Jaguar I-Pace Wins Unprecedented Treble at 2019 World Car Awards

The all-electric Jaguar I-PACE has completed an historic treble at the 2019 World Car Awards. Not only has it won the coveted 2019 World Car of the Year and World Car Design of the Year titles – equalling the success of the F-PACE in 2017 – it has also been named World Green Car.

I-PACE is the first model ever to win three World Car titles in the 15-year history of the awards.

This latest win for the I-PACE, awarded at the New York International Auto Show by a panel of 86 motoring journalists from 24 countries, comes just weeks after it claimed the European Car of Year title, and affirms its status as the most desirable premium electric vehicle (EV) in the world.

Prof. Dr. Ralf Speth, Chief Executive Officer, Jaguar Land Rover, said: “It is an honour that the Jaguar I-PACE has received these three accolades from the prestigious World Car jurors.

“We started with an ideal, to move towards our Destination Zero vision; zero emissions, zero accidents and zero congestion. I-PACE is our first step to achieving this, and it was conceived when EVs were little more than a niche choice.

“So we started from a clean sheet of paper to create a new benchmark - the world's best premium electric vehicle, and a true Jaguar driver's car.

“For I-PACE to be awarded 2019 World Car of the Year, World Car Design of the Year and World Green Car gives our first all-electric vehicle the ultimate recognition it deserves. I would like to thank the team who have created I-PACE for their passion in making it so outstanding.”

Designed and developed in the UK, I-PACE is attracting new customers to the Jaguar brand, for many of whom it will also be their first EV – to date, over 11,000 customers in more than 60 countries worldwide have taken delivery. Its combination of sports car performance, zero emissions, exceptional refinement and true SUV practicality make I-PACE the stand-out choice in its segment.

Ian Callum, Jaguar Director of Design, who was in New York to accept the awards, said: “Designing Jaguar cars is probably the best job in the world, and I can honestly say that no other project I’ve worked on has been as rewarding as I-PACE. Electric vehicles offer designers unprecedented freedom to rethink the proportions, the profile and the packaging, and it’s an opportunity that my team has exploited in full. Winning the 2019 World Car Design of the Year award, as well as World Car of the Year and World Green Car, is true recognition for their achievements.”

The I-PACE’s dramatic, cab-forward profile, short overhangs and taut, muscular haunches give it a sense of drama which set it apart from other SUVs. The spacious interior – enabled by the bespoke electric vehicle architecture – is finished with beautiful premium details and exacting Jaguar craftsmanship.

I-PACE has a state-of-the-art 90kWh lithium-ion battery and delivers a range of up to 292 miles (WLTP cycle). It’s capable of charging from 0-80% in just 40 minutes (100kW DC), or takes just over ten hours to achieve the same state of charge when using a domestic wallbox (7kW AC) - ideal for overnight home-charging.
A suite of smart, range-optimising technologies also include a battery pre-conditioning system: when plugged in the I-PACE will automatically raise (or lower) the temperature of its battery to maximise range ahead of driving away.
The I-PACE has also earned a five-star Euro NCAP safety rating. The body structure provides high levels of occupant protection, and is complemented by technologies designed to protect other road users and pedestrians, including a deployable bonnet and autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection.

The I-PACE has received 62 awards since it was revealed little more than a year ago, including European Car of the Year, German, Norwegian and UK Car of the Year, BBC TopGear magazine EV of the Year, China Green Car of the Year, and Autobest’s ECOBEST Award.

Reliance Net Up 9.8% to Rs 10,362 Cr in Q4; Jio Net Jumps 65% Y-o-Y to Rs 840 Crore

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries on Thursday posted the highest quarterly net profit by any Indian private sector firm with a 9.8% rise in earnings in the period ended March 31 after robust business in retail and telecom sectors offset a dip in oil refinery margins.

The oil-to-telecom conglomerate reported a 9.8% rise in its consolidated net profit at Rs 10,362 crore, or Rs 17.5 per share, in the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2019, as compared with Rs 9,438 crore, or Rs 15.9 a share, in the same period of the previous financial year, the company said in a statement.

This is the highest quarterly profit by any Indian private sector company. State-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) holds the distinction of posting the highest ever quarterly profit by any Indian firm when it had reported a net profit of Rs 14,512.81 crore in January-March 2013 after it received the full-year fuel subsidy in just one quarter.

