Tata Motors Finance Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Motors Limited, today picked up a 26% stake in TruckEasy, a tech based freight aggregator owned by Loginomics Technologies Solutions Limited, a Bangalore based logistics company. This is part of Tata Motors’ continued endeavor of bringing smart solutions to enable the Trucking Community to have better lives and improve their livelihood.
TruckEasy was formed in 2015 in Bengaluru by 3 passionate young entrepreneurs’ – Nikhil Thomas, Vikram Kodgi and Avinash Achar. The company provides timely and reliable service for the transporting needs of businesses within Bangalore. TruckEasy will use this investment to expand it footprint to additional cities.
This strategic investment in TruckEasy will provide Tata Motors an insight into the rapidly growing technology-driven transformation in the freight logistics space and also get an understanding of the market dynamics in the intra-city freight movement. This will also enable Tata Motors to stay closer to the final customer, the load consigner thus enabling to provide better products and solutions. The data analytics provided by TruckEasy will be further used for research and development thereby allowing for better customization of product specifications in line with market requirements.
Speaking on the investment, Girish Wagh, President –Commercial Vehicles Business Unit (CVBU), Tata Motors said “Tata Motors has always been at the forefront of providing a differentiated service experience to the trucking community by not only providing them with the means of income but also creating business opportunities. TruckEasy is promoting entrepreneurship amongst transporters and providing them with a stable income. The young start-up has grown manifolds due to its partner-based module and its outstanding service to its customers. Through this investment from Tata Motors, TruckEasy will be able to access our wide network to grow the supply side and also to expand to multiple locations country wide.”
Commenting on this strategic investment by Tata Motors, Nikhil Thomas, CEO –TruckEasy said, “TruckEasy has been on a disciplined growth since its inception, having coverage all over Bangalore serving both the planned and unplanned business segments. Our plan is to expand to other cities and replicate the success we have in Bangalore. With the entry of Tata Motors as an investor, a box of limitless opportunities has opened up. Tata Motors having a majority market share in the SCV segment, the alliance will certainly give us access to lot of vehicles & businesses through their network. This would help us scale at a much faster pace. We in turn can give deeper insights into the SCV usage pattern with our vehicle data analytics. The driver community will be more confident on the aggregation business with Tata's entry. Truly exciting times ahead!”
For Prime Day this year, Amazon India will offer a one-of-a-kind virtual reality (VR) experience to customers in India’s top metros. Until July 17, customers in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata can visit top malls to experience hundreds of new products launching exclusively on Prime Day.
Aimed at bringing the touch-and-try charm to online shopping, Amazon Prime Day Experience Zones will allow customers to enjoy an immersive experience before buying a product. They can view products in life-size, inspect products up close, enjoy 360 degree views and evaluate products in the environment that they are likely to use it in. Apart from product launches, customers will get a virtual theatre experience and enjoy trailers of the 7 Prime Video titles premiering for Prime Day, including the latest Bollywood blockbuster Raazi and the all-new Amazon Prime Original series Comicstaan, in a virtual theatre experience.
Prime Day is an exclusive 36-hour celebration from 12 noon on July 16 to midnight on July 17 where Prime members enjoy over 200 exclusive launches, blockbuster deals and entertainment premiers. Amazon has partnered with top brands such as OnePlus, Nestlé NesPlus, Marks & Spencer, Bosch, HP, Acer, GAP, Asics and more to launch over 200 new products on Prime Day, available first to Prime members in India.
Explaining the concept, Akshay Sahi, Director & Head of Prime, Amazon India, said “Prime is designed to make life easier, more convenient and more fun for customers. With this virtual reality experience, we are helping customers discover and experience great products that are yet to launch. Customers can check the fit & fall of the latest Marks & Spencer dress on a 360 degree hologram, pick up an Amrapali necklace and inspect the intricate details up close, open a Bosch microwave placed in a kitchen countertop to visualize how it would look in their home, play with an Iron Man figurine from Hasbro in virtual reality and more. All this, while having fun in the Prime Day world.”
Customers can visit Amazon Prime Day Experience Zones in top malls in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata until July 17th. These Experience Zones are located in the atriums of malls and are open to all visitors, free of charge. Prime members will get priority access to this unique experience. At the Experience Zones, customers can also take selfies against the Prime Day wall, share their experiences on social media by tagging #PrimeDayVR & #AmazonPrimeDay and participate in quizzes to win special Prime Day merchandise.
