Yo Yo Honey Singh Embraces Swan Brand

The global online Fashion &lifestyle brand American Swan has signed up Yo Yo Honey Singh-famed Indian rapper, music composer and current singing sensation of Bollywood, as its brand ambassador. American Swan, launched in January 2013 offers authentic  smart casual wear for the youth and has been built with the best inputs from across the globe: be it the brand identity, the product design, sourcing, user experience, etc. Within a short span, the brand has received an excellent response from its core target audience: the 18-35 year old urban & semi-urban youth, who is digitally savvy and connected. 

Talking about the association Honey Singh said, “I am excited to partner with American Swan and to be able to connect with the youth & inspire them to chase their dreams and script their destinies. It has been a great year for me and I am looking forward to create a music video for the brand. The Brand Positioning resonates with my quintessential approach to my life, music & work. The video will see me style in looks that my fans haven’t seen before”. With his string of recent hits like Sunny Sunny, Party All Night the 31 year old singer-composer with an international fan following has struck a chord amongst the youth of the generation.

 American Swan will unveil the new identity along side the launch of its new collections-AS Premium and AS Original. The latter is a trend-led, fast fashion collection for the youth and allows the brand to extend its core preppy, casual wear brand to a wider audience. As the youth in India look for global designs and standards with affordable pricing at the convenience of a click, American Swan expects to garner a significant share of the apparel & lifestyle market in the burgeoning ecommerce and mobile commerce market.

Speaking about the association, Anurag Rajpal, Director & CEO, American Swan said, ­­­­­­­­­“We are glad to announce the latest developments of our brand: our association with Yo Yo Honey Singh and the American Swan brand re-launch in what we hope will be an iconic new avatar. While we constantly aim at building a fashion brand that can resonate in the hearts and mind of Gen Y youth, these major milestones will only cement the evolution of American Swan as we take a constructive leap towards a major expansion across the online space.” 

 The American Swan marketing strategy is to build a customer base through a strong mobile-first, digital & social activation. In continuation with this approach, the new brand video will be launched across touch points through a series of differentiated and engaging campaigns on website, social channels, and mobile properties.

 American Swan epitomizes dynamism that is born out of passion for doing things exceptionally diverse. The brand has been promoting young talent since long by associating itself with various young achievers in past like Unmukt Chand , Shruti Hasan and Lauren Gottlieb and has espoused its “Young Achievers” campaign with them. The brand has also stepped into social media by initiating various online program and formats like tweet store and beauty and the blogger event which has attained enormous success. To reinforce the brand’s philosophy in similar direction, the brand will soon invite showbiz aspirants to get a chance to be featured in the Yo Yo Honey Singh music video.  

PNB & Mphasis Partner For Customer Relationship Services

Mphasis, a leading IT services provider, today announced that it has signed a 5 year contract with Punjab National Bank (PNB), to set up contact centers in Noida and Mangalore. As a part of this strategic deal, Mphasis will offer end-to-end Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services that include Inbound Phone Banking, Outbound Calling and Complaints Management. The scope of the services includes support for all banking products and services such as deposits operations, core banking processes, lending services, internet banking and account & card related services

 Under this contract, Mphasis will implement a state-of-the-art Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system and a comprehensive CRM solution Advisor 360 which will cater to the bank’s customers, branches and fulfillment requirements across 13 regional circles in India. 

 Mphasis a leader in BPO services and Customer Relationship Management has implemented end-to-end Contact Centers for several leading banks in India. Mphasis will provide services in multiple languages (English, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu) through their strategically located centers in North and South. Through this partnership, Mphasis will support Punjab National Bank in improving the quality of its customer service and enable intelligent customer engagement  through optimal utilization of data. 

“With heightened customer expectations and strong competition in the marketplace it is imperative for banks to constantly redefine their business models. Our innovative technology-enabled solutions and comprehensive BPO services will help Punjab National Bank to realize tangible outcomes from superior customer experience and engagement. This win is a reflection of our commitment to transform our client’s business.” said Elango R, Chief Human Resources Officer and Head Emerging Geographies Business Unit, Mphasis.

“At Punjab National Bank, we recognize the crucial role played by technology in providing wider and easier access to banking services across our growing customer base. We are delighted to partner with Mphasis a leader in BPO services, to bring PNB Contact Centre Infrastructure in line with the best-in-class in the Indian market.” said K. R. Kamath, Chairman & Managing Director, Punjab National Bank.

Microland Announces Hybrid IT Infrastructure Services For Enterprises

Microland, India's leading specialist IT Infrastructure and Cloud Lifecycle Services Provider, today announced the successful completion of 25 years of its operations. Underlining the transformation underway in the Digital world, the company rolled out Microland 4.0, an enhanced view of how IT Infrastructure Services will get delivered in the future, a culmination of investments in its Innovation Labs over the last 3.5 years.

Incorporated in 1989, Microland pioneered networking in India and in 2002 transitioned to being India’s first Remote Infrastructure Management Services Provider. Microland has 2700+ professionals, 75+ global clients and six global delivery centers – three in India and one each in USA, UK and Middle East.  The commitment to highest standards of governance and business ethics have enabled the company to build   long standing strategic partnerships with its customers and  technology partners such as  Amazon Web Services, Citrix, Microsoft and VMware.

