Fleetwood, Hull and Gallacher to Take on the Hero Challenge in Liverpool

Tommy Fleetwood, the host of the Betfred British Masters, will be joined by Charley Hull and Stephen Gallacher for an action-packed evening of golf at Liverpool Waters’ Princes Dock on Tuesday May 7 as the innovative Hero Challenge returns for the first edition of the 2019 season.

Taking place during the week of the Betfred British Masters at Hillside Golf Club in Southport, the fast and fun event will bring golf into the heart of Liverpool’s historic waterfront, and fans can secure FREE tickets at LostInTV.com

Hull becomes the first female player to participate in the Hero Challenge, as the Ladies European Tour and LPGA star joins Gallacher, who won his fourth European Tour event last month at the Hero Indian Open, to take on 2017 Race to Dubai Champion and local favourite Fleetwood.

Three more players will complete the line-up as they go head to head in the exciting shoot out event in Princes Dock, located on Liverpool’s incredible World Heritage Site waterfront.

Fleetwood is following in the footsteps of his fellow countrymen Ian Poulter, Luke Donald, Lee Westwood and Justin Rose when he hosts the Betfred British Masters in his native Merseyside. The man who contributed four points to Europe’s remarkable 17½ - 10½ Ryder Cup triumph at Le Golf National last September, will make his second Hero Challenge appearance when he tees it up in Liverpool.

He said: “It’s such an honour to host the Betfred British Masters in my home town, and I’m excited to start off the week in style by bringing golf right into the heart of Liverpool with the Hero Challenge.

“It’s always a really fun night, and I’m sure Charley and Stephen will be just as keen to win as I am, so there should be plenty of entertainment for the fans in Princes Dock.”

Hull, who has three professional victories worldwide and is a three-time Solheim Cup player, broke new ground when she and Georgia Hall formed the first England Women team to play on the European Tour in last season’s GolfSixes. She is looking forward to playing in another innovative golf event.

She said: “I think the Hero Challenge is a great idea to help bring golf to new fans. I really enjoyed playing against the men at GolfSixes and it will be a lot of fun to play in another innovative event.

“Teeing off in the centre of a city will definitely be something new for me and I can’t wait to give it a go.”

Scotsman Gallacher birdied three of his last four holes to produce a stunning comeback and win his first European Tour title in five years at the Hero Indian Open in March. Like Fleetwood and Hull, the Scotsman has also represented Europe, playing in The 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles. He’s also a passionate supporter of junior golf, through the Stephen Gallacher Foundation.

He said: “The Hero Challenge seems like a great way of bringing golf to new fans and hopefully getting more young players excited about the game.

“Teeing it up in Princes Dock will definitely be an interesting experience, and I’m looking forward to trying to get my hands on another trophy.”

Hero MotoCorp Ltd - the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles and scooters – has reaffirmed its commitment to innovation on the European Tour by continuing to support the Hero Challenge, which boasts past winners including 2018 Masters Tournament champion Patrick Reed of the United States, Swedish Major Winner Henrik Stenson, and former World Number One Lee Westwood of England.

Owned by regeneration business Peel Land and Property, Liverpool Waters is a £5 billion waterfront development scheme which is transforming the city’s north docks, including development of numerous residential, commercial and leisure facilities across five distinct neighbourhoods. The stunning location takes on hosting duties as the Hero Challenge comes full circle, after a successful debut at the British Masters in 2016.

The Hero Challenge will take place on Tuesday May 7 and will be shown live across the European Tour’s digital platforms. Free tickets to be there in person are available at LostInTV.com

The Betfred British Masters takes place at Hillside Golf Club, part of the glorious stretch of terrain recognised as England’s Golf Coast, from May 9-12, and tickets are available at europeantour.com/tickets

Nutanix Unveils Returnship Programme for Women Seeking to Re-Enter Workplace in India

Enterprise cloud computing leader, Nutanix, has announced the launch of a returnship programme for women, as part of the company’s continued investment in India.

WomEncore, (women encore), will seek to open the door back into the workplace for women whose careers have been interrupted due to family or other reasons by re-skilling and re-equipping them for a continued career in the digital workplace.

