Digitally-Led, Digitally-Driven: Spice Digital Changes its Brand Identity to DiGiSPICE

In a strategic development which underlines its position as the most trusted strategic partner in the digital transformation of private and public enterprises as well as governments, Spice Digital has revamped its brand identity to DiGiSPICE. As part of the rebranding, it has merged all of its business units and international operations across geographies such as the Middle-East, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia under the DiGiSPICE brand. The company has also undertaken extensive employee re-orientation to help them understand what the brand stands for.

The move is aimed at reflecting the company’s continued evolution as a digital leader over the last 18 years, as well as its focus on utilizing its extensive expertise in new-age technologies to deliver impactful digital solutions. Post the revamp, DiGiSPICE also aims to make greater headway into emerging cutting-edge domains such as Blockchain, Robotic Process Automation, Big Data, Data Analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) etc.

Speaking about the need for the brand revamp, Dilip Modi – Founder & Chairman, DiGiSPICE, said, “With several major technological advancements having completely transformed the global business ecosystem, organizations across industries find themselves at a curious crossroads. They realize that they need to be ready for a digitally-led, digitally-driven future, but lack the specialized expertise to do so. This is where we come into the picture. Our brand revamp is aimed at reaffirming our digital-first strategy and highlighting the pioneering work that we have been doing, not just in India but on a global stage, as a cohesive business unit guided by a singular vision.”

Leveraging its core capabilities in engineering, analytics, and automation, DiGiSPICE enables customers to easily reinvent products, operations, and business models, while helping to build a strong digital ecosystem for brands and organizations across various sectors. Its in-depth knowledge of digital domains, acute technical insights, customer-first approach, and agile service delivery have enabled the company to achieve industry leadership across segments.

“As Spice Digital, we have blazed several new trails, assisting enterprises and organizations in their transformational journeys. As DiGiSPICE, we aim to take this proposition forward and raise the bar that we’ve set within the industry even higher. We believe the future will be completely digital, and we aim to empower enterprises and consumers across the globe by accelerating the adoption of digital technologies. We are confident that – in keeping with our brand vision – we will impact billions of lives globally, one innovation at a time,” Dilip added.

With a global presence in several high-potential international markets, DiGiSPICE has several cutting-edge digital products and services catering to four major domains: Enterprise, Entertainment, Government, and Financial Services. The company has been working with over 50 operators across 30 countries and over 40 enterprises, and has also undertaken exclusive tie-ups with governments and key enterprises to deliver a wide range of digital and technology-driven solutions.

Google Launches ‘Bolo’, a New Speech Based Reading-Tutor App

Aimed at bridging the learning gap in education, Google today launched a new app ‘Bolo’ that parents can download to help primary grade children improve their Hindi & English reading skills. The beta version of Bolo, launched in India first, is optimised for native Hindi speakers, and uses Google’s speech recognition and text-to-speech technology. It comes with a built-in fun and helpful reading buddy, “Diya”, that encourages, aids, explains, and corrects the child, as they read aloud. Designed to work offline, Bolo is available today on the Google Play Store, in India, for all smartphones running Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) and higher.

As per the annual ASER 2018 report, of all students enrolled in grade 5 in rural India, only about half of them can confidently read a grade 2 level textbook. Lack of reading ability can significantly impact further education, and ultimately children's ability to realize their full potential. While the reasons behind the lag in learning levels are varied and complex, limited access to quality material, under-resourced infrastructure, and barriers to learning outside the classroom, are amongst the primary ones.

Nitin Kashyap, Product Manager, Google India said, “Bolo is designed as a reading-tutor app that helps primary grade students to improve their reading -- anytime, anywhere. With Bolo, we aim to encourage and engage kids so their love for reading grows and it becomes a daily habit. We believe that technology can be a powerful enabler, and we want to ensure that students, parents, teachers and the education ecosystem, benefit from it. We have been piloting Bolo in 200 villages, and the early results are very encouraging.  We are now actively working with a number of nonprofit partners to take it to more people across the country who could benefit from it.”

Zohair Hyder, Engineering lead for Bolo said, “We all have our own personal experience and know that reading aloud with someone giving 1:1 feedback helps improve reading skills.  Many children, especially those in rural India don’t have this support. With Bolo we wanted to bring a similar experience to anyone who needs it, via their smartphone.”