Amazon Prime Day Experience Zones will be operational until 17 July from 12 noon to 8 p.m.
Not a Prime member yet? Customers can join Prime now for ₹129/month at www.amazon.in/prime to enjoy Prime benefits including free fast delivery, unlimited video, ad-free music streaming, exclusive deals and more.
Every Day Made Better with Prime
Prime is designed to make your life better every single day. Over 100 million Prime members around the world enjoy the many benefits of Prime. In India, this includes unlimited free & fast shipping, unlimited access to award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Video, unlimited access to millions of songs ad-free with Prime Music, early access to Lightning Deals and more. Members in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai can enjoy ultra-fast 2-hour delivery on Amazon devices, consumer electronics and everyday essentials on the Prime Now app.
Aujas Cyber Defense Center, an ISO 27001 certified Global Delivery SOC (Security Operations Center) has gone live in Bangalore today. It is designed to extend the capabilities of SIEM (Security Incident and Event Management) solutions and proactively provide threat detection, actionable threat intelligence and endpoint response. This aims to help security professionals hunt and mitigate the increasingly complex and persistent threats of the present and future.
Srinivas Rao, Co-founder and CEO of Aujas, explains the increasing need for proactive cybersecurity. “Today, more than 70% of security incidents are reported by third parties, often as late as 6-9 months after the event. The data signifies that enterprises today have weak monitoring capabilities driven by detecting and alerting familiar attacks. This leaves a window of vulnerability which malicious agents can easily and repeatedly exploit. “
He further added, “If a bank or an insurance provider’s network is breached, then the customer’s assets, as well as personal data and reputation, are on the line. So the key question is do you want your security teams to play on the back foot and wait for malicious attacks or should they start playing on the front foot and stop an attack before it happens? Wouldn’t you sleep better knowing you have the right people, employing the right tools, actively hunting threats 24/7?”
In 2017, the threat landscape consisted of 58 per cent known threats and and 42 per cent unknown threats. Further, before 2020, it is likely to exceed that of the known, according to IBM X-Force Threat Research report.
“It is true that technology has evolved and the modern SIEM is truly an integrated solution built on a common codebase, with a single data management architecture and a single user interface. This helps with better correlation, integrated with tactical threat intelligence feeds, capability to link assets with vulnerabilities and do prioritization with run book automation, but still, that is not enough,” said Rao.
Firstly; not all logs lead to attack patterns; in fact, modern attacks do not even leave logs. So, how do you know whether your system has been compromised?
To understand whether and how an adversary has breached your network, improve your defenses and stop future attacks, you must build capabilities in Deception, User and Entity Behavior Analytics and Threat Hunting.
To enable preemptive protection, Aujas Cyber Defense Center incorporates:
Proactive Threat Discovery by using actionable threat intelligence based on customer critical assets, industry segment and geographical threat vectors, secondly, a proactive threat hunting by leveraging big data that ingest customer log and packets and uses machine learning to identify anomalies and finally, the managed deception to lure attackers and improve true positives
Advanced Threat Detection using Next Generation SIEM with flexibility to use kill-chain based use cases and threat model-based protection, capture full packets and flows and integrate well with organizations critical assets, vulnerabilities, use tactical threat intelligence feeds and provide single pane of glass
Incident Response Platform Automation to improve SOC efficiency, provide single-view visibility and reduce time-to-respond by 90%
Endpoint Detection and Response tools to detect and respond to outsider and insider threats; speedily contain future attacks and manage APT attacks effectively
Advanced technology, effective use cases, seamless processes and workflows and automation are good supports to sound decision making. But the real key to cybersecurity is the human capability to hunt and make sense of data.
At the Aujas Cyber Defense Center, a skilled team of certified security professionals scans client’s network for suspicious behaviour round-the-clock. It collects threat data from the external landscape and combines this information to identify risks. It also separates the false positives/deceptive, validates real risks and prioritizes them. The team then recommends rapid counter-measures to provide complete cover on threats and intrusions in real time. They conduct a detailed root cause and impact analysis and recommend policy/rule changes to preempt future attacks.
With this right blend of technology, processes and people, Aujas SOC offers 100% service availability in the steady state.
