CarDekho’s Gaadi Forays into Southern Market with “12 New Stores in Bengaluru”

Gaadi by CarDekho, a retail auction model for pre-owned cars, has announced its foray in southern India with launch of twelve stores in Bengaluru. Better known as the silicon valley of India, Bengaluru is a magnet for the millennials as well as the urban population, creating the perfect opportunity for Gaadi to expand its market.

The brand has already witnessed phenomenal success within its first quarter with sale of over 900 cars across the 15 stores in Delhi – NCR. The brand is steadily building its trust with the audience as a dependable, hassle-free medium to sell their cars. The intend of the team is to scale the entire country with nearly 200 stores in markets including Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai etc. The USP of Gaadi is to provide effortless vehicle selling experience to the customers with optimum resale value for their cars along with Free RC transfer, Loan closure assistance, Instant money transfer, and scientific car inspection at their outlets.

According to a research by McKinsey, there is continued growth in the used-car segment with India projected to be the 3rd largest market for used-cars by 2021. To add on to it, escalating concerns about the life term of cars, a paradigm shift in emissions and safety norms has also influenced consumers to waver from purchasing new cars. Cementing this trend, industry organization, SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers), states that market growth is anticipated to be driven by rising penetration of online platforms such as Gaadi, that enables used car dealers to boost their reach to a larger audience and considering that on an average there are 7,000-8,000 cars being sold each month in Bangalore makes it the perfect market to tap.

Commenting on the move, Vibhor Sahare, CEO, and Co-founder at Gaadi mentioned, “It gives me immense pleasure to venture into a new market. This step is indicative of our growth and we are confident that the stores in Bengaluru will witness incredible success and encourage expansion to other cities. Bengaluru has the ideal combination of perfect target audience and market opportunity for us and we expect great customer response from the city”.

Collaborative Design and Advanced Construction Mgt Results in Significant Savings on Large-Scale Expressway Project

The CNY 23.6 billion Lipu-Yulin Expressway will run through Guilin, Guigang, and Yulin in Guangxi province and is an important section of G59, China’s national expressway network. Guangxi Transportation Design Group Co., Ltd., is responsible for the overall design and coordination of the project, as well as providing technical support for the construction unit. The large-scale project, which requires complex and comprehensive management, faces many challenges including long distances, large amounts of land requisition and demolition, and citizen-control factors that need to be considered in the planning phase. The main line of the project is 263.1 kilometers long and requires exceptional communication and coordination among teams, multiple disciplines, and public entities.

The expressway design includes several technically complex bridges, such as the Xiangsizhou Bridge, with a span of 450 meters and the largest-span, cable-stayed bridge in Guangxi province, and the Pingnansan Bridge, the largest span-arch bridge in the world under construction, with a span of 575 meters. The expressway also includes super-long tunnels, such as the Wenwei Tunnel, which runs 4,705 meters and is located in mountainous regions with rough terrain and poor geological conditions.

The BIM design team was required to determine how to build a full-factor scenario project model quickly and optimize the route plan. The team depended on Bentley software to enable the design, collaboration, and management across all teams while meeting contractual-scheduled requirements. Project goals include saving design time by 20 percent, limiting deviation between target cost and actual cost to 2 percent, and achieving a profit margin of 5 percent.

The BIM team used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in combination with ContextCapture to create large-scale, reality meshes for the project. The models were used to perform 3D analysis to ensure the safety clearance of equipment and structures and conduct site planning and optimize construction site space utilization to reach 95 percent optimization. Using OpenRoads, the team created 3D models for planning construction sites and temporary sites, arranging service areas, and selecting spoil ground to avoid wasting land resources, which saved land use by 5 percent and avoided 4,100 square meters of building demolition.

MicroStation was used to perform 3D parametric modeling, with ProStructures used to accurately model the steel structures; these applications identified problems and reduced design errors design rework to save 15 working days. OpenRoads and OpenBridge were used to perform 3D design of roads, bridges, and tunnels to quickly and accurately locate the structures, perform parametric modeling, and improve design efficiency by more than 200 percent. BIM 5D construction management was achieved using the project’s electronic sandbox system based on MicroStation to manage 3D content while combining the data with a web GIS to provide information browsing and sharing. ProjectWise was used to provide collaborative design across all parties and professions and reduced communication costs by CNY 400,000.

