As part of his current visit to Dubai, Canada and the United States, Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis is hosting a series of meetings in Quebec with the intent on promoting emerging technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence. Key among them are the meetings with IVADO and AI Next.
The CM met Vice Premier of Quebec Dominique Anglade, and both agreed to a collaboration between Maharashtra and Quebec to increase increments in AI and Aero, as also promoting AI accelerators like AI Next and IVADO.
The meeting with IVADO was fruitful in that IVADO signed a collaboration agreement with the Department of IT, Maharashtra for setting up an AI accelerator in the state. They also signed a Letter of Intent to become part of the World Organization on AI (Artificial Intelligence – Quebec expertise). Additionally, AI Next has signed an agreement with the Government of Maharashtra’s Department of information Technology to set up a joint AI accelerator to promote 50 start-up AI units in Maharashtra. It has also been agreed that IVADO and Applied AI Research Institute focused on social good in Mumbai, which was launched in February, will work together to set up AI clusters in Maharashtra in conjunction with IIT Mumbai.
Speaking at a panel discussion on the topic, Chief Minister said, "There is a great deal of uncertainty around AI. However, as representatives of the people, if we begin to embrace it, it will give a great deal of confidence to the citizens and enable us to demystify the technology. With effective use of AI, we hope to bring basic services to the doorsteps of the people, be able to save lives through improved healthcare as also create about 230 million jobs in the country by year 2025 under WEF Industry 4.0."
Under the visionary aegis of the Chief Minister, the state of Maharashtra has invested in AI in several areas already. Maharashtra was the first state in India to come out with a comprehensive cloud policy that has enabled the entire government to take steps to shift its operations to cloud and take advantage of the capabilities of cloud computing. Providing boost to this direction, the government has come out with the first fintech policy in India that includes incentives to start ups, Mumbai fintech sandbox, fintech registry etc. Additionally, the IT department of the state government has also embarked on use of blockchain in some key areas such as land registry, health care, transport etc.
The vision of Hon’ble Chief Minister is to smartly deploy AI to bring about improvement in a few fields of governance and welfare:
Agriculture: to provide farmers with information on (a) what to sow to maximise their profit (not just yield) (b) when to sow it (c) when to fertilise, irrigate and harvest it; provide the agriculture department insights into what water storage mechanisms to build on farms and in villages, based on climatic zone, soil type, soil health, weather patterns / history, land topography; use satellite or drone or mobile phone images (or combinations thereof) to predict pests, growth rates, yields, harvest dates, and arrival dates and prices in vegetables
Health: Assist hospitals in diagnosis of common cancers (e.g. mouth or throat cancers) from images and blood samples using Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of a large population; assist ASHA workers to provide pre-diagnosis in remote villages for simple diseases, and generate recommendations for escalations to doctors for more complex diseases
Home: Detection of number plates from moving cars through CCTV images; detection of criminals using face detection algorithms
Revenue and Finance: Detection of fraud and evasion of taxes by using analytics techniques coupled with AI
Power: Forecasting power prices based on weather patterns and weather forecasts
IT: Detection of cyberattacks using Advanced Persistent Threat monitoring systems
Social Justice – Disabilities: Speech synthesis for the speech impaired, and speech recognition and transcription for the deaf
Industries or Textiles: Assisting in scoring / making recommendations on applications to various government benefits schemes, e.g., for loans, grants for technology upgradation, etc.
After two consecutive years of successful annual shows, ABIR, one-of-its-kind art exhibition-cum-contest, is back with its Third Edition – Abir First Take 2018. Conceptualized with an earnest vision to promote young talent in art across the country, Ms. Ruby Jagrut, a distinguished natural dye artist started ABIR as a non-profit charitable trust in 2016. With support from the art fraternity and connoisseurs, Abir continues its efforts towards honoring promising artists not only with prize money but also by providing them with mentorship from the maestros. The clarion call for entry from across the country has been made; art entries will be accepted from 10th June onwards.
Art forms such as acrylic on canvas, etching, charcoal, oil on canvas, sculpture, ceramic sculpture, clay, calligraphy, wire, etc. will be judged by an illustrious panel of jury. Like every year, renowned artists from the fraternity have lent their support to this growing movement of art. This year’s jury comprises of homegrown veteran talent Amit Ambalal (Painter & Sculptor), Umrao Jaan famed Padmashri Muzaffar Ali (Filmmaker, Fashion designer, Poet), Ravinder Reddy (National award winning eminent Sculptor), Seema Kohli (noted Contemporary Indian artist) and Vijay Bagodi (expert in Etching, Woodcuts, Lithographs, Serigraphs and Monoprints).
