foodpanda to Enter into Partnership with IRCTC

foodpanda, India’s leading online food ordering platform proposes to associate with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways that handles the catering, tourism and online ticketing operations of the Indian railways. The association will enable consumers to order meals of their choice through foodpanda’s aggregator model, and allow them to order from a wide variety of cuisine options. To ensure that food reaches consumers in the best condition, foodpanda will deploy its own delivery fleet to fulfil all deliveries.

The pilot of this proposed association is being planned to be launched at the New Delhi Railway station and after successful roll out in the metro city, the service will be extended to more cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in due course of time. The customers will have the choice to order meals at-least 2 hours in advance of the travel. The delivery will be aligned to the train arrival time at the station and consumers can pay for the order in advance online or make on the spot cash payment as per their convenience.

Speaking about the association, foodpanda CEO Saurabh Kochhar, Said,“Foodpanda is an innovative business model which caters to an important consumer need. Our association with IRCTC will be an offering which addresses a huge consumer need prevailing for years. For long, consumers had limited food options to choose from while travelling with Indian railways but the newly launched e-catering service by IRCTC (approved by Ministry of Railways) is set to change the way Indians eat while travelling. We are excited to begin action with the Delhi station by December and are looking forward to extending this offering to other stations like Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in due course of time.”

Robin Kalita, Director, Catering Services, IRCTC, “At IRCTC, it has been our endeavour to extend best possible services to our passengers. Food forms a very important part of the travel experience and IRCTC takes immense care to offer healthy and hygienic food to its travellers on-board. With progressing times, we aim to offer wider choices to our consumers and are extremely thankful to foodpanda to have offered partnership with us. We are happy that we will be able to offer wider food choices to our consumers with this association and once our pilot project is successful, we will extend the service to more locations.”

1,000 UK Graduates to Be Trained By Tata Consultancy Services

India's largest software services firm Tata Consultancy Services said it has partnered British Council to train 1,000 university graduates in the UK at its Innovation Labs and software development centres.
 
The announcement comes during the UK visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Under the initiative, 1,000 British university graduates will have the opportunity to spend a year training and working for TCS at its Innovation Labs and software development centres across India between 2016 and 2020, TCS said in a statement.
 
The students will receive training in technical and commercial skills as well as digital and business skills.

Applications for the internships will open in the coming months, with the first cohort set to begin their roles in India in Summer 2016.
 
With employment opportunities in the UK IT sector set to grow at almost twice the UK average employment rate between now and 2020 according to the Tech Partnership, the Social Market Foundation has predicted that the country faces a shortfall in domestic supply of around 40,000 graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics per year.

The TCS-British Council partnership aims to address this challenge by helping to foster the next generation of digital talent and provide British employers with the graduates they will need to succeed in the future, the statement added.

In India's 4G Market, Samsung Leads; Micromax, Intex, Lenovo follows

Smartphone shipments in India jumped 21.4% in the July-September quarter to 28.3 million units, buoyed by a three-fold jump in demand for 4G-enabled devices, according to a research firm IDC.

Smartphone shipments stood at 23.3 million units in the same period a year ago. The shipments increased over 6% from 26.5 million units in the April-June 2015 quarter.
 
"The growth in the smartphone market was helped by rising demand for affordable 4G smartphones," IDC senior market analyst client devices Karthik J said in a statement.
 

In the third quarter, 4G-enabled devices witnessed almost three-fold increase in shipments over the previous quarter and one out of three smartphones shipped was 4G-enabled, IDC said.
 
"E-tailers such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon continue to drive shipments of the Chinese vendors, who have been aggressively trying to capture the 4G smartphone market in India," Karthik said.

Samsung emerged as the biggest 4G player in India with its popular sub-$150 LTE models such as Galaxy Grand Prime and Galaxy J2, IDC said.
 
Samsung was the largest player with 24% share of the smartphone market, followed by Micromax (16.7%), Intex (10.8%), Lenovo Group (Lenovo and Motorola) (9.5%) and Lava (4.7%.)
 
"Almost one out of every two smartphones sold, had 5-inch plus displays. Most of the popular models in the market today support 4G, have a large screen, and are attractively priced at less than $200," said IDC market analyst client devices Jaipal Singh.

The total handset market (feature and smartphones) grew about 2% to 73.8 million units in the third quarter of 2015 from 72.4 million units in the year-ago period.
 
Samsung led the market with 21.6% share. Domestic handset firm Intex toppled Micromax (11.6%) to become the second largest player with 11.8%. 

India & Singapore Partnership Essential for Transformation, Says PM Modi

Terming Singapore as "Asia's economic lion", Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the city state is a major partner in almost every area of India's transformation.

Speaking at a banquet lunch hosted for him by Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Modi said, "The Asiatic Lion can now be found only in Gujarat, but Asia's economic lion is here in Singapore."

While praising the "energy, sense of purpose and enterprise in the Singapore air", he said, "Singapore is a major partner in almost every area of India's transformation."

Modi said in his banquet address: "There can be no place like Singapore -- a symbol of aspiration for people and a source of inspiration for nations... Lee Hsien Loong's leadership has sustained the momentum of Singapore's success."

Later, Modi tweeted that he presented the Singaporean Prime Minister a reproduction of a map of the island of Singapore dating back to 1849.