The programme will initially target eighty women, comprising two intakes of forty throughout the year. Each four-month training programme will consist of both classroom training and practical workplace experience designed to help them better re-integrate into a digital workforce and open the door to full time employment.

The programme is part of a Nutanix initiative to ensure opportunity and choice for women in STEM. Potential applicants must have a college degree and have been out of the workforce for over 2 years.

Commenting on the initiative, Sankalp Saxena, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Nutanix India, said “Personal sacrifice should not be a barrier to fulfilling dreams and potential. WomEncore is our way of saying thank you to those women who have put family before career and ensuring that we offer a way back for talented individuals as well as a commitment to help re-launch the careers of a select few.”

WomEncore is just one of a series of programmes initiated by Nutanix in India. The enterprise leader also has a long-standing successful internship programme for its engineering and product support teams.

The initial WomEncore programme will commence on April 22nd, 2019.  Interested applicants can find full details of eligibility online via the WomEncore site at www.WomEncore.in

Emirates to Expand Reach to Six Indian Cities with SpiceJet Codeshare Partnership

Emirates and SpiceJet have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enter into a reciprocal codeshare agreement, which is set to open new routes and destinations for passengers travelling between India and popular destinations across Africa, America, Europe and the Middle East.

Subject to necessary government approvals, the partnership will enable Emirates’ passengers to enjoy seamless connectivity on flights to India, leveraging SpiceJet’s strong domestic presence and adding six new destinations: Amritsar, Jaipur, Pune, Mangalore, Madurai and Calicut - to the nine existing cities in India served by Emirates. This will bolster Emirates’ already-extensive network adding a total of 67 weekly connections between Emirates’ hub in Dubai to these six fast growing destinations in India. This includes increased domestic connectivity  from Emirates’ nine Indian gateways to points such as Goa, Hubli, Guwahati, Vishakhapatnam and Tuticorin which would allow for a greater variety of travel options between both Emirates and SpiceJet flights.

“Our journey in India has been defined by progressive investment, partnership and growth. We constantly try to improve and provide our customers with greater flexibility and travel choices. This partnership with SpiceJet and the mutual expansion of our network will go a long way in further enhancing the travel experience of our customers in India as well as those heading into India, benefiting travellers and businesses alike,” said Adnan Kazim, Emirates’ Divisional Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning, Revenue Optimization and Aeropolitical affairs.

Passengers travelling from India will have more choice to travel seamlessly with minimum connection times, when flying to destinations in Emirates' Europe network such as London, Paris, Frankfurt, Manchester and Amsterdam. The codeshare agreement will also open up flights for Indian travellers to North and South American destinations such as New York, Washington, Toronto, and Sao Paulo as well as Middle Eastern destinations such as Jeddah, Kuwait and Amman, operated by Emirates.

SpiceJet passengers travelling from Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Amritsar, Jaipur, Pune, Mangalore, Madurai, Kozhikode and 41 other domestic destinations that the airline operates to, will be able to access Emirates’ expansive network across the globe..  Optimized scheduling will allow for minimal transit times between India and these global destinations and travellers on these codeshare routes will be able to book connecting flights using a single reservation.

 “I am delighted to announce that as part of SpiceJet’s international expansion strategy, we have signed a MoU for a codeshare agreement with Emirates. This new partnership should immensely benefit passengers travelling on both airlines. While SpiceJet passengers from across India will be able to enjoy seamless connectivity leveraging Emirates vast network across Europe, Africa, America and the Middle East those travelling to India on Emirates will be able to travel to 51 destinations across our domestic network,” said Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, SpiceJet.

SpiceJet is India’s second-largest airline in terms of domestic market share.  Founded in 2005, it now serves 51 cities in India and nine international destinations.

If Data is Oil, Business Information is is Petrol! Expert Opinion

By Heramb Thuse,
Head Cloud Solutions & Presales
Crayon Software Experts India

Funny title! Isn't it? IT world is always chasing new phrases and new tech jargons, fancy new ideas and new ways to apply new tech concepts. Every technology innovation is better than a previous one, and helps in solving current business problem effectively. Every new cool thing/innovation attracts both - the presenters and recipient. Both of them spend time and resources to understand the entire process before getting into business value, TCO analysis, and transformation journeys etc.

