Infosys Foundation Inks Rs 5.92 Crore MoU with Visakha Jilla Nava Nirman Samithi

Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Infosys, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Visakha Jilla Nava Nirman Samithi (VJNNS) to construct 100 gravity fed water supply systems in tribal villages of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The endowment of Rs 5.92 crore will be used to promote good sanitation practices and create efficient water management systems in all target villages.

               

VJNNS an NGO in Andhra Pradesh, aims at making potable drinking water available to remote tribal villages in the districts of Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam. Through this partnership, Infosys Foundation intends to provide an impetus to VJNNS’s objective of constructing a gravity fed water supply system that will help 100 tribal villages and 40,000 beneficiaries using pipelines. This will not only help enhance health but also aid in reducing water-borne diseases.

Speaking about the MoU, Sudha Murty, Chairperson of Infosys Foundation, said, “Drinking water supply and sanitation in India continue to be a key concern. The Foundation endeavors to promote good sanitation practices and aims to train local communities to effectively manage water supply systems through workshops. Under this project, local communities will also be taught to manage a village development fund.”

BookMyShow on a Tech Innovation Spree; Testing with WhatsApp

BookMyShow today announced that it has become the first Indian online ticketing brand to participate in the WhatsApp business pilot. As part of this test, BookMyShow has made WhatsApp a default ticket confirmation channel for all its users.

This means that users who book tickets on BookMyShow will now receive a message on WhatsApp with the confirmation text or an M-ticket (mobile ticket) QR Code, along with an email.

Ravdeep Chawla, Head of Product, BookMyShow said, “At BookMyShow, we are constantly taking measures to enhance our users’ experience on our platforms. Keeping up with their changing preferences and habits, we decided to integrate BookMyShow with WhatsApp for its pilot. WhatsApp has definitely become a preferred mode of communication for millions of people in our country and we could identify tremendous value in making it a default ticket confirmation channel. We have already started rolling out this feature and over the course of next few weeks, we aim to scale it to cover our entire user base.” 

BookMyShow had recently introduced ‘Plan-it’, the in-app messaging feature for friends and families to interact with each other in real time, suggesting movies, show times, venue options and eventually complete the movie tickets booking from within the chat window.

Lenovo’s “Killer Note” to Go on Open Sale from Sept 15 on Amazon.in

Lenovo India’s latest edition of its bestselling K Note series, the K8 Note, will go on open sale beginning Friday, 15th September, 2017 on Amazon.in. The K8 Note has received tremendous response from the market and was sold out within 8 minutes of going on sale on Amazon.in last month. The company is now opening the availability of the device for discerning consumers who want a holistic experience from their smartphone.

Targeted at the young and spirited who want more from their device at a pocket-friendly price, the Lenovo K8 Note made history as the first device in Lenovo’s K Note series to run on stock Android and offer dual cameras. Designed with a metal body, it is available in two colors: Venom Black and Fine Gold. The K8 Note is also powered by a 10-core processor, backed by 4GB RAM, 64GB storage (and a dedicated memory card slot), Dolby(R) Atmos(R) sound, as well as a large 4000 mAh battery with a 15W Turbo ChargerTM.

As a special open sale days offer, customers can exchange their old devices for the new Lenovo K8 Note and receive additional Rs 1000 off for their old smartphone. In addition, consumers using a HSBC credit or debit card will also receive a cashback of Rs 1000.

The most outstanding hardware feature of the Lenovo K8 Note - also known as the “Killer Note” for its great photography features - is its dual camera set-up, which is comprised of a 13.0-megapixel primary and 5.0-megapixel secondary depth sensor. The dual cameras work seamlessly together, allowing users to take photographs with amazing depth of field (up to virtual DSLR-equivalent F/1.2), making it one of the best cameras in its class. Samples of images taken by a select group of photographers using the K8 Note can be seen at @KillerShots. And for those who love snapping themselves, there is a 13.0-megapixel selfie camera with a full light LED flash. Additionally, Lenovo K8 Note’s multimedia experience is amazing superior with TheatreMax. 

You can view all the content you want with a much larger virtual screen once you put on a VR headset. Dolby Atmos ensures that you get high quality sound from your device - whether it is the thump of a drum or the buzzing of a bee in a forest. The phone even has a dedicated music key to play, pause, or switch tracks. It also comes with an advanced water repellent coating that protects it from spills, splashed or getting caught in the rain!

