Accenture invests in Strivr; Brave releases De-AMP; Indian SaaS companies to see $6.5 bln in funding in 2022

Accenture has made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, in Strivr, a provider of virtual reality-based, immersive learning and training solutions for enterprises, according to a press release. Santa Clara based Strivr has trained more than one million workers at some of the world’s largest companies using its proven, proprietary immersive learning platform. Strivr’s VR training platform helps enterprises increase the efficiency and efficacy of their employee skilling and up-skilling initiatives, while also delivering data-driven insights to improve their broader enterprise talent development efforts. Global industrial equipment and facilities distributor RS Components and Tata Consultancy Services yesterday announced RS Industria, an industrial internet of things solution, Manufacturer magazine reports. RS Industria connects real-time factory floor data with powerful analytical capabilities that continuously support RS Components’ manufacturing customers in their maintenance and repair activities. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) platform, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) means the industrial supplier can better support those on the factory floor. A Pune-based labour union has raised a complaint against Infosys with the central labour ministry and sought the removal of a non-compete agreement clause in offer letters given by the the company, Economic Times reports. Infosys’s employee agreement states that an employee shall not accept for six months an employment offer from “named competitors” such as TCS, Wipro and HCL among others if the new job involves working with a customer with whom the employee has previously worked in the preceding 12 months during their stint at Infosys, the union, Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate, said in its complaint, according to ET. Brave, the company behind the eponymous fast-growing browser, is rolling out a new feature called De-AMP, which allows Brave users to bypass Google-hosted accelerated mobile pages, and instead visit the content’s publisher directly. AMP harms users' privacy, security and internet experience, and just as bad, AMP helps Google further monopolise and control the direction of the Web, Brave said in a blogpost. Indian Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startups are expected to grow 55-70 percent to clock overall revenue of $116 billion by 2026, venture capital firm Chiratae and management consultancy Zinnov said in a report, according to Economic Times. The report, titled ‘India SaaS: Punching through the global pecking order,’ notes that overall funding for Indian SaaS startups is expected to touch $6.5 billion this year, compared with $4 billion in 2021. The report also says that the average size of investments in Indian SaaS companies grew to $56 million in 2021 from roughly $25 million in 2020, according to ET. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds