Sasken Becomes a Member of the EtherCAT Technology Group

Sasken Technologies Ltd., (formerly Sasken Communication Technologies Ltd.), a leading product engineering and digital transformation solutions provider, today announced that it has become a member of the EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG). As part of this membership, Sasken will contribute to features of the EtherCAT standard as well as to the case study bank of EtherCAT technology use cases. Through this membership, Sasken aims to enable industrial product companies, who are deliberating ways to improve the performance of their next-generation products, accelerate the adoption of EtherCAT technology.

Today, industrial companies are adopting industrial Ethernet technologies rapidly to leverage the mature Ethernet technology ecosystem. Among the Ethernet technologies available in the industrial domain, EtherCAT is one of the best options for its performance, reliability, synchronization, and simplicity which are seminal in the operations of industrial products. Sasken is enabling customers across the globe accelerate the adoption of industrial Ethernet technologies, especially EtherCAT, for their products and solutions.

“Sasken Industrials has been engaging with customers to build next-generation industrial products that are ‘connected’ and ‘intelligent’. In the recent past, for a leading industrial conglomerate, we have migrated EtherCAT slave stack to TI-Sitara platform running VxWorks 7.0, for high-precision ultrasonic welding machines, which were the first of their kind in the market. We are also working with a leading manufacturer of machine vision systems on enabling EtherCAT slave support on their next-gen computer vision cameras,” said Mihir Kumar, Senior VP and Head, Industrials Business, Sasken.

“As a strong player in the Industrial Ethernet ecosystem, we anticipate that the ETG membership will open new avenues for us in various industrial domains such as robotics, high-precision machineries, factory automation products, etc. due to the rapid adoption of EtherCAT technology. We are looking forward to leveraging the knowledge that this mature ecosystem provides as well as to contributing new use cases using EtherCAT technology to the group,” he added.

Customer Experience Pyramid Drives Loyalty, Satisfaction and Advocacy: Gartner

Eighty one percent of customer experience (CX) leaders report they will compete mostly or entirely on CX, but less than half have established the rationale for why CX drives business outcomes, according to Gartner, Inc. The goal of CX is to meet and exceed customer expectations, but while 48 percent say their CX efforts exceed management’s expectations, just 22 percent of CX leaders report their CX efforts exceed customers’ expectations.

To address this challenge, Gartner unveiled the CX Pyramid, a new methodology to test organizations’ customer journeys and forge more powerful experiences that deliver greater customer loyalty and brand advocacy.

“The fact that so many organizations understand the importance of CX to the brand, but are unable to deliver outcomes that meet or exceed customer expectations is indicative of the growing need for fresh approaches to delivering more positive outcomes for customers,” said  Augie Ray, research director at Gartner. “Leading brands in CX start with a strong foundation in customer satisfaction. Getting this right and understanding how to build upon it to drive positive financial and business outcomes is what sets the best brands apart from the rest.”

The Gartner CX Pyramid (see Figure 1) is a framework to understand what separates the most powerful customer experiences from the rest. Each level, from bottom to top, defines an incrementally stronger way to forge relationships between an organization’s brand and their customers based on the way CX leaders listen for, understand, act on and solve customer needs.

The pyramid helps to identify the most powerful CX based on criteria including: (a) how the experiences are triggered, (b) the amount of effort required of the customer, (c) the completeness of the solution, and (d) the emotion and change in perception created by the experience. The CX pyramid goes beyond just solving today’s problems for today’s customers, by focusing on five key stages:

·         Stage 1: Communication Level – Furnish customers with the information they can use via the right channel at the right time.
·         Stage 2: Responsive Level – Solve the customer’s problem quickly and efficiently – meaning, balance both business and customer goals, measures and strategies.
·         Stage 3: Commitment Level – Listen for, understand and resolve customers’ unique needs.
·         Stage 4: Proactive Level – Provide experiences that resolve needs before customers ask.
·         Stage 5: Evolution Level – Make customers feel better, safer or more powerful.