Unveiling Microland V4.0, Pradeep Kar, Founder, Chairman & Managing Director, said, "Led by trends like cloud computing, mobility and consumerization, IT is set to drive large scale transformation in enterprises across all industry verticals. Microland 4.0 can help businesses become more agile & innovative through a structured transformational approach towards Hybrid IT in their IT-as-a-Service journey, while simultaneously improving efficiency and effectiveness of their existing IT infrastructure through automation & process reengineering”.

Hybrid IT is the enabling framework to deliver computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (both enterprise networks & public networks like the Internet). Analysts define Hybrid IT Services as a service that is composed of some combination of traditional IT, Private, Public and Community Cloud Services, from different service providers. It allows one to extend either the capacity or the capability of a Cloud Service, by aggregation, integration or customization with another Cloud Service.

“The road to Hybrid IT and enterprise transformation to IT-as-a-Service is not straight forward. In our experience we have seen multiple challenges that need to be overcome. To begin with, enterprises need to change the way they think and approach the Hybrid IT architecture- it is service oriented. Some of the key imperatives that need to be kept in mind while embarking on this journey are 1) Service Management to deliver guaranteed service,  2) Governance & Compliance, 3) Avoiding vendor/technology lock- ins and 4) allowing for integrating best of breed technology environments. It has to be future proofed since the transformation is a one way street” said, M S Rangaraj, Chief Innovation Officer of Microland.

Gartner says that growth in the worldwide Public Cloud Services market is forecast to significantly outpace growth in IT spending generally through 2018, causing a shift in spending from traditional IT systems to Cloud. The Public Cloud services market is expected to grow 17.8% in 2014 to US$153 billion. Similar growth is projected for the Virtual Private Cloud market and the Private Cloud market. Forrester estimates the Virtual Private Cloud market at US$66.4 billion (US$7.5 billion in 2011) and the Private Cloud market at US$15.9 billion (US$7.8 billion in 2011).

Enterprises are realizing the value proposition of Hybrid IT services. Everest Group's research suggests that more than half of the enterprises are spending in excess of 10% of their annual IT budget on cloud services. Enterprises are consuming a variety of cloud solutions, thereby leading to an increasing multiplicity of co-existing models in a Hybrid IT environment. According to Everest Group, about 65% of enterprises have already adopted or are looking to adopt Hybrid IT environments in the future.

As a true visionary in the IT industry, Microland played a key role in bringing Enterprise Networking into India and enabling the transformation from Mainframe era to the Client Server era. Microland conceptualized and crafted the platform for many well-known tech-giants in the country like Compaq, Cisco, SynOptics and Netscape. Pioneering India's thrust into the internet economy in 1998, Microland built several successful internet companies like Planetasia.com, indya.com, ITspace.com, media2india.net and Net Brahma Technologies. The company was also the first to envision the role of Remote IT Infrastructure Management as the Third Wave of Outsourcing from India and today is India’s leading specialist provider in that space.

NASSCOM estimates that, by 2020 one third of the IT industry revenues will come from Managed Services and India will have a 45% share in the global addressable market for Remote Infrastructure Management. Microland 4.0 is expected to play a significant role in the next revolution of IT industry. 

NCR Real Estate – Ghaziabad In Growth Mode

 By Rohan Sharma, Associate Director - Research & REIS, JLL India

Ghaziabad caters primarily to the mid-segment and affordable housing segments. It is home to established housing clusters such as Kaushambi, Vaishali and Indirapuram while upcoming residential corridors include Raj Nagar Extension and developments along the NH-24 beyond Indirapuram, including the Crossings Republic township.

While lack of land options has restricted new launches in the Kaushambi, Vaishali and Indirapuram clusters, they being already developed to a great extent and with a large existing residential population, these residential clusters have also recorded healthy capital appreciation. Recent project launches have been mostly in the upper-mid and premium segments offering luxury specifications and upgrades from the usual, mid-segment housing options. 

 Prices in the Kaushambi and Vaishali areas are in the range of INR 5,500 – 6,500 per sq ft while in Indirapuram prices are in the INR 4,800-5,500 per sq ft price range. The affordable residential clusters are in the average price range of INR 2,200-3,500 per sq ft. The upper end of the range is commanded by projects which are completed or close to completion in Crossings Republic, while the newer projects in NH-24 are in the lower price band of INR 2,200-2,600 per sq ft. The Raj Nagar Extension corridor on NH-58 is also priced in the INR 2,600-3,000 per sq ft range. 

 All these clusters have contributed the maximum to new project launches that have been recorded in the Ghaziabad residential market over the past few quarters. While Raj Nagar Extension may be seeing project launches by first-time or lesser known developers, the likes of Assotech, Ansal API, SARE, Ashiyana Group and Wave Group have come up with projects on NH-24, which includes Crossings Republic as well.

 With prices in the Noida Extension precinct in the Noida sub-market expected to be higher, Ghaziabad will continue to garner interest, particularly for affordable projects in Crossings Republic, Raj Nagar Extension and on the NH-24.

 The Ghaziabad sub-market also enjoys a large population base from the industrial sector and SMEs, and low-income workers looking to upgrade to better accommodation. In the near future, the better areas within Ghaziabad, such as Indirapuram and Vaishali, should continue to hold their ground while the lower-income profile areas of Sahibabad, Raj Nagar Extension and further developments coming up on NH-24 and GT Road will account for majority of sales volumes.

Going forward, infrastructural developments such as the extension of the Metro route to Ghaziabad and widening of the NH-24 to six lanes is likely to aid in furthering residential developments in this area. The core demand is likely to emanate from the low and middle-income population for the residential offerings in this corridor.