Reliance saw its revenue jump by 19.4% to Rs 154,110 crore in January-March 2019, even though they were 9.7% lower than Rs 170,709 crore revenue in the third quarter of the fiscal.

The company opened more retail stores and added 26.6 million new subscribers to its Jio mobile phone service that helped increase the profitability of the venture as its traditional oil refining business witnessed margin pressures on fluctuating international oil prices.

In full year 2018-19, the company posted a record Rs 39,588 crore net profit on a revenue of Rs 622,809 crore.

“During FY 2018-19, we achieved several milestones and made significant strides in building Reliance of the future. Reliance Retail crossed Rs 100,000 crore revenue milestone, Jio now serves over 300 million consumers and our petrochemicals business delivered its highest ever earnings,” Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani said.

The record profit for the year came in a period of heightened volatility in the energy markets, he said, adding pre-tax profit has more than doubled in the last five years to Rs 92,656 crore.

“Focus on service and customer satisfaction led to higher numbers of subscribers and footfalls across our consumer businesses, driving robust revenue growth. Our endeavour is to create better experiences for our customers, leading to a better-shared future,” he added.

Its retail business, which comprises 10,415 stores with 510 being added in Q4, saw pre-tax business profit jump 77.1% to record Rs 1,923 crore.

“Reliance Retail is the only Indian retailer to be in the top 100 global retailers list and the 6th fastest growing retailer globally as per Deloitte’s Global Powers of Retailing 2019,” the statement said.

Jio continous to excel

Reliance Jio, the group’s telecom arm, posted a standalone net profit of Rs 840 crore, which was 65% more than the previous year, as subscriber base swelled to 306.7 million from 280.1 million at the end of the December quarter.

Earning per subscriber, however, declined to Rs 126.2 a month from Rs 130 in the previous quarter.

The petrochemical business saw pre-tax profits jump by 24% to Rs 7,975 crore on higher prices.

The operator of the world’s largest oil refining complex saw pre-tax earnings from the business decline for the fourth quarter in a row. Pre-tax earnings fell 25.5% to Rs 4,176 crore as margins dipped.

It earned $8.2 on turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel as compared to a gross refining margin (GRM) of $11 per barrel in January-March 2018.

G7 CR Tech Hosts a 2- Day Free Workshop on Architecture and Design on PowerBI with Microsoft Azure Analysis Services

G7 CR Technologies, a leading global information technology, consulting and cloud services company, has organized a full 2-day free workshop on Architecture and Design on PowerBI with Microsoft Azure Analysis services on 26th & 27th April 2019 at G7 CR office, Bangalore.

This Two-day instructor-led Workshop provides delegates a clear and comprehensive explanation of the concepts and best techniques for deploying OLAP (Online analytical processing). The workshop will offer IT professionals a thorough coverage of logical issues such as Design for Data Marts, dimensional hierarchies, as well as physical issues of data storage, access, and calculation. In addition, the session will provide many practical methods and formulae, along with a quick preview of Predictive analysis and Data Mining.

The course consists of 3 modules:

Module 1: Introduction

The BI Architecture
An Architectural Framework and Approach to BI Implementation
Data Marts, Data Warehouse and OLAP
The Need for Data Modeling
Dimensional Data Modeling
Business Cases and Data Modelling Techniques.
Thinking Clearly in N Dimensions
Module 2: The Core of BI and OLAP Solutions

The OLAP Flavors and it’s Pro’s and Con’s
It’s a Jungle Out There – vendors and Products
The Core of Multidimensional Technology
The Internal Structure of a Dimension
Hypercubes or Semantic Spaces
Analytic Visualization
Physical Design of Applications
Practical Steps for Designing and Implementing BI Systems
Product Language Comparisons

Module 3: Success Guidelines and Best Practices

Issues and Resolution Business and Technical
Multidimensional Guidelines
Toward a Theoretically Grounded Model for BI and Its Connection to the Relational
Model and Canonical Logic
Codd's 18 Features
Best Practices For one of the leading SSAS Products

This course will be beneficial for Designers, Managers, and Owners of a BI System who need to get about the business of Analyzing their Information from the heaps of data. And it will be an advantage for those who are already familiar with working knowledge of SQL, experience with database design, understand Data Warehousing Concepts.

Emirates Airlines Rolls Out Special Easter Menus from April 19-23

Emirates is introducing seasonal treats to celebrate Easter on board and in select airport lounges worldwide. The Easter menu is available to customers in all cabin classes from 19 to 23 April when travelling from Dubai to destinations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Ghana and the Philippines.

