Aston Martin & LetV Enter JV for Development of Connected Electric Vehicles

Aston Martin and Letv has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on a research partnership for the development of connected electric vehicles. The partnership will see the two companies working together on research projects ranging from connected car technologies through to manufacturing consultation on new electric vehicles.

It is envisaged that these technologies could feature in the future Rapid E, the first ever all-electric Aston Martin, which will be manufactured at the company’s UK headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire.  The RapidE will draw on advanced technology solutions from leading global suppliers including those based in the UK and China.

 Following the announcement of their collaboration with Aston Martin in April this year, leading Chinese technology company Letv will bring their engineering and product development capabilities to help provide advanced connected car solutions to the RapidE.  The new research partnership will also begin a feasibility study focused on bringing Aston Martin consulting expertise in high quality manufacturing to support the production of future Letv electric vehicles. 

 Commenting on the significance of this new partnership, Dr. Andy Palmer, CEO of Aston Martin said, “We see the connected vehicles as a vital part of our future product portfolio and welcome Letv as a research partners in this exciting venture. Both the Chinese and British Governments have taken meaningful steps to encourage the widespread adoption of zero emission technologies, and we look forward to utilizing our expertise not only for our RapidE cars, but also in providing manufacturing assistance through our consulting capability, to Letv.”  

Commenting on the significant partnership with Aston Martin, Yueting Jia, board chairman and CEO of Letv Holding Group said, "As the world's first IT company that announced a car manufacturing project, the young and innovative Letv has now entered a research partnership with Aston Martin, a global leader of high-end coupe design, research and manufacturing. It is a win-win venture which symbolizes the deepening collaboration and reformation between IT and automobile industries. This project will be a major milestone for Letv in implementing its SEE Plan and proving again the unique charm of the company's strategy of building an open ecosystem. In the future, it possible that the two parties will not only work together on IOV (Internet of Vehicle) technologies, but also leverage their respective resources to carry out long-term, all-around cooperation into building connected electric vehicles with disruptive values, aiming at providing the next-generation transportation tools and traffic solutions for both China and the UK, and indeed for the world.”

Chinese Smarphone Maker Meizu Sets Up Indian HQ & Research Centre at Gurgaon

Meizu Technology (MEIZU), one of the fastest-growing Chinese smartphones company, announced the launch of its corporate office in India.

MEIZU recently entered the Indian market with its flagship phone MX5 in August and since then has made rapid strides in the Indian market by offering two additional products the m2 note and m2. With the launch of its corporate office in Gurgaon, Meizu is well positioned to expand its customer service team in India and aims to hire around 100 employees by the next financial year.  The office is already humming with an initial landing team from its headquarters in Zhuhai, China, and a team of recent hires from India.

 “With 46 functional customer service centers across 33 cities in India, the Meizu HQ in Gurgaon will play a pivotal role in expanding these services to 100 cities by 2016. We are also committed to providing future ready products and services to the Indian customers. As a result we are currently scouting for a location to set up a R&D center, to serve our Indian customers with better and localized products”said, David Dong, India Director.

Women Tech Coders Win Honours at 'Tech for Good 2015' Hackathon

There were a total of 616 participants comprising of 101 teams that participated in the 'Tech for Good' Hackathon prelims that were conducted in 5 cities (Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi and Madurai) in the month of August organised by the Anita Borg Institute India. Out of total 101 teams 11 teams have made it to the finals which took place at the largest technical conference for women in India – the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing India (GHCI) 2015.

The main objective of this hackathon is to code and work on ideas and projects that will have a social impact.    

The teams worked on 5 projects for 6 NGOs. The projects the teams developed are: 

• Logistics and Inventory Management for the NGO Neev 
• Project Management System for the NGOs Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement and Reaching Hand 
• Smart Bin for the NGO Reap Benefits 
• Cancer Detection Aid for the NGO Indian Cancer Society
• Platform for Connecting Visually Impaired with Volunteers for the NGO Antardrishti.

The finalists did a demo of their projects during the Hackathon finals and the top 3 winning teams were announced by a panel of judges. 

Winner: Team Five Star from Chennai

NGO: Antardrishti

Project: Platform to connect differently abled and volunteers

Antardrishti aims at creating an inclusive society with equal and full participation of the blind or visually impaired people. Their mission is to promote self –reliance among the visually impaired people by empowering them with education, skill building and mastering life skills. The app being developed is a platform to connect the visually impaired with volunteers across the country.

