Cisco and Google Partner on New Hybrid Cloud SolutionCisco and Google Partner on New Hybrid Cloud Solution

Cisco and Google Cloud has announced a partnership to deliver a hybrid cloud solution that helps customers maximize their investments across cloud and on-premises environments. The companies will provide a unique and open hybrid cloud offering that enables applications and services to be deployed, managed and secured across on-premises environments and Google Cloud Platform. The solution delivers cloud speed and scale, with enterprise-class security.

The offering provides enterprises with a way to run, secure and monitor workloads, thus enabling them to optimize their existing investments, plan their cloud migration at their own pace and avoid vendor lock in. Companies can now develop new applications in the cloud or on premises, consistently using the same developer tools, run time, and production environment.

"Our partnership with Google gives our customers the very best cloud has to offer— agility and scale, coupled with enterprise-class security and support," said Chuck Robbins, chief executive officer, Cisco. "We share a common vision of a hybrid cloud world that delivers the speed of innovation in an open and secure environment to bring the right solutions to our customers."

"This joint solution from Google and Cisco facilitates an easy and incremental approach to tapping the benefits of the Cloud. This is what we hear customers asking for," said Diane Greene, CEO, Google Cloud.

The joint Cisco and Google Cloud hybrid solution helps developers leverage managed Kubernetes, GCP Service Catalog, Cisco networking and security, and Istio authentication and service mesh monitoring. Enterprise app developers can securely access cloud APIs, and cloud developers can securely access enterprise APIs and on-premises resources

Cisco and Google Cloud hybrid solution highlights:

·  Orchestration and Management – Policy-based Kubernetes orchestration and lifecycle management of resources, applications and services across hybrid environments

·  Networking – Extend network policy and configurations to multiple on-premises and cloud environments

·  Security – Extend Security policy and monitor applications behavior

·  Visibility and Control – Real-time network and application performance monitoring and automation

·  Cloud-ready Infrastructure – Hyperconverged platform supporting existing application and cloud-native Kubernetes environments

·  Service Management with Istio – Open-source solution provides a uniform way to connect, secure, manage and monitor microservices

·  API Management – Google's Apigee enterprise-class API management enables legacy workloads running on premises to connect to the cloud through APIs

·  Developer Ready – Cisco's DevNet Developer Center provides tools and resources for cloud and enterprise developers to code in hybrid environments

·  Support – Joint coordinated technical support for the solution

The solution will be available to a limited number of customers during the first part of 2018, with planned general availability later in the year.

Technology to Transform Lives of the Small and Marginal Farmers

Dalberg Advisors is partnering with the Government of Andhra Pradesh (AP), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to organize an AgTech Pitch Competition #SmartFarming4AP.

The Pitch Competition is to seek out innovators developing solutions, which could solve the challenges faced by the small and marginal farmers. The winners will get an opportunity to sign an MoU with the Government of AP to roll out their solution in the State.  Dalberg Advisors is helping curate this competition, and in addition has announced it will provide mentoring support to the winners, to help sharpen their business plans and go-to-market strategies that drive inclusive transformation.

The final round of the competition will be held during the AP AgTech Summit 2017:Progressive Farmer, Smart Farming in Visakhapatnam on November 15-17, 2017. More than 1500 delegates are expected to attend the event, including global leaders, business heads, start-up founders, policymakers, and technology experts. The Summit will be led by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu. The co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, will also be present at the event.

Varad Pande, Partner, Dalberg Advisors, commented on the initiative, “We are delighted to partner with the Government of Andhra Pradesh, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and CII on this event. At Dalberg, we firmly believe that if we are serious about inclusive economic transformation, we have to solve the problems of the small and marginal farmer. This requires us to creatively bring together technology, policy, and business. The #SmartFarming4AP Pitch Competition aims to do exactly this – by catalyzing the next frontiers of AgTech innovation.”

Innovators are invited that are working on the following themes: Technology-enabled Rural Advisory Services (RAS); Technology-enabled market linkages; Digital Financial Services for agriculture; Data mining for agriculture.

Last date to submit an application is October 31, 2017.

