DARE-19 PHASE III SHOWS TREATMENT’S WELL-ESTABLISHED SAFETY PROFILE CONSISTENT IN COVID-19 PATIENTS

KUALA LUMPUR, July 30 (Bernama) -- The findings of DARE-19, a double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase III trial examining Dapagliflozin in patients with cardiometabolic risk factors hospitalised with COVID-19, have been published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. 

The study was a collaboration of George Clinical, a global scientifically-backed clinical research organisation and Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and was funded by AstraZeneca, according to a statement.

“In a month, we broke down barriers to go from concept to our first patient in the trial, and the team displayed extraordinary commitment needed to successfully manage this research during this pandemic personally and professionally,” said George Clinical Chief Business Officer, Sean Hart. 

Prior to the study, it was established that patients hospitalised with COVID-19 with cardiometabolic risk factors had an elevated risk of organ failure and death.

DARE-19 was the first large, randomised controlled study of hospitalised patients with COVID-19 to evaluate the safety and efficacy of SGLT2 inhibitors.

Detailed results from the primary analysis of the DARE-19 Phase III trial assessing the potential of Farxiga (dapagliflozin), a sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor, to treat patients hospitalised with COVID-19 who are at risk of developing serious complications, showed the trial did not achieve statistical significance for the two primary endpoints. 

However, there were numerically fewer events of death or new or worsened organ dysfunction in the Farxiga group compared with placebo.

The primary endpoint of prevention was defined as new or worsened respiratory, cardiovascular or kidney organ dysfunction during hospitalisation or death from any cause during the 30-day treatment period.

Numerically fewer events were observed in the Farxiga group across all components of this composite endpoint. Cardiac, renal and metabolic comorbidities have been associated with poor outcomes and death in patients hospitalised with COVID-19.

 The second primary endpoint of recovery, which assessed change in clinical status (improvement or deterioration) compared to baseline, showed no overall difference between the treatment groups. 

More details at https://www.georgeclinical.com.

-- BERNAMA

Riskified initial public offering pricing announced

KUALA LUMPUR, July 29 -- Riskified Ltd (Riskified), a fraud management platform enabling frictionless eCommerce, has announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 17,500,000 Class A ordinary shares at a public offering price of US$21.00 per Class A ordinary share. (US$1 = RM4.226)

The offering consists of 17,300,000 Class A ordinary shares offered by Riskified and 200,000 Class A ordinary shares to be sold by one of Riskified’s existing shareholders. Riskified will not receive any proceeds from the sale of the shares by the selling shareholder.

The underwriters will have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2,625,000 Class A ordinary shares from Riskified at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.

Based on a statement, the Class A ordinary shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on July 29, under the ticker symbol RSKD.

Meanwhile, the closing of the offering is expected to occur on Aug 2, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Goldman Sachs & Co LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC are acting as lead book-running managers for the offering.

Riskified empowers businesses to realise the full potential of eCommerce by making it safe, accessible, and frictionless. It has built a next-generation eCommerce risk management platform that allows online merchants to create trusted relationships with their consumers.

-- BERNAMA

TOSHIBA STARTS MASS PRODUCTION OF 12 NEW DEVICES IN M4K GROUP FOR MOTOR CONTROL

KUALA LUMPUR, July 29 (Bernama) -- Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation (Toshiba) announced it has started the mass production of 12 new devices in the M4K group for motor control as the first products of the TXZ+™ family advanced class.

It will start mass production of another 10 products in the M4M group in August this year, according to a statement.

Both the M4K and M4M groups of microcontrollers will be manufactured in a 40nm process, and belong to the TXZ4A+ series.

These products use Arm Cortex-M4 core with FPU, running up to 160MHz, and integrating motor control circuit A-PMD (advance-programmable motor driver), 32-bit encoder A-ENC (advanced-encoder) and vector engine A-VE+ (advanced vector engine plus).

These devices provide suitable solutions for AC motor, brushless DC motor and various inverter controls with a maximum of three units of high-speed and high-resolution 12-bit analog/digital converters.

Devices in the M4K group have UART, SPI and I²C integrated as general communication interfaces, and the M4M group additionally has a CAN communication interface.

Both groups achieve low current consumption and high functionality while maintaining good compatibility with existing TXZ™ family M4K(2) group.

Documentations, sample software with example of actual usage, evaluation boards and driver software which control interfaces for each peripheral are provided together with parts shipment. 

A development environment is also provided to support various needs in cooperation with global Arm ecosystem partners.

More details at https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/top.html.

-- BERNAMA

PHC HOLDINGS CORPORATION: APPOINTMENT OF MR. ALAN MALUS AND MS. KYOKO DEGUCHI AS INDEPENDENT EXTERNAL DIRECTORS

 TOKYO, July 28 (Bernama-BUSINESS WIRE) -- PHC Holdings Corporation (headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, President & CEO: John Marotta, hereafter PHCHD), a leading global healthcare company, has today announced the appointment of Alan Malus and Kyoko (Kay) Deguchi as independent external directors, effective June 30, 2021. Both bring extensive knowledge of the healthcare industry and executive-level experience at international and Japan-based medical device and life sciences companies.

