Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd NCD Issue to Open from September 14, 2018 with Attractive Interest Rate upto 9.75% Per Annum

Aadhar Housing Finance Limited (the “Company”), a deposit taking housing finance company registered with the NHB and focused on providing affordable housing financing products for the EWS and LIG segment in India, in tier 2 to tier 4 cities and towns, proposes to open public issue of Secured Redeemable Non-Convertible Debentures (“NCDs”) of face value of Rs. 1,000 on September 14, 2018, 1,40,00,000 for an amount of Rs. 50,000 lakhs (“Base Issue Size”) with an option to retain oversubscription up to Rs. 90,000 lakhs aggregating up to Rs. 1,40,000 lakhs (“Tranche 1 Issue Limit”) (“Tranche 1 Issue”).

The Issue is scheduled to close on September 28, 2018 with an option of early closure or extension as decided by the Board of Directors of the Company (“Board”) or the Working Committee.

Ratings by CARE Ratings & Brickwork Ratings India: Outlook: Stable

The NCDs proposed to be issued under this Issue have been rated ‘CARE AA+ (SO) ((Pronounced as CARE Double A Plus Structured Obligation); Outlook: Stable)’ for an amount of `3,00,000 lakhs, by CARE Ratings Limited (“CARE”) and ‘BWR AA+ (SO) (Pronounced as BWR Doub le A Plus (Structured Obligation)), Outlook: Stable (for an amount of `3,00,000 lakhs, by Brickwork Ratings India Private Limited (“Brickwork”) The rating of CARE AA+ (SO); Outlook: Stable by CARE and BWR AA+ (SO), Outlook: Stable by Brickwork indicate that instruments with this rating are considered to have high degree of safety regarding timely servicing of financial obligations. Such instruments carry very low credit risk.

Allotment is on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Issue Structure:

Tenure 3 years (Category I, II, III and IV)

Series I: Frequency of Interest Payment “NA”. Coupon Rate: “NA”. Effective Yield: 9.60%.

Series II: Frequency of Interest Payment Annual. Coupon Rate: 9.60%. Effective Yield: 9.59%.

Tenure 5 years (Category I, II, III and IV)

Series III: Frequency of Interest Payment Monthly. Coupon Rate: 9.25%. Effective Yield: 9.65%.

Series IV: Frequency of Interest Payment Annual. Coupon Rate: 9.65%. Effective Yield: 9.64%.

Tenure 10 years (Category I, II, III and IV)

Series V: Frequency of Interest Payment Monthly. Coupon Rate: 9.35%. Effective Yield: 9.75%.

Series VI: Frequency of Interest Payment Annual. Coupon Rate: 9.75%. Effective Yield: 9.74%.

[Category IV] Investors (Retail Individual Investors) are defined as Resident Indian Individuals and Hindu Undivided Families through the Karta applying for an amount aggregating up to and including Rs. 10,00,000 across all options of NCDs in the Tranche I Issue.

At least 75% of the net proceeds of the Public Issue of NCDs will be used for the For the purpose of onward lending, financing, and for repayment of interest and principal of existing borrowings of the Company. A maximum of up to 25% will be used for general corporate purposes.

The NCDs offered through the Shelf Prospectus and the Tranche I Prospectus are proposed to be listed on BSE Limited (“BSE”). BSE Is the Designated Stock Exchange.

The Lead Managers to the Issue are YES Securities (India) Limited, Edelweiss Financial Services Limited, YES Bank Limited, Axis Bank Limited, A. K. Capital Services Limited, Green Bridge Capital Advisory Private Limited and Trust Investment Advisors Private Limited.

Luminous Unveils “Regalia”, India's First Wall Mounted Smart Power Backup System

Luminous Power Technologies, India’s leading power back-up specialist, announced the launch of REGALIA in the southern states of the country today. It’s a revolutionary lithium ion based power back-up system that can be wall mounted and comes loaded with multiple user-friendly features. Regalia is a compact power back-up system that is designed in an aesthetically pleasing and modern style with an expected lifespan of up to 10 years. It uses the integrated lithium ion battery technology which makes it maintenance free and removes the need of periodic water top up. Regalia is also future ready, offering consumers the option to charge Regalia with regular mains supply or through solar panels harnessing abundant solar energy.

