PRS Oberoi Says The Oberoi, New Delhi to Open in January, 2018

Addressing the Sixty-seventh Annual General Meeting of EIH Limited (the flagship Company of The Oberoi Group) held in Kolkata today, P.R.S. Oberoi, the Executive Chairman said, “The Oberoi, New Delhi was originally scheduled to open in early April, 2018 after complete renovation. The progress on site has been very satisfactory and the new hotel is likely to open in January, 2018. The Oberoi, New Delhi is expected to retain its iconic position in the Capital which it has enjoyed since it first opened in the year 1965.”

P.R.S. Oberoi added, “during the first quarter of 2017-18, Total Revenue of the Company has been Rs. 303 crores as against Rs. 279 crores last year, an increase of approximately 9%.  In spite of moderate increase in revenue, primarily because of refund of interest on taxes and various adjustments of other duties and taxes, the Company has shown much better performance in terms of profitability compared to last year. EBIDTA has been Rs 47 Crores as compared to Rs. 33 Crores last year, an increase of 40%. Profit before tax has been Rs. 18 Crores as compared to a loss of Rs. 19 Crores last year.  Profit after tax has been Rs. 11Crores as compared to loss after tax of Rs. 12 Crores last year.

Oberoi was optimistic that the Company will improve revenue and profitability at its hotels and business units to partly offset the revenue loss from the closure of The Oberoi, New Delhi. The earlier than expected opening of The Oberoi, New Delhi in January, 2018 will further contribute to the revenue and profitability of the Company.

Oberoi stated that Oberoi Hotels & Resorts has been voted the ‘World’s Best Hotel Brand’ by the Travel + Leisure, World’s Best Awards Readers’ Survey, 2016 for the second consecutive year. Oberoi Hotels & Resorts was also rated the ‘World’s Leading Luxury Hotel Brand’ for the fifth consecutive year by World Travel Awards, 2016. 

On the people front, Oberoi stated that the Company has been recognised as one of the best employers in the ‘Aon Best Employers India-2017’ survey.

Oberoi said that “these accolades are a testimony to the excellent facilities and exceptional service provided to guests by a team of passionate and committed individuals.”

In conclusion, Oberoi said that The Oberoi Marrakech is in the final phase of completion and is expected to open in the last quarter of 2017.

Boeing Forecasts Demand for 2,100 New Airplanes Over Next 20 Years in India

Boeing forecasts a demand for 2,100 new airplanes in India, valued at $290 billion, over the next 20 years. The company released  the new numbers this week as part of its annual Current Market Outlook (CMO) briefings for India.

“Commercial aerospace demand in India continues to grow at unprecedented rates,” said Dinesh Keskar, senior vice president, Asia Pacific and India Sales, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “The increasing number of passengers combined with a strong exchange rate, low fuel prices and high load factors bodes well for India’s aviation market, especially for the low-cost carriers.”

Single-aisle airplanes, like the 737 MAX family, will continue to account for the largest share of new deliveries, with airlines in India needing approximately 1,780 airplanes.

“The 737 MAX is the fastest-selling airplane in Boeing history because customers throughout the world, including India, want its combination of performance, flexibility and efficiency,” said Keskar. “Boeing also continues to offer the most complete family of widebody airplanes, as evidenced by our more than 85 percent in-service market share in India.”

Other important findings from the annual outlook include:

·   Traffic growth is more than 20 percent, far exceeding the global average of 7.3 percent

·    Domestic passenger traffic increased 23 percent from 2016

·     Low-cost carriers continue to account for more than 60 percent of all flights

Boeing projects a worldwide demand for 41,030 new airplanes over the next 20 years, with India carriers needing more than 5.1 percent of the total global demand. Boeing's Current Market Outlook is the longest running jet forecast and regarded as the most comprehensive analysis of the aviation industry. 

