Hero Electronix’s Tessolve Opens Center of Excellence for Chip Design in Bengaluru

Hero Electronix, a part of the Hero Group, has announced the opening of its dedicated Semiconductor Chip Design Center in Bengaluru. The center has been set up by Tessolve, a Hero Electronix venture and a leading engineering solutions company. The center will focus on the needs of Tessolve’s clients, which include major global semiconductor companies. The company recently inaugurated another center in Visakhapatnam, which primarily focuses on software and test program development. The goal is to scale the design team by 100% over next 2 years to support growing demand for chip design projects from Tessolve’s customers.

Since the acquisition by Hero Electronix in 2016, Tessolve has strategically focussed on expansion of its services portfolio by enhancement of its capabilities. It has successfully transitioned from a semiconductor test engineering services player to becoming one of the leading end-to-end engineering solutions partner for top semiconductor companies – from pre-silicon to post-silicon services. Expertise areas now cover chip design (VLSI), test development, and hardware design through Embedded Systems development.

The new design center will provide strong impetus to Tessolve’s chip design offering.  As more and more clients seek capability and depth in a critical area like chip design, the new facility has been set up as the center of excellence for all chip design projects. It will work in close association with Tessolve’s other design centers to develop innovative chip solutions across verticals – automotive, server, graphics and mobile platforms, to name a few. Training will be a key focus area. Tessolve already runs training programs for engineering talent aimed at long-term growth and development of the workforce.

According to P. Raja Manickam, Founder & CEO, Tessolve: “Our vision is to be the leader in semiconductor and systems engineering from concept to delivering chips and systems. We believe in being a technology services company where we help our customers with in depth expertise, enable time to market advantage and economic benefits. It is an important milestone for the Tessolve team in our journey to become a chip design leader and is followed by the acquisition of Analog Semiconductors a year back to strengthen our analog design capabilities. It will further help in strengthening our capabilities as an end to end solutions partner and semiconductor engineering services leader.”

Nikhil Rajpal, CEO, Hero Electronix added: “We are proud of Tessolve’s growth and achievement since our partnership as today it is amongst the leaders in the semiconductor engineering space. We have not been shy of making investments in assets and infrastructure to add strategic capabilities as Tessolve made acquisitions in key areas - embedded systems, analog design, PCB fabrication and test lab. The new design centre will help accelerate Tessolve’s growth and replicate its test engineering leadership in chip design.”

The new center is located at Global Technology Park, Block C, Bellandur, Outer Ring Road. The new office will be catering to chip design projects across all domains - Design Verification, Design for Test and Debug, Physical Design, FPGA Emulation, Post SI Validation, Analog & Mixed Signal (AMS) Design.

Microsoft Shows the Way to Unlock Full Potential of AI for India

Envisioning the potential of AI for India, and continuing in its mission to empower India, Microsoft detailed the country’s readiness for AI in a whitepaper titled ‘Age of Intelligence’.  Focus on making India a digital economy, mobile phone penetration, reduced data costs are all collaborating to make for an environment conducive to extend connectivity and services to the underserved segments of the population, Microsoft said in a whitepaper on AI, unveiled at the NASSCOM Technology and Leadership Forum (NTLF) 2019.

The whitepaper titled ‘Age of Intelligence’ outlines challenges and opportunities with respect to AI and how appropriate government policies, technological advancements including growing internet penetration and connectivity help reap benefits of digital transformation in years to come. Furthermore, Microsoft called for the technology industry to actively partner and engage to help realize India’s aspirations in AI, given that many of the initiatives outlined need technology as the backbone to achieve scale, efficiency and sustainability. Cloud infrastructure and rapid deployment of intelligent cloud services will play a key role in driving AI adoption in the country.

Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India said “Our ambition is to enable a human-centered approach to AI. India is currently at an inflection point in the adoption of AI. Building on the four foundational pillars – enabling digital transformation across industries, forging coalitions for innovation, building a future-ready workforce and creating sustained societal impact will unlock and accelerate the potential of AI. All of this should be done within an over-arching ethical framework for AI development and usage.”

In this paper, Microsoft presents an industry point of view on the ‘age of intelligence’ that this world is embarking upon, wherein intelligence will be experienced in every facet: in products and services, in the way individuals communicate, how organizations function and collaborate, and how society and countries evolve. Microsoft AI is a vision for empowerment – for every developer to innovate, every organization to redefine industries and every individual to transform society.