Indian Railways Working on Suburban Rail Network for Bengaluru: Railway Minister Goyal

Indian Railways (IR) is working on a proposal to create a suburban railway network for Bengaluru, like the one in Mumbai, to decongest the city and link it to the airport, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said.

Goyal said the idea was suggested to him before he took over as the railway minister by senior BJP leader Ananth Kumar who told him that he had been pushing for a suburban rail service for the Indian IT capital since 1996.

He said that during a review meeting of South Western Railway on September 18, he asked the officials to study the city for a rail network and come up with a preliminary project report for an elevated network.

"And possibly also have a road on top of the rail to connect the airport to places of work in the city," Goyal said speaking at the International Conference on Green Initiatives and Railway Electrification here.

The minister said he gave the SW Railways 30 days' time to come up with a plan but on September 20, when he was in the city again, he was given a document listing out initial action plans on the project to be executed within 28 days.

On September 26, Goyal said the SW railway construction wing of Bengaluru awarded the consultancy to the Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES), a government of India initiative, for a conceptual planning and study of the proposal.

By October 1, the minister said he was presented with a rough assessment on the availability of land for commercial use including the relocation requirements.

"They used google to locate and prepare the plan where land is available because the scheme has to be self-financed. Then they identified various sections which need to be elevated and also pointed out which were to be done on ground," he said.

By October 18, the RITES had already finalised an initial conceptual plan with drawings of how the project will look like, where the routes will be and with height and elevation details, the minister said.

"So in a months' time, we have a proposal upon which the Indian Railways can now start deliberating.

"I am sharing this to reflect the new confidence with which the Indian Railways is working with the commitment to time-bound delivery of services," said Goyal.

Karnataka Government to Make Amendments to the Rule on Banning Pillion Riding: SIAM

Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) –apex body of automobile manufacturers – has written to Karnataka Govt. to make amendments to the act prohibiting registration of two-wheelers with less than 100 cc engine capacity, with a pillion seat.

SIAM also highlighted the fact that, as per Motor Vehicle Act (MVA), powers have been given to Central Government to make rules under the Central Motor Vehicle Rule (CMVR) inter-alia related to construction of motor vehicles. Hence, as per these rules, the motor vehicles are tested at one of the notified test agencies of Government of India for certifying compliance to all emission and safety regulations notified by Government of India from time to time.

Commenting on this, Sugato Sen, Deputy Director General, SIAM, said, “This is the first time in the country that such ban has been imposed. There are no such provisions in the Central Motor Vehicles Act either. There are several popular models of motorcycles that are just below 100 cc. Many of them are 99 cc. SIAM has approach the state government seeking a revision of this provision of the motor vehicles rules”.

The recommendations comes in the wake of Karnataka government banning riding pillion on two-wheelers with engine capacity of less than 100 CC, giving effect to a 2015 court order. The transport department also banned registration of such vehicles.

The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) is a not-for-profit apex national body representing all major vehicle and vehicular engine manufacturers in India. SIAM works towards supporting sustainable development of the Indian Automobile Industry with the vision that India emerges as the destination of choice in the world for design and manufacture of automobiles. It also works towards facilitating enhancement of the competitiveness of the Indian Automobile Industry, reducing cost of vehicles, increasing productivity and achieving global standards of quality.

Hitachi Vantara’s Pentaho 8.0 with Real-Time Data Processing Helps Fast-Track Digital Insights for Enterprise Customers

From its PentahoWorld 2017 user conference, Hitachi Vantara, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., has unveiled the next generation of its Pentaho data integration and analytics platform software. Pentaho 8.0 is enhanced and provides support for Spark and Kafka to improve data and stream processing, plus the ability to easily match compute resources with business demand in real time. The new release is designed to help Hitachi’s customers extract greater value from their data to gain a competitive advantage and accelerate their digital transformation journeys.

According to independent research firm IDC, the global datasphere will grow to 163 zetabytes by 2025 – 10 times faster than the amount of data generated in 2016. The firm also forecasts that more than a quarter of that data will be real-time in nature, with IoT data making up more than 95-percent of it.

