Indian Government Intervention Essential for Tackling Hearing Disability

By Manu Sharma

Over 7 percent of India suffer from profound deafness. More than a million such children need either hearing aid or cochlear implant surgery to restore their hearing. However, what's scarier is the high cost of the equipment and the lack of government's aid to help those with hearing disabilities.

Cochlear Implants is a proven medical aid for individuals with severe to profound hearing loss. It gifts sound to the ears of a person with profound deafness and gives him a chance to lead a near to normal life once again. Since the first implant nearly 20 years ago, about 4500 cochlear implant surgery has been conducted at private health facilities in the country. 

Dr Shankar Medikere, Senior ENT Surgeon at the Medikeri’s Super Specialty ENT Centre says, “The cost of cochlear implants ranges from Rs 5.5 lakh to 12.5 lakh. Also I’m aware that the cost is beyond the affordability level for many and that where the government needs to intervene.”

The cost of this surgery is high as the implant device is not manufactured in India and it has to be imported from countries like Australia, USA and Austria. “So, we urge the government to extend assistance to the poor children suffering from the hearing impairment,” he said.

Dr Medikere highlights that in many states both the centre and the state have come together to drive this initiative. Like in Andhra Pradesh, several schemes like the Rajiv Aarogyasri, a program of the government of Andhra Pradesh has already taken off . It covers all those below the poverty line (BPL). The government issues an Aarogyasri card and the beneficiary can use it at any government and private hospitals to obtain services free of cost.

The good news is this scheme also covers cochlear implant surgery with auditory-verbal therapy for children below 6 years. “But it’s not enough if a few states like Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala have a few scheme to aid the deserving. What about Karnataka? Where in more than 2.35 lakh patients exist and the state is yet to kick off any such scheme,” he adds. 

Now the ENT Hospitals will be the only government-run hospital in Andhra Pradesh to conduct this expensive surgery free of cost. The Andhra government is also considering to make cochlear implant surgery free for all hearing impaired children of BPL families across the state. 

Since the problem is off much greater magnitude and with one out of every 12 Indian suffering from some degree of impaired hearing, the Centre needs to intervene fast and help reduce the cost of the equipment.

Brett Lee Bats for Awareness of Cochlear Implants

The Australian world-renowned bowler will draw attention to the functional, social, emotional and economic impact of hearing loss on individuals and their families.

Lee’s son suffered from hearing loss because of a head injury. “Even though he recovered in a couple of months, at that point of time I was so disturbed,” he confided.

This incident got him to associate with the campaign as it could help millions who suffer from hearing loss.

“I want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to experience what I hear — the sounds of everyday life or cricket, or the voices of loved ones,” Lee adds.

Lee is the global brand ambassador of Cochlear, an international firm that deals with implantable hearing solutions. He had unveiled the Indian leg of Sound of Cricket in Mumbai last year. Lee will interact with Christ University students on Tuesday. He will also participate in a cricket match on the campus, played by children with hearing disability.

BT to Help Panalpina Improve Collaboration and Unlock Value in the Supply Chain

BT has announced a contract with Panalpina, one of the world’s leading freight forwarding and logistics companies, to transform and manage its global communications infrastructure. The transformation will enable Panalpina’s 15,000 employees to better communicate and collaborate internally and with their customers. This supports the company’s vision to work closer with its clients to build smart and efficient end-to-end logistics solutions.

BT will overhaul Panalpina’s network infrastructure, currently sourced from more than a dozen domestic and regional providers, and migrate it into a single integrated platform, connecting 500 offices in more than 75 countries. BT will also provide services from its BT One Voice portfolio, to converge voice and data on a single platform.

The new network will be a hybrid infrastructure, based on BT’s IP Connect and Internet Connect services, combining the reliability and security of IP-based Virtual Private Networks (VPN) with the flexibility of Internet connections. BT’s services will underpin the continued implementation of Panalpina’s new global enterprise resource planning (ERP) and transportation management systems, which require optimal end-to-end control of the infrastructure.

Additional services, such as BT Connect Intelligence, will provide an application-aware network architecture designed to support strategic business applications.

“This agreement with BT is a major milestone on our way to becoming the most customer focused global provider of freight forwarding and logistics solutions,” said Ralf Morawietz, Chief Information Officer at Panalpina. “As our single point of contact for communication services, BT will take away the burden of managing a multitude of different suppliers, and will make it easier for us to implement new services and to support our employees and customers around the globe.”

