Oriflame’s Completes 21 years; To Focus on Cosmetics and Wellness Direct Sales in India

With a clear focus to be the wind beneath the wings of its consultant family, Oriflame is now poised to further empower the growth of its leaders in Southern India. It has announced the launch of a new centre in the Garden City of Bengaluru which will equip its consultant community to better convert their ambitions and aspirations into meaningful opportunities. Located in one of the most prime locations in all of Karnataka - Sumero Towers, Brigade Road, Bengaluru - the recently furbished facility is spread over a sprawling 3,500 sq ft area and will enable Oriflame leaders to expand their horizons as well as the footprint of the brand in the high-potential South India market.

The launch of the facility was celebrated with much pomp and ardour on August 9, 2017. Pradnya Deshpande, Sales Director, Oriflame India & Kunal Verma, Director Operations, Oriflame India along with Anil Budania, Senior Area Manager- South, Oriflame India inaugurated the new centre and shed light on how the event was a harbinger for bigger and better things to come for everyone associated with Oriflame. They underlined how with the new facility, Oriflame would be in a more effective position to extend its 50-year legacy of making the world a more fulfilling and beautiful place.

Speaking on the same, Deshpande said, “Oriflame is driven by an emphatic focus on empowering its consultants and offering them the most effective platform to convert their dreams into reality. We have witnessed a tremendous response from the Bengaluru market and from South India overall. The launch of the new centre is a means to support our business leaders to tap into the wealth of opportunity that this region offers.”    

Verma added, “As a part of our 50-year celebrations, the launch of the new facility is yet another important milestone event. It represents Oriflame’s renewed focus on the South India market and its commitment to facilitate its consultants with the best success plans possible. We are certain that the new facility will translate into more growth for them, greater mindshare for Oriflame and easier access to our superlative range of products to the customers in the region.”

Netcore Solutions Secures #1 Position In Asia For Transactional/Triggered Emails

Netcore Solutions, India’s first and largest marketing technology solution provider, achieved a new benchmark by sending an average 150 (1.5Bn) crore transactional emails and 400 (4Bn) crore (promotional emails) per month in the last quarter for their clients across Asia. India has emerged as one of the fastest growing markets for transactional/triggered emails today, which grew by 220% in FY 2016-17.

The volumes have witnessed an upward growth trajectory buoyed by the transformation in the consumption habits and patterns among all consumers preference to access real time information on multiple platforms and channels simultaneously.

This transformation in the consumption habits and patterns among all consumers is what Netcore broadly terms as the rapidly growing age of ‘consumer parallelism’. Owing to this, the company expects transactional/triggered email volumes to double by FY17-18 in Asia.

Commenting on the market scenario, Kalpit Jain, CEO, Netcore Solutions, said, “Netcore Solutions serves more than 300 brands in Asia from across sectors to disseminate transactional/ triggered emails.

Earlier organisations in India used their in-house transactional platforms to disseminate information to their customers. But lately due to the surge in the volumes of customer base, demonetization and GST, organisations are outsourcing their transactional/ triggered emails to experts.  With a surge in the e-commerce portals and platforms and the upcoming festive season, we anticipate the transactional/triggered email volumes to grow further by 100% YoY.”

Opportunity Galore: India and Asian market

The Indian government’s thrust towards digitization has provided a fillip to the email marketing business. In addition, GST and demonetization provided an added thrust to the volumes of transactional/triggered emails. The company currently holds around 50-60% of the organized email solutions market in the country. The company serves marquee clients such as Yes Bank, Axis Bank, Religare, India Infoline, Ola Cabs, Vodafone, Shine.com, etc.

Netcore is Asia’s leading transactional/ triggered email solution provider. The company handles 33% of Indonesia traffic, 40% of Philippines's traffic, 25% of Malaysia's traffic, 20% of UAE's transactional/triggered email traffic and 66% of India's [organized] triggered/transactional email traffic, all routed through Netcore. Consequently, Netcore has been witnessing a quarter on quarter revenue growth of 30% from its transactional/triggered emails solution.

Transactional/ triggered emails have 8x open rate as compared to traditional promotional emails.  They also generate 6x more –ROI as compared to age-old practice of “batch & blast”. Using Falconide, India’s largest taxi aggregator attained 0.01 milli sec email latency-- which means the customers received the transactional/triggered response from the brand in real-time.

“Structured email marketing tactics to reduce cart abandonment rates, re-engage and retain customers, and derive more from assessing the customer life value of the customer will gather momentum as it offers a direct measurable impact on the bottom-line and ROIs for the brands. These trends will also give rise to increased use of trans-promotional emails in the future,” Jain concluded.

ThoughtWorks Re-Launches Vapasi to Bring Technical Women Back to Work

ThoughtWorks, a global technology company, announced the re-launch of Vapasi, today. Vapasi is a ThoughtWorks India initiative that addresses the gender gap within the senior developer community. The program will enable experienced women developers who are currently on a career break, to re-enter the world of programming.