Cloud is the new normal
There was a time when Cloud had been just a buzz word and IT professionals were trying to understand concerns associated with it. There were a lot of security related myths initially, lot of eye brows were raised when enterprises had to move their in premises workloads to Cloud. Cloud as a solution stood tall and proved its value, helped answer questions on security effectively and efficiently. But those days are long gone and today, 'Cloud is the new normal'. Enterprises don't feel abnormal now to put their critical applications, data in cloud. Board room discussions are now revolving around Multi Cloud strategy.

So now what's next?
As advancements kept on happening, the large-scale compute power, ability to crunch peta bytes of data in quick time and development in ability to solve business problems with algorithmic approach brought two new fancy tech terms - Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Today, AI is a hot topic of discussion in boardrooms, as professionals seek to improve profitability, monetise value of data, and capture new market share. Every enterprise would wish to use these technologies to gain competitive edge, better their products and services and quickest possible go to market decisions.

While everyone is trying to understanding ML and AI, we see enterprises still struggling to see business value out of these two. Even people confuse and interchangeably use ML, AI, data analysis terminologies. While decision makers are going through workshops, presentations and brain storming sessions, there is a large chunk of enterprises not even aware the size of disintegrated data islands exist in their own enterprises. This heap of data they are generating, maintaining and spending money for is even not used for analytics to take any decisions.

Many times enterprises are unable to derive the value of data due to lack of knowledge, lack of information and wrong notions of how it can work. Many times , it is even considered not possible that two dispersed, isolated, inherently different data sources like databases, excels, op premise and in cloud etc., can talk to each other and produce information.

Extracting Business Information from Raw Data
There are many solutions that can help convert 'Oil' (Raw Data) into meaningful and more valuable 'Petrol' (Business Information). CXO's will see lots of value in this petrol and would love to see this Crude oil producing Petrol.

Enterprises can go for business analysis / data visualisation tools or solutions like Microsoft Power BI, AWS Quick sight or Tablue, etc. Interestingly, most of these tools follow 'pay-per-usage' model and can be subscribed on a monthly basis. So, enterprises need not to invest in them perpetually before they even see the value in them. Application of these tools / solutions can not only bring value out of Data but an entire new way of looking at collaborative effort to achieve more in less. Suddenly Data starts speaking, for example, Data of Financial system and applications start adding value to CRM, CRM Data adds value to purchase department, two diverse entities and departments start new ways and means to work in tighter processes. Adds a lot of value to decision makers to see inter related, inter dependent departments with their own and isolated data ponds producing meaningful information on an integrated, orchestrated, intuitive platform for effective live decision making.

It is very interesting journey to see the hidden value of data. These tools help in finding new meaning to data and help decision makers take an informed decision. The ability to intuitively analyse data helps to comprehend it quickly. Various statistical models, which otherwise look impossible to use for different and huge volume of data, suddenly become easy to use and experiment with. These tools bring lots of value and use cases, especially when they collaborate and can help in predictive analysis for business, which any decision make would love to have.

By no means the Data visualisation tools are alternatives to MI / AL, but surely can bring a lot of value and direction to decision makers to decide the priorities, business models and areas of business focus where ML/ AI can be used for business advantages more effectively.

So in a nutshell, even before one thinks about ML and AI, one to ask ourselves and other business stakeholders, have we made an attempt to convert our Oil (Data) into Information (Petrol).

Sanjay Manohar Appointed Managing Director of McAfee India

McAfee, the device-to-cloud cybersecurity company, announced the appointment of Sanjay Manohar as managing director, India. He will be responsible for building and leading teams to drive product revenues, increase adoption of cloud-based products and strengthen customer relationships. He will report directly to Craig Nielsen, vice president, APAC, McAfee.

Sanjay brings over 25 years of proven industry experience spanning leadership roles across the APAC region. His career has been marked by continuous growth and recognition in marketing, sales and channel strategy. His core strengths include go-to-market strategy and execution, supplemented by his expertise in the areas of SaaS, enterprise software and networking.

