Will use the fund to build its products and offerings for the Chinese market as part of the Chinaccelerator Program

New Delhi, March 13 , 2019: Guiddoo, a Travel Technology Startup for in-destination experiences has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from SOSV – a  leading global venture capital firm based in New Jersey and Artesian China fund to build its products and offerings for the China market. Guiddoo currently offers its services across 15  international destinations and works with over 4000+ Travel Agents in India and also has institutional partners including Cleartrip & Yatra for their activities. In 2017, Guiddoo raised $300,000 (Rs 1.9 crore) and a second round of funding in December 2018 of $ 800,000 (Rs 6 crore) ) in a pre-Series A round from global investors.

According to a recent report by McKinsey, China has pipped US to become the largest outbound market in the world and will continue to consolidate its leadership position with 160Mn outbound travelers by 2020. The funds will be utilized to expand Guiddoo’s footprint in China and to strengthen its on ground operations and product development. Guiddoo also plans to add new destinations in Middle East and Africa into its portfolio to a take a distinguishing space in the Chinese Market. As an aggregator, the firm will also focus on adding independent Chinese travel Service Providers into the loop.

Vineet Budki, Co-Founder & CEO at Guiddoo said, “With rapid digitization and subsequent rise of an experiential economy, there has been a fundamental shift in the consumer behavior with them seeking novel experiences – such as travelling solo and to unknown destinations, as part of their travel. This has fueled the growth of in-destination segment and we see a huge potential in the same going forward.

“China is a potential market for us, and this investment will give us the wings to fly higher. We are  delighted to have secured  funding  as well as a strong partner in China this time around that will help us expand our reach, acquire the right talent and augment our portfolio in the China market. We are motivated more than ever to build a robust product and extend the best services possible to our consumers,” he added.

“We are excited to partner with Guiddoo in their endeavor to bring world class search experiences to travel enthusiasts, having a digital presence here in China.  With requisite infrastructure and support, the travel sector is well-poised for growth and with Guiddoo’s expertise in the ‘In-destination’ segment, we are confident of successfully reaping the opportunity. We have full faith in the capabilities of the team and look forward to achieving new milestones with them,” said William Bao Bean, General Partner at SOSV.

Oscar (MD, Chinaccelerator) said, “Guiddoo  brings the best-in-class, digital, in-destination experiences for  the independent Chinese travelers, which we believe is a growth segment as Group Tours are so Old School. Having deen the strong growth in the Travel Segment especially seeing the growth of CTrip, Qunar and Mafengo, we see a huge growth potential in the Outbound Chinese Travel Market and we believe that Guiddoo has the right product, team and expertise to build a strong base here.”

Incepted in 2013, the startup has been actively helping travelers to provide seamless services so that they can enhance and enjoy their international leisure trips. Guiddoo offers an array of In-Destination services like Tours and Activities, Dining, Entertainment and Shopping as add-ons to the Indian and Chinese Outbound travelers and curates special packages for them based on their preferences and profile – which are differ from global products in experience type, culinary habits, and prices among others.

About Guiddoo

Guiddoo World is a one-stop shop for in-destination experiences. With over 4000+ Travel agents, 5000+ excursions, 30000+ Customers Handled and 15 destinations, Guiddoo offers an array of services like Tours and Activities, Dining, Entertainment and Shopping as add-ons to the Indian Outbound travelers and curates special packages for them. It was established in June 2013 by Vineet, Nidhi, Prashant and Biswajeet in the form of an App only Audio Guiding Product from In5 Dubai, and later pivoted to the current tours and activities model in 2017.

About SOSV & Chinaccelerator

Chinaccelerator, the first startup accelerator to launch in China, is a mentorship-driven program helping internet startups from around the world cross borders – from the world into China and from China to the world. It is operated by the venture fund SOSV with $500M+ AUM operating six global accelerators. Chinaccelerator offers three months of rigorous guidance, training and resources from mentors, partners and investors. The robust and supportive alumni network continues beyond the Chinaccelerator program.

