Wonder Cement Limited, a leading cement company catering to markets across India, part of RK Marble, a leading name in the marble industry, was awarded the Asia’s Most Promising Brand at the recently help 5th edition of UK Asia Business Summit 2018. The award was received by Vivek Patni, Director, Wonder Cement, Rishabh Patni, Director,
Wonder Cement and Tarun Singh Chauhan, Management Advisor, Wonder Cement, at a grand ceremony held in London.
Vivek Patni, Director, Wonder Cement, said, “We are a young company with a motto to provide the best quality products. This commitment to always do better reflects in our growth that the company has experienced, in such a short span of time. It is our aim to continue serving our existing customers, and reach out to new ones across the country. Nothing would make us happier than to help be a Perfect Shuruaat for every home builder and owner.”
Tarun Singh Chauhan, Management Advisor, Wonder Cement, added “It is a huge honor for us to have been recognized with this award as well as tremendous motivation to continue the work we have been doing. We are glad that our hard work and dedication is rewarding us with such a huge demand from across the nation and I hope we sustain this to further benefit our customers. It has been a tremendous journey of building an exciting young brand backed by a great organization in such a short period in an evolved category with old & established players”
Asia Business Summit is one of the most prestigious and biggest multi-platform global projects on brands & leaders that celebrates the most promising brands from across 18 Asian Nations. Asia’s Most Promising Brands is the foremost brand research and recognition intellectual property in the world in terms of research process, mega events globally, number of research editions across the continent. The research for 2017 includes brands across South East Asia, GCC and Indian Sub-Continent. Asia’s Most Promising Brands is a research Intellectual Property of World Consulting & Research Corporation.
Asia's Most Promising Brands has been awarded to more than 750 brands from 21 different Asian countries in the last four editions and is the biggest multi-platform global project on brands and leaders across print, portal and electronic formats. The awards are selected based on the most transparent selection process which involves research, jury and validation.
Ed-tech platform NeoStencil organised an IAS toppers seminar in Bangalore on 20th May. The seminar hosted their IAS students such as Suman Sourav Mohanty (All India Rank 9, 2016), Rishi Raj (AIR 27, 2017) an Akshat Kaushal (AIR 55, 2017) and a partner teacher Praveen Kishore, Director of Nice IAS. The seminar was attended by over 350 serious UPSC aspirants and parents. Attendees asked preparation related questions of all the speakers.
Exam preparation in India has always been concentrated to a few cities. Top teachers in these cities have always been a valued commodity. With aspirants relocating to Kota for IIT/PMT, Delhi for IAS/IES and the like, as a norm.
Many have tried to address this in different ways. Quite a few have set up VSAT centres, franchise in other cities. Some existing institutes have gone online with their own content. A few have created open online marketplaces while targeting to enable more than 10,000 teachers to come and teach.
Despite these being around, more than 90% serious aspirants still continue to relocate to the same cities, to study from the same teachers.
NeoStencil.com, an Ed-tech venture set up by IIT, AIIMS and IIM alumni, realized this pattern. And realized the core of the problem was never lack of quality teachers. The core was always accessibility to these quality teachers.
NeoStencil decided to approach the problem differently. The company decided to enable existing top teachers of the country to conduct their classes online through its Live-Learning platform.
To ensure that students saw value in this, and did not need to relocate any longer, NeoStencil conducts these classes Live. A student sitting in a remote corner of the country can attend a class by Hyderabad’s top teacher as and when the teacher is teaching in his classroom. So, the syllabus is up-to- date and current. Moreover, with live classes, student’s studying is in-sync with offline world and it is easier to manage the learning pace. If a student misses LIVE classes, he also gets the flexibility to attend the class later, 24x7 and any number of times. Study material, regular tests, toppers seminar are other features of this comprehensive one-stop platform of NeoStencil.
This allows students around the country to get access to teachers of their choice, without needing to relocate any longer. Students can now continue with their jobs, continue living with their families. They do not need to spend lakhs on rent and living expenses. We take pride in the fact that we have been able to create a level playing field among aspirants as more than 50% of our students are from Tier III, IV towns and beyond with parental income less than INR 2.5 Lakhs – who otherwise couldn’t have afforded to relocate to Delhi and aspire for their IAS officer dream.
