From dance and music to acting, YouForrte is enabling a channel to allow one’s creativity to become their career choice. With an endeavour to emerge as a go-to platform for securing professional opportunities based on creative abilities, the company aims to provide a medium to attract, retain, develop and deploy talent in the entertainment industry.

Addressing the prevailing challenges this tech platform will enable seamless integration of skill-sets with add-on benefits of paid assignments. Looking forward to redefining representations across a spectrum of talents, the platform aims to emerge as a haven for multiple young riders looking to advance their portfolios through contemporary channels.

According to Mohit Kaushal, Founder & CEO, YouForrte, “Over the years we have been witnessing a huge gap in the demand v/s supply across the media and entertainment industry. Also, India offers a pool of talent waiting for the right opportunity to showcase their strength and creativity in this dynamic and aggressively evolving industry. Therefore, YouForrte is trying to facilitate a medium to showcase the hidden gems and will help transform the industry through this modernized digital intervention.”

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This year, the 11th cohort presented social business ideas ranging from leveraging new technologies for a more inclusive society and proposing alternative means to save the environment, to empowering vulnerable communities through education and job training.

The YSE Workshop comprised an intensive series of webinars and business clinics led by social entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and business strategists. Participants gained knowledge to become effective social entrepreneurs including sessions on finance, marketing, and impact measurement.

In the end, 54 teams presented their business plans to a panel of judges and 15 teams were shortlisted to proceed to the next phase of the YSE programme. Four teams representing India are part of the 15 teams moving on to the next phase of the programme –Built Empathy, Canfem, International Changemaker Olympiad, and Shoonya Environmental Solutions.

These India-based social enterprises are offering sustainable solutions in areas of urban design, healthcare, as well as education and training.

The shortlisted teams, comprising 29 young changemakers representing nine nationalities, were chosen for further grooming because their business ideas held the potential for significant social impact, promise for sustainability, and scalability of the business model.

They also got to interact with like-minded peers of different nationalities, gaining a deeper cross-cultural understanding to make new friends, and forge professional relationships.

Ambassador Ong Keng Yong, SIF Chairman, said, “At the SIF, we believe in bringing people of different cultures together to inspire ideas and action for good. While we are unable to have the YSE participants physically in Singapore this year, the digital platform offers new opportunities to nurture the energy, innovative spirit, and passion of young changemakers driven by a strong sense of social purpose. In current times of great economic, climate, and global health challenges, it is even more important that we accelerate the pace of social innovation.”

Bhavya Singh, founder of Built Empathy said “Through the YSE programme, we were exposed to the social enterprise landscape outside of India. We were introduced to market players from Singapore and around the world and gained valuable insights into managing a social enterprise. This has been an enriching journey for me, and I hope to achieve great things in the coming months as I work with my mentors.”

Shortlisted Indian teams:

Built Empathy: headed by Bhavya Singh, improves liveability in Indian cities by making the community and public spaces safer, sustainable, and more inclusive. With a practice rooted in human-centered design, they bring the design to the communities that need it most.

Canfem: headed by Akriti Gupta, enables breast cancer survivors to have a better quality of life by manufacturing and marketing unique and affordable product-service solutions. Their external breast prosthesis and mastectomy brassier help survivors get back into society with dignity and improve their physical and mental health. Their pilot, completed on over 3,200 patients, had shown a 93 percent satisfaction rate.

International Changemaker Olympiad: headed by Rahul Adhikari and P Sai Sindhu, provides a platform for children in schools to identify social and environmental problems around them, and launch initiatives to tackle them. Through their programme, students participate in teams to identify real-world problems, develop solutions, and implement them over a span of five months. They aim to develop children into empathetic, conscious citizens of the world with an action-oriented mindset.

Shoonya Environmental Solutions Pvt Ltd: headed by Manik Dhingra, the company’s vision is to enable zero waste human settlements across the world. They are presently engaged with the scientific disposal of non-recyclable plastics across 20 states in India and aim to be an organization with the capability of designing an entire ecosystem which is ecologically wise, socially inclusive, and economically sustainable

Over the next six months, the shortlisted teams will be mentored by leading business consultants from McKinsey & Company and Temasek International and established entrepreneurs relevant to their sectors.

