India Govt’s Focus as Top Destination for Research and Innovation Augurs Well with ER&D Industry

Commenting on the Budget 2019 announced by the Indian Finance Minister on Friday, L&T Technology Services, CEO & MD, Dr. Keshab Panda said, “The government’s focus on positioning India as the top destination for research and innovation augurs well with the interests of the ER&D industry. Moreover, the announcement on providing support to the skill development initiatives related to AI, IoT, 3D printing, VR, Robotics has the potential to establish India as a global talent hub for digital technologies."

Dr Panda goes on to mention that lastly, earmarking Rs.10,000 crore over a three year period towards building a wider ecosystem of electric vehicles is a  welcome move. It is now for the value chain players to come together and replicate the success achieved by Indian ER&D players for global auto majors on the EV front.

Sonalika Unveils Tiger Series - Next Generation Technology Tractor in Karnataka Market

India’s one of the fastest growing tractor brand, International Tractors Limited (ITL) which has built the World’s No. 1 (largest) integrated tractor manufacturing plant in Hoshiarpur, today launched Tiger Series - Next Generation Technology Tractors, Designed in Europe. Following a trailblazing success in Karnataka, after achieving its highest double digit market share, the company has surpassed industry growth, recording 28% growth in Q1 FY 20 (April - June’19) vs. previous year.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Raman Mittal, Executive Director, Sonalika Group, said, “Sonalika’s growth is on account of our focus to address varied needs of farmers across regions through constant technological up-gradation and innovation.

After the success of Sikander series, we have launched this unrivalled Tiger Series, designed in Europe for Indian farmers and is available in the wide range of 28 HP to 65 HP category. In the era of Digitalization, this tractor is equipped with plethora of next generation technology driven features. One such feature is a mobile application, Sonalika Sky Smart in which Tiger tractor owner can monitor the health of the tractor remotely. The owner can locate his tractor, check fuel tank reading, Hour Meter Reading as well as get an alert on any discrepancies like fuel theft , battery disconnection etc.

Tiger Series is equipped with a new engine, new transmission, cutting edge technology with next generation design for the Next Generation Farmers offered through Next Generation retail experience. It is designed in Europe and developed to achieve the highest productivity in its category. Being a fully sealed tractor, it ensures flawless operation in the toughest of puddling conditions and haulage, well suited for Karnataka.

He added, The company’s objective is to increase farmers’ productivity exponentially, while ensuring reduced operational cost. Sonalika offers implements like Rotavators to help double farmer’s income through enhancing productivity, which has led Sonalika to be chosen by Govt. of India as the contributing partner with Niti Aayog for doubling farmer’s income by year 2022.”

Present at the launch, Mr. Mudit Gupta, President, Sonalika Group said, “Today, we produce and offer the most productive and reliable products across the globe, which gets manufactured at our World’s No. 1 largest Integrated Tractor manufacturing plant in Hoshiarpur, Punjab.

Technology innovation comes into use when it is rightly priced. We are launching the Tiger series at a very competitive price since we have already invested in the state of the art plant and R&D. We have chosen Karnataka as the first market to launch the series, as the state offers immense potential in the 41-50 HP segment. We are confident that Tiger’s revolutionary features and unique attributes will win the hearts of our treasured farmers.”

He added,” Sonalika aim’s to strengthen its presence in the domestic market with a strong focus on the Southern markets. We have also set up Skill Development Centers in the region to empower the next generation farmers by imparting education on latest farm technologies.”

We have recorded first ever double digit market share in Karnataka for the period Q1 FY’20. With the launch of its new series we are targeting to increase our market share in and continue to surpass industry growth.”

Jaguar Land Rover to Build Range of New Electrified Cars in the UK, Safeguarding Thousands of Jobs

Jaguar Land Rover has revealed plans to manufacture a range of new electrified vehicles at its manufacturing plant in Castle Bromwich, UK. The announcement is the next significant step in delivering on the company’s commitment to offer customers electrified options for all new Jaguar and Land Rover models from 2020.

Prof. Dr. Ralf Speth, Chief Executive Officer of Jaguar Land Rover, said: “The future of mobility is electric and, as a visionary British company, we are committed to making our next generation of zero-emission vehicles in the UK.

“We are co-locating our electric vehicle manufacture, Electronic Drive Units and battery assembly to create a powerhouse of electrification in the Midlands.”

The first new electric car to be produced at the plant will be Jaguar’s flagship luxury saloon, the XJ. The choice of business leaders, celebrities, politicians and royalty for over five decades and through eight generations of production, the XJ is designed, engineered and manufactured in the UK and has been exported to more than 120 countries.

