According to an official release, the Coco Framework when integrated with blockchain networks addresses critical needs for commercial adoption like high-transaction speed, distributed governance and confidentiality. Providing these foundational capabilities, Coco Framework opens up more complex, real-world blockchain scenarios across industries — like financial services, supply chain and logistics, healthcare and retail — further proving blockchain’s potential to digitally transform business.

Mark Russinovich CTO, Microsoft Azure, writes on a company blog:

“As enterprises look to apply blockchain technology to meet their business needs, they’ve come to realize that many existing blockchain protocols fail to meet key enterprise requirements such as performance, confidentiality, governance, and required processing power. This is because existing systems were designed to function—and to achieve consensus—in public scenarios amongst anonymous, untrusted actors with maximum transparency. Because of this, transactions are posted “in the clear” for all to see, every node in the network executes every transaction, and computationally intensive consensus algorithms must be employed. These safeguards, while necessary to ensure the integrity of public blockchain networks, require tradeoffs in terms of key enterprise requirements such as scalability and confidentiality.

“Efforts to adapt existing public blockchain protocols or to create new protocols to meet these needs have generally traded one required enterprise attribute for another—such as improved confidentiality at the cost of greater complexity or lower performance.”

Coco Framework combines advanced algorithms and trusted execution environments (TEEs), like Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) or Windows Virtual Secure Mode (VSM).

When integrated with a blockchain network, key benefits of the Coco Framework include:

• Transaction speeds of more than 1,600 transactions per second
• Easily managed data confidentiality without sacrificing performance
• A comprehensive, industry-first distributed governance model for blockchain networks that establishes a network constitution and allows members to vote on all terms and conditions governing the consortium and the blockchain software system

“We are thrilled to work with Microsoft to bring blockchain to the enterprise,” said Rick Echevarria, vice president, Software and Services Group and General Manager, Platforms Security Division at Intel. “Our mutual customers are excited by the potential of blockchain. Intel is committed to accelerating the value of blockchains powered by Azure on Intel hardware, by improving the scalability, privacy and security of the solutions based on our technologies.”

By design, Coco is open and compatible with any blockchain protocol. Microsoft has already begun integrating Ethereum into Coco and JP Morgan Chase, Intel and R3 have committed to integrating enterprise ledgers, Quorum, Hyperledger Sawtooth and Corda, respectively.

“The R3 Corda platform was built for enterprises. We designed it with the financial industry from the ground up to solve real business problems, but we also knew it had to be deployable and manageable in today’s complex IT landscape,” said David E. Rutter, CEO of R3. “No other distributed ledger technology platform is as interoperable or easily integrated, and partnering with Microsoft is another milestone in our mission to facilitate a world of frictionless commerce.”

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The report quoted different sources as saying that the deal is estimated to be between $45 million and $90 million, which is far below the price — $400 million — e-commerce platform Snapdeal had acquired it for in April 2015.

The non-exclusivity of the term sheet, allows Snapdeal to sell the digital payments platform to other potential buyers.

Earlier this year, Govind Rajan, CEO of Freecharge stepped down from the company, after being associated with this role for almost nine months.

The ET report suggests that “Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm is in advanced stages of discussions to raise up to $1.9 billion in fresh funding from Japan’s SoftBank.

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The latter will implement Alipay at the point-of-sale for its four million US business clients. The rollout will begin with First Data’s clients that use the Clover suite of solutions.

Alipay is operated by Ant Financial Services Group, a spin-off of e-commerce giant Alibaba.

“Our goal is to extend reliable payment services to the over four million Chinese consumers that visit North America every year,” said Souheil Badran, President, Alipay North America.

According to Ant Financial Services Group, Chinese tourists to the US are projected to spend $40 billion in 2017. Shopping is the number one tourist activity, with Chinese visitors projected to spend between $500 and $3,500 per trip. Alipay’s availability in the US reduces the need for tourists to carry large amounts of cash or to use international credit cards, which traditionally see high decline rates and involve foreign exchange fees.

First Data’s partnership with Alipay will enable the acceptance of the latter’s app at several luxury and specialty retailers in the United States. The app will identify participating merchants based on the consumer’s mobile device geolocation feature. In-store signage will also identify Alipay-accepting merchants. The app will also display discounts, coupons, and other promotions to the Chinese visitors before, during, and after their visit.

