Yes Bank to Raise $100 million from IFC for Green Bond, Women-owned SMEs

Yes Bank is planning to raise around $100 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC), a project report issued by IFC revealed. The investment by World Bank's investment arm comprises $50 million for a so-called Green Bond and an equal amount for the financing line for women-owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the IFC’s project disclosure report said. 

This will be the first emerging market Green Bond investment by IFC, the proceeds of which will be lent to eligible climate change finance projects mainly in the renewable energysector.

The long term funding will be on terms that are consistent with the underlying cash flow profile of such long gestation and capital intensive projects. IFC said the investment is aimed at generating support and confidence in the Green Bond market which is a new asset class in India and will go towards creating a new and viable source of long term financing for climate change projects in the domestic markets.

It added that the development of the Green Bond market will provide an impetus to the development of the overall local currency bond market, which is a high developmental priority for IFC and for the Indian government. IFC's investment in an emerging market Green Bond will encourage issuers in other markets to issue similar bonds and support greater resources for climate change finance and development of domestic capital markets.

IFC also said its financing complements its active and growing knowledge partnership with Yes Bank in the areas of infrastructure finance, small business lending, gender finance, renewable energy finance. IFC expects to engage closely with Yes Bank in these areas both through funding and advisory activities. 

The second project will support women-owned businesses, which are less likely to be banked because they tend to be smaller and less formal. The socio-cultural environment, where men are still regarded as the heads of the household owning land and property of the family, makes it difficult for women to present assets as collateral to access finance. While banks perceive women-owned businesses to be at higher risk, they often do not recognize the economic and social benefit of banking women-owned businesses, who tend to be more loyal customers, less price sensitive and more risk averse, said IFC.

"IFC and Yes Bank are looking to explore deeper collaboration in Capital Markets including supporting Yes Bank's efforts to broaden the range of investors in its offerings of senior debt securities such as Green Bonds. This financing is consistent with and supportive of this overall strategic priority," said IFC.

YES Bank is India’s fourth largest private sector bank, with an asset base of $20 billion (Q3FY15), and a loan book that has grown at a CAGR of 29%. It has steadily diversified and increased its SME and retail portfolio, which presently comprises 32% of its loan book, and is looking to increase the proportion of the SMEs to 50% over the next five years.

JOHN CHEN: BLACKBERRY’S FUTURE IS AS A NICHE PRODUCT

John Chen once a gain asks us not to give up on Blackberry

There once was a time when Blackberry (NASDAQ: BBRY) was a global force in the smartphone market. Then along came Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and the countless Android phones that the world’s 1.75 billion smartphone owners use.

People have long thought that Blackberry, with its dramatic fall from grace, was going to be dismantled patent-by-patent and sold off in chunks to its competitors. After all, Blackberry’s market share is almost too small to measure as the company only shipped 1.6 million phones in the last quarter compared to Apple’s 60 million. But under John Chen, the CEO Blackberry’s board appointed in November 2013, the company seems to have another chance at life with Chen repeatedly promising a turnaround and recovery by focusing strictly on enterprise and government customers.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Chen says that Blackberry will continue pushing along in the smartphone market because its key customers — enterprise and government — demand the security that only Blackberry can provide.

“I can only make iPhone so much more secure, but I can’t make it as secure as a BlackBerry device,” Chen said to Business Insider. “If you look at the US Army, they’re still rolling out all BlackBerry. If I tell them there are no more phones, I lose that account. The question is how do you make phones profitable at the volume those people represent?”

Blackberry’s cash burn isn’t as bad as it once was, but shareholders aren’t going to be infinitely patient with Chen. They will want to see evidence of a turnaround soon. Blackberry’s client base is a guaranteed source of income, but the company will have to do much more than that to enter the turn around stage.

ANDROID LOLLIPOP ADOPTION STILL LAGGING

Google’s latest Android release only has a 9% market share 7 months after release.

Unlike Apple’s (NASDAQ: APPL) iOS, Android isn’t as specific about forcing users to update their operating system. As Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Terry Myerson pointed out during a recent speech, this presents a major security risk as tens of thousands of unpatched devices in the wild make for the perfect situation for a massive malware outbreak.

For those concerned about the adoption rate of new, patched, versions of Android, this chart from Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is particularly concerning. It shows just over half a year after the release of Android Lollipop, the adoption rate is just under 10%.

As you can see the majority of users are still running Android Kitkat (4.4) or an earlier version (4.1.x or 4.2.x) of Jelly Bean.

While the majority of handsets from the past three years will support Lollipop without a problem, the lack of forced updates by Google and the slow pace of US-based carriers rolling out flagship handsets that ship with Lollipop has led to single-digit adoption.
This is a big problem for Google. Android users will have to lean on third party anti-malware apps to stop the spread of malware. In reality, Google should be more forceful in requiring users to install updates in order to preserve the overall health of the ecosystem.

WITCHER 3 PLEASE WAIT XBOX ONE BUG FIX

Like just about every big AAA release on current-gen consoles, The Witcher 3 has its fair share of launch day woes–this time in the form of annoying glitches that refuse to load the game or even delete your progress.

Today we’ll be taking a look at the pesky “please wait” glitch on the Xbox One and some possible solutions that have worked for me, so they might work for you as well.

The Problem

Everyone familiar with the glitch knows all too well what to expect: when firing up The Witcher 3 you’re stuck at the main menu with a permanently looping “please wait” notification spinning merrily away, driving you completely insane as a result.