With its Pentaho 8.0 release, Hitachi Vantara helps customers to better prepare their businesses to address this real-time data deluge by optimizing and modernizing their data analytics pipelines and improving the productivity of their existing teams. New enhancements to the Pentaho 8.0 platform allow users to:

Improve Connectivity to Streaming Data Sources: With data moving faster, it’s critical to process it as it happens and react immediately if necessary. New capabilities in Pentaho 8.0 include:

o   Stream processing with Spark: Pentaho 8.0 now fully enables stream data ingestion and processing using its native engine or Spark. This adds to existing Spark integration with SQL, MLlib and Pentaho’s adaptive execution layer.

o   Connect to Kafka Streams: Kafka is a very popular publish/subscribe messaging system that handles large data volumes that are common in today’s big data and IoT environments. Pentaho 8.0 now enables real-time processing with specialized steps that connect Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) to Kafka. 

o   Big data security with Knox: Building on its existing enterprise-level security for Cloudera and Hortonworks, Pentaho 8.0 now adds support for the Knox Gateway used for authenticating users to Hadoop services.

 Optimize Processing Resources: Every organization has constrained data processing resources that it wants to use intelligently, guaranteeing high availability even when demand for computation resources are high. To support this, Pentaho 8.0 provides:

• Worker nodes to scale out enterprise workloads: IT managers can now easily bring up additional nodes and spread simultaneous workloads across all available computation resources to match capacity with demand. This matching provides elasticity and portability between cloud and on-premises environments resulting in faster and more efficient processing for end users.
• Adaptive execution enhancements: First introduced in Pentaho 7.1, Pentaho’s adaptive execution allows users to match workloads with the most appropriate processing engine, without having to rewrite any data integration logic. Now, Pentaho 8.0 makes adaptive execution easier to set up, use and secure. The functionality is also now available on Hortonworks. 
• Native support for Avro and Parquet: Pentaho 8.0 makes it easy to read and write to these popular big data file formats and process with Spark using Pentaho’s visual editing tools. 

• Boost Team Productivity: Pentaho 8.0 also comes with several new features to help increase productivity across the data pipeline. These include granular filters for preparing data, improved repository usability and easier application auditing.

“On the path to digital transformation, enterprises must fully exploit all the data available to them. This requires connecting traditional data silos and integrating their operational and information technologies to build modern analytics data pipelines that can accommodate a more connected, open and fluid world of data,” said Donna Prlich, chief product officer for Pentaho software at Hitachi Vantara. “Pentaho 8.0 provides enterprise scale and faster processing in anticipation of future data challenges to better support Hitachi’s customers on their digital journeys.”

Hitachi Vantara’s Pentaho 8.0 software will be generally available in November. 

NXP India Opens its Wall of Fame to Acknowledge Innovators with Over 450 Patents Displayed

NXP India, a world leader in secure connectivity solutions for embedded applications, recently inaugurated its patent wall to recognize the significant contributions of inventors and augment the spirit of innovation at NXP India. The wall highlights technological achievements of innovators, motivating them to tread the path of invention-led careers. Benny Chang Global VP of R&D, BL AMP, BU Automotive and Lars Reger SVP & CTO, BU Automotive brought up the curtain on the Patent Wall that NXP engineers were aspiring for years.

“India is the hub of automotive innovation and this bright wall at NXP Noida with more than 450 US patents is but a grand showcase of every time we have led that innovation,” said Benny Chang.

“Innovation is the salt of our organization. I hope that soon these walls are too small for all of the inventions coming from our team,” added Lars Reger.

The wall showcases more than 450 US Patents for innovations, which are granted by United States Patent and Trademark Office (US PTO), an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification. The showcased patents cover innovations from a wide spectrum of applications, such as Automotive Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) using Radar and Vision technology and cutting edge networking and security applications. The Patents focus on next generation technologies and architectures including integrated circuits, extremely low power designs, area efficient circuit design, high density dual bit storage circuits, tamper detect power supplies, advanced techniques for design for Test, traffic schedulers for wireless applications and signal processing for radar applications, among others.

Sanjay Gupta, Vice President & India Country Manager, NXP India said, “NXP India has incessantly motivated and transformed young engineers into a fierce technology force and vibrant innovators. In that spirit, this Patent Wall is a source of inspiration for the next generation of innovators and an encouragement to innovation within our organization.”