The two companies had successfully piloted the implementation of the Alipay mobile payment solution in select high-end and specialty retail locations in California and New York, in 2016.

The Chinese payment leader claims to have more than 450 million global active users. In addition to online payments and money transfers, users can hail a taxi, book a hotel, buy movie tickets, and make doctors’ appointments directly from within the app.

“Extending our partnership with a premier partner like First Data provides the merchants with a seamless integration and access to consumers who want to continue paying with their lifestyle mobile app,” Badran said.

Frank Bisignano, Chairman and CEO, First Data, added: “As Alipay’s popularity continues to spread beyond China, we are thrilled that the company chose First Data to support its acceptance for American businesses of all sizes. Through this agreement, we will be able to offer our unparalleled network of business clients a cutting-edge payment solution.”

Alipay transactions to be routed through Acculynk

As part of the agreement, Alipay transactions will be routed through Acculynk, First Data’s recently-acquired technology company that provides innovative debit routing solutions. During the transaction, Acculynk will tokenize the app’s QR code for settlement.

“With the help of Acculynk’s gateway technology, First Data will be able to quickly implement Alipay for its large client base, so businesses can start accepting transactions in a seamless manner,” said Ashish Bahl, founder and CEO of Acculynk.

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1. Heaven View: Data accessible to all

Previously known as God View, the tool was first reported by Buzzfeed as early as November 2014, to have been used to track journalists, who could write critically about the company. Buzzfeed quoted two former Uber employees stating, God View, which shows the location of Uber vehicles and customers who have requested a car, was widely available to corporate employees.

The tool has been used to track politicians, celebrities, ex-boyfriends, and ex-girlfriends, according to an October 2016 court declaration given by Uber’s former forensic investigator Samuel Ward Spangenberg.

Spangenberg stated that Uber changed God View to “Heaven View” and employees caught tracking customer data without permission were fired. Uber acknowledged it had fired “fewer than 10” employees for improper access.

2. Rides of Glory: Name and shame RoGer journalists

Consider this:

Today were going to get a little emotional. You know that Uber loves you and well, gosh, sometimes its nice to think that you love us, too. But we know were not the only ones in your life and we know that you sometimes look for love elsewhere. Well, while youre out loving other human beings, we #UberData nerds are cuddled up with our computers, loving math.

The above text and image are from an Uber blog, dated: March 26, 2012. The blog post has been deleted now from Uber servers but then, nothing actually gets deleted from the world wide web. It still can be accessed on WayBackMachine.

The innocuous blog got attention much much later, when Buzzfeed quoted Uber executive, Emil Michael, outlining the notion of spending ‘a million dollars’ to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists to “help Uber fight back against the press — they’d look into ‘your personal lives, your families,’ and give the media a taste of its own medicine.”

Let’s fetch more text from the now deleted blog:

Recently, I have come to understand that some of you may have—and Im not pointing any fingers here or anything—on occasion found love that you might immediately regret upon waking up the morning after. Lets talk about that. In times of yore you would have woken up in a panic, scrambling in the dark trying to find your fur coat or velvet smoking jacket or whatever it is you cool kids wear. Then that long walk home in the pre-morning dawn. But that was then.

The world has changed, and gone are the days of the Walk of Shame. We live in Ubers world now.

One of the neat things we can do with our data is discover rider patterns: are there weekend riders that only use Uber post-party? What about the workday commuters who use us every morning? It was while playing around with this idea of (blind!) rider segmentation that we came up with the Ride of Glory (RoG). A RoGer is anyone who took a ride between 10pm and 4am on a Friday or Saturday night, and then took a second ride from within 1/10th of a mile of the previous nights drop-off point 4-6 hours later (enough for a quick nights sleep).

Essentially, that means, Uber wanted to tread the path of naming and shaming RoGer journalists.

3. Greyball: The secret software to dodge law officials

In March, this year, New York Times reported that Uber has for years used a tool called Greyball to systematically deceive law enforcement officials in cities where its service were declared illegal or had been banned.

