Key Announcement Pointers
· IBM will now be offering its Watson Customer Engagement (WCE) services, the world’s leading “AI-Powered” Enterprise Marketing Cloud solution from its Cloud data center in India.
· With the launch of this new service, IBM will become the only company in the world to offer best-in-class “AI - powered” Enterprise Marketing Cloud Services locally from a Data Center in India.
· IBM’s Indian customers can now host their marketing data on our cloud data center, which gives them proximity, scalability, and more importantly helps them meet regulatory requirements.
· This move will enable marketers of Indian businesses and government agencies to create unique customer journeys, while ensuring that their clients have more control over their marketing data in line with data privacy regulations, especially in highly regulated sectors such as Banking, Insurance and more.
· IBM has a rich legacy of working with some of the top brands across the world and in India – who are redefining their customer journeys with the help of IBM’s technologies.
· Our valued clients such as Payback, IndusInd Bank and Titan are all leveraging IBM’s Watson Customer Engagement which is helping them create world class marketing campaigns to engage deeply with their customers.
About Watson Customer Engagement
IBM’s customer engagement expertise hasn’t evolved overnight. They are the result of a 20+ year journey focused on building a unique portfolio with $3.5 billion in investments, a commitment to innovations as seen through its 1,200 patents 12+ strategic acquisitions and 17,000+ clients’ implementations globally.
With IBM, clients gain a 360-degree view of the customer that engages them with new innovative, truly personalized experiences both in-store and online, that inspire them to buy.
· IBM’s offerings are “AI-powered” via the industry’s most advanced cognitive technology (WatsonTM), enabling marketers to identify audiences, identify the right content, identify message sentiment, and personalize customer experiences in real-time. Some key differentiators of these offerings are:
· It allows digital marketing professionals to unlock value by exceeding revenue, customer loyalty, and customer engagement goals via personalized, automated, multi-channel marketing programs.
· Our clients can deliver the smartest campaigns and perfect customer experiences with “AI-powered” capabilities and seamless access to customer behavioral and profile data to construct any program you desire.
· The “AI-powered” Marketing Assistant saves users time and effort (tasks that take hours can be completed in minutes) and helps marketers make better decisions.
· Clients can drive customer engagement with truly personalized campaigns using AI-determined customer locations (such as “work” and “home”) and predictive weather conditions.
Analyst Views
* In 2017, IDC’s MarketScape on Worldwide Artificial Intelligence in Enterprise Marketing Clouds 2017 Vendor Assessment identified IBM Watson Marketing as the only company in the leader segment.
IBM has been named as a leader by Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs, April 2018
COMIO Smartphone, India’s emerging mid-segment brand, recognised as ‘The Most Promising Brand’ by The Economic Times is all set to conquer the market with the launch of its flagship smartphone, the COMIO X1 Note. Competitively priced at Rs 9,999, the X1 Note boasts of flawless slim ID design with a stylish mirror finish back cover in two colour variants- royal blue and sunrise gold. With the COMIO X1 Note, the brand which was initially launched in North & West India now forays into the East & South market. The brand will be launching a total of 5 devices in 5k-10k price segment in East & South market including their existing models C-1, P-1, C-2 lite and S-1 lite.
Karnataka is one of the largest markets in the South region and will be of prime importance to COMIO Smartphones. Being a highly ‘value added’ market, the brand will have a strong offline network of 2000 retailers, 35 distributors, 400 after sales touch points and a deeper penetration through 3-4 large format retail chains. COMIO Smartphone will target sales of 15 K units per month from the region with an aim to have a 2-3% market share in this year. Special offers that will be offered to consumers will include- Reliance Jio offer, exhaustive COMIO support including screen breakage warranty.
The device has a dual rear camera with 13MP + 5MP AF with Flash and front camera with 8MP. A photographer’s delight, the handset comes bundled with a set of camera modes like portrait/ bokeh, beauty, panorama, social and night mode. Designed to enjoy high definition to the fullest, the smartphone comes with a 6-inch full view FHD+ 2.5D curved display. The 4G-VoLTE dual SIM smartphone is powered by a 1.45GHz quad-core processor and has a 2,900 mAh battery.
