Ey (Ernst & Young) Launches Blockchain-enabled Solution for Secure Business Agreements

EY (Ernst & Young) has recently introduced a groundbreaking blockchain-enabled solution called EY OpsChain Contract Manager (OCM). This tool is designed to streamline complex business agreements, reduce costs, and enhance security.

EY OpsChain Contract Manager (OCM) runs on the Ethereum public blockchain, enabling truly decentralized operation in a trust-worthy environment. EY OCM helps enterprises to execute complex business agreements, supporting confidentiality, helping improve time efficiency, and achieving cost reduction, with automatic adherence to the agreed terms.

Purpose and Features

Contract Management: EY OCM facilitates the fulfillment of complex, multi-party business agreements while ensuring confidentiality and adherence to agreed-upon terms.

Data Synchronization: It synchronizes data across business partners, enabling uniform enforcement of key business terms such as standardized pricing, volume discounts, rebates, and strike prices.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs): To enhance contract integrity and mitigate value leakage, EY OCM utilizes public blockchain's security and accessibility with data privacy through ZKPs.

ZKPs allow parties to verify the accuracy of information without revealing the information itself. When parties interact with the contract, they can validate its integrity without exposing sensitive details.

This ensures that critical contract terms, transaction details, and value chain confidential information remain shielded, granting enhanced privacy.

Decentralized Operation: The solution runs on the Ethereum public blockchain, ensuring decentralized operation within a trustworthy environment.

API Integration: Enterprises can easily integrate EY OCM into existing systems through a standardized API.

Challenges Addressed by EY OCM

Multi-Party Contracts: EY OCM tackles the challenge of managing business agreements that span internal and external operational and technology silos.

Value Fragmentation: By aggregating spend across systems and business partners, smart contracts prevent value fragmentation, making it easier to track and qualify for discounts and rebates.

Use Cases

Power Purchasing Agreements (PPAs): Initial test users are implementing complex PPAs that include market prices and strike prices with minimum and maximum purchase criteria.

According to Zion Market Research, the global smart contracts market is projected to reach $1 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 24% between 2023 and 2030.

EY (Ernst & Young) is actively involved in developing various blockchain solutions to address business challenges and enhance efficiency. Some of the notable EY blockchain solutions include — EY Blockchain Analyzer (Smart Contract/ Token Review and Tax Calculator), EY OpsChain Traceability (for traceability and transparency across supply chains by leveraging notarization and tokenization), EY OpsChain Public Finance Manager, and EY Blockchain Analyzer: Reconcile.

Reliance's Jio Platforms Raised $4.6 Bn in May, which's 85% of All PE/VC Investment in India

The month of May recorded investments worth $5.4 billion across 58 deals, with $4.6 billion invested in Jio Platforms, according to a report by IVCA-EY.

IVCA (Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association), which is India's apex association representing the interests of India's private equity & venture capital industry, together with Ernst & Young has released this report, which is a monthly PE roundup.

If not for Jio Platforms, PE/VC investments would have recorded a fourth straight month of decline, recording just US$791 million in investments, a 72% y-o-y decline and 15% lower than April 2020, the report said.

According to the report, the month of May 2020 saw almost double of Private equity and venture capital investments -- on year on year basis.

It is to be noted that in the first 5 months of 2020 there have been only US$1.5 billion worth of fundraises, 91% of which were raised in the first two months i.e. -- January & February (which is pre Lockdown), compared to US$4.6 billion raised in the same period last year.

[caption id="attachment_146269" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Source ~ IVCA.in[/caption]

Investments in May 2020 were 92% higher compared to May 2019 (US$2.8 billion) and 5.8 times the value recorded in April 2020 (US$935 million). However, 85% of the investments in May 2020 were due to the Jio Platforms PE deals aggregating US$4.6 billion, said the IVCA-EY report.

From a sector point of view, telecom sector (US$4.6 billion across four deals) emerged as the top sector due to Jio Platforms, followed by life sciences sector (US$354 million across four deals) which includes Carlyle’s buyout of 74% stake in SeQuent Scientific Limited for US$210 million and financial services (US$309 million across 16 deals).

Venture Investments up 69% at $16.4 Bn in Q2

Venture investments grew 69 per cent to USD 16.4 billion in the September quarter on the back of a jump in the number of transactions, a report said on Thursday.

This is the strongest ever quarter by deal values for the private equity and venture capital industry, consultancy firm EY said in the report.

Its partner Vivek Soni said deal activity grew across all three main asset classes of private capital
including private equity, infrastructure and real estate.

"With increasing interest from large global pension and sovereign wealth funds combined with the evolution of new investment structures like InvITs and REITs, we continue to project sustained growth in real asset investments in India," he said.

In a similar report, its rival KPMG also said venture capital investment in India strengthened during the September quarter led by a slew of large deals of over USD 100 million.

However, it was more circumspect on the outlook front.

"VC investment in India is expected to remain strong in the December quarter and the March quarter. However, given the current credit squeeze it might not be as robust as it has been over the past two quarters," it said.

The EY report said that exits have been subdued as the total number stood at USD 8.1 billion for the first three quarters as against USD 8.5 billion in the same period last year, the data said.

"The Governments step to rationalise corporate tax rate and introduce positive changes to the FPI policy are steps in the right direction, and increase attractiveness of India for long-term capital investment relative to it's emerging markets peers," it said.

From a fund raising perspective, the report said there was an 11.5 per cent dip at USD 2.3 billion of new firepower being raised. PTI AA

Ernst & Young Acquires Bangalore-based CRM Solutions Firm 'C Centric'

India unit of Ernst & Young (EY) on Thursday said it has acquired C Centric, an end-to-end provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions and services, for an undisclosed amount.

"The acquisition strengthens EY's commitment to support businesses in their transformation journeys by bringing a customer-insights driven strategy that helps organisations look at digital from every angle and unlock the power of key disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, analytics, cloud among others," a statement said.

With the acquisition, EY brings on board a team with extensive experience in conceptualising and implementing CRM solutions, it added.

The team's capabilities range from both online as well as on-premise CRM implementations. It works across industries, particularly financial services including banking and insurance.

[caption id="attachment_132312" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Team of C Centric[/caption]

"Over the past couple of years, we have collaborated with the C Centric team in strategising and implementing several complex, large-scale digital transformation programmes and our clients have benefitted immensely from this association," Rohan Sachdev, Partner and Leader (Advisory Services) at EY in India said.

Their addition to EY will strengthen EY's ability to help businesses capitalise on the digital wave and provide an end-to-end digital experience to customers, he added.

C Centric was co-founded by Shubho Bhattacharrya, Gerald Prabhu, Vinod Ganesh Ram and Vineet Kalucha in 2007 in Mumbai and has a presence in three cities.

With more than 2,800 digital and technology professionals in EY's India team, the firm is well positioned to deliver advanced digital solutions to organisations in varied functions and industries, the statement said.

EY has globally completed over 120 acquisitions in the last six years and has over 21 alliances with technology majors around the world. Recently, EY in India acquired Fortune Cookie UX Design to drive digital transformation, including design thinking, user experience (UX) design, usability and building user-centric digital ecosystems. PTI SR