Speaking at the launch, Vipul Sabharwal, Managing Director, Luminous Power Technologies, said, “At Luminous we consistently strive towards excellence in quality and performance. We take great pride to come up with path-breaking products Indian consumers have never seen before. Regalia is our most sophisticated and smartest power back-up system. With Regalia, we are bringing a whole new experience to our consumers that will change the way power back-up technology is perceived. Regalia is smart, safe, stylish, solar ready, has an everlasting battery and is maintenance free. It truly is a revolutionary power back-up system. We feel that the tech-oriented markets in Southern India are ready to adopt a high-tech product like Regalia.”

Regalia is designed to suit modern sensibilities to seamlessly blend with the home décor for both contemporary and traditionally styled homes. It enables users to stay connected using Wi-Fi. It also has a touch screen to view backup time, charging time or for configuration. It is safe, eliminating the risk of accidental contact by doing away with wires, terminals and includes an in-built safety mechanism to protect appliances from voltage surges and short circuits.

Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 17.3 Percent in 2019

The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 17.3 percent in 2019 to total $206.2 billion, up from $175.8 billion in 2018, according to Gartner, Inc. In 2018, Gartner forecasts that the market will grow 21 percent, up from $145.3 billion in 2017.

The fastest-growing segment of the market is cloud system infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service or IaaS), which is forecast to grow 27.6 percent in 2019 to reach $39.5 billion, up from $31 billion in 2018 (see Table 1).

By 2022, Gartner expects that 90 percent of organizations purchasing public cloud IaaS will do so from an integrated IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) provider, and will use both the IaaS and PaaS capabilities from that provider.

"Demand for integrated IaaS and PaaS offerings is driving the next wave of cloud infrastructure adoption," said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner. “We expect that IaaS-only cloud providers will continue to exist in the future, but only as niche players, as organizations will demand offerings with more breadth and depth for their hybrid environments. Already, strategic initiatives such as digital transformation projects resulting in the adoption of multicloud and hybrid cloud fuel the growth of the IaaS market."

Software as a service (SaaS) remains the largest segment of the cloud market, with revenue expected to grow 17.8 percent to reach $85.1 billion in 2019.

“The increasing adoption of SaaS applications and other cloud services impacts the management, dissemination and exploitation of enterprise content,” Craig Roth, research vice president at Gartner. “Organizations are steadily — but not exclusively — shifting their content environments to SaaS. Gartner expects that by 2019, the current enterprise content management (ECM) market will devolve into purpose-built, cloud-based content solutions and solution services applications.”

In the business process as a service (BPaaS) category, Gartner forecasts a revenue growth of 7.9 percent, to reach $50.3 billion in 2019. Gartner found that especially in this category, buyers increasingly expect deep domain expertise, technology and global deployment capabilities from their providers as well as service portfolios that bridge legacy offerings and support new automated, digital and cloud service delivery paradigms.

Machine Learning Among 3 Technologies to Have a Transformational Business Impact Within 2 to 5 Years

The 2018 Gartner, Inc. Hype Cycle for information and communication technology (ICT) in India classifies machine learning (ML) among three technologies that will have a transformational business impact within the next two to five years.

The ICT Hype Cycle identifies 28 key technologies and capabilities for digital transformation that are important for local Indian IT leaders (see Figure 1). The focus is on three stages of digital business delivery — designing, delivering and scaling — which reflect the focus of 75 percent of CIOs in India.

“Scaling business is the primary objective of Indian CIOs,”said Pankaj Prasad, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Doing it right requires continued investment in proven technologies and balanced investment in emerging technologies that sustain growth.”

Gartner analysts classified 13 technologies on the Hype Cycle that will take two to five years to reach mainstream adoption. Of these 13, the three technologies that will have transformational impact on organizations are machine learning, edge computing and platform as a service (PaaS).

 Peak of Inflated Expectations

Machine learning continues to climb up the hype curve in India. ML has moved from being at the Innovation Trigger in 2017 to close to the Peak on this year’s Hype Cycle.

Organizations in India, across various industries, are still evaluating ML and experimenting with it. “There is a lack of understanding of the technology and therefore user adoption is currently limited,” said Prasad. While large banks and insurance companies in India are either evaluating or piloting specific use cases (for example, fraud prediction, lending appraisal and propensity to buy prediction), organizations in retail are evaluating and piloting ML concepts in customer segmentation, churn analysis and predictive modeling of buying behavior. “In the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector, we witness some use cases particularly in drug research and oncology/cancer research,” he added.

Edge computing made its entry onto the Hype Cycle this year and moved to the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Gartner defines edge computing as solutions that facilitate data processing at or near the source of data generation. For example, in the context of the Internet of Things, the sources of data generation are usually things with sensors or embedded devices.

