Give income, not houses!

— By Bharat Jhunjhunwala | Aug 29, 2015 12:00 am 22Modi The Government plans to provide interest subsidy of 6.5 percent to the Economically Weaker Sections to enable them to buy homes. The concern is welcome. But usefulness of such subsidy is doubtful because EWS households simply do not have the incomes to buy a house. The problem is brought out by just one statistic. A report by Real Estate Consultancy firm Jones Lang Lasalle says housing shortage in India in 2007 for MIG and HIG was only 0.2 percent; for LIG 10.5 percent and for EWS a whopping 99.9 percent! This means that all the problems supposedly besetting the housing sector have not prevented the real estate firms from supplying nearly 17 million houses to the MIG and HIG households. These households have money to spend. The builders have found ways to overcome the problems. EWS households do not have purchasing power hence the builders are not interested in building houses for them. Main problem in providing housing for the poor is that they do not have the income to buy the houses. Question is whether interest subsidy will enable EWS households to cross the threshold and enable them to buy houses? Let us look at the experience of other countries who have implemented similar schemes. The National Shelter Program provide housing for the poor in Philippines. It was found that the beneficiaries abandon or transfer the homes they are awarded. The EWS houses are necessarily made some distance away from the city center because land is prohibitively expensive near the city center. The EWS households do not have opportunities to earn livelihood where the houses are provided. Also, essential services like those of bus are deficient so they cannot reach their work places. EWS households prefer to live in smaller houses that are near to their work places. A report on the Baan Mankong participatory slum upgrading program in Thailand says that while the beneficiaries appreciate their new houses, they are wary of the resulting burden. They do not have the income to pay the installments on the new houses. A study done by the Inter American Development Bank says the problem in Latin America is that there are insufficient resources to solve the problem; and there is high dependence on subsidies. The EWS households do not have income hence the Government has to subsidize the house hugely to make them affordable. The governments do not have the resources to provide these amounts of subsidies. Similar findings are available from other countries. I have not found a single such project that is successful. Everywhere the problem is that EWS households do not have the money to afford even the subsidized houses. Strategy of the Modi Government is to reduce the price of the houses. Interest subsidy is one step in that direction. Other measures that are suggested are increase in Floor Area Ratio, exemption from Rent Control Act, reducing the time taken in obtaining clearances for construction, easier funding from banks, and dilution of construction norms. Indeed these will help if implemented. My assessment, however, is that the cumulative impact of all these measures would bring the price of housing down by, say, 25 percent. That would still be much inadequate. The guard who does 12 hours duty in the Society where I live in Ghaziabad is paid Rs 8,000 per month. He pays rent of Rs 1,500, spends Rs 3,000 towards food and living expenses, Rs 1,000 for contingencies, and Rs 2,500 sent to the village for maintenance of his family. That leaves him with no surplus. He could, at best save Rs 2,500 if he did not have to support his family in the village. A back of the envelope calculation indicates he could possibly take a loan of Rs two lacs and be able to service the same at an interest rate of six percent which he will have to pay after availing of a subsidy of 6.5 percent as proposed by Modi. But what will he get in Rs two lacs? Not even a one room tenement. Inquiries reveal that minimum Rs seven lacs will be required to buy 25 square meters land with one built up room. Then there is problem of availing the loan. The Pradhan of a village in Uttarakhand told me of the sad plight of the loanees. A gang of touts works hand in hand with the bank officials. The tout will get papers of loan of, say, Rs 50,000 signed by the beneficiary but actually pay him only Rs 20,000. Later, when the Bank issues a Recovery Certificate they will take Rs 2,000 from the loanee and tell the Patwari and the Bank Manager not to pursue the recovery for, say, six months. So the interest keeps on building till the poor fellow has to sell his land. The Pradhan gave strict instructions to the Bank not to extend any loan in his village so that the poor people of his village were spared of such a fiasco. Similarly, rickshaw puller in Varanasi told me he was paying a rent of Rs 1,500 per month or Rs 18,000 per year to the rickshaw owner. The rickshaw cost only Rs 12,000 to buy. When asked why did he not take a loan and buy a rickshaw himself, he said, “I would be running from one office to the other, provide this document and that, pay commissions, and at the end of the day the Bank would give a loan of Rs 8,000 that would be insufficient to buy a rickshaw.” There is such a huge gap in the capacity of the people and the real price of housing that enhancement of subsidy from 4 percent to 6.5 percent will be like a drop in the ocean. Modi should beware that the Congress has created a system in the last 60 years that perpetuates poverty and provide opportunities to the welfare mafia of government servants to make monies. The EWS households only get dreams. Modi should not perpetuate that disgusting system. Cosmetic policies like increase in interest subsidies will only provide more attraction for the welfare mafia to trap the simple minded households. He will be well advised not to aim for the sky. He should realize that solving the problem of incomes or housing of the EWS households is beyond his capacity. He should instead focus on improving the civic services in the slum areas. Let the per capita expenditure on water, sewage, roads and lighting in the slums be made, if not equal, then, say, 10 percent of the per capita expenditure in Lutyens Delhi. That is doable and will actually provide relief to the 44 million EWS households that will be inevitably be living in cramped quarters ten years down the lane. Bharat Jhunjhunwala

