vivo Unveils First Z Series Smartphone - #FullyLoaded Z1Pro Sold Online from July, 11, 2019

vivo, the global innovative smartphone brand, today launched the all-new vivo Z1Pro in India, under its brand new Z-series portfolio that targets the ‘Generation-Z’ consumers. The #FullyLoaded Z1Pro is vivo’s first offering in the online focused Z series. The vivo Z1Pro will come in three variants – 4GB+64GB, 6GB+64GB and 6GB+128GB and will be available in three attractive color options - Sonic Black, Sonic Blue and Mirror Black. The device will go on sale starting 11th July on Flipkart and vivo India E-store. The three variants are priced at INR 14,990, INR 16,990 and INR 17,990.

The Z1Pro has been designed to offer a perfect integration of performance, speed and mesmerizing design.

The vivo Z1Pro is equipped with the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 712 with AI engine, 32MP In-Display selfie camera, and massive 5,000mAh battery with 18W Fast charging, and AI Triple Rear Camera with a 16MP Primary camera, 8MP Super Wide-Angle camera and 2MP Depth camera.

Consumers will also get an array of attractive offers* on the purchase of the vivo Z1Pro including:

·         INR 750 instant discount on ICICI debit and credit cards on Flipkart
·         Jio benefits worth INR 6,000 on vivo India E-Store

*terms and conditions apply

Expressing delight on the launch of Z series, Mr. Nipun Marya, Director Brand Strategy, vivo India said, “Innovation has been at the core of our India strategy. With the Z1Pro, we’ve put performance at the forefront, ensuring a line of highly advanced products at budget friendly prices for consumers from all walks of life. This device caters especially to the increasing expectations of our Gen-Z consumers who are on a constant look-out for the best offerings and first-in-class innovative features. With the Z1Pro, we are introducing a new breed of smartphones for India’s Generation-Z that are a blend of power-packed performance for a superior smartphone gaming experience and a refreshing design.”

Commenting on this collaboration, Mr. Aditya Soni, Senior Director, Mobiles at Flipkart said, “We are delighted to launch vivo's Z series on Flipkart. At Flipkart, our continuous endeavor has been to provide innovative and high-quality differentiated products, easily accessible to Indian customers at aggressive price points. With the launch of the vivo Z1Pro, we are confident that consumers in India, especially our Gen-Z consumers will be able to enjoy the best-in-class performance, camera technology and a great overall experience."

#FullyLoaded Performance

Equipped with Snapdragon 712 AIE along with 4/6GB RAM & 64/128GB ROM. At the heart of this premium platform is a 64-bit CPU - Qualcomm Kryo 360 with an advanced 10nm design, clock speed of up to 2.3 GHz and Adreno 616 Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) leading to increase in the overall performance by 10%3 and gives you the extreme performance while gaming and multitasking.

#FullyLoaded Viewing Experience

Z1Pro features a 16.59cm (6.53) bigger display, screen ratio improved to 90.77%, 19.5:9 super wide view and FHD+（2340X1080）resolution creates a vivid and life-like viewing experience that makes games and videos more immersive and exciting than ever before. Super Black “hidden” front camera, app interface optimization brings better visual experience.

#FullyLoaded Selfies

For self-portraits, Z1Pro comes with a 32MP In-Display front camera to capture the most delicate facial details and produce more precise results which gives unrivalled clarity. AI Face Beauty enhances your facial features even further with customized solutions, so you can spend less time editing your selfies and enjoy more time looking glamorous on camera.

#FullyLoaded Rear Camera

When you see the world through an AI Triple Rear Camera, creating photographic masterpieces is easier than ever. The Z1Pro features AI Triple Rear camera setup with a 16MP Primary camera, 8MP Super Wide-Angle camera and 2MP Depth camera. From magnificent landscapes to beautiful portraits, these three cameras help you capture your most impressive shots – with the least amount of effort. The camera also offers modes like backlight HDR, portrait bokeh, portrait light effects, AR stickers, slow motion, time-lapse photography, AI Beauty etc. The AI Super-Wide-Angle1 camera expands your view to 120°, so you can capture more landscape, more of your friends, and more impressive pictures.