The Phase 1 of NXP India Patent Wall was launched in Noida and soon plans to complete the next Phase inaugurations in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Seventh Edition of RBS Earth Heroes Awards Confers Heroes of Environment and Wildlife Conservation for 2017

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), a subsidiary of the RBS Group, today announced the winners of the RBS ‘Earth Heroes’ Awards for 2017. Eight individuals/institutions from the field of wildlife and conservation, who have demonstrated exemplary work on the ground, were chosen by an independent jury, for the RBS Earth Heroes Award. The jury panel, comprising of active wildlife enthusiasts, environmentalists and conservationists, reviewed nominations received from across the country.

Pankaj Phatarphod, Managing Director Country Head of Services; India Chairperson – RBS Foundation India, said, “Earth Heroes Awards’ journey has truly been enriching for us at RBS, by giving us an opportunity to honour and encourage individuals and organizations who work towards environmental sustainability. This year as well, we have been fortunate enough to receive numerous nominations of such high calibre and have the privilege to celebrate and honour the best in the field for their respective efforts. This year’s awardees’ demonstrate how sheer dedication for their respective field can help make a positive change to the environment. We hope to serve as a source of inspiration for the youth of India, by encouraging the exemplary work done by the Earth Heroes”

N Sunil Kumar, Head of Sustainability, India, Royal Bank of Scotland and Director, RBS Foundation India, said, "The unsung  heroes of the country who dedicate their lives, go beyond the call of duty to conserve our wild habitats  deserve to  be celebrated.  Forest carbon sink and biodiversity is an important Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) committed by India at the UN Climate platform (COP 21 of UNFCCC). The Earth Heroes work is a direct contribution to this NDC.  I am honoured to acknowledge their efforts towards conservation of our wildlife and habitats.  It is indeed a privilege for us to be hosting these awards each year.”

The seventh edition of RBS Earth Heroes Awards saw Sumitra Mahajan, hand over award citations and cash prizes to the winners, at the awards ceremony in New Delhi.

The winners of the 2017 RBS ‘Earth Heroes’ Awards are:

No.	Winner	Award category
1	Jadav Payeng	RBS Earth Hero’ Award
2	Valmiki Tiger Reserve	RBS Earth Guardian’ Award
3	Mr. Khenrab Phuntsog and Mr. Smanla Tsering	RBS ‘Save The Species’ Award
4	Mr. Atul Deokar	RBS ‘Save The Species’ Award
5	Mr. Rohan Chakravarty	RBS Inspire’ Award
6	Dr. Shekhar Niraj	RBS Green Warrior’ Award
7	Mr. Ipra Mekola	RBS Green Warrior’ Award
8	Mr. Chandrakant Naik	RBS Green Warrior’ Award

RBS ‘Earth Hero’ Award (Felicitation)

This award recognizes extraordinary achievements of an individual who has worked a life time in conservation of wildlife, natural resource management, and environment and has influenced policy.

The RBS ‘Earth Hero’ Award was conferred upon Jadav Payeng for his outstanding achievements and his passionate engagement in environment and wildlife conservation.

Jadav Payeng, popularly known as the ‘Forest Man of India’ is one of the most inspiring stories of our time. 31 years ago, the Assam Forest Department started out a project to plant life on the tough terrain of the eroded island covered with sand and silt. Jadav Payeng was a part of the project and continued even after the project ended. Shri Payeng, through his continuous effort over decades, succeeded in turning a sandbar of the river Brahmaputra into a forest reserve by planting trees. The forest, called the ‘Molai’ forest after him is located near Kokilamukh of Jorhat, Assam, India, and encompasses an area of about 1,360 hectares.

Amongst several other esteemed recognitions and awards, ‘The Forest Man of India’ was also a recipient of RBS ‘Green Warrior’ Award in 2013. Shri Payeng was honoured with the fourth highest civilian award in India, the ‘Padma Shri’, in 2015.

Unlock your Holiday Home with OYO's Favorite Destinations in India

Investing in real-estate, building a home in the hills or by the beach to holiday with family, or just making a savvy investment – there may be many reasons for you to have purchased a second home in Pondicherry, Coorg and Goa. But does this home stay locked and unused except for the few days in a year when children are able to take leave and the whole family can holiday together? Are you unable to put it on rent for fear of not being able to manage and oversee the maintenance from a different city? Are you not receiving expected returns from your investment? If any of these issues sound familiar, you are not alone. All across the country, in India's favourite holiday destinations, there is an abundance of empty, unutilized "holiday homes" - second-homes that owners are able to visit only a couple of times a year.

One of the major reasons for this is the lack of a trusted maintenance and managing partner. When you consider visiting your holiday home, you also have to devote a couple of days for cleaning and setting the place up. Further, since maintenance and plumbing issues usually go undiscovered in an unused home, you have to be ready for a few surprises.

Help is now here in the form of OYO Home. This is the latest initiative from OYO – India’s largest hospitality-company with a mission to create beautiful, high-quality living spaces.OYO has built technology led capabilities of managing infrastructure quality, delivering great guest experience and meeting owner expectations – which it is now employing to unlock homes across the country.

In 5 of the most popular holiday destinations across India – Pondicherry, Coorg , Goa, Nainital, and Shimla – OYO has unlocked over 300 homes to 15,000 guests.  The company takes care of maintenance, upgradation and repair, housekeeping, revenue-management and marketing. It has a dedicated representative called OYO Captain who visits the property regularly for maintenance and upkeep, as well as checking in the guests and responding to their needs. OYO also works with home owners to upcycle their current space and establish functional aesthetics to make the homes beautiful and comfortable. Home-owners receive higher yields from OYO Home's revenue share model as compared to rentals.

Antonio Pinto, owner of a home in Goa, stays in Germany. According to him, “I live outside the country 6 months of the year so my home in Goa stays locked for a large part of the year. It’s not easy taking care of the property especially since regular maintenance and upkeep could not happen. So when this opportunity came up, I thought to give the OYO folks a chance. This has been one of the best decisions – not only does OYO takes great care of the property but they also did a good job with refurbishing the interiors to give it a great, heritage look. All this, while I sit back and relax here in Germany and get a monthly deposit in my account.”

Owners like the professional maintenance of their home and the enhanced yield from their asset. They love the trust and one-stop-shop service that comes with partnering with OYO. Owners are happy that their locked homes are being cleaned and furnished, regularly maintained and are now being utilised. An added benefit is the assurance that they can visit their holiday home anytime and without prior planning – since OYO ensures the home is clean and functional at all times. 

Amar Dhamane from Kolhapur says, “I am delighted to partner with OYO. The team took charge of managing and beautifying interiors, space, and design, something we do not have expertise in. Our Goa property now looks fantastic and has been fetching handsome returns in terms of business.”

VIP Clothing Ltd Unveils Regal & Frenchie Casuals in Bangalore; Focus on Offline Market in South India to Boost Sales

Premium Men’s innerwear company, VIP Clothing Ltd embarked on a new journey with the launch of VIP Regal and Frenchie Casuals designed to cater to the sensibilities of the Modern Indian man.  The listed company will remain focused on offline market to boost its sales in the country. Presently only 1 percent of its sales comes from online market players like Flipkart and Amazon.

Both collections cater to 2 unique consumer segments. VIP regal is a contemporary classic brand, crafted for the sophisticated taste whereas Frenchie Casuals targets the fashion oriented youth. The collections are designed keeping ‘FIT’ as the most important factor while retaining its aesthetic appeal and was unveiled cricketer and currently a cricket commentator also known as ‘Very Very Special’ – for his initials V.V.S and splendid performance during his tenure, Yogesh Tiwari, CEO, VIP Clothing Limited and Sunil Pathare – CMD, VIP Clothing Limited along with the attendance of more than 450 distributors of VIP clothing ltd. The company official says that south India contributes to almost 49% of the market and would like it to grow further over the years.

Bangalore is one of the most vital consumer market for VIP. The event was held at Sheraton Grand, Bangalore commenced with an interactive session with the distributors followed by a speech by the CMD of the company and finally unveiling of the two premium collection exclusively for the Bangalore market.

“VIP Clothing Ltd is constantly developing products to suit the needs of the modern consumers and the launch of the 2 new collections, VIP Regal and Frenchie Casuals is going to define the brands direction in the coming years. We are bringing international designs and fits while reviving the tone of the brand. As Bangalore being one of the most important market for us, we are launching our new collections exclusively in this regions and aims to strategically maximize the outreach at PAN India level in the days to come. The launch embarks the beginning of a new era in the company’s life,” said Yogesh Tiwari, CEO, VIP Clothing Ltd.

VIP as a company has been at the edge of excellence when it comes to fit, fabric and quality factors. Both our collections are refreshing in terms of design and accustomed to the modernized feel. We have infused different flavors to cater to varied sensibilities of modern man who is not just fashion conscious but also comfort savvy. We hope our customers will love our new offerings like they have always loved our previous ones,” said Sunil Pathare, CMD, VIP Clothing Ltd.

‘It’s a pleasure for me to be associated with VIP as this is one of those time-travelled brands I have grown up with and still have some of the promotional jingles fresh in my mind. It’s an honorable gesture to be a part of the timeline of such a renowned and heritage brand’, said  V.V.S. Laxman, Cricket Commentator and former Indian Cricketer.

RICS Announces Change of Leadership for South Asia as Sachin Sandhir Departs

RICS announced that Sachin Sandhir, Global MD – Emerging Business and Managing Director for RICS in South Asia is stepping down to pursue other opportunities.  Nitin Kapoor, Associate Director, RICS South Asia will take responsibility for the RICS professional body on an interim basis.  Ashwani Awasthi, Chief Operating Officer will lead operations at RICS School of Built Environment (RICS SBE).

Under Sachin’s leadership, RICS has become a respected standard-setting, qualifications and assurance body in India.  In 2013, Sachin was instrumental in RICS establishing its historic first educational institution in partnership with Amity University.  Today, RICS has offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and RICS SBE has campuses in Noida and Mumbai with combined staff strength of over 150.

India is a priority market for RICS in its vision of being a global professional body fit for the 21st century.  We are committed to expanding the footprint of RICS qualified professionals in India and embedding our standards via government policies, employers and end users.

Sachin will be leaving his role in January 2018 and will assist management in smooth transition.  RICS has commenced the process for seeking a new Managing Director for its South Asia Region.

Will Myles, Regional Managing Director - Asia Pacific, RICS said, “Sachin has been instrumental in building and leading a thriving and successful organization for RICS in South Asia. He leaves behind a strong team, which is well positioned to continue to serve the needs of stakeholders in India. We thank Sachin for his contribution and wish him all the best.”

Reflecting on the announcement, Sachin Sandhir said, “I am proud to have created a legacy in India by building a profession that will help the country address its built environment and skills challenges and raise standards in the sector.  At this time, having witnessed the first students joining the new Mumbai campus of RICS SBE, the time has come for me to look to my next challenge. I am confident that the profession is in safe hands for the future.”

Rural Talents of Karnataka Win Accolades at the World Skills Competition 2017 Held in Abu Dhabi

Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) talents have won 3^rd and 6^th position at the internationally renowned 44^th World Skills Competition that was held from October 15 to 18 at Abu Dhabi. Also called as the ‘Skill Olympics’, the coveted event is one of the most prestigious forums recognizing excellence in vocational education and skills.  All three contestants who represented TKM in the 44^th World Skill 2017 held in Abu Dhabi during Oct ’17 were trained at Toyota Technical Training Institute. While Kiran bagged the bronze medal in the Prototype Modelling Skill, H Varun and T A Anand Kumar, were ranked sixth amongst 39 participants from across the globe in the Mechatronics Skill category.

This year, the competition saw participation from more than 1300 competitors from 59 countries challenging each other in 51 skill categories. India took part in 26 categories winning 2 Medals (silver in patisseries and bronze in prototype) and 9 Medallions of excellence in the respective categories. The team which consisted of 28 talented young minds showcased the best ever performance by India since the country began to take part in the competition in 2007. The participants were selected through a nationwide screening process under the guidance of National Skill Development Council (NSDC).

