Progressive Infotech, one of India’s leading Managed Services Providers, recently celebrated the win of its CEO Prateek Garg at the 9th ‘Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards’ held in New Delhi. Prateek received this award for his continued efforts and innovations in the field of ‘IT, Internet and Telecommunication’.
APEA is a recognition program led by ‘Enterprise Asia’, a non-government organization promoting entrepreneurship in the region. It aims to acknowledge groundbreaking contributions of regional players amongst various industry segments and market verticals. This year, the annual event was hosted in New Delhi, receiving close to 100 nominations from which 22 winners across 11 industries were selected. Minister of State for External Affairs Gen. V.K. Singh was the Chief Guest at the event, along with Dr. Fong Chan Onn, Chairman, Enterprise Asia and Mr. William Ng, President, Enterprise Asia.
HappynessFactory.in, India’s first goal-based financial planning portal launched a one-of-its-kind “family” feature that enables family members to co-invest toward common goals such as retirement, kids’ education, home buying and many more.
One of the key learnings that the founding team of Happyness Factory brought in from their 13 years of helping families plan their finances is: goals of a family are best achieved when everyone’s on it together. Accordingly, the “family” feature was conceived as the first and only one in the country that allows members of a family to co-invest for common goals.
Take for instance, a goal like higher education costing Rs 40 lakhs today. An investor who wishes to build a corpus for her son’s higher education in 10 years would have to aim for Rs 86 lakhs, assuming inflation at 8%. This requires a monthly investment of approximately Rs 33,000 in equity funds. If the wife opts to allocate Rs 15,000, the husband can put in the remaining Rs 18,000 required for meeting the goal.
Moreover, once investments are in place, each member of the family can track progress toward the goal and view how their individual contributions are helping to reach the goal.
Children too can join their parents to contribute to goals like their higher education and marriage. Children above the age of 18 can be added to the primary contributor’s “family”. Up to 4 persons can invest for shared goals.
Without this feature, the common practice was for spouses to split goals and invest separately for those. So, the wife may invest for the kids’ education while the husband focuses on building a corpus for their house, retirement, etc.
No wonder then that the feature has been well appreciated by users and the results that followed have been phenomenal. In the words of Milin Shah, Head of Product Development and Planning at Happyness Factory, “This is not just because financial objectives are met in 100% of cases but also because of the emotional connect it brings as people identify and agree on goals as a family. This approach works well in the Indian context because family values run deep in our society.”
At CEBIT 2018, Huawei released its latest IoT and AI products to help enterprises create intelligent and connectivity genes to build digital neurons and accelerate digital enterprise transformation.
At Huawei's press conference at CEBIT, Qiu Heng, President of Global Marketing, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei, delivered a keynote speech titled "Creating Intelligence & Connectivity Genes for Enterprises' Digital Neurons". In his speech, Mr. Qiu explored how IoT helps enterprises connect the physical and digital worlds. IoT creates a cycle whereby sensors embedded in the physical world provide continuous feedback to the digital world which then controls the physical world. With IoT in place, AI helps this cycle become more efficient and automated to effectively merge the two worlds. IoT and AI will serve as the intelligent and connectivity genes in digital enterprises' nervous system.
In this year's CEBIT, Huawei released its latest IoT and AI products to help enterprises create intelligent and connectivity genes for their digital neurons, accelerating digital enterprise transformation.
Intelligent and Connectivity Genes Are Indispensable
Huawei's Global Connectivity Index (GCI) report shows that intelligent connectivity will bring a new wave of innovation and drive economic development. By 2025, the digital economy is estimated to reach US$23 trillion in size. Intelligent connectivity will impact governments, public utilities, manufacturing, and many other sectors, and determine how industries manage their digital transformation.
In addition to its basic abilities in IoT, AI, big data, video, ICP, and GIS services, Huawei leverages its core abilities in chipsets, algorithms, and architecture design to build digital platforms. Huawei products cover from chips and terminals to cloud and edge computing infrastructures. These products feature ultra-high performance in computing, storage, and communications. In future digital enterprises, functional modules (also called neurons) will serve as digital platforms and end-to-end AI and IoT capabilities will enable the neuron's intelligence and connectivity genes.
