According to data from Indeed, the world’s no. 1 job site, there has been an increase of 186% in the number of job seekers looking for work opportunities in the robotics sector in India between May 2015 and May 2018. During the same period, job postings in the sector grew by 191%.
Growth of robotics in India
The rising interest among job seekers for jobs in robotics as seen in the past year by far outstrips the growth witnessed by the sector in the previous years, while the number of job postings in the sector, on the other hand, has slowed after the initial boom, during which growth was far more rapid.
It appears that while job seekers are increasingly looking at working in the robotics sector, companies within the sector are slowing down in terms of hiring. Following the initial spurt in growth in 2015, driven by the government’s investment of $13 billion USD in robotics under its Make in India initiative, hiring for robotics profiles has slowed considerably.
Top regions for robotics jobs in India
The data further indicates that Maharashtra is the leading state in India for those seeking job opportunities in the robotics sector. Home to large technology centres like Pune and Mumbai, it comes as no surprise that the region leads the trend. It is followed by Karnataka, which houses India’s Silicon Valley Bengaluru, and Telangana, of which upcoming technology hub Hyderabad is a part, making up the top three regions in India for job opportunities in the robotics sector. According to a previous study by Indeed, the leading cities in India for jobs in the technology space are also predominantly from the states that lead in terms of robotics job openings.
Sectors leading the robotics boom
Surgery is one area where robots are making a breakthrough, with the sector expected to grow at a rate much higher than the global average. India’s surgical robotics market is estimated to grow at a rate (CAGR) of 20% between 2017 and 2025, as compared to the global rate of 12%[1]. Another sector that is seeing increasing reliance on robots is the construction industry, given the thrust of government initiatives such as Make in India and Digital India. With a market of for close to one thousand robots annually, the sector offers huge potential for experimentation.
Commenting on the subject, Sashi Kumar, Managing Director, Indeed, said, “Robotics is one of the most exciting sectors emerging in India today. Sectors like construction, manufacturing and healthcare are boosting the demand for robotics talent, and there is enormous scope for the application of the technology across an even wider array of industries. As access to internet connectivity and open source platforms improves, a favourable environment for the sector’s growth and development is being created. Even as people fear that automation will take away jobs, robotics is creating new job opportunities for skilled resources.”
Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions secures Lupin Limited, a transnational leader in the pharmaceutical industry, by addressing their security needs across data centers, endpoints, email and networks. Trend Micro was also able to complement the existing security solutions of Lupin Limited through a comprehensive security across their major vectors, advanced shielding from vulnerabilities with virtual patching and safeguarding of networks and endpoints against advanced attacks. By providing out-of-box integration with existing perimeter security solutions, Trend Micro was able to further simplify Lupin’s security operations with a single management dashboard for all capabilities.
Lupin Limited required a high-level security solution to safeguard critical applications in its data centers, while also requiring protection of email on Microsoft Office 365 against advanced attacks a priority. With more than 300 servers running on multiple operating systems, Lupin also required the ability to detect targeted attacks, advanced threats, and ransomware across the network, capturing lateral, inbound and outbound traffic. Finally, Lupin wanted to manage the solution through a single console.
“Lupin was seeking a comprehensive security solution that would equip their servers, network, and email with advanced protection, and that could detect and block security exploits, while also being equipped with cloud capabilities. At Trend Micro, they found the perfect partner who could provide exactly that and more. We deployed our solution in two phases. The first phase involved deployment of Deep Security in a hybrid environment, which brought in robust capabilities for physical, virtual, and cloud servers, in one integrated platform. The second phase involved deployment of Smart Protection Complete and Deep Discovery Inspector. Also, Cloud App Security was used to secure more than 20,000 mailboxes operating on Office 365,” said Nilesh Jain, Vice President – South East Asia and India, Trend Micro.
“Our Deep Security supports legacy operating systems, providing seamless integration for VMware deployments, and integrates with multi-cloud players, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform service. Our solution was seamlessly integrated with Lupin’s VMware deployments,” he further added.
“Trend Micro is a huge plus to our organization. It has increased security by reducing the risk of data breaches. The virtualized environment has streamlined administration, without compromising security or flexibility,” said Mayur Danait, CIO, Lupin Limited.