Also, women in our country need to take into account additional factors – such as safety – before deciding to relocate. With a platform like NeoStencil getting established, women do not need to compromise on safety at all, and can access best education simply through their laptops.
Today NeoStencil has become one of the preferred online platforms for Civil Services exams aspirants as it grants access to top teachers and their classroom programmes across India, through its Live-Learning platform. NeoStencil has tied-up only with top teachers of their field. Teachers who have vast experience, and have delivered stellar results throughout are on-boarded through well defined criteria. The Company has partnered with the most recognized and trusted teachers and coaching institutes such as Prof Majid Husain, Pavan Kumar IAS, Lukmaan IAS, Mitrapal, Alok Ranjan, Rajnish Raj, Praveen Kishore, Venkat Mohan among 40+ Institutes from across India.
A graduate of IITB and IIMC, Kush Beejal, the Co-Founder of NeoStencil, said “The cost incurred towards Exam preparation is not only the course fees, but also the dilemma of leaving jobs, and the relocation expenses candidates have to bear to move to coaching capitals. With technology evolution, internet penetration and affordable IT hardware at NeoStencil we have bridged the geographical challenges for student and teachers to facilitate comprehensive preparation of competitive exams and within affordable range. We aim to delink aspiration and affordability”.
“Many students have started using online platforms, such as NeoStencil, to connect with teachers and select their classroom of their choice. We are super excited and happy that almost 1 in every 2 successful candidates is a student of our partner institute. 102 of our online students made it to the 2017 final UPSC list including AIR-5, AIR-9 and so on. This is a testimonial to the acceptance of our platform among serious aspirants and the quality of education we enable through our platform," shares, Beejal.
As per the sources, the Edutech market is further pegged to have a potential to touch $1.96Bn by 2020 from current size of $247 Mn.
The IT capital of India, Bengaluru, has accounted for 40% of the winners in the India Emerging (ie) 20 competition for startups organised by Mayor of London.
Out of the 326 startups that applied for the awards, 20 winners are selected. Bengaluru accounted for eight winning startups, followed by seven startups from Delhi.
The IE 20 programme was launched by the Mayor of London’s official promotional agency, London & Partners, in collaboration with BDO and Lalit Hotels, with the aim to identify some of India’s most ambitious companies that are considering international expansion. Among the prominent startups from the city that won the award, include famous tea company and a cafe chain with focus on the tea-based beverages - Chai Point.
The companies selected to join this year’s programme will receive help in setting up or expanding their business in London. The winners will also have the opportunity to benefit from discounted rates on a London office and tailored expert advice on marketing, access to finance.
Last December, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan visited India on a trade mission in which he announced a number of Indian investment deals for London, including 400 new tech jobs for the capital.
“London is a truly global business centre and presents lots of opportunities for Indian companies looking to expand their business overseas. I am delighted that my India Emerging 20 programme is helping some of India’s fastest growing companies with their international growth and London remains open to investment, talent and collaborations with India,” Khan said.
Further analysis of London & Partners investment data shows that 2017 was a record year for foreign direct investment from India into London.
“London & Partners launched their proprietary property - IE 20 with BDO as the nominating partner and has successfully completed 3 years of identifying high growth Indian companies,” Arbinder Chatwal, Partner and Head of India Advisory Services team at BDO said.
Toyota Kirloskar Motor has launched its versatile sedan –Yaris in India fueling excitement across country. The sedan from world's leading automobile manufacturer, after rolling out Yaris in six countries globally have now localized the new model with extra safety, performance, comfort and also technology features specially suited for the rugged Indian roads.
As one of the most anticipated cars of the year, Yaris boasts of advanced and emotional design, superior comfort, shining ride quality and quietness, dynamic efficiency and class-leading safety and technology. Customers can make their bookings at any of the authorized Toyota dealerships across the country with deliveries beginning from today. Toyota expects to deliver around 1000 plus Yaris to customers on first day of the delivery.
