South India’s Smallest Baby of 1.6 Kgs Gets a Pacemaker at Manipal Hospitals, Bengaluru

Manipal Hospitals Bengaluru stacks up yet another medical marvel in its record as it becomes home to South India’s smallest baby to undergo a pacemaker implantation. The 4 day old baby weighing 1.6 Kgs was born with septal defect (hole in the heart) on 28th January this year and was successfully operated by Dr Devananda N S, Chairman & Consultant HOD, Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Manipal Hospitals.

Hailing from Shimoga, the baby’s parents realized there was some defect in the fetus even before it was born through fetal echocardiography (test used to diagnose cardiac conditions in the fetal stage) during one of the checkups conducted by Manipal doctors locally. However, considering the condition is curable, doctors at Manipal assured the parents to cure the baby and not terminate pregnancy.

Thus, the couple moved to Bengaluru and delivered the baby on 28th January 2019. However, as detected, baby was born with a hole in the heart and was shifted to ICU the very next day. Considering the baby was just a day old and weighed only 1.6 Kgs, a suitable pacemaker was not available in the hospital. As a result, the hospital placed an order for the smallest pacemaker available from Hong Kong which arrived on the fourth day and the surgery was performed immediately.

Speaking about the case, Dr Devananda N S, Chairman & Consultant HOD, Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Manipal Hospitals said, “The initial 3-5 days are very crucial as babies are the most fragile during this time. Especially in this case, there were many challenges as the heartbeat was just about 0-40 times a minute with normal being 140 times a minute during the time of birth. Moreover, the baby was weighing only 1.6 Kgs. Owing to the size, we had to find the smallest pacemaker to be implanted. Nevertheless, thanks to the advance neonatal care with multidisciplinary expertise, we were able to send back home a baby born as old as 4 days with septal defect.

Timely diagnosis and intervention paid off in saving the baby in this case, however lot of people lose their babies due to lack of awareness. Babies with any suspected or known heart diseases should not be salvaged as there is always a possibility to survive. Fetal echocardiography plays an important role in diagnosis, management and follow up of patients in such cases,” added Dr. Devananda.

Expressing her joy, the baby’s mother said, “I have gone through two miscarriages earlier due to complications and I could not save my babies. Even this time I completely lost hope and never thought I would see my baby alive until I met doctors at Manipal Hospitals. As this is our first child, we wanted the best care to be available for him and we are extremely thankful to the team of experts at the hospital who took immense care of our bundle of joy.”

Experian Grows Innovation Footprint to Financially Enable India’s 190 Million Unbanked

Experian, the world leader in information services, is further expanding and investing in its innovation facility, Experian X Labs based in Singapore. The facility serves as Experian’s first incubator and collaboration centre for cutting-edge solutions, aimed at addressing pressing economic and societal issues in the India, such as financial inclusion. The Experian X Labs team, comprises of data scientists, product architects and industry innovators.

Financial inclusion is a significant challenge for economic progress in India, a region that is home to more than 190 million people without access to formal financial services[1]. Fostering greater financial inclusion, through financial access and education, will lead to more opportunities and economic growth. The Experian X Labs team leverages alternative data, advanced analytics and partnerships with industry organisations to develop technology solutions that will bridge the gap between India’s unbanked and financial service providers. The recently expanded Experian DataLabs[2] plays an integral role in the facility, providing a compliant and secure environment for experimentation with data and collaborative research.

Mohan Jayaraman, Regional Managing Director, Decision Analytics and Business Information Services at Experian Asia Pacific, said: “Responsible innovation is the driving force behind our work at Experian. Matching major societal issues with localised solutions, the data science and technology experts at Experian X Labs are tapping on data generated from alternative sources to provide valuable insights into a person’s credit worthiness. Data generated through the region’s rapidly growing internet penetration and mobile usage rates, for example, can help build financial identities for Asia’s unbanked. In the Indian context, this also translates into harnessing various initiatives in the India tech stack and the vibrant data economy to look at opportunities for boosting financial inclusion.”

Solutions that are currently in development at Experian X Labs include Experian X Score, a credit-scoring system based on alternative data, aimed at helping the new-to-credit population in India strengthen their financial identities and progressively gain access to a wider set of financial services. To achieve this, Experian India has partnered with multiple local entities in the digital payment processing and personal finance space. These developments will follow Experian’s previously launched Prove-ID in India[3], an automated identity and address verification service that helps over 7 million marginalised Indian citizens gain access to government and financial services. Prove-ID gathers key consumer insights from multiple data sources and helps banks verify customers at a faster and more efficient rate.

