Synechron Launches RegTech Accelerator Program for Financial Services

Synechron, Inc, the global financial services consulting and technology services provider, has today announced the launch of its RegTech Accelerator program. Synechron’s RegTech Accelerators are focused on financial services applications to increase efficiency in processes relating to regulatory compliance. By leveraging Synechron’s unique combination of expertise in business consulting, technology, and digital experience, its RegTech Accelerators were created to give financial organizations the benefit of increased control through technology, which will allow for greater transparency, more efficiency, better data quality, and better overall management of risk and regulatory compliance.

 Taking into consideration the vast number of regulations impacting global firms recently and those that are scheduled through the next few years, and the estimation that financial institutions will spend up to 10% of their total revenue on compliance by 2022, each of Synechron’s six RegTech Accelerators has been designed to address specific regulatory challenges, including solutions for the following regulations: Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC), Basel III, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 9, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB). While creating more control over processes for financial institutions, the Accelerators may also benefit users by reducing compliance costs and making regulatory compliance and risk management quicker, simpler, and more efficient as firms adjust to the evolving global regulatory landscape. Synechron’s Accelerator program is supported by best-in-class partnerships, including with data lineage solution provider Solidatus.

 The overarching trend which the Accelerators have been designed to address key themes within regulatory obligations and concerns. Each accelerator has been categorized in the corresponding regulatory theme as follows: 

 Risk

·         Capital Walk forward Accelerator: With a combination of Machine Learning and Natural Language Generation (NLG), this Accelerator automates the variance calculation process, as well as identifies influencing factors, and generates required commentary for manual validation and distribution. This assists firms in Basel requirements for Capital Numbers reports and improves efficiency as it is quicker and less error-prone than human processing.

·         Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) Accelerator: This Accelerator automates FRTB calculations requiring the Standard Approach to modelling risk using a Spark-based data analytics platform, addressing the key areas – Sensitivity Based Approach, Default Risk Charge, and Residual Risk Add-on, offering a greater degree of control against using internal risk models.

Client Lifecycle Management (CLM)

 ·         KYC Remediation Accelerator: The KYC accelerator uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scan documents and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the data, eliminating manual processes and ensuring companies are controlling and managing their KYC exposures. 

Legal & Compliance

·         Information Governance and Records Management Accelerator: This Accelerator addresses the inconsistencies in record keeping due to the high level of unstructured records banks are producing today, which are unsupported by the current manual processes used for traditional paper records, by applying automation to analysis, classification, and retention of unstructured documents for varying records management requirements using OCR and NLP to populate forms from the records data and create full audit trails.

·         Intelligent Controls Testing Accelerator: The intelligent Controls Testing Accelerator delivers an intelligent analytics platform boasting Data Science and Predictive Analytics to automate the current manual and tedious testing processes. This allows firms to trial its enterprise risk management systems, rather than rely on manual tests on the first line of defense (1LOD). 

Finance & Treasury

 ·         Accounting Standard Normalizer: Synechron’s Accelerator for Accounting Standards delivers a data analytics framework with a microservices architecture to input proprietary credit risk models and use real-time data to run calculations for global Expected Credit Loss (ECL) calculations. The Accelerator addresses the challenges global banks face with varying global accounting reporting standards, like the US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 9.

 “Demand for smart solutions to regulatory challenges remains at an all-time high across the sector, and our Accelerator program is designed to help banks and insurers ramp up these efforts more quickly and efficiently as they move past a ‘check-the-box’ mentality regarding regulations, and look to innovative technologies to find creative solutions to addressing new and changing regulatory obligations.” Faisal Husain, Synechron Co-founder & CEO, said. “We continue to see huge demand for RegTech solutions from clients seeking more control over their activities and risks. The focus on the total cost of compliance is high-priority for financial institutions, and technology is the best enabler to address this challenge.”