Based on the 'one nation one selling price' strategy*, Yaris is now available across all dealerships (All India) at the same price at an attractive range of ₹ 8, 75,000/- to ₹ 14, 07,000/. *Prices will be same across the country at ex-showroom level, however the final on road price may vary based on local road tax and levies. Unveiled earlier this year at the India Auto Expo 2018, the new sedan comes in four grades and mated to a 7 speed CVT (Continuous Variable Transmission) or 6 speed MT (Manual Transmission) engine, offering effortless and dynamic driving.
Built on the Toyota philosophy of QDR, Yaris offers 11 first-in-segment features such as the Power Driver Seat, 7 SRS Airbags, Roof Mounted Air Vents, Tyre Pressure Monitoring System, Front Parking Sensors, CVT across all grades and more.
Speaking on the occasion, Akito Tachibana, Managing Director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said “Toyota is here to deliver ever better cars that set a benchmark in safety, quality, durability and reliability. Indian car market is highly competitive and customer preferences are changing with time and exposure to globalized products. Yaris is the most celebrated sedan globally and comes loaded with range of first in segment features. We have prioritized customer safety in the car offering class leading safety features. We are happy that the strengths of the product has been recognized, we are confident that Yaris will be a standard on the Indian roads when it comes to matching up with the evolving taste of Indian customers. We would like to thank customers for the confidence and trust they have shown to Toyota products over the years”
Commenting on the overwhelming response, N. Raja, Deputy Managing Director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor said, “We have received overwhelming response from customers across India. We are happy that in less than a month of announcing the price and opening the bookings, we have collected nearly two months equivalent of customer orders. In line with our customer first approach, we had started our production last month itself to cater to be able to match our supply to the customer demand and reduce the waiting period as much as possible. We look forward to shipping around 4000 plus Yaris across the country for customers by the end of May. We hope to service all these customer orders by the end of this month which will take us amongst the top 3 in sales in the petrol segment.
In addition we have 60000 plus customer enquiries on Yaris which gives us the confidence that the customers are recognizing the value propositions that this product has to offer in the market. With the test drives already having begun across the country we are sure to see more conversions into customer orders taking place.
Toyota has always strived to keep up with the evolving customer needs and with the Toyota Yaris we have ensured that we offer unbeatable safety, comfort, quality and excellent ride handling with advanced and emotional design elements. We are confident that this car will cater to customers with a discerning taste who are constantly on the lookout for something better. With the CVT option available across all grades it will also be well accepted by woman drivers in India. “
*Prices will be same across the country at ex-showroom level, however the final on road price may vary based on local road tax and levies.
Societe Generale Global Solution Centre (SG GSC) announces the 2018 edition of Catalyst and calls for Fintech, Technology start-ups and Universities to take part in the digital transformation of the banking industry. Catalyst, a 10-week accelerator program, aims at connecting innovation experts and enterprise-relevant technology startups with Societe Generale business leaders, to deliver actionable solutions and insightful research, in areas of strategic interest to the banking industry.
Hosted at SG GSC premises, from 22nd June to 31st August, the 2018 edition of Catalyst will provide participants with over 250 global business cases, spanning 16 countries. A collaborative platform, Catalyst will provide participants with the required operational skillsets, infrastructure and application to test, iterate and scale their products on real business scenarios and data volumes.
Rathnaprabha Manickavachagam, Head of Innovation, SG GSC says, “Catalyst is an excellent platform to realise innovation ambitions and design disruptive solutions which can benefit end customers. From the past editions, over 35% of the recommendations have already been adopted. SG GSC has signed commercial contracts with the selected startups to further develop their solutions to the required scale for global implementation within the bank.”
Vijay Nadadur, Co-Founder & CEO, Stride.ai (www.stride.ai), and previous beneficiary of Catalyst says “The Catalyst program by Societe Generale was a defining moment in our journey. At the end of the program, we had the ultimate joy of signing up, Societe Generale as our customer. This has led to our business grow leaps and bounds, and today we have more than 10 large financial services organizations, as our customers. Without Catalyst, this wouldn't have been possible."
In line with its commitment to anticipate the fast-changing customer demand, Societe Generale is developing its innovation strategy by experimenting with disruptive technologies and stepping up its interaction with the digital ecosystem in a spirit of open collaboration. The Group is notably dedicating €150 million euros over three years in an innovation fund to finance internal and external start-ups strategically aligned to digital transformation.