Forward-Looking Information Is Subject to Risk and Uncertainty
Certain statements in this release may be "forward-looking" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "expects," "forecasts," "projects," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar expressions are used to identify these forward-looking statements. Examples of forward-looking statements include statements relating to our future plans, business prospects, financial condition and operating results, as well as any other statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions about future events that may not prove to be accurate. These statements are not guarantees and are subject to risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict.

Many factors could cause actual events to differ materially from these forward-looking statements, including economic conditions in the United States and globally, general industry conditions as they may impact us or our customers, and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any such statement, except as required by law.

Accenture Develops Artificial Intelligence-Powered Solution to Help Improve How Visually Impaired People Live and Work

Accenture has developed a new artificial intelligence (AI)--powered solution to help the visually impaired improve the way they experience the world around them and enhance their productivity in the workplace. The solution, called Drishti, was developed as part of Accenture’s focus on Tech4Good, which aims to apply technology to improve the way the world lives and works by solving complex social challenges.

Drishti, which means “vision” in Sanskrit, provides smart phone-based assistance using AI technologies such as image recognition, natural language processing and natural language generation capabilities to describe the environment of a visually impaired person. Initially developed and tested with 10 blind professionals through a collaboration with the National Association for the Blind in India, the solution provides narration to the user on the number of people in a room, their ages, genders and even emotions based on facial expressions. It can also be used to identify and narrate text from books and documents, including currency notes, and identify obstructions like glass doors to improve the safety of the user.

Accenture, which has an unwavering commitment to inclusion and diversity, plans to introduce Drishti to more than 100 visually impaired employees in India. The solution is currently being piloted at Accenture in South Africa, and a Spanish language version is being tested with Accenture employees in Argentina.

“Accenture believes diversity is a source of innovation, creativity and competitive advantage,” said Paul Daugherty, chief technology & innovation officer, Accenture. “This Tech4Good solution is a great illustration of how AI technology can empower humans by augmenting their capabilities so they can achieve more for themselves and the world around them. This work reflects our longstanding commitment to inclusion and diversity, and our effort to create a ‘truly human’ environment where people can be who they are, and be their best, both professionally and personally.”

“Accenture shares our mission to empower the visually challenged in the workplace. Through the innovative use of technology, we’ve seen first-hand how the Drishti solution Accenture developed can enable visually impaired individuals to lead more inclusive and productive lives,” said Pallavi Kadam, executive director, National Association for the Blind in India. “This project makes us excited for a not-too-distant future where the widespread use of technologies such as this will have a significant and positive impact on the blind community.”

“Drishti is a powerful example of how advanced and emerging technologies can be used for good to address complex human challenges. This project resulted from an opportunity we saw to build a more inclusive workplace for our visually impaired colleagues,” said Sanjay Podder, managing director of Accenture Labs in Bangalore, Accenture Tech4Good lead and Eisenhower Fellow. “By harnessing the rapid advancements in AI technology, we’ve demonstrated – through the pilot with the National Association for the Blind in India, as well as with Accenture’s own employees – the impact innovative solutions such as this can have on improving the way people live and work.”

NTT Communications Expands Presence in India to Meet Growing Digital Demand

NTT Communications Corporation, the ICT solutions and international communications business within the NTT Group has announced the launch of international data network services in India through its affiliate NTT Communications India Network Services (NTTCINS). The acquisition of this licence in India follows the initiation of construction of the Company’s two new data centers in Mumbai and Bangalore, through Netmagic, a subsidiary of NTT Com and one of the leading managed hosting and cloud service providers in India.

This reinforces the Company’s commitment to enable customers with high-quality infrastructure services as well as the management and security services to meet their Information and Communications Technology (ICT) outsourcing needs.

NTT Com acquired Virtual Network Operator - International Long Distance (VNO-ILD) network licence in March this year. NTT Com has been providing Arcstar Universal One services as its international network services, by partnering with local carriers. The Company implements its own value-added services such as Network Virtualization Functions (NVF), while utilizing the infrastructure of its partner carriers in India.