ORION ERP of 3i Infotech Clocks 82% growth in License Revenues in FY17-18

ORION ERP, an integrated, cost-effective and cloud-enabled industry solution for growing and mid-sized enterprises, from 3i Infotech Limited, a global information technology company, registered an impressive 82% growth in license revenues to close the financial year FY17-18 on a high. This comes at the back of the company’s last quarter announcement, of their ERP vertical posting a buoyant 32% growth result in Q3, FY18 over the same quarter in FY17. Middle East, APAC and India markets have been the main contributors to the growth. The total revenues have increased by 24% since FY16, and new sales have nearly doubled in the last two years.

“The sustained investments made in our ‘Next-gen’ ORION 11j product have helped us in offering enterprises the most compelling ERP solution, one which fulfils the core business needs of organizations across all industries and market sectors and provides a foundation for growth, innovation, and end-to-end business process excellence.  ORION ERP offers industry specific solutions that are designed for rapid implementation, and organizations can rely on a single partner from implementation to training, with low cost of ownership,” Suryanarayan Kasichainula, EVP & Business Head (ERP), 3i Infotech.

“The buoyant growth witnessed in our ERP vertical can be largely attributed to the implementation of VAT in GCC countries and adoption of ORION ERP by manufacturing industries,” he further added.

Backed by robust service support, ORION ERP is a globally trusted partner to more than 800 customers with over 1,000 installations and 50,000+ users across various verticals, and aims to be one of the prominent ERP solutions available globally. Their customers are spread across geographies including India, the Middle East (UAE, KSA, Qatar, Kuwait & Oman), Africa, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The ERP customer base is concentrated in the emerging markets, including MEA, KSA, and Thailand.

JetSynthesys and Orkut’s Hello Network Bring ‘Jet Hello’ to India

JetSynthesys, a leading technology and digital innovation company and Hello Network, Inc, founded by Orkut Büyükkökten (the founder of Orkut.com) today announced a Joint Venture - Jet Hello. JetSynthesys and Hello Network have been working closely for the last one year to develop hello an interest based social network for the Indian user.

Under this strategic partnership, JetSynthesys as a hands-on local partner will be responsible for larger business strategy and operations, marketing and monetisation for hello to strengthen its reach in the Indian market, while the hello team will continue developing innovative technologies to bring a world class platform. hello will also provide JetSynthesys access to the global talent pool, experience in social networking from Orkut himself. JetSynthesys will also leverage its existing products, network of influencers as well as pool of celebrities to derive synergistic value for Jet-Hello. The Jet Hello team will work from The Garage, run by Jet Labs - JetSynthesys’s strategic accelerator, a 200 seater San Francisco style co-working space in Parel, Mumbai.

 Speaking about the partnership, Rajan Navani, Managing Director and CEO, JetSynthesys Pvt. Ltd. said, “With a deep understanding of the Indian digital consumer, we are delighted to bring Orkut’s latest venture -Hello Network to India.  Jet Hello is our combined endeavour to drive real connections and meaningful conversations between connections. Combining the strengths of both players, Jet Hello aims to provide users with a fresh interest based social networking experience. With expertise in the Indian market coupled with strong operational experience in bringing mobile Apps to India, we believe we are well matched to strengthen Jet Hello’s presence in the Indian market.”

Commenting on its partnership with JetSynthesys, Orkut Büyükkökten said, “We are thrilled to partner with JetSynthesys as we believe both organizations share the same passion, ideology and goals. Making a social network for India which is driven by communities and enables connections of like-minded people, in real life as well, is our focus. We are committed to enhancing the social network experience of every Indian user & I’m delighted to say hello to India, once again!" 

Launched in 2016, hello has received tremendous response across geographies including Brazil with over 1M downloads, with active users spending over 320 minutes each month on the app.  Post its successful launch in the Indian market, hello plans to expand North America (US/Canada), Europe (UK, France, Germany), and Japan, Korea and Singapore in the coming months.

Bangalore-Based Analog Devices' New R&D Centre to Double Head Count to Over 900 Engineers

Analog Devices, Inc. , has unveiled its new India headquarters for the approximately 600 Bengaluru-based staff who make up ADI India. The new 175,000 square foot facility, which houses one of ADI’s top three global design centers, will focus on developing and selling cutting edge technologies and solutions for the global automotive, industrial, healthcare, consumer, Internet of Things (IoT), security, communications, and energy markets. 