Developers to innovate

Microsoft is democratizing AI and is making the technology used in building its own AI applications available on Azure to empower developers and institutions in solving their most difficult problems.

For instance, a challenge in India relates to inclusion- given India’s linguistic diversity and literacy. This results in a digital language barrier, with services not being easily accessible to all citizens. AI is playing a key role in removing this barrier, by enabling voice recognition, text to speech and translation for all key Indian languages.

Once that is fully available, all services can be offered to all citizens, in the language of their choice. Microsoft is closely working with developers to bring these services to all major Indian languages.

Enterprises to redefine

Enterprises can achieve far more with a comprehensive AI being AI to every application, every business process, and every employee. AI enables organizations to take better-informed decisions by making it easy to derive insights from data, helping them expand customer engagement, optimize operations, and improve offerings. Reimagining business processes with AI also makes work more efficient, saving employees time so they can focus on higher priorities.

Healthcare – Healthcare sector will be transformed through effective use of analytics driven insights decoding the complex data available, which so far remained a significant challenge worldwide. Microsoft has enabled analytics-driven individualized treatment plans based on a patient’s genetic makeup, medical history, lifestyle along with cloud-based solutions to empower healthcare organizations and help them build and deploy compliant, virtual health assistants can provide users with conversational and engaging access to the most relevant and accurate healthcare services and information.

For instance, Narayana Health is looking at new avenues to optimize its operations and augment patient care with technology. One of the ongoing projects being piloted internally is to use Artificial Intelligence to decipher X-Rays to point out any irregularities from a normal X-Ray, which would help doctors save time in diagnosis.

Public Sector-. AI tools enable governments to connect with their citizens more effectively, eliminate waste, and protect sensitive information. Microsoft’s Smart cities – Intelligent technology and Citizen services tools are designed to tackle common challenges such as fee and toll management, traffic optimization, and sustainability as well as help provide citizens with easier access to consolidated government services through tracking, search, and conversational bots.

Education- Technology is creating unprecedented opportunities to connect students to the world around them and help them realize their full potential. Teachers, administrators, and technology innovators are collaborating to solve some of the most pressing challenges in education through AI. Microsoft’s AI is helping in enhancing accessibility in the classrooms and providing school-wide AI insights into student success and risk across entire schools or school districts help educators make informed decisions on how to improve student outcome

As India surges forward with its digital transformation, large and small organizations - both public and private - are waking up to the power of cloud computing, data analytics and intelligence. They are already beginning to use the transformative power of the cloud to improve their lives and businesses.

Society to transform

AI is a powerful tool for increasing access to information, education, employment, government services, as well as social and economic opportunities.

In its work to deploy AI, Microsoft is working with policy think tanks and research organizations such as Niti Aayog (National Institute for Transforming India) and ICRISAT in creating and adopting frameworks to accelerate AI-led digital transformation across sectors. This will help frame the guard rails of where and how AI should be used to instill trust and responsibility across AI-based systems.

India is digitally ready for a comprehensive AI framework aligned to industries long-term strategy. With the size of the market and opportunity for growth it’s imperative to implement AI for India that bring economic, societal and inclusive growth. Microsoft is best positioned to address the current AI needs and ready to support all stakeholders across the entire spectrum including government, businesses, and communities by collaborating with them to accelerate all AI opportunities to drive critical growth for India’s progress.

Santokba Durlabhji Memorial Hospital (SDMH) Partners with Medvarsity for Training Medical Professionals

Santokba Durlabhji Memorial Hospital (SDMH) partners with Medvarsity Online Ltd., a leader in online medical training for courses related to Emergency medicine, Cardiology, Critical Care & Endocrinology to the practitioners at SDMH, Jaipur, Rajasthan. Each program has been designed thoughtfully to upskill the students to become highly qualified, informed and confident for their healthy professional growth. These set of courses are being deployed at SDMH with a vision to enable and strengthen the present of healthcare practitioners in order to provide better patient care for future.

India is facing a lack of upskilled professionals in today's healthcare ecosystem, where 61% of India's higher education leaders believe that our education system is not at par with the society's changing needs, reveals a research conducted by IBM. This is exactly the reason why the country needs to take proactive measures to transform the system with newer models that align with the industry goals. 

“The state of Rajasthan carries the double burden of high prevalence of infectious diseases and high incidences of cardiac complications. By partnering with SDMH, the largest healthcare provider in the state, Medvarsity aims to positively impact this requirement through upskilling and training.” said Mr. Gerald Jaideep, CEO, Medvarsity Online Ltd. on the partnership.