Uber “greyballed” officials attempting to hail an Uber during a sting operation. They might see icons of cars within the app navigating nearby, but no one would come pick them up. The program helped Uber drivers avoid being ticketed.

Greyball was part of a program called VTOS, short for “violation of terms of service,” which Uber created to root out people it thought were using or targeting its service improperly. The program, including Greyball, according to The New York Times, began as early as 2014 and was predominantly used outside the United States. It was used in Portland, Oregon, Philadelphia, Boston, and Las Vegas, as well as France, Australia, China, South Korea and Italy.

Greyball used geolocation data, credit card information, social media accounts and other data points to identify individuals they suspected of working for city agencies to carry out the sting operations, according to the Times.

Later, the company said that it will stop using the tool. It said on a blog post:

We have started a review of the different ways this technology has been used to date. In addition, we are expressly prohibiting its use to target action by local regulators going forward. Given the way our systems are configured, it will take some time to ensure this prohibition is fully enforced. We’ve had a number of organizations reach out for information and we will be working to respond to their inquiries once we have finished our review.

4. Hell: A spyware to track Lyft drivers

More hell broke loose on the firm, this month, when the news of the ride-hailing company using software dubbed ‘Hell’ to track drivers on its rival Lyft, in the US, broke in. Used between 2014 and 2016, Hell, according to The Information allowed Uber to monitor details on Lyft drivers including how many of them were available, their location and which of them were registered to both Uber and Lyft.

In the latest development, Michael Gonzales, a former Lyft driver has sued Uber in San Francisco, California, alleging the ride-summoning company spied on his movements and violated privacy, competition, and communications laws.

Gonzales alleges that Uber used Lyft driver data to identify which drivers utilized both Uber and Lyft, in order to encourage those drivers to focus on Uber, thereby making Lyft customers wait longer for rides and reducing Lyft’s earnings.

“Uber accomplished this by incentivizing drivers working on both platforms to work primarily for Uber, thereby reducing the supply of Lyft drivers which resulted in increased wait times for Lyft customers and diminished earnings for Lyft drivers,” the lawsuit reads.

5. Fingerprinting: Your iPhone is on the radar

In another privacy breach issue, Uber has been retaining “fingerprinting” of iPhone users, even after the user has uninstalled the app and even wiped the phone. According to The New York Times, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, stopped short of kicking Uber out of the app store and got a personal reprimand from Apple CEO Tim Cook.

A device fingerprint or machine fingerprint or browser fingerprint is information collected about a remote computing device for the purpose of identification. Fingerprints can be used to fully or partially identify individual users or devices even when cookies are turned off.

In order to prevent Apple engineers from discovering the fingerprinting, Uber allegedly geofenced Apple’s Cupertino headquarters to hide the code used in the process. But Apple engineers based in other offices discovered the trick, according to the New York Times, leading Cook to call Kalanick.

The company still continues to use fingerprinting worldwide. In its defense, it states that it does not track user data and location, and uses fingerprinting on iPhones as a fraud-prevention method in locations like China. Drivers there would register multiple Uber accounts on stolen iPhones and use them to request rides, thereby boosting the number of overall rides — a metric that Uber rewards with bonuses.

Time to Unroll.me Uber

Have you ever used the Unroll.me tool in Gmail or other email services that promises to protect privacy and unsubscribe newsletters and promotional messages for you and send the ones you like as a digest? May be, you should reconsider the “authorization” to the tool. Unroll.me, has been allegedly snooping on your mails and selling the data to Uber.

The same New York Times article that details Tim Cook lambasting Uber CEO Kalanick, makes mention of Unroll.me’s data breach.

Slice Intelligence, the firm that owns Unroll.me, allegedly, snooped over emailed Lyft receipts in users’ Inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. The latter used the data as a proxy for the health of Lyft’s business.

Unroll.me CEO Jojo Hedaya is “heartbroken” but unapologetic. On Sunday, he wrote on a company blog that “it was heartbreaking to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetize our free service.”

He pointed out to the company’s Terms of Service Agreement and “a plain-English Privacy Policy”, which he said “users agree they have read and understand before they even sign up.”