Sanjay Kalirona, CEO & Director, COMIO Smartphone, "We are excited to announce the launch of COMIO X1 Note as it marks our expansion into a pan-India brand. The response we have received from our consumers, retailers and distributors has been tremendous, encouraging us to deliver a product such as COMIO X1 Note, which is one of the best offerings from the brand in the sub-10,000 price segment.”
He further added, “The COMIO X1 Note provides an integrated solution comprising of advanced camera quality, better speed, security features, stylish design and value-added services all-in-one, ensuring an enhanced user experience.”
Some of the other features include:
· Android O: Android Oreo picture-in-picture (multiple apps), smarter battery, 2x faster interface, over 60 new emojis
· A smarter way to unlock your smartphone with Face Unlock feature
· Secure your smartphone the smartest way with the Intruder Selfie feature
· Explore magic with the Finger Print sensor: pick calls, unlock device in 0.15 seconds, click pictures, access apps
· More memory, more space, more fun: 3GB RAM + 32GB ROM, expandable upto 128GB
· Never miss a buzz with a Notification LED, nor your favourite conversations with Auto Call Recording feature and Auto Call Back Reminder
· Personalise your smartphone your way with the Dual Account app
· Font Application feature with access different stylish fonts and supported with 22 regional languages
· Pop-up touch feature allows user to use the apps with less number of clicks
· WPS Office app to view all kind of documents with ease
Further to this, Sumit Sehgal, Chief Marketing Officer, COMIO Smartphone said on the launch, “After capturing the hearts of the youth in North & West India, we are excited to widen our reach to South & East market. South is a strategic region for us and Bangalore d will be one of the most important markets with its high number of technology enthusiasts. We will multiply our efforts in this region and engage with the youth to make Comio a preferred brand through our philosophy of ‘Don’t Listen Kar Daal.’
COMIO support: Specially designed after-sales support comprising of 1 year + 100 days warranty, one-time screen breakage warranty, 30-day replacement, a special buy back and upgrade offer allowing you to upgrade your old smartphone. The COMIO upgrade offer allows you an assured 40% return on your old COMIO phone (not more than 12 months old) which will be given if you want to upgrade you existing COMIO phone. Applicable through www.comio.in only.
Reliance Jio offer: Customers can now enjoy unlimited data and talk time offers using a COMIO smartphone. Jio customers to get Rs 2200 cashback (44*50 Rs vouchers) at the time of 1st successful recharge of Rs 198/299 monthly plans. The offer can be redeemed from the 2nd recharge onwards.
Availability: The COMIO X1 Note will available at all key retail stores Pan-India and online platforms- Snapdeal, Flipkart, Amazon, ShopClues and Paytm.
JLL, India’s largest professional real estate services company, estimates that over 13 million people will work out of co-working spaces by 2020. In a recently released research report ‘Spotting the opportunities: flexible space in Asia Pacific’, the company says that demand for flexible offices – including coworking spaces and serviced offices – is growing faster in Asia Pacific than anywhere else in the world. In India, the growth of flexible office space is expected to grow at 40 - 50% in 2018. The region’s stock of flexible floor space is growing at 35.7 per cent per year compared to 25.7 percent in the US and 21.6 per cent in Europe.
The potential market size of co-working across India is expected to be 13.5 million users by 2020 about half of which will be from enterprises, which are expected to take up 10.3 mn seats.
Freelancers and Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are expected to contribute 1.5 million users worth of demand, while it is anticipated that startups will demand upto 100,000 seats by 2020. The report further indicates, that the top 6 cities[1] will require an estimated 5 million seats in co-working spaces, while, 8.5 million of the projected demand will be in Tier 2 and 3 cities.
The report, which looks at major coworking and serviced office operators in 12 Asia Pacific markets, including India, reveals that the number of major flexible space operators has doubled, while flexible floor space has increased by 150 per cent between 2014 and 2017.