Bolo helps children in many ways:

Read all by themselves: Just like a personalized reading tutor, the app assists them at every step, giving both positive and corrective feedback.
Choose from a large variety of engaging stories: All the reading material on the app is completely free and the initial catalogue from Storyweaver.org.in includes 50 stories in Hindi & 40 in English; with more being added soon.
Enjoy as they learn: Children can also play interesting word games and earn in-app rewards and badges, helping reading become both fun, and a daily habit.
Improve at their own pace: Multiple children can use the same app, and track their progress separately. Over time the difficulty level of recommended stories adjusts to their reading skills.
Understand English better: Diya - the reading buddy in the app can not only read out the text to your child, but also explain the meaning of English text in Hindi.
Read without distractions (and without data too): The app works even when offline, so children can just focus on reading, and is completely ads free.
Stay safe and secure: The app has been designed with children's safety and security in mind and all personal information always stays on device.

Google has been piloting Bolo with over 900 children in 200 villages in Uttar Pradesh, India, with the help of ASER Centre. The results are very encouraging, with 64% of children showing an improvement in reading proficiency in just 3 months.

ACT Fibernet and Netflix Announce Strategic Partnership Across India

ACT Fibernet, India’s largest fiber broadband provider and Netflix, world’s leading internet entertainment service, today announced a strategic partnership. As part of this partnership, ACT Fibernet’s existing and new customers who select from the newly launched 6-month and 12-month ‘Entertainment’ plan variants will be able to seamlessly pay for their monthly Netflix subscription through their ACT Fibernet bill. This will also enable customers to receive an assured cashback of up to INR 350 per month on their ACT bills, which will be added to their ACT accounts.  The offer will be available for ACT Fibernet customers from tomorrow, March 6, 2019 across Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and will be subsequently expanded to other markets.

Speaking on the partnership, Ravi Karthik, Marketing Head, Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. said, " In line with our brand philosophy  Feel the Advantage, we are excited to partner with Netflix, one of the most preferred choice of entertainment for our customers, and provide exceptional benefits and convenience to our users who will now be able to stream and enjoy the best of 4K and HD content seamlessly.

Further, under our advantage entertainment promise, we are delighted to launch a unique assured cashback program for all our customers who choose to subscribe for Netflix via ACT.”

Speaking on the partnership, Abhishek Nag, Director - Business Development, Netflix India said, “Rising video consumption is at the heart of the growing broadband internet ecosystem in India. We are delighted to partner with ACT Fibernet to enable their customers to pay seamlessly for their Netflix subscription as part of their ACT bill and enjoy our incredible catalogue of content on any internet-connected screen.”

In Bengaluru, the ACT Entertainment variants are available on ACT Storm, ACT Lightning, ACT Incredible and ACT GIGA broadband plans. Likewise, in Hyderabad, ACT Entertainment variants are available on A Max-1050, A Max-1299, ACT Incredible and ACT GIGA. In Chennai, the ACT Entertainment variants are available on ACT Blast Promo, ACT Storm, ACT Lightning, ACT Thunder, ACT Incredible and ACT GIGA. Similarly, in Delhi, the ACT Entertainment variants are available on ACT Platinum Promo, and ACT Diamond broadband plans.

Cybage Embarks on a Major Expansion Drive; Acquires World-Class Facilities in Pune and Gandhinagar

In a major announcement for the year 2019 from Cybage, the expansion and hiring drive continues to be one of the top agendas for the company. A leader in technology consulting and product engineering space, Cybage started the new year on a high note with acquisition of two prime facilities in world-class special economic zones (SEZs) in Pune and Gandhinagar.

The 700-seater facility at EON IT Park, Pune, will be the third development centre of Cybage catering exclusively to the growing talent pool. Scaling up its operations in Gujarat, Cybage has acquired an additional 300-seater space in India’s first International Financial Services Centre, the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City).

The India expansion drive is strategically aligned with the ongoing global expansion of Cybage. In the recent months, the foothold of Cybage has strengthened in the Northern and Northwestern Europe, United States, and Canada. The expansion and hiring plans are bullish for Cybage; over the next one year, the organization plans to hire around 1000 professionals.

Cybage is positive about the next phase of growth with recent consolidation of its various organic Digital offerings into a unified Digital Solutions umbrella—scientific, data-driven, digital decision-making platform called the DecisionMines™—and the leadership position in the product engineering landscape.