Combining Bentley technology with BIM methodologies, the design team was able to achieve economic savings as well as reduce staff input of design and construction management by 10 percent, which reduced resource hours by 30 percent and greatly improved the quality of construction, laying the foundation for timely and high-quality project completion.

Changhai Wang, BIM center director, Guangxi Communications Design Group Co., Ltd., said, “Using Bentley’s project team collaboration system leveraging ProjectWise, improved information sharing and communication among team members. Having the most updated information at our fingertips helped us reduce the number of meeting by 15 times and communication and collaboration costs by more than CNY 400,000.”

First-Ever Survey on ‘What India Wants’: Shine.com Appraisal 2019

Shine.com, India’s 2nd largest job portal, recently conducted a first-of-its-kind appraisal survey focusing on the expectations of employees instead of a top-down HR or company led perspective. The survey was conducted across working professionals from various industries including IT, Banking and Finance, Industrial products, education/training, FMCG etc.

In a comparison between expectations among employees in metro cities, the leading job search platform found some interesting insights. It was revealed that professionals working in cities such as Mumbai, Pune and Chennai are looking for higher pay hikes, above 20% as compared to their counterparts in other metros like Delhi-NCR and Bangalore, wherein people expect lower hikes in salaries – between 0-10 percent. The Survey found that in the Financial Capital – Mumbai almost 37% of people are expecting increment above 20%, while in Pune and Chennai, the number is 36% and 38% respectively. Bangalore, which is referred to as the Silicon Valley of India, observed that 21% of people expecting appraisals in the range of up to 10% hike, while the country’s capital – Delhi NCR saw the trend of 20% of people expecting increments on the lower side.

Appraisal sentiment in Bangalore: High competition; low expectation

To get a holistic view of the overall employee sentiment in terms of salary hikes, Shine.com also mapped the lowest expectations across sectors and cities. Bangalore emerged as one of the least demanding cities in terms of pay hikes, as one-fifth of all respondents in the city mentioned that they would be satisfied with up to 10% increment. Sectors including BFSI, IT and BPOs, that already offer high packages to employees are the ones driving these low expectations. As there is an abundance of talent in the city, especially in the IT and e-commerce sectors, it is no surprise that professionals are expecting lower appraisals.

Surprisingly, although Bangalore has been India’s IT hub for years, its e-commerce sector is expecting much lower appraisals as compared to Delhi. While over 46%  of e-commerce sector employees in Bangalore are only expecting an average growth of 11-15%, Delhi NCR (Gurgaon) seems to be emerging as a new hub for E-commerce as appraisal sentiment is high with over 1/3rd professionals expecting a bumper hike of over 20%.

Auto and Education bolster appraisal sentiment in Mumbai and Pune

Shine.com further revealed interesting developments in Mumbai and Pune where employees in Education/Training and the Automobile sector are expecting hikes on the higher side. While a whopping 62% of employees in Mumbai are looking for over 20% appraisal in the Education/Training sector, around 56% in Auto are eyeing the same. Further, 48% of employees in the Auto sector and 38% in the Education/Training sector are looking for more than 20% hike in Pune. These two cities, which are witnessing robust growth across most sectors have collectively portrayed the highest appraisal sentiment in the country.

Sector-wise analysis: BFSI and BPO/KPO/ITES expectations witness an uptick

A sector-wise analysis of appraisal expectations revealed that the highest appraisal sentiment is being carried by professionals the BFSI and BPO/KPO/ITES sectors with over 35% of employees in these sectors expecting more than 20% increment. With these sectors witnessing robust growth on the back of the tech advancement and integration, such high expectations come as no surprise.

Speaking on the survey, Zairus Master, CEO, Shine.com said, “It is interesting to note the variance in employee expectations across different metro cities and across sectors. While employee sentiments are high across most sectors, it is a given that not all organizations will be able to meet these expectations. At Shine.com, we are gearing up for an increase in active job seekers on the portal post the appraisal season. As always, we will strive to match them with the perfect job according to their skills and expectations and also offer a chance to upskill and enable long term career growth for them through our Shine Learning platform.