First Runners-up: Team Bin Watch from Bangalore

NGO: Reap Benefits

Project: Bin Watch

Reap benefits research on ideas that are at an intersection of environment, education and civic problems to derive key insights from on-ground data. They develop low cost innovations to address environmental and civic problems. They build the next generation of problem solvers by involving students in implementing solutions for environmental and civic problems. The project being developed is a combination of both hardware and software that has an ability to provide real time information on when the garbage bins need to be emptied that optimizes and drastically cuts the cost of garbage collection.

Second Runners-Up: Team IsecG7 from Bangalore

NGO: Neev

Project - Logistics n Inventory Management

Neev is based out of Shivpuri, MP and they run a project for women – to make bags out of waste newspaper. They sell bags to various shops in Shivpuri & Delhi. Their project serves 2 purposes – to provide livelihood to women and replace plastic bags in Shivpuri. The app that was developed for Neev is a responsive page design app for logistics, inventory management and basic accounting with a dashboard view of visually appealing charts and graphs.

“This year’s Hackathon saw incredible response and was indeed a resounding success right from the regional prelims that were held in five cities”, said Geetha Kannan, Managing Director, The Anita Borg Institute India. “It is a reassurance to the fact that women in technology are here to stay. It is truly overwhelming to see the enthusiasm and the will power.”

"The GHCI 2015 Hackathon with the theme of “Tech for Good” was a great channel to get women who are tech enthusiasts across multiple geographic locations, organizations and colleges to connect and work towards a common cause, which is to benefit the underprivileged, destitute, impaired and the needy in addition to solving environmental, civic and health problems", said Ms. Shaila Srinivas, Chairperson of the Hackathon.

German IT Firm Cellent AG Brought by Wipro for Rs 518 Crore

 

Wipro Ltd has announced signing an agreement to acquire German IT services company cellent AG for 73.5 million euros (Rs 518 crore).

The German company is a leading IT consulting and software services outfit and has been offering IT solutions and services to its customers in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) for the past 14 years. It (cellent AG) serves the DACH market region with a team of more than 800 consultants, who will now become part of Wipro.

“The DACH market is a strategic growth and investment region for Wipro. This acquisition will provide Wipro with significant scale and prime customer relationships, especially in the manufacturing and automotive domains, which are key industry sectors in the DACH region”, said a Wipro spokesman.

“We welcome cellent AG to the Wipro family. Cultural synergies and locational proximity are key to building successful customer relationships. Cellent is a well-established player with marquee customers, a well-known brand and has strong local talent. cellent will significantly boost our footprint in the DACH region, especially in the Manufacturing and Automotive domains”, said NS Bala, Chief Executive - Manufacturing and Hi-Tech, Wipro, said.

YatraGenie CEO Pledges Rs 30,00,000 for Flood Affected Chennai & Nellore Regions

YatraGenie Services Pvt Ltd, a leading hyper market-place for bus, cab, auto and hotel bookings, today announced that Renil Komitla, CEO, Yatra Genie Pvt. Ltd. will be donating an amount of Rs 30,00,000 (Thirty Lakhs) to the flood affected regions of Chennai in Tamil Nadu and Nellore in Andhra Pradesh. The floods are one of the worst to have hit the region in 100 years.

During the need of the hour, Renil Komitla, CEO, YatraGenie Pvt. Ltd. said, “At this time of crisis Chennai and Nellore need our support. A little help that we can do to both states is donate our time, money and support. Through this donation, I urge other Corporates and individuals to come forward and pledge their support to the calamity hit states as this is the need of the hour.”

Renil Komitla will be handing over the cheque to both the state governments.

Arya.ai Features in French Innovation Agency’s International Innovators 21 Global List

Arya.ai, an Artificial Intelligence start-up from Mumbai has been picked by ParisnCo, a French innovation agency, as one of 21 companies globally that do standout innovations.

An alumnus of Venture Nursery, India’s premier angel-backed start-up accelerator, Arya.ai, provides advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that developers can use to build robots that can assist professionals from different fields in their tasks. The AI tools are offered as modules using ‘Language’, ‘Vision’ and ‘Dialogues’ which developers can assemble to give relevant knowledge to the machine to learn.