Training in Fellowship In Emergency Medicine, Master Class in Clinical Cardiology, Fellowship in 2D Echocardiography, Master class in Critical Care Medicine, Fellowship in Intensive Care Medicine and Masterclass in Diabetes Mellitus are aligned to meet the key need areas of today’s healthcare industry. Upskilling is a critical need for healthcare practitioners, whether they are managing a clinic or a specific department. Medvarsity’s courses are designed to provide the knowledge and clinical excellence required to fulfil the job responsibilities in these departments.

“Healthcare industry is making a shift in Rajasthan, with the Government led by Mr. Ashok Gehlot, Chief Minister of Rajasthan successfully crossing all barriers to provide comprehensive healthcare services to the people. With this partnership with Medvarsity we are aiming to boost the best of the healthcare services to a common man and by facilitating the Medvarsity’s updated courses to our doctors, we believe we are strengthening the medical sector of not only the city but the country too” said Dr. Gajendra Gupta, Medical Director,SDMH

These certificate programs are aimed at giving doctors and other healthcare professionals the in-depth knowledge and skills needed to manage people and departments efficiently within the health centers and hospitals. Medvarsity plans to become the go-to platform for continuing professional development in the healthcare domain.

Independent Research Firm Names McAfee a Leader in Cloud Security Gateway Report

McAfee, the device-to-cloud cybersecurity company, has announced that market research firm Forrester recognized the company as a leader in The Forrester Wave: Cloud Security Gateways, Q1 2019 evaluation. Also referred to as cloud access security brokers (CASB), Cloud Security Gateways (CSG) are on-premises or cloud-based software that secure enterprise usage of cloud services.

The Forrester Wave evaluates and ranks products in the CSG category. The report provides security leaders with evaluations of the 10 providers that matter most and how they stack up. Forrester evaluated the most significant CSGs based on 34 criteria and conducted a detailed technical evaluation of each product as well as an analysis of each provider’s market presence, strategy, services and partners and customer satisfaction.

In the report, authored by Forrester Vice President Andras Cser, McAfee received the highest score possible in the categories of IaaS Monitoring, Cloud Malware Detection, Sanctioned and Unsanctioned Application (Shadow IT) Detection, User Activity Monitoring, and Scalability. McAfee also received the highest score possible in the strategy category in the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Platform Monitoring Plans, Cloud Data Governance Plans, Cloud Encryption Plans, Cloud Malware Detection Plans, Unsanctioned Cloud Apps Plans and User Activity Monitoring Plans criteria. Above all other evaluated vendors, McAfee received the highest score in the IaaS Platform Monitoring Plans criteria.

The report states that McAfee MVISION Cloud (the McAfee CSG) “…offers comprehensive policy management, which is uniform for forward and reverse proxy, and APIs. The solution also covers sanctioned and unsanctioned application monitoring, DLP [data loss prevention], and reporting/dashboarding very well.”

“Through MVISION Cloud, McAfee is dedicated to providing a cloud-native means for organizations to consistently protect their data and defend against threats across the spectrum of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), IaaS and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), without the friction of requiring agents on end-user devices,” said Rajiv Gupta, senior vice president of Cloud Security at McAfee. “We believe our position as a Leader in Forrester’s Wave for Cloud Security Gateways is another validation of McAfee’s comprehensive vision and relentless execution to address our customers’ cloud security needs.”

McAfee MVISION Cloud enables organizations to accelerate their business by giving them total visibility and control to protect their data and applications in the cloud. It takes the evolution of the former McAfee Skyhigh Security Cloud product and introduces new integrations within the broader McAfee portfolio, including McAfee Data Loss Prevention and McAfee Web Gateway, providing consistent security and policy enforcement across device and cloud environments. MVISION Cloud secures SaaS applications such as Office 365, Box, and Salesforce, along with IaaS and PaaS platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

HDFC Bank Collaborates with Route Mobile to Showcase RCS Business Messaging at MWC 2019

HDFC Bank Ltd. (“HDFC Bank”), one of India’s largest private sector bank has partnered with Route Mobile Limited (“Route Mobile”) to showcase Rich Communication Services (“RCS”) on Google’s RCS Business Messaging platform at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019. Route Mobile is among the leading cloud-communications platform service provider to enterprises, over-the-top (“OTT”) players and mobile network operators.