IVR- Helping Company Contact Centres to Enhance Customer Experience

Customer experience has attained immense importance in today’s business environment. Companies are constantly in pursuit to retain their customers which makes customer experience an inseparable part of the competitive business world. C-Zentrix, a leading contact centre is using many such solutions to provide businesses effective ways to deal with customers effectively and efficiently. For this, contact centres are the most important aspect of the customer experience strategy. They bring the stability of a human connection to the ever changing world of technology.

A contact centre has several components irrespective of whether it is a vanilla contact centre or an omnichannel integrated contact centre. Intelligent call routers, smart diallers, AI driven Chabot integration or multi-channel integration on Omni channel are some components to name a few. But the most important component of any contact centre is Interactive voice response (IVR).

According to Saket Setu, Co- Founder & CEO, C-Zentrix, “IVR is crucial for any contact centre as it helps to filter and distribute the call and manages the queue wait time. It also lowers the order information like package delivery details, bill amount, payment due dates, account balance etc, which can be delivered over IVR, freeing up the agent’s time. With the growing understanding of an IVR’s importance, technology has been developed to further strengthen the tool and make it more convenient for customers to use. We at C- Zentrix are in the pursuit to come up with solutions that adequately use IVR to reduce the work load of companies associated with interaction with the customers.”

IVR has witnessed some recent advances. Speech IVR by C- Zentrix adds voice to the key based input process, bringing convenience into lengthy IVR flows. On the other hand, the soon to be launched Visual IVR by the company is conceptually similar to speech based IVR but with the addition of visual menus to enhance the experience. In this, the user interacts with a visual interface by touch or click commands on their mobile or computer screen.

Disruptive Ideas on Extended Reality, UAV Tech and IoT Win the Boeing HorizonX India Innovation Challenge

Boeing has showcased disruptive business ideas at the ‘Demo Day’ of the Boeing HorizonX India Innovation Challenge, held at Boeing’s India Engineering & Technology Center (BIETC). Three Indian startups – Merxius, HUVIAiR and ZestIoT – joined three teams from BIETC in presenting to an audience of prospective investors and customers, as well as government stakeholders.

The Demo Day marks the culmination of a 3-month accelerator program launched in collaboration with T-Hub, a global startup catalyst that powers entrepreneurship. Following a stringent evaluation process, six teams from a competing pool of more than 1oo ideas and applications, have won the opportunity to join the cohort.

Boeing will continue to collaborate with the three external startup teams to help further their businesses. The ideas presented by the Boeing teams are under evaluation as potential future company offerings.

“India is known around the world for its inherent capabilities for disruptive innovation. This capability, coupled with a growing aerospace ecosystem offers the opportunity for technological breakthroughs that can redefine the way the world flies,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog. “I am pleased to see the way Boeing is providing a platform to promote innovation in India. Such platforms not only accelerate ‘Startup India’ but also add impetus to ‘Make in India’ and ‘Skill India’.”

The ideas presented by the three external finalists range from Extended Reality (XR) applications to the use of Internet of Things (IoT) for aerospace. Merxius develops a product that enables the creation of XR environments to save cost and reduce training time in aerospace manufacturing. HUVIAiR refines custom unmanned aircraft services and software solutions for survey and workflow management. ZestIoT explores solutions that connect the airport and airplane ecosystem using IoT to optimize ground handling at airports and improve on-time performance of airplanes.

“Innovation can happen anywhere and startups around the world have the potential to bring disruptive capabilities to aerospace markets and drive our industry forward,” said Brian Schettler, Managing Director of Boeing HorizonX Ventures. “Boeing HorizonX is proud to partner with and invest in startups to help them mature and scale their products and services and create value for Boeing customers.”

“Never before have corporates and startups collaborated as much as they do now and T- Hub is a key cog that is driving this in the country,” said Jay Krishnan, CEO of T-Hub. “Boeing, which brings a strong legacy of technological breakthroughs, has been an instrumental partner of ours that embraces this philosophy. We are immensely pleased to collaborate with Boeing in discovering the right startup talent to support their innovation goals.”

The six finalist teams took part in a 3-month accelerator where thirty subject matter experts from Boeing and T-Hub mentored them and exposed them to potential customers, while strengthening their offerings and capability.