Trend Micro OfficeScan solution eliminated security gaps across endpoints by constantly learning, adapting, and automatically sharing threat intelligence across Lupin’s environment, and their Connected Threat Defense delivered network sandbox rapid response updates to endpoints when a new threat was detected, enabling faster protection and reducing the spread of malware. Trend Micro Deep Discovery Inspector provided identification against advanced and unknown malware, ransomware, zero-day exploits, command and control (C&C) communications, and evasive attacker activities that are invisible to standard security defense.
Further adding to it, Saurabh Kaushik, CISO, Lupin Limited said, “Trend Micro’s capabilities like virtual patching that shields from vulnerabilities without leading to do emergency patching, and employing cross-generational techniques like machine learning used to detect advanced malware are a big benefit to our organization.”
Trend Micro’s position as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms since 2002, and its rank as the “most effective recommended breach detection system” for two years running by NSS Labs further encouraged Lupin to choose Trend Micro over other solutions.
In a move which highlights its strong growth momentum, Cybage, a leading global technology consulting organisation specialising in outsourced product engineering services, has appointed Walter Mastelinck to its newly-formed Board of Directors. The appointment of a remarkable and experienced business leader such as Walter marks a significant landmark in Cybage’s ongoing success story. In his role at Cybage, Walter will reinforce company’s vision, strategic direction, and achievement of the business goals.
A serial entrepreneur, Walter has built several successful and scalable businesses from the ground up throughout an illustrious career spanning more than 25 years. He founded Transics in 1991 and, his tenure of more than two decades as its CEO has been one of the most prominent entrepreneurial stories. Walter led Transics’s transformation from a local Belgian enterprise to a global leader in fleet management and telematics solutions for the road transport sector. He spearheaded Transics’ IPO on the Eurolist stock exchange in 2007 as well as its eventual sale to WABCO, a global commercial vehicle industry technology supplier, for EUR111.1 million. He led the company till the end of 2016 as its CEO.
Speaking on the appointment, Arun Nathani, Managing Director & CEO – Cybage, said, “Walter has a highly successful track record of building great companies and taking them to market leadership positions. Having such a veteran industry leader with extensive, hands-on expertise in the various aspects of business operations as part of its Board of Directors is an important milestone for Cybage. The rich entrepreneurial experience that Walter brings to the table will help Cybage consolidate its position as a domain-leading organisation, whilst keeping its core culture of entrepreneurship alive.”
Since the end of his tenure at Transics, Walter has guided several high-potential ventures from an early stage, nurturing them into respectable and domain-leading organisations. This has only been made possible by Walter’s unrelenting determination to be deeply and actively involved – as an investor and as a mentor – in all aspects of business operations, especially those initiatives pertaining to technological innovation and business growth. He is currently involved with two medtech start-ups, Molecubes and Epilog, and is also the Co-founder, investor, and Director at WATT Factory, home to the ‘best in class’ accelerator with start-ups brought together from different Smart City domains. He is also currently serving as the Co-owner and CEO of Creaplan, a Belgian market leader for the design and construction of exhibition stands, displays, and interiors.
Walter Mastelinck added, “Incremental disruption through continuous innovation – that is what I feel any organisation, regardless of its size, should always aspire to. On that front, Cybage has an impressive track record. It has grown exponentially over the years and has emerged as a market leader in the hi-tech product engineering and outsourcing domain, and has still kept up with the constantly-changing technological landscape with several innovations of its own. I am also impressed by the vision of the senior leadership at Cybage, and look forward to working with this talented and driven team.”
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will be organising the 14th India Innovation Summit on July 12-13, 2018 with the theme, ‘India.AI - Driving the Future for the World’. The Summit will attempt to strengthen the spirit of India to build an ecosystem that fosters and propels Innovation through New Age Technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) as the foremost pillar of global growth. This year’s Innovation summit will cover topics such as, ‘Myths and Truths of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality’, ‘Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Smart Farming, Healthcare’, ‘Learning, Automobiles (Driverless Vehicles)’ among others.
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman India Innovation Summit, Chairman, Axilor Ventures & Co-Founder, Infosys Ltd said that the India Innovation Summit has been an immense source of inspiration and a patron for Innovation, it provides an ideal platform for Indian Industry to study and understand the various flavours of innovation across all verticals of the Industry, it is also a platform to engage and drive the innovation led growth strategies from India for global markets.