Seventh Pay Commission to submit report by December-end

New Delhi: The Seventh Pay Commission's term was on Wednesday extended by four months till 31 December to give its recommendations on revising emoluments for nearly 48 lakh central government employees and 55 lakh pensioners. The Commission, whose recommendations may also have a bearing on the salaries of the state government staff, was given more time by the Union Cabinet just a day before its original 18-month term was coming to an end. Representational image. AFP Representational image. AFP Representational image. AFP The Commission, headed by Justice A K Mathur, was appointed by the previous UPA government in February 2014, and its recommendations are scheduled to take effect from 1 January, 2016. "The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi today gave its approval for the extension of the term of the 7th Central Pay Commission by four months up to 31 December, 2015," an official statement said. In view of its volume of work and intensive stakeholders' consultations, the Pay Commission had made a request to the government for a four-month extension up to 31 December, it added. The government constitutes the Pay Commission almost every 10 years to revise the pay scale of its employees and often these are adopted by states after some modifications. As part of the exercise, the Commission holds discussions with various stakeholders, including organisations, federations, groups representing civil employees as well as Defence services. The other members of the commission are Vivek Rae, a retired IAS officer of 1978 batch, and Rathin Roy, an economist. Meena Agarwal is Secretary of the Commission. The Sixth Pay Commission was implemented with effect from 1 January, 2006, the fifth from 1 January, 1996 and the fourth from 1 January, 1986. PTI

Saudi escalator market set for 7pc growth

Growing construction industry, high rise buildings and expansion of public and private infrastructure will boost Saudi Arabia’s elevators and escalators market to grow at a CAGR of 7.2 per cent during 2015-21, a report said. Surging demand and increasing competition is resulting into decline in prices of elevators and escalators in Saudi Arabian market, added the report “Saudi Arabia Elevators and Escalators Market (2015–2021)” released by 6wreseach, a global market research and consulting firm. Also, growing domestic manufacturing and joint ventures of international players with domestic players have additionally slashed the prices of elevators and escalators in the country. Elevators have prominently fuelled the growth of the overall market, however in the forecast period; elevators market would marginally lose its market share to the escalators, according to 6Wresearch. Amongst all the applications, commercial application has captured major share of market pie in overall elevators and escalators market in Saudi Arabia. Expanding retail sector, construction of new hotels, hospitals, metros, and commercial offices/ business parks are spurring elevators and escalators demand in the country. Retail segment accounted for key share in the commercial application. In Saudi Arabia elevators & escalator market, western region leads the market followed by the central region. Western region is one of the key regions for construction market and has witnessed high degree of urbanization over last few years. The construction of high rise buildings in the region has fuelled the demand for the elevators and escalators. The key cities in the region are Makkah, Riyadh, Jeddah and Madinah are playing vital role for the growth of the market. – TradeArabia News Service

Chief Hardware Engineer Plans to CastAR Raises $15 Million for Augmented Gaming

An early version of castAR augmented/virtual reality glasses. An early version of castAR augmented/virtual reality glasses CastAR is an augmented/virtual reality system created by Technical Illusions. Recently the company gained $15 million in funding from Global Playground, the Venture Capital (VC) firm of former Android CEO Andy Rubin. I spoke with castAR Co-Founder and Chief Hardware Engineer Jeri Ellsworth to find out what castAR plans to do with this fresh round of funding. Andrew Terranova: How will the new funding affect castAR? Jeri Ellsworth: We had $1 million from our original Kickstarter, which goes quickly when you start paying wages. We couldn’t have much staff and had to be super cautious with every piece of hardware. This infusion of money will let us move faster. AT: So you will be hiring? JE: I was handling the job of three engineers (optical, FPGA design, and more) plus some of the business stuff. We will be hiring across the board, but we’ll be pretty cautious with how the influx of people affects company culture. AT: What impact has your CEO David Henkel-Wallace had since he joined? JE: David helped us refine our product roadmap from the Swiss Army knife approach and focus on a consumer product that is fun, tangible, and social. It wasn’t painless; Rick Johnson (Co-Founder and Chief Software Engineer) and I had to let some of our big dreams go. AT: What was finding funding like? JE: You only get a few minutes to get your message across with the VCs. Luckily David had been through this before and Paul Denton, our CFO, helped present our financials. David scheduled some VCs early on that he knew probably wouldn’t be a fit. They gave harsh, candid feedback and helped us refine our pitch. Once we presented our big picture, we were able to demonstrate all the interactions we had talked about to the VCs. Many of them were as excited as kids with a new toy. CastAR aims to be mass-market ready, immediately understandable and relateable. CastAR aims to be mass-market ready, immediately understandable and relatable. Andy Rubin from Playground Global swooped in at the last minute. Andy’s group uses a technology incubator concept, except for more grown up companies. They provide money and resources, and can even assist with engineering. Once we met with him there was no way we’d go with anyone else. AT: What does the future look like for castAR? JE: First we have to deliver on our Kickstarter commitments. The Kickstarter backers provided feedback to help us make a better product. (“Ouch, it pinches my nose.”, “There’s too much heat.”, etc.) They also taught us what type of game interactions people wanted. That will probably ship in the first quarter of next year, and people will be able to buy that version afterwards. The next generation will blow kids’ (and adults’) minds. I can’t share too much yet. The dream is a mass-market product kids can open as a gift and play immediately, but that won’t be ready this year. Andrew Terranova Andrew Terranova is an electrical engineer, writer and an electronics and robotics hobbyist. He is an active member of the Let’s Make Robots community, and handles public relations for the site.Andrew has created and curated robotics exhibits for the Children’s Museum of Somerset County, NJ and taught robotics classes for the Kaleidoscope Learning Center in Blairstown, NJ and for a public primary school. Andrew is always looking for ways to engage makers and educators.

The top career advice for future software engineers

Softwareengineers Quora-2129 By Quora2015-08-19 17:10:28 UTC This question originally appeared on Quora. What are the top 10 pieces of career advice for future software engineers? Answer below by author and Quora user Gayle Laakmann McDowell. First, let me explain what awesome careers look like. They don't look like nice linear graphs, where you're moving up a little bit each month. (Heck, even so-so careers don't look like that. You don't move up every month. You get a bit better at your career every month, but you move up in big steps.) Graph Great careers look more like this: They have some periods of slower growth and some "turning points," where your career shoots up. Graph2 The color changes? Those are career changes: software development to product management, sales to cofounder, etc. They also have some setbacks. Because you know what? Being great requires taking some risks. And taking enough risks means you'll fail a bit, too. So with that said... Coding Code. A lot. Schools are great at theory, but not so much at practical stuff. This is especially true at the top universities. Professors are academics and are often actually hostile to more "practical" forms of education. The best way to be a great coder is to just practice — a lot. It doesn't matter so much what you code (open source, iPhone apps, etc.) as long as you're coding and pushing yourself. Be language agnostic. Language is just a tool. It's valuable to know a language deeply, but it's also valuable to be learning new things. The best developers tend not to identify as a ____ developer. Career choices Prestige helps. Having a strong name on your resume helps open doors and show competence. If you can get a name like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc., do it. (But don't stay long. See the next tip.) Leave the big companies quickly. If you want to build your career at a big company, then by all means, stay and build your career there. But if that's not what you want, leave quickly. One or two years post-college at a company like Google is great. 10 years? Not so much. You will continue to learn, but there are diminishing returns of sticking around. (Unless you want to be a big company person.) If you want an A+ career, come to San Francisco bay area. I love Seattle and began my career there, but I have to be honest: there are so many more opportunities in tech in the bay area. You will limit yourself as an engineer (or product manager/tech business role) if you live elsewhere. If you don't want an A+ career, don't come to the bay area. It is extremely expensive here. Seriously. That's worth it if you want a ton of career options. But if you just want a cushy career, there are more affordable cities with enough tech (like Seattle). A good software engineer can buy a nice house in Seattle. It's a stretch in the bay area. If you don't want to be a developer forever, then move on quickly. There is a lot of value in getting really deep technical expertise. But it doesn't matter that much whether you spent two years as a developer or seven years. Within a few years of college graduation, make a choice. Do you want to be an engineer for the next 10, 20, 30 years — or not? If you don't, start trying to move on now. More time as an engineer won't help you that much. Quit quickly. If I look at my friends who have switched jobs, almost all of them were thinking about quitting for the last six to 12 months. Some stayed for two or three years after they started saying that they wanted to quit. They've wasted so much time because of a resistance to change. If you're thinking about quitting, take action now. Start applying elsewhere — or possibly just quit outright. You probably won't be very successful if you're unhappy anyway, and there is a big opportunity cost in staying. Dealing with others Integrity matters. If you try to cheat and cut corners, it'll haunt you. Do the right thing in life. It's not only the good thing to do, but it's also the smart thing to do. People will trust and like you more. More doors will open — and those doors might just be the breakthrough moments in your career. Be helpful. When possible, help people who ask for help. The people who ask you for help right now will be much more likely to help you in the future. That "help" might be introducing you to their friends who can help you more directly. So even if you don't see how that person will be helpful, you don't know who their buddies are or will be. Make friends. You actually can't really be successful by yourself. If you're an entrepreneur, you need employees and business connections. If you're an employee, you need a job. Either way, it's friends who will be key to opening up these opportunities. It's friends, distant and close ones, who form the important part of your network, not that one person you met at a meetup and never talked to again. Being awesome Realize — no, internalize — that we've all got impostor syndrome. Even the most successful entrepreneurs and engineers (with very few exceptions) feel like they just "got lucky" and aren't nearly as good as people think, and that one day soon they're going to get "caught." Truly internalizing just how widespread impostor syndrome is can help you realize that feeling like you're a fraud doesn't mean that you are. Start stuff. Show initiative. Good things come to those who don't wait. Seek out new opportunities. Start stuff — a hackathon, a club, a project, a company, a new running group, whatever. You will learn so much from doing this and it will open doors. Take risks. Seize opportunities. When you notice that little flicker of opportunity, seize it. Run with it. See where it goes. Don't walk away just because you don't know exactly where it's going to go. Bias toward "yes." A great career hinges on the "breakthrough" moments. The problem is that you often can't identify those in advance. You don't know where that coffee meeting that you don't see the point of is going to lead. You won't know that, two months down the line, that person will end up introducing you to a guy who needs some advice and winds up as your business partner. Maintain a strong bias towards saying yes. This response has been abridged. View the full answer here. More Q&A on Quora: the best answer to any question. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from the experts and get insider knowledge. Mashable Job Board Listings The Mashable Job Board connects job seekers across the U.S. with unique career opportunities in the digital space. While we publish a wide range of job listings, we have selected a few job opportunities from the past several weeks to help get you started. Happy hunting! Topics: Business, career advice, Job Search Series, Jobs, mashable careers, quora, software engineers.

Intel to Invest Heavily in Software That Enhances Cloud-Computing Capabilities

Photo Diane M. Bryant, a senior vice president of Intel, in San Francisco. Intel has earmarked $100 million for cloud computing. Credit Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times SAN FRANCISCO — Intel, the world’s biggest maker of computer chips, has seen its future. There may not be room for some of Intel’s old friends in it. “A new world is coming, and it is inevitable,” said Diane M. Bryant, who runs Intel’s business in chips for industrial-size computing centers. “Everyone has to act differently.” Indeed, Intel’s venture arm is expected to announce on Monday that it will put $100 million toward software that is used in cloud computing, an increasingly popular method for making bigger and more efficient computing systems. Intel will lead a $75 million equity investment in Mirantis, a little-known start-up specializing in open-source cloud software, and will spend another $25 million on bolstering its own resources for working with Mirantis-type products, according to several people familiar with the deal. They declined to be identified in order to maintain relations with Intel and other companies. Intel was part of a $10 million investment round in the company in 2013 and last year joined another group of Mirantis investors. Many longtime Intel partners like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM also make this kind of software, called OpenStack. Not long ago, the chip king would have been happy to lean on their work. But in anointing the start-up with more of its investment money, Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is doing what a number of older tech giants have done in recent years: rely on a young, nimble company to help it remain competitive in a fast-growing market. The Intel investment in Mirantis also shows how old alliances among tech companies are changing into more nebulous combinations of partnership and competition — co-opetition, as it is often called — driven by what appear to be permanent changes to the industry. Since April, five of the six companies that Cisco Systems has acquired or has announced its intentions to acquire have been in cloud systems. EMC, a tech giant that specializes in storing data, has for years owned a company called VMware, which makes software that is integral to cloud computing technology; now both EMC and VMware have invested in Pivotal Software, which works on cloud products. Enterprise computing, as tech for business is called, has for years consumed about three-quarters of the $1 trillion of annual worldwide expenditures on technology. Intel enjoyed being the biggest chip supplier by a wide margin to that diverse market. But the advent of cloud-driven businesses like Google, Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon Web Services, or A.W.S., which rents cloud capabilities to businesses, is shrinking the number of companies that would buy or even build machines using Intel’s server chips. “When you sell semiconductors to just a few cloud providers who buy at giant scale, you can be at the mercy of an A.W.S.,” said Lydia Leong, an analyst specializing in cloud computing at the information-technology research firm Gartner. Ms. Leong estimated that by the end of this year, one-fifth of the applications that companies build would be made on cloud systems, a number that she said would rise quickly. “Google is already in the top five server manufacturers — they can have power over Intel.” In other words, big customers can demand lower prices, and like any company, Intel does not want to rely on a handful of customers, particularly because it does not dominate the market for chips that go into smartphones the way it once did the market for chips that run PCs. Intel’s server business is well worth protecting. In the last quarter, Intel’s PC chip business shrank 14 percent from a year earlier, to $7.5 billion, while data center chips, Intel’s second-largest segment at $3.9 billion, grew 10 percent in the same period. Mirantis could be a hedge against that shrinking pool of customers for server chips. Mirantis software is a so-called open-source product; the same kind of software is also produced by Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM, Cisco and others. It enables about 50 computer servers to function in concert, creating one flexible machine, but Intel wants Mirantis to eventually raise that to 1,000 servers. The hope is that this software will make it easier for more companies to develop cloud-computing systems. And among restive start-ups like Mirantis, there is an increasing sense that, now that the serious money is moving around, there are plenty of opportunities to work with giants both inside and outside the tech industry. “Companies like AT&T and Goldman Sachs have realized that their future businesses are all enabled by software in the cloud,” said Adrian Ionel, the chief executive of Mirantis. “It creates a lot of opportunities for new companies like us, because the old enterprise companies can’t help them there.” Mirantis, based in Mountain View, Calif., has 750 employees, about 600 of whom are engineers who focus on improving its cloud operating system. In addition to cash, Intel can also use its marketing muscle, and perhaps find some new allies. A few weeks ago, Intel announced that it was working with Google on software that would make it easier to deploy and manage applications across a global cloud network. And Google is also working with Mirantis, said Craig McLuckie, product manager on the Google cloud. Other big companies, like Ericsson, the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment provider, are also investors. Ericsson is a Mirantis customer as well. Intel has also invested a reported $700 million in Cloudera, a start-up focused on data analysis. Cloudera looked as though it could work well in cloud systems, Ms. Bryant, of Intel, said. The more people store and analyze data, Intel figures, the more they will consume Intel’s chips to do the analysis. “We’re seeing a very major transition,” Ms. Bryant said. Computers used to be white boxes that businesses turned to for efficiency and data storage. Now they are smartphones in pockets, and they continue to move into all manner of devices, combining with sensors and cloud systems to deploy and manage intelligent machines everywhere imaginable. For those in the computer business, that means many longstanding assumptions and alliances will have to change. The winding history of the OpenStack technology that Mirantis is working on shows how big companies can sometimes make a mess of a good idea, and why Intel is interested in the start-up. In 2010, OpenStack was started by Rackspace, an early purveyor of cloud-type services, in conjunction with NASA, which turned over some code it had been developing internally. Rackspace enjoyed early growth, but it has stumbled as Amazon Web Services has expanded. (Among other things, the company has picked up NASA as a customer.) A collection of companies contributing to the OpenStack effort have bogged it down in bureaucracy. After considering selling itself last year, Rackspace now hopes to profit partly as a reseller of Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing service. Intel appears ready to force the issue. Last month, the corporation opened an OpenStack innovation center alongside Rackspace. “My job is to try and get things moving,” Ms. Bryant said. “Intel has a long history of being able to drive standards and getting everyone to move together.” She added, “You’d be surprised how much money I have for this.”

How To Choose The Best Web Hosting Service For WordPress Sites Brought By BloggingIncomeLifestyle.com

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HMH Acquires Ebook Assets from MeeGenius

hmh_logo_detailHoughton Mifflin Harcourt announced that it has acquired select ebook and technology assets from MeeGenius, an ebook subscription service for children ages two through eight years old. MeeGenius is an app and subscription service that offers mobile access to hundreds of classic children’s stories, MeeGenius originals and content from authors around the world, enhanced with interactive digital features such as read-along word highlighting, audio playback and story narration. The service also offers partner content from Sesame Street, Dr. Seuss and P.D. Eastman. In 2013, Scholastic named MeeGenius to its list of “Best Children’s Reading and Book Apps.” The MeeGenius assets will serve to further bolster HMH’s offerings outside the classroom, which is a key area of growth for the company. [Press Release] Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Acquires eBook and Technology Assets from MeeGenius, Strengthens At-Home Digital Content Offering for Early Learners Acquisition includes more than 700 interactive eBooks for kids ages 2-8 BOSTON – August 11, 2015 – Global learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) has acquired select eBook and technology assets of MeeGenius — an eBook subscription service for children aged up to eight years old. The acquisition marks the Company’s latest investment in high-quality digital content for parents and young learners and supports its ongoing strategic focus on the direct-to-consumer market. Available in both iOS and Android, the award winning MeeGenius app and subscription service offer mobile access to hundreds of classic children’s stories, MeeGenius originals, and content from authors around the world, enhanced with interactive digital features such as read-along word highlighting, audio playback, and engaging story narration. “MeeGenius provides a combination of beloved children’s stories, and interactive tools that support literacy development and give families a smart array of digital books in one comprehensive offering,” said CJ Kettler, Executive Vice President and Chief of Consumer Brands and Strategy at HMH. “As HMH continues to expand its portfolio of digital consumer products, the incorporation of these MeeGenius assets further strengthens our content offerings beyond the classroom.” Created by parents and entrepreneurs Wandy Yeap Hoh and David Park in 2010, MeeGenius transforms mobile devices into expansive digital libraries for young learners. The service is currently available online at meegenius.com, and via the App Store, Google Play, Amazon and the Nook Store. “When we developed MeeGenius five years ago, our goal was to offer a quality mobile experience for young readers and their families,” said Wandy Yeap Hoh, Co-founder and CEO of MeeGenius. “We are thrilled that our creation is now joining one of the world’s leading providers of educational media and look forward to watching our eBook assets become an integral part of its growing digital content offering for children and families.” As a leading global learning company, HMH is well positioned to create educational and entertaining content that extends beyond the classroom and meets the needs of young learners, parents and families at home and on the move. Across multiple channels and formats —from mobile apps and web portals to eBooks and paperbacks — HMH provides engaging and inspiring content that parents can trust.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Acquires EBook And Technology Assets From MeeGenius, Strengthens At-Home Digital Content Offering For Early Learners

learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) has acquired select eBook and technology assets of MeeGenius — an eBook subscription service for children aged up to eight years old. The acquisition marks the Company's latest investment in high-quality digital content for parents and young learners and supports its ongoing strategic focus on the direct-to-consumer market. Available in both iOS and Android, the award winning MeeGenius app and subscription service offer mobile access to hundreds of classic children's stories, MeeGenius originals, and content from authors around the world, enhanced with interactive digital features such as read-along word highlighting, audio playback, and engaging story narration. "MeeGenius provides a combination of beloved children's stories and interactive tools that support literacy development and give families a smart array of digital books in one comprehensive offering," said CJ Kettler, Executive Vice President and Chief of Consumer Brands and Strategy at HMH. "As HMH continues to expand its portfolio of digital consumer products, the incorporation of these MeeGenius assets further strengthens our content offerings beyond the classroom." Created by parents and entrepreneurs Wandy Yeap Hoh and David Park in 2010, MeeGenius transforms mobile devices into expansive digital libraries for young learners. The service is currently available online at meegenius.com, and via the App Store, Google Play, Amazon and the Nook Store. "When we developed MeeGenius five years ago, our goal was to offer a quality mobile experience for young readers and their families," said Wandy Yeap Hoh, Co-founder and CEO of MeeGenius. "We are thrilled that our creation is now joining one of the world's leading providers of educational media and look forward to watching our eBook assets become an integral part of its growing digital content offering for children and families." As a leading global learning company, HMH is well positioned to create educational and entertaining content that extends beyond the classroom and meets the needs of young learners, parents and families at home and on the move. Across multiple channels and formats — from mobile apps and web portals to eBooks and paperbacks — HMH provides engaging and inspiring content that parents can trust. 1 of 3 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt acquires select eBook, technology assets of MeeGenius MeeGenius is an eBook subscription service for children aged up to eight years old with iOS and Android apps available BOSTON, Mass – August 11, 2015 — Global learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) has acquired select eBook and technology assets of MeeGenius — an eBook subscription service for children aged up to eight years old. The acquisition marks the Company’s latest investment in high-quality digital content for parents and young learners and supports its ongoing strategic focus on the direct-to-consumer market. MeegeniusAvailable in both iOS and Android, the award winning MeeGenius app and subscription service offer mobile access to hundreds of classic children’s stories, MeeGenius originals, and content from authors around the world, enhanced with interactive digital features such as read-along word highlighting, audio playback, and engaging story narration. “MeeGenius provides a combination of beloved children’s stories and interactive tools that support literacy development and give families a smart array of digital books in one comprehensive offering,” said CJ Kettler, Executive Vice President and Chief of Consumer Brands and Strategy at HMH. “As HMH continues to expand its portfolio of digital consumer products, the incorporation of these MeeGenius assets further strengthens our content offerings beyond the classroom.” Created by parents and entrepreneurs Wandy Yeap Hoh and David Park in 2010, MeeGenius transforms mobile devices into expansive digital libraries for young learners. The service is currently available online at meegenius.com, and via the App Store, Google Play, Amazon and the Nook Store. “When we developed MeeGenius five years ago, our goal was to offer a quality mobile experience for young readers and their families,” said Wandy Yeap Hoh, Co-founder and CEO of MeeGenius. “We are thrilled that our creation is now joining one of the world’s leading providers of educational media and look forward to watching our eBook assets become an integral part of its growing digital content offering for children and families.” As a leading global learning company, HMH is well positioned to create educational and entertaining content that extends beyond the classroom and meets the needs of young learners, parents and families at home and on the move. Across multiple channels and formats — from mobile apps and web portals to eBooks and paperbacks — HMH provides engaging and inspiring content that parents can trust.