The respondents of the survey were majorly located in leading metro cities including Mumbai (19.49%), Delhi/NCR (20.89%), Bangalore (20.08%), Hyderabad (16.43%), Pune (9.34%) and Chennai (11.64%). The aforementioned findings call for organizations to invest an increased amount of funds towards their human resources in order to retain top talent over the years to come.

The Food Ordering Habits of Emerging India: Zomato Annual Report

India’s favourite food app, Zomato, recently published its Annual Report FY19 highlighting its performance over the last year and its ambitions to craft a future where everyone has easy access to fresh, clean and affordable food outside the home. One of the key drivers of this future is its food delivery business which grew from 15 cities to 213 cities in India within a year. Now that tier II, III and even tier V cities are ordering food online, what’s interesting to notice are the unique food ordering habits across India.

Here are some interesting nibbles on user behaviour from the emerging regions of India-Map

Highlights:

·         A Zomato delivery roved across the Brahmaputra River on a boat, in the city of Guwahati, to deliver Chicken Hakka Noodles. It took around 1.5 hours in total to make the delivery
·         70% of Zomato’s regular users in Kolhapur had never tried food delivery in their life (even over a phone call), and Zomato was the first food delivery experience of their lives
·         Tuni, a small town in Andhra Pradesh is the smallest emerging city in food delivery with the highest number of cashless payments
·         Abohar in Punjab was the first city to cross 1,000 orders on the day of launch and has been clocking 2,000 orders a day since then
·         An order worth a whopping ₹1,84,760 was delivered in 415 boxes in Jaipur, and another massive food order was placed by a user in Lucknow worth ₹16,800.
·         Indore requests more midnight meals than Mumbai
·         Kota is the largest emerging city in food delivery
·         Bhagalpur and Gaya have more delivery partners delivering food on cycles than on bikes.
·         Vijayawada is most likely to get breakfast than any other city

Something interesting brewing in Hyderabad (it is too interesting to miss!)

Over 100 Zomato delivery partners waiting to pick up their assignments at the Bawarchi restaurant in Hyderabad. Bawarchi typically receives ~2,000 orders a day from Zomato.

Zomato currently lists over 1 lakh restaurants in India and has a last mile delivery fleet of 180,000 partners. Globally, the food tech giant is present in over 10,000 cities with over 1.4 million active restaurants on the platform.

Making Creativity Affordable & Accessible: Itsy Bitsy Launches 10-Day Summer Mega Sale

Celebrating the 2019 summer in a different way, India’s largest arts, crafts and hobby megastore Itsy Bitsy is launching Summer Mega Sale on its online e-retail platform www.itsybitsy.in from April 3 to April 14, 2019.

The most affordable and accessible Summer Mega Sale will be e-retailing more than 10,000 products with a discount ranging from 50% to 80% on art supplies, general and kids' craft, paper crafting, mixed media, soap making, candle making, needle craft and a whole lot more.

What’s in it for you

To keep kids creatively engaged for hours during summer, the sale will have a huge variety of art supplies, chalk paints and acrylic paints at 10% off.
There is an offer up to 20% on scrapbooking and card making materials and up to 50% off on Itsy Bitsy’s home brand, Little Birdie’s handmade flowers and embellishments.

Honda Puts India First Launches Social Activism Movement - #ActivIndia

India’s most trusted two-wheeler brand, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Pvt. Ltd, today announced its biggest social activism movement #ActivIndia.

Honda is spearheading the mission to create meaningful difference in society fuelled by citizen partnership. #ActivIndia ignites every Indian to exercise their most important form of self-expression - their right to vote.

With lack of transportation often being a hurdle in the world’s biggest democratic process, Honda proposes a fresh solution. Honda is asking every two-wheeler rider to pledge that #KoiSeatNaJayeKhali (no seat should go empty). Ensure that your pillion seat doesn’t go empty when you ride to vote. Ride with your friend, relative, neighbour etc. on pillion & ensure every two-wheeler rides two votes to the polling booth!

