Vivo India Announces Aamir Khan as its New Brand Ambassador

Vivo, the global premium smartphone brand, today announced Aamir Khan, one of the world’s highly acclaimed actors, as its brand ambassador for India. The eminent actor has been signed for Vivo’s future brand and product communication initiatives of Vivo India.

Capturing the essence of brand Vivo, superstar Aamir Khan will soon be seen in a full-fledged marketing campaign around the upcoming products and will feature in a new television commercial. 

Speaking on the announcement, Kenny Zeng, CMO, Vivo India said, “We are thrilled about the possibilities that our partnership with one of the world’s biggest superstars, Aamir Khan, will open up for Vivo in India. He mirrors the values of versatility, perfection and innovation that we steadfastly follow at Vivo. This new association will enable us to explore newer avenues to reach our customers as we script our future growth strategy in India.”

Commenting on his association, Aamir Khan said, “Vivo as a brand embodies the spirit of innovation and meaningful disruption. Over the years, the brand has been constantly pushing the boundaries of smartphone technology as we know it today to provide consumers with an enhanced mobility experience. I am enthused to be a part of Vivo’s transformative journey in India.”

Over the last few years, Vivo has established an extensive retail presence to provide varied choices to consumers across the length and breadth of the country. Additionally, it has also launched an e-store and Experience Centre to provide phenomenal experience to its valued customers. With sports as a key focus for brand building, Vivo has invested heavily to associate with popular platforms such as IPL and Pro Kabaddi League.

NSE Challenges Young Minds with a Machine Learning Hackathon at The Garage

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) partnered with The Garage, a San Francisco style start-up accelerator and co-working space in Mumbai, a business division of JetSynthesys, to host an exciting Machine Learning (M.L.) competition in India - NSE FutureTech 2018 Machine Learning Hackathon. This 30-hour live event held on March 17-18 challenged designers, coders and data scientists from across the country to tackle capital market challenges with machine learning.

Partnering with NSE for the first time, The Garage provided a 170-seater venue and also made available WiFi and beverages for the Hackathon. With pre-registrations of more than 400 developers, the event saw participation from more than 165 creative minds from technological and non-technological backgrounds who worked on real-life problems and attempted to develop a Machine Learning solution within a timeframe of 24-hours.

A panel of distinguished judges including industry experts like Mr. Sankarson Banerjee, CTO, National Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Sumeet Vijaywargiya, Associate Director, IBM Watson and Mr. Karan Chaturvedi, Developer Advocate, IBM decided the winners’ basis their skill set and problem-solving ability. The criteria on which individuals and teams were judged was the solution, its technical simplicity, completeness and presentation.

The top three winners of Hackathon received INR 1,00,000, INR. 50,000 and INR. 25,000 in cash, an opportunity to intern at ICICI, complimentary seating at The Garage, along with a bagful of goodies. The winners of NSE FutureTech 2018 Machine Learning Hackathon were The Matrix (Nikhil Lobo, Manish K., Subhnesh Kumar & Prashant), 1^st Runner Ups Silicon Alpha (Sanket Shah & Priyank Shah) and 2^nd Runner Ups Drupple (Swastik Shrivastava, Anirudh Murali, Rajat Rawat, Shivam Singh & Rohan Chougule).

Speaking about the event, Sankarson Banerjee, CTO, National Stock Exchange (NSE) said, “Machine Learning is making a profound impact in the technology space. It’s diverse ability to learn and adapt to its surroundings allows M.L. to perform at levels similar to or even beyond human capabilities. With Hackathon, our goal was to challenge young minds to solve present day problems in a fun and pragmatic way and provide simple yet meaningful solutions using the latest machine learning tools. We were absolutely thrilled to see the turnout as well as the intelligent minds that are our future!”

Commenting on the same, Rajan Navani, Managing Director and CEO, JetSynthesys, said, “NSE’s FutureTech Machine Learning Hackathon is a great platform for developers to put their abilities to test and showcase their technical knowledge in an exciting M.L. challenge. A one of its kind event, it gave bright young minds the opportunity to learn and compete with the best talent in India. We, at The Garage, are extremely glad to partner with a body like the NSE and foster new talent in the technological space.”

3i Infotech ensures effective work management for Gandhar Oil Refinery with successful implementation of ORION ERP

3i Infotech Limited, a global Information Technology company, committed to empowering business transformation, ensured auto reconciliation of more than  10, 000 bank receipts and payments per month for Gandhar Oil Refinery India Limited with implementation of its ORION ERP software. With this, now the organization can control all operations from the head office, thus helping in smooth delegation of tasks across various branches. This will help Gandhar Oil achieve automation, centralized data access and effective time management across the organization.