Hedaya, from this point forward, promises a “clearer messaging” on Unroll.me website, and app, and in its FAQs. “We will also be more clear about our data usage in our on-boarding process,” he states.

Time that we unroll Uber?

The post From God View to Hell: 6 ways Uber has snooped on your privacy over time appeared first on TECHSEEN.

Bala Swaminathan (Ex) KPMG partner, one of the earliest investors in the platform too has invested in this round as well.

With this round of funding, Credihealth aims to expand its operations and fund the new services to address the non-clinical pain points of patients.

Credihealth claims to have tie-ups with over 630 hospitals in Tier 1 as well as Tier 2 geographies and has partnerships with brands such as Fortis, Medanta, Columbia Asia, BLK, Paras, Artemis, etc. It provides extensive healthcare assistance to patients supporting them in managing all their hospital needs.

Commenting on the funding, Ravi Virmani, Founder and Managing Director, Credihealth said, “More than money, it is innovation and steady growth that are needed to survive in the market today. We are already a company with a consistent and positive cash flow and have achieved substantial growth in the past few quarters. The funding will primarily be utilized to augment technology and infrastructure to expand services and introduce new products. Most importantly, the guidance and mentorship of our investors is what we are looking forward to, for sustained evolution of Credihealth.”

Manish Tibrewal, CEO of Tolaram Inc said:

“The Indian startup landscape has exhibited exceptional growth across industries and we are glad to participate in such a vibrant market with a high-potential healthcare startup. There is an urgent need for drastic improvements in India’s healthcare delivery system and to bring transparency for the patients.”

He added, “Standing true to its name of providing credible healthcare assistance, Credihealth is currently one of the most disruptive healthcare startups in the Indian market, having achieved such phenomenal growth in a very short period of time. It is most certainly one of the few startups in India to watch out for.”

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The firm, which received final approval of the Reserve Bank of India to formally launch its own payments bank, will be offering micro-loans between INR 5,000 (US$77) to INR 20,000 (US$308), sources close to the development, told Techseen.

The service is expected to start in a month’s time. The loan amount will be disbursed by ICICI Bank and will be credited to the Paytm wallet.

The eligibility for the loan will be decided on the basis of transaction history, particularly electricity and mobile bills payment.

The Alibaba backed One97 Communication, which operates the Paytm platform had first showed intent of offering personal loans in September last year. “While small ticket loans in the INR 5,000-10,000 range will be approved in 30 minutes, the bigger sized loans of about Rs 200,000 would take a day or two for disbursal, Krishna Hegde, VP (Business), Paytm, had told Times of India at that time.

Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had in February announced this year that it had reached 200 million wallet users. “Next milestone, 500 Mn by 2020,” Sharma had tweeted. He said that the company was adding 700,000 users per day; and that the total balance in the Paytm wallets stood at INR 8.99 billion (US$134.777 million approx).

Paytm rival Mobikwik, in association with consumer-lending marketplace, CashCare, already had done a pilot of offering micro-loans from INR 500-INR 2,500 to about 25,000 users in April-May last year.

For the record, ICICI Bank, last week tied up with Truecaller, to allow Truecaller users to make P2P payments.

Loans to merchants

Paytm started offering collateral-free working capital loans — anything between INR 50,000 and INR 20 million — for merchants on its platform, in July last year. It had tied up with with financial institutions such as Capital Float, to offer loans to merchants such has retail stores, auto and taxi drivers and milk cooperatives based on their payments history.

The interest rates vary from 12% to 24%.

Paytm is closely following the model of its largest investor Alibaba. The Chinese conglomerate committed to invest $177 million in the company in February this year. A week later, it bought the 1% stake held by Reliance Capital in Paytm for $41.2 million (INR 2.75 billion).

“It is amazing that in China they (Alibaba Group Holding and Ant Financial Services Group) disburse billions of dollars of loans,” One97 Communication founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, had told The Economic Times, as early as December 2015. “We have learned that model can work here. That is why we are excited about it and will continue with it.”

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The petition had garnered 6,941 signatures at the time of writing the story and was 559 signatures away before it would be submitted to Arun Jaitley, India’s Finance Minister; Urijit Patel, Governor of Reserve Bank of India; and S Selvakumar, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance.