Experian X Labs provides the organisation with a platform to collaborate with start-ups, fintech providers, related businesses and academic institutions in the region. The team is also working to seed and develop APAC-wide solutions aligned with Experian’s core areas of expertise around financial inclusion, digital payments and consumer enablement through advanced data analytics, research and development. In addition to developing innovative technology solutions, the Experian X Labs will continue to play a central role in Experian’s efforts to build digital financial marketplaces in the region, better matching financial solutions with people who need them.

Absolutdata Integrates IBM Watson for Scalable Business Impact through Enhanced Insight Mining

Absolutdata, a leading data analytics firm, has announced that they have embedded IBM Watson services into their NAVIK AI Platform to help companies build an Intelligence Stack across Sales and Marketing functions. The Watson enhanced NAVIK AI Platform combines data, analytics and technology to optimize decisions on an ongoing basis without having to build a data science team while the NAVIK AI Sales Solution delivers dramatic improvements in sales and marketing effectiveness. The benefits seen include salesforce effectiveness, customer targeting, campaign management and optimized decision making across industries.

“Many of our global clients are interested in achieving the business transformation that AI can deliver,” said Dr. Anil Kaul, Co-founder and CEO of Absolutdata. “Yet they struggle with the best approach to start, and how to get the promised scalable business impact. IBM Watson AI can deliver results quickly, economically and at a scale that gets noticed at the board level.” Dr. Kaul adds, “We are in the early stages of companies building their intelligence stack and NAVIK enables our clients to develop a strategic competitive advantage that will last a long time.”

Integrating IBM Watson with Absolutdata’s NAVIK AI platform and services allows clients to utilize analytical frameworks and natural language processing to mine existing sales data. As a result, clients are better poised to identify hidden revenue streams, run hyper-personalized campaigns at scale and derive deeper business insights, compared to traditional methods of resource-based analytics and model development. This will help businesses enhance productivity, eliminate manual intervention and access huge data sets in real time, which was not possible earlier.

Following a phased approach, Absolutdata has incorporated IBM Watson into NAVIK SalesAI, NAVIK MarketingAI, NAVIK ResearchAI and NAVIK MicroMods, with others under development. Absolutdata is also using other IBM services such as Weather to enhance effectiveness in certain modules.

One of the world’s largest dairy companies is using NAVIK integrated with IBM Watson, to mine consumer insights and drive quick marketing decisions about brand, campaigns and pricing. The brand’s marketing team can classify and generate automated insights from both structured and unstructured data rendered real-time across mobile devices and the web, reducing decision lead time from weeks to seconds with over 99 percent uptime.

Absolutdata’s growing team of 400 data scientists and engineers is implementing AI solutions across client needs and is receiving extensive training on IBM Watson as a key component of the partnership.

Legrand India to Become a Part of the USD 15-B IoT Market in India; By 2020, 40 Product to be Fully Digitized

Legrand India, a global leader in electrical and digital building infrastructure provides a new dimension for connecting lives with their roll out of IoT programme- ELIOT. ELIOT which stands for Electricity + Internet of Things is a programme that aims to inject the power of communications, advances in connectivity and intelligence in the building environment and enhances value of the connected products to improve user experiences. Eliot also supports the development of suitable digital infrastructures for buildings and provides interoperability.

In India the Eliot product offerings are – Residential: Arteor With Netatmo, My Home Up, Classe 300 IP Door Phones, Nuvo for Audio Systems; Hospitality: Neat for Integrated Assisted Living, Flex Commercial: Power Distribution Unit, Energy Distribution.

ELIOT, a combination of “electricity” and “IoT,” will work to transform built environments through a purpose-built cloud, with gateways for installed legacy offerings, an array of natively connected new products, and solutions comprising connected, intelligent technologies and services.

Legrand India through their IoT Eliot programmes aims is to deliver additional benefits for all private and professional users, whether they are end users or installers. The products are interconnected in such a manner that they are able to talk to each other and interact when the user wishes too.

The Eliot IoT programme is based on three cornerstones-

•      Connected solutions,
•      Interoperability and
•      Sustainable digital and electrical infrastructure for buildings.

Legrand is joined by partners Amazon Echo, Samsung and Google Play, Renault, Marriott in launching ELIOT, which offers a purpose-built cloud, gateways for installed legacy offerings, an array of natively connected new products, and innovative solutions comprising connected, intelligent technologies and services.