“Both external startups as well as internal ideas promise to disrupt business models and service delivery in aerospace. We are excited to tap into a new pool of ideas from India which will surely change the global aerospace industry,” said Pratyush Kumar, president, Boeing India. “I am especially proud of our three Boeing teams from India that have made it to the finals with their ideas and technological breakthroughs”.

Boeing continues to evaluate disruptive startups in India, apart from the Boeing HorizonX India Innovation Challenge finalists, for potential future investments.  

Disruptive Ideas on Extended Reality, UAV Tech and IoT Win the Boeing HorizonX India Innovation Challenge

Boeing has showcased disruptive business ideas at the ‘Demo Day’ of the Boeing HorizonX India Innovation Challenge, held at Boeing’s India Engineering & Technology Center (BIETC). Three Indian startups – Merxius, HUVIAiR and ZestIoT – joined three teams from BIETC in presenting to an audience of prospective investors and customers, as well as government stakeholders.

The Demo Day marks the culmination of a 3-month accelerator program launched in collaboration with T-Hub, a global startup catalyst that powers entrepreneurship. Following a stringent evaluation process, six teams from a competing pool of more than 1oo ideas and applications, have won the opportunity to join the cohort.

Boeing will continue to collaborate with the three external startup teams to help further their businesses. The ideas presented by the Boeing teams are under evaluation as potential future company offerings.

“India is known around the world for its inherent capabilities for disruptive innovation. This capability, coupled with a growing aerospace ecosystem offers the opportunity for technological breakthroughs that can redefine the way the world flies,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog. “I am pleased to see the way Boeing is providing a platform to promote innovation in India. Such platforms not only accelerate ‘Startup India’ but also add impetus to ‘Make in India’ and ‘Skill India’.”

The ideas presented by the three external finalists range from Extended Reality (XR) applications to the use of Internet of Things (IoT) for aerospace. Merxius develops a product that enables the creation of XR environments to save cost and reduce training time in aerospace manufacturing. HUVIAiR refines custom unmanned aircraft services and software solutions for survey and workflow management. ZestIoT explores solutions that connect the airport and airplane ecosystem using IoT to optimize ground handling at airports and improve on-time performance of airplanes.

“Innovation can happen anywhere and startups around the world have the potential to bring disruptive capabilities to aerospace markets and drive our industry forward,” said Brian Schettler, Managing Director of Boeing HorizonX Ventures. “Boeing HorizonX is proud to partner with and invest in startups to help them mature and scale their products and services and create value for Boeing customers.”

“Never before have corporates and startups collaborated as much as they do now and T- Hub is a key cog that is driving this in the country,” said Jay Krishnan, CEO of T-Hub. “Boeing, which brings a strong legacy of technological breakthroughs, has been an instrumental partner of ours that embraces this philosophy. We are immensely pleased to collaborate with Boeing in discovering the right startup talent to support their innovation goals.”

The six finalist teams took part in a 3-month accelerator where thirty subject matter experts from Boeing and T-Hub mentored them and exposed them to potential customers, while strengthening their offerings and capability.

“Both external startups as well as internal ideas promise to disrupt business models and service delivery in aerospace. We are excited to tap into a new pool of ideas from India which will surely change the global aerospace industry,” said Pratyush Kumar, president, Boeing India. “I am especially proud of our three Boeing teams from India that have made it to the finals with their ideas and technological breakthroughs”.

India Business Delivers Strong 14% Volume-Led Sales Growth; Consolidated Net Profit Growth of 80%; Issues Bonus Shares of 1:2

Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL), a leading emerging markets FMCG company, today announced its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2018.

Finance Overview 

1Q FY 2019 FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE SUMMARY:

·         1Q FY 2019 consolidated constant currency sales increased by 10%* year-on-year

-   India business sales growth of 14%* year-on-year, led by 14% volume growth

-   International business sales growth of 7% year-on-year, on a constant currency basis

·         1Q FY 2019 consolidated constant currency EBITDA increased by 26%

·         1Q FY 2019 consolidated net profit and EPS (without exceptional items and one-offs) increased by 36%

·         The board has declared an interim dividend of 200% (INR 2.00 per share) and an issue of bonus shares in the ratio of one equity share for every two equity shares held, subject to requisite approvals. 