RCS is an upgrade to SMS on a global scale. Users can now access a range of advanced capabilities from within their native messaging service – capabilities which previously required a separate OTT app to be downloaded. Messaging is no longer limited to sending simple SMS text: it has become a platform. The features of this new platform enable businesses to deliver intuitive and interactive campaigns to their customers while maintaining the reach, reliability and ubiquity of the biggest messaging platform in the world – SMS.

Nitin Chugh, Country Head - Digital Banking, HDFC Bank said “The RCS messaging agent we are showcasing illustrates the constant endeavour by HDFC Bank to harness the cutting edge technologies and digital platforms to offer a unique experience to our customers. In this age of hyper-personalization, we want to make customer experience better with a richer and highly interactive messaging platform.

Route Mobile’s MD and Group CEO, Mr. Rajdipkumar Gupta said “We believe RCS is the future of messaging and this collaboration will not only enhance the momentum for BFSI industry but also enhance the momentum for other industries toward advanced messaging and accelerate the awareness of next-generation technology, such as RCS.”

Facebook School of Innovation to Showcase Best of New-Age Technologies in Virtual Reality by Students

In a presentation of cutting-edge innovations in the field of emerging technologies in India, 21 talented students from the Facebook School of Innovation will be showcasing their work to a panel of industry leaders on February 23 at Royal Orchid Regenta in Bengaluru.

As part of the Facebook School of Innovation VR Day Programme, co-created by Facebook and Startup Village Collective (SV.CO), the brightest minds of the country will get an opportunity to exhibit their talent through product prototypes designed using Virtual Reality.

The participating students, shortlisted after a nationwide exercise covering some of the best engineering schools, underwent an intensive six-month developer-training programme under the mentorship of five professionals who are experts in the field of emerging technologies. The purpose of the VR program, built in collaboration with industry partners Scapic and Unity, is to impart key skills required to build a world-class VR prototypes.

Speaking about the steep learning curve that the students showed during their programme, Suma Sundararajan, Programme Head and Chief Operating Officers of SV.CO, said: “Through the School of Innovation, we now have students who have transformed themselves from being enthusiasts in an emerging technology to become industry-ready, professional VR developers who are capable of building stand-alone VR applications. Students now have a choice to use their skills to take a job, build their own startup or go for masters in areas like Gaming or Machine Vision.”

Satyajeet Singh, Head of Platform Partnerships for India and South Asia, Facebook, added:“With disruption being the new norm driving the Indian technology ecosystem today, we want to equip our budding entrepreneurs with the latest in emerging technologies and enable them to become problem solvers of tomorrow. The Facebook School of Innovation and the VR Day Programme seek to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship in Indian students and impart them with relevant skill sets, to bridge the gap between academia and industry requirements.”

Trained in a comprehensive and in-depth industry curriculum, the student developers also learnt about the global best practices through multiple online sessions with Global Virtual Reality experts. In terms of the practical aspect of the training, the students were provided Oculus GO VR Devices to build their respective applications and product prototypes. These technological innovations will be demonstrated at the event, which will also be attended by an array of vice-chancellors, members from state startup missions, fellow students and parents.

Launched in December 2017, the Facebook School of Innovation Programme is designed with an objective to give industry exposure to engineering students in India in emerging technologies and help them to build their ideas into next-generation, globally marketable products and services.

The 21 student developers, who will be the main attraction of the VR Day Programme, were selected from 1,191 applications received from 25 Indian states. The engineering and design students who made the cut through a three-part selection process belong to some of the most well-known institutes of the country, such as: BITS Pilani, NIT Calicut, College of Engineering Pune, KIET Ghaziabad, Meerut Institute of Engineering and Technology, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology, Kerala, Sri Sairam College of Engineering, Bengaluru, and Image College of Arts, Animation and Technology.

With an aim to spread awareness in the emerging field of Virtual Reality, the School of Innovation programme conducted a series of workshops for nearly 5,000 students across the country, of which three talented developers will be given the chance to showcase their work at the VR Day.