For more details contact:

Neha Koli/ Sagar Rai

+919717621084/ 7007549553

Kind Regards

Neha

• New report reveals that Quality Assurance and Testing is a bottleneck to implementing DevOps and Continuous Delivery for many organizations
• Fragmented test automation landscape is slowing down the adoption of Continuous Testing
• With 58% of enterprises surveyed deploying a new build daily (and 26% at least hourly), Continuous Testing is becoming a necessary part of the DevOps and agile development ecosystem

 Mumbai, March 11, 2019 – Capgemini and Sogeti, part of the Capgemini Group, today released a new report on Continuous Testing, in collaboration with Broadcom Inc.’s Enterprise Software Division. According to the report, the practice of Continuous Testing – the process of fast and efficient validation of software releases in agile developments through highly automated tests – is gaining ground in large enterprises, with almost a third of IT executives (32%) stating that their IT departments had ‘fully embraced Continuous Testing’. However, with 58% of enterprises surveyed deploying a new build daily (and 26% at least hourly), the report highlights that companies must work to improve their continuous testing effectiveness by streamlining their test environment within an agile development ecosystem.

 The report is based on 500 interviews with senior-level IT executives from large and medium-sized companies (over 1,000 employees) in industries including financial services, high tech, healthcare and life sciences, telecommunications, media and entertainment, and manufacturing. It found:

Companies must unlock the potential of automation in testing

The study strongly highlights that there is a significant scope to optimize Continuous Testing processes through technology. It found that automation was only being used to execute 24% of test cases, 24% of end-to-end business scenarios, and to generate 25% of the required test data.

Greater use of automation could significantly improve the velocity of testing activities in the agile teams; for example, over a third (36%) of those surveyed said that more than 50% of testing time is spent searching, managing, maintaining and generating test data. The report recommends that to respond to customer and market needs, all enterprises need to take significant action.

Use cases, detailed in the report, include a leading Australian bank, which had over 5,000 builds for more than 100 applications. By harnessing a single platform for automated build and deployment, integrated with testing and automation tools, it was able to reduce build cycle time by 40%, improve time to market and significantly increase environment uptime.

Enterprises need smarter orchestration and enablement for testing

The self-empowerment of autonomous teams resulted for many enterprises in an uncontrolled landscape with a broad diversity in QA and test automation approaches.  To regain control, cites the report, organizations need to improve the central quality enablement of the agile teams with clearer QA guidelines and smarter QA technology provisioning. A promising development is to make the test orchestration and execution much smarter via artificial intelligence (AI) technologies which provide “smart” test orchestration. With the addition of machine learning capabilities, systems will be able to automatically determine the tests that are required in the release and production cycles.

The report showed a clear need for improved transparency and orchestration in agile testing. Among the executives surveyed, 35% identified a ‘complete audit trail of testing activities’ and a ‘consolidated test and release pipeline’ as the most important test orchestration capabilities, with 32% highlighting a need for a ‘single-place for cross-team collaboration’ and ‘continuous delivery pipeline visibility’.

The shortage of centralized enablement on technology provisioning becomes most apparent when investigating the challenges with test environments. Teams wasted too much time procuring complete test environments. Four in ten (40%) of the respondents said their teams spend more than half of their time building and maintaining their test environments.

“The next two to three years will be a critical time for Continuous Testing as organizations need to solve the dilemma of transitioning to self-empowered autonomous teams where quality is everyone’s responsibility, while improving the central quality support and central quality oversight to create an agile development environment, that is truly able to deliver value in an increasingly complex IT landscape.” said Mark Buenen, Global Leader, Digital Assurance and Testing for the Capgemini Group. “This report clearly demonstrates the need to expand the levels of test automation, make provisioning of test environments and test data smarter, implementing meaningful quality metrics and smart quality dashboards as the core focus areas.”

 Inter-disciplinary teams require new skills and support

 In the last three to five years, the roles of both developers and testers have evolved significantly. According to the report, developers are now much closer to the customer, with a prominent role in shaping the user experience, while testers have moved out of siloed teams to work in parallel with developers and business teams, meaning that they are involved much earlier in the development life cycle. The roles and responsibilities of developers and testers are blurring, but clearly it remains important to have QA and test focused experts in the agile teams.

