Gujarat Lions Appoints Reliance Games as Official Gaming Partner for IPL Season 9

Reliance Games, a leading publisher and developer of mobile games has announced partnership with Indian Premier League’s newest cricket team Gujarat Lions. With this partnership, Reliance Games becomes the Official Gaming Partner of the Rajkot based team, led by ace batsman Suresh Raina.

The games will allow players to customize their team, engage with their favorite T20 stars - Suresh Raina, Brendon McCullum, Aaron Finch and other champion cricketers in the Gujarat team by playing with their favorite superstars in the game.

“The Gujarat Lions team is making waves this IPL and fans now have the perfect opportunity to engage and play with their favorite stars. The game will bring to life player management, cricket action and an immersive 3D gameplay experience,” Amit Khanduja, CEO, Reliance Entertainment-Digital.

Reliance Games’ has developed top chart cricket games in the past for tournaments like ICC World Cup, T20 World Cup, and Champions Trophy etc. Besides team management based game play, Reliance is also set to launch a series of exciting cricket themed games covering genres like casual, puzzle and real action for this IPL season. Customers can download these games from App Store & Google Play free of cost.

Commenting on the partnership, Amit Khanduja, CEO, Reliance Entertainment-Digital said, “We are excited to be the official gaming partners for Gujarat Lions and  Intex. Cricket lends itself to amazing player experiences & infinite potential for game design since fans adore their cricketers and the sport itself. With our new series of fun IPL games, we plan to enhance cricket enthusiast’s gaming experience both on the field and now on their smart phones and new Intex devices.”

Vineet Singh, VAS Head, Intex Technolgies (India) Ltd. said, “We are delighted to announce Reliance Games as our official gaming partner. Reliance Games has an incredible team with some amazing ideas for games for the Gujarat team. Being the latest entrant this IPL season we aim to enthuse our fans by giving them a larger than life cricketing experience with a multitude of games. This is a start of a new beginning for Intex and in future new high engaging products will be launched based on user’s interests & needs, which compliments well with our devices.

Pidilite’s New Roff Experience Centre in Bangalore to Showcase Adhesive, Grouting & Maintenance Range of Roff

Roff from the house of Pidilite, the industry leader in construction chemicals, has launched Roff Experience Centre in Bangalore, the first of its kind experience centre to spread awareness and facilitate exploration, while adopting latest solutions in tiling and stone installation. The experience centre was inaugurated by Dr. Sanjay Bahadur, Global CEO, Construction Chemicals Division.

Roff Experience Centre is designed to create an experience zone showcasing the adhesive, grouting and maintenance range of Roff. Consumers walking-in at outlets will be shown the advantage of tile adhesives and grouts over traditional methods of tile fixing. The wide range of adhesives options on substrates–stone, tile on tile and glass. The literature kept in the zone will look at educating the consumer on tile care, modern methods of tile fixing, generating architectural ideas and offering various solutions for difficult tiling areas.

Dr. Sanjay Bahadur, Global CEO, Construction Chemicals Division said, “Bangalore is essentially one of our key markets. Launch of Roff Experience Centre will facilitate innovation through showcasing the comprehensive range of tile and stone adhesives. This will help consumers to get a real life experience of the application and assist them in making correct decisions. Further, it will also assist people to get over conventional practices which are otherwise time consuming and ineffective in case of severe problems.“ 

Now SMBs in Mumbai Can Sell Using Amazon Tatkal Within 60 Minutes

In line with its vision to transform the way India sells, Amazon.in brings Amazon Tatkal, a unique initiative to help thousands of small and medium businesses (SMBs) to Mumbai. A one-stop-shop on the go, Amazon Tatkal enables SMBs to get online and sell on Amazon.in, in less than 60 minutes.

Amazon Tatkal is a specially designed studio-on-wheels offering a suite of launch services including registration, imaging and cataloguing services, as well as basic seller training mechanisms. It will enable thousands of interested sellers to start selling on Amazon.in in real time and experience the benefits of launching an online business.

Amazon Tatkal will be stationed at Linking Road and Elco Market today; Vashi Market and Nerul Market tomorrow, April 27 and Mulund Market and Dadar Market on Thursday, April 28. It will traverse the entire country, engaging with thousands of entrepreneurs, artisans, manufacturers and sellers and help them sell online on the spot. Mumbai-based sellers will now be able to sell local offerings like apparels, electronics, books, etc through Amazon.in within 60 minutes.

Talking about the concept, Gopal Pillai, Director and GM, Seller Services, Amazon India said “Our conversations with hundreds of SMBs reveal that there is a high level of interest among them to get online and start selling, but they are unable to overcome perception barriers of the process being time consuming, tedious and complex. As a result many interested sellers tend to put off onboarding tasks. As always, we worked backwards from seller needs and conceptualized Amazon Tatkal. We believe this initiative will help sellers to overcome these constraints, get them onboard, and start selling on the Amazon platform with speed and ease.”