Arun Nathani, CEO & MD, Cybage said, “India is the biggest market for us for talent acquisition; we are aggressive about our hiring plans which is a by-product of our ‘glocal’ expansion. Through this two-way expansion drive, the organization strives to bolster its growth and channelize its operational efficiency simultaneously to provide optimal digital solutions and facilitate the transformation of our enterprise’s vision into concrete achievements. With successful and positive results in the past quarters, we are capping for 16% to 17% organic growth for the current financial year”.

Headquartered in Pune, India, Cybage is spread over three development centres in India, namely Pune, Hyderabad, and Gandhinagar. Besides India, Cybage is represented in the US market by a development centre in Seattle and its near-shore centre in Toronto. The sales and marketing offices are situated in New Jersey, California, and Atlanta. Among the fastest-growing regions, the APAC, comprises Cybage’s presence in Singapore, Japan, and Sydney. By far, North America remains the largest market for Cybage, whereas other markets include UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Subex Wins Five-Year Multi-Million-Dollar Contract with BTC

Subex, a leading telecom analytics solution provider, today announced that it has signed a five-year multi-million-dollar deal with Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited (BTC), a leading telecommunications services provider in Botswana. As part of the deal, Subex will be implementing its integrated ROC Revenue Assurance and ROC Fraud Management Platform (iRAFM), along with its ROC Partner Settlement and ROC Route Optimization. This deal also marks the continuation of Subex and BTC’s long-standing partnership which dates back to 2010.

BTC is a telecommunications services provider offering fixed line, mobile services (voice, SMS, data) and fixed broadband through ADSL, Fixed LTE and fiber to individual consumers, enterprises and other licensed service providers. BTC has interconnections and relationships with multiple service providers in the region making it a trusted partner for both provisioning of services to neighboring countries and as a partner for transit product and services.

Through the multi-solution deployment of iRAFM, Subex will enable BTC with an out-of-the-box solution to combat prevalent frauds such as Subscription Fraud, Internal Fraud, Premium Rate Service Fraud (PRS Fraud), and International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF), amongst others. The solution will also prevent losses through revenue leakage by providing a solution with capabilities to investigate, diagnose and recover any lost revenues.

The ROC Partner Settlement deployment will offer BTC a 360-degree view of their interconnect agreements to help better manage revenue and margins across their partner ecosystem. Moreover, through ROC Route Optimisation, Subex will provide BTC with a solution that analyzes existing data in terms of operator tariffs and quality of service and generates forecasts to help make an informed choice of interconnect operator partners. In addition to this, Subex will also provide BTC with Managed Services expertise to help them implement the best practices and get the most out of the deployment.

“We have had a long-standing relationship with BTC, and it gives me great pleasure to successfully enter into a new 5-year contract with them. We started our engagement with BTC in 2010 where we played a pivotal role in supporting their mission-critical business operations and processes through our solutions and expertise in the areas of Revenue Assurance and Fraud management. As part of the new deal BTC will be able to take advantage of the latest versions of our product suite, along with our business and IT application support on all the platforms” said Vinod Kumar, Managing Director & CEO, Subex Limited.

Commenting on the deal, BTC Managing Director, Anthony Masunga said, “We are delighted to extend our relationship with Subex given their extensive expertise and the capabilities of their AI/ML enabled solutions towards Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management. We selected to partner with Subex once again due to their experience of executing Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management operations, their proven ability in implementing Management Services engagements across the globe, and the value that they bring in terms of savings and ROI.”

Emirates Introduces a Super Sale to Attract Travellers from India

Great news for those enthusiastic about experiencing new cultures and traversing roads less travelled, or who just have a serious case of wanderlust: Emirates today launched a Super Sale promotion that will allow more travellers to fly to select destinations across the airline’s network.

With fares starting as low as INR 17,508, Emirates is offering special prices for round-trip tickets. Book between 6 March 2019 and 31 March 2019, with travel dates between 8 March 2019 and 30 June 2019, to discover some great deals.

Economy fares to New York, London and San Francisco will start from INR 65,128, INR 47,470 and INR 70,116, whereas, business class fares for Seattle, Paris and Nairobi will start from INR 239,873, INR 138,649 and INR 122,385 respectively.

(Please note: Terms and conditions apply. The special fares include all taxes and surcharges, and are subject to point of origin, availability and fluctuations. Date and flight restrictions also apply.)

