Keypoint Technologies Adds Intenticons Features to Xploree Keyboard

Keypoint Technologies has added a new feature -Intenticons to the Xploree keyboard gallery.

The company announced the roll out of this new feature addition to Xploree, its revolutionary keyboard. The feature is available for users from September 2016.With Intenticons, Xploree promises to deliver a novel mobile discovery experience to its users. This new age feature merges users’ conversational context with predictive imagery. These images – Intenticons –are predictive visual manifestation of users’needs even as the latter gesture, converse or type on the keyboard.

The images have been pieced together on the guiding principle of making information discovery on mobile more purposeful, sorted, and self-explanatory during the conversation. All research & development at Keypoint Technologies revolves around human reasoning and linguistics. Hence, the name for the new feature - ‘Intenticons’.

The Intenticons illustrate the combination of intents and imaginative icons through pre-defined images. They are intuitive and indicative, capable of guiding users towards relevant content, offers and services– in the same frame, at the tap of a key. The Intenticons will help and guide the Xploree user in multiple ways. To explain with some examples:

-         Even as the user types “Flight” – a pop-up image of Tour operator Intenticoncan suggest flight deals

-     As the user chats about food – Grocery Intenticoncan help him/her find nearby grocery options.

-    the Art & Entertainment Intenticon can keep user updated with reviews of the latest Bollywood movie.

As of now KeyPoint has introduced Intenticons across 150categories covering food, restaurant, grocery, fashion and travel. The company sees endless possibilities for delivering useful content to its users with the help of these images. Sunil Motaparti, CEO KeyPoint Technologies says,“With Intenticons, we have introduced a novel visual trigger to assess and consume information at the tap of a finger. At that very precise moment within a conversation, which we call mobile interlude, it becomes utmost important to be able to switch to the information you need and come back to where you original are. With increasing usage of imagery language comprising of emojis and stickers, we see ‘Intenticons’ serving this very purpose for the Xploree consumers.”

Idea Cuts Pack Rates by Upto 62% Across Karnataka Circle

In its efforts to provide its customers with superior and affordable wireless services, Idea Cellular; India’s fastest growing telecom operator, announced upto 62% reduction in the MRP of various recharge packs available in Karnataka. Idea customers in the region can now avail same benefits at a much reduced cost.

The Idea pack priced at Rs. 84 with Idea to Idea local call benefit of 10 paisa/minute is now available at just Rs. 32 (62% reduction) and Rs. 65 pack that provided the benefit of local mobile calls at 30 paisa/minute is now priced at Rs. 29 only (55% reduction). Another pack with STD call benefit at 25 paisa/minute can now be availed at Rs. 28, this pack was earlier priced at Rs. 67 (58% reduction).

All these packs are available at your local retail store with 28 days validity and there will be no 1^st min charging applicable on any of these. Idea has also reduced the prices of other such tariff packs and the details are as follows:

Talking about the newly announced offers for Karnataka,  Siva Ganapathi, Chief Operating Officer, Karnataka, Idea Cellular, said, “In Karnataka, the major portion of this population uses voice as the primary way of communication. Our revised prices for local and STD call packs are aimed at providing the new and existing customers with superior wireless experience at an affordable rate. We hope our customers will make best use of this opportunity and will derive maximum benefit.”

Idea is one of the leading operator in Karnataka serving 8.5 million customers. The company provides 2G services on superior 900MHz, high speed 4G services on 1800Mhz and 3G services through ICR.

Talking about the newly announced offers for Karnataka,  Siva Ganapathi, Chief Operating Officer, Karnataka, Idea Cellular, said, “In Karnataka, the major portion of this population uses voice as the primary way of communication. Our revised prices for local and STD call packs are aimed at providing the new and existing customers with superior wireless experience at an affordable rate. We hope our customers will make best use of this opportunity and will derive maximum benefit.”

Idea is one of the leading operator in Karnataka serving 8.5 million customers. The company provides 2G services on superior 900MHz, high speed 4G services on 1800Mhz and 3G services through ICR.