Mr. Malus joins the board with over 18 years’ experience in the life sciences and diagnostics industry. Mr. Malus was most recently Corporate Executive Vice President at Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. and the President of their Laboratory Products and Services Segment. He has held various leadership and senior executive positions in finance, marketing, commercial development and operations since joining Thermo Fisher in 1998. His early career started with almost 15 years in the automotive industry, working for Ford, Chrysler and Textron.

Ms. Deguchi joins the board with over 20 years’ experience in the healthcare and chemical industries. Ms. Deguchi has most recently run the Ochanomizu Orthopaedic Rehabilitation Clinic as Vice Director and currently serves as an outside director of several public and private companies, including Nippon Ski Resort Dev Co., Ltd., T-Gaia Corporation, and Heartseed Co., Ltd. She has held a number of senior leadership positions in finance, marketing and operations for the Japanese subsidiaries of various international healthcare companies, including Janssen Pharmaceutical, Stryker and Abbvie.

John Marotta, President and CEO of PHCHD and Chairman of the Board of Directors for PHCHD, said: "I am delighted to welcome Alan and Kay to the PHC Holdings Board of Directors and we are thrilled to have attracted people of their caliber to our board. They have exceptional track records of driving commercial success for companies in the healthcare sector. They bring a wealth of experience from both international and Japan-based companies. This will be invaluable as we look to the next phase of growth for the PHC Group. They are great additions to the team and I am excited to begin working with each of them."

Mr. Malus will serve as the lead independent external director. 

http://mrem.bernama.com/viewsm.php?idm=40637

Uniphore to Acquire Jacada to Transform Customer Experience with Advanced AI and Low Code/No Code Automation

Uniphore + Jacada will become the only low code/no code automation provider with multimodal AI and RPA

PALO ALTO, Calif. & ATLANTA, Ga. & HERZILYA, Israel, July 28 (BUSINESS WIRE)--

Uniphore, a leader in Conversational Service Automation (CSA), today announced its agreement to acquire Jacada, a customer experience pioneer with the industry’s leading low code/no code platform for contact center automation. Jacada’s advanced automation software brings a proven track record of solving complex contact center challenges and empowering the design and implementation of transformational customer experiences quickly and easily.

Combined with Jacada’s innovative low code/no code platform, Uniphore’s industry-leading conversational automation platform will empower businesses to easily automate key interactions across self-service and agent-assisted customer engagements. With this comprehensive platform, business users can realize state-of-the-art digital transformation, resulting in significant ROI.

When integrated with Uniphore’s conversational AI and automation solutions, along with Jacada’s deep experience spanning decades focused on contact centers, the joint solution will deliver significant benefits to customers, including:

• Business user-friendly interface with a low code/no code platform that empowers business users to generate interaction flows for increased automation and fast, easy implementation.
• Optimized and customizable AI models for different industry verticals.
• Workflow and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for both multi-modal self-service and agent assisted interactions.
• Fully scripted and AI-enabled next-best action to guide both the customer and the agent.
• Enhanced knowledge-base guidance for increased agent efficiency and accuracy.
• Highly automated agent after-call work (ACW) summaries and call disposition
• Automatic logging of promises made during agent interaction and managing the fulfillment post call.
• End-to-end post interaction analytics and insights.

The acquisition comes at a time when enterprises are having more conversations with their customers over multiple mediums and modes of communications. Currently, the market is heavily fragmented with point solutions across self-service, agent-assist, analytics, security, front-office, back office and RPA products.

Upon closing the acquisition of Jacada, and with Uniphore's January 2021 acquisition of Emotion Research Labs , Uniphore will be the only vendor to provide proven low code/no code capabilities along with best-of-breed voice and video AI, including self-service, intelligent in-call agent assist, complete natural language after-call work summaries, trusted agent solutions and post interaction analytics. Now, customers can truly deliver front office and back-office automation across every customer and agent interaction, truly optimizing every conversation, in a simplified, business-friendly UX environment and desktop.

“Today, I welcome the Jacada team and celebrate the announcement that will ultimately bring cutting-edge low code/no code technology to our portfolio along with a very talented team of professionals who will supercharge the Uniphore innovation engine,” said Umesh Sachdev, CEO and Co-founder of Uniphore. “I am very excited to have the Jacada team join us as we work together to bring our customers new ways to quickly and easily build and deliver transformative customer experiences.”

"Our customers rely on us to bring them the latest and greatest solutions to help them grow their business,” said Yochai Rozenblat, CEO of Jacada. “We are stoked about joining forces with a team who is both experienced and passionate about contact centers, customer experience, and intelligent automation. Looking at what Uniphore has developed across such a wide range of applications and areas, we know that together, we will truly lead the industry in new and exciting ways, combining advanced automation and AI capabilities to deliver solutions that create lasting value and differentiation for our customers.”