The teams will have the opportunity to hone their business acumen, broaden their cultural perspectives, and tap on a global YSE alumni network of over 1,200 members. In March 2021, all teams will reconvene at the YSE Pitching for Change event. They will present their refined business plans to a panel of judges for a chance to receive seed funding of up to S$20,000.

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Mumbai/Denver based CometChat, a CpaaS startup has raised $1.6 million in a Seed round from Colorado-based Range Ventures, NY-based Silicon Badia, and India based iSeed Ventures.

CometChat, which was incorporated in the US, by Anuj Garg and Anant Garg in 2019, works with top global enterprises by providing plug n play communication products to improve brands’ reach.

As a product tech company, it designs critical functions like chat, video, and live event capabilities within websites and apps to help enterprises who are looking to boost user engagement accelerate their go to market time. Because of their product and solutions, enterprises save hundreds of developer hours and the associated costs.

Anuj Garg, Co-founder & CEO, CometChat, says, “CometChat has been working in the space of designing effective chat and video solutions for our customers. Today, we have built a strong base in the US and India, and with the backing of well known VCs both in the US and India, we believe our growth rate will accelerate and help us hit the next set of milestones quicker than before.”

Founded by twin brothers Anant Garg and Anuj Garg, CometChat products enable beginner developers and business owners to add a full-fledged messaging and communication platform within their website and apps in minutes using a plug and play interface. It also enables intermediate and expert developers to easily customize and scale their communication requirements using their SDKs and APIs.

Utsav Somani, Founder, iSeed Ventures, said, “I first came across CometChat when a customer of theirs posted a great review about them. Then from the minute, I saw their meteoric rise in metrics to Anuj and Anant’s vision on how text, voice, and video will play a vital part in bringing intimacy to experiences online, I was excited to invest fairly quickly.”

The company chose to remain bootstrapped until last year when they became the first and only Indian startup to be selected for the Techstars Boulder Accelerator Program and received funding as part of the program. The funds raised in the Seed round will be used to scale up sales and marketing functions in the US and India.

This capital will help CometChat, a B2D (business to developer) company, fuel growth by entering new markets with their Developer-First marketing approach and make significant investments towards product development.

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Kelly said the move could come as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to toughen vetting of visitors to screen out people who could pose a security threat.

He said it was one of the issues under consideration, especially for visitors from seven Muslim majority countries with very weak background screening of their own — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Kelley told the Homeland Security Committee at a hearing that, “we’re looking at some enhanced or some additional screening,”

“We may want to get on their social media, with passwords. It’s very hard to truly vet these people in these countries, the seven countries… But if they come in, we want to say, what websites do they visit, and give us your passwords. So, we can see what they do on the internet,” Kelly said.

Anyone who refused to cooperate would be barred from entering the U.S, he said. He made clear that no decision has been made, but tighter screening was on its way.

Kelly stressed that no decision had been made yet, but said tighter screening was definitely in the pipeline, even if it means longer delays for awarding visas to visitors.

“But over there, we can ask them for this kind of information and if they truly want to come to America, then they will cooperate. If not, next in line,” he said.

Kelly also took blame for the hasty rollout of President Trump’s executive order.

“I should have delayed it just a bit so I could have talked to members of Congress,” Kelly said. “Going forward, I would have certainly taken some time to inform Congress, and that’s something I look forward to in the future.”

Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida, who has introduced one of the bills requiring social media information, called the Customs and Border Protection proposal “lame.” And the legislation is still pending in Congress.

“Collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide D.H.S. greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity,” the border agency said, referring to the Department of Homeland Security, its parent organization.

The proposal comes after Congress passed legislation on 2015 to add restrictions to the Visa Waiver Program.

The department said that while it does not consistently examine social media accounts of applicants for visas or immigration, it has a list of nearly three dozen situations in which social media can be examined to screen applicants.

Four pilot projects are underway in the department to examine the use of social media among applicants for immigration benefits.

Reference: The New York Times

Feature Image Credit: Pixabay

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