“In India, the coworking segment is expected to grow by 40-50% in 2018 alone. By the end of the year, we anticipate flexible workplaces would attract investment upto US$ 400 mn. With over 200 premium business centers across the country, set to double by 2020, co-working spaces will reflect the global trend of being closer to 20% of total workspace”, mentioned Sandeep Sethi - MD, Integrated Facilities Management West Asia, JLL. He highlighted that rise of the millennials and a large, vibrant start-up ecosystem are the key factors contributing to this trend in India. However, while the growth of this segment in India has been phenomenal, most corporates are in pilot or experimentation phases - revealed a high-powered panel discussion comprising of real estate thought leaders and influencers at a recently held thought leadership event ‘JLL Perspectives’. Furthermore, corporates hin India want to better understand and mitigate, the potential challenges before adopting the model .
Implications for real estate investors
In response to growing demand, JLL notes that landlords will continue to form joint ventures with coworking operators, or create their own flexible space offerings to meet tenants’ needs. Meanwhile developers are adapting to what could be a new standard in property development whereby flexible workspace will be an amenity as essential in a commercial building as food and beverage outlets or a gym.
“By 2030, flexible work spaces could comprise 30 per cent of corporate commercial property portfolios worldwide,” said Jeremy Sheldon, Managing Director, Markets & Integrated Portfolio Services, JLL Asia Pacific. “Although corporate adoption is still in its early days, there are certain factors that will continue to make this region a hot spot for coworking growth.”
One of the key drivers of the surge in corporate demand for flexible spaces, identifies the report, is plug-and-play simplicity, particularly for larger companies. The ability to move in and out of an office at short notice, avoid complicated contract negotiations and fit-out work is a convenient option for many occupiers.
At the same time, businesses are looking to encourage collaboration among employees and are using shared workspaces as a way to foster innovation through exposure to new ideas and ways of working.
Child Rights and You (CRY) a leading Indian non-profit working for child rights, announced it has received a grant from Oracle, a global leader in cloud applications and platform services. The $100,000 grant aims to harness the power of state-of-the-art digital technology in reaching out to underprivileged children of India.
This system will potentially improve lives spanning across 19 states of India and covers 2060 villages, 2 lakh households and 4.13 lakh children which happens to be the premise of CRY’s intervention. With Oracle’s support, CRY has set forth developing a software system that not only captures the ongoing groundwork in real time, but also opens up opportunities in sharpening its performance on a regular basis. With Oracle’s support, CRY has implemented the MEAL system (Monitoring Evaluation Accountability and Learning), which has helped CRY manage its database, enabling MEAL to have a presence in 19 states of India.
Oracle’s support has enabled CRY to tap into the specific problems linked with each child under any given thematic, be it education, health and nutrition, protection and participation. MEAL provides CRY with a comprehensive system that tracks changes in growth and development of every last child in the remotest village, making the results accurate and tending toward evidence-based analysis and advocacy.
The outcome of the project will be on the lines of creating efficiency to capture and communicate evidence while increasing accountability and effectiveness in studying and analyzing the interventions made in the project areas.
“The technology upgrade will enable our grass-root level workers to identify, manage and track every child and household with far greater accuracy in our intervention areas.” said, Suma Ravi, Regional Director, CRY-Child Rights and You.
“We are pleased to support Child Rights and You (CRY) in a shared mission to improve the world around us,” said Rajendra Tripathi, Senior Manager, Oracle Corporate Citizenship – India.
3i Infotech Limited, a global Information Technology company has launched Maggie – Your Virtual IT Engineer. Maggie is part of cognitive service desk that will help contact centres to address hundreds of user requests simultaneously while successfully meeting the expectations of the digital-age users anytime, from anywhere. Powered by Artificial Intelligence, and combined with Natural Language Interface, which helps it understand user queries and learn from past experience, Maggie reduces human intervention in communication and operations.
Automating most of a company’s IT operations while being 100% risk free, Maggie is based on the framework that can be further customized with open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) with technologies needed by enterprises of any size.
