Outlook, which asked more than 125 CEOs in India about their strategies and outlook, has revealed that 58 per cent of the leaders in India as well as globally expect a mild and short recession. Pandemic fatigue, the threat of rising interest rates, inflation and anticipated recession and reputational risk, top the list of most pressing concerns for CEOs in India today.

Only 66 per cent CEOs in India, compared to 86 per cent globally, anticipate a recession to hit over the next year. Though 86 per cent CEOs in India, compared to 71 percent CEOs globally, predicted that it would impact company earnings by up to 10 per cent.

Senior executives in India as well as globally also felt more confident about the resilience of the global economy over the next six months than they did in February 2022 when KPMG surveyed 500 CEOs for its CEO Outlook Pulse survey.

PepsiCo fund

PepsiCo has announced that its global agriculture accelerator, the Positive Agriculture Outcomes (PAO) fund would grant funding to 14 business projects in India and 10 other countries to address some of the most intractable challenges facing agriculture today.

Launched in August 2021, the PAO fund offers PepsiCo market teams to accelerate diverse and innovative positive agriculture projects. The investments are designed to “de-risk” promising initiatives while accelerating the development of innovative technologies and approaches that can help scale the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices.

In 2022, the PAO fund is making investments in projects that are focused on either testing a new regenerative technology or approach that helps farmers build climate resilience or develop new sustainable “landscapes”. In total, it is providing ongoing support to over 20 different projects around the world through grants of $7.4 million awarded in 2021 and 2022.

Blue-collar jobs

Men and women applicants for blue-collar jobs are at par in Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru, finds a report by WorkIndia, a blue-collar recruitment platform. However, there is a nationwide difference of 23 per cent between the men and women applicants for blue-collar jobs with several Tier 3 cities still showing 0 per cent to 9 per cent female job applicants for on-site jobs. The data referred to is collated starting from January 2022 till mid-October 2022.

Surprisingly, geographies like Medak in Telangana and Porompat in Manipur have reverse scenarios with 100 per cent of women job applicants and 0 per cent male recruitments.

GE’s Belong

Diversity, inclusion and equity took the front seat at GE Belong, the hybrid event for GE staffers to take the inclusion conversation further. Over 5,000 GE employees and invited guests participated in Belong 2022, which had more than 20 different sessions and activities including panel discussions, workshops, idea showcases from an I&D hackathon and performances by blind and deaf artists.

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