SAP SE has announced that SAP Labs India has ranked #1 in ‘India’s Best Companies to Work For – 2018’ survey carried out by the Great Place to Work® Institute. SAP Labs India has also been recognized in the list of the Best Workplaces – Culture of Innovation 2018. Great Place to Work® Institute’s annual list is one of the largest and most esteemed study of workplace excellence and people management practices globally.
Congratulating SAP Labs India, Prasenjit Bhattacharya, CEO - Great Place to Work Institute said, “SAP encourages free expression, collaboration, individuality, and diversity. Its core strength as an employer vests in the Culture of Innovation of the Company. SAP has developed an environment which motivates its employees to do their best and energizes an individual to influence the deliveries with utmost sincerity, and this award is a testament to it.”
SAP Labs India is the second largest R&D center in SAP’s global network of 20 labs in 17 countries and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Employees of SAP Labs India work in an environment where people are the focus across all functions and the workplace is non-hierarchical, fluid and flexible. SAP Labs has always been employer of choice because of its various people-focused initiatives like – ‘Back-to-Work; Autism at Work; Entrepreneurship Sabbatical, Care for Life Fund, SAP Startup Studio among several others.
Dilipkumar Khandelwal, President – SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP SE & Managing Director, SAP Labs India said, “Innovation is the soul of the organization and we place significant importance to build and sustain a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovation drives pride and helps us to move our customers into the future. Our endeavor is to create a workplace where each individual believes that they are stakeholders in the success of the organization and are empowered to take decisions that eventually leads to better innovations for our customers.”
Shraddhanjali Rao, Head of Human Resources – SAP, India said, “At SAP, we create a workplace our employees feel inspired & challenged to bring their best, be authentic and feel a part of bigger family that cares. Our emphasis is to understand their needs and provide platforms for innovation fostering creativity & collaboration. We have hyper personalized our programs, initiatives and benefits for the five generations of employees who work at SAP.”
SAP Labs India contributes to a wide range of SAP products and platforms including SAP S/4 HANA, the next generation business suite, SAP SuccessFactors, the complete HR system on the cloud,SAP Cloud Platform, the open enterprise PaaS offering, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, providing cloud infrastructure and managed services for in-memory applications, database, and platform among many others.
Juniper Networks, an industry leader in automated, scalable and secure networks, today announced that ESDS, a managed data center service and auto-scalable cloud solution provider, has successfully implemented Juniper’s high-performing networking solutions, including the QFX 5100, EX 4550 and MX 104, which have enabled rapid and secure cloud application delivery to their customers.
With ESDS experiencing an increase in workloads due to a fast growing customer base, the organization required a high-performance, low latency network that could help them securely deliver cloud applications without risk of delay or disruption. Having a reliable network is especially essential given that a majority of ESDS’s customers are from critical sectors, such as government and financial services industries, which demand consistent high-performance and uninterrupted access to their applications.
To address this, ESDS selected Juniper Networks to help optimize, automate and secure its cloud application delivery infrastructure. Through the deployment of Juniper’s carrier grade operating system, Junos OS, ESDS has also streamlined their operations and improved network management while reducing their total cost of ownership (TCO) by 20 percent, even while experiencing traffic growth of over 50 percent year-on-year.
Today, Juniper powers more than 90 percent of the organization’s network infrastructure, helping ESDS drive greater digitization of data storage and processing capabilities across all its markets, particularly within infrastructure development and nation building. In fact, ESDS’s accomplishments have included significant contributions to the Indian government’s efforts in bringing the Pune Smart City vision to life, all while providing greater flexibility and superior up-time for citizen-centric online services.
With ESDS planning major expansions to Bangalore and other key cities in the near future, ESDS has selected Juniper as their networking partner to power their cloud transformation as they create a secure, scalable and automated multicloud environment for their customers.
News Highlights
Optimizing network scalability: The high-performance QFX5100 was deployed at the core by ESDS for their Mumbai and Nashik data centers, allowing for optimized application delivery, alongside the strong scalability required as part of their business operations.
Ease of network management: Leveraging the advanced capabilities of the compact, high-density EX4550 as the top-of-rack switch and the powerful MX104 Universal Routing Platform at their data-center edge, the deployment has improved network management by providing highly granular telemetry data, which aids in network monitoring, troubleshooting and planning activities. Additionally, Juniper’s Virtual Chassis feature allows ESDS to manage multiple elements as a single device.