Edge computing serves as the decentralized extension of the campus networks, cellular networks, data center networks or the cloud. It solves many issues as it decreases latency and reduces unnecessary traffic. It also establishes a hub for interconnection between interested peers and a hub for data thinning of complex media types or computational loads.

Moving Up the Slope of Enlightenment

Platform as a service (PaaS) is moving up the Slope of Enlightenment. Several trends are increasing consumer’s confidence and making the adoption of PaaS progress towards the Plateau of Productivity. Among them is the maturity of PaaS offerings, which is improving over time. IT megavendors are fast improving their execution and a growing market acceptance of the smaller xPaaS innovators.

The PaaS software revenue in India is on pace to total US$186 million in 2018, an increase of 29.7 percent from 2017. The rapid growth of PaaS is indicative of Indian organizations moving away from traditional on-premises, license-based database consumption models to cloud-based “as a service” models, which are generally more price-competitive.

“Don’t delay adoption of cloud PaaS. It saves your organization’s expensive vendor lock-in and chaotic handling of their hybrid technology environment,” said Prasad.

Entering the Plateau of Productivity

Unified communications and collaboration (UCC) is the only technology moving onto the Plateau of Productivity this year. With every business becoming digital, the need for seamless connectivity is very high. UCC fulfills this necessity by helping workers shift seamlessly from messaging to voice to video, and across physical spaces, platforms and devices, to reach internal and external collaborators.

“While ML and edge computing helps CIOs attain their digital business objectives, PaaS and UCC help organizations with their ‘grow the business initiatives’,” said Prasad.

Accenture Future Talent Platform now Available for SAP SuccessFactors to Fortify Digital Learning Experiences

Accenture is making its interactive learning platform, the Accenture Future Talent Platform, available for easy integration to SAP SuccessFactors solutions. This will help Accenture’s SAP SuccessFactors clients offer curated bite-sized video content on emerging topics to enable their workforces to stay up-to-date in critical areas such as artificial intelligence, digital, cloud, IoT, design thinking and security.

The Accenture Future Talent Platform helps companies address today’s talent challenge in a rapidly evolving technology environment and close the skills gap by empowering employees to reskill, upskill and continuously learn. It can now be integrated into the SAP SuccessFactors Learning solution, creating customized learning modules that provide unique and interactive learning experiences. Subject matter experts can access Accenture’s pre-curated library of content or create new learning boards sourced from an ecosystem of private and public thought leadership for a better, faster learning experience. Users can access all features of the Accenture Future Talent Platform, interact with each other through comments and track their learning progress from the SAP SuccessFactors solution.

“Research from Accenture shows that while 78 percent of business leaders expect their organizations to be digital by 2020, half of these leaders don’t believe they have a digitally skilled workforce.” said Sanjeev Vohra, group technology officer, Accenture Technology. “The Accenture Future Talent Platform helps create a culture of learning and integrates with SAP SuccessFactors so that employees can access trainings through a familiar interface and acquire the digital and intelligent skills necessary to succeed in the age of the New.”

Accenture will be showcasing the Accenture Future Talent Platform at SuccessConnect, held on September 11-13 in Las Vegas.

Trend Micro to Strengthen Policybazaar's Security Posture

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, shields Policybazaar from vulnerabilities and strengthens their security posture by addressing their security needs. Policybazaar, India’s largest and leading insurance aggregator website, specializing in providing comparative analysis of various insurance, chose Trend Micro Deep Security and Trend Micro Deep Discovery Inspector to identify evasive threats and to provide virtual patching against exploits in real-time.

Policybazaar required a high-level security solution for the applications that they migrated to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Trend Micro Deep Security, a robust cloud security solution with anti-malware, web reputation, firewall, and intrusion prevention modules, provided the company an in-depth analysis to remediate and defend against targeted attacks and protected cloud workloads from data breaches and business disruptions. This solution enabled stress-free integration with a hybrid cloud environment, and was able to meet compliance requirements. Deep Security enables the management of multiple security controls from a single dashboard, simplifying and centralizing security operations.

Policybazaar also wanted better visibility across the organization’s threat landscape, including the ability to identify and stop malicious activity at the endpoints. Trend Micro Deep Discovery Inspector, enabled the company to detect, analyze, adapt and respond to targeted attacks with network-wide visibility, insight, and control. Also, it continues detecting and protecting against zero-day malware, document exploits, attacker network activity, web threats, email threats such as phishing and spear phishing, and more.