Legrand offers triple focus of digital trust in IoT eliot programme i.e. advantage in using the brand relationship satisfaction, ensuring security where no one else can access your data and ensuring privacy where no one else except you can access your data.

On the launch of ELIOT programme, Mr. Jean Charles Thuard, CEO & Managing Director, Legrand India said, “India is at the cusp of technological advancements and it is the right time for IoT to become mainstream. Customer have evolved and millennials are already using app-based services. The success of IoT products require proximity to both the people who are the users of IoT devices and to the to the power and data connectivity that will enable those IoT devices and services. We at Legrand are trying to build an environment where various devices can seamlessly be connected devices get connect and combine it with analytics to improve the performance and interoperability of the devices. He further added, “Eliot is a great way to establish dialogues with these new-age modern products. We have made some great partnerships and I am sure our customers will enjoy the added benefits of our solutions under Eliot. Under Eliot, Legrand by 2017 has been able to successfully digitalise more than 30 out of 100 product families globally”.

Speaking on this occasion, Mr Sameer Saxena, Director, Marketing Legrand Group India said, “India has the ecosystem in place for connected devices. Internet penetration is at its peak, people have befriended technology as a part of their daily life and demand for voice-controlled device (Alexa, Google etc) is strong. Through our partnership modules we have a robust system ready for our interoperable offerings and we feel this will arm our customers with all around efficient solutions for building and living spaces.”

With its Eliot program, Legrand has decided to speed up the deployment of its connected offerings, to the benefit of both private and professional users. Professional applications currently account for 60% of the overall market of the Internet of Things. Globally ELIOT programme are present at France, Greece, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Dubai, America and made its first-time entry in India region with its launch today in Hong Kong.

Singapore Airlines to Introduce “Airbus A350 Aircraft” in Bengaluru Starting May 18, 2019

Singapore Airlines is pleased to announce the introduction of its A350 medium haul aircraft on the Bengaluru to Singapore sector. It will be the first airline to start A350 services from Bengaluru International Airport. The inaugural service SQ505 will depart from Bengaluru International Airport at 0120 hrs on 18 May 2019. Progressively, all ten weekly scheduled Singapore Airlines services will operate on this new aircraft type, subject to regulatory approval.

“Singapore Airlines is delighted to start services on this latest generation aircraft to Bengaluru. In line with the company’s commitment to product and service excellence; the Airbus A350 medium haul aircraft combined with our award-winning inflight service will provide Indian travelers enhanced comfort,” said Mr. David Lim, General Manager India – Singapore Airlines.

The A350-900 features higher ceilings, larger windows, an extra wide body delivering more space and comfort as well as lighting designed to reduce jetlag. Fitted with the new regional Business Class and Economy Class cabin products, the A350-900 medium haul Business Class cabin has 40 seats in a 1-2-1 arrangement that ensures direct aisle access for every customer, while the Economy Class cabin has 263 seats arranged in a comfortable 3-3-3 configuration.

New Business Class

The new medium-haul Business Class seats have been manufactured by Stelia Aerospace. With each seat able to recline directly into a 76” fully-flat bed, customers can rest in more comfort, even on the shortest flights. Each seat measures up to 26” in width with retractable armrests that can be raised and lowered.

Other features include ample stowage space for personal items, a business panel with in-seat power supply and USB ports, an integrated reading light unit with adjustable lighting intensity and a personal 17” full high-definition touchscreen monitor.

New Economy Class

The new Economy Class seats have been designed and manufactured by RECARO and also offer customers an enhanced in-flight experience. Each seat has an ergonomically-designed contour backrest that provides greater relaxation, and a six-way adjustable headrest with foldable wings to provide more neck support. Economy Class customers can also enjoy an enhanced entertainment experience on their personal 11.6” full high-definition touchscreen monitor.

Other features that have been introduced for Economy Class customers include storage space for small personal items, a coat hook, USB port and in-seat power supply.

In-flight Entertainment

The A350-900 medium haul aircraft are also fitted with the latest Thales AVANT in-flight entertainment system – a first in SIA’s fleet. This has been designed with a new user interface that offers a more intuitive experience and navigation options, leaving customers with the pleasure of enjoying Singapore Airlines’ myKrisWorld and its selection of more than 1,800 movies, TV shows, audio programmes and games with even greater flexibility.