Increased operational efficiencies: Junos OS as a common operating platform powering ESDS’s entire Juniper deployment has greatly simplified, streamlined and automated network management. With Junos OS supported on the QFX, EX and MX platforms, ESDS can schedule software upgrades and configuration checks all on one interface, which frees up valuable time and resources, resulting in significant operational efficiencies and savings.
“As one of the leading cloud service providers in India, we were able to create our own patented vertical auto-scaling technology on our cloud platforms, thereby enabling a scalable cloud infrastructure. With this innovation in place, we needed a network that could support our cloud technology and Juniper helped us achieve that – all while ensuring that floating virtual machines between multiple data centers were operated with the highest levels of security,” said Piyush Somani, Managing Director, ESDS Software.
“ESDS is a strong player with a proven track record in the cloud and automation space, and we are proud to have been selected to power their network. Their impressive pace of growth in the past few years is a reflection of the immense potential and success for cloud-based solutions in India. Coupled with our commitment to simplifying the journey for customers toward a secure and automated multicloud, we are eager to continue our partnership with ESDS to support their expansion in building a progressive and future-ready cloud for India,” says Ramesh Narasimhan, Sales Director, India, Juniper Networks.
Samsung Electronics announced the opening of what it said is the world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturing facility as the South Korean tech group seeks to expand production in the world’s fastest growing major mobile phone market.
The facility in Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi, will allow Samsung to make phones at a lower cost due to its scale when other phone making hubs such as China are getting more expensive, analysts who track the sector said.
The factory, inaugurated jointly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, will also help Samsung to compete with rivals such as China’s Xiaomi, which became India’s biggest smartphone brand by shipments earlier this year.
Samsung, which has been assembling phones in India since 2007, also plans to export India-made handsets, the company said in a statement.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has imposed taxes on imports of key smartphone components as part of a plan to encourage electronics manufacturing in India which would boost growth and create millions of new jobs.
While Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign is still a long way from delivering on ambitious job promises, the programme has had some success with the phased manufacturing of mobile devices and components. More than 120 local factories currently assemble mobile phones and accessories like chargers, batteries, powerbanks and earphones in India, according to tech research firm Counterpoint. Samsung said last year it will spend Rs 4,920 crore ($716.57 million) over three years to expand capacity at its Noida plant.
The new facility will help Samsung double its current capacity for mobile phones in Noida to an annual 120 million units after the phased expansion plan is complete, the company’s statement said. Meanwhile, speaking on the inauguration, PM Modi said that his government’s pet ‘Make in India’ initiative has propelled India to become the world’s second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones as the number of factories soared to 120 from just 2 four years.
Ness Digital Engineering, a global provider of digital transformation and custom software engineering services, announced today that Rajul Rana, a technology veteran with more than 25 years of experience in digital technologies, has joined the organization as Chief Solutions Officer. In the role, Rana will lead the evolution of Ness’ solutions approach, ensuring that Ness continues to leverage core and emerging technologies to deliver the innovative digital platforms Ness’ customers use to achieve competitive advantage.
“Because we work with clients to design and develop their core, revenue-generating and productivity-enhancing digital platforms, the solutions we provide must be highly-innovative and performant to deliver the impact our clients need,” said Moshe Kranc, chief technology officer (CTO) at Ness. “Rajul has a great deal of experience helping companies use digital technologies to generate business value, and we are glad to have him on-board to support our growth and the tremendous demand for data-driven, user-centric digital solutions.”
Rana’s role will include management of the Solution Architecture team and development of new solutions and accelerators that take advantage of the latest technologies. He will also manage a team of consultants who provide subject matter expertise and technical guidance to Ness’ customers in the early stages of their digital transformation journey.
“I am excited to join a company that has such a strong, well-integrated portfolio of capabilities in experience design, big data & analytics, and platform engineering and a long, proven track record in helping clients bring innovation-led solutions to market,” said Rana. “This is an exciting time to join Ness, and I look forward to contributing to and supporting its growth globally.”
Rana was most recently CTO at LiquidHub, which was acquired by Capgemini. Prior to that, he was CTO and co-founder of aSpark, a company that leverages emerging technologies to bring customer-led innovation into enterprises. Rana also held various roles at Mphasis, concluding his 12-year career there as Chief Architect.
Rana will work out of Ness’ headquarters in Teaneck, NJ, and he will report to Moshe Kranc.