Corrado Sciolla, President Europe & Global Telecom Markets at BT Global Services, said: “In the new digital world, customers and employees are becoming more demanding, ecosystems are evolving and the established rules are changing. We are very proud that a global leader such as Panalpina has chosen BT to manage their communication services in this changing environment. We will build on our long-standing expertise in serving the needs of the logistics sector to make sure that Panalpina’s employees and customers around the world can collaborate better and more easily. The intelligent features of our network services will also help Panalpina improve the performance of its business-critical applications and constantly adapt the whole communications infrastructure to its rapidly evolving digital needs.”

Adani Enterprises Enters Wind Energy Segment with 50 MW in Andhra Pradesh and 20 MW in Madhya Pradesh

Adani Enterprises, a leading conglomerates, has marked its entry into the wind energy segment by placing the company’s first orders for wind turbine generators with Inox Wind Limited.  Inox Wind, further strengthening its leading position in the Indian wind turbine industry, has inked two contracts for a cumulative capacity of 70 MW with Adani Green Energy Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Limited and part of the Adani Group.  The orders bagged by Inox Wind represent Adani Group’s maiden foray into the wind energy segment and encompass a 50 MW turnkey project to be set up in Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh and a 20 MW turnkey project at Inox Wind’s Lahori site in Madhya Pradesh. 

As part of the two turnkey orders, Inox Wind will deliver, install, and commission 35 units of Inox Wind’s 100 rotor diameter turbines and has also been contracted to undertake operations and maintenance services of the projects for a multi year period, post commissioning.  

Inox Wind provides its clients with end to end solutions including wind resource assessment, acquiring land, developing the entire site infrastructure, building the power evacuation system, supplying the WTGs, erection and commissioning services, long term operations and maintenance services as well as post-commissioning support. 

"Inox Wind is proud to be working with Adani Group, a global conglomerate and one of the country’s leading business houses.  These are the first orders placed by Adani in the wind power space and reaffirm customers’ faith in Inox’s ability to provide world class technological solutions to its clients.  We are delighted to partner with Adani in their endeavour to become leaders in renewable power technologies and in our joint commitment towards providing clean and green energy in India.” said Kailash Tarachandani, Chief Executive Officer of Inox Wind Limited in his statement.  

Reva's New Ajura App Offers International Roaming at 90% Less Cost

A trip overseas usually means penny pinching on communication. It means keeping an eye on the phone’s clock watching how long you talk and who you talk to. Ajura Pte Ltd from Reve Group has launched a mobile app that takes away the financial burden of making expensive calls home and allows the traveler to stay connected and a call away.

The Ajura App allows global travellers to make and receive international calls at 5 to 10 per cent of what a roaming call would normally cost. Simple to use, all one needs to do is download the app from the app store after which users need to sign up with their regular mobile number and activate the roaming option before they travel out of the country.

The intelligent App detects if the mobile user is online and routes the calls to the App. When the user has a local mobile number in the visiting country, the call automatically diverts to the visiting country number.

A visiting country SIM is not necessary if the user takes all incoming calls on the App but his or her phone then needs to be hooked on to a wifi or data network. The visiting country SIM card however helps a user get cheaper data and be always available to roaming incoming calls.

The product developed in India has several innovations. A user can have phone numbers and an identity in 54 countries - including Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, Canada and the US - that ring in her home mobile phone. The app offers the facility to top up or re-charge (or load money) SIMs of over 100 countries.

The app is relevant for millions of NRIs visiting their hometowns as through Ajura App they can stay connected to their family and business even when on a holiday in Indian towns and villages at affordable cost.

Indians travelling abroad can call back home for as low as three cents or two rupees on a wifi network versus using frightfully expensive roaming.

A resident Indian who has a lot of global business contacts too will find the app useful. For instance, exporter of goods or services, a travel agent or a hotel with prospects or customers abroad, or anyone needing a global geographic identity, can get an ‘Ajura global number’, of any of the 54 countries, and share it with their contacts abroad. When they dial this number, it is a local call for the overseas customer facilitating better communication.

What differentiates Ajura from call services of other chat apps is that the phone calls received on the user’s home mobile number are automatically forwarded to the app, when the user is online – and the person calling need not have downloaded Ajura app.

“Roaming users of Ajura App can receive calls made to their regular mobile number on the Ajura app or on a visiting country SIM purchased in the destination country. Similarly, users can also make outbound calls to any country from the Ajura app at much cheaper rates than using mobile roaming or even a local SIM card,” said M Rezaul Hassan, Founder and Group CEO of Reve Group. 

Prior to launching the app, the company did a field survey among foreigners travelling to India , which showed that only 20 per cent of the overseas visitors kept their home country mobile switched on. Seventy per cent had bought a local SIM and most were using chat apps – albeit only at night at locations with wifi to communicate back home. 