Gandhar Oil Refinery India Limited, manufacturers of mineral oils, liquid paraffin, petroleum jelly, rubber process oils, industrial and automotive lubricants, and transformer oils, was using a distributed file-based system where the management lacked access to online information or automated reports for quick decision-making. As the system was obsolete, the team struggled to collate data during half-yearly and yearly financial closure. Furthermore, operational data was maintained in excel sheets which resulted in frequent human error.

“The client was looking for a cutting-edge enterprise management system that would fit their unique business requirements, and the ORION ERP solution seemed like a natural fit. The solution was mapped to meet the unique requirements of export processes of Gandhar Oil such as pre-shipment processes, post-shipping tracking, etc. and a fully integrated system was deployed,” said Suryanarayan Kasichainula, EVP & Business Head for ERP, 3i Infotech.

“The ORION ERP solution has been implemented so well at Gandhar Oil Refinery India Limited, that even after close to a decade of it being implemented, we continue to benefit from accurate and in-depth reports through each module. With recent upgrades to the ERP solution over two years back, we continue to benefit from its’ robust performance, and are considering another upgrade shortly to meet our growing business requirements.  The user experience that ORION provides is truly fantastic. By punching all our data into a centralized system, we can manage operations across 15 branch offices, 2 plants and depots,” said Mr. Suhag Shukla (IT Head) of Gandhar Oil Refinery India Limited.

Europe's Leading Electronic and Home Appliances Brand Thomson Plans to Re-Enter Indian Market

Technicolor SA owned consumer electronic brand Thomson is planning to make a come-back to India through the e-commerce market space. The brand will bring in the range of its Smart Televisions that will hit the Indian market early next month, i.e. April 2018. With over 120 years of legacy, the French Corporation, works with licensing partners world over. In India too, the brand will be under an exclusive licensing agreement with a local counterpart. 

Once India’s highest selling brand, priced competitively Thomson Smart TV's will make a great deal for the smart consumers who

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are uncompromising, well-informed and like to place the best bet while comparing several options that are available online . 

The European legacy of the brand will certainly add to the aspiration,  premium and class factor, an offer that will pit Thomson high up amongst other available premium brands.

Piramal Finance Launches Housing Finance Offering in Bangalore; Has Crossed Rs 20,000 Cr of Wholesale Loans in South Market

Piramal Housing Finance, the wholly owned subsidiary of Piramal Finance, expands its presence in the Bangalore market. The retail housing finance business will offer home loans, loan against property and smaller ticket construction finance to the developers in Bangalore market.

Piramal Finance has a strong presence in South India through its wholesale business. Currently, it has existing partnership with 80 developers across 230 projects. The wholesale business has crossed an aggregate commitments of INR 20,000 crores from 2014 till as of now. 

Leveraging the size, scale and relationships of our wholesale business, Piramal Finance has introduced its retail offering which will complement its existing wholesale business and will enable them to offer the entire spectrum of financial products in real estate. Piramal Housing Finance will further enable development partners in the Bangalore to target home buyers (both salaried and self-employed) through a range of tailor made products.

Khushru Jijina, Managing Director, Piramal Finance & Piramal Housing Finance said, “We are delighted to launch our housing finance business to Bangalore. In September 2017, we launch our business in Mumbai with 2 branches and have crossed Rs 1,000 crores in the span of 6 months. Last week, we launched in Delhi and we are happy to receive great response from our developer partners. Going forward, by 2020, we plan to expand our reach with 24 branches across India to make our Pan India presence.” 

He further added, “Our unique business model – B2B2C – business to developer to customer is the key differentiator. This is a developer relationship driven business where our existing relationships, innovative offerings and end-to-end solutions will help us expand our business.” 

Housing Finance recently also launched its innovative product – ‘SUPER’ loan. ‘SUPER’ loan factors future income potential whilst assessing the credit parameters for a retail loan and thereby enables the consumer to purchase an ideal home. It enables individuals to buy their first home at a much younger age (28 years as opposed to the earlier average of 35 years as the first time home buyers’ average age)

In addition, Piramal Finance also has a unique sales and research function ‘Brickex’ will also aid in identifying and implementing innovative marketing strategies and facilitating primary sales through newer distributors and channel partners.