NEWSBOARD

Naukri.com to promote profiles of jobseekers who lost jobs in pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to haunt companies and job seekers in India, job portal Naukri.com on Monday launched the ‘Step-Up’ initiative that will highlight profiles of those who have recently been laid off or are available to join immediately.

The initiative aims to facilitate hiring and career progression, to help recruiters and job seekers in these uncertain times, the company said in a statement.

“For recruiters, our very first offering is the free bouquet of hiring services to recruiters in critical industries like medical, healthcare, pharma and telecom as we stand with them in these tough times. There are many more offerings in the pipeline,” Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri.com said in a statement.

“On the jobseeker front, we are prioritising access and discovery of recently ‘laid off and immediately available to join’ jobseekers by the recruiters,” Goyal added.

There will be a live tracker highlighting companies and industries that are currently hiring along with active jobs to apply to.

Naukri.com has also curated some useful content around work from home (WFH) productivity, job search, upskilling courses etc. to help jobseekers navigate these times.

“Also, there is a complete guide on career progression during these tough times with upskilling courses, Hiring insights, CV assessment tools etc.,” Goyal said. IANS

University of Hyderabad start-up wins BIRAC funding for Covid-19 project

In a boost to efforts aimed at tackling the pandemic, a start-up incubated at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has been selected for Covid-19 funding by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC).

OncoSeek Bio Pvt Ltd will receive funding support for developing an in vitro Lung Organoid model, from BIRAC which comes under the Union Science and Technology Ministry’s Department of Biotechnology (DBT).

OncoSeek’s project is one of 16 selected so far from the 500 proposals received for the Covid-19 research consortium. Dr Suresh Poosala, Founder CEO of OncoSeek, said, “Current animal models available for research on Covid-19 are either difficult to get into India or create them in time, to address the pandemic. The company envisages creating novel in vitro platforms for Covid-19 research under the support.” Under this grant proposal, the company plans to use their novel platform to screen drugs/peptides/molecules/agents/compounds targeted against the virus or the host cell. It plans to create this capability in the next 6 months. “With the help of talented faculty at the School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad, and ASPIRE- BioNEST, they can address the challenges and bring out the science to understand and solve the Covid-19 puzzle.” OncoSeek is a start-up incubated at ASPIRE-BioNEST at UoH since 2019, and works on developing in vitro and in vivo platforms for specific diseases for therapeutics screening.

BioNEST at the University of Hyderabad is a life sciences incubator, set up with the support of the BIRAC, an enterprise under the DBT, to provide a plug-and-play life science ecosystem of incubation. IANS