#FullyLoaded Battery

Z1Pro innovative 3D shape design could cover 5000mAh battery with only 8.85mm thickness. A large, industry-leading 5,000mAh battery keeps Z1Pro going longer, for a more enjoyable gaming and video experience. Now, battery worries are a thing of the past. It also comes with vivo’s exclusive 18W Fast Charging technology to re-juice quicker than ever. Not only that, but the Z1Pro also supports the OTG reverse charging2 function, which is a mobile phone and a charging treasure.

#FullyLoaded Gaming

The new vivo Multi-Turbo with ART++ compiler enhancement technology, provides a breakthrough in mobile phone performance. ART++ compiler enhances Turbo greatly improving the performance of the phone and the response speed of the app. Net Turbo network acceleration, Z1Pro maintains better network status and Center Turbo processor accelerates to ensure the game's CPU and memory resources are smooth. The AI Turbo recognize the usage pattern and enabling common applications to open faster.

The Ultra Game Mode is designed for the ultimate gaming fun. Play e-sports like a pro by using Competition Mode, which allocates system resources that prioritize your game performance. 4D gaming vibration and 3D surrounded sound effect allows a fully immersed like a real game scenario. Gaming countdown will always remind you the exact show time so that you will never miss the chance to become the leader of your game. It is also equipped with a low blue eye protection function to effectively filter blue light.

SAP Labs India Ranked #1 in India’s Best Companies to Work for 2019 by Great Place to Work Institute

SAP SE has announced that SAP Labs India is #1 in the list of India’s Best Companies to Work for 2019. The survey, conducted by the Great Place to Work® Institute, marks the second consecutive year that SAP Labs India has nabbed the top spot by standing out for its inclusive culture that empowers continuous learning. The Great Place to Work® Institute’s annual list is one of the largest and most esteemed study of workplace excellence and people management practices globally. This year’s survey had 900 participating companies across 20 different industries. 

Dilipkumar Khandelwal, Managing Director, SAP Labs India said, “We are thrilled to be ranked #1 by Great Place to Work® for two years in a row. At SAP, we have made considerable investments to create a culture in which innovation, learning and intrepreneurship is encouraged and rewarded.”

Employees of SAP Labs India work in an environment which is non-hierarchical, fluid and flexible. The company has several best-in-class employee initiatives. These include peer-to-peer learning platforms, supporting women in different phases of their career and encouraging employees to consider entrepreneurship. SAP Labs India has also won several awards for its best-in-class diversity programs such as Autism at Work.

Shraddhanjali Rao, Head of Human Resources – SAP, India said: “At SAP we believe that our strength lies in differences, not in similarities. We have created a diverse and inclusive culture which in turn fuels our innovation, creates a greater customer experience helping us drive success for our business and enabling us to succeed in a rapidly changing world.”

SAP Labs India is a strong proponent of Sustainability and Social Responsibility. The key pillars of its corporate social responsibility include ensuring Education and Digital literacy to women and youth from the underprivileged sections of the society, Entrepreneurship development - focusing on creating social enterprises and helping engineering students embrace entrepreneurship, Technology donation for NGO's, Disaster relief support for devastations caused by natural calamities and Swachh Bharat (CleanIndia) campaign.

CSS Corp Join Forces with ICT Academy to Skill Youth of Tamil Nadu

CSS Corp, a new age IT services and technology support company today announced it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ICT Academy, a not-for-profit society, to jointly launch an extensive training program to skill the youth of rural, urban and low-income family groups in Tamil Nadu. Through this initiative, CSS Corp endeavours to help build the socio-economic conditions of underserved students through quality education and training in IT. The program was officially launched at an inauguration event held at Sri Sairam Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu on 3rd July 2019.