Allow Emirates’ extensive network to transport you to exciting new destinations in Europe and Africa. Travel to Spain for some delicious pintxos, capture the breathtaking views in sunny Santorini, immerse yourself in centuries-old art at the Louvre in Paris, or meander through medieval streets at Gornji Grad in Slovenia. Emirates lets you discover the hidden, the famous, the modern, and the historic that the world has to offer.

This exclusive promotion spans Emirates’ vast global network, covering destinations such as Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Hungary, Ireland, Malta, Morocco, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

Emirates boasts of one of the widest network among all global airlines, traveling to 158 destinations in 86 countries, all accessed seamlessly via the Emirates’ hub in Dubai. Travel in style from India with Emirates. Your holiday begins the moment you step on board and experience our fully enclosed First Class suites and our luxurious shower spa aboard the A380 – firsts of their kind on any commercial airline

Emirates believes in making every flight experience extraordinary. By continually investing in the refreshment of the world’s biggest fleet of Airbus A380s and Boeing 777s, passengers travelling with Emirates can experience more on every single flight.

With door-to-door chauffeur services to and from the airport along with luxurious on-ground lounges and on-board enhancements, First and Business Class travelers enjoy a seamless travel experience. An on-board shower spa, fine dining, and lounge bar are some of the exclusive experiences for First Class travelers aboard the A380, while the Boeing 777 Game Changer offers uncompromising luxury and privacy with an enclosed First Class Suite, mood lighting for unprecedented comfort, and virtual windows and sleek leather inspired by the Mercedes-Benz S-Class. Prestigious Bordeaux wines more than ten years in the making, along with gourmet meals, ensure that that all palates are matched and satiated.

Economy Class travelers can also experience the comforts of flying with Emirates’ through unique offerings that are loaded with extra value. Amenity kits ensure that passengers arrive feeling refreshed. Soft, environmentally friendly fleece blankets make families traveling with children feel as cozy as at home. Inflight meal services, inspired by each destination, are served to children first, so that parents have more time to enjoy their meal. Young flyers will be nothing short of delighted with the non-stop entertainment on board, featuring the latest cartoons, animated movies, and Disney classics. Ignite the wanderlust in young travelers with Emirates’ Lonely Planet Kids packs filled with interesting facts and creative crafts.

All Emirates’ flights from India will stop over at our global hub in Dubai. The state-of-the-art Terminal 3 at the Dubai International Airport welcomes travelers to an exciting, modern city steeped in rich and historic culture. The airport offers a variety of ways to refresh and recharge during your trip. Whether it is by napping, exercising, sleeping, taking a shower, or getting a massage, the Dubai International Airport has everything you need.

Those wishing to stop over in Dubai to experience its splendor can do so in 48 hours. Dubai is a shopper’s and gourmand’s paradise – home to the Dubai Mall (one of the world’s largest) which is stocked with the latest global fashion trends, as well high-quality international cuisines from across the world. Travellers can also bring fantasy to life by eating dinner beneath the stars on a desert safari.

CSS Corp wins Silver Stevie in 2019 Sales & Customer Service Awards

CSS Corp, a new-age IT services and technology support company, today announced that it has won the Silver Stevie Award in the “Best Use of Customer Insights” category at the 2019 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. CSS Corp’s Active Insights platform was recognized for its innovative usage of AI and data insights to impact revenue streams and create a competitive advantage for its customers. The results were declared during the award ceremony on Friday, February 22 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The cloud-based Active Insights platform is a multi-faceted advanced analytics platform that goes beyond traditional analytical models. It helps businesses understand their customers across their digital journeys by providing insights on customer intent, interactions, engagement, and enablement. With its extensive data ingestion, cognitive insight, simplified visualization and extensive reporting capabilities, Active Insights has been consistently ranked amongst the leading customer analytics platforms in the world.

Speaking on the occasion, Manish Tandon, Chief Executive Officer, CSS Corp said, “In today’s connected economy, consumers demand instant gratification and instant solutions for complex problems. This has changed the competitive dynamics for global brands, making them seek out actionable insights, but by sifting through tons of customer data.”

“As a new-age services company, CSS Corp understands this need deeply, and hence we are building customer centric solutions that change the way our customers create and compete, and bring about significant revenue advantage to them.”

“We are proud to see Active Insights being recognized by Stevie, and this award is a testament to our continued pursuit of customer centricity and deep tech innovation.” he further added.

More than 2,700 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were evaluated in this year’s competition. Finalists were determined by the average scores of more than 150 professionals worldwide, in seven specialized judging committees.