The new state-of-the-art  center located at the RMZ Infinity on the Old Madras Road, Bangalore is built on a 1.75.000 square feet of  space on a 7 floor building to facilitate collaboration and growth in software, systems and IC development. The facility presently employees over 600 and likely to cross 920 and these include both laterals and freshers in the coming years i.e. allowing for a 50 percent increase in ADI India’s current  headcount.  The company's R&D center in Bangalore has 300 patents from India and it includes 107 granted and 85 under review so far.

“We have created a culture of innovation, collaboration and engineering excellence at ADI, encouraging our engineers to explore, learn and share while giving them opportunities to work across teams and domains so they become well-rounded experts,” said Yusuf Jamal, Senior Vice President of ADI’s Industrial, Healthcare, Consumer, and IoT Solutions and Security Group. “We have been aggressively investing in our global facilities, including a recently announced U.S. expansion in Silicon Valley, to better attract and leverage local talent and skills and this investment in ADI India will better position us to accelerate growth and impact for ADI.” 

Having started as a three-person product development center in 1995, ADI India’s headcount has grown by a factor of 200 over the last twenty years to support the evolving needs of ADI’s global customers. Mirroring ADI’s transformation from a manufacturer of modules and integrated circuits (ICs) to a provider of edge-to-cloud systems, and from a focus solely on hardware to one that includes software and data analytics, ADI India counts software, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), applications, product and test engineering, systems, and analog and mixed signal IC development among its broad suite of capabilities. 

“ADI India has come a long way since its humble beginnings as an integrated circuit design center, having experienced an impressive expansion in the capabilities and range of functions being performed by our skilled employees here in Bengaluru,” said Sai Krishna Mopuri, Managing Director, ADI India. “As we move into this new facility, we plan to expand our university relations program work with reputed academic institutions, which includes fellowships, sponsorships and internship opportunities, through additional partnerships and talent acquisition from engineering colleges across the country.”

Honeywell Expands its Fulgaon Manufacturing Facility in Pune by Doubling Operational Space

Honeywell has  announced the expansion of its Fulgaon manufacturing facility in Pune to meet the growing demand for automation solutions and factory instrumentation more effectively. In line with the growth of the Indian manufacturing sector, Honeywell continues to invest in its local production capabilities by doubling the operational space of the plant to 151,000 square feet. The state-of-the-art facility enables Honeywell to provide enhanced expertise and training capabilities to customers and expand its production range.

Originally built in 2014, the facility integrates advanced engineering, testing and manufacturing of equipment for the process industries such as refining, oil and gas, pulp and paper, power generation, chemicals, life sciences, and metals, minerals and mining. In addition, it offers a customer integration center, thermal solutions and smart metering factories, and a Honeywell Intelligrated® demonstration center. The center provides an immersive experience by letting customers interact with technologies that make manufacturing safer, more secure, comfortable and energy efficient.

“The expansion of our plant allows us to now commercialize new technologies that are researched and developed in Honeywell technology development centers here in India and globally and with that to widen our product range and meet future customer demand,” said Ashish M Gaikwad, managing director, Honeywell Automation India Limited. “In alignment with the government’s ‘Make in India’ mission, we continue to leverage the existing local manufacturing expertise and support our domestic as well as international customers.”

  Honeywell products and solutions manufactured in Fulgaon offer precision, repeatability, and durability for industrial applications across the markets. Honeywell’s flagship product, Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS)—a solution that integrates control and safety systems along with other crucial manufacturing processes, will be assembled at the facility. Some of the other products to be manufactured in this facility include hybrid programmable logic controllers (PLC), load computers, smart transmitters, industrial burners, gas trains, smart meters, sensors, shifters, and switches.