Commenting on Sanjay’s appointment, Craig Nielsen said, “Sanjay will work closely with our leadership team to further accelerate our growth in India, which is a strategic market for McAfee globally. He joins us at a time when enterprises are realizing the significance of cybersecurity and making it a part of their boardroom discussions. His extensive knowledge of the industry and the region will help our customers find the best solutions for optimizing their security infrastructure, reducing risk and increasing operational efficiencies.”

“There is an increasing need today for robust cybersecurity protection for both enterprises and individuals with the fast-evolving threat landscape. I look forward to helping customers address this challenge and I’m pleased to join McAfee which remains committed to making the connected world more secure while being a trusted partner for all our stakeholders across the region,” said Sanjay Manohar.

Prior to McAfee, Sanjay held roles as regional vice president - Asia Pacific Japan, Carrier Business at Akamai Technologies, and MD of the Greater China region spearheading a cross-functional team of over 100 employees across 5 offices. Sanjay has been associated with leading MNCs when the industry was at the cusp of cloud offerings for businesses.

India's Online Retail Market Likely to Cross $170 Billion by 2030: Jefferies Report

Online retail in the country that is growing at a faster pace, is expected to be $170 billion by FY30, growing at a CAGR of 23 per cent, according to a Jefferies report. Currently, the total online retail in the country is pegged at $18 billion.

The online retail, which is currently around 25 per cent of total organised retail market in India, can potentially increase to around 37 per cent of the total organised retail market during this period, the report said.

Currently, the total online retail in the country is pegged at $18 billion.

Spends per online shoppers, which is estimated at Rs 12,800 is expected to increase to Rs 25,138 by FY30, with consumers shopping online for other segments, beyond electronics and apparel.

It noted that electronics, including mobile phones, has grabbed the market share from physical retailers, largely due to heavy discounting and cash-back online in electronics.

“Apparel and electronics have been present as categories in online retail space quite some time now in India, but online grocery is increasingly witnessing new consumers as companies such as Big Basket and Amazon Pantry are heavily advertising there discounting days, which takes place at the start of every month.

We believe that new customers will continue to enter the online grocery, given low differentiation in grocery and convenience for consumers. However, penetration of online retail in grocery will continue to remain lower,” it said.

Personal care, including make-up, too is gaining its market share online.

Jefferies noted that increase in online penetration has been a function of both discounting and convenience, however, over the medium term, discounting in the system should rationalise and convenience will be the key driver.

However, it observed that product quality remains a key concern for most of the consumers shopping online and there have been lot of instances in the country where consumers have got a counterfeit or a fake product, especially in categories such as perfumes and cosmetics.

“Quality remains a key issue for consumers while shopping online. Though online retailers are taking steps to address this issue, it will take some time and hence some consumers will continue to stay away from online shopping, especially for big-ticket, branded items.

The adoption of online retail should continue at a fast pace, as convenience seems even more important. Apart from quality, breach of data and data security are also key issues hampering adoption of online retailing,” it added.

Jet Airlines Assures Value of JPMiles Will Remain Secure and Intact

We would like to assure our members that the value of their JPMiles are secure and remain intact. With our air reward offering, “Select Flights”, members have the choice to redeem their JPMiles to fly free across more airlines, any destinations, any flights and any seats in India and globally, starting with the same JPMiles requirement as before which was applicable on Jet Airways and its partner airlines.

As always, our members can also continue to use their JPMiles on hotel stays, fuel & 2500+ merchandise options on the JetPrivilege Reward Store. We consider it our foremost responsibility to safeguard the faith our members have placed in us and remain steadfast in protecting and creating more value for our members through JPMiles. We are constantly expanding our vast partner network to offer diverse JPMiles earning opportunities across 10+ categories to our members.

Jet Privilege Pvt. Ltd. is a separate, independent entity, part of the Etihad Aviation Group formed with the sole purpose to market, develop and grow JetPrivilege – an internationally acclaimed award-winning loyalty and rewards programme.