MAM
Aspiring Minds appoints Havas Media as AoR
MUMBAI: After awarding its creative mandate to abm Communication earlier this week, employability solutions company Aspiring Minds has decided to go with Havas Media as its media agency on record.
Industry estimates peg the size of the account at Rs 200 million.
Aspiring Minds co-founder and chief executive officer Himanshu Aggarwal said, “We believe Havas Media, with their media skills and cross sector knowledge, passion for people and understanding of our customer both student and corporate, will be the right partners to help achieve our objectives in the marketplace in the long term.”
“The best students today need direction even after their degree in choosing the industry suited to their success and the employer needs his fit. Aspiring Minds has positioned itself strongly in the recruitment space and in getting jobseekers a job on merit. They are very activity focused and research based; and so are we, we look forward to working on this account,” said Anita Nayyar, Chief Executive Officer, Havas Media Group, India and South Asia.
Havas Media managing director Mohit Joshi said, “Education and employment fit is the need of the hour for India. Our mix of media and digital expertise in reaching a younger audience across India will certainly bring in the momentum. The team is smart, young and open to ideas so it will be an interesting association.”
With a management team from MIT, the IITs and IIMs, Aspiring Minds has enabled leading brands to improve the quality of talent they hire via the flagship employability assessment product named AMCAT. Adapted to meet requirements across sectors, candidates can seek a desired job and get feedback of their areas of strength and weakness with an analysis on their core skills and necessary improvement areas.
Brands
Zscaler, Airtel launch India AI Cyber Research Centre
New hub to boost cyber resilience and trusted AI use
NEW DELHI: As India’s digital engine roars ahead, so do the risks riding shotgun. In response, Zscaler, Inc. and Bharti Airtel have joined hands to launch the AI and Cyber Threat Research Center – India, a national initiative aimed at strengthening the country’s cyber defences and accelerating responsible AI adoption.
The centre is designed as a multi stakeholder platform that brings together industry, government and academia. Its mission is clear: protect critical sectors such as telecom, banking and energy, shield everyday digital users, and future proof India’s fast expanding online ecosystem.
India has long been a major innovation hub for Zscaler, with a substantial portion of its cyber research talent based here. With this new centre, that footprint evolves into a national collaboration engine. The idea is simple but ambitious, build in India, for India, and help power the country’s journey towards a secure and digitally self reliant future.
The timing is telling. India is building digital systems at population scale, not just enterprise scale. That scale has widened the attack surface dramatically. At the same time, cyber criminals and nation state actors are deploying AI to scan, probe and exploit vulnerabilities in minutes.
Zscaler’s research arm, ThreatLabz India, reports millions of infiltration attempts every month. These include espionage campaigns linked to regional geopolitical tensions, 1.2 million intrusion attempts from 20,000 sources targeting 58 Indian digital entities, and a rise in zero day exploit attempts across multiple industries.
In such an environment, perimeter based security models are struggling to keep pace. The new centre aims to push a shift towards secure by design systems and Zero Trust architecture.
Its strategy rests on four pillars: protect through real time intelligence, remediate by working directly with government agencies, facilitate adoption of AI driven security and Zero Trust frameworks, and build a stronger cybersecurity talent pipeline through specialised certifications.
As founding members, Zscaler and Airtel will combine global threat intelligence with local network visibility. Zscaler will deploy a dedicated India focused research team and draw insights from its Zero Trust Exchange platform, which processes over 500 billion daily transactions worldwide. Airtel, meanwhile, will contribute deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic, helping detect suspicious activity faster and coordinate response across the ecosystem.
Bharti Airtel executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal, said the partnership extends Airtel’s commitment to safeguarding customers and the nation’s digital fabric. He added that the collaboration would address challenges unique to the Indian market and encourage secure and confident digital engagement.
Zscaler chief executive, chairman and founder Jay Chaudhry, said India’s digital ambition cannot be secured with legacy firewalls and VPNs. He noted that a modern Zero Trust architecture is essential for a hyper connected world and that the new centre would harness the scale of Zscaler’s global security cloud while empowering a new generation of Indian cyber defenders.
Additional members from critical public and private sectors are expected to join the initiative in the coming months, expanding its scope and deepening collaboration.
In a world where threats travel at machine speed, India’s answer is to think faster, collaborate wider and build smarter.