The company, which counts Volkswagen/Audi, Toyota/Lexus and Nissan as customers, is working alongside manufacturers, using real-time 3D to improve the way automobiles are designed, built, serviced and sold.
Unity Technologies, creator of the world’s most widely-used real-time 3D development platform, announced today that the company has declared its commitment to the automotive industry. The company’s newly-formed automotive division -- which hails experts from companies like Volkswagen, Renault, GM, Delphi, and Denso -- is dedicated to bringing the power of real-time 3D to the world’s automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers. Unity is no stranger to the automotive industry and counts eight of the world’s top 10 OEMs as customers, helping improve the way they design, build, service and sell automobiles.
“The real-time revolution in automotive is here. Over the past 15 years, we’ve made great strides leading the game development industry -- now, we’re bringing our real-time rendering technology to a new group of creators, equipping automakers with the tools that will allow them to iterate at the speed of thought,” said John Riccitiello, Chief Executive Officer, Unity Technologies. “We can’t wait to see what auto creators -- from design and pre-production all the way through sales and marketing -- create with our technology.”
The company also announced its inaugural Unity AutoTech Summit (June 19/20 in Berlin, Germany): a two-day gathering of sessions, tech demos, and networking dedicated to demonstrating how Unity’s real-time solution is accelerating innovation and transforming workflows in the automotive industry. Featured sessions include:
· Digital Omotenashi: Bringing the Lexus LC500 to Life Through the Magic of Unity: David Telfer (Lexus), Joe DeMiero (Team One for Lexus), Carl Seibert (TiltShift for Lexus)
· How to Drive VR/AR Use Cases for Enterprises Using the Example of Volkswagen: Torben Volkwein (Innoactive for Volkswagen)
· Creating Powerful Mixed Reality Applications Across Auto: Jason Yim (Trigger Global for Nissan)
· Next Level Rendering Quality for Automotive: Arisa Scott (Unity)
· Unity Training Workshops Taster: Introduction to Automotive Design Visualization: Anuja Dharkar (Unity)
· Unity in Automotive - The Road Ahead: Tim McDonough (Unity), Ed Martin (Unity)
Unity and PiXYZ Partner to Deliver Unity Industrial Bundle
Unity and PiXYZ recently partnered to launch the enterprise-level Unity Industry Bundle: a bundle built on a combination of PiXYZ products, training, and Unity Pro. The Bundle streamlines the import of CAD data for real-time development while maintaining the integrity of information throughout the process, providing customers with a best-in-class solution optimized for creating real-time experiences in Unity. It scales from automated data prep in a datacenter to individual productivity on a desktop and serves processes including design and engineering, AR/VR training, and the creation of high-impact customer experiences.
According to Tata Elxsi, the combination of Unity and PiXYZ was able to complete some workflow steps 66% faster and produced a model that was 72% smaller than the next leading competitor. The full report names Unity + PiXYZ the most powerful and performant solution available.
The World’s Leading Automotive OEMs Already Choosing Unity to Gain Competitive Edge For years, Unity has been working alongside the world’s top OEMs. Examples of how leaders such as Audi (VR design review), Volkswagen (interactive VR training for 10,000 employees), Cadillac (Virtual Showroom) and Mercedes-Benz (AMG Powerwall) are leveraging Unity can be found on the Unity Automotive and Transportation website.
“Innovation is a core principle at Audi,” said Jan Plueger, Coordination AR & VR, Audi Center of Competence. “With Unity, we create and deploy immersive, real-time interactivity to accelerate team collaboration and speed our pace of development and innovation.”
Dell Technologies announced the winners of its 2018 customer awards at Dell Technologies World, recognizing two extraordinary sets of its customers: the Innovators realizing significant business impacts from their innovative digital and IT transformations and Trailblazers in the early stages of their groundbreaking transformation journeys.
A panel of senior Dell executives reviewed all nominations against a range of criteria, and winners were deemed to be standout examples of forward-thinking companies making real progress in the areas of Digital Transformation, IT Transformation, Workforce Transformation and Security Transformation. Winners are collaborating with Dell Technologies and the family of businesses including: Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, Secureworks, Virtustream and VMware to realize their digital future.