NestAway to Provide Verifies Rental Assistance for Brigade Residences

Brigade Group signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NestAway, a premier rental solutions provider to become the first builder in India to address the commonly-faced rental concerns of its customers on exclusive basis. 

Through this collaboration, Brigade Group will offer comprehensive rental assistance to all its existing customers as well as 10000 apartments in different stages of construction that are currently in the process of being readied for handover. Brigade customers will now be able to avail of a rental default guarantee that assures them timely rent. 

Brigade Group is one of the India’s leading Real Estate player headquartered in Bangalore has over the past 29 years created many landmarks and innovative projects across South India. It offers property development, property management services, hospitality and education services. The firm develops luxury apartments, integrated enclaves, software and retail facilities, serviced residences, resorts, clubs, schools, hotels, a convention centre and hospitals.

“We have over 22 properties in South India and many residential on the verge of occupation. We have many existing customers looking for quality rental assistance. Assuring clients of an organised rental and maintenance service is a value-addition that we are offering as a first in the building industry," said Om Ahuja, CEO, Residential at Brigade Group.

Jitendra Jagadev, Co-founder and Managing Director of NestAway says, “There is a need for rental assistance for residential houses and apartments in India as well. We have a database of over 18,000 verified customers across India and have provided assistance to about 4,500 home owners so far. Assured rentals and maintenance handling are additional bonuses which help the current and future needs of Indian home buyers.”  

BT & Microsoft Join Forces To Simplify Hybrid Cloud Customers

 

BT has announces BT Compute for Microsoft Azure, a new service that allows BT customers to order Microsoft Azure alongside BT’s own cloud services through its award winning Compute Management System (CMS) online management tool. The service enables customers to build hybrid cloud infrastructure with a single service wrap, contract and on a single bill.

BT customers already use private and public cloud services – also known as hybrid cloud - hosted in BT Compute’s 48 data centres globally. With BT acting as their cloud services integrator, and by using CMS, customers can manage their cloud services end-to-end from datacentre to network, maximising the benefits and minimising the complexity, risk and costs of moving to the cloud. Using local delivery with global scale allows BT to meet the evolving needs of organisations for cloud services and at the same time address the complexity of regulatory requirements.

Integration of Microsoft Azure into the CMS expands the choice for BT customers. They gain access to Microsoft’s rapidly growing collection of integrated cloud services, including leading Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) computing capabilities.

Neil Lock, vice president of BT Compute at Global Services, BT, said: “Hybrid cloud has become a major focus for many large enterprises as they choose a variety of cloud solutions to suit their complex business needs. In fact, BT research suggests that 90 per cent of its largest customers expect to be using a combination of public and private cloud in the next few years. Through our relationship with Microsoft, customers can build their own hybrid cloud environment and enjoy the benefits of Azure whilst removing costly management concerns from the equation. Our Cloud of Clouds portfolio strategy is all about empowering our customers take advantage of the choice, flexibility and control of cloud without concerns about the complexity and security.”

Aziz Benmalek, vice president, Worldwide Cloud and Hosting Services, Microsoft Corp, said: “BT is a natural fit to provide managed cloud services on Azure. Through our relationship with BT, we're able to help customers with their infrastructure management and give them the ability to scale their business in a consistent hybrid cloud environment."

The service will be available during the final quarter of 2016, adding further value to Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute available through BT Cloud Connect Direct. 

Bill Thies from Microsoft Research India Awarded MacArthur Fellowship

Bill Thies, a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research India, has been awarded the MacArthur Fellowship or as popularly known a ‘genius grant’, from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the largest private philanthropies based in the United States. 

According to the MacArthur Foundation the fellowships, are awarded to“talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction”. The award recognizes Bill for his contributions to the socio-economic development of underserved communities. With a deep understanding of the real-world constraints, Bill’s socio-economic research projects bring life-needs like education and healthcare to the less empowered by leveraging the power of the mobile in the rural areas of India.

His recent work includes the 99DOTS initiative; a new model of delivering tuberculosis medications and ensuring adherence to the full treatment regimen, which is crucial for preventing the spread of drug-resistant strains of the disease. Currently being scaled up across all states of India, the initiative utilizes basic mobile phones and augmented blister packaging to provide real-time adherence monitoring of the disease.

