Panduit, an industry leader in end-to-end electrical and network connectivity physical infrastructure solutions, concluded its Solution City Conference at The Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, India, on 20 November 2018. The conference offered in-depth insights into projects supporting the case for India’s infrastructure growth and served as an avenue for global experts to discuss efficient ways to tackle infrastructure challenges in the country.
On Tuesday, participants from across India and abroad gathered to discuss and learn from their peers on how to address the infrastructure challenges ailing India. Dr Andrew Staples, Global Editorial Director from The Economist Corporate Network opened the event, breaking down significant key infrastructure growth points in driving the economy, and the challenges that lie within. He noted that as of April 2018, India has 1,332 infrastructure projects underway, each worth at least US$22m and 343 of which are classified as mega-projects. A third of these mega-projects are behind schedule, further adding to costs.
In the panel discussion moderated by Dr Staples on investing in India, Harry Woo, Managing Director, Panduit Asia Pacific, shared how through the years Panduit India has managed to overcome the challenges in their local operations by leveraging the local distribution network, which has been proven to work in their favour.
“India is a land of endless opportunities and with Panduit as a foreign investor, we look towards our strong partner network to share the success. We are good at manufacturing products through our 60 years of innovation and research, to reduce costs and deliver on infrastructure needs. However, it is the expertise of our distribution network that helps us bring our products to market,” Woo said.
“We are encouraged by the conversations we are having with industry and that the work we do is aligned with their needs. Together, we can work toward solving India’s infrastructure challenges and realising a richer economy.”
Furthermore, industry leaders Cisco Systems (India), International Solar Alliance, Sterling & Wilson and Yes Bank participated in separate panel discussions covering digital transformation in transportation, meeting India’s renewable energy demand as well as sustainable investment for the solar industry.
Pramod Sharma - Executive Creative Director, Rediffusion said, “Tata Commercial Vehicles are the lifeline of India. Be it goods, Ganesha idols or sports felicitation processions, the Tata vehicles carry emotions with them, making them the heartbeat of the country. Our idea stemmed from this insight, executed nicely by Old School Films.”
Tata Motors is at the forefront, promoting Wrestling and Kabaddi in the country through their recent associations with Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) and Pro Kabaddi League (PKL). In some of the biggest non-cricket partnerships of the country, Tata Motors takes pride in extending its support beyond a simple commercial engagement by promoting the sport, encouraging and developing rising sporting talents, enabling them to achieve their aspirations.
Continuing from its association and strong support towards home –grown sports of the country like Kabaddi and Wrestling, Tata Motors, India’s leading automotive company has introduced its brand new TVC “DeshKeTruck”. The film establishes Tata Motors’ range of commercial vehicles as an integral part of a sportsperson’s quest for excellence, helping them hone their skills to pursue success. The vehicles also double up as a symbol of perfection, inspiring every athlete to push their boundaries akin to these commercial vehicles that are unstoppable in the wake of challenges. The film ‘Desh Ke Truck’ has been conceptualized by Rediffusion and executed by Old School Films.
The TVC features players such as Sushil Kumar, Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik, Rishank Devadiga, Monu Goyat etc. among others, from WFI and PKL. It will be promoted during the ongoing Pro Kabaddi League matches, further cascading on to the social media handles with the following hashtags - #DeshKeKhiladi #DeshKeTruck #PKL #WFI. URL to the TVC – Tata Motors Desh Ke Truck TVC
Speaking on the TVC, UT Ramprasad, Head – Marketing and Brand Communications, Commercial Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors said, “Tata Motors is the archetype trucking champion of India. In essence - the ‘DeshKeTruck’ positioning embodies our vehicles and the movement of the Indian economy at large. Tata Motors Commercial Vehicle’s association with Kabaddi & Wrestling is our acknowledgment of the undeniable and unstoppable ‘Sportification’ of India through these homegrown sports.”
ExxonMobil Lubricants Pvt. Ltd. is set to expand its presence in India, the world’s fastest growing lubricants market, with one of the most exciting brand associations, 2.0. Associated as the energy partner, the world’s leading lubricant brand aims to engage its consumers, trade partners and employees through marketing associations that reflect the Mobil brand promise.
The 2.0. association is first amongst many initiatives under the Farak Laakar Dekhiye brand campaign. The campaign embodies Mobil’s strategy for India and articulates the position of making a difference to things that matter and seeing the change. As a brand, Mobil continues to stay ahead of the curve, through its advanced technology and engineering capabilities to offer better protection - which sets Mobil branded products apart from every other lubricant manufacturer.
