Tata Motors launched a new state-of-the-art full-range passenger vehicle showroom and workshop, M/s Kropex Auto Pvt Ltd, in Bengaluru today. Expanding its class leading automotive experience, the inauguration of this showroom and workshop is a step towards Tata Motors’ aggressive network expansion plans, in line with its Turnaround 2.0 strategy.
Inaugurated by Mayank Pareek – President, Passenger Vehicles Business Unit, Tata Motors and SN Barman - Vice President, Sales, Marketing & Customer Support, Passenger Vehicles Business Unit, Tata Motors, the Company has a total of 11 showrooms in Bengaluru and boasts of 44 showrooms in Karnataka overall. Spanning across 4500 sq. ft. of area, this newly inaugurated showroom is strategically located at the Main Hosur Road in Electronic City, and will cater to the aspiring customers of the city with a stunning range of new generation passenger cars from Tata Motors.
According to Mayank Pareek – President, Passenger Vehicles Business Unit, Tata Motors - “With ‘Connecting Aspirations’ at the center of our brand promise, we at Tata Motors are working with our network partners to offer our customers a solid product mix and a delightful showroom experience. As part of our Turnaround 2.0 journey, we are concentrating on optimizing various business levers and focus on strengthening its sales network and customer experience, in order to enhance performance and profitability. Hence, the current focus for the fiscal is on winning sustainably as part of this transformation journey. We continue to enhance and expand our network to cater to our evolving customers, with high expectations.”
According to Vanik Sachadeva, Dealer Principal, M/s Kropex Auto Pvt Ltd, “We are delighted to extend our partnership with Tata Motors and are extremely happy to launch this showroom today in Bengaluru. With a commitment to provide best in class purchase experience during sales to all our customers, we look forward to working with Tata Motors and strengthen our relationship in the years to come.”
Equipped with the latest technology, this new showroom will retail Tata Motors’ next gen PV line up. The company also offers a workshop to its customers which is equipped with latest equipment and advanced mechanization and automation. Tata Motors aims to increase its reach aggressively and through these showrooms it will continue to offer best value and experience to customers. Tata Motors’ Turnaround 2.0 journey will focus on ‘Winning sustainably in PVs’ with an objective to increase market presence and drive volumes in PVs.
NXP Semiconductors N.V. has changes to the senior leadership team designed to better align with the company’s renewed focus and growth strategy.
Effective immediately, Kurt Sievers, executive vice president & general manager of NXP’s automotive business, has been promoted to president of NXP Semiconductors. Under the new structure, Kurt Sievers will oversee all of NXP’s business lines.
“This new structure follows the natural evolution of our strategy, as we strengthen our focus on secure connected devices through the automotive and industrial & IoT businesses while also participating in the mobile and communications infrastructure markets,” said Rick Clemmer, chief executive officer of NXP. “As technological change accelerates, all our focus verticals require edge to node platforms and solutions that facilitate data analytics, machine learning and advanced services. By simplifying our organization, we will be better able to fully leverage our scale, facilitate cross-company collaboration and reduce overhead, all of which will help us unlock the full profitable growth potential of our business.”
“Kurt is an exceptional leader who inspires others to reach their full potential working across organization boundaries and delivers great results,” said Rick Clemmer. “Under his guidance, our automotive business has grown to be the #1 semiconductor supplier to that industry, architecting the most complete solution portfolio and establishing the deepest strategic partnerships across the autonomous driving and safer driving mobility ecosystem. By continuously raising the bar, Kurt has helped us to evolve from product leadership positions to be a recognized thought leader. I am excited about the prospect of working with Kurt over the coming years to extend these results across the entire business. We have a great team that I am confident will be able to keep NXP evolving and growing.”
“This is an exciting time to lead our business to broader leadership for Secure Connections for the Smarter World,” said Kurt Sievers. “Our scalable embedded & analog solutions make it easy for our customers to innovate, while we master the underlying complexity and ensure scalability, functional safety and security,” he added. “I am energized by our positive customer feedback and employee engagement and I look forward to make NXP the benchmark of value creation for all our stakeholders.”
Ruediger (Rudy) Stroh has decided to pursue his next chapter outside the company, effective September 30, 2018, after a successful nine-year career during which he served as executive vice-president and general manager of NXP’s security & connectivity business.