Amazon Tatkal will visit seller-dense pockets across multiple cities in the country and engage with local businesses over the next several months.  Specially trained company representatives will educate sellers on the benefits of selling online, introduce them to the specialised seller services offered by Amazon.in including innovations like Easy Ship, Fulfilment by Amazon as well as Global Selling and launch interested sellers on the Amazon platform, helping them with on-the-spot imaging and  cataloguing tasks.

“We are very excited to see the high level of interest and enthusiasm from sellers to get online and benefit from the digital economy. A number of sellers on Amazon.in witnessed a growth of 250% (YOY) last year. We believe that initiatives like Amazon Tatkal will help thousands of SMEs in the country to experience the ease and convenience of selling on the Amazon.in marketplace in a matter of 60 minutes,” adds Gopal.

Since its launch in June 2013, Amazon.in has been working extensively to launch services that meet different business requirements of sellers and help them grow their business profitably online. Over the past two and a half years, Amazon.in has introduced the most comprehensive suite of offerings for sellers to sell online in India. From running an extensive education and skilling program for SMBs called Seller University, offering Fulfilment By Amazon (a pay-as-you-go fulfilment service wherein Amazon.in  packs, ships and delivers products to customers, manages returns and does customer service on behalf of the sellers), innovating Easy Ship (an assisted shipping service that makes it easy for sellers to ship products across India) and Seller Flex (bringing Amazon’s flagship FBA experience to the seller’s doorstep by implementing the FBA technology at sellers’ warehouses) , to  building the largest storage capacity in ecommerce in India for sellers to the tune of 5 million cubic feet, Amazon.in has been helping sellers reach millions of customers across the country. Amazon launched its Global Selling Program for sellers in India in May last year and today over 6000 sellers from India are selling their ‘Make in India’ products on Amazon’s nine global marketplaces to over 304 million active worldwide customers.

Amazon.in also recently launched a lending program for sellers through an independent, third party partner to offer secured and unsecured loans to sellers from 5 lakh rupees to Rs 2 crores at very competitive interest rates. 

India 2nd Largest Smartphone Mkt by 2017; 4G Phones will Account for 75% of 170 M Imports

According to the report on global technology and telecom, the country's smartphone market will grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% through 2018 and would account for 30% of the global growth during the period.

"We expect India to overtake the US next year as the second-largest smartphone market by units. India will grow nearly five times faster than the world's largest smartphone market China, where growth has decelerated," the report said.

It added, "We estimate a 23% CAGR in units in India, compared with 5% over the same period in China. By 2018, we estimate 192 million smartphones will be shipped to India, or 11% of global units."

Morgan Stanley said there are only 225 million smartphone subscribers in the country, accounting for 18% of the total population. "The improvement in demographics, as measured by declining age dependency, has been one of the most important factors supporting higher potential growth in India... We expect consumption to maintain a relatively high growth rate, driven by an increase in per-capita income growth and an emerging middle class," it noted.

On consumption of data, the report said the country is on the cusp of significant growth in data traffic driven by rising data users as well as growing data usage per user.

"We expect India's internet penetration to reach 50% by 2018, up from 26% last year, driven by rising smartphone availability and affordability, online content and changing user behaviour," it said.

The global consultancy estimates 4G smartphones will account for 75% of 170 million shipments by the next year, which currently has less than 1% subscriber penetration in the country. The report, which is based on 2,600 urban smartphone buyers, said the respondents paid an average of Rs 8,500 for their smartphones and plan to spend 40% more on their next phone. 

Ten Percent GDP to Make India $10 Trillion Economy: Amitabh Kant

India needs to grow at 10% to become $10 trillion economy and eliminate poverty by 2032, Niti Aayog Chief Executive Officer Amitabh Kant said here on Thursday.

The country's growth rate was 7.6% in 2015-16 and its economy worth $1.7 trillion. In a presentation made during Civil Services Day function attended by Prime Minister and large number of civil servants, he said a growth rate of 10% would also help in creation of 175 millions jobs by 2032.

"Growing at 10% will transform India. India will be a $10 trillion economy with no poverty in 2032," his presentation reads. The presentation was made on the status of implementation of reports of 'Group of Secretaries' formed by the Modi government. A total of eight Group of Secretaries were formed in December last year on focus areas.

"These eight groups had officers from different ministries. Further, there were 16 groups of joint secretaries who simultaneously worked on their focus areas. We cut across silos so that we can act on the eight themes and act as agent of change," said Kant.