NTT Com is the first Japanese ICT provider of VNO-ILD network licence in India.

On top of this move, NTT Com has decided to invest more than 160 million USD on the two data centers, which will become operational by April 2018. These data centers will add nearly 500,000 square feet of gross floor space at full build. This brings NTT Com’s total gross footprint to 1,100,000 square feet in India.

“India has been a key strategic market for us with the accelerating shift of IT services from traditional enterprise data centres into the cloud-based services,”said NTT Com President and CEO Tetsuya Shoji. “For the past few years, our business in India has consistently grown over 35 percent annually. With further expansion of data center foot print and addition of international data network services to our service portfolio, we aim to meet the growing market needs for Mobility, e-Commerce, Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud and Big Data.”

“There is a continuous demand for a resilient and scalable IT Infrastructure backbone in this digital era. And, our Company has a rich history of evolving itself ahead of the curve to meet the dynamic requirements of our clients' businesses,” said Sharad Sanghi MD & CEO of Netmagic (An NTT Communications Company). “Our strategy is to accommodate this demand and ensure that our network service offering and data centres enable our ICT clients with rich IT infrastructure for maximum connectivity and enhanced productivity. With this two new data centers, Netmagic becomes one of the largest data center service providers in India.”

Built to the exacting global design standards of NTT Com, the new data centers in Mumbai and Bangalore will be accommodating 2,750 racks / 22MW power and 1,500 racks / 15 MW power respectively. With NTT Com's high-speed, high-volume Internet backbone and network services, customers can accelerate their business development to meet the increasing demand of Cloud services.

Netmagic provides Colocation service with a global network of data centers operated by NTT Com under the Nexcenter brand, as well as Managed Hosting, Cloud, Network, Managed Security, Disaster Recovery and Software-Defined Storage services to more than 2,000 customers globally, across banking and financial services, insurance, e-commerce, healthcare, manufacturing, media & entertainment, IT & ITeS, logistics, hospitality, and education. The Company was the first in India to launch services – Cloud Computing, Managed Security, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) and Software-Defined Storage.

BookMyShow Acquires Nfusion for its Audio Entertainment Offerings

India’s largest online entertainment ticketing company BookMyShow has announced that it has acquired Nfusion for an undisclosed amount in an all cash deal. This comes at a time when BookMyShow after redefining the movies and events ticketing space, is well on its path to become the ultimate entertainment destination for users.

Nfusion was set up in Middle East in 2009 by Shoaib G.M. Khan, Sivagurunathan S and Prabhakar Reddy as a HD video-on-demand platform which allowed its users to stream videos online. While Shoaib (alumnus of BITS Pilani), designed, built and managed the end to end media platform, Prabhakar (alumnus of BITS Pilani and Harvard Business School) led the Product, Monetization and Business Development at Nfusion. Sivagurnathan (alumnus of BITS Pilani and IIM Bangalore) designed and managed the information security and infrastructure for Nfusion's media portal.   

Nfusion’s scalable tech solutions, especially CMS (content management system), will be key to the success of BookMyShow’s foray into audio entertainment. The acquisition not just provides BookMyShow a robust tech platform but also an experienced team which will provide a fillip to BookMyShow’s audio entertainment offerings. While the Nfusion team will be headed by Shoaib, Sivagurunathan will lead the Architecture and Devops teams at BookMyShow.

Parikshit Dar, Director, BookMyShow said, “We have already established our video content vertical and are now excited to foray into audio entertainment through our offering ‘Jukebox’. The Nfusion team has brought with them immense experience, innovation capability as well as expertise in building and managing scalable tech solutions.  With them and our music label partners, we look forward to offering the widest variety and possibly the best curated audio content to our users.” 

Through Jukebox, BookMyShow already offers free music downloads to its users. Anytime users book movie tickets on BookMyShow, they are rewarded with music credits which can be redeemed to download their favorite songs on the Android or iOS app. Currently, BookMyShow offers over 1.5 million songs to choose from and has already been witnessing 300% growth m-o-m in the number of downloads.