Airvana Onecell Enables Stronger Indoor LTE

Mobile World Congress is all about mobility-enhancing technologies. But while much of the technology media is focused on the consumer-facing technologies and devices during the event, MWC also celebrates innovations in the underlying tech that supports our devices and networks. As part of MWC 2015, this author was tasked to be among the panel of judges for the Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough category.

Entries in this field mostly consist of vendors and solution providers with devices or embedded technologies that improve performance, connectivity and platform convergence meant for mobile use.

One of the finalists is Airvana OneCell, which is an LTE small cell system meant for both enterprise and consumer-facing applications, which mobile operators can use to augment their capabilities in servicing customers in urban and indoor settings.

Airvana’s technology is borne out of the need to have strong wireless signals even inside buildings. One limitation of LTE — and wireless signals in general — is that signal strength is significantly reduced with obstructions. Building foundations act like a cage, after all, where radio signals are good at bouncing within the structure, but not necessarily across from inside-to-outside and vice-versa.

“Outdoor macro cell towers cannot fully penetrate building walls to deliver quality LTE service indoors, and upgrading legacy distributed antenna systems (DAS) for LTE is prohibitively expensive,” says Airvana. An alternative would be standalone small cells, but this is not effective in large enterprise settings, because these create many “cell borders.” In addition, these are not easy nor cost-efficient to deploy.

“These borders create large areas of interference between cells that result in low throughput, poor VoLTE quality, frequent handovers, complex RF planning, and macro interference challenges. Furthermore, they have static capacity, limited upgradeability, and support only a single operator.”

A cross-carrier solution

Airvana’s OneCell solution addresses the challenge of delivering consistent, high-speed LTE services for multiple operators, but without the cost and complexity of a DAS. Basically considered as a “cloud RAN”, the solution involves a single baseband controller, with radio points distributed throughout a building or establishment. These radio points act as a single cell, which results in zero cell borders, border interference and handovers — which mean better energy-efficiency for the connected mobile devices.

Industry experts consider cloud RAN as a disruptive technology because of two benefits: centralization and virtualization. Centralizing the baseband means significantly cheaper operational expenses — operators in South Korea, China and Japan have demonstrated 30% to 50% OPEX reduction with the use of such technologies. Meanwhile, virtualization of network functions will reduce capital expenditure, particularly the need to build standalone cell towers or micro-cell sites.

An added benefit of OneCell’s solution is that the nodes connect with each other via regular ethernet connection, and each radio point runs on power-over-ethernet, further reducing the complexity of deployment. According to a study by Real Wireless, deployment of OneCell is 69% less expensive than a traditional DAS. Material savings from the passive infrastructure can reach 90%, while simplified cabling means labor savings of 75% to 90%.

And a bigger benefit for enterprises: convergence across carriers. “Large enterprises and public spaces are typically multi-operator environments, and OneCell is designed to cost-effectively support multiple wireless providers with a single infrastructure,” says Airvana. “Architecture is designed to allow operators to take advantage of upcoming LTE capabilities, such as carrier aggregation, Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) and distributed Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO) via software upgrades, without replacing any installed equipment.”

Full signal bars

Scalability and cost efficiency are the most relevant benefits for enterprises and other establishments that require indoor wireless broadband connectivity. Meanwhile, for consumers, it means excellent connectivity even within buildings, for a “five signal bar experience.”

“There’s a clear interest among operators in serving indoor enterprise environments with scalable, distributed solutions that are also cost-effective,” says Ed Gubbins, senior analyst at Current Analysis. The potential market for OneCell’s technology is 1 billion users, as the Chelmsford, MA-based firm has dealings with mobile operators from Europe, Asia and North America.

The direction here is clear: the combination of centralized and distributed architectures provided by technologies like the OneCell are a boon to those seeking scalable and cost-efficient means to improve quality of service for mobile broadband users.

IceCOLD Announces its Foray into India with the Latest Synthetic Refrigerant Technology

February 26/27, 2015: Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, IceCOLD®, a Global Management, Sales and Marketing Company for the Production and Distribution of IceCOLD® Product, announced IceCOLD’s availability in India through its sole licensee for the Indian Subcontinent – EcoCool Tech India Pvt. Ltd today. This green technology IceCOLD® restores cooling efficiency and protects the equipment.

IceCOLD® is a non-toxic, non-hazardous, green technology which restores cooling efficiency and protects the equipment. Installed once, it lasts for the life of the system It is an engineered synthetic catalyst and not an additive and specifically engineered and to address the problem of Oil Fouling. IceCOLD® will not damage a refrigeration or air conditioning system. Since inception there is not a single equipment failure due to IceCOLD®.

“We are thrilled to foray into India and truly excited about the populace here discovering our green and revolutionary product. We feel proud to say that since inception there has not been a single equipment failure due to IceCOLD. India is a big market with immense potential. Our product is compatible for this market with offerings for varied sectors like Hotels, Malls, Hospitals, Commercial Buildings, Cold Storages and Cold Chains many more such facilities.

The launch of the IceCOLD2 initiative comes at a time when there is a greater focus than ever before, on improving energy efficiency and reducing operating costs, especially in the real estate sector,” said Mr. Peter Lewis, CEO, IceCOLD®.

IceCOLD is compatible with most refrigerants, and all compressor oils. Since 2003, IceCOLD® has consistently demonstrated cost-effective energy efficiency improvements, delivered through thousands of successful installations in HVAC, refrigeration and heat pump systems. Today, IceCOLD® is sold in 28 countries.