Emirates will also observe Orthodox Easter with special menus for customers travelling on flights from Dubai to Russia and Greece on 28 April.

On board, customers can look forward to Easter buns handmade using Emirates’ signature recipe with spiced dough and orange peel, sultanas and currants; and children will be delighted with desserts featuring the Easter bunny. Those flying in premium classes will be able to choose from Easter-inspired desserts. First Class customers can also look forward to an Easter edition of the Lakrids “Egg” Dulce de Leche Liquorice Balls in their personal goodie baskets. This seasonal offering is in addition to the regionally-inspired cuisine served on all Emirates flights.

From 21 – 22 April, all seven Emirates lounges at Dubai International Airport and most of the airline’s dedicated Emirates lounges around the world will also introduce Easter specials. In Dubai, customers can savour traditional Easter buns, Simnel cupcake, carrot cake and Banoffee desserts. For the entire week, Coffee Planet will serve festive drinks such as Marshmallow Mocha and White Chocolate Breve.

At Emirates lounges in other international airports, frequent flyers and those travelling in Emirates First and Business Class can enjoy Easter menus with different local highlights such as Roman lamb chops served with artichokes and mint in the Emirates Rome lounge, Traditional South African Pickled Fish in the Emirates lounges in Cape Town and Johannesburg, Easter bread in the Emirates Kuala Lumpur lounge and Easter leg of lamb in the US lounges.

Customers travelling during the Easter break can enjoy over 4,000 channels of on-demand entertainment on ice, including over 1000 movies from around the world. New family-friendly movies include Dumplin’, Christopher Robin, Freaky Friday, The House with a Clock in its Walls and Mary Poppins Returns. With such a broad array of entertainment on offer, customers can create their own playlists of music, movies and TV shows on the Emirates app ahead of their flight and sync it to their seats once on board to maximise their enjoyment time.

The Easter celebrations on board and on the ground are part of Emirates’ commitment to enhance the customer experience with unique and seasonal offerings.

Tenable Announces Cloud-Based General Availability of Predictive Prioritization in Tenable.io

Tenable, Inc., the Cyber Exposure company, has announced Predictive Prioritization is now generally available within Tenable.io - its cloud-based vulnerability management platform and a core component of the Tenable Cyber Exposure platform. Predictive Prioritization is a ground-breaking innovation for solving the vulnerability prioritization problem, enabling organizations to dramatically improve their remediation efforts by focusing on the 3 percent of vulnerabilities that are most likely to be exploited.

Attempting to prioritize vulnerabilities with CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) alone presents significant limitations. According to the National Vulnerability Database, there were 16,500 new vulnerabilities disclosed in 2018 alone, but only a small subset had a public exploit available and even fewer were actually leveraged by attackers. However, the majority of vulnerabilities scored through CVSS are rated 'high' or 'critical.' This creates an overload of high-priority vulnerabilities and one of the most difficult challenges organizations face today.

Predictive Prioritization addresses this industry-wide problem by re-prioritizing vulnerabilities based on the probability they willbe leveraged in an attack. Tenable.io now automatically displays a Vulnerability Priority Rating (VPR) that indicates the remediation priority of each flaw, along with VPR Key Drivers, which provide enhanced context into how scores are calculated. Both features are dynamic and change with the threat landscape, arming security teams with actionable insight into their true level of business risk.

"The release of Predictive Prioritization across Tenable's Cyber Exposure platform is the latest phase of our mission to redefine vulnerability management for the digital era. We're helping customers solve one of the most difficult challenges in the industry today," said Renaud Deraison, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Tenable. "Predictive Prioritization flips the advantage back to cyber defenders by telling them where they're exposed, to what extent and which vulnerabilities to focus on first. These are all critical components of an effective Cyber Exposure strategy."

This latest release follows the general availability of Predictive Prioritization in Tenable.sc (formerly SecurityCenter), making Tenable's Cyber Exposure platform the only one to provide predictive capabilities for on-premises and cloud deployments.

Qonnections Global Conference in Dallas Brings the Qlik World Together

Qlik has announced that the company is expecting a record number of attendees to be on hand for Qonnections 2019, May 13-16 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Dallas, TX. The conference brings together Qlik customers, partners, influencers and data enthusiasts to help users learn and better capitalize on how to use data to innovate and transform their organizations.