The news was confirmed to workers at Castle Bromwich as production of the current XJ came to an end. Credited with pioneering a range of industry-first innovations during its 50 years of production, the new XJ will build on the characteristics synonymous with its predecessors - beautiful design, intelligent performance and revered luxury.

The new all-electric model will be created by the same expert team of designers and product development specialists responsible for delivering the world’s first premium electric SUV, and 2019 World Car of the Year, the Jaguar I-PACE.

Today’s announcement, which safeguards several thousand jobs in the UK, is the next stage in execution of Jaguar Land Rover’s electrification strategy. In January the company confirmed plans to bring battery and Electric Drive Unit (EDU) assembly to the Midlands with investment in new and existing facilities. These investments have been anticipated in the company’s previously communicated capital investment plans.

The new Battery Assembly Centre at Hams Hall, operational in 2020, will be the most innovative and technologically advanced in the UK with an installed capacity of 150,000 units. Together with the Wolverhampton Engine Manufacturing Centre (EMC), home of Jaguar Land Rover’s global EDU production, these facilities will power the next generation of Jaguar and Land Rover models.

The extensive transformation of Castle Bromwich to become the UK’s first premium electrified vehicle plant will be the most significant in the plant’s history. Later this month, work will begin to commence the installation of all-new facilities and technologies required to support Jaguar Land Rover’s next-generation Modular Longitudinal Architecture (MLA). Designed and engineered in-house, MLA enables flexible production of clean efficient diesel and petrol vehicles alongside full electric and hybrid models.

The expansion of Jaguar Land Rover’s electrified vehicle line up will see customers offered a greater choice of vehicles to suit their lifestyles. However increased consumer take-up remains a challenge.

Prof. Dr. Ralf Speth, Chief Executive Officer of Jaguar Land Rover, said: “Convenience and affordability are the two key enablers to drive the uptake of electric vehicles to the levels that we all need. Charging should be as easy as re-fuelling a conventional vehicle.

“Affordability will only be achieved if we make batteries here in the UK, close to vehicle production, to avoid the cost and safety risk of importing from abroad. The UK has the raw materials, scientific research in our universities and an existing supplier base to put the UK at the leading edge of mobility and job creation.”

As Jaguar Land Rover today makes its commitment to electric car manufacturing in the UK, it calls on government and industry to work together to bring giga-scale battery production to the country. This builds on the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre and the government’s Faraday Challenge, essential for next generation battery technology to create smaller, denser, cheaper batteries. These critical steps will also support and grow the existing supply chain, making the UK less dependent on essential materials sourced abroad today.

Together, these initiatives enable battery production and demand for automotive companies, to attract future giga-scale factories to the UK. 

Mobil Cricket Challenge in India: Khel Kar to Dekho

To amplify the current cricket mania ExxonMobil -India’s leading lubricant brand, has unveiled its new cricket challenge ‘Khel Kar To Dekho’- an AR technology driven initiative across 15 cities.

As a part of this challenge, 19 Mobil branded vans with AR (Augmented Reality) enabled digital screens will be doing rounds in 15 cities till July 7, 2019. It is a simple challenge where the participant has to simulate ball bounce on a physical bat; the AR screen will provide the simulation and will capture the participant’s scores; the participant who is successfully able to bounce the ball for a minute is the winner.

Speaking on the campaign, Dheeraj Bhushan, General Manager –Marketing Deployment for ExxonMobil Lubricants Pvt. Ltd said, “India is a cricket loving country and fans here worship the sport. With the on-going cricket world cup, fans are immersed in a cricketing fever. Our augmented reality powered vans aim to further ignite this excitement/ sentiment wherein visitors will get a chance to play the sport virtually.”

Along with the AR initiative, the audience will be engaged with an on-ground cricket trivia under a campaign called ‘Mobil -Cricket Ke Champion’. The emcee will engage the audience by asking questions on cricket and participants who answer correctly will get ExxonMobil goodies.

What Is Your Expectation from The IT Industry in Union Budget 2019?

"India is the second largest hub for startups and Government needs to be startup friendly"

"In the Union Budget 2019, we look forward to the Indian government being startup friendly. Startups require a continuous flow of fund, operation and regular upgradations,.To meet this requirement, both the governments, central and state, must take measures/initiatives that are specifically focused towards the development of startups. The government must conduct programs, formulate policies and schemes to encourage new age startups. The government should introduce a policy framework that ensures seamless operations, efficient company registration and less of paperwork.

Another key area, where we want our government to take action is "demand-supply-cost gap". With various technological developments in the IT industry, evolved customers buying patterns, variable GST rates in goods/IT products, the government should consider reducing the current 18% GST."

While the overall intention of the Government is in the right direction, it needs to take strong steps in reducing the bureaucracy and make life simpler and easier for doing business.