“On behalf NXP’s board of directors, I want to thank Rudy for the passion, energy and vision he brought to the company, and wish him all the best in the future,” said Rick Clemmer, chief executive officer of NXP Semiconductors. “Under his talented leadership, NXP brought mobile wallets into the hands of billions of consumers, created security solutions for billions of payment and identity credentials and developed the broadest portfolio of fit-for-purpose IoT & security solutions that pave the way for revolutionary machine learning inferencing in edge computing. I believe the company is well positioned to build on Rudy’s record of success and continue to deliver solid results. To ensure the success of this change, Rudy will be working closely with Kurt and me during a transition period.”
Jennifer Wuamett, deputy general counsel and chief IP officer, will succeed Guido Dierick as executive vice president and general counsel of NXP Semiconductors, effective immediately. Guido Dierick retires as general counsel but remains country manager of NXP Semiconductors Netherlands.
“Jennifer’s unique mix of understanding technology and expertise in intellectual property, corporate governance and legal matters make her ideally suited to lead NXP’s legal & IP teams, as she did for Freescale Semiconductor,” said Rick Clemmer. “Jennifer is an industry-recognized intellectual property expert and an outstanding leader; in an expanded role, her talent will continue to be a great asset for our company.”
Guido Dierick retires from his general counsel position after an exceptional 36-year career in the electronics industry.
“Guido’s achievements are too many to recount and he has been my trusted partner throughout NXP’s history,” said Rick Clemmer. “I sincerely thank Guido for his outstanding guidance, insights and leadership across all these years; wish him well in his personal pursuits of charitable causes and am glad he continues to contribute to our success as country manager of NXP Netherlands.”
Infosys, India’s second largest software services firm recently signed a three-year partnership with the Australian Open as its official digital innovation partner.
In a BSE filing, Infosys said the company will leverage its expertise in emerging technologies like big data and analytics, AI as well as virtual and augmented reality, to provide unique, innovative and engaging experiences for fans.
Commenting on the development, Australian Open Tournament Director Craig Tiley said partnering with Infosys is an exciting next step.
“It is a right step in our ongoing quest to innovate the Australian Open and engage new audiences across the world,” he said. Infosys and nor the Australian Open didn’t reveal the financial details of the deal.
Infosys CEO and MD Salil Parekh said the partnership is about creating new ways of experiencing the Australian Open. “We are really excited about the opportunity to showcase how digital technologies can enhance the boundaries of this tournament,” he said.
The Indigenous light combat aircraft Tejas, for the first time, received fuel mid-air from an IAF tanker aircraft recently, taking a big step towards becoming fully ready for combat in the Indian Air Force.
Within minutes of taking off from Gwalior, the home-made combat jet received 1,900 kg of fuel from the IAF IL78 tanker in a successful air-to-air operation.
The refuelling was carried out at an altitude of 20,000 feet. All the internal tanks and drop tanks were refuelled to enhance the aircraft’s endurance. The aircraft was moving at a speed of 270 knots. The aircraft was piloted by Wg Cdr Siddharth Singh of the National Flight Test Centre.
“The air-to-air refueling capability for LCA is a force multiplier for the IAF, giving the aircraft the potential to stay airborne for much longer periods of time,” tweeted Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
With this, India joins the elite group of countries that have developed the Air-to-Air (AAR) system for military class of aircraft, says HAL Chairman and Managing Direct, R Madhavan.
The enhanced range and endurance is expected to provide IAF a host of options in exploiting the operational potential of the LCA as well as to participate in international exercises without having to stage through several locations en-route.
The refueling, explained an officer, would allow a take-off with higher payload, which could be extra weapons too. “The maximum take-off weight is maintained by carrying less fuel and topping up once the aircraft is air borne,” he said.
It would enable the Tejas aircraft to undertake multi-role missions, both for air defence and strike, the officer pointed out.
Before the ‘wet contact’ trial, the ‘dry contact trials’ were successfully conducted twice on September 4 and 6, where the Drogue (basket) extended from the IAF tanker aircraft by a fuel hose, was tracked and plugged into using the aircraft refuelling probe without taking fuel.
Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Aeronautical Development Agency have pushed the target date for the Final Operational Clearance sometimes in the middle of 2019. The deadline is years beyond the original schedule and the last target deadline in June 2018 was missed.
Synechron, a global financial services consulting and technology services provider, today announced that Hareesha Pattaje, Managing Director – Technology was awarded the coveted CIO100 FutureTech Leader Award 2018.
The award recognizes Hareesha’s extensive efforts in formulating and executing reskilling and up-skilling strategies at Synechron. His vision for identifying and deploying relevant future technology skills has been instrumental in creating a future-proof environment at the company. Hareesha also has played an important role in setting up the Synechron Blockchain CoE.