Pricing and availability

The Lenovo K8 Note is priced at Rs 12,999/- for 3GB+32GB variant and Rs 13999/- for 4GB+64GB variant and will now be available via open sale, exclusively on Amazon.in.

Mahindra Electric Crosses 50 Million Electric Kms on Indian Roads

Mahindra Electric, a pioneer in the development and manufacture of electric vehicles (EV) and a part of India’s US$19 billion Mahindra Group, today announced the completion of 50 million electric kilometers on Indian roads.

Together, the e2o and e2oPlus electric cars have contributed to a saving of 2,50,000 kgs of carbon dioxide emission into the environment which is the equivalent of planting 25,000new trees. This milestone marks the beginning of a greener future for India and announces the arrival of an Electric Mobility revolution.

Commenting on this milestone, Mahesh Babu, CEO Mahindra Electric “Crossing the 50 million electric kilometers milestone comes at a time when the Government has significantly increased its thrust on electric vehicles and accelerated the process of large scale adoption of electric vehicles through its Electric Mobility Mission 2030.  This is a proud moment for us and reaffirms our role in India’s electric mobility revolution.”

Babu, further said, “To put this 50 million electric kilometers into perspective, imagine the e2o and e2oPlus doing a trip from Earth to Mars. We would like to thank our customers, the EV pioneers of India, for their support that has enabled us to reach the country’s first EV milestone and helped us to set out on the next phase of this exciting journey.”

India’s leading electric car, the e2oPlus has smart technology and telematics integrated into it. These features allow the vehicle to remain connected with the customer as well as Mahindra Electric. Telematics help Mahindra Electric engineers to remotely diagnose and fix any issues that may come up in the vehicle. It also helps collect big data to help fine tune and improve the technology that is at the core of these vehicles.

Second Edition of India’s Largest Internet of Things Platform - IoT India Congress 2017 Held in B'lore

The second edition of India’s largest conclave on IoT, the IoT India Congress 2017 kick-started its two day event today at the Park Plaza Hotel, Bangalore. IoT India Congress 2017 is the platform of platforms for empowering business outcomes using the Internet of Things.  Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India inaugurated the event, which was followed by the formal launch of the Healthcare Live Experience Zone.The two-day session will focus on eight tracks - Healthcare, Manufacturing, Smart Living, Emerging Technologies, Ganga Rejuvenation, Telecom, Standards and Digital Payments & Financial Inclusion along with workshops on topics ranging from inter-device communication using blockchain to Raspberry Pi for IoT applications and essentials of drone flying. More than 80 speakers from various leading companies like GE, Philips, Tata Group, IBM, AT&T Global Network Services, Accenture, Microsoft, Fortis Hospital, Ola, Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, Zoomcar, Hitachi, Bosch etc. will participate in this event and discuss how IoT is changing the landscape of the industry. 
The congress is observed to be the only platform that can readily impact businesses / revenues not only for the entire ecosystem of technology business beginning from chip manufacturers, gateway providers, telecom operators, system integrators, IoT platform and solution providers, but also those segments / user communities who might not yet look at IoT as a business game changer for them.
Few of the key highlights of the congress will be the Healthcare Live, SME Meets etc., that will bring together an end-to-end ecosystem of the Internet of Things – to work with each other and speed the IoT movement in India. The platform will achieve this through CEO meets, product and solutions discovery for SMEs, funding opportunities and mentorship for startups and academic projects, idea discovery avenues for VCs and incubators, and policy inputs for government agencies.
Few of the eminent speakers at the event are:

 The Congress will also host the prestigious IoT Thought Leadership Award 2017, where Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Founder of Art of Living will be the Special Guest. The IoT Start-Up Awards 2017 will recognise exemplary work done by start-ups in the IoT space.