“Implementation of Trend Micro’s solutions resulted in Policybazaar gaining a complete and proactive security solution. Deep Security improved protection and enhanced visibility for applications in AWS, strengthening our security posture. Deep Discovery provided network-wide visibility, and rapid containment and response of malware. The easy integration of the solutions and quick implementation time was an additional benefit,” said Mr. Bibhu Krishna, VP IT Infrastructure and Security, Policybazaar.

“Policybazaar 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 to protect AWS environment. At Trend Micro, they found the perfect partner who could provide exactly that and more. Policybazaar’s application and data security needs were met through automated instance security provisioning and workload-aware security policy,” said Nilesh Jain, Vice President – South East Asia and India, Trend Micro.

Trend Micro’s position as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms since 2002, along with Deep Discovery’s rank as the “most effective recommended breach detection system” for two years running by NSS Labs, further encouraged Policybazaar’s decision to choose Trend Micro.

Vijendra Katiyar, National Sales Manager, Trend Micro said, “Both Trend Micro’s Deep Security and Deep Discovery Inspector are powered by XGen, a smart, optimized, and connected security approach. As per Policybazaar’s requirements, these solutions collectively provide comprehensive protection, greater operational efficiency, superior platform support, and tighter integration with existing investments.”

With its AWS environment protected by Trend Micro solutions, Policybazaar now has a solid security foundation. With this foundation in place, Policybazaar plans to gain a deeper understanding of new attack vectors and continue to take steps to defend against the next generation of cyberthreats.

Electronics Major Opens 'World's Largest Mobile Experience Centre - Samsung Opera House' in Bengaluru

Bengaluru's iconic Opera House on Brigade Road was given a facelift, and now it is called 'Samsung Opera House'.

After a two years for Samsung to renovate and restore this place, the Opera House will bring together technology, lifestyle and innovation to offer people unique experiences.

Mohandeep Singh, Senior Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India, said the company will showcase all its products- right from smartphones, Smart TVs to Family Hub Refrigerators, among others.

Singh added that they are also looking to come up with such experience centres in other cities as well.

"Samsung Opera House will have a fully functional customer service centre, and it is also equipped with high-speed public Wi-Fi," Singh said.

In India, Samsung has two manufacturing facilities, five R&D centres and one design centre. Samsung's first R&D centre was set up in 1996 in Bengaluru. Today Samsung R&D Institute, Bengaluru (SRI-B) is the Company's biggest R&D centre in the world, outside Korea. It has the largest retail and distribution network in the country with over 1,80,000 retail partners and 2,100 Samsung brand stores spread across the country.

In July this year, Samsung opened the largest phone factory in Noida. It had said that it would spend Rs 4,920 crore over three years to expand capacity at its Noida plant.

Looking to further cement its position in India, South Korean tech major Samsung set up what is arguably the world's largest mobile experience centre in Bengaluru, barely two months after it opened its biggest mobile factory in Noida.

"We are looking at more number of such experience centres in the country. We are looking at covering all the big cities in India over a period of time with such centres," Singh told the media.

However, he did not mention a timeline for the launch of other such centres in India.

The centre would offer Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) experiences and for the first time in India, enthusiasts would be able to enjoy VR experiences such as the "4D Sway Chair" or the "Whiplash Pulsar 4D chair" that makes 360-degrees three-dimensional movements.

The tech giant would also showcase its full line-up of smartphones and wearable devices at the experience centre along with flagship consumer electronics products such as the QLED TV, Smart TVs, "The Frame", and "Family Hub" refrigerators.

The centre would also house a home appliance zone which would have a kitchen set-up where a chef would give live cooking demonstrations using Samsung smart ovens.

Also, this would be the biggest-ever display of Samsung accessories such as cases, covers and power banks at the "Samsung Opera House" wherein prospective buyers would be offered customization options for accessories.

"They would be given choices such as the installation of military strength skins for screen protection and 360-degree body protection (for phones). They can also get laser engraving done of any design or content on the mobile covers they choose," the company added.

"Samsung Opera House" would also house a range of Harman Kardon, JBL and Samsung audio products.

In June last year, the South Korean tech major announced a Rs 4,915 crore investment to expand its Noida plant and, after a year, the new facility is ready to double production.

The company is currently making 67 million smartphones in the country and with the new plant being functional, it is expected to manufacture nearly 120 million mobile phones.

Samsung dominated the premium smartphone segment in India in the first half of 2018 with 48 per cent market share, according to a report from from(CMR).