“The Fulgaon facility continues to build Honeywell’s local footprint and expertise to improve our customer service for the automation business in India,” said Vimal Kapur, president, Honeywell Process Solutions. “With production and integration facilities closer to the domestic customers, we can seamlessly integrate customer needs and specifications into our products and solutions—helping us to serve them more quickly and efficiently.”

Aside from the Fulgaon plant, Honeywell has a significant presence in Maharashtra with its automation and turbocharger manufacturing facilities based in Pune.

Cisco Launches START Products Program Designed for SMBs in Gujarat

Cisco has deepened its commitment to Gujarat with the launch of Cisco START- a product portfolio specifically designed to help SMBs in Gujarat build their digital foundation and become globally competitive.  This initiative is aligned with Cisco’s commitment to accelerate Gujarat’s digital transformation and showcase how digitization can fuel economic growth, world-class innovation, sustainable competitiveness, and prosperity.

A digitized state aims to drive GDP growth, create jobs and foster innovation, enhance research and education, stimulate entrepreneurship, accelerate business innovation, develop economic cluster initiatives, and support infrastructure. Towards that, Cisco is the leading technology partner helping states across India become digital hubs of innovation by building sophisticated and forward-thinking IT network ecosystems that allow for greater connectivity, productivity, and security. 

With Gujarat looking to drive growth through digitization, SMBs have become an essential component of the journey as the state houses one of the largest concentration of SMEs in the country. Increasing high-speed broadband coverage, rising adoption of mobile devices, improving connectivity quality and networks are accelerating the growth of Gujarat’s SMB sector. However, SMBs face challenges such as access to right technology, lack of skill sets as well as high entry cost that limit their ability to scale and seize opportunities provided by digitization. An IDC’s survey of SMBs across India shows that the top three business priorities for SMBs are to reduce costs, gain operational efficiency, and improve productivity.

Cisco START aims to make it easy for SMBs and midmarket customers to embrace digitization by providing them with access to a suite of simple, secure and smart enterprise-class technologies, specifically tailored to their needs. More specifically, Cisco START delivers:

The right-sized, right-priced solutions wherever they are on their digital journey Enhanced operations, services, and processes to reduce overheads and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)Improved workforce productivity and innovation to meet the increased demands of today and the evolving opportunities of tomorrow

 Sudhir Nayar, Managing Director, Commercial Sales, Cisco India & SAARC said, “We are excited to be a part of Gujarat’s digital journey and help further the government’s vision to create sustainable competitiveness and prosperity. SMBs are a key pillar of the economy and are a huge source of employment and innovation. SMBs have a much wider geographic footprint than large enterprises and are best placed to democratise the benefits of digitization. We launched Cisco START as a commitment to help SMBs adopt a digital-first mindset that can help them digitize, secure their business and stay ahead of the technology curve.”

SMB is the fastest growing segment for Cisco in India. In the last one year, Cisco has on-boarded over 5,000 new SMB customers, out of which over 300 customers are from Gujarat.

SAP Celebrates India Inc’s Digital Champions at the 11th ACE Awards in Mumbai

Celebrating India’s most successful digital innovators,  SAP SE has announced the winners of the 11th edition of SAP ACE Awards. The coveted ceremony felicitated 21 Indian enterprises who have achieved business excellence and showcased consistent innovation by using technology as the key competitive differentiator.

SAP ACE Awards 2018 received over 300 project nominations competing across 16 major award categories, with a distinct focus on large and midsize companies. Over the last decade, SAP ACE Awards have become an industry benchmark to recognize not only the best-run businesses but also outstanding individuals who are a creating a true digital impact in the Indian business community.

“It is time to navigate from digital schemes to creating digital businesses,” said Deb Deep Sengupta, President and Managing Director, SAP Indian Subcontinent. “In their transformation journey, 
companies must become agile, obtain the necessary skills while simultaneously innovate at a rapid speed. The 11th edition of SAP ACE Awards acknowledges and honors digital leaders who have the mindset to deliver game-changing innovation in their respective fields.”

As part of the methodical process, all the front running nominees were assessed by an eminent jury nominated by management board of SAP India User Group (INDUS).