He said that current 7% growth rate would make India only a $6 trillion economy by 2032 and would still leave 5-6% of population Below Poverty Line (BPL). The groups has decided on sub-themes, Some of its recommendation have been acted on whereas a road map has been suggested for the rest to achieve intended target.

Under the sub-theme "accelerated growth", he said there will be Rs 2 lakh crore worth investment in roads and railways in FY 2017. It intends to complete 10,000 km of road project during the same period. LPG connections to below poverty line women through Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana and promotion of medical tourism are other action points suggested by the group under "health and pharma" category.

Invixium Unveils New Breakthrough Products in Biometrics - IXM Merge

On April 20th evening witnessed the most innovative, revolutionary and advanced technology in Biometric Systems in India. With over 16 years of experience in the biometric industry, Shiraz Kapadia, CEO and President at Invixium launched the brand’s latest biometric product family IXM MERGE at Taj Santacruz, Mumbai. This by-invitation-only event was attended by VIPs, industry experts, consultants, integrators, end-users, media, Invixium staff and key figures of the Invixium ecosystem.

Some highlights of the event included a keynote by Shiraz Kapadia, cutting edge 3-D mapping video and panel discussion with industry leaders like Richard Agostinelli, CEO at Crossmatch Technologies and Ravi Ahluwalia, Deputy General Manager at Hitachi Europe Ltd. The entire Invixium product family including the newly launched IXM MERGE was on display for guests to get a first-hand feel.

IXM MERGE is a combination of design and smart engineering.  The family includes IXM MERGE and IXM MERGE CR.  IXM MERGE is a powerful biometric device with Corning Gorilla Glass, 2.0 inch LCD screen, sensor and card reader. To achieve a slimmer than slim profile, the product was designed with Rigid-Flex PCBA. The sensor uses Active Thermal sensing technology which eliminates errors prone to optical sensors while delivering unmatched performance with any finger condition (dry, wet). IXM MERGE CR is a RFID card reader variant that supports MiFARE, DESFire and DESFire EV1 cards. These are ideal products for end users from enterprise access and time and attendance markets who can select from non-biometric & biometric solution for their installs.

Invixium launched IXM MERGE series for India which is an ideal market for this revolutionary product that balances cost and features. This engineering masterpiece possesses the quality and performance values of the Invixium brand and is interoperable with other Invixium products through IXM WEB.

Speaking on the occasion, Shiraz Kapadia, CEO and President at Invixium commented, "Invixium designs and engineers incredible products". He added "We unveiled our newest masterpiece IXM MERGE at the most extravagant Product Launch event the biometric industry has ever seen. Our invitees were absolutely mesmerized."

At Microsoft’s Confluence, Anjum Chopra & Shabana Azmi Address Over 500 Employees at Hyderabad Campus

 Microsoft India hosted Confluence, its signature annual diversity and inclusion conference in Hyderabad. Confluence is a platform for employees to engage with the company’s leaders, industry experts, and public personalities, and discuss the power of diversity and inclusion in driving innovation, growth, and societal impact. 

The day-long conference was attended by over 500 Microsoft employees from across India. Interactive workshops, panel discussions, and the many inspiring stories were the highlights of Confluence 2016. Successful public personalities Anjum Chopra, Captain, Indian Women’s Cricket team, and Shabana Azmi, eminent actor and social activist interacted with participants and shared work and life advice. The day’s discussions included deliberation on gender, generation, and ability-based biases and building a work culture that helps overcome any such bias.

Building a diverse and inclusive work environment is at the core of Microsoft’s new mission of empowering every individual and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Says Rohit Thakur, Head HR, Microsoft India, “We need the best minds on this planet to help us build technology that makes a positive difference in the world. And the best minds come from myriad backgrounds, different genders, age groups, and physical abilities. We welcome them all to our workplace and create an environment to help them do their best work. Confluence 2016 is a celebration of the power diversity and inclusion brings to Microsoft India.”

Star cricketer and former captain of the Indian women cricket team, Anjum Chopra, and veteran Bollywood actor and social activist Shabana Azmi also spoke at Confluence. Sharing their life stories, talking about turning points in their career and covering key moments in their lives – both speakers had inspiring conversations with the employees.

Six breakout sessions focused on the three pillars of diversity – gender, generational and abilities, engaging participants in theatre plays, simulation and gender sensitization workshops. “Let’s Not Talk about it!”,an interactive play with multiple stories that brought forth key aspects of an inclusive work place like gender equality, stereotyping, urging participants to 'Start Talking About it “. “Antarchakshu” was an immersive workshop that gave participants an insight into the world of the visually impaired. “He F(or) She” – was a workshop held on gender sensitization and “Yuva Katha”, was an experiential workshop addressing generational work styles.