Is it a ponzi scheme?

The petition has come in response to a statement issued by Indian parliamentarian Kirit Somaiya, who had compared bitcoin to a “pyramid ponzi scheme.”

“The use of Bitcoin, a hypothetical currency, is increasing at a rapid speed in India as well as in the world. Experts have expressed concern that Bitcoin is a pyramid ponzi type scheme. This issue should be taken very seriously and there is urgent need to have a study on development of Bitcoin in India. There is no regulator. As it is functioning like [a] currency and seems like [a] Ponzi scheme, RBI and SEBI as well as Finance Ministry to take appropriate step to save the people from another big ponzi fraud,” Somaiya had said in the parliament.

Subsequently, the Indian media had reported bitcoins as “illegal.” Indian bitcoin exchange, Zebpay, clarified on its blog, “No, that is not true. Nothing has changed regarding bitcoin’s legal status in India this week. In our opinion, bitcoin is not illegal. Bitcoin is legal under all existing laws. It’s business as usual at all Indian bitcoin exchanges, including Zebpay.”

“Ponzi schemes are unfortunately common. They use different modes to accept and make payments. Sahara’s chit fund was a ponzi scheme. It used Indian Rupees for payments.

Unfortunately, there are a few ponzi schemes which use bitcoin as the payment method. Just like Rupee is not a ponzi, neither is bitcoin. In fact for a few months now, we have been regularly warning our users to beware of such ponzi schemes on our website, Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The well meaning MP wants to do is his job of protecting the people of becoming victims of such ponzi schemes. It’s a misunderstanding of the technology that made him remark that bitcoin is ponzi.”

The government has setup an inter-ministerial committee to study the legality of bitcoins, which will give a response on 20th April 2017.

Stop bad actors, not the technology

The petition urges the government to “not take hasty steps and prevent innovation, economic activity and jobs. This will only stop good uses of cryptocurrencies.”

Read the full petition below:

Bitcoin is not illegal as per existing laws. As per media reports, a parliamentary committee is setup to look into the future legality of bitcoins and cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies offer India opportunities for innovation and development.

Blockchain: It has been accepted worldwide that blockchain technology will be the future for financial institutions. Blockchain cannot work without allowing all parts of the industry – mining and trading of blockchain tokens, that is cryptocurrencies.

Remittance: Potential for India to save US$ 7 billion by using cryptocurrencies for inward remittances. Compare this to US$ 2 billion budget of the Mid Day Meal scheme to feed 120 million poor children.

Financial inclusion: Cryptocurrencies can provide modern financial services to the poorest Indians at far lower costs.

Fintech Hub: With its status as a tech hub, India has the potential to be a fintech hub by allowing innovation in future fintech technologies.

We wish to develop a responsible industry around this revolutionary technology.

Stop bad actors, not the technology: With infrastructure technologies like the Internet, the smartphone and cryptocurrencies, it makes far more economic sense to chase the bad actors (for example, ponzi schemes) rather than shutting down the technology.

Cryptocurrencies will be available irrespective and the illegal users do not care about its legal status. Please do not take hasty steps and prevent innovation, economic activity and jobs. This will only stop good uses of cryptocurrencies.

DABFI: The need for self-regulations

The industry consisting of Indian cryptocurrency startups Zebpay, Unocoin, Coinsecure and Searchtrade had come together to launch DABFI for the orderly and transparent growth of virtual currency market.

Nishith Desai Associates, an international law firm, has been appointed to develop self-regulations for the industry.

Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $1,350 earlier this month and is currently trading at just under $1,000.

The post Petition to announce bitcoin legal in India garners 7K signatures appeared first on TECHSEEN.

Ransomware is a malware spread through infected email attachments or programs that encrypts data and demands payment for a decryption key. Ransomware is technically inferior to other malware; operating ransomware demands much less knowledge and skill, which has attracted lower-level criminals to it in the past decade.

“Cybercriminals continued to innovate in 2016 as we saw techniques like ransomware move from a nuisance to an epidemic,” said Caleb Barlow, Vice President of Threat Intelligence, IBM Security.