Vapasi will provide female developers, who have chosen to go on a break, an intensive deep dive into object-oriented programming through a customized designed four week boot camp that will also involve sharpening participants’ programming skills through hands-on sessions. This will ensure that, the returning technologists can keep track of changes, in the ever dynamic IT space. Post the boot camp, participants are encouraged to apply for a 3 or 6 month internship with the company. After the internship, participants who are interested in joining ThoughtWorks, full time, can opt for a specially designed recruitment procedure.

The program’s intention is to also provide female IT professionals with a platform, to define/re-define career paths, connect and identify with role models, exchange experiences and support each other in becoming an active member of the IT community.

Commenting on the Vapasi program, Savita Hortikar, Head of Recruitment, ThoughtWorks India said, “ThoughtWorks has always been passionate about diversity. We realize that an inclusive working environment of passionate and driven women technologists leads to collective and sustainable organizational growth. We are happy to provide a platform in the form of the Vapasi program, for women professionals to continue strong technical careers.”

This program is part of #TalkTechToHer, a ThoughtWorks campaign directed towards women in technology who have more than 6 years of work experience. The campaign wants to elevate the conversation around inclusivity and drive an important message that women can achieve as much as men, or more, when they are presented with the opportunities, without the biases.

This year, Vapasi will be held in Hyderabad, launching in the third week of August. Log on to https://info.thoughtworks.com/vapasi to find out more about the program.

BPCL Awards Microsites Design & Implementation Contract to Octaware Technologies

Octaware Technologies Limited, a leading software and business solutions development company, is pleased to announce that they have been awarded the prestigious contract from BPCL for the design and implementation of their loyalty and brand microsites. Octaware was one of the bidders and was awarded the contract, post evaluation and presentation of efficient solutions and capabilities to the evaluation committee.

The scope of work under the contract includes design and implementation of microsites for BPCL’s loyalty programs – SmartFleet & PetroBonus and other brands - Speed and In & Out. The engagement includes a period of 3 months for implementation of microsites and an additional three years of support and maintenance. Octaware Technology Limited’s expertise in the areas of online portals & enterprise systems helped them win the contract.

Commenting on the development, Aslam Khan, Chief Executive Officer, Octaware Technologies Limited, said, “We are extremely delighted to have won the prestigious contract from BPCL, our first major win in the Indian PSU sector, post our IPO in April 2017. The fact that it falls under one of Octaware’s key focus verticals of governance, demonstrates our consistent and steady inroads in the Indian market, surpassing some of the strong players in the region. We look forward to a long-term business association with BPCL”.

Tata Elxsi Wins Supplier Excellence Award from Jaguar Land Rover

Tata Elxsi, a leading global design and technology services company, has received the prestigious Jaguar Land Rover Supplier Excellence Award for 2017.

This award recognizes companies who consistently demonstrate excellent on-time delivery, continuous quality, technical innovation and consistently meet production and design challenges with a complete understanding of Jaguar Land Rover‘s standards.

Tata Elxsi has been working with Jaguar Land Rover for over 16 years now, and set up an Offshore Development Center for Jaguar Land Rover in 2008, to provide design, technology and engineering services, right from advanced R&D to software and engineering for production programs and complete vehicle program management.

Tata Elxsi was recognized this year for its contribution to an innovative industry-first feature, which is now available in Jaguar Land Rover vehicles.  Tata Elxsi was responsible for the development of this module, including the application, base software, integration and testing. The design delivers a scalable common architecture, which can be used across multiple variants and programs, resulting in not only a differentiated feature for Jaguar Land Rover vehicles, but also significant cost and weight savings along with the benefits of complete ownership of the software.

Speaking about the award, Anil Sondur, Executive Vice President, Tata Elxsi, said, “Winning the Jaguar Land Rover Supplier Excellence Award is a great moment for us, and, reaffirms the fact that we are strategically aligned to Jaguar Land Rover’s vision and roadmap, and understand their commitment to design & technology. We take pride in supporting Jaguar Land Rover to achieve its goals of building  cars that combine distinctive design and superlative technology“

Panasonic Eyes Rs. 2,000 Cr Revenue from Smartphone Business Across India

Japanese tech major Panasonic expects a revenue of Rs. 2,000 crore from its smartphone business this year as it revamps operations by launching new devices and undertakes aggressive marketing.

The company plans to launch as many as 28 devices this year, priced in the range of Rs. 6,000 to Rs.20,000.

“We ended our partnership with Jaina in April and are now pursuing the smartphone business on our own. Last few months have been spent on preparing for the launch and now we are ready to bring in the best products for Indian customers,” Pankaj Rana, Panasonic India Business Head, Mobility Division, told PTI. He added that the company is targeting the youth with its smartphone offerings so as to convert them into buyers of its consumer durables range also.