According to him India is currently witnessing the commercialization of artificial intelligence and this has two aspects, one is cost and second is access. Ai is a disruptive technology which is going to touch all our lives and every business. He said that an area where a lot of work needs to be done is in policy and regulation, we need to create an environment that is conducive and encourages innovation, but as the same time looks at the challenges and the down side of innovation. Every aspect of disruption will have pros and cons and until we fully understand the implication of technology this will need to be navigated very carefully and in a balanced manner.
Speaking on the Young Innovators Challenge Award, Debarati Sen, Managing Director, 3M India Ltd said that 3M has significantly enhanced the size for the award for the young innovators challenge from 9 lakhs total prize value last year to 15 lakhs this year. 3M is celebrating 5 years of investing in “Youth & Innovation” through the 3M-CII Young Innovators Challenge Awards. As a responsible business and corporate, 3M is committed to building a community of young innovators capable of nation building and leading the future of the world. The 5th season of 3M-CII Young Innovators Challenge Awards seeks to find ideas and new projects from young innovators communities that are ready to build resilience to the social, economic, and physical challenges that India is facing and lead the future of the world. Also, this year the Challenge has added a new section called “Rural Innovations Awards” to ensure support to ideas working for sustainable rural development.
Sandeep Maini, Managing Director, Maini Group, said that this year the Summit will deliberate on Ai and the way it will drive the growth of industries globally. Ai has already set it significance across healthcare, aerospace and defence, FMCG and retail. One of the most talked about advancements is the deployment of Ai and how it’s used in chat bots. Over 47% of consumers are reportedly comfortable buying items from a bot. Ai provides valuable insights and it has opened the arena for better governance. The application of Ai in governance will be a game changer.
While setting the theme for 14th India Innovation Summit, I Vijayakumar, Co-Founder and CTO, Caryon Data Pte said that the theme is very relevant and timely for India, from a national economic and a human capital development perspective as AI, will be one of the advanced tools that would help us grow and emerge as one of the most desired markets for manufacturing and consumers. The Summit will address the need of the nation to build an AI-led ecosystem for fostering innovation to build our youth’s future in a digitally connected world. The session plan at the event covers a broad scope in terms of AI-led business trends, technology-led new business models, key trends in the future of human labor, the emergence of machine-intelligence in operations systems, and the maturity of machine learning methods in representation of human expertise.
To complement and enrich the conference themes, there is an exhibition arena co-located with the conference event to provide experiential understanding of the real-world products of the new human/machine intelligence paradigm. The pavilions cover the diverse sectors of the industry to represent the macro and micro level of the India’s AI landscape and the potential for the global business growth.
The two-day event will be a meeting of the minds from diverse sectors with a unique mix of corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, Govt. representatives, academia and general public makes this a great networking event as well as a learning experience both for the machines and humans.
The leading mobile marketing platform, CleverTap, has announced its entry into the field of psychographic segmentation that sets a new standard for segmenting mobile app users. Psychographic segmentation is an industry-first machine learning capability that sits at the cornerstone of what CleverTap does - help growth marketers deliver on the promise of relationship marketing.
Despite the fact that this in an age of abundant data, mobile users today expect to receive the right information with the right context. Existing mobile marketing tools help divide the audience by demographics, technographics, location, and app behavior. However, user actions are not always telling of what they are truly interested in. Their behaviors and interests change frequently, based on seasons, sporting events and current affairs. Actions can be one off behaviors or occasional purchases.
It is more critical than ever to identify micro-segments of users based on changing needs and pivot marketing efforts to bring timeliness, context and relevance. Of the numerous interactions that users have with a brand, marketers have to identify which ones characterize with their most dominating interests. For example, watching an action movie on one day does not indicate that they are action movie fans. The user’s predominant genre of interest may in fact be comedy and the content recommendations should be representative of these predominant interests.
This becomes even more challenging when the number of users are in hundreds or millions, making it impossible to accomplish contextual messaging at scale. By leveraging the power of machine learning, CleverTap leverages psychographic segmentation capabilities to process millions of data points across an entire user base to determine micro-segments of audiences. By determining a propensity or affinity towards one thing over all others, it helps establish an effective match between products and each user’s dominant interests.
With psychographic segmentation, marketers are able to anticipate user needs and predict what product or message will resonate the most with which micro-segment. They are able to find an accurate and a more intuitive way of understanding how users like to spend time on their app. It allows them to run targeted campaigns and significantly increase the chances of conversion.