To lead this vertical, BookMyShow has appointed Aditya Kuber as Associate Vice President – Audio Entertainment. He will report to BookMyShow CEO and Founder, Ashish Hemrajani. Aditya’s role will be instrumental in driving partnerships with music labels and distributors, creating exclusive audio content for BookMyShow users, and product marketing. He brings with him over 17 years of experience and has a demonstrated history of working across media, publishing, digital, and advertising.

BookMyShow had earlier acquired Chennai based online ticketing player TicketGreen in 2013. The company then acquired a majority stake inBengaluru-based social media analytics start-up Eventifier in 2015 and Chennai based fan relationship management (FRM) solutions provider, Fantain Sports Pvt. Ltd. in 2016. In 2017, BookMyShow acquired Hyderabad based online movie ticketing platform MastiTickets, invested in Pune based DIY platform Townscript and also acquired Mumbai based local food and restaurant recommendation engine Burrp.

Samsung Pay Now Available for SBI Debit Cards Across India

State Bank of India and Samsung India has announced the availability of Samsung Pay for higher variants of SBI Debit Card. With this collaboration, ~130 million SBI Debit Cardholders will be able to tap and pay using a wide range of Samsung smartphones at merchant outlets having Card acceptance machines.

Samsung Pay works on 2.5 million Point of Sale (PoS) Card machines across the country through its revolutionary Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology. Samsung Pay is currently available on a wide range of Samsung smartphones, enabling consumers to make offline payments without the need for a physical Card.

The coming together of Samsung - the world’s biggest smartphones company and SBI - India’s biggest bank creates convenience for millions of consumers and provides a major boost to Government of India’s Digital India initiative.

“Both Samsung and SBI are household names in India, and it is a momentous occasion for us to collaborate on Samsung Pay and extend an innovative solution that is transforming people’s lives worldwide. Samsung Pay, with its many ‘Make for India’ innovations, is revolutionising the way people carry out their day-to-day payments & transactions. To help more consumers avail of our innovative payment system, we have also introduced Samsung Pay to our mid-segment smartphones like Galaxy J7 Pro. We recently introduced Samsung Pay Mini to cater to the unique requirements of mid-segment consumers too,” Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India, said.

Rajnish Kumar, MD, National Banking Group, SBI said, “Bank aims to be the Banker to Digital India and has been at the fore-front of all digital initiatives in the banking space. We are committed towards increasing the share of digital initiatives in products, services and transactions, supported by technologically advanced backend operations. Tie-up with Samsung Pay is one such initiative which will give our customers an additional reason to go digital.’’

Samsung Pay, launched in India this year, has already received overwhelming response from consumers, who have instantly fallen in love with its Simple, Secure & Everywhere proposition. Samsung Pay comes with Samsung KNOX, Samsung’s defence-grade security system that is designed to keep consumers’ transactions safe.

Available on Galaxy J7 Pro

Samsung Pay will also be available on the newly-launched Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro smartphone, which comes with superior specs - 5.5” FHD sAMOLED display, 13MP + 13MP camera configurations and a stylish metal unibody design. The availability of Samsung Pay on Galaxy J7 Pro smartphone will increase its adoption as Galaxy J7 Pro is the most affordable smartphone in Samsung’s smartphone range with Samsung Pay functionality.

Galaxy J series is India’s most popular smartphone series, accounting for one in four smartphones sold in the country. Galaxy J7 Pro is now available across retail channels at INR 20,900.

Samsung Pay is also available on: Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S7, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy A5 (2016), Galaxy A7 (2016), Galaxy A5 (2017), Galaxy A7 (2017) and Galaxy A9 Pro.

SBI Debit Card - Samsung Pay Offer

Samsung Pay consumers holding eligible SBI Debit Cards can avail a flat INR 100 cashback on minimum transaction amount of INR 500. The cardholder can avail maximum cashback of INR 500 per Card, during the offer period i.e., from August 01, 2017 till August 31, 2017.