Panasonic has also roped in actor Taapsee Pannu as brand ambassador, along with Varun Dhawan, for the smartphone vertical.

“We will launch 28 smartphones this year. About 20 will be offline and rest will be online. In the next 30–40 days, we will bring in 11 of these into the offline market,” Rana said. The companyhas been trying to make inroads into the hyper competitive Indian smartphone market but has not met much success.

India is one of the world’s fastest growing smartphone markets. Driven by increasing data consumption and falling data prices, a huge number of feature phone users are also migrating to smartphones and seek affordable devices.

According to research firm IDC, 27 million smartphones were shipped to India in the January–March quarter of 2017.

Samsung led the market with 28.1 per cent share, Xiaomi and Vivo had 14.2 per cent and 10.5 per cent share respectively. Lenovo had 9.5 per cent, while Oppo had 9.3 per cent share in the said quarter.

“We are not running after market share. We are working on strengthening our brand presence and delivering quality products to customers. This year, we hope to get Rs. 2,000 crore in revenue from the smartphone business,” Rana said. He added that last year, the smartphone business had revenue of about Rs. 1,400 crore.

He said the company expects tier II and III cities to account for major chunk of the sales, especially states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal.

Panasonic will also use its 250 exclusive retail counters that sell its other products to showcase its handsets. “Apart from the exclusive counters, we are working with distributors across states and large format retail stores to reach customers,” he said.

Mahindra Unveils Superior Tech Tractor Jivo for South Indian Market

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.’s Farm Equipment Sector (FES), a part of the US$19 billion Mahindra Group today announced the launch of the Mahindra JIVO in Bengaluru. A new age, superior technology small tractor platform in the sub 25HP category, the Mahindra JIVO is suitable for row crop and horticulture farming. The tractor is available in the 4WD version with engine power of 24HP and PTO power of 22HP. It will be sold in Karnataka with immediate effect at a starting price of Rs. 4.00 lacs for the 4WD model, ex-showroom Karnataka.

With the launch of JIVO, Mahindra entered the growing segment of Horticulture and Row crop farming. Mahindra JIVO has been designed keeping in mind the latent needs of this specialized farming segment and is an ideal choice for the farmers owing to its narrow and compact build and high power.  

Developed ground up, the Mahindra JIVO is a highly versatile tractor that can be used across multiple applications including crop care, land preparation and inter culture activities. Mahindra’s first sub 25HP 4WD tractor, it is a high performance tractor that leads the segment with best-in-class torque and fuel efficiency. Further, its highest PTO HP and narrow turning radius make it ideal for spraying in vineyard applications.

With Innovation and Technology as its bedrock, Mahindra is working on redefining the face of farming in the future. The company embarked on various initiatives towards this end and the recently launched Farming 3.0 platform will help in taking farm mechanization to the next level.

Speaking at the Mahindra JIVO launch in Bengaluru, Ravindra Shahane, Vice President – Marketing, Farm Equipment Sector, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. “We are happy to present Indian farmers with the Mahindra JIVO that will help in small farm mechanisation with its multi-application suitability. With its compact size, stylish and comfortable design, class leading power, attractive price, best in class PTO HP and high fuel efficiency, I am sure that the Mahindra JIVO will be an instant hit in this specialized farming segment”.

The tractor is specially designed for operator comfort. Its small steering wheel, easy to operate pedals, gear shift lever located on fenders and suspension seat make the JIVO extremely comfortable to operate over long hours.

The Mahindra JIVO also comes with modern styling. With its wrap around head lamps, silver add on, attractive decals and sculpted bonnet this stylish tractor is sure to catch the attention of the farmer.

The new Mahindra JIVO is equipped with key features for more benefits:

-       Fuel efficient Mahindra DI engine – Best-in-class fuel efficiency

-       Automatic Depth & Draft Control (ADDC) – Ideal for land preparation activities

-       8 Forward + 4 Reverse transmission – More speed options to choose from

-       Side shift gears – Open floor space & comfortable gear shifting

-       High ground clearance – Useful in crop care applications

-       4WD – More traction even on wet fields

-       2 Speed PTO – Improves rotavator application

-       750 KG lift capacity – Best in class lift allows the farmer to operate bigger implements

-       High top speed of 25 KMPH – More trips to move farm produce

-       Highest PTO power – For continuous spraying in Vineyard applications

The Mahindra JIVO 245 4WD will also be available in unique two tone red & silver sheet metal and will be equipped with Mahindra DiGiSENSE technology which will enable farmers to get updates on their tractors’ performance as well alerts on a real time basis.

Going forward, a 20 HP 2WD product has been planned on the JIVO platform, which will be launched during October - December 2017 period.