Leading marketers are finding success with CleverTap’s psychographic segmentation to help them identify the most intelligent way to engage users along their customer journey. For instance, finding users most likely to purchase limited seats of a movie based on their genre of interest and viewing time preferences. With psychographic segmentation, marketers can now send the best offer to the user most likely to find value in it and ensure that their product inventory finds its most optimal buyers.
“Interest based psychographic segmentation is a significant breakthrough that equips marketers to target much more relevant content to users based on their dominant or significant behavior. In early usage the engagement rates are more than double as compared to engagement with behavior segments. The content and timing is just a whole lot better and users react to it more”, said Sunil Thomas, Chief Executive Officer at CleverTap.
(Authored by Arnab Ghosh, Director, Synergy Property Development Services)
Today we must learn to be fast, fair and slow, all at the same time. Project management professionals across geographies, are not immune from these changes. Traditional construction management methodologies are also being replaced or reinforced with new tools and technology.
In the last decade, there has been a tectonic shift in the way the real estate and construction industry is evolving in India. With the Indian construction market set to be the world’s third-largest construction market by 2021, it is imperative that Indian Construction and Design professionals up their ante in terms of delivering technologically advanced solutions.
The industry has seen sporadic improvements but in essence it largely remains a people-intensive industry as compared to the more developed parts of the world. Companies globally look at anywhere between 1-3% of project costs as the budget for software technologies to create cost and time efficiencies, which is a far cry for India.
While traditional project management models focused exclusively on the delivery of products and services, newer project management models are increasingly focusing on achieving results by interpreting the business strategy, providing effective risk assessment and deriving a solution. By embracing continuous innovation in technology, new age PMC firms are going digital by adopting ‘Cloud-based’ storage services and ‘end-to-end’ project management software solutions. Let’s look at some of the prominent technology tools which new-age PMC firms are using in India today.
Building Information Modelling
BIM is a 3D model-based process for creating and managing project information. The building information model is a digital description of every aspect of the build, and objects in the model can be linked to related information such as quantity, images, specifications or manuals. This technology benefits construction professionals by helping them create better plans, produce faster results, and stay within budget. BIM started slow in India. However with the advent of Smart cities, IoT, VR and AR gaining ground, BIM practise is witnessing a strong revival.
CCTV Monitoring
CCTV installation on-site is one of the best ways to protect a site from undue hazard. They help to track events across the site in more than one place at a time. CCTVs on-site also manage thefts and help to monitor employees at work. Client located offsite are now able to get a real-time view of their sites in the smartphones itself.
Unmanned Airborne Vehicles
Drones or UAVs are extensively used today to monitor the construction work for large and complex sites. They help the Construction management team to have visibility of the workforce operating at heights and keep the site EHS complaint. Analytic software in Drones can help to do thermal mapping and land surveying. It is still not that prevalent in India but will gain ground once the legalities of their usage is formalised.
Project Portfolio Management software
Web based cost effective Project management software is being used extensively to streamline the construction process and increase efficiency. Usually, most of the online software caters to requirements such as maintaining and creating construction schedules, resource allocations, monitoring usage and generating reports.
Cloud-based Document management software
Cloud-based document management system helps to keep all the project related documents in an easily accessible organized manner. It also makes collaborations between teams easier and there are chances of easier recovery of data if it is lost. Most importantly such software has the ability to track deliverables and make the users accountable with well-defined workflows.
Online Conferencing Applications
Considering the fact that large projects have stakeholders located in different geographies, these online conference tools are a boon to PMC firms to bring the team together at an agreed frequency to resolve open issues. Most of this software allows documents to be presented in various formats for quick reference. Virtual meetings are the new reality.
Procurement software
Procurement software contributes to automating the entire tendering process in a project. Such software nowadays is integrated with the Client ERP system and support e-bidding process flows. The workflows are well defined with the necessary checks and balances in place. It helps to maintain transparency and a clear audit trail behind for all orders released against a project.
Web-based Collaboration tools
In any project, collaboration is essential to ensure that all the teams head in the same direction and create an innovative environment. Collaboration tools with real time chats, posting features and group messaging options enable teams to communicate with each other, access information and increase efficiency rapidly.
