Ravisankaran, Manoj Kumar take Charge as New GMs at BEL Ltd

Two new General Managers (GMs) have assumed charge at Navratna Defence PSU Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL). They are A Ravisankaran, GM (Central DnE)/BEL-Bengaluru, and Manoj Kumar, GM (BEL-Kotdwara).

A Ravi Sankaran, GM Central (DnE)/BEL-Bengaluru, completed his BE degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirapalli, in 1981. He joined BEL’s Bengaluru Complex after completing post graduation (M.Tech) from IIT-Kanpur in 1983.

Ravi Sankaran has worked extensively in Radar development projects including RAWS-03 and Flycatcher Upgrade, for which he received the BEL R&D Award. As Head of the Development & Engineering Department at the Military Radar SBU of BEL-Bengaluru, he was engaged in the joint development of Air Defence Fire Control Radar with LRDE for the Army, till his elevation as GM.

Manoj Kumar, the new GM of BEL’s Kotdwara Unit, graduated in Electronics & Communication Engineering (BE) from Karnataka Regional Engineering College, Surathkal (now NITK), and joined BEL’s Ghaziabad Unit in February 1985 as Probationary Engineer.

He started his career in the Sales Communication Department of BEL-Ghaziabad and was involved in the trials and introduction of Digital Mobile Troposcatter equipment into the Services. He moved into Quality Assurance and served in the Inward Goods Inspection and Test Equipment Support departments. He later worked in the Marketing (Radar) Division, where he was involved in the induction of INDRA Mk II and Reporter Radars.

In the year 2002, Manoj Kumar was transferred to Systems Department, where he played a pivotal role in the implementation of POLNET and Mobile Cellular Communication System projects. He then moved to the National Marketing Division at BEL’s Delhi Regional Office to take care of BEL’s Naval business. He was Additional General Manager (Navy/National Marketing)/BEL Regional Office-Delhi, before his elevation as GM. 

JDA & Tata Consultancy Partner for Fast, Reliable and Cost Effective Manufacturing Planning 9.0

JDA Software Group, Inc. has announced it has partnered with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to launch an offering to help facilitate solution upgrades to the latest release of JDA Manufacturing Planning, version 9.0.  Together, JDA and TCS will provide customers with a pre-packaged upgrade program for customers so they can leverage the new capabilities in JDA Manufacturing Planning 9.0. JDA Manufacturing Planning enables companies to create a seamless, highly adaptive supply chain that spans upstream suppliers and downstream distributors, enabling an agile and profitable response as demand and supply conditions change.

“TCS’ global presence and its large JDA consulting practice will help offer JDA customers an opportunity to upgrade in a timely manner, reliably and cost-effectively,” said David Johnston,  senior vice president of supply chain, JDA. “JDA’s long-standing alliance with TCS, combined with their extensive experience with JDA supply chain solutions, makes them the ideal partner as we migrate our customers to the JDA Manufacturing 9.0, helping our customers create a more agile, risk-aware supply chain.”

With the release of JDA Manufacturing Planning 9.0, JDA customers can now take their supply chain solution to the next level of business performance, enabling seamless and profitable supply chains. Customers can derive significant business value, leveraging the very best of supply chain in-memory technology, faster speed, next generation forecasting algorithms, rapid what-if simulations with guided resolution levers, and a dramatically improved user experience. JDA customers with up-to-date maintenance and support agreements can access the latest version of their solution components from JDA without any additional charge.

“This joint offering embodies TCS’ deep commitment to client centricity and co-innovation in solutions through proactive investments in technology said Krishnan Ramanujam, vice president and global head, Consulting & Enterprise Solutions of TCS. “JDA’s technology product range is a key enabler of TCS’ service and solution offerings and we look forward to providing our customers with best-in-class services.”

TCS is speaking at JDA FocusConnect 2015 this week, on Thursday, November 4 at 2 p.m. with JDA in the session entitled “JDA Manufacturing Planning Upgrades: JDA Supply Chain Planner to JDA Enterprise Supply Planning in 90 days!” JDA FocusConnect is being held at the Hotel Arts Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain, and brings together more than 500 retail and supply chain professionals to share best practices in supply chain, manufacturing and retail planning, store operations and category management. 

Indian IT Spending to Rise 7.2% to $72.3 billion in 2016: Gartner

India is poised to become the fastest growing information technology market for the second straight year, and the country's spending on IT is expected to rise 7.2% to $72.3 billion in 2016, according to research firm Gartner. IT budgets too are growing the fastest in India at 11.7%, compared with the world average of 1%, it said.