What:

Qonnections 2019 focuses on providing customers and partners with the knowledge and best practices they need to lead with data, through Qlik’s end-to-end platform that blends data management and analytics to address the entire data supply chain. CEO Mike Capone will share Qlik’s strategic vision and roadmap, showcasing how Qlik is helping customers tackle their most difficult data challenges while driving the 3rd generation of BI and analytics.

Additional keynote presentations will showcase how Qlik customers are transforming with a holistic and unified, strategic approach to data and analytics through Qlik. These customers are empowering users to transform the whole organization, going from raw data to democratized insights with Qlik. Special focus will be given to how various unique aspects of Qlik’s portfolio are enabling these transformations, including: multi-cloud, self-service for data, how big data is just data, accelerating insights through augmented intelligence, and the ability to capture insights from any part of the organization. Qlik Sense®, QlikView® and Qlik Data Catalyst® trainings and certification exams will also be offered.

Lindsey Vonn, Olympic gold medalist, world-record World Cup ski winner, author and LV Foundation founder will be giving a fireside chat discussing how passion helped her overcome challenges and shaped her approach to leadership.

Data Literacy experts Alan Schwarz, Ben Jones and others will join Qlik Global Head of Data Literacy Jordan Morrow in a roundtable on the importance of data literacy, how far the movement has come since the launch of the Data Literacy Project and what leading organizations need to do to make sure they correctly empower their workforce with the data skills necessary to lead.

Customer and partner presenters will appear from companies like Genuine Parts, Lenovo, Humana, Nemours and Amerigas. The complete list can be viewed at the following link: https://www.qlikqonnections.com/sessions/2019-sessions/.

The Qonnections Data Discovery Zone will feature more than 35 sponsoring partners and exhibitors that will showcase their value-add solutions and services for Qlik products. Diamond sponsors include Accenture, Cognizant and SDG Group.

“We are honored to be a Diamond Sponsor in the year of our 10th anniversary partnering with Qlik and making it possible for Organizations to Lead with Data,” said Alejandro Martinez, Partner, CEO USA & Canada, SDG Group. “SDG Group is one of the Global Gartner Representative Vendors for Data & Analytics, and we believe in Data as a Transformational Asset (D.A.T.A), and support the whole Data Value Chain from Data Capture to Business Insights. SDG Group will be showcasing how customers can accelerate analytics projects with dedicated solutions and help bring innovative components to Qlik solutions.”

Qlik Hack Challenge. A highly anticipated annual event, this hackathon uncovers the very best app building skills and development talent using Qlik APIs, Qlik Core and code. This year we’re calling on developers to participate in the “There is no Planet B” challenge, where data will be provided by Qlik corporate responsibility partner the United Nations (UN) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Qlik and the UN challenge the community to create a solution to reduce travel-related carbon dioxide emissions. Every hackathon participant will have access to Qlik Branch®, a collaborative developer workspace and community, and support from internal Qlik experts moderating the event.

Qlik Late Night Lunacy. At the Late Night Lunacy event, teams consisting of Qlik Sense and QlikView insight experts will also participate in the “There is no Planet B” challenge. For the first time, these teams will also build their world-changing solutions prior to Qonnections. At the event, teams will be able to improve their applications, ask the experts for advice and then present their solution for reduced travel-related carbon dioxide emissions.

JSA Advises Conneqt Business Solutions and Quess Corp in its Acquisition of Allsec Techn

J.Sagar Associates (JSA) advised Conneqt Business Solutions Limited (Acquirer) along with Quess Corp Limited (PAC) in its acquisition of a controlling stake in Allsec Technologies Limited from Mr. Ramamoorthy Jagadish and Mr. Adiseshan Saravanan (Promoters) and First Carlyle Ventures Mauritius (Carlyle).

The transaction is valued at approximately Rs. 271 crores and will be followed by an open offer for an additional 26 pc stake in Allsec.

Allsec is an Indian company with subsidiaries in USA and Philippines which provides business process solutions across various industry verticals.

The Acquirer will buy majority of the Promoters shares and Carlyle's shares followed by a mandatory open offer for 26 per cent shares.

JSA team comprised Partners – Vikram Raghani, Raj Ramachandran and Anand Lakra; Principal Associate – Rakki K; Senior Associates – Sindhu Nayak and Abhilash Chandran, Associates - Ami Shah and Khamir Kamdar.