“As a global technology company with the most diverse portfolio from edge to core to cloud, we are best positioned to optimize the digital transformation opportunity in India. Our portfolio strength coupled with our ability to deploy such transformative projects have resonated with the customers leading us to be best poised for 2018. We value our customers and understand their need to transform their IT landscape therefore, we continue to commission programs and surveys to serve them better. These awards are a celebration of the fantastic work done by our customers in India for their stakeholders,” said Alok Ohrie, President and MD, India Commercial, Dell EMC.
“These awards celebrate organizations across industries and regions using technology to accelerate success in today’s all-digital world,” said Karen Quintos, chief customer officer, Dell. “Not only are these leaders realizing their digital futures through technology innovation, but they are creating an exceptional experience for their employees, customers and communities. We’re honored to be a strategic partner to this extraordinary group and look forward to the continued impact we can make collectively through the power of technology,” she added.
2018 Dell Technologies customer award winners
In the Innovator award category, winners are Ford Motor Company, Bank Leumi, AeroFarms and Johnson & Johnson.
INNOVATORS:
*Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is shifting gears and reimagining the future of transportation with connected car technology and the FordPass mobile app. In partnership with Pivotal, Ford is embracing a startup and software development mentality to democratize mobility and bring innovative solutions to market faster. Learn more here.
*Bank Leumi
By working with Dell Technologies, Bank Leumi, Israel's oldest banking corporation, has been able to challenge the status quo of an industry and bring to life its mobile-only bank, Pepper. The company implemented a hybrid cloud model and software-defined data center that allowed them to move code from development to production within hours compared to weeks, establish new environments faster and do this at less cost. This has helped them to bring a new, innovative product to market. Learn more here.
*AeroFarms
New Jersey-based AeroFarms is on a mission to transform agriculture and show the world how to feed an ever-growing global population while conserving our limited natural resources. In collaboration with Dell Technologies, the company is using data-driven insights from IoT deployments to increase yields, conserve resources and improve flavor at its indoor vertical farming facilities. Learn more here.
*Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson relies on RSA Netwitness Suite as a core component of the cybersecurity fabric that supports its global portfolio of operating companies. It has facilitated the mind shift from traditional threat detection to mitigation of business risks intrinsic to information and operational technology.
In the Trailblazer award category, winners include Volvo Cars/Zenuity, Travelers, Unidad de Conocimiento and State Bank of India.
TRAILBLAZERS:
*Volvo Cars/Zenuity
Zenuity is a joint venture of Volvo Cars and Veoneer (as of April 1, Veoneer is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Autoliv) formed in early 2017 to develop software for autonomous driving and driver assistance systems to help save lives. To manage both the rapid growth of unstructured data and comply with stringent regulatory requirements, Volvo Cars and Zenuity worked with Dell EMC and Virtustream to implement an end-to-end solution – including storage, backup, servers, networking and security – as a managed service, ultimately reducing operational risk and complexity while accelerating the time to value.
*Travelers
Travelers, in strategic partnership with Dell EMC, is successfully implementing a companywide IT transformation. Through standardization, simplification and automation, Travelers is changing the economics of IT and how technology products and services are delivered. This is creating meaningful capacity, operating agility and increasing available funding for a broad array of digital business initiatives.
*Unidad de Conocimiento
Unidad de Conocimiento is a group of five individual corporations, with approximately 50,000 employees in Colombia and another 10,000 in other Latin American operations. The organization, which includes Grupo Bancolombia, was motivated to equip its growing workforce with the latest PCs and laptops to enhance productivity and efficiency. The group turned to Dell to ensure that all employees – whether in banking, healthcare insurance, cement manufacturing or food processing – had the right device for the right job, backed by a full range of services and support.
*State Bank of India
The State Bank of India, the largest public-sector bank in the country, implemented a converged private cloud based on all-flash storage, data protection, services and VMware as part of an overhaul of its branch operations. The bank also recently opened a major innovation center to explore the integration of emerging technology, such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
On behalf of each award winner, Dell Technologies will donate $2,500 to one of the following organizations of the winners’ choice supported through Dell’s Legacy of Good program: Save the Children, Deaf Kids Code, Next Wave (via the Lonely Whale Foundation) and Beat Childhood Cancer.