According to NASSCOM, the demand-supply gap for soft and technical skills have given rise to an urgent need to re-skill more than 50% of India’s IT workforce to meet the requirements of the industry. This has also led to a shortage in employment, specifically for entry-level jobs. With this collaboration, CSS Corp and ICT Academy aims to address the gap by imparting sector-specific skills through training and workshops that will lead to more employment opportunities.

The training program will be conducted in 20 colleges spread across Tamil Nadu. The program targets to provide 100 hours of intensive activity-based training in soft and technical support skills for 1,000 final year graduating students from engineering, arts & science colleges located in the rural and urban areas of Tamil Nadu. The module includes business communication, grammar, vocabulary, hardware & networking, operating systems, wireless technologies, and career counselling; all of which will be offered by professionals who have industry expertise. College students who aspire to
apply for the program should currently be pursuing their final year in Computer Science & IT and must secure an average score of 6 CGPA until the last semester. Volunteers from CSS Corp will be closely involved in the program through overall monitoring of the training program, mentoring of the students and conducting mock interviews and group discussions.

The program is also aimed to skill students from financially backward families with annual income of less than or equal to 2.5 lakhs. Girl students will be given preference during the selection process to keep in line with CSS Corp’s objective of empowering more women in the technology sector.

Speaking about the initiative, Manish Tandon, Chief Executive Officer, CSS Corp said, “One of the major challenges for the IT industry is re-skilling the present and future workforce to bridge the demand-skill gap. CSS Corp has been consistently institutionalizing a culture that promotes learning newer technologies and solutions to embrace the current disruption.

This year, through our CSR initiative, we look forward to imparting the skill expertise that we have curated to deserving students through quality education and proper training. We are privileged to partner with ICT Academy to design a program that will effectively empower students of Tamil Nadu to be truly future ready”.

Mr. M Sivakumar, Chief Executive Officer, ICT Academy said, "CSR comes as a big boon for the under privileged and the development of rural India. We at ICT Academy, being a not for profit organization continued partnering with several leading companies across India for implementing their CSR objectives in the areas of employability, skill development, youth empowerment, capacity development of teachers, digital empowerment, entrepreneurship development, literacy initiatives and women empowerment. Thanks to CSS Corp for coming up with such a high impact initiative under their CSR.

Through this partnership with CSS Corp, ICT Academy being the skill development institution, is delighted to train the students on latest technology skills and increase their opportunity to acquire a good job in the industry. This is a welcome initiative by CSS Corp, and I believe this would make a positive impact to the beneficiaries’ family as well as the industry by bridging the skill gap”.

Accenture, Cisco and Quest Alliance Team to Skill Youth for the Digital Economy

Accenture, Cisco and Quest Alliance are teaming to equip 1.5 million youth across India with skills for the digital economy. As part of a year-long collaboration, the organizations have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Directorate General of Training (DGT) within the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to offer a digital skilling program to all students enrolled in industrial training institutes (ITIs) via the government of India’s Bharat Skills portal.

The three organizations have also signed MoUs with the state governments of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Bihar and Assam to roll out a comprehensive blended learning program, which will cover more than 100,000 students from 227 ITIs across these states. The training modules will include online self-learning via the Bharat Skills portal as well as in-classroom training.

The skilling program, which will be expanded in a phased manner to ITIs across other states in India, includes tailor-made curriculum with modules for digital literacy, career readiness, employability skills and advanced technology skills such as data analytics. The in-classroom program will deliver more than 240 hours of training to impart skills for digital literacy and fluency; workplace readiness, including creative problem solving and use of data in decision making; and career management skills, including the cultivation of a growth mindset and the ability to identify and plan career journeys. The online module is optimized for mobile phones to enable on-the-go self-learning, and the toolkit also includes training the trainer resources.