·         Dr Gopichand Katragadda, Chief Technology Officer, Tata Group

·         Satish Mittal, CTO, Senior VP, Vodafone

·         Monika Gupta, Former CIO B2B, Bharti Airtel

·         Avnish Sabharwal, Managing Director – Digital, Strategy & Innovation, Accenture

·         Bala Girisaballa, MD, Microsoft

·         Dr. Rajkumar Deshpande, Consultant Neurosurgeon, Fortis Hospitals

·         Farhana Haque, Vice President & Business Head IOT Vodafone

·         Jeurgen Hase, CEO, Unlimit powered by Reliance

·         Nigel Fine, Chief Executive, Institution of Engineering and Technology

·         Pradeep David, General Manager, Universal Robots ABB

·         Jeremy Watson, President, Institution of Engineering and Technology

·         Raghuram Joshi, General Manager, Enterprise Business Solutions & Services, Bosch

·         Sanjeev Malhotra, CEO – IOT Centre of Excellence, Nasscom

·         Ravi Ramaswamy, Sr. Director & Head – Health Systems, Philips Innovation Campus

·         Srinivas Prasad, CEO, Philips Innovation Campus

·         TV Ramachandran, President, Broadband India Forum

·         Ankit Jain, Vice President & Head, Ola

·         Vivek Mehrotra, Director, Regional Digital Strategy & Transformation, GE- Predix

·         Greg Moran, Co-Founder,  Zoomcar

·         Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairman of IET India IoT Panel

·         Shekhar Sanyal, Director and country Head of the IET

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Dr. Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairman of the IET India IoT Panel and President, Aeris Communications said, "The IoT India Congress started with a vision to provide people a platform beyond the borders of organizations to come together and create the roadmap for IoT adoption. IoT is a disruptive technology that is connecting and encompassing multiple sectors and we at IET IoT Panel understand the need to connect the industry leaders to further the growth and adoption of IoT technology.  We are happy to see the overwhelming participation of IoT enthusiasts at the second edition of the IoT India Congress. We look forward to the enriching sessions tomorrow."

“This edition of the IoT India Congress is showcasing the outstanding application of IoT deployment in various sectors in India. The internet of things is a platform business and instead of working in silos, it requires businesses to come together and integrate ideas and technologies to create the future.  With this congress, we aim to break barriers, provide a platform to various players to come together and take back the learning that can further the growth of IoT adoption in India. This time we have multiple tracks and with the inclusion of Argonaut and Healthcare Live sessions, the excitement from participants is endearing. With more sectors and areas being IoT enabled, it is great to see the entire tech community come together on one platform to further the IoT revolution. ”said Shekhar Sanyal, Director and Country Head of the IET.

More than 700 Industry Experts Attended CLOUDSEC 2017 in Mumbai

CLOUDSEC, the leading internet security conference in Asia Pacific and Europe, today held its seventh annual event in Mumbai today. Hosted by Trend Micro Incorporated, CLOUDSEC 2017 gathered more than 700 industry experts from across the globe to meet renowned industry thought-leaders who shared their insights to the business community. Over 20 eminent speakers provided next-generation solutions, and instructed the organizations to ‘Level-Up’ their fight against cybercriminals.

"Security can no longer be considered as an after-thought in the larger scheme of things, rather it should be a well-thought out investment by enterprises, looking to catapult themselves in a competitive and technology-driven environment. Companies need to adopt stringent measures to stay ahead of cyber criminals," said Dhanya Thakkar, Managing Director and Vice President, APAC, Trend Micro.

He further added, “CLOUDSEC is the best platform for attendees to build their threat intelligence and improvise their knowledge through the track sessions, panel discussion and other activities. It gives them the opportunity to know and be aware of the latest security strategies and the ways to protect against the attackers.”

Present at the event, Nilesh Jain, Country Manager (India and SAARC), Trend Micro said, “Targeted attacks, Ransomware and Business Email Compromise (BEC) are some of the newer and stealthier security challenges faced by enterprises of today. As the cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem become more interconnected, it is essential for organizations to reevaluate and redefine their understanding of threats, risks, and solutions in an ever-changing landscape.”

During the event, Bill McGee, Senior Vice President of Hybrid Cloud Security, Trend Micro, offered insights on the latest and upcoming trends in cloud computing, which may challenge current information security mindset and practices. Simon Piff, Vice President of Security Practice, IDC, explained the future of IT security technologies and focused on the structural changes organizations need to make to ensure that the depth of innovation can be best leveraged to create a holistic and robust enterprise security strategy and Sunil Varkey, Vice President and CISO, Wipro Technologies, elaborated on trust and assurance, in the digital world.