Customers can receive personalised content recommendations based on their preferences and viewing history, while KrisFlyer members can bookmark and resume content, as well as customise and save preferences and playlists for subsequent flights. KrisFlyer members and Business Class customers will also have access to additional in-flight entertainment content choices.

In addition, customers will have access to high-speed in-flight WiFi service on the new A350-900s, equipped with Inmarsat GX Aviation’s broadband connectivity system offered through SITAONAIR.

Singapore Airlines placed orders for a total of 67 Airbus A350-900 aircraft, 29 of which are already in the fleet including six ultra-long-range variants, 21 long-haul variants, and two medium-haul variants.

HDFC ERGO Launches the First-of-Its Kind ‘Trip Projector’ Policy in Indian Market

HDFC ERGO General Insurance Company, India’s third-largest non-life insurance provider in the private sector, today announced the launch of ‘Trip Protector’ insurance policy, a pioneering policy in the non-life insurance segment in India. In the event of a cancellation, either a flight or hotel booking, Trip Protector insurance policy will safeguard travellers financially against the cost of cancellation levied by Hotels or Airlines. In addition, the policy will provide the travellers a cover against cancellation of a pre-booked room, in case they are refused accommodation on arriving at the Hotel due to overbooking.

Travellers often plan their vacations in advance basis either public holidays, festivals or school academic year, thereby allowing them to avail of the early bird fares offered by hotels and airlines. However, sometimes these plans may be altered closer to the date, thereby leaving the traveller with a huge financial loss by the way of cancellation fees/charges. In such an unfortunate situation, the ‘Trip Protector’ Insurance policy by HDFC ERGO will cover the cancellation of pre-booked flights and hotels for domestic as well as international travel. The policy is initially being offered to customers of HDFC Bank on the purchase of Airline tickets or Hotel Bookings done using their individual HDFC Bank credit cards.

Commenting on the launch of the new policy, Mr Anurag Rastogi, Member of Executive Management, HDFC ERGO General Insurance Company said that, “Customer satisfaction is of paramount importance for us and we are constantly looking to provide innovative solutions, in alignment with our customers' ever-evolving needs. We observed that, despite meticulous planning, travel plans may get cancelled due to unfortunate events, leaving the travellers with huge financial losses due to the cancellation fees. While travel insurance offers a smooth travel experience, this policy will help travellers’ pre-plan their trips without any fear of cancellation. Sensing this gap, the Trip Protector insurance policy will allow travellers to book their airline tickets and hotels, carefree in advance. The policy also refunds cost incurred towards visa, over and above the hotel and flight booking charges in the event of cancellation for any reason.”

Trip Protector insurance policy will enable travellers to buy refundable or non-refundable tickets. Refundable tickets covered by the policy will ensure that the end customer incurs no additional expenses, in the unfortunate event of a cancellation. This policy, however, is not applicable in case the flight or the hotel cancels in its own accord. The policy is an All Risk Policy where ticket cancellation by customers, due to any reason, will be covered.

3i Infotech and its Leadership Bag Prestigious Global Awards 2019

3i Infotech Limited, a global Information Technology company has started 2019 on a winning note, with the company being named as one of ‘Asia’s Greatest Brands’ and its MD & Global CEO Mr. Padmanabhan Iyer being honored as one of ‘Asia’s Greatest Leaders’ by the Asian Business & Social Forum 2019. The awards were presented to the company at the 3rd edition of ‘Asia’s Greatest Brands & Leaders’ at a glittering ceremony in Singapore, as part of the ‘Pride of Asia’ awards series of AsiaOne magazine and URS Consulting.

Speaking on receiving the prestigious double accolades, Mr. Padmanabhan Iyer, MD & Global CEO, 3i Infotech said, “3i Infotech as an organization and I personally, are delighted and humbled to have received these prestigious awards among luminaries within the industry. It reinforces our commitment to all our stakeholders in delivering quality and excellence over the years. We as a company are growing and have re-invented ourselves as a future-ready organization, delivering next-gen solutions to our customers globally.  By constantly upgrading its comprehensive set of IP based software solutions & IT Services solutions, the Company sustains its cutting edge advantage in addressing the dynamic requirements of Banking, Insurance, Capital Markets, and Asset & Wealth Management (BFSI).”

The award recipients were selected on the basis of primary and secondary research across 16 industries under 62 sub categories in Asia, with evaluation and scoring by independent jury members, United Research Services International’s primary and secondary data collation and the AsiaOne editorial team, and the entire process reviewed by PricewaterhouseCoopers.