Commenting on Honda’s biggest social initiative, Mr. Yadvinder Singh Guleria, Senior Vice President, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Pvt. Ltd. said “As a responsible corporate, Honda has always looked beyond business to contribute in empowering India, be it through our various CSR initiatives or even road safety commitment. After gaining the trust of India, Honda is now sparking positive social change and striving to evolve India into #ActivIndia. Together let’s make each citizen socially aware, more responsible and drive the change. Just give a missed call on 9870500111 and support the #ActivIndia movement by taking a pledge to vote.”

Starting 6th April 2019, the first phase of #ActivIndia campaign triggers ‘duty to vote’ as the main action for voters. The movement will further deepen public awareness through campaigns across all 6000 Honda network touchpoints, workplace locations supported by marketing communications across all mediums.

#ActivIndia - Proactive Citizens make a Progressive Nation

·         Pledge to vote: Visit www.hondaactivindia.com and join the #ActivIndia movement.

·         Set SMS reminder: Select your polling date on the website and get reminded a day before.

·         Join the movement through missed call: Just give a missed call on 9870500111 and support the #ActivIndia movement by taking a pledge to vote

·         Frame your pledge: Show the world your customized pledge frame and spread awareness.

·         Spread the cause: Upload your pledge certificate on social media and ask your friends and family to take the pledge too!

·          Every vote counts: Ensure two votes are cast for every two-wheeler. Ride to the polling booth with a pillion.

SunTec Confluence Dubai Highlights Critical Need for elevating Customer Experience Through Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation is gaining priority for organizations across the globe, the main drivers being the opportunities it presents and the competitive pressure to stay ahead of the digital curve. Banks and other organizations need to go beyond offering customers a product or a service and own the experience instead. This was the highlight of Trivandrum Technopark-based SunTec’s event - ‘SunTec Confluence’, held in Dubai.

SunTec, the leader in relationship-based pricing and customer experience orchestration, hosted its flagship event, ‘SunTec Confluence’. The theme for this year’s Confluence was “Digital at the Core”, an essential strategy in today’s world, as leading organizations seek to digitally transform, modernize their legacy systems and build a new core that is intelligent, immersive, integrated and invisible – one that can help in creating highly personalized customer experiences.The event was held in Palazzo Versace Dubai, one of the world’s only two Versace owned hotels, near the scenic Dubai Creek and now the world’s topmost digital city. 

The event highlight was the keynote address by Brett King, highly acclaimed influencer in financial services, award-winning speaker, co-founder and CEO of Moven. As a futurist, he visualized how four major trends - Artificial Intelligence, Voice based Artificial Intelligence, Smart Glasses and Machine Learning – are changing the ecosystem dynamics and how these will need to be embedded in customer experience journeys across industries like banking, telecom and retail.

“Access to credit is not the same as needing a credit card”, Brett explained, “It’s about creating an all new Credit experience, where banks can predict and assist your daily life credit requirements without a credit card and how open banking can tie all these data together for the banks”.

Nanda Kumar, CEO of SunTec, talked about the ever-pervasive effects of Industry 4.0. He stressed upon the need for organizations to understand and embrace the ‘basic human-needs’ driven approach if they want to succeed in today’s digital world.  Jost Hopperman, Vice President Forrester Research was another prominent keynote speaker

The key takeaway from the event was the growing need for organizations to focus on the ‘Customer Experience’part of their Digital Transformation programs. Replacing the core is not a viable option for most banks and this is a big hurdle for modernization projects – but not anymore. The SunTec product session demonstrated how banks can adopt a simple approach of Hollowing the core and separating the customer engagement layer to leap-frog the customer experience ladder.This simple yet highly effective strategy enables banks of all types, to exponentially increase their customer experience orchestration capabilities.

Amit Dua, President, SunTec, said, “Via Confluence, our goal is to provide a meaningful platform for industry thought leaders to come together and deliberate upon the state of Digital Transformation. The response has been extremely positive with generous appreciation for the high-quality content. We are delighted to have delivered to expectations of our clients and partner eco-system in helping shape the Digital Transformation roadmap for the industry”.

SunTec has been a trusted provider of services to various banks and other enterprises for years. Keeping the event in Dubai highlights SunTec’s growing presence and focus in Middle East, with most leading banks in the region preferring to work with SunTec in meeting VAT regulations as well as moving further in their legacy transformation journey by creating a truly Digital Core.