“While the volume of records compromised last year reached historic highs, we see this shift to unstructured data as a seminal moment. The value of structured data to cybercriminals is beginning to wane as the supply outstrips the demand. Unstructured data is big-game hunting for hackers and we expect to see them monetize it this year in new ways.”

The study comprises of observations from more than 8,000 monitored security clients in 100 countries and data derived from non-customer assets such as spam sensors and honeynets in 2016. IBM X-Force runs network traps around the world and monitors more than eight million spam and phishing attacks daily while analyzing more than 37 billion web pages and images.

IBM Security found 70 percent of businesses impacted by ransomware paid over $10,000 to regain access to business data and systems. In February, last year, a California hospital paid a ransom of 40 Bitcoins (approximately USD17,000 at the time) to unlock encrypted files. In the first three months of 2016, the FBI estimated cybercriminals were paid a reported $209 million via ransomware. This would put criminals on pace to make nearly $1 billion from their use of the malware just last year.

Records compromised grew a historic 566% in 2016

In all, which includes other data breaches including ransomware, the IMB study finds that records compromised in 2016, grew a historic 566 percent from 600 million in 2015 to more than 4 billion.

These leaked records include data cybercriminals have traditionally targeted like credit cards, passwords and personal health information, but IBM X-Force also noted a shift in cybercriminal strategies. In 2016, a number of significant breaches related to unstructured data such as email archives, business documents, intellectual property and source code were also compromised.

Shift from healthcare back to financial services

Information & communication services companies and government experienced the highest number of incidents and records breached in 2016.

• Information and Communications (3.4 billion records leaked and 85 breaches/incidents)
• Government (398 million records leaked and 39 breaches/incidents)

In 2015, healthcare was the most attacked industry with financial services falling to third. However, attackers in 2016 refocused back on financial services. While financial services was targeted the most by cyber-attacks last year, data from the X-Force report shows it was only third in compromised records. The lower success rate versus the high volume of attacks in financial services indicates that continued investment in sustained security practices likely helped protect financial institutions.

The data for the financial services sector reveals a greater percentage (58%) of insider attacks versus outsider attacks (42%). The insiders are composed of both inadvertent actors (53%) and malicious insiders (5%).

The healthcare industry continued to be beleaguered by a high number of incidents, although attackers focused on smaller targets resulting in a lower number of leaked records. In 2016, only 12 million records were compromised in healthcare – keeping it out of the top 5 most-breached industries. For perspective, nearly 100 million healthcare records were compromised in 2015 resulting in a 88 percent drop in 2016.

Healthcare, also has a greater percentage (71%) of insiders (inadvertent at 46% and malicious at 25%) versus outsiders (29%). It can be useful to think of inadvertent actors as compromised systems carrying out attacks without the user being aware of it.

The fact that the insider attacks targeting the financial services and healthcare were largely the result of inadvertent actors, organizations in thee sectors, according to the study, should focus on educating employees about phishing and how to avoid becoming a victim, use a variety of approaches—video, webinars, in-person instruction—and require training at intervals to make the risk clear.

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An Oregon District court last week, dismissed a lawsuit — filed by two firms from Portland Tenrec Inc, a web development company and Walker Macy, a landscape architecture firm — that challenged the lottery system adopted to determine successful applicants for H-1B visas. The lawsuit sought to process the H-1B visa applications in the order they are received, and end the lottery system.

Judge Michael Simon wrote in his ruling: “For example, the Fedex driver may have had a flat tire or took a long lunch, resulting in the UPS truck delivering its petitions before Fedex. The US Mail delivery may always be delivered in the afternoon for a particular location on the mail route, making its delivery last. Is it fair to process the UPS petitions first, simply because they ‘arrived’ at the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Service) office first?”

Bill against abuse of H-1B visas reintroduced

‘The Keeping American Jobs Act’, that seeks to prevent US companies from outsourcing jobs overseas by “abusing” the H-1B program was re-introduced in House of Representatives, last week. The Bill is sponsored by Democrat Congressman Derek Kilmer and Republican Doug Collins, and if passed, would prevent companies that have H-1B employees from using them to train workers in the country and then move those jobs to a foreign country.