“The latest offering from the Reve Group removes a major pain point for business and holiday travellers. As the financial burden of receiving and making a call on a business trip or holiday reduces dramatically, travellers will feel liberated,” explains Sanjit Chatterjee, CEO, Ajura. 

SanDisk Offers Upgraded All-Flash Storage Platform in InfiniFlash IF150 System

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions, has introduced an upgraded all-flash storage platform with the introduction of the InfiniFlash IF150 system, the latest addition to its InfiniFlash family, which is transforming data centers around the world. The new IF150 brings twice the performance via upgraded 12Gbps SAS connectivity, and the same massive capacity to big data and hyperscale workloads as the previous generation of InfiniFlash. This further broadens the potential uses for the next-generation storage platform around a variety of new workloads, including high-performance computing (HPC), big data analytics, media services and other high capacity, extreme performance-demanding applications. Today, SanDisk also introduced new offerings to enhance the experience for InfiniFlash customers.

“Since its launch, the game-changing performance and economic benefits of the InfiniFlash System have been recognized by customers—from data centers in research institutions doing big data analytics to web providers, hyperscalers and video streaming companies who manage data on a massive scale, and more,” said Ravi Swaminathan, vice president and general manager of systems and software solutions at SanDisk. “With our new IF150 system, we have pushed the performance even further, while at the same time delivering massive-scale storage at a price point that makes business sense.”

The IF150 system is uniquely suited for both the scale-out and scale-up environments required by today’s enterprise, cloud and hyperscale data centers. Delivering up to two million raw IOPS and consistently low latency, the IF150 system supports demanding workloads by addressing scalability and availability challenges. It works intelligently as an integrated hardware, software and open source system to deliver multiple business benefits to enterprise customers. It offers up to half a petabyte (512 terabytes) of flash storage in one 3-rack-unit (3U) system and can directly connect up to eight off-the-shelf-servers. Like all InfiniFlash systems, the new IF150 offers massive all-flash storage capacity at a $1 per GB price point for raw flash – compression and de-dupe capability in storage software (available from SanDisk InfiniFlash ecosystem partners) can further dramatically reduce the effective price per GB.

“While all-flash arrays continue to exhibit strong double digit growth, the cost of these solutions is undergoing an increasingly downward trend,” said Eric Burgener, research director at IDC. “As these flash alternatives reach price parity with HDD-based systems, we are starting to see more data center customers able to consider them for their storage requirements. The introduction of the InfiniFlash IF150 system brings higher performance at an effective dollar-per-gigabyte price point; in turn allowing a variety of new enterprise workloads to benefit from flash storage performance.” 

IF150 features and specifications include:

• Exceptional Performance: Features an enhanced 12Gbps SAS interface, which can deliver up to two million IOPS, providing new levels of speed and performance in read/write-intensive environments.¹
• Breakthrough Economics and Reduced Opex: Offers up to an 80 percent reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) advantage over HDD-based systems. It is projected that all-flash arrays are 10x more reliable than HDD-based arrays, greatly reducing maintenance and FRU expenses.²
• Incredibly Low Power Consumption: The lowest power consumption – 450 watts average – of any high-capacity flash storage in the industry, significantly reducing data center operating expenses.³
• Downsized Data Center Footprint: IF150 delivers among the highest density – 512TB in 3U – in the industry, saving costly rack space in the data center, making efficient use of available power and floor space.

 In addition to the introduction of IF150, SanDisk is now further broadening its commitment to exceptional customer support for the InfiniFlash systems family with the addition of two new optional offerings:

• FlashStart– A SanDisk Professional Service for all InfiniFlash storage systems and SanDisk ION Accelerator customers that ensures that all hardware and software is optimally installed and configured to give all customers a competitive edge.

FlashAssure – A comprehensive customer support service including warranty coverage, selectable Service Level Agreement (SLA) options and onsite field technicians. 

Indian Cyber Security Delegation Heads to Netherlands & UK from April 11-15, 2016

The first ever NASSCOM-DSCI Cyber Security delegation is set to visit the Hague Security Delta and Malvern Cyber Security Cluster, in Netherlands and UK respectively between 11- 15 April 2016. The delegation will be led by Dr. Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Government of India, will comprise of 39 representatives from the Central and State Government, Industry (Security Startups, SMBs & Large IT Services and Consulting), User organizations and Academia.