Subject to completing customary closing conditions, the Jacada team, its intellectual property, and products will become part of Uniphore, enabling Uniphore to continue to deliver industry-leading products and services for their global joint customer base. Specific financial terms and other details of the deal are not being disclosed.

About Jacada

Jacada is the leading provider of contact center automation software, recognized for its unified intelligent virtual agent and robotic process automation capabilities. Contact center and customer experience leaders at Fortune 1000 companies trust Jacada with assisting customers and customer service employees during moments that matter. Business analysts and developers use our low code automation platform to build and launch real-time assistance solutions leveraging AI and RPA in weeks and realize return on investment in months.

About Uniphore

Uniphore is the global leader in Conversational Service Automation. The Company’s vision is to disrupt an outdated customer service model by bridging the gap between human and machine using voice, AI and automation to ensure that every voice, on every call, is truly heard. Uniphore enables businesses globally to deliver transformational customer service by providing an automation platform where digital agents take over transactional conversations from humans, coach agents during calls, and accurately predict language, emotion and intent. All in real-time. With Conversational Service Automation, enterprises can now engage their customers to effectively build loyalty, improve customer experience and realize operational efficiencies.

For more information on the news and additional assets, please visit: www.uniphore.com/jacada

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View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210727005553/en/

Contact

MEDIA CONTACTS:
North America
Marjaneh Ravai, Uniphore
Mobile: 650.346.3756
marjaneh.ravai@uniphore.com

India / Asia Pacific:
Cynanda Noronha, Uniphore
+91 9008026309
Cynanda@uniphore.com

Source : Uniphore

NEWQUEST ACQUIRES MINORITY INTEREST IN KIDS CLINIC INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED

KUALA LUMPUR, July 28 (Bernama) -- NewQuest Capital Partners (NewQuest), the leading dedicated secondary private equity platform focused on the Asia-Pacific region, has announced acquiring a minority interest in Kids Clinic India Private Limited that operates as Cloudnine chain of hospitals across India.

This stake has been acquired through a combination of a primary investment and acquisition of a secondary stake from existing investors and other shareholders, based on a statement.

Cloudnine is India’s premium birthing centre for maternal, childcare and fertility care. The Company is headquartered in Bengaluru with 16 facilities spread across in Gurgaon, Noida, Chandigarh, Panchkula, Chennai, Mumbai and Pune.

Partner and Head of India and Southeast Asia at NewQuest, Amit Gupta said: “We believe that the healthcare segment is on the cusp of high growth and Cloudnine is well positioned to consolidate its market leading position under the stewardship of Raviganesh Venkataraman, Chief Executive Officer at Cloudnine.”

NewQuest made its investment in Cloudnine from its fourth flagship fund, which closed in late 2019 with US$1 billion in commitments. (US$1 = RM4.232)

The investment represents NewQuest’s third investment in India in the last six months. NewQuest’s other recent investments in India include Cosmos-Maya and KreditBee.

Meanwhile, Founder Chairman and Neonatologist at Cloudnine, Dr Kishore Kumar said: “We now welcome NewQuest as our investor partners during this next exciting phase of growth to deliver further technological advancement and public private partnership to make pregnancy and childbirth a safe and enjoyable experience for every mother in India.”

Allegro Advisors acted as exclusive Financial Advisor to Cloudnine and its shareholders.

For NewQuest, Induslaw acted as Legal Advisors, Alvarez & Marsal and Dhruva Advisors acted as Financial Due Diligence and Tax advisers, respectively, and Envint Global acted as the ESG diligence advisers.

More details at www.nqcap.com.

-- BERNAMA

TETRATE OPENS SINGAPORE OFFICE, EXPANDING APAC REGION PRESENCE

KUALA LUMPUR, July 28 (Bernama) -- Tetrate, the leader in application-aware networking and service mesh technologies, has announced the opening of a Singapore office to expand its presence in the APAC region.

"We are seeing strong momentum for Tetrate’s products in the APAC region and now is the right time to invest in building a strong sales and engineering team in Asia," said Tetrate Chief Executive Officer, Varun Talwar.

Tetrate also appointed Karthik Viswanathan as the APAC sales leader and Adrian Cole as head of engineering to build out its team in Asia, according to a statement.

Viswanathan has grown sales organisations for Cloudhealth (acquired by VMware) and Fortinet, while Cole is a co-founder and major contributor to open source projects like JClouds, Spring Cloud Sleuth and OpenZipkin.

This expansion in the region reflects Tetrate’s ambition to be closer to its global customers. The Singapore-based team will include sales, marketing, engineering and customer success professionals.

This will enable local and regional customers to receive quicker guidance and support. Tetrate will continue its expansion efforts in the coming months to add more locations in Asia.

Adopted by Fortune 200 financial, health and retail companies, and US federal government organisations, Tetrate’s application delivery platform and its flagship product, Tetrate Service Bridge, help accelerate cloud adoption, digital transformation and zero trust architecture.

Tetrate, a leading contributor to Envoy Proxy and Istio, helps enterprises with their service mesh adoption journey by providing commercial support and expertise.

More details at www.tetrate.io.

-- BERNAMA