"Measuring 52in x 52in and based on a survey that was done during 1842-45, the map depicts topographical details of parts of Singapore. The map also depicts a description of various points in the vicinity of Singapore town above the level of low water spring tides," he said.

The reproduction was done from the cartographic collection of the National Archives of India, New Delhi.

Earlier, India and Singapore signed ten pacts, including a joint declaration on elevating their bilateral ties to a strategic partnership, besides agreements for enhanced defence cooperation and in areas like cyber security, shipping and civil aviation.

Google Offline Maps Now Offers with Turn-By-Turn Directions

Offline version to allow users to get turn-by-turn directions to find a location on the move while passing regions with spotty internet

Finding directions on Google Maps with bad internet connectivity is possible in India, after the search giant introduced an enhanced version of the smartphone app.

The offline version would allow users to get turn by turn directions -critical to find a location on the move while passing through regions with spotty internet.

Google previewed the functionality for offline Maps at I/O, its developer conference, back in May. The company began rolling out the feature globally a few weeks ago and since yesterday started offering the service to users in India.

"You can now download the map of an area to your phone, and the next time you find there's no connectivity-whether you're on a holiday in Goa or looking up for your next destination from an underground parking Google Maps will continue to work," said Google in a blog post.

Maps isn't the first Google product to gain offline functionality. In December 2014, the company begun providing users the ability to watch videos on its YouTube app even when they were not online. Further, once downloaded, users would be able to watch a video multiple times on their devices.

Rohit Sharma Brings India’s Only Aggregated Cricket News & Social Media App - UK’s RightNow

One of UK’s leading sports app providers, RightNow Digital has made inroads into India with the launch of its first cricket news & social media updates app called Rohit Sharma Cricket News. The company has been a pioneer in catering to the large community of sports enthusiasts globally, by developing various sports apps related to Football, Formula 1, Cricket, Rugby, Tennis, Golf and Cycling. The Rohit Sharma Cricket News app is unique because it curates all the relevant, authoritative and trustworthy news and social media sources including articles from e-papers, social media posts, blogs, videos and vblogs from platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. By including every social media account of every Indian cricket player, it also enables end users to interact with Indian players directly, from within the app. The brand has a revenue sharing partnership with Rohit Sharma.

India prides itself on being a sports crazy nation where cricket is the religion that unites 1.3 billion people from different walks of life. Cricket is the most popular sport in India, and the most followed game on television and in the digital space. There are about 2.5 billion cricket fans globally of which 1 billion are Indians. In order to cater to this ever increasing cricket enthusiast’s community, RightNow Digital has developed this app to serve as the single source of information related to cricket in India.

Speaking on the launch, Simon Ryley, CEO - RightNow Digital said, “The company was born out of my passion for Manchester United as I would look up various sources every day to keep myself up-to-date about the team. It was then that I realized that it can get very frustrating for fans like me to search the same sources every day to find all the latest news and information. Finding and following players on social media just made this worse. We saw a need to develop a technology solution to address this situation so that sports fans who don't use social media can see all the amazing content that is being created by teams and players and find the latest news at the press of a button. In India, cricket is big and in Rohit Sharma we found the right person to partner with: he is dynamic, and has an impressive track record with proven dependability on the field. These attributes also exemplify the functionality of this cricket app and we are delighted to have found a perfect match in Rohit Sharma.”

“We are thrilled to launch our first app in India, through a first-of-its-kind partnership that we have with Rohit Sharma. Our focus is to make cricket news and social media content easily available to all Indian cricket fans who make up 40% of the world’s cricket fans. Rohit Sharma has a fantastic track record and an impressive number of followers on social media. We believe that this association will help us reach the right set of end consumers who will appreciate the seamless functionality and simple design of the application.” said Seetha Chinnappa-Sarwal, COO – RightNow Digital.

In a short span of time, Rohit Sharma has created a distinctive place for himself in the Indian cricket team. Having started his international career at the age of 20, he has become the first ever. player to score two double-hundreds in ODI history and has always demonstrated consistent performance. He has also lead Mumbai Indians to the IPL title twice.

Titan & HP Joins Hands to Bring Out Smart Watches in India

Watch maker Titan Co and global information technology major HP have joined hands to offer a range of smart watches to be launched soon.

The new relationship between HP Inc. and Titan combine innovative materials, design and custom technology to deliver products that are responsive, and not intrusive, Titan Co said in a statement.

“The range of smart watches will be launched later this year in India and select international markets,” it added.

Titan Co CEO (Watches and Accessories Division) S Ravi Kant said the two companies would create a unique lifestyle offering for people not only in India, but also across the world.

This category of smart watches is going to change the way people view the art of timekeeping and beyond. They can still wear “a drop-dead gorgeous watch on their wrist infused with ’smart’ technology for a new era of access and connectivity”, he added.

HP Inc General Manager, Wearables and Smart Platforms, Sridhar Solur, said although personal style is the ultimate self-expression, some smart accessories on the market force consumers to sacrifice form for function.

“Our legacy of innovation is helping fashion-forward brands infuse technology into their designs to give consumers the stylish timepieces they want but that are more connected and responsive to the way they live today,” Solur said.

Titan, a joint venture between Tata Group and Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO), has presence in watches, jewellery and eyewear. It had closed 2014-15 with an income of Rs.11,791 crore, a growth of 9 per cent over the previous year.

Agencies