Paying TDS on 7th of the next month means paying this out of your own pocket as the sales proceeds are not received by then.  This causes a huge cash flow issue to businesses - especially those in the trading business and those with very low margins.  Ideally this due date should be shifted to the end of the next month to ease out the cash flow pressures on businesses - say 26-27th of the month.  Not to mention GST payments as well.

Also would need more clarity on notifications issued earlier - especially considering the changes in business models - due to which earlier notifications are no longer relevant and have lost the very purpose for which they were issued.  A classic example is NOTIFICATION No. 21/2012 [F. No. 142/10/2012-SO(TPL)] S. O. 1323(E), DATED 13-6-2012.

Government had provided for non-deduction of withholding tax on reselling of software licenses - primarily considering the very low margins in this trade and the fact that resellers are not making any changes to the licenses purchased from the OEMs.  With the changes in technology - pure play software licenses are being replaced by a bundled package - Azure, Amazon web services, etc. (Together referred to as "Cloud Services").  However, the concept largely remains the same - Resellers are not making any changes to these bundled packages and the margins are also very low.  Would urge the Government to come out with specific notification to extend the scope of the term "Software" as defined under NOTIFICATION No. 21/2012 [F. No. 142/10/2012-SO(TPL)] S. O. 1323(E), DATED 13-6-2012.

After the success of Swachh Bharat, Cooking Gas and Electrification of villages - the next big thing is piped water to every house. I think major budget should be allocated to water problems. Chennai is going through major water problems and the global media has addressed the issue. There may also be an allocation for MSME development budget like earlier NDA government did in the past term. Skill development of micro SME is extremely important for boosting local manufacturing.

Policy reforms/expectations on behalf of Indian AV industry
Local manufacturing for displays will grow as government continues to boost incentives for exports and fulfil local demand. Samsung has already planned for a 1500 cr plant in Uttar Pradesh, which is expected to be operational by April 2020. With the likes of the rest will follow. GST could come down to 18% from 28% for projectors and larger televisions; this could possibly add more money in customers pocket to spend on bigger displays.

Beyond AV industry
The automobile industry is struggling to get back on track. Maruti Suzuki, the market leader reported drop in sales consecutively. Maruti sells volumes in the entry level segment and the sales majorly come from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. The reason for drop in sales could be due to less disposable income left over due to inflation and other factors. There should be a major booster for spending to put confidence in consumers mind to get the ball rolling for 9% GDP growth plus in coming years.

IT will continue to drive success of all types of business with innovations around AI, ML, social media, Cloud, IoT, Cybersecurity, Blockchain etc. Success of IT innovation will determine overall success of other industries including government's digital drive and hence IT industry, as the enabler for success of all other government and private business, should be accorded special status. Policy and framework to promote home grown IT innovations is the urgent need of the hour to promote growth and provide large scale employment opportunities. Local manufacturing needs special promotion to reduce dependence on imports of basic electronic goods such as mobile and other house hold items there by promoting employment and reducing dollar outflow for low tech mass volume goods.

Reduce Custom Duties for Advanced Networking and Security Products from 20% to 5%, Roll Out 5G in line with Global Markets

From this budget, we would require government to create policy frameworks that will incentivise investments from big players in manufacturing locally in India. Creating transparency in governance and reducing regulatory compliances should be taken into the consideration with special focus on reduction of customs duties for advanced networking and security products which is currently at 20% to 5%. We expect the import/export process to be made digital and transparent so as to have an efficient RMA system for customers. There should be clear actions, policy and reforms to promote latest technologies like AI, IoT, Zero Trust, Machine learning, 3D printing, blockchain and simultaneously ensuring training facilities for all the mentioned technologies as part of skill development. Declare IT as a special focus sector for the country and roll out 5G in line with global markets.

If we look beyond IT, we would want this year's budget to focus more on energy and water conservation with greater importance to sustainable development and pollution control. India is facing a critical water shortage and therefore we would require the government to take serious actions including penalties for wastage and incentives for water conservation. This can include water conservation strategies like reviving lost lakes, rivers ponds as well as maintaining optimal availability of water in all regions. Energy conservation can be taken one step further by mandated phasing out of fossil fuel driven vehicles and promoting electric, gas based lower pollution vehicles. Demarking areas in public places for charging can promote the use of electric vehicles in cities. Improving quality of the government medical facilities to prevent deaths of infants and less privileged people as well as significantly improving the quality of government schools and providing them quality education are few other expectations we have from this year's budget.