This is the only Indian start up to feature in the coveted International Innovators list, which was drawn up following an international competition.

The competition, held in conjunction with the City of Paris' Grands Prix de l'Innovation, invited start-ups from all over the world to submit distinctively innovative projects, regardless of the sector in which they specialise.

For the second edition of iiAwards, the economic development and innovation agency of Paris, joined hands with incubator 50Partners and three major organisations: Aéroports de Paris, Johnson & Johnson and Total.

Apart from Arya.ai, other foreign finalists include two start-ups from the United States, one from Sweden, three from England (London), two from Germany (Berlin), one from the Netherlands (Amsterdam) and one from Spain in addition to 10 French start-ups.

“We are excited to be in the global top innovators listing from India,” said Vinay Kumar, founder of Arya.ai. “We believe strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) can solve many of the information problems people face in their professions.”

Arya.ai’s platform has a multi-tasking ability and uses complex deep learning algorithms to develop general artificial intelligence systems that can adapt and learn with minimal inputs from humans. By using more general AI rather than rule-based narrow AI, Arya.ai can start assisting humans in making more effective decisions faster.

‘India’s only angel backed accelerator, VentureNursery, co-founder, Ravi Kiran said,“VentureNursery’s obsessive focus during acceleration has helped these start-ups take pole position.”

“Global recognitions for our alumni--Thiel Fellowship for Ritesh Agarwal of OYO Rooms, Google for Entrepreneurs Exchange for SeekSherpa and now International Innovation Award for Arya.ai--reinforces our confidence in our active mentoring model and in our start-up founders,” Ravi Kiran added.

This is the second global recognition for the company in the past six months. In June 2015, Arya.ai was named as the top 4 next generation technology start-up at ‘Silicon Valley Forum’ held at Microsoft’s US campus.

Arya.ai is working with some big companies in various verticals to create AI systems that will automate task execution and help in making better decisions.

“Recognition by global Tech communities spurs us to put in every ounce of our heart soul and sweat into this unique product,” added Vinay Kumar. 

IBM Watson Powers Manipal Hospitals for Cognitive Oncology Healthcare Treatment

Manipal Hospitals will adopt IBM Watson technology to help physicians identify options for treating cancer related cases. Watson is a cognitive computing technology that understands different aspects through machine learning algorithm,  

As a part of this initiative, Manipal Health will offer this solution across all its patients, and will be affordable, company officials said but did not get into specifics.

Manipal Hospitals' corporate and teaching facilities will adopt 'Watson for Oncology', trained by MSK, that analyses data to identify evidence-based treatment options. This will help oncologists provide individualised healthcare, company officials said, adding this would be the first deployment of 'Watson' in India.

"This engagement represents a major step in the transformation of healthcare in India. With IBM Watson, we are bringing cognitive computing to the healthcare ecosystem to help deliver greater value to patients in India," IBM India Managing Director Vanitha Narayanan said.

Highlighting shortage of oncologists in India, she said there are over a million cases of cancer diagnosed every year. There are 1,600 patients to one oncologist in the country, compared to 1:100 ratio in the US, she said.

IBM said to date, 'Watson for Oncology' has ingested nearly 15 million pages of medical content, including more than 200 medical textbooks and 300 medical journals.

Using natural language, clinicians using 'Watson for Oncology' will be able to explore treatment options, analyse information provided, and gather evidence specific to a patients' individual health needs, it said.

'Watson' will benefit both oncologists and patients, Manipal Hospital Chairman Dr H Sudarshan Ballal said, adding that it be available for both rich and poor patients.

Manipal said it would implement 'Watson' at its hospitals across the country where it has facilities for oncology and also affiliate with community oncologists.

Manipal has 16 hospitals and 50 oncologists across the country and more than 2,00,000 people receive care for cancer at their facilities each year.

Stating that affordability is very important, Manipal Hospitals CEO and Managing Director Dr Ajay Bakshi said, "We have worked very closely with IBM to structure an economic model which works for Indian patients. That was our first starting point." “Without going into financial specifics, he adds, "It will be incredibly affordable."

To a question, Bakshi said "It will take six months to implement 'Watson'. We are projecting that it will be done by May or June next year. For six months, we will be working with IBM to indigenise it and train it on Indian patients' database."