"India will continue to be the fastest growing IT market for the second year in succession and will continue growing to total $87.67 billion by the end of 2019," said Aman Munglani, research director at Gartner.

Devices including mobile phones and PCs and tablets will account for almost 33% of the overall IT spend in India, while the devices business will grow 9.4% in 2016. Mobile phones will continue to be the single largest technology sub segment in India and the third fastest-growing through 2019, Gartner said. 

Digital business is driving "significant growth in new and established organisations across the world", it said.

Digital is also a key part of how Indian firms are looking to expand business.

In February, the Tata Group appointed former Citigroup executive Deep Thomas as head of its consumer analytics division, and is now looking to put in place chief digital officers at its consumer facing businesses, ET has previously reported.

Similarly, Mahindra Group has appointed Jaspreet Bindra to helm digital innovation and ecommerce, while Larsen & Toubro has hired consultancy McKinsey to chart a digital strategy. IDFC, which was recently awarded a banking licence, had appointed former Airtel executive Sriraman Jagannathan as its chief digital and data officer last year.

In IT budget, the retail sector is expected to see the highest growth of 11.3% in 2015, followed by banking and securities at 10.6%, insurance at 10.4%, healthcare providers at 10.3%, utilities at 10.2% and education and transportation at 10.1%.

Communications services, the largest segment, is also expected to be the slowest growing with 10% growth during the period, said Gartner. The research firm said bimodal IT and bimodal business running in two modes simultaneously is essential to take advantage of digital business, and the approach is resonating with companies.

"We run a bi-modal IT model; where one team works on run-the-business and the other on a more transform the business. There is a lot of focus on evaluating newer technologies for their use in the business," said Kalpana Maniar, president and chief information officer at financial services firm Edelweiss. IT spending is also moving beyond the chief information officer's control, which necessitates the need to look at new leadership approaches, said Gartner. 

Self-Awareness is the Key to Success, Says Varun Agarwal

By Parvathi Benu

Varun Agarwal is a name synonymous to inspiration for millions of youngsters across the country. The 27-year-old is an established entrepreneur, film-maker and an author.

“I do not consider myself an author. I’ve written one book and might write another soon. I would prefer being called an author and definitely a film maker,” said Agarwal. He was one among the speakers at the Bangalore Business Literature Fest 2015 held on October 31, 2015 in Bangalore.

He co-founded Alma Mater, Reticular and Last Minute Films and had written the bestseller ‘How I braved Anu Aunty and found the million dollar company.’ “The book is just around five percent fictious. In fact, Anu Aunty was happy about being popular,” he said. “The book gave free promotion to Alma Mater. Sales boosted up very much.”

Agarwal said that the idea of writing the book came to him when people started liking his blog posts and could relate to very much to the character Anu Aunty. “It was a difficult task to write a 50,000 word long manuscript. Honestly, I got stuck after the first 10,000 words,” he said. “Getting your work published is a very easy task here. Trust me, if I could get my book published anyone could. All you have to do is dedicate your time and write,” he added.

He said that while the term entrepreneur is very much glamorised by the media, every youngster wishes to be one because of three reasons- To make a lot of money, to be the boss and to not have a 9-5 job. He added that these are all the myths about entrepreneurship that has to be broken.

He spoke about how he used to fail in his subjects in college. “Those failures however helped me very much. I lost my fear of losing,” he said.  He added that everyone must do what they’re passionate about in their life and should not bother about what others say. “Honestly, people do not have time to care and they won’t,” he said.

He quoted an incident during his college life, where he had to give a presentation in front of his whole class but could not utter a single word because of stage fear.  He took the embarrassment as a lesson and started working on his public speaking skills, by spreading a certain gossip among a group of friends.

“I was very much inspired by Steve Job’s speeches. Public speaking is the best way to inspire people. You just have to open up. And yeah, old monk helps a lot,” he said jokingly.

He added that one should be passionate enough to do what they are doing. He asked the crowd to be self-aware. “Spend time with yourself. Go for a trip alone. Find yourself. Also, our heart is always saying something. Listen to it,” he added.

Boost Operational Effectiveness with New Food Ordering TinyOwl App

In a continuous attempt to establish its foothold in the market, TinyOwl, the preeminent and fastest food ordering app in India, has undertaken a mass streamlining to unlock the organization’s operational efficiency by deploying scalable city level frameworks. While the app has witnessed remarkable growth in the past year, the current focus for the company is to now attain a viable business model from a long term perspective, in consideration of the current market challenges being faced by food ordering players in India. 

TinyOwl has undergone an organizational restructuring to increase its efficiency and productivity, involving eliminations of certain positions from the company, as part of this process.