Samsung Pay

Samsung Pay is a complete payments platform. Apart from cards, Samsung Pay users can also make fast and secure UPI payments through P2P money transfers and also QR code scan and online payments wherever UPI payments are accepted. Consumers can add their SBI accounts and accounts of all banks which are on UPI to Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay also supports wallet payments - Paytm on Samsung Pay and Mobikwik and Paytm on Samsung Pay Mini, which is designed to cater to the unique requirements of Indian mid-segment consumers. Samsung Pay Mini provides a comprehensive platform for UPI and e-wallets. Samsung Pay will continue to build and bring to market other payment features going forward.

Samsung Pay works with Samsung’s patented MST technology as well as with Near Field Communication (NFC). MST replicates a card swipe by wirelessly transmitting magnetic waves from the supported Samsung device to a standard card reader. Through MST, Samsung Pay will work seamlessly on a majority of PoS terminals in India. Samsung Pay, fortified with three levels of security—fingerprint authentication, card tokenization and Samsung’s defence-grade mobile security platform Samsung KNOX—makes for an invulnerable payment service.

Bengaluru, Mumbai, NCR Record Strong Office Rentals in Q1 2017

Office rentals in the cities of National Capital Region, Mumbai and Bengaluru will continue to outperform thanks to strong demand from office space occupiers, according to a recent RICS’ India Commercial Property Monitor. Bengaluru is in fact expected to do better than the other two cities.

RICS’ India Commercial Property Monitor is a quarterly guide to the trends in the commercial property investment and occupier markets. The guide is based on survey questionnaires sent out to RICS members over a month long period ending 10 July, 2017. Respondents were asked to compare conditions over the latest three months with the previous three months and give their views on the outlook.

Office rental forecasts over the next twelve months have been lowered slightly to 3.3% in Q2 from 3.5% in Q1 of 2017. This is due to a moderation in rent expectations for prime office space, though office rental forecasts are still seen up 6.3% over the next year.

“Strong economic growth is generating demand for office space.The last two years 2015 and 2016 have been quite good for the segment with pan India office vacancy at its lowest over 5 years. Vacancy levels in some cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune is around 5-10%. On the supply side, there is a shortage of grade A office space. It is less than half of the current office stock across top eight cities at 280 million sq ft. The gap between demand and supply of good quality office space Is keeping office rentals strong,” said Sachin Sandhir, Global Managing Director-Emerging Business, RICS South Asia.

Retail properties in NCR are however expected to see significantly less rental value appreciation over the next year than their counterparts in Bengaluru and Mumbai. The Q2 2017 results show occupier demand continuing to rise in the office sector, while, similar to Q1, respondents reported virtually no change in demand across the industrial and retail segments over the quarter.

investor demand was flat in Q2 though investment enquiries for offices increased during the quarter. This trend was mirrored in the data on enquiries from foreign buyers. The supply of property for investment purposes was unchanged for the third consecutive quarter across all three market segments.

Respondents are modestly bullish on capital values over the next three months. However, this is mainly driven by the office segment as the outlook for the industrial and retail segments are flat over the next quarter. Respondents however do expect capital values to increase across all market segments over the next year.

When viewed at the city level, respondents revised capital value forecasts over the next year lower, particularly in Bangalore. Headline capital values are now seen increasing 3.9% over the next year after contributors forecast a 6.1% appreciation last quarter. However, this market is still seen outperforming Mumbai and the NCR where headline capital values are seen up 3.8% and 2.9% over the next twelve months, respectively.

The Occupier Sentiment Index inched higher to +7 from +6 in Q1. This slightly positive reading indicates marginally positive momentum in the occupier market.

The Investment Sentiment Index moderated slightly from +9 in Q1 to +6 in Q2. This is consistent with only modest overall momentum behind the investment market.