“I am honored to have won the CIO100 FutureTech Leader award. The sheer hard work, dedication and perseverance put in by our team has borne fruit,” said Hareesha Pattaje, Managing Director – Technology at Synechron. “We are committed to reskilling and upskilling our talented specialists to ensure we continue to innovate cutting-edge solutions for our clients.”
Commenting on this, Faisal Husain, Co-founder and CEO of Synechron said, “Hareesha has been a part of the organization for close to 15 years now. His leadership and guidance has nurtured our talent into industry’s best R&D experts. He has been pivotal in bringing some of the best in class innovations at Synechron. Our heartiest congratulations to Hareesha and his team for winning this coveted award.”
The CIO100 Awards honors 100 outstanding organizations and their CIOs for exemplary use of technology while the symposium encourages the exchange of ideas and inspires future transformation through the proactive adoption of technology solutions. It is the most powerful congregation of IT leaders in India with entry exclusive to winners. Adjudicated by an eminent jury comprising of the who’s who of the IT industry, the parameters to judge the FutureTech Leader Award 2018 included strategies that business leaders have formulated and rolled-out to create a balance between the future technology requirements and the current ones in smart and relevant ways.
Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, AnantKumar Hegde has inaugurated a Workshop on Understanding Rare Scripts at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, Regional Centre (IGNCA), Bengaluru. The workshop is being organised in line with IGNCA’s larger mandate to enable engagement and preservation of India’s heritage and archival resources. The workshop will offer hands on training in deciphering the script, accessing manuscripts and will also cover issues in manuscriptology research.
The objective of the initiative is to document and archive the country’s languages that have been lost or are likely to be lost in the near future. The inauguration was conducted in the august presence of Dr Sachchidanand, Joshi, Member Secretary, IGNCA, Dr Ramesh C Gaur, Head Kalanidhi Division, IGNCA and Dr. K.R. Venugopal, Vice Chancellor, Bangalore University.
Courses will be open to students and scholars who are interested in heritage research. No prior training in manuscriptology is necessary. Participants will also be encouraged to further their training by undertaking translation projects from the microfilm library at the Regional Centre Bengaluru.
Speaking at the ceremony, AnantKumar Hegde said, “In recent years the language diversity is under threat as speakers of diverse languages are becoming rare. Scripts and languages are important aspect of our culture. There are plenty of things one can do to contribute towards documenting a language, depending on the skill-set. Besides the preservation of the neglected archival records, the initiative is also aimed at compiling the local history of state. The problem needs to be addressed at societal level, in which the communities have to take part in conservation of language diversity that is part of cultural wealth.”
India is home to priceless manuscript collections which are a source of invaluable knowledge. IGNCA seeks to create opportunities that results in skill development and also foster engagement with our culture.
Regional Center Bengaluru houses a niche library with 14,000 books which cover subjects such as arts, culture and history. The manuscript microfilms library has been aggregated from over 52 centres across the country with about 22,000 microfilms rolls covering 2,85,000 manuscripts. One lakh vintage and contemporary colour slides are available for research scholars and academicians.
The Modi script was used to write the Marathi language spoken in the current state of Maharashtra. It originated as a cursive script during the 17th century CE. Modi was used until the 1950's when Devanagari replaced it as the written medium of the Marathi language. The script is used all over Canara and Western Hilly regions of Karnataka. Many manuscripts written in these scripts are also found in erstwhile districts of Mumbai, Uttara Kannada, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Shimoga and Kasaragod district of Kerala. Most government records in the region prior to 1950 are in Modi Script.
About 20 million people are expected to shop on various e-commerce platforms during the festive sale next month, translating into sales of around $3 billion for players like Amazon and Flipkart, says a report.
The report by RedSeer Consulting stated that about 13-24 million shoppers had transacted on e-commerce sites during the five-day festive sale last year and 10 million in 2016 around the same time frame.
The festive sale not only brings in discounts and deals for customers but is also an annual showdown of sorts between the two largest players - Flipkart and Amazon India.
While the two companies are yet to announce the sale dates for this year, it is likely to be held in October. According to RedSeer, the daily gross merchandise value (GMV) during the five-day sale period is expected to be around $527 million. GMV refers to the total sales value of merchandise sold through the platform over a certain period of time.
During May-July 2018 period, the GMV was around $62 million, while it was about $280-300 million during last year’s five-day festive sale.
The report also said the share of items like electronics and furniture during the sale could be higher this year due to “affordability” initiatives being undertaken by the e-commerce players. Also, while mobile phones would continue to be the bulk of the sales (52%), categories like fashion are expected to be about 15%, RedSeer said.
Like in offline retail, e-commerce companies see a major bump up in sales during Dussehra and Diwali.