Prior to that a legislation called the ‘High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness Act of 2017‘ was introduced in the House of Representatives by California Congressman Zoe Lofgren, in January this year. The Bill calls for doubling the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders to $130,000, which is more than double the current amount of $60,000, established in 1989. This will pose as a challenge for tech firms to induct workers from abroad.

It will also cancel the lowest-pay categories and raise the salary at which H-1B employer is exempt from non-displacement and recruitment attestation requirements. With regard to startups, the Bill would set aside 20% of the allocated H-1B visas each year for startups and firms that have 50 or less than 50 employees. It would also establish wage requirements for L-1 workers and improve H-1B wage requirements to encourage companies to hire qualified American workers and prevent them from using foreign workers as a source of cheap labor.

Around 85,000 H-1B visas are allotted a year, of which nearly two-thirds of H-1B visa applicants are Indian nationals who either work for Indian firms — like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and Infosys — in the US, or the local operations of US firms such as Accenture, IBM and Google. The reforms Bill, introduced earlier this year proposes for doubling the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders to $130,000, which is more than double the current amount of $60,000, established in 1989.

Passing the H-1B visa reforms will not be easy

The chain of events has set caution amongst Indian IT services companies who willingly have decided not to apply for H-1B visas for junior employees, this year. Infosys, which according to MyVisaJobs.com, is the largest sponsor of H-1B visas in the US and had in FY2016 filed 25,405 Labor Condition Applications (LCA) for H-1B Visas, will not be applying for visas for employees with under four years of experience, this year. The company is instead talking to clients about offshoring more work to India, and the work done be by its junior employees in India.

However, experts say that it will be difficult for President Donald Trump’s administration to actually pass the proposed reforms. Kirit Udeshi, VP, Business Development at Forte Consultants, an IT consulting agency in Reston, Virginia, feels that the failure of the American Health Care Act last week is set to impact the overall legislative priorities of the new administration, including President Trump’s promise to reform the H-1B visa program.

Udeshi, writing for The American Bazaar, says, “Now, in the aftermath of his failure, right out of the gate, to get his signature healthcare legislation passed, the president’s options on H-1B reform are limited.”

Trump though has an option to issue an executive order, which though is a temporary measure and not a substitute for legislation; and executive orders can be challenged in the court of law. After taking over the reigns from Barack Obama, Trump has issued some two-dozen executive orders, but not the one he promised on H-1B. “Especially, after federal courts blocked the so-called Muslim ban, the administration is more cautious about the legality of executive orders,” argues Udeshi in the article.

Sheela Murthy, a prominent immigration attorney in the US and founder of Murthy Law Firm, also raises similar concerns in her talk with The American Bazaar, and urges companies to not panic. “I would tell people not to panic, not waste your cosmic and spiritual energy in focusing on something that we don’t know if anything will ever come to pass,” she says.

Indian industry body confident

Indian IT industry, along with the Indian government have raised the issue with the US government at multiple levels. Indian IT industry body NASSCOM, is not too much concerned with the proposed reforms. “There is no concern. As much as we need them, they (the US) need us, Kamal Agarwala, Chairman, Nasscom’s Eastern Regional Council, said.

“That is what the NASSCOM stand is all about. They do not have the manpower to replace us. There may be some challenges because of the changes in the industry’s dynamics, but we do not see anything to be alarmed about.”

The H-1B visa reforms will not only hurt Indian IT companies, but will hurt the US equally if not more. US does not depend on skilled foreign workers for the IT services industry only, but for healthcare too. US universities too depend on foreigners to fill their faculty ranks, especially in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

There are high chances that if pushed to the wall, US companies could relocate their production and employment overseas.

The post Can the US actually push H-1B visa reforms? appeared first on TECHSEEN.

The blog post states that Yogi, as Vasupal is popularly known in the Indian startup industry, was in the process of liquidation (before his arrest) of assets that were not generating revenue and focus on vehicles which had a good opportunity in the current system. Company was also in the parallel process of collection from debtors and other pay offs.

“Company is still ACTIVE. So criminalizing a person who was solely and earnestly working towards these closures has blocked the path for everyone else for Aditya’s selfish reasons. It is not only hurtful to Stayzilla’s existing partners but also demoralizing for entrepreneurs across,” the blog post said.