6 awards in 3 different categories are bestowed with prize money. The winning entry can take home an award money of Rs 1,00, 000/- while the runner- up is awarded Rs 50,000/- in each category.
Top 100 artworks shortlisted by the jury members will be exhibited at Kanoria Centre of Arts and HP Hutheesing Visual Art Centre, Ahmedabad from 27th Oct to 2nd Nov 2018. It is a conscious effort of Abir to promote aspiring artists and bridge the gap between the art patrons and upcoming talent by the means of its annual exhibition show. The selected artwork will be up for display and sale thus providing exposure for their creation while providing the right patronage too.
At the curtain raiser announcement of ABIR First Take 2018, Ruby Jagrut shared her vision and added “As an artist, I understand the importance of hand-holding and encouraging aspiring talent when they need the most. Lack of right education, mentors, financial resources, galleries and patrons can be daunting. I am thrilled that more than 2000 artists from 117 cities from across India and abroad have entered Abir contest in last two years. It gives me faith that we are reaching out to the right people who need support and mentorship. Art fraternity has been extremely supportive and encouraging. Every year, we get an illustrious panel of jury to judge these entries. We look forward to see what Indian artists have to offer this year too”.
“Art is an intimate form of exploration of beauty, texture, and space. It’s about giving substance to an idea. And I’m eager to see how well young, talented artists at Abir First Take 2018 do this,” stated the eminent artist and jury member, Muzaffar Ali. “What I’ll be looking for in the submitted entries is the ‘wow’ factor, a creation that’s a fusion of beauty and humanity. It’s this fusion that has the capacity to touch the soul,” he added.
While the maiden edition of ABIR in 2016 received 629 entries from 48 different cities of India, the second edition made headway with 1400 entries from 117 cities. Out of the 100 shortlisted creations, 46 oeuvres got sold garnering fame, recognition and remuneration to the artists. With the community initiative evolving into a bigger platform each year, Team ABIR is positive about record entries for the third edition.
Admissions are open for the Internationally renowned Yoga Teacher Training Programme from KRISHNAMACHARYA YOGA MANDIRAM-CHENNAI which is India’s Premiere Yoga Institute, Bangalore, at Sri Krishna Wellness Yoga and Cultural Centre, Malleshwaram, Bangalore. The course begins on June 23 2018 and is a 11-month course.
If you are a keen Yoga Practitioner and Yoga Enthusiast and really want to learn Traditional Yoga, and want to get certified from one of the most highly reputed global institutions, set up more than 40 years ago, considered the ‘IIM of Yoga’ this is the course for you.
There is only one exclusive KRISHNAMACHARYA YOGA MANDIRAM in Chennai and this is the first time in their 40 year history their teachers are coming to Bangalore to teach this prestigious Yoga Teacher Training Program at the unique centre Sri Krishna Wellness Yoga and Cultural Centre, Malleshwaram, Bangalore.
Ms. Mimi Partha Sarathy, Founder and Managing Trustee, Sri Krishna Wellness, Yoga & Cultural Centre, (Trust)
Shri T. Swaminathan – CEO - Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram - – Chennai
Sri Sri Yathiraja Jeeyar Swami, Swamini Svatmabhodananda Saraswati , Ms. Mimi Partha Sarathy – SKWC, Dr. Latha Satish - KYM , Shri S. Sridharan-KYM , Sri. Jayaraman Mahadevan, Smt. Nrithya Jagannathan – KYM with the graduates of the KYM TTC – Batch 2017 – 2018.
The leading mobile marketing platform, CleverTap, announced their powerful suite of Discovery Tools, based on automated user segmentation. These tools enable mobile marketers to quickly unearth customer insights and accelerate ROI on their marketing strategies. CleverTap’s Discovery Tools are already being leveraged by enterprise customers to build long term customer value and to create impactful customer experiences.
Today’s customers expect brands to respond to their needs immediately. Businesses that are able to predict and respond to their user’s behaviors in a timely manner are the ones that will win. While progressive marketers have been using manual means of segmenting their users into micro-segments, this is a time consuming and expensive effort. Automated segmentation goes through users behavior data, running different machine learning algorithms and models on this data and is finally able to present interesting segment of users to marketers.
This set of advanced tools will instantly identify champion users, loyal customers differentiated from hibernating users and about to churn users. Automatically exposing these user segments allows marketers to focus their creativity on finding the best ways to engage with these segments - run a loyalty program for champion users and possibly run some win back campaigns on users likely to churn to get their interest back. With automated user segments at their fingertips, marketers can optimize their mobile strategies to drive higher conversions while reducing friction points.