The flow of real-time information to every team in a project is vital. Amongst the deluge of data, tools which control and analyse the information will become popular. Technology today can create algorithms which help us to take decisions. Every day we are witnessing newer applications and gadgets coming in the market to aid construction professionals. The key is to be aware about the latest advances in technology and adapt them in an innovative and effective manner.
Cheering for England and looking for their soccer team t-shirt? Or expanding your autograph collection and missing that Rajnikanth autographed photo? Is your cricket collection missing the Chris Gayle signed bat? Or is your office desk Avenger collection still short of that Spiderman figurine? Well wait no further! Providing another avenue to shop for collectibles to enthusiasts from across the country, Amazon.in today announced the launch of a dedicated store for Collectibles. The new store comprises of collectibles from two categories - Entertainment and Sports that will provide Amazon.in customers direct access to thousands of collectibles in the form of sports and entertainment memorabilia from selected sellers. The store aims to connect prominent sellers directly with collectible enthusiasts from across the country.
The Collectibles store on Amazon.in is one of the largest online collections of original and limited edition collectibles for purchase directly from sellers and dealers. This new store features easy-to-use discovery tools to help open the collectibles world to customers, provides customers with high quality images and offer detailed information about the collectibles, all in one place! Amazon.in customers can explore collectibles selection from key sellers from across the country. Some of the prominent names include Entertainment Store, Ultra Media, Voxpop, Essence for entertainment and sports collectibles.
Currently, the Collectibles store also has a special football collection displayed as part of the on-going football world cup. Gauging the popularity of the World Cup, the store offers official merchandise such as t-shirts, bobble heads, mini football boots, flags, football, table flag and posters belonging to various teams and football clubs. This is a treat for football enthusiasts as unique and interesting products are made available for purchases and gifting.
Commenting on the launch, Gopal Pillai, Director and GM, Seller Services, Amazon India, said, “At Amazon, selection is one of the key pillars of our strategy. We are committed to ensure that the Amazon.in marketplace offers the widest and the most unique selection to our customers and helps sellers expand their reach and grow at a significant scale. The launch of the Collectibles store is part of our constant endeavor to provide our customers & sellers with a new opportunity to buy & sell products even from a niche category. This store will help sellers reach customers from across the country, along with providing enthusiasts access to collectibles of their interest, especially the football fans right now looking to buy their favorite team’s merchandize. This is definitely a key launch for us and we are excited about the possibilities of this store.”
Amazon.in’s Sports Collectibles store currently has a selection of hats, bats, jerseys, mugs, figurines, fan art, shot glasses, trading cards and autographed selection. The company has on-boarded 9 well known sellers offering ICC official merchandise and rare Olympic autographed selection. Currently, the category offers selection ranging from Manchester United fan art starting from INR 300 to extremely rare Sachin Tendulkar Autograph bats for 65k+.
Furthermore, Amazon.in’s Entertainment Collectibles store currently consists of thousands of apparel, comic books, movies & music, figurines, caps, autograph photographs and old movie posters. The company has on-boarded 6 well known sellers, namely The Entertainment Store which is selling official licensed and limited edition merchandise of Game of Thrones, Avengers etc. The company has also on-boarded Ultra Media House that is listing old movie posters from 70’s super hit films like Toofan and Bijlee. The category offers a selection of collectibles from Captain America posters starting at INR 199 to extremely limited edition Batman Figurines of upwards of INR 40k as well.
Essence offers opportunities to fans to own ICC licensed memorabilia marketed worldwide, such as Sachin Tendulkar’s personally autographed signed bat. Anish Shroff, CEO of Essence said, “Amazon.in’s Collectibles store helps us cater to an untapped sports ecosystem in India and to dramatically expand our audience while simultaneously providing access to affordable, limited-edition collectibles from some of the most significant celebrities.”
Jatin Varma, CEO of Comic Con India said, “Amazon.in’s Collectibles offers opportunities to fans to own licensed merchandise across movies, music and TV-shows. We are looking forward to partner online with Amazon.in’s Collectibles store. This will help us build our online presence and provide a platform to direct traffic to Amazon collectibles to purchase authentic merchandise from our key exhibitors/sellers.”
“I was looking for the Knock out Telstar football all over in Surat, and I finally found the original version of it on Amazon collectibles. Being such a huge fan of football, this belonging is priceless. I am so happy that I could buy it from a trusted platform where I don’t have to worry about it not being genuine,” said Satish Sharma, sports enthusiast, Surat.