A simulated engineering environment provides a user-centered, first-person perspective that enables users to interact with an engineered system naturally and provides users with an extensive range of accessible tools. With Maggie, the firm aims to resolve conversational requests automatically through more natural interactions over a chat as well as help to perform health-checks of infrastructure and applications using incident management automation.
In today's digital atmosphere, the operation center’s role as a competitive differentiator in a business is principally reliant on its ability to take swift action, continue to learn from experience and apply intelligence on the go.
Speaking on their next-gen offering, Mohua Sengupta, EVP and Global Head, Services said, “IT virtual engineers are today’s necessity as digital-age users want things to happen quickly, be it a simple password reset or churnout a VM on the cloud. Incidents like these shouldn’t be dependent on the availability of a person to execute them. We have been talking about do-more-with-less, and Maggie just proves it by helping close more than 50% of Level-1 calls.”
Nilesh Gupta, VP and Global Head of Digital Infrastructure Management Services Solutions said, “In the present day scenario, contact and operation centers are more about better user experience, with everything-as-a-service and moving to a cognitive service desk, where user wants support / remediation on their terms and that’s what Maggie helps accomplish.”
Acer, one of the world’s leading gaming PC makers once again attained No.1 spot in the Indian PC gaming market as per IDC’s Q1 2018 report. Acer has proved leadership in India with 37% market share in gaming laptops and 21% share in PC gaming segment as per IDC’s Q1 2018 report, outpacing competition by a significant margin.
Acer gained the top spot in the gaming market with its critically acclaimed and widely popular Predator and Nitro gaming series. Acer in India has the widest portfolio of PC gaming products, which includes laptops, desktops, monitors and accessories specifically designed for beginners to professional gamers.
Commenting on the achievement, Chandrahas Panigrahi, CMO & Consumer Business Head, Acer India said, “It gives us immense pleasure to announce that once again Acer has retained No.1 position in the Indian gaming market by growing the market share across our gaming products. This is a result of Acer’s strong focus on innovation and commitment in offering cutting edge gaming products to Indian customers. Acer India has been at the forefront of pushing PC gaming envelop with our Predator and Nitro series and we are grateful to our fans, our partners and our customers for their constant support that has helped us achieve this milestone once again.”
Acer has shown consistent growth over the last few quarters in their gaming segment to successfully capture the top spot consequently in Q4 2017 and Q1 2018.
The Forum Mall, one of Bangalore's first full-fledged mall along with Conrad Hilton organised "Junior Chef Champ" at the Conrad, Bengaluru on Tuesday. The event Is a platform to showcase young culinary talent and inspire kids to pursue their passion. The "Masterclass Session" with celebrity chef was held In the city and children across various categories received prizes worth Rs 10 lakh.
Speaking on the event, Suresh Singaravelu, Executive Director, Prestige Group - Retail, Business Expansion and Hospitality says, "Every child should have variety of experience and developing skills is essential. Cooking is an creative art to de-stress yourselves and others.Today the best of the best are here to receive the prizes after showing off their cooking skills with the masterclass chef Praveen Shetty."
Praveen Shetty, Executive Chef at Conrad, Bengaluru said thanks to the Internet era, most children have a variety to watch and learn. Most of the children here are already familiar with culinary skills. "Cooking is a good profession to pursue."
Over the last 6 months the event was held across 5 cities and 1314 participants took part.
Singaravelu adds that being pioneers in the business, the Forum Mall have always indulged in curating experiences for all ages groups which has made us one of the preferred shopping destinations in India.
The winners of Junior Chef which was organized by Forum malls are
Forum Kormangala Winners
Category 1 (7-10 years)
-Winner: Hasini
-Runner Up: Mekhala
Category 2 (11-15 years)
-Winner: Abhinandan
-Runner Up: Srishti
Forum Neighbourhood Mall Winners
Category 1 (7-10 years)
-Winner: Chaithra
-Runner Up: Aanika
Category 2 (11-15 years)
-Winner: Neeharika
-Runner Up: Virdhi
Prizes
Cycles from Landmark, Masterclass at Conrad, Gift Vouchers from Zebronics, Gift Vouchers from Davanam Sarovar Portico Suites.