“The digital economy is creating opportunities — with artificial intelligence alone estimated to add more than US$1 trillion to the Indian economy by 2035 — yet an unintended consequence of advanced technologies is further marginalization

of people, as humans and machines work side by side,” said Kshitija Krishnaswamy, director of corporate citizenship at Accenture in India. “The key to continued socio-economic growth in the digital economy is large-scale skilling of those at the greatest risk of displacement, enabling them to use advanced technologies to further their growth. Our collaboration with Cisco and Quest Alliance is part of Accenture’s Skills to Succeed initiative, which aims to create employment opportunities by leveraging digital innovation. So far, we’ve skilled more than 500,000 people in India, and by partnering  with the ITIs, we hope to have a positive impact on lives that could be most disrupted in the digital economy.”

Harish Krishnan, managing director of public affairs and strategic engagements at Cisco India and SAARC, said, “Digitization is accelerating the transformation of every industry in India. With the majority of our skilled workforce coming from the vocational sector, we need to ensure that the students in ITIs are digitally fluent and well-equipped to enter the workforce. Digital skilling has been one of Cisco’s top priorities, and with this partnership, we are taking our portfolio and partnerships to the vocational sector. We look forward to expanding our partnership with Accenture, our global channel partner, to our social programs.”

Aakash Sethi, CEO of Quest Alliance, said, “Quest’s strategic goal over the next five years is to equip 1.2 million youth with critical life, work, and digital skills as they transition into the world of work. Linear job trajectories are no longer the norm, and our work with youth in ITIs serves to hone their 21st-century skills like digital fluency, self-learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It is these skills that will help youth thrive in the 21st century.

Building collaborations of this kind between the DGT, the government of India, Accenture and Cisco is an integral part of the Quest mission.”

Consolidation to Gather Pace Among Tier 11 Indian Technology Firms

CRISIL expects consolidation among Tier II1 information technology (IT) services firms (annual revenues of Rs 1,000-10,000 crore) to gather pace over the medium term as they strive to achieve scale and build digital capabilities to stay relevant.

This comes at a time when their legacy businesses – such as time and material contracts – have already become commoditised, posing significant growth and profitability challenges.

Another trend that’s also being witnessed is the exit of promoters of Tier II firms, capitalising on higher valuations in the past two years and better growth prospects.

CRISIL’s analysis of the top 22 listed IT service firms shows there is a potential consolidation opportunity among Tier II firms, which today have a combined market capitalisation of ~Rs 33,000 crore. Pertinently, consolidation moves worth Rs.18000 crore are already in progress among Tier II firms.

Such consolidation engenders manifold synergies, boosts profitability and builds capabilities to cope up with opportunities in the digital space.

Housing Sales to Remain Strong Despite Modest Launches in First Half: JLL Report

House sales are expected to remain strong despite modest new launches in the country witnessed during the first half of the year (H1 2019), according to the latest JLL report titled “Residential Market Update – H1 2019” that was released on Tuesday.

With Hyderabad being on top among the seven cities, residential real estate market witnessed an increase of 22 per cent in sales at a pan-India level during the period, it said.

Interestingly, the share of affordable and mid-income housing (ticket size of up to Rs 1 crore in Mumbai and Rs 75 lakh across other cities), has seen a hike of up to 58 per cent at the country level, the report added. Pune tops the list, with 91 per cent of the new supply falling in the affordable and mid-income category.

The report added, with gradual revival in homebuyers’ confidence and improved affordability, markets witnessed a resurgence in sales in 2018. The resurgence continued in H1 2019.

During H1 2019, Hyderabad recorded the highest growth in sales at per cent, followed by Delhi NCR (42 per cent) on a year-over-year (YoY) basis. In Chennai, sales grew by 24 per cent over H2 2018, however it is yet to match the levels of H1 2018.

Sales are likely to receive a further fillip with progressive policies of the government, JLL said. During the first quarter this year, the Government further lowered goods and services tax (GST) rates on affordable homes to one per cent from the earlier eight per cent, without input tax credit (ITC). The GST on projects under construction, which are not under the affordable housing segment, was reduced to five per cent from 12 per cent. The rate revision augurs well for homebuyers as the process of claiming the ITC under the former system was complex.