Also present at the event was, Christophe Durand, Police Senior Superintendent, Interpol Global Complex for innovation (IGCI) who explained how an enhanced attribution process could help in mitigating the cyber risk. Vishal Salvi, Chief Information Security Officer, Infosys, shared his perspective on Ransomware and how companies need to treat data protection proactively, getting the right solutions and processes in place to prepare for the inevitable attack.

The event concluded with a closing keynote on evolving era of cloud by Nilesh Jain, Country Manager (India and SAARC), Trend Micro; Mohit Pande, Country Manager – India, Google Cloud and Arun Kumar Parameswaran, Managing Director, VMware India, who were the panelists.

National Truckers Programme - Eyes OK Please- Unveiled by Sightsavers

Sightsavers, a leading global development organization working in over 30 countries to combat avoidable blindness and promote equal opportunities for visually impaired, unveiled “Eyes OK Please”, a report on National Truckers Programme, named RAAHI – Road Safety and Assurance By Healthy Eyes, in the presence of its honorary brand ambassador and internationally acclaimed actor, Shri Kabir Bedi. The programme will reach out to 500,000 truck drivers and helpers of the laborious 9 million truck drivers and transporters community present in India. This 9 million-truck driver community transports 65% of national cargo by road.    

With an aim to understand the situation of refractive errors and spectacle usage among truckers and transporters who were part of Sightsavers’ interventions, the study spanned across 3 years analyzed vision for thousands of truckers, including a 360-degree testing of all normal visual faculties. Drawing from the research-backed insight that good vision accounts for as much as 95% of all sensory requirements to drive safely, the National Truckers Programme detects visual problems, provides spectacles or other service/ referrals. This intervention is an attempt to pre-empt visual problems among drivers, since road travel accidents have an annual death toll of 1.2 million worldwide and up to 50 million injuries. The findings corroborate an earlier study by road safety experts CSRI-CRRI and IDTR that states that drivers operating trucks have undetected eye problems and live and drive for long periods of time with these problems. The intervention for truckers is as necessary as it is missing, in the country’s road safety discourse.

The data in this report comes from 235 outreach camps that Sightsavers India and its partners conducted over 10 cities in India. From April to December 2016, these eye camps screened 17,546 people. A total of 324 respondents – 268 drivers and 56 staff (including Conductors and Helpers) – from 10 cities were interviewed for this study. The average age of the drivers interviewed was found to be 44.6 years. Among the 268 drivers, 81% were truck drivers, 11.6% were bus drivers, and 7.5% drove other vehicles such as autos, private vehicles or tempos.

The findings of the report states that a very high number of respondents knew that there is a problem. Nearly half, i.e., 48.5% of the respondents said they felt the need to attend the eye camp because of an eye-related problem. Of these, as many as 42.2% said they faced a problem in driving or working. It also states that the respondents have been living and driving with eye problems for as long as 8+ months, with 64.2% of the respondents saying that they were not doing anything about their eye problems. Of the 324 respondents, each one required professional eye care; with 96.6% required spectacles and 3.4% were referred for further treatment.

Unveiling the report, Dr. S.Y. Quraishi, former chief election commissioner (CEC) of India and Honorary Chair of Sightsavers in India said, “I feel proud to be part of this great organization that is undertaking such important studies for the betterment of the country and the citizens. The Eyes OK Please! report on National Truckers Programme brings out that eye conditions such as refractive errors are quite common among truckers and transporters. The effort by Sightsavers in this direction is commendable. The mission that was started more than five decades ago is forging ahead to bring sight to many and lighten up their lives with hope. I pay my respect to Sir John Wilson whose vision had set a course to change the eye health scenario of not only India but globally.”

RN Mohanty, CEO Sightsavers (India) said at the event, “We envisage a world where no one is blind from avoidable causes and where visually impaired people participate equally in society. From this experience, Sightsavers India can confidently state that community-based eye testing, provision of spectacles and referral services for the trucking community have a huge potential for scaling up in India. Sightsavers India will relentlessly work for the betterment of its people and also contribute significantly to Sustainable Development Goal number three (SDGs), especially 3.6 which says that by 2020, 50 percent of the deaths from road accidents will be reduced.”

Declaring the programme open, Kabir Bedi, honorary brand ambassador, Sightsavers India and internationally acclaimed actor said, “Not many in the past have paid heed to such a significant need of having an eye health programme for our truck driver community. It is clearly a welcome intervention by Sightsavers to enhance road safety in India by reaching out to this laborious truck driving community.”