*Comparable growth assuming GST in the base quarter sales

Chairman's Comments 

Commenting on the financial performance of 1Q FY 2019, Ms. Nisaba Godrej, Executive Chairperson, GCPL said, “We have had a good start to fiscal year 2019 with profitable, ahead of the market growth across most geographies and categories. Our constant currency sales increased by 10% and EBITDA increased by 26%, led by robust gross margin expansion. In India, we delivered a sales growth of 14%, with 14% volume growth and double-digit growth across all categories. In our international business, we saw a recovery in Indonesia, while our performance in Africa was relatively soft.  

Consumer demand is improving and we expect this recovery to sustain going forward. In India, while we expect both urban and rural growth to improve, rural growth will outpace urban growth on the back of remonetisation, the settling down of the GST implementation and the government’s efforts to stimulate the rural economy.

We are accelerating the pace of innovation with differentiated and unique products. Fiscal year 2019 will be our most active yet in terms of new launches. Alongside this, we continue to manage our costs prudently and make competitive brand investments for sustainable future growth.  

Overall, we remain relentlessly focused on becoming more agile, increasing the pace of innovations, enhancing our go-to-market approach and investing in our key talent, to continue to outperform the market and deliver industry-leading returns.”

*Comparable growth assuming GST in the base quarter sales

BUSINESS REVIEW – INDIA

Performance Highlights

·         1Q FY 2019 India sales increased by 14%* to INR 1,279 crore

·         1Q FY 2019 Adjusted EBITDA increased by 44% to INR 279 crore

·         1Q FY 2019 net profit increased by 47% to INR 220 crore

Category Review

Household Insecticides

Household Insecticides delivered robust performance with double-digit volume led sales growth of 17%, the highest in the last seven quarters. This growth was driven by a better season and new product launches. Goodknight PowerChip and our higher efficacy liquid vapouriser with 50% more power, continue to scale up well. We continue to focus on driving penetration with the launch of affordable solutions and trial generation SKUs and make effective brand investments for future growth.

Soaps

Soaps sustained double-digit volume led sales growth of 10%, driven by healthy growth in Godrej No. 1 and Cinthol. This performance was led by effective micro-marketing initiatives, a focus on new states and strong on-ground execution. We have continued to gain market share during the quarter.

Hair Colours

Hair Colours delivered double-digit volume led sales growth of 12%. Godrej Expert Rich Crème continues to consistently deliver robust performance with double-digit volume led growth. It continues to expand distribution, penetration reach and gain market share. During the quarter, we forayed into the herbal based powder hair colour segment under our Godrej Nupur brand.

Text Box: *Comparable growth assuming GST in the base quarter sales

BUSINESS REVIEW – INTERNATIONAL

Indonesia

Our Indonesia business saw recovery with ahead of the market, constant currency sales growth of 10%. This was driven by new product launches and effective sales promotion investments. Household Insecticides growth rates improved to healthy double digits. We regained our market leadership position and continued to gain market share on a year-on-year basis, as well as a quarter-on-quarter basis in Household Insecticides. Adjusted EBITDA margins increased by 220 bps, led by cost savings initiatives, lower overheads and sales promotion spends. 

GAUM (Africa, USA and Middle East)

Our GAUM cluster had a relatively soft quarter with a constant currency sales growth of 5%, led entirely by volume growth. Sales in the quarter was impacted by weakness in South Africa, while Kenya saw early signs recovery. Our business excluding South Africa grew in double digits (in constant currency terms). Adjusted EBITDA margins decreased by 250 bps year-on-year driven by the lag between increase in input costs and price hikes and upfront marketing investments to scale up wet hair care business.

AntWorks Announces Series A Funding with Strategic Investment by SBI Holdings

AntWorks, a leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Automation products and solutions company, today announced their Series A funding with a $15 million investment by SBI Investment Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, Inc., which conducts investments and management of venture capitalfunds, at an undisclosed valuation. This investment will provide AntWorks with an impetus for their next level of growth in Artificial Intelligence & Enterprise RPA, fuel R&D, strengthen their marketing and sales engine, and energise their foray into newer markets. 