In alignment of the current organization focus, TinyOwl will be scaling back nationally, with optimization of resources across verticals being the key focus. This development has been made on a strategic level as a step towards sustainability and growth for the brand in the current challenging market scenario. While TinyOwl will continue to operate in 6 cities, the new model will be initially tested in major metros Mumbai and Bangalore.

Talking about the recent developments, Harshvardhan Mandad, CoFounder & CEO, TinyOwl said, “The current strategic focus for us as a company is to build TinyOwl as a sustainable, profitable and scalable business, working towards the ‘big dream’. With the current take rate being 45 – 60, we are looking at a more commensurate operational structure. Every business goes through its own unique journey, with some hits and definitely some misses. We have had our share too. But the important aspect is to learn from your journey along the way and continue to do what is best for the brand.  We thank all our employees for their contributions in making TinyOwl one of the fastest growing startup brands in the market today.”

With the refurbishing of the brand, the company is aiming at developing an enhanced ecosystem of business management with a strong and robust backend looking at long term sustainability. One of the youngest players in the ecosystem, TinyOwl hopes to continue add more value to partners and provide the best of food ordering experience to its customers with enriched offerings and services. 

From being a five member start-up to being one of the fastest growing startup brands in the market today, TinyOwl continues to be focused on strengthening the brand’s position in the market.

Indian Govt Offers Subsidy to Participants of CeBIT Hannover 2016

With more and more technology starups emerging from Indian shores, it’s time to reach out to the global market and Europe being the prime. After a successful CeBIT 2015 at Hannover for the Indian participating companies, Deusche Messe AG, the organizers of the fair are targeting over 100 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to take part in the world’s largest IT expo. To assist the MSMEs, Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC), sponsored by the Government of India is providing large amounts of subsidies to small scale businesses for their participation in CeBIT.

Addressing the media, Priya Sachdeva, Project Manager of HMFI says, “CeBIT is the gateway to the Indian market and the government of India as part of the Market Development Assessment scheme is providing assistance of Rs 1,50,000 to MSMEs in the ‘Make In India’ pavilion being set up at the Hannover fair.”

“This year 25 exhibitors availed the scheme and for the 2016 event the scheme has been expanded to 50 exhibitors,” she adds.

More number of startups are expected to attend next year’s CeBIT to be held in Hannover being held from March 14 to 18, 2016, said Jan-Hendrik Tiedje, Key account manager of Deutsche Messe. Speaking on the sidelines of CeBIT India 2015, Tiedje emphasised the need for digitisation and stated that it is the need of the hour. He said next years’s CeBIT will focus on digital economy – D!Conomy.

Arbind Prasad, Director General FICCI, said that FICCI would be managing the India Pavilion on behalf of the Government of India in the upcoming CeBIT. FICCI will be supported and funded by the Department of Industrial Policy Promotion and Department of Electronics and IT, he added.

The government of Kerala will be taking a large contingent to Hannover for the 23th year. The state has been an active participant since 1993. Besides a number of other states like Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat making their foray into the European market.

This is besides the large number of corporates like Infosys and others like UBS, who take part on their own without any assistance, adds Sachdeva.

Intel Education Holds Digital Wellness Program for Assam Govt Students and Teachers

Reiterating its commitment to Digital India, Intel India today announced the launch of Intel Education Digital Wellness Program in Assam, including the release of an Assamese version of Digital Wellness curriculum for students and teachers in government schools. As part of this initiative, Intel India will closely work with the education ecosystem in Assam to enable a safe cyberspace for the students and youth. The announcement comes as the latest in a series of engagements that Intel has been running in the state since 2006.

The Intel Education Digital Wellness Program, developed by Intel Security Group, is an empowerment program for students and youth to make them aware of the possible risks of using the Internet and equip them with the necessary knowledge and skills to avoid such risks and stay safe and secure while on the Internet. The Intel Education Digital Wellness Curriculum is designed to be delivered through training modules, created especially for children and administered by the school’s teachers and master trainers.

Speaking at the launch, Kumud Srinivasan, President, Intel India, said, "Intel has long been committed to the vision of Digital India. It is important for us to enable a robust and safe digital environment for everyone, particularly young citizens to be able to appropriately use the benefits of digital world. We believe the Intel Education Digital Wellness Curriculum is a key step in that direction and it will contribute to accelerating innovation and technology adoption in Assam.”

As a part of the Intel Education Digital Wellness Program in Assam, Intel India will collaborate with the Department of Education, Government of Assam to impart training to 35,000 faculty and students in government schools on Digital Wellness and related initiatives, this year. In the last academic year, this Program was successfully implemented in Karnataka and Haryana, reaching out to 1,10,000 students and teachers.