Setting up of cyber security clusters in India is an important recommendation of NASSCOM-DSCI Cyber Security Task Force (CSTF), which was set up in 2015 on the Honourable Prime Minister’s exhortation, to give a fillip to the budding security entrepreneurship and to foster closer interaction between Govt., Industry and Academia on security industry development. The visit to two of the world’s most active, innovative cyber security clusters, will offer a plethora of opportunities for initiating long-lasting collaborations between the regions, help in understanding the cluster ecosystem and implementing it in Indian cities, exploring avant-garde research, technologies and solutions in cyber security, and most importantly, establishing the Indian brand in global cyber security ecosystem. Equal focus would also be given to developing research capabilities and exploring academic collaboration. More delegation visits to other relevant regions are planned in near future.

While talking about the delegation, Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Government of India, said, “Knowledge, intelligence and experience sharing are core to our approach on cyber security. As an increasingly important issue, dealing with cyber security for businesses and the state requires global collaboration. We are looking to strengthen the collaboration with other nations on this important subject, as we align ourselves to secure Digital India revolution.”

R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, said, “After Hon’ble PM Modi had asked NASSCOM to form a Task Force and chart out a Roadmap for building cyber security industry, we worked on learning the critical success factors for creating an ecosystem that would help achieve the vision of making India a cybersecurity hub. Lot of our member companies, especially startups, have developed niche capabilities in security space through products, integrated solutions and managed services. The exchange of ideas and knowledge facilitated by this delegation visit would add strength to our industry development and promotion charter.”

Rajendra Pawar, Chairman, NASSCOM-DSCI Cyber Security Task Force, said “Setting up multiple cyber security clusters is one of the prime recommendations to achieve CSTF vision. The success of The Hague Security Delta and Malvern Security Cluster garnered great interest from CSTF members, and it was imperative that we build a deeper engagement. Global learnings will help us chart out our roadmap in a better fashion. We intend to take more such delegations in near future”

Acknowledging the delegation’s engagement potential, Nandkumar Saravade, CEO, DSCI, said, “DSCI has been hosting international security delegations for long. It was about time that we led an Indian delegation. Learning from successful global models and countries is a matter of great opportunity in catalysing the growth of the cyber security product ecosystem, that fosters entrepreneurship in security domain. This initiative will pave the way for organisations in exploring and forging alliances, in studying the ecosystem for research and productization, learnings about the cutting edge technologies, and on top in developing synergies between stakeholders. We are overwhelmed with tremendous response to this initiative. We are thankful to both the countries for agreeing to host the Indian delegation” 

The Hague Security Delta (HSD) is the largest security cluster in Europe. In this Dutch cluster –with important regional hubs in The Hague, Twente, and Brabant– businesses, governments, and knowledge institutions work together on innovations and knowledge in the field of cyber security, national and urban security, protection of critical infrastructure, and forensics. The Malvern Cyber Security Cluster was founded in September 2011 and is run by Key IQ Ltd (Key IQ is a business and technology catalyst, helping businesses to grow and succeed. They run facilities, networks and events to foster creativity and promote entrepreneurship. 

Oracle to Set Up Indian Incubators for Nine Startup & Connect with Cloud Technology

To mentor budding entrepreneurs and help the emerging companies access best technology, IT major Oracle said on Thursday it will set up nine startup incubators across the country. ”Our goal is to make it extremely easy for people to access the Cloud and we want to make it accessible not just to big companies, but also to every person who has an idea for a business that can transform this country,” Oracle President Thomas Kurian said on Thursday.

Mentoring is a key part of the initiative and the incubator will facilitate the companies to learn from venture capital funds and also former chief executives of successful startups, he said at a company event in Mumbai. Even though the company works with the software ecosystem across the world, this is a global first of having dedicated incubators, Kurian added.

First of the ‘Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator’ will be launched in Bengaluru – the “second best funded startup hub in the world outside of USA” – tomorrow, which will be followed up with similar centers across the country over the next 12 months, he said. However, he did not tell the exact amount to be invested for the initiative, but said Oracle has committed “several millions of dollars” for it. The company’s Vice President of Development, Sanket Atal, will be leading the initiative and the other centers have been planned at Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Thiruvanantapuram, and Vijaywada, a company statement said.

The announcement comes after the government launched a high-decibel campaign to promote startups in the country and steps to develop the ecosystem. The accelerator is open to early-stage technology and tech-enabled startups working on creating impactful products and services and the costs of using it will also be low, said Kurian.

Startups will have to apply to be a part of the accelerator and selected ones will undergo a six month accelerator program. The selected startups will be able to access Oracle’s technology, including application and software through the Cloud, and can also connect with its designers and engineers. Oracle, which already operates a venture fund, is not looking at the initiative from a venture investments point of view, he clarified.