Better Intelligence Gene: Industry's First AI-Enabled Software-Defined Camera
AI applications have been widely used in almost all industries. Auto-pilot, unmanned supermarkets, intelligent voice assistants and more. AI has become a "nuclear power plant" that drives digital industry transformation and AI development will depend on data, algorithms, and computing power. Among these three key elements, computing power can bring the most significant improvement in AI advancement. IDC analysis shows that from 2014 to 2020, data volume will increase by 5.5 times. Algorithms such as identification accuracy will improve by 4%. Whereas, computing power will grow by a staggering 30 times. This means a GPU will only need 1 day to finish a computing task that a CPU takes 30 days to complete. Gartner's report says by 2022, the majority of industrial IoT analytics will be performed at the edge rather than in the cloud, up from less than 10% in 2017. This proves that AI's rapid development relies on computing power improvement, particularly the improvement of edge computing power.
Huawei offers full-stack AI solutions that comprise chips, AI terminals, GPU servers, video PaaS cloud platforms, and more, to improve computing power and intelligence levels from end to end. At CEBIT 2018, Huawei released the industry's first AI-enabled software-defined camera (SDC), the M/X series. This series of cameras can be applied to a vast range of scenarios and improve image processing capabilities by 25 times. In low-illumination environments, the characteristic acquisition rate exceeds 85%. These cameras also have a number of unique features:
Environment Adaptive Operations: The cameras have preset parameter configuration for the day time, night time, and in different weather such as cloud, rain, and snow. When detecting time or whether changes, the cameras automatically adjust parameter settings to ensure video quality. No manual intervention is needed, which significantly improves the system operating efficiency.
Front-end Intelligence: While traditional cameras can only run a single application, an M/X camera can dynamically load algorithms to run multiple applications.
Continuous Evolution: Huawei cameras allow online upgrades to ensure continuous operation. In contrast, traditional cameras require remote manual upgrades which typically results in operational interruptions.
Upgrade of the Connectivity Gene: Connected Vehicle Platform and Wireless IoT Connectivity Solutions
In addition to the OceanConnect IoT Platform, Huawei's IoT solution also includes wired and wireless connectivity, edge computing, and chipset (LiteOS) modules. The is the industry's most comprehensive IoT solution, and Huawei continues to advance the solution to meet fast-evolving enterprise needs. At CEBIT Huawei unveiled: the upgraded OceanConnect IoT Platform which now supports Connected Vehicle systems; the eLTE-IoT Solution which has new capabilities to drastically improve performance; and the new eLTE-DSA Solution. These solutions are designed to significantly upgrade the platform's connectivity gene.
The Connected Vehicle Platform is the key ICT infrastructure that enables automotive companies' digital transformation. As the digital engine of intelligent and connected vehicles, this powerful OceanConnect IoV Platform provides four key enablers for the transformation of manufacturers:
Connectivity enablement: The platform provides safe, reliable connectivity for vehicles, supporting hundreds of millions of connections and concurrent access from millions of vehicles. The flexible platform supports deployment in private, public and hybrid clouds, accommodating their different architectures. Huawei uses its global public cloud deployment capabilities to support automotive companies' global business operations.
Data enablement: The platform collects vehicle status and driving behavior data, and analyzes the data to create profiles of drivers and vehicles (Digital Twins) on the cloud. The precise analysis of driving behavior and scenarios enables intelligent content distribution and service recommendations.
Ecosystem enablement: By separating data from services, the platform helps automotive companies control their digital assets, converge third-party content and applications, and build a thriving ecosystem around their business.
Evolution enablement: The Connected Vehicle Platform interconnects with V2X. The cooperation covers vehicle intelligence and intelligent vehicle-road synergy to evolve the intelligent experience for drivers while delivering new levels of safety and efficiency.
The upgraded eLTE-IoT Solution uses technological innovation to further improve its performance. The solution now covers a radius of 10 km with 10% stronger signals. Its communications latency is reduced by 50% and the maximum standby time is extended to 10 years.
Newly unveiled by Huawei at CEBIT, the eLTE-DSA Solution uses Discrete Spectrum Aggregation (DSA) technology to create a large bandwidth spectrum through the convergence of small spectrums – some of which are continuous, while others are scattered. DSA technology can flexibly select and aggregate them to bring several valuable features. The solution supports the flexible aggregation of all the 280 spectrums around 230 MHz; Huawei will also promote the application of DSA in other frequencies in the future. eLTE-DSA also improves the overall coverage radius by 40% and the air interface latency is reduced to 20ms. In addition, the solution achieves five-nine (99.999%) in overall stability.