These inter-disciplinary teams mark a move forward, but also create challenges, details the report. They require every team member to have a holistic understanding of the entire process, with testers needing to upgrade their technical skills. Companies must address the requirement for upskilling and a new, integrated approach to truly achieve Continuous Testing’s full potential.

 “It’s difficult to fully capitalize on the benefits of Agile and DevOps without Continuous Test automation, which enables organizations to leverage data and intelligence to accelerate the creation of high quality software at the pace of digital business,” said Ashok Reddy, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Software Division at Broadcom. “As the chasm between IT and business leaders continues to close, new DevOps practices and techniques, such as automating continuous testing processes, will begin to emerge as necessary tools to drive digital transformation in a hyper-competitive marketplace.”

 The report can be downloaded here.

Notes to Editors

Methodology

 The Continuous Testing Report (CTR) 2019 brings together survey data and subject matter expert contributions to outline the challenges and potential approaches to transforming test practices in the age of Agile and DevOps. It is based on the considered opinions of several subject matter experts from Capgemini, Sogeti, and Broadcom, buttressed by the results of a global survey of 500 senior decision-makers in corporate IT functions, working for companies and public-sector organizations across eight different regions.

 About Capgemini and Sogeti:

A global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation, Capgemini is at the forefront of innovation to address the entire breadth of clients’ opportunities in the evolving world of cloud, digital and platforms. Building on its strong 50-year heritage and deep industry-specific expertise, Capgemini enables organizations to realize their business ambitions through an array of services from strategy to operations. Capgemini is driven by the conviction that the business value of technology comes from and through people. It is a multicultural company of over 200,000 team members in more than 40 countries. The Group reported 2018 global revenues of EUR 13.2 billion.

Part of the Capgemini Group, Sogeti operates in more than 100 locations globally. Working closely with clients and partners to take full advantage of the opportunities of technology, Sogeti combines agility and speed of implementation to tailor innovative future-focused solutions in Digital Assurance and Testing, Cloud and Cybersecurity, all fueled by AI and automation. With its hands-on ‘value in the making’ approach and passion for technology, Sogeti helps organizations implement their digital journeys at speed.

Visit us at www.capgemini.com. People matter, results count.

 Broadcom, the pulse logo, Connecting everything, CA Technologies and the CA technologies logo are among the trademarks of Broadcom. The term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.

Press contact:
Bhaswati Chakravorty
Tel.: +91 96500 60929
E-mail: bhaswati.chakravorty@capgemini.com

Edison said on innovation in technology that – big problems correspond to even bigger opportunities. Referring a famous Canadian Ice Hockey player, Wayne Gretzky, who had scored many hits in his time, “the trick is not to skate where the puck is, but to skate where the puck is going.” Today, technology performs a major role in solving a wide range of problems. It may be building a business or solving social problems and in this way, it can impact business all over the world. Here are the major challenges that can be solved by technology.

Carbon appropriation

Rising of global temperature is a major threat for everyone. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions cannot alone sufficient to check an increase in global temperatures. Removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can anyway help to reduce the temperature. But, it would be really expensive. Currently, many startups are searching for ways of recycling carbon dioxide into products, like synthetic fuels, carbon fiber, polymers, and concrete. It may somehow helpful, but we require the cheapest way to completely store the billions of tons of carbon dioxide and as a result, we might successfully pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Grid-scale energy storage

Different renewable energy sources like wind and solar are becoming discounted and governments in different countries are deploying them widely. But they fail to generate electricity when the sun’s not shining or wind isn’t blowing. Still, then, some countries are trying to generate some amount of energy by which they can deviate from secure sources like coal and natural gas. The cost of building enough batteries is too much to provide backup to total networks for the days when renewable generation standards would be excessive. Many scientists and startups are trying to build up cheaper forms of grid-scale storage that can persist for longer periods, including flow batteries or tanks of molten salt. However, we urgently need a cheaper and more competent way to store vast amounts of electricity.