Tata Motors to Supply 80 Electric Buses to West Bengal Transport Corporation

Reaffirming its commitment towards E-mobility in the country, India’s leading bus brand Tata Motors announces the supply of 80 Electric buses to the West Bengal Transport Corporation (WBTC) at an event held in the city today. The company has already supplied 20 Ultra Electric 9/9m AC E-buses, with remaining 20 9/9m AC E-buses scheduled to be delivered by March 31, 2019. The company will also be supplying 40 9/12m AC E-buses to WBTC in a phased manner. Hon’ble Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee, flagged off the buses with dignitaries from WBTC and Tata Motors. The new buses will begin their inaugural journey from Nabanna, Howrah.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Rohit Srivastava, Product Line Head – Passenger Commercial Vehicles, Tata Motors, said, “With growing environmental concerns, electric bus is definitely a symbol of future mobility. Tata Motors has always been at the forefront of the E-mobility evolution and this order is a testament of our best-in-class solution tailored for the bus segment in India. The order is part of the 255 e-buses to be supplied to six STUs in the country, of which WBTC is one. Our in-depth understanding of sustainable public transport for different markets and customers is what differentiates us from our competitors. We are determined to develop alternate fuel technologies and create more energy efficient vehicles thereby supporting the government’s efforts towards promoting electric vehicles in the country.”

Manufactured at Tata Motors Dharwad plant, the Ultra Electric buses will have a traveling range of up to 150 kilometers on a single charge. The company has installed charging stations at Nonapukur, Kasba, Newtown and Belghoria. Furthermore, intermediate charging terminals powered with fast charging are mounted at Howrah and Santragachi. The indigenously developed e-buses offer superior design and best-in-class features. The Li-ion batteries have been placed on the rooftop to prevent breakdown due to waterlogging. The batteries are liquid cooled to maintain the temperature within an optimum range and ensure longer life along with better performance in tropical conditions.

Dr. A.K. Jindal, Head Engineering (Electric & Defence), CVBU, Tata Motors said, “Tata Motors has been engaging in advanced engineering and development of electric traction system for Hybrid as well as Pure Electric vehicles for over a decade. The Ultra Electric Bus is a new modular platform, which has been developed in a very short lead-time of less than a year, leveraging the knowledge and experience we have gained and demonstrating our commitment to the Government of India’s National Electric Mobility Mission Plan for Public Transport.  The architecture of the platform has been conceived and developed by in-house engineering team of Tata Motors, meeting the requirement of various tenders floated by different state transport undertakings. The exterior has been designed with new brand identity that includes stylized Ultra headlamps and streamlined looks. The vehicle architecture ensures very low energy consumption and low TCO (total cost of operation) apart from being a Zero Emission environment friendly bus.”

The new age Ultra Electric buses, powered by an Integrated Electric Motor Generator are built on existing proven platforms of Starbus and Ultra. With a max power of 245KW and continuous power of 145KW, the buses have a seating capacity of 31 + 1D seats. The buses will help in zero tailpipe emissions, 50% lower fuel costs, 20% better energy consumption and lower maintenance downtime as compared to diesel buses. The Ultra Electric buses are air-conditioned, have modern interiors and comfortable seats for 31 passengers. As an industry first, there will be air suspension for both front and rear axles to make travel more comfortable for the commuters. Integrated electric motor generator with a peak power of 333HP can deliver 197HP continuously ensuring effortless driving in congested roads and frequent start stops needing no shifting of gears.

Commenting on the occasion, Mr. Narayan Swaroop Nigam, Managing Director at West Bengal Transport Corporation (WBTC), said, “As one of the most densely populated cities in the country, Kolkata is a challenge for us. However with our strong commitment to transform Kolkata as one of the smartest cities in the world, public transport has always been a key focus area of our government and today is a very significant day for the people of Kolkata. The state-of-the-art Ultra 9m AC Electric buses by Tata Motors is a big step towards achieving better public transport, with a clear emphasis on providing sustainable, affordable and safe mobility solutions for the masses. These E-buses will soon ply on the roads of West Bengal, from Howrah to Jadavpur, Garia to Airport, Behala to Rajarhat and Esplanade to Santragachi. We look forward to strengthening this association with Tata Motors to bring smart city solutions for a greener and cleaner Kolkata.”

The critical electrical traction components have been sourced from internationally known best-in-class suppliers in USA, Germany and China offering proven products. The buses have been tested and validated by Tata Motors across states including Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Assam and Maharashtra to establish performance in diverse terrains. The company has tenders to supply 255 electric buses to six public transport undertakings including WBTC (West Bengal), LCTSL (Lucknow), AICTSL (Indore), ASTC (Guwahati), J&KSRTC (Jammu) and JCTSL (Jaipur). In addition to this, the company is also working on developing its electric mini-bus segment in the near future.