“Series of reforms and rising buyers’ interest in the segment have propelled the sector to align itself to the market demand. Interestingly, in most cities, homebuyers continue to focus on ready to move in projects and projects nearing completion. As a result of this shift in buying preference, developers too are focused on completing their ongoing projects,” said Ramesh Nair, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) & Country Head, JLL India.

With developers focusing on delivery of already launched projects, new launches of residential units decreased by 11per cent on a YoY basis across the top seven cities, the report added. With the exception of Mumbai and Bengaluru, where launches grew YoY, all other cities saw a dip during H1 2019. Mumbai, Delhi NCR and Bengaluru continued to dominate launches and formed three-fourth of the overall launches during this period.

“Limited number of launches by developers, in a way, is helping the sector to balance the demand supply scenario in the country. This will act as a cushion and help the sector revive. As a result of the reform measures more specifically RERA and GST, we expect more transparency in the sector which in turn will bring back buyers’ confidence. ” said Siva Krishnan, Managing Director (MD) - Residential Services, Developer Solutions and Strategic Consulting.

The report added that a substantial decline in launches combined with a strong growth in sales in H1 2019 has brought a parity between year-to-sell (YTS) and average construction period across cities. “With Delhi NCR and Kolkata being the exception, the average YTS at 3.4 years across the seven cities compares favourably with the average construction period for a typical residential project across these cities at 3-4 years,” said Samantak Das, Chief Economist and Head of Research & REIS, JLL India.

Edelweiss Tokio Life Brings “Health Shield+, an Innovative Heart + Cancer Insurance” Solution

In light of the rising healthcare costs and incidences of critical illnesses, Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance brings an innovative “Heart and Cancer insurance” solution called Health Shield+ with one-of-a-kind feature – Term Trigger benefit.

The product provides cover for all types of Cancers and 17 cardiac conditions. Depending on their needs, a customer can opt for a cover only for Cancer or only Heart or both the ailments.

Commenting on the development, Sumit Rai, MD & CEO, Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance said, “We have an unmoving focus on innovation. We want to be anticipative and recognise the unarticulated needs of our customers. The Term Trigger benefit is in line with this aim, and seeks to provide a comprehensive protection to our customers.”

Term Trigger benefit is an optional feature available under the Cancer variant of the plan. In case of detection of a major condition of cancer, the insurer extends a term cover to the policyholder, in addition to the lump sum pay out.

Cancer has a severe impact – emotionally and financially – on an individual and their family. A recent study conducted by Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance (click here to see the report), shows that survival rate of patients while promising in the first year post late stage detection, declines drastically following 5 years of diagnosis. While 45% patients survive post one year of diagnosis of a major condition, only 11% live beyond 5 years.

When one is fighting with a critical disease like Cancer, buying an insurance is typically not a priority. Additionally, buying an insurance at that stage becomes a cumbersome process. The Term trigger benefit is aimed at providing a sense of financial security to the individual’s loved ones and alleviate any financial concerns the policyholder may have for their loved ones.

Another unique feature is the Return of Premium, which allows the policyholder to recover all unclaimed premiums from the insurer on maturity.       

“With incidences of critical illnesses increasing, we don’t want customers to stay away from buying critical illness plans on account that they would lose their money in the event that they do not have to claim it,” Rai added.

The study also showed that cancer care can cost anywhere between Rs. 4 lakhs and Rs. 14 lakhs, depending on the stage of detection. More importantly, a whopping 75% of patients are either uninsured or inadequately insured to meet these treatment costs. With incidences of cancer likely to rise by about 25% over the next five years, a disease-specific insurance plan is essential.

Health Shield+ offers a fixed payout on diagnosis of minor and major conditions of Cancer and Heart disease, and a waiver of premium for 5 years from the date of diagnosis of both, the first and second minor condition of these ailments.