CleverTap’s Discovery Tools Suite includes automated segmentation using the following models:
● RFM (Recency, Frequency and Monetary):
○ How recently a user has visited your app in combination with how frequently a user visits are valuable insights into how marketers can engage with them. Treating someone whom you’ve seen yesterday or a week ago differently from someone you’ve not seen for a year is critical. CleverTap’s RFM model automatically segments your entire user base into 10 automatic segments (from champions to hibernating users) so that you can see what you are doing right with one group, and what you can do more effectively to connect with others.
● Flows:
○ Users traverse through your apps via a thousand different paths. Some sophisticated users navigate it optimally, but many others get stuck and need help at different steps along their paths to conversion. CleverTap’s Flows lets you instantly visualize all possible paths of all your user segments. Using conversion percentages, you can identify the most optimal paths in your app. Provide an improved customer experience to user segments that are getting stuck and help them reach their destinations within your app.
● Pivots:
○ With a few clicks, breakdown your users into weekend vs. weekday warriors; users who consume content in the afternoons vs. nightowls. CleverTap’s Pivots give you unlimited combinations of data visualizations to make your data actionable by providing the ability to pinpoint each cell as a segment of users. Easily discover your best customer segments without needing a data scientist to try hundreds of permutations and combinations to get to the same answer.
“Today’s users don’t have the time and patience to visit your app and dig for the information they need. Brands almost need to anticipate and dynamically react to their users’ needs. With the launch of Discovery Tools, we aim to automate a large part of how marketers discover their valuable customer segments. These tools will significantly improve marketing efficiency and help marketers spend their marketing dollars effectively”, said Sunil Thomas, Chief Executive Officer at CleverTap.
Genpact, a professional services firm focused on delivering digital transformation, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Commonwealth Informatics, Inc. (CI), a market-leading provider of cloud-based drug safety analytics products and services for medical research and healthcare delivery headquartered near Boston, Mass. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. This transaction is not expected to be material to current year financial performance.
With this acquisition, the Genpact pharmacovigilance artificial intelligence (PVAI) suite of capabilities is expected to be the first in the industry to establish a closed-loop, machine-learning system across the entire pharmacovigilance information value chain. Incorporating the Commonwealth Vigilance Workbench (CVW) software and the deep expertise of the CI team, Genpact will enable life sciences companies to establish a new approach for pharmacovigilance – one which leverages the wealth of available data in an effort to better predict and prevent adverse effects of medicines and thereby protect patient safety, while at the same time improving data quality and operational efficiency.
Genpact’s PVAI capabilities incorporate natural language processing and machine learning techniques to reliably and accurately extract and process adverse event data from unstructured and partially-structured source documents. The integration of CVW with Genpact’s PVAI offering for automated and intelligent case processing is expected to create a pharmacovigilance system that continually learns from the wider healthcare delivery ecosystem, accelerates and enhances signal detection and evaluation, and better protects patient safety.
Commonwealth Informatics is led by a widely-respected services and development team whose products and services span signal detection, signal evaluation, risk assessment, benefit-risk assessment, and population health informatics. CVW consists of a set of integrated modules that are delivered via a software as a service model. Commonwealth Informatics developed the modules in close collaboration with leading pharmacovigilance teams within pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies. The modules provide support for generating and assessing evidence from individual case safety reports, clinical trial data sets, and electronic health records. CVW is used by life sciences and biotech companies, healthcare providers, and government agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
“With the integration of Commonwealth Informatics’ ground-breaking signal management solution into the Genpact PVAI suite of capabilities, we can better help life sciences companies achieve end-to-end transformations of their pharmacovigilance operating models, serving as their single go-to partner,” said Balkrishan “BK” Kalra, business leader for Life Sciences and Healthcare at Genpact. “We believe that our enhanced PVAI suite has the potential to be revolutionary in its impact across the industry, shifting resources from transaction processing to analyzing the effects of medicines on public health. Genpact’s PVAI offering is currently being implemented by a number of large pharmaceutical companies, including a top-five global pharmaceutical leader. With the added capabilities from CI, we are excited to provide a comprehensive solution capable of transforming pharmacovigilance.”
“Commonwealth Informatics is thrilled to join forces with Genpact and combine our software and expertise in close collaboration with our customers to create the future of pharmacovigilance systems,” said Geoffrey Gordon, founder and president, Commonwealth Informatics. “We are also excited to use this strong foundation as the basis for future work with healthcare organizations to close the loop and realize the full potential of a learning healthcare system.”