Commenting on the association, Deepankar Banerjee, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ExxonMobil’s lubricants business in India said,“We are extremely pleased with our association with 2.0. The movie illustrates best-in-class and is synonymous with the Mobil brand promise. This association is just one of the many brand associations we will launch in India. The brand campaign, Farak Laakar Dekhiye, was conceptualized with the Indian subcontinent in mind, promising an array of unique and relevant experiences that lead to stronger brand recognition and curiosity for Mobil products in India.”
The World Obesity Federation recognizes obesity as a "chronic, relapsing, progressive disease process, associated with comorbidities such as diabetes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure and infertility.” A recent study also linked morbid obesity to 13 types of cancer. In Karnataka, obesity is growing rapidly across both men and women, and across rural and urban areas. The proportion of men who are obese has doubled in the last decade. Increasing urbanization can be a contributing factor to these trends - lack of physical activity and growing consumption of fast food are proven to fuel obesity. But obesity is no more confined to urban areas. Even in rural areas, nearly 20% of men and women in Karnataka are obese. Widespread awareness of obesity as a serious medical condition is the need of the hour, so that patients consult doctors in time to benefit from the full range of available treatment options.
Dr. Shivaram H V, a surgeon in Aster CMI Hospital,observes that obese patients usually do not consult a medical professional promptly, “In the Indian scenario, more than 60% of individuals wait more than 6-10 years to seek out clinically proven weight-loss methods. By that time, such patients may have two or more comorbidities – such as sleep apnea or type 2 diabetes. Amongst residents of Bangalore, particularly among software professionals aged less than 30 years, the incidence of obesity is rising rapidly. Based on clinical experience, I would estimate the growth to be as high as 15% per annum. It is imperative that as soon as patients observe a steady and uncontrolled weight gain, they consult a medical expert who can identify the cause and advise corrective measures.”
Obesity treatment plans aim to limit weight gain, and eventually help patients reach and stay at a healthy weight. Treatment plans usually include diet and lifestyle recommendations, medications and bariatric surgery for eligible patients. Dr. Shivaram H V added, “When obesity is treated effectively, many comorbid conditions also show improvement. For instance, bariatric surgery is proven to help control Type 2 Diabetes in obese Indian patients. In my experience, this benefit is long-lasting. With simple habits and routines implemented by the patient post-surgery, glycemic control persists for at least 10-15 years. Similarly, I have observed sustained improvements in patients with high blood pressure, cholesterol and PCOD.”
Worldwide, of the four million deaths attributed to excess body weight in 2015, nearly 40% occurred among those whose body mass index (BMI) was above the threshold of obesity, i.e., 30 or above. To help ensure that severe obesity is treated with proven methods, insurance coverage of obesity treatment is a key step. Dr. Shivaram H Vemphasizes, “About 40% of patients visiting our hospital had previously avoided seeking obesity treatment due to financial concerns. Some even question whether they should spend money on a ‘cosmetic’ need. They discover later the reality that obesity is not just a matter of appearance, but also a serious health issue.” Recently, the IRDAI panel clarified that obesity, if contracted after buying a health cover, cannot be excluded from coverage. Dr. Shivaram applauded this step saying, “Covering obesity treatment with insurance will reinforce the seriousness of the condition, its potential to drive related lifestyle diseases and the need to seek appropriate medical treatment.”
Arena Animation, the leading animation institution in India recently organized the Creative Minds - Bengaluru 2018 — an opportunity for over 400 students to showcase their talent.
Creative Minds is Arena’s flagship student competition, where students produce and showcase some brilliant work. Students conceptualise and produce films under the guidance & mentorship of their faculty. These films and projects are judged by industry experts, who then guide and nurture them. This competition which happens across the country, judges students on various categories such as digital illustration, character design and animation, visual effects scene, 3D architectural visualization to name a few. It creates a platform for the students that provide them opportunity to learn teamwork and showcase their work within a strict timeframe, thus improving their capability, capacity and efficiency.
Congratulating the winners, Pravir Arora, Group Chief Marketing Officer, Aptech Ltd said, “Creative Minds is an initiative that offers a holistic benefit to the students. On one hand they receive quality insight including tip and tricks while using software, and on the other, they receive quick and comprehensive feedback on their work. With such competitions we want to create a stage for students to network with the industry experts. I would like to heartily congratulate the winners of Creative Minds, Bengaluru 2018”.
The industry stalwarts consisted of leading studios in India. These industry experts lent their guidance to students and also provided them useful career tips, in order to nurture industry-ready individuals. In this way, students were exposed to the latest industry trends, while at the same time they learnt to apply the learnings to the work they had presented. Along with the competition, a masterclass was conducted by industry leaders such as:
Pranay Agarwal, Head of Compositing, DNeg Studios, Mumbai
Dijo Davis, Head of L&D at Technicolor Academy & Sachin A.A. Learning Lead Compositing - Technicolour Academy by MPC Studios, Bengaluru
Arena Animation believes that a better future for the Indian animation and VFX industry can only be fueled by skilling the youth and nurturing creative minds and make them industry-ready. Initiatives like Creative Minds by Arena Animation always aim towards creating a strong community of skilled animators.
Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, now provides comprehensive protection to Motilal Oswal’s endpoints, network, and servers via one unified platform. The cybersecurity solutions securing Motilal Oswal include Trend Micro Apex One for endpoints, Trend Micro Deep Discovery Inspector for network, and Trend Micro Deep Security with anti-malware and intrusion prevention modules for servers.
Motilal Oswal is one of India’s leading financial services companies. With more than 2,200 branches in 500 Indian cities serving more than ten million customers, Motilal Oswal needed solutions that could provide comprehensive security without further complicating its IT environment.
The company first deployed Trend Micro’s Apex One endpoint security suite; then expanded the deal to include security solutions for its network and servers. Trend Micro Apex One protects the endpoints from unwanted and unknown applications. Trend Micro Deep Security provides emergency virtual patching to safeguard the servers from zero-day malware, network-based attacks, and operational impact from resource inefficiencies. Trend Micro Deep Discovery Inspector provides comprehensive threat detection and 360-degree visibility into the network, by monitoring all ports and protocols to identify attacks.
As a result, Motilal Oswal is able to monitor lateral movement within its network, reduce unscheduled downtimes, gain greater visibility into its IT assets, and decrease the time needed for security operations through one single-window management.
Nilesh Jain, Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Trend Micro said, “Motilal Oswal’s all-inclusive deployment of our security solutions allows the company to achieve what we call connected threat defense, an integrated and layered approach to cybersecurity that gives enterprises better control over their IT environment.”
“Trend Micro’s solutions enable us to offer our customers a truly secure environment that doesn’t compromise on performance. Our organization has benefited immensely from the reduced downtimes and real-time protection from threats,” said Pankaj Purohit, CIO, Motilal Oswal Financial Services.
Amit Ghodekar, CSO, Motilal Oswal Financial Services said, “One of the reasons we selected Trend Micro solutions over other vendors’ is for their unique virtual patching capabilities. Virtual patching shields our systems from zero-day vulnerabilities until a patch becomes available.”
Vijendra Katiyar, National Sales Manager, Trend Micro said, “Trend Micro’s robust security solutions have increased operational performance and provided Motilal Oswal enhanced protection against threats.”
“We gained an excellent solution in Trend Micro’s comprehensive security suite. The main benefits of improved protection and enhanced visibility, without compromising on performance enabled us to gain a safe environment within a cost-effective budget,” said Sehul Shaht, VP - IT Infrastructure Motilal Oswal Financial Services.
Trend Micro has been a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms since 2002, along with earning the rank of ‘most effective recommended breach detection system’ for two years running by NSS Labs.
Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, today announces a major 3-year contract with the C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), an organization within the MeitY (Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, India) to supply its BullSequana supercomputers. This contract is part of the NSM (National Supercomputing Mission), a 7-year plan of INR 4500 crores (~650M$) led by the Government of India which aims to create a network of over 70 high-performance supercomputing facilities for various academic and research institutions across India.
This project will see Atos deploy its BullSequana supercomputers, with a cumulative computing power of more than 10 petaflops. These supercomputers, including the recently announced BullSequana XH2000 will be installed in various academic and research institutions, making Atos a leading supercomputing provider in India for this segment.
“We are honoured to be given this opportunity by the Indian Authorities to be part of the NSM initiative and to become the technology partner of C-DAC for HPC-related platforms. We’re proud to be supporting India as one of the major markets with its strong growth expectations. The choice of the Indian government is testament to our experience and expertise in high-performance supercomputing and I am delighted that our BullSequana, with its unique Direct Liquid Cooling platform, will be enabling Indian academic and research institutions to accelerate their research” said Pierre Barnabé, Chief Operating Officer, Big Data & Security at Atos.
“We would like to thank the Hon’ble Minister MEIT, Secretary MEIT and the Director General of C-DAC Dr. Hemant Darbari for giving this opportunity to participate in such a prestigious program. We are very excited and looking forward to this unique technology partnership with C-DAC. Besides delivery of the Make in India Supercomputers, the partnership will bring to bear cooperation in many emerging areas, including exascale computing, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.” said Arvind Bajaj, Vice President and Head Big Data & Security at Atos in India.
This new contract illustrates the strategic relationship and partnership between the two countries and marks India’s ambition to be a leader in HPC. Delivery is expected to start early 2019.