Atlassian R&D Center in Bengaluru to Touch 500 Employees by 2020

By Manu Sharma

Australian enterprise software company - Atlassian Corporation Plc, known for its online tools Trello and Jira, plans to hire over 300 engineers over the next 12 months to reach 500 employees for its recently launched development centre in Bengaluru,  Mike Cannon-Brookes, Co-Founder and CO-CEO of Atlassian said. The company presently employees 200 engineers, product managers, designers and backoffice support staff.

Atlassian announced that it has opened a permanent office in Bengaluru, India. Atlassian, which established a local presence in 2018, plans to grow the Bengaluru office into a world-class R&D and customer support center.

Atlassian was founded by entrepreneurs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar in 2002 and has gone on to make a name for itself in collaborative tools for software and technology industries. The company went public on Nasdaq in 2015, and hit a billion-dollar annual revenue mark in the second quarter of 2018-19.

Atlassian’s Bengaluru office, the first for the Sydney-headquartered company outside the US and Australia, was opened in May 2018. With around 75 employees in the Bengaluru centre and the company planning to hire more number of engineers, it is now planning to move into a bigger office space in the city. The hiring will be primarily for engineers, product managers and designers, Brookes said.

“Bengaluru has some of the brightest tech talent in the world, and within our first year in market we’ve hired incredible people whose work has had a direct impact on our global customer base,” said Dinesh Ajmera, Site Lead and Head of Engineering for Bengaluru of Atlassian. “I’m confident that the work done in this office will help Atlassian reach its long-term goal of reaching 100 million monthly active users.”

Atlassian is the maker of products such as Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello that are used by over 144,000 customers worldwide, including Ola Cabs, Reliance, Walmart Labs, and Flipkart. R&D has been key to Atlassian’s growth and innovation; it invested $415.8m in R&D in FY18, up 34% from the previous year, and has grown the R&D team by approximately 50% since 2017.

“Innovation is the lifeblood of Atlassian, and the company has made a significant investment to ensure the Bengaluru office becomes a world-class R&D center,” said Ajmera. “We will continue hiring aggressively for the top talent in the market, and are confident that our unique culture - one that values openness, trust, and inclusion - will help us meet our goals.”

Atlassian plans to expand further in Bengaluru the coming months by adding a number of engineering, design, product management, recruitment, and customer support roles. Atlassian's new office is located in RMZ Ecoworld, and has room to grow to more than 700 employees. Atlassian has been named a Best Place to Work by Great Place to Work Institute in every market where it has a staff presence.

Simplilearn Partners with IBM to Introduce Four Master’s Programs in AI and Data Science

Global online training provider Simplilearn today announced a collaboration with IBM to introduce four master’s programs in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. Through this collaboration, professionals can  access live virtual classrooms and self-paced video courses that combine Simplilearn’s seamless training experience and world-class instructors with IBM’s state-of-the-art labs and course content.

Key features of the Master’s Programs include portfolio-worthy Capstone Projects that demonstrate applied skills, hands-on exposure to today’s most-used tools, 24/7 access to teaching assistants, and industry-recognized certificates.

“We are delighted to partner with IBM to bring our students the most comprehensive training programs available,” said Krishna Kumar, CEO and founder of Simplilearn. “IBM is known not just for its innovation in the world of science, but for its dedication to client success. Together with IBM, we’re confident these Master’s Programs will provide everything our students need to launch new careers in data science and AI.”

“Our partnership with Simplilearn is yet another example of our commitment to providing people with the skills they need to advance their careers in emerging tech areas,” said Devkant Agarwal,Leader Growth Initiatives, Career Education, India South Asia . “Our own research indicates that there will be over 2.7 million data science job openings by 2020 as every sector of our economy embraces these technologies. This need for talent can only be met by upskilling our existing workforce.”

The Data Scientist Master’s Program and AI Engineer Master’s Program were released today. Find more information on each of them here:

Data Science Master’s Program: https://www.simplilearn.com/big-data-and-analytics/senior-data-scientist-masters-program-training

AI Engineer Master’s Program: https://www.simplilearn.com/artificial-intelligence-masters-program-training-course

The third and fourth programs, Data Analyst Master’s Program and Data Engineer Master’s Program, will be available in the later half of July 2019.

All course content will be accessible on Simplilearn’s learning management system and will follow Simplilearn’s unique blended learning structure, providing learners with expertly-crafted content that’s delivered live and via pre-recorded video to meet the needs of every student’s preference and schedule, followed by quizzes and projects to enforce the retention of each lesson. Teaching assistants and forums provide a collaborative environment to nurture students from foundational concepts all the way through completion. Upon completion of each program, learners will receive industry-recognized certificates from Simplilearn and IBM to indicate the user has successfully completed all requirements.

Simplilearn has repeatedly been recognized as a top global online training provider for individuals and corporations. To date, Simplilearn has helped more than 1,000,000 professionals across 150 countries to upskill.