Bail denied

Yogi was arrested last week, on “criminal charges” initiated by Chennai based advertising agency, Jigsaw Advertising and its CEO, CS Aditya, alleging that Yogi and his partner Sachit Singhi owed the company INR 17.2 million (approx US$259,000).

Chennai’s special court, today, while rejecting Yogi’s bail plea granted Central Crime Branch one-day custody of Yogi, in connection with the case.

Let truth prevail

While urging the Press, Entrepreneurs, Investors and Government officials to: “Get Yogi out first and LET THE TRUTH PREVAIL!!!” the blog post questioned:

“HOW did a civil matter become Criminal?”, and if it is done to Yogi — it can be done to any entrepreneur(any one infact).”

The post accuses Jigsaw CEO CS Aditya of “crime” he did to Yogi’s families —: “life threat to our kids, rape threat and false brothel case threat (refer to Yogi’s previous blog for the call record) and we are still living in tremendous fear, anxiety & insecurity.”

Clarification on siphoning claims

The article also posts “Clarifications to false siphoning claims” with details of Yogi and his partner Sachit Singhi’s salaries, credit cards used to make online payments towards server fee and online purchases of tools and softwares like GITHUB, AWS, JIRA etc. It also refers to details of payments made to Yogi’s father as rent paid for office premises.

“The monthly payout to Yogi’s dad that was ‘exposed’ and categorized as siphoning (cheap trick), which also got wrongly picked by some media without verification. It is actually the monthly rental under a Rental Agreement for Yogi’s dad’s apartment that is Stayzilla’s registered office in R.A Puram, under Inasra Technologies Pvt Ltd since 2013 till date. This was not formalized in the initial years of occupation since 2007 but was done in 2013 after investments were received.

“Even during formalization, the rent was kept low at Rs.55000 monthly rental for his dad’s 1800 sq ft in comparison to Rs.90000 monthly rental for a space of 2000 Sqft that was being used as an extended office space in the apartment complex from an unrelated party.

“Our point is that there’s a record for every such related party transaction that one is trying to dig up on Yogi and Sachit. Humbly request everyone to verify facts before propagating false information. We will provide backing proof for everything to concerned parties. #helpyogi #ReleaseYogiNow so facts are known.”

The post goes on to state that Yogi was in the process of “complete restructuring (reboot) of Stayzilla and had begun discussions with prospects in the accommodation and tourism space. He even attended a travel summit in Delhi in the 2nd week of March to begin his discussions on the reboot. He was in the process of liquidation of assets that were not generating revenue and focus on vehicles which had a good opportunity in the current system.”

Industry support

It said that Yogi’s family, friends, ex-employees, management and board fully support him and stand strong with him.

Ravindra Krishnappa, who was an investor and Director with Stayzilla till 2015, told Techseen, that he has spoken to Yogi’s family and Board members, and that he is “confident” that this is a case of a disputed invoice with the vendor for non-performance of services under dispute with the company.

“Yogi believes that this is a civil matter being dragged into the criminal domain to exert pressure and has expressed a desire to continue to fight it in the legal system,” Krishnappa said.

He also said that there has been no check bounce, and Yogi’s family has categorically stated that.

Meanwhile, the industry has come out in full support of Yogi and contends that no one should be allowed to use intimidating tactics and at the most it was a civil case, which has been made into a criminal case, using political connections.

The industry, on Monday, this week, came up with a website, Help Yogi, that has a letter addressed to Indian Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, urging “to look into this matter and ensure that expeditious justice is provided to Yogi.”

The campaign, which is open for signatures from the industry, has garnered over 440 signatures since Monday. Some prominent names amongst the signatories include Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO, Paytm; Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder, OlaCabs; Mohandas Pai, Board member of Infosys; Amarendra Sahu of NestAway.

The petition to the Home Minister is also backed by industry bodies — CII, IAMAI, ISPIRT, FICCI, TiE, and NASSCOM.

The letter has also been marked to Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Nirmala Sitharaman; Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog; Edappadi K Palaniswami, Chief Minister, Tamil Nadu; Rajiv Mehrishi, Home Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs; and Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion.

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