In addition, in an unusual show of commitment, a joint venture between SBIand AntWorks was also announced to tap the tremendous opportunities in the emerging AI space in South East Asia.

Fuelled by cognitive automation and machine–learning capabilities, AntWorks delivers industry–best RPA — that’s powered by AI — using its ANTstein platform to enterprises of all sizes. AntWorks provides a unique code-free RPA product and its one-of-a-kind Cognitive Machine Reading (CMR) engine — that is very rapidly replacing OCR — is the most critical component to any Automation, RPA or digitisation journey for enterprises as it ingests any data type – Structured, Unstructured, Inferred, or Image data.

Asheesh Mehra, Founder and Group CEO says,“When Govind Sandhu and I started AntWorks with a small, passionate group of people, the dream was to create a company that would serve as a catalyst for enterprises on their digitization journey. SBI Holdings reposing this faith in us with both the investment and the joint venture is a validation and an opportunity to grow and come into what we have always believed AntWorks can be – a true leader forging a new path, reimagining business as usual. Today I feel pride in our team who have worked so tirelessly and gratitude towards SBI Holdings and towards every employee, partner, analyst and well-wisher who has been on this journey with us. May we remain fresh in our approach, fearless in embracing change and fast in learning, adapting and delivering on everything we stand for as AntWorks.”

As a relatively new entrant, AntWorks has already made a global impact in the space and is consistently benchmarked against competitors who have been in the space for far longer. The AntWorks differentiator is in bringing together all three pieces of the Automation puzzle, effortlessly and under one umbrella — Data Ingestion, RPA, and Artificial Intelligence.

“AntWorks’ has risen through the ranks of global RPA, Automation and Artificial Intelligence companies with a ferocity that’s unprecedented in the industry. We are excited with the possibilities of ANTstein and look forward to their growth in the Asian region through our joint venture, as well as globally,” said Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, President, and CEO of SBI Holdings, Inc. “SBI Group is actively involved in introducing RPA solutions to financial institutions in Japan and strongly believes in the future of this field.” 

Highlights of AntWorks’ capabilities, enterprise automation solutions, and business growth:

·      Providing solutions for about 450+ customers and with a presence in 4 continents, AntWorks is building a business that works with a diverse range of verticals and creates unique Deep Automation solutions for every industry.

·       Their intelligent automation platform — ANTsteinTMhas made an impressive debut with its user-friendly interface, code free RPA environment, intuitive ML (Machine Learning), & NLM (Natural Language Modelling) capabilities.

·      ANTStein is unmatched in the industry for both its deep automation capability and its ability to meet diverse AI requirements across industries. 

·      AntWorks’ advanced capabilities in AI, NLP, and NLM, allow training of BOTs which are proficient and highly accurate while performing higher-value tasks.

·      In a marketplace that is growing at 10X multiples, AntWorks has the only end-to-end automation offering in the market built using the fundamentals of fractal science.

·      AntWorks has performed at an annual revenue growth in 3-digit multiples.

·       Analytics Insight included AntWorks in their annual report of the 10 most innovative companies in Machine Learning for July 2018. They were also awarded the IDC Digital Disruptor of the Year for 2017 apart from a number of other accolades and analyst mentions over the last 18 months. 

·      SQUARE, the new RPA product release is slated for Q4 of this calendar year and details will be released closer to launch. 

“With this investment we will work together with SBI Group to bring end-to-end, AI-based Enterprise RPA to the globe in a way not done before. Our goal is to empower enterprises in emerging markets like Philippines, India, China, etc. — by unleashing the limitless potential of Machine Learning and Cognitive Automation.”  says Govind Sandhu, Co-Founder and CFO, AntWorks.

The funding that we have received, and the repute of our investors will only bolster our efforts to forge ahead. Our ANTsteinTMplatform will be leveraged to automate administration and augment human judgement, creating new criteria for success: collaboration capabilities, information sharing, experimentation, learning, and decision-making effectiveness. I am excited about this investment from SBI Group and I welcome them to the board as their contribution will be game-changing, for us at AntWorks and for the industry at large,” says Asheesh Mehra in his closing remarks.