Startup news and updates: daily roundup (May 6, 2022)

Altigreen expands leadership to focus on quality and service

Electric vehicle (EV) company Altigreen has appointed Mainak Nandi as National Head of Service and Spares and Vinod Gupta as Head of Quality, strengthening its leadership team. 

The Bengaluru-based EV company offers three-wheelers for last-mile transportation. 

Having previously worked with auto companies, Mainak comes with an experience of over 25 years in automotive channel operations, after-sales, customer experience enhancement, and business transformation. In his role, he will be responsible for a robust service delivery experience to improve customer satisfaction. 

Vinod, who has also worked with auto manufacturers for over 23 years, will be responsible for setting up a strong quality infrastructure, and processes at every stage from technology to manufacturing and service at Altigreen. 

Filo partners with Bihar government to provide post classroom academic support

Instant live tutoring app Filo on Friday said it has partnered with the government of Bihar to offer free access to its platform to all students from classes IX to XII from over 9,000 government schools of Bihar.

The state-wide initiative will come at no cost to over 45 lakh students who can access professional tutors on the platform for 1:1 personalised learning.

“Having been a teacher who has helped thousands realise their goals, I can say with confidence that post classroom personalised tutoring can create a massive difference in students’ performance. In the US, this is a tried and tested model and districts like San Francisco, Florida, Chicago, and Los Angeles have been offering such support for a while now,” Imbesat Ahmad, Co-founder, Filo said.

The startup has grown to more than 1.7 million downloads since its launch in November 2020. It has over 350,000 monthly active users on the app and a dynamic community of 50,000+ plus tutors.

Pescafresh announces the launch of meat-based Spreads range

D2C seafood and meat brand Pescafresh on Friday said it has launched its new range of delectable and unique spreads – SaSH22 – made with the brand’s 100 percent fresh meat.

The flavoured meat spreads, which are priced starting at Rs 199, were developed after six months of R&D, stringent selection process, and hand-picked through blind tasting by specially selected focus groups, the company said.

“We are excited to launch the new category - SaSH22. The growth in the ready-to-cook (RTC) and ready-to-eat (RTE) segment has been severely constrained due to lack of quality ingredients. This space found itself more as an effort to reduce wastage that comes from using substandard ingredients. This is what Pescafresh wants to change. Products can be fresh and still have the highest quality in the RTC and RTE segment. This category should no longer be treated as only a convenience segment, but must be equally fresh, clean and pure,” said Sangram Sawant, Founder, Pescafresh.

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Autonomy seen highest among Indian developers at 57 percent: Atlassian Survey

Atlassian Corporation Plc, the maker of Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket and Trello products, released its first-ever global State of the Developer report.

As per the report, autonomy is at its highest in the US and India (57 percent and 56 percent respectively) and lowest in Germany (29 percent). Autonomy in this context means more freedom to decide which tools developers use, what they work on, and how that work gets done.

Greater autonomy makes developers happier at work, despite more frequent context switching and increased job complexity, according to the report.

“Developers who enjoy more autonomy tend to spend more time coding and are able to work on a greater number of products and services,” Atlassian said in release.

IIT Kanpur and MIT USA jointly win patent for water purification vessel

IIT Kanpur and MIT USA have been granted a joint Indian patent for a novel water purification device. The invention titled “A Vessel and A Method for Purifying Water and Monitoring Quality of Water” is expected to be a quite cost-effective apparatus to check water quality.

“At IIT Kanpur, we always have a multi-disciplinary approach when it comes to research and development and this new patent is an example of that. I congratulate the team led by Prof. Indra Sen, K Sri Harsha, and their counterparts at MIT, USA for this novel device, which I believe would be revolutionary in terms of water quality monitoring and purification. This is a very timely and quintessential device to curb the issues plaguing clean water resources,” Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT Kanpur said.