Genpact currently serves the majority of the top global life sciences companies, helping pharmaceutical and medical devices companies pursue global growth, achieve cost reduction, increase speed to market, and improve regulatory compliance by providing a range of digital solutions, analytics services, and business process transformation expertise.
Today, global smartphone brand Vivo announced the launch of Vivo #PassTheSwag, a global dance movement aimed to unite both football and music fans around the world to create an iconic memorable moment for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The initiative will bring people together through a common dance language and to the tunes of the Official Song for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, ‘Live it Up’, by Nicky Jam, Will Smith and Era Istrefi. Vivo hopes to empower fans to capture unforgettable memories and express themselves through Vivo #PassTheSwag during the World Cup, aligning with its product focus on creating smartphones with quality sound, ultimate photographic experience and cutting-edge technology.
As part of the launch, fans from all around the world are encouraged to share videos of themselves on social media as they #PassTheSwag to the tune of the Official Song. Throughout the tournament, fans watching it live will also be encouraged to #PassTheSwag during the Vivo Super DJ Show at all 64 matches.
Speaking about the announcement, Michael Chang, Brand Director, International Business, Vivo, said, “The FIFA World Cup is the biggest stage in world football, and a massive celebration which brings together people from across the globe. In sponsoring the 2018 FIFA World Cup, we encourage fans to go beyond being just an audience, but to become a participant, a creator, and to enable extraordinary moments to be seen, shared and remembered.”
“Globally, we’ve seen how, when tied together, music and performance goes hand-in-hand with sports to create truly extraordinary moments. #PassTheSwag brings to life our campaign theme “My Time, My FIFA World Cup”, in getting everyone excited and by allowing fans to be part of the World Cup through a fun and catchy dance”, added Chang.
Vivo #PassTheSwag is part of the Vivo Super Time project which also consists of music themed activities like the Vivo Super DJ Show at all the matches, and Vivo Super Time during the Official Song Performance at the Final Match Show. Together with the Vivo Super Fan photographer programme, which provides fans unprecedented pitch-side, stadium and warm up session access to capture and share these extraordinary moments, Vivo Super Time is part of the brand’s global World Cup campaign, ‘My time, My FIFA World Cup’.
India is booming as an emerging market for the increasingly popular EB-5Visa. Due to the sudden rise in the demand, it has been published earlier that some countries including India will hit retrogression this year. Retrogression results in an extended waiting period for visas due to any one country exceeding its quota in a given year. Nysa Global is offering in India a project through which people can beat the backlog and get EB-5 approval on an expedited basis. Thus far applicants to this project have received approval in less than 90 days.
At the EB-5 Advocacy Conference in April 2018, the National Visa Center (N.V.C.), the department that issues the immigrant visa announced that India will begin to be impacted by visa retrogression by June 2019. A final action date (FAD) marks the end of a “current visa” status for a country, indicating a backlog. It does not affect the project, but it does effect processing time for applicants. Countries with a FAD mean that an investor is only eligible for the green card if the priority date is available. Due to the dramatic increase in demand for EB-5 visas in India, the State Department projects that it will impose a FAD for India in June 2019 – but it could well be earlier. Once a FAD has been imposed, Indian nationals will likely wait for 5 years to get the visa.
Nysa is the only company in India to introduce a project that has received federal expedited status.
“By investing in this project, Indians can beat the visa backlog as they can potentially secure their Green Cards within this visa year (till Sep 30, 2018) and in the early part of the next visa year and beat the impact of retrogression” added Pankaj Joshi, Managing Director, Nysa Global.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Indian’s to get approved in record time and beat the backlog that is coming!!
“Non-Resident Indians in the US on valid non-immigrant visas, like H1-B, L-1 and F-1 could potentially file for their Adjustment of Status and secure the employment authorization cards immediately upon approval” added Joshi.
APEA simultaneously provides a platform to successful entrepreneurs for sharing ideas, resources and opportunities to boost innovation and business development, while ensuring fair business practices. This year, the event was attended by more than 250 industry leaders representing an elite group of prominent entrepreneurs in the subcontinent.
Commenting on his achievement, Prateek Garg, MD and CEO, Progressive Infotech said, “I am extremely delighted to be a part of this august group of successful entrepreneurs. At Progressive, our approach has always been aimed at delivering unmatched customer satisfaction. Since the market is dynamic, so has been our attitude while addressing it. This dynamic approach has helped us establish robust processes and frameworks at Progressive and enabled us to stay relevant within the global marketplace since our inception. I’m indeed honoured to be felicitated by APEA, however, I’d like to mention that this recognition is equally credited to my team at Progressive Infotech without whom none of my contributions to the industry would be possible.”