Universal flu vaccine

Pandemic flu is a rare worldwide spread deadly disease. It is caused by a virus and spreads all over the world. People with lack of immunity get affected by this new influenza. In the 1918 pandemic of H1N1 flu about 50 million people died and in the 1957-’58 around a million people died in pandemics. More recently, half a million died in a 2009 return of H1N1. The decrease in death tolls is due to the milder strains. We should not take this disease casually as these viruses may reproduce too quickly for any tailor-made vaccine to effectively fight it. Therefore, a common flu vaccine that confined not only against the relatively less harmful variants rather against a catastrophic once-in-a-century epidemic is a critical public health challenge.

Ocean clean-up

There are a large number of tiny pieces of plastic, called “micro-plastics” are now floating all over the world’s oceans. The major source of this waste is bags or straws which have been broken up over time. It’s deadly for birds, fish, and humans. According to researchers, the effects on both human health and the environment will be intense, and it may take centuries to clean up the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic from the oceans which have been accumulated over the decades. As pollution is widespread, it’s difficult to clean up. When there are prototype methods for undertaking the massive oceanic garbage patches, we are helpless in cleaning coasts, seas, and waterways.

Dementia treatment

Dementia or Alzheimer’s is getting quite common worldwide. Above one in 10 Americans at the age of 65 suffer from Alzheimer’s. And around a third of those are of 85 years old or more than that. Till the date, Alzheimer’s has not been understood completely, as definite diagnoses can be done only after death, and even then, doctors show the distinction between Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. With advances in neuroscience and genetics are providing more insight. That understanding is offering clues to slow or even shut down the disturbing effects of the condition.

Energy-efficient desalination

The quantity of salt water on earth is about 50 times as there is fresh water. The increase in the world’s population and climate change increase droughts and the call for fresh water is going to develop more. Israel is getting most of its household water from the sea by making the world’s biggest reverse-osmosis desalination facilities. But this method requires too much energy to be practical worldwide. New types of membranes, electrochemical techniques may be valuable to make salty water useful for irrigation. Similarly, the use of adaptation technologies to create drinking water from the ocean ought to be the main concern.

Embodied AI

A video of Atlas, showing the jumping up steps of robot like a commando, designed by Boston Dynamics, swept the internet. This came only two years after AlphaGo challenged the world’s best Go player. Atlas can’t play Go (it is embodied, but not intelligent), and AlphaGo can’t run (it’s intelligent, in its own way, but lacks a body). So what happens if you put AlphaGo’s mind in Atlas’s body? According to so many researchers, real artificial intelligence may depend on a skill to share internal computational processes to actual things in the physical world. Additionally, an AI would obtain that ability by learning to work together with the physical world as people and animals do.

Secure driverless car

Till the date, independent vehicles have been used for millions of miles on public roads. Pilot programs for release and taxi services are in progress in places like the suburbs of Phoenix. But driverless cars have not been ready to capture roads in common. They are not working properly in disordered traffic, and in weather conditions like snow and fog. If they can be finished consistently safe, they might let an extensive reimagining of transportation. Traffic jams might be abolished, and cities could be altered as parking lots and these may give way to new developments. Especially, if self-driving cars extensively deployed, are likely to eradicate most of the 1.25 million yearly deaths caused by traffic accidents.

Earthquake prediction

Earthquake is one of the devastating natural calamities in which over 100,000 people died in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami—prompted by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded and it had killed around a quarter of a million people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and elsewhere. We are able to predict hurricanes days much in advance, but we are helpless in predicting earthquakes. Predicting earthquakes with some self-assurance would let the planners discover some long-lasting solutions. Even a few hours’ before a warning can help people to leave unsafe areas, and millions of lives can be saved.

Brain decoding

Our brains stay deep obscurity to neuroscientists. All the things we think and remember, and all our movements, must in some way be coded in the billions of neurons in our heads. Here everyone wants to know that code. There are so many unknowns and puzzles in perceptive, by which our brains store and exchange our thoughts. Breaking in that code may lead to mental disorders like schizophrenia and autism. It might allow us to pick up direct boundaries which communicate straight from our brains to computers, or even to other people. This is life-changing progress for people who are paralyzed by injury or degenerative disease.