Initiated in 1950, The World Skills Competition is the global hub for skills excellence and development through international cooperation and development between industry, government, organizations and institutions.  The competitors are all under the age of 22 years (except for four skills that have the age limit of 25).  It is considered to be the global meeting place for government, education, industry and association leaders to discuss relevant and important issues related to skills management.

Commenting on the occasion, Sailesh Shetty, Vice President (HR) Toyota Kirloskar Motor said, “We at Toyota are honored that contestants who have been trained at TTTI are making the nation proud at an international platform. The young dynamic talents from rural Karnataka have time and again made their mark at the World Skill Contest under the rigorous training from TTTI.  Toyota’s skill development initiatives are aimed at contributing to Honorable Prime Minister’s ‘Skill India’ mission by bridging the gap between India’s rapidly growing industrial sector and availability of highly skilled workforce to match up with ever changing auto industry. . We further look forward to contributing to India by passing our global manufacturing skills to budding talents across the nation”

As a part of its commitment towards developing world class skilled workforce for the emerging Indian Auto Industry, Toyota in 2007 established the Toyota Technical Training Institute (TTTI) which offers a three year rigorous full-time training in – Automobile Assembly, Automobile Paint, Automobile Weld and Mechatronics (a combination of mechanical and industrial electronics) to financially challenged students hailing from Below Poverty Line (BPL) families from across Karnataka. This institute exclusively emphasizes on over all development of the trainees as per industry requirements & towards “Perfecting people” and there by contributing young multi skilled, energetic, ideal students to the nation. Training Curriculum is a unique blend which focuses on the holistic development of Knowledge (16%), Skill (34%), Body and Mind (50%) of the students. Last year Toyota’s TTTI institute accomplished a key milestone of being selected for “Manufacturing Skill Transfer Promotion Programme” under the MoC signed by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Government of Japan (METI) and Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Government of India (MSDE).

The company has been tirelessly working towards enhancing the employability quotient in the automobile manufacturing industry in India by promoting unique skill development:

·         Toyota Technical Training Institute (TTTI) offers a three year rigorous full-time training in – Automobile Assembly, Automobile Paint, Automobile Weld and Mechatronics (a combination of mechanical and industrial electronics) TTTI has also been selected as a part of this partnership between Japan and India for the “Manufacturing Skill Transfer Promotion Programme’’

·         Gurukul is a well-equipped learning center at TKM imparts diverse training to employees at all levels which helps them to improve their abilities and thoroughly fulfill their roles. Everyone who works in Toyota experiences 70% of their development through the job itself; and the experience serves as a driving force in developing the next generation

·         Toyota Technical Education Program (T-TEP) provides technical know-how training to ITI students across India along with providing hands on real time experience within Toyota dealerships

·         Toyota Tantrajna is a unique skill development project initiated in association with the Automotive Skills Development Council (ASDC).  A comprehensive year and a month plus [Program duration - 13.5 months] training module consists of an induction and fundamental skill training, On the Job development and class room training and trade knowledge training [including Language - English speaking skills, Computer soft skills, Interview etiquettes, etc.,].  After completion of course evaluation and certification by ASDC, TKM synergizes to connect the trainees with prospective employers through “Job Fair”. Toyota provides an attractive stipend, free commutation and canteen facility for the trainees during the training period.

·         Toyota Apprentice Scheme (TAS) – Under TAS, TKM has trained over 12,000 Apprentice Members (ITI, Diploma and Engineer) since 2002, which makes it one of the largest sources of providing such manpower to the industry

·         National Sales Skills Contest – Launched in 2014, National Sales Skill Contest is an initiative that provides Toyota’s dealer sales & service personnel to showcase their skill levels with a view to identify gaps and improvise. Held at three levels – across dealership, regional and national levels, the contestants are evaluated on various parameters such as knowledge, process demonstration, soft skills and role plays among others. Continuous training skills are imparted to hone the dealer personnel skill sets to meet the growing expectations and deliver Toyota’s best-of-all Quality, Durability & Reliability for ultimate customer delight