In addition to his contributions to the field of healthcare, Bill has been instrumental in driving CGNet Swara, a voice portal for citizen journalism across physically and socially isolated tribal communities in India. In collaboration with the India journalists, Bill and his team developed an interactive voice response (IVR) system that allows users to report or record events of notice via mobile phones. As part of the initiative, a team of moderators review the audio messages received via the IVR and, if warranted, bring the recorded concerns to the attention of government officials.

Bill is also a co-inventor of several low-cost technologies for education, including a mobile application that automatically detects and aggregates student responses using computer vision, as well as an interactive tool that helps translate educational videos into local languages. 

PayPal Extends Refund Period from 60 to 180 Days for Indian Merchants

In a bid to facilitate refunds for customers and merchants, PayPal, one of the world's leading payment platforms, extended the time limit from 60 to 180 days for filing a refund claim, a company official said on Thursday.

The extended refund period will be applicable for all its users covering both goods and services. "The extended refund period is another step towards improving the user experience and enabling them to manage refunds effectively. An extended refund window is a manifestation of our vision of being a customer centric organisation and an enabler of smoother digital payments," said the company's managing director Anupam Pahuja.

With the extension, merchants will get more time to elevate customer concerns and process refunds in a smooth and efficient manner. This will allow them to manage queries independently and in turn reduce the number of escalations thereby helping them to control their fund flow, said the company statement.

US$50 Billion Revenues for Indian BPM Industry by 2020: Nasscom

The Indian Business Process Management (BPM) industry is forecast to touch $50 billion by 2020, according to the software lobby group Nasscom. The BPM industry present revenues amounts to $28 billion in both domestic as well as in exports.

Nasscom has kick-started the two-day Nasscom-BPM Strategy Summit 2016 in Bangalore. Growing at a CAGR of over 8%, the BPM industry clocked a total revenue of US$28 billion during FY2016. With a share of over 25% of the total IT-BPM exports, the industry added 49,000 employees to its workforce, at a rate of 4.7%, taking the total no. of employees to 1,086,000.

The top management attributes analytics and process innovation evolve as key driving factors of Indian BPM that are likely to trigger off the growth. Over the last five years the industry grew about 1.7 times and has about 2,500 companies.

Keshav Murugesh, appointed as the new chairman of Nasscom’s BPM Council said, “The industry that has demonstrated resilience in the face of economic uncertainty by constantly re-inventing itself to meet market needs, is forecast to touch $50 billion by 2020 from the present $21 billion.

“While BPM 1.0 in the late nineties was centered on cost efficiencies and productivity, BPM 3.0 in late 2000 focused on specialisation, process re-engineering, technology-enabled platforms and taking BPM to the rural areas. I believe that the era ahead is that of clients and providers working together even more closely on disruptive innovations.”

“We have a rather audacious goal ahead of us as a Council. We are looking to rebrand the image of the industry from BPO to BPM to signify the evolution and the value that it creates for client companies globally.”

Speaking about the wave of change, R Chandrashekhar, President, Nasscom said, “Automation, digitalized processes and new business models are enabling the BPM sector to take a step forward in adopting a more strategic role as compared to being just another outsourcing platform. The next wave of growth for the industry will come from increasing demand of technologies like advanced analytics, social media, mobility and other new technologies, driving demand for specialised services.”

Nasscom also discussed the preliminary recommendations of its Consumer Interest Protection Task Force (CIPTF) in dealing with reputational risk. These recommendations will be shared with the Government and other relevant agencies in greater detail. The recommendations identify the following intervention points to address cases of tech fraud, and enhance consumer interest protection.  

i.        Prevention via development of a common code of practice featuring standards security, privacy and ethical practices

ii.      Detection and Reporting by setting up an accessible whistleblowing mechanism for registering complaints
iii.    Investigation through an independent govt. investigation agency with the jurisdiction and power to co-ordinate between governmental agencies and departments