The release of these new products is just the beginning. Huawei will host the grand Huawei Connect 2018 in Shanghai this October to present more AI products and launch its flagship digital platform. Huawei Enterprise BG follows the company's vision and commitment, and aims to bring digital to every organization for a fully connected, intelligent world.
Huawei together with its partners and customers is showcasing new digital transformation solutions to orchestrate a digital symphony at CEBIT from June 11-15 in Germany, the home of classical music. It is also hosting activities and sharing best practices around Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN), all of which play a critical role in today's digital transformation.
WeP Solutions Launches Asset Management Services Under its Managed Print Services Portfolio
WeP Solutions Ltd, the no.1 Managed Printing Solutions (MPS) Company in India, has launched an Asset Management service with the objective of increasing MPS penetration in India. The service will help an organization in reducing the costs associated with printing and copying, reducing staff time related to managing and supporting imaging devices, improving the level of support to end users, letting them focus on other business priorities, and contributing to environmental objectives.
Majority of businesses depend heavily on paper for various business needs. Such reliance on paper is not only inefficient but also unsustainable – financially and from the point of view of the environment. The Asset Management service is thus aimed at bringing discipline to the print infrastructure for businesses. It will enable them to streamline their print environment effectively without worrying about existing/any immediate investment.
This service is offered on a ‘zero capital’ basis in which the printers are deployed at the customer’s premises and commercials are on a ‘Pay Per Page’ basis. Companies get a monthly automated print report, and 100% visibility of present and future costs. WeP also offers a periodic joint assessment of the enhanced print environment. With their mobile app, companies need not wait and can log calls and monitor them. They can also generate invoices and pay them online.
Speaking about this, Manish Garg, Chief Executive MPS, WeP Solutions Ltd said, “One of the key drivers of MPS is the continued reliance on paper-based services, which can prove costly for businesses. However, with our Asset Management services, organizations will be able to save up to 40% of their costs in terms of manpower, running the printers, and issues with toner, etc. Launched last month, this service makes everything hassle-free for our customers. Another value-added service that accompanies this is called device management. For example, it is possible for one person to monitor &control several printers, connected to one network, through a single dashboard from one location. WeP will also help organizations who come under the ambit of our Asset Management services, meeting certain parameters, to replace their printers.”
MPS being the future of the printing and imaging industry culminates the printing/ copying /scanning requirements of organizations.Understanding this need, WeP introduced the concept in the Indian market and aims to innovate new ways and revamp the traditional ways of how MPS is done in India. It has more than 500 happy enterprise corporates being serviced in more than 2000 locations spread across India. WeP has installed over 25,000+ machines and has a retention capacity of about 99%.
WeP has been transforming itself continuously adapting to changing technology and market needs. In the initial years, their primary business came from impact print technology. Over the years, it has diversified from a hardware-centric company to a solutions-based one. The group has three business lines: WeP Digital, WeP MPS, and WeP Retail. Together, these cater to 1,000+ enterprise customers and 80,000+ retail customers in 2000+ cities across India.Their MPS or Managed Print Serviceswas a first in the country. With WeP Retail and Digital, the company has now delved into emerging segments like Digital Services and Solutions for enterprise and retail industry in line with the Indian government’s Digital India and Make in India initiatives.
Amazon India has announced the launch of the School Bookstore on Amazon.in. As schools across the country reopen for the new academic year, the School Bookstore will seek to lighten the load on parents and students of running around for school supplies and be their one stop destination to shop by class, subject and board.
Right from nursery to 12th standard, parents can find books for all subjects across different boards - CBSE, ICSE & IGCSE - and publishers such as NCERT, with delivery at their doorsteps. The store is segregated into books for each class and subject, across different syllabi, for an easy shopping experience.
In addition to textbooks, students getting ready for competitive exams like the JEE, NEET, Olympiads can find study material on this store. Guidebooks and sample papers are also available to help students prepare for these exams.
Commenting on the launch, Saurabh Srivastava, Director – Category Management, Amazon India said “We are dedicated to building the best-in-class store when it comes to buying books online. Textbooks are a basic need for school students and often, parents find it difficult to source them. Now customers can buy these books and other school supplies on Amazon.in with the convenience of getting them delivered at their doorsteps. We also have school specific bundles of textbooks and notebooks recommended by various schools. Finding the right school books for their children isn’t a challenge for parents anymore.”
AVTAR Group, a pioneer in D&I consulting, is all set to host a series of webinars aimed at returning second career women starting from 22nd June 2018. These one-hour webinars hosted by prominent D&I consultants from AVTAR will help prepare returning women for the changing facets of the workplace. Usha Pillai, Chief Consultant of AVTAR Group will present the upcoming session of the webinar between 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM on the theme, ‘Use Emotional Intelligence to build better work relationships.’
Emotional intelligence is a skill that every returning woman should hone as part of their career journey in order to manage feelings and emotions, as they have a direct correlation with performance and decision making. Keeping this in mind, the one hour workshop has been crafted to help women learn the various ways in which women can handle attitudes and behavior at work. During the webinar, the attendees will gain knowledge on how to be self-aware of the consequences of one’s emotions and ways to interact in a balanced way with others, thus improve daily interactions.
The free webinar is open to all women professionals who are interested in understanding emotional intelligence to build better work relationships. Interested participants can register by visiting the official website or clicking on the link below.
According to data from Indeed, the world’s no. 1 job site, Bengaluru is the leading city for those seeking job opportunities in the technology sector, by a considerable margin, with 22% of all job postings in the country originating from the city. It is followed by Delhi-NCR (comprising New Delhi, Noida and Gurugram), Pune, Hyderabad, and Mumbai, making up the top five destinations for technology careers in India. Smaller cities such as Mohali and Ahmedabad also see a fair share of job postings in the sector; with Chennai also featuring in the leading cities for jobs in the technology sector.
Aptly named the Silicon Valley of India, it comes as no surprise that Bengaluru continues to lead in terms of job opportunities in the technology sector, given that it has in the past been the home ground for several start-ups. According to a previous study by Indeed, Bengaluru is also the leading city in India for jobs related to blockchain, an upcoming segment in the technology space.
While the actively job seeking age group of 20-29 year olds continue to show a relatively high level of interest in the technology sector – indeed, the age group is also the most actively hired; interestingly, senior job-seekers above the age of 55 are also showing significant interest in the sector. Conversely, the 40-49 age group shows the least interest in the sector.
Commenting on the subject, Sashi Kumar, Managing Director, Indeed, said, “Today organizations must keep constantly evolving in order to keep pace with the advent of new technologies, be it artificial intelligence, machine learning, or big data analytics. New technologies bring with them opportunities for employment, as new job roles emerge in their wake. However, while there are ample jobs available in India, the need of the hour is talent that is adequately skilled to fulfil the responsibilities the job entails. Employers all over the world are in search of employees with the ability to continuously upskill themselves, and thus continue to stay relevant to the organisation.”
There has been consistent demand for professionals in the technology sector, with jobs outnumbering talent, due to a persistent skill gap or talent mismatch. While India produces a significant share of the world’s graduates, there is an urgent need to ensure parity between skilling programmes and industry’s requirements. It is up to both employers and job seekers to undertake measures that help in developing the requisite skills for the job roles in question. Such initiatives could go a long way towards reducing the skills gap and alleviating the perceived talent crunch that companies are facing.
South Korean auto maker Kia plans to roll out electric and hybrid vehicles from its upcoming plant at Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh and is targeting to launch an electric vehicle in India by 2021, said a top company official.
Kia Motors India, the wholly-owned arm of Kia Motors Corporation, has lined also up three models to be launched here in the next three years as part of its plans to enter the market. It will start with sports utility vehicle (SUV), SP Concept that was showcased at the Auto Expo this year.
“At the moment we are considering to produce electric vehicles and hybrids at our facility (at Anantpur),” Kia Motors India Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Kook Hyun Shim told the media in an interview.
The company is investing $1.1 billion at the plant spread over 23 million square feet. It will have a capacity to produce 3 lakh car annually and employ around 3,000 when fully operational.
When asked about the company’s plans for electric vehicles (EVs) for India in the backdrop of the government taking a technology agnostic approach and avoiding framing an Electric Vehicle policy, he said the company’s approach is “very flexible” to reach market advantage.
