5 Companies Helping you Unlock the Next-Level of Customer Engagement

As the time-tested market proverb goes, “Customer is the King”, brands are virtually nothing without the support of their customers. We have seen global brands enjoying a cult following, having customers evolved into ‘brand patrons’ or graduate to ‘brand evangelists’. At the helm of this aspirational transition is brands offering their customers an unparalleled experience till they build substantial brand equity and mindshare; everything else is clockwork from thereon.

In their bit to delivering and exceptional customer experience, businesses of today are not left alone to fend for themselves. In fact, some of the leading companies are leveraging the latest advancements in AI and digitalization to enable businesses to elevate virtual user assistance to the next level. Let us have a look at some of the revolutionary platforms that are positively affecting the end-user experience on behalf of their clientele with their trailblazing approach:

1.      LogMeIn’s Bold360, AI-powered customer engagement: Customers now expect consistent, high-value, in-person, digital experiences. Therefore, businesses need to adopt a multifunctional approach to meet this demand and deliver improved levels of customer experience consistently. To the same end, LogMeIn- one of the world’s top 10 public SaaS companies- is helping companies embrace this era with their AI-powered customer engagement platform, Bold360. As the industry’s most tightly integrated AI chatbot and live-agent workspace, Bold360 allows bots and humans to work hand-in-hand in creating the best possible outcome for the consumer. By leveraging the power of AI, Bold360 helps personalise and enhance every interaction, regardless of where it takes place, allowing companies to deliver better and more consistent customer experiences seamlessly across both AI and agent-based interactions. Channelizing the best capabilities of humans and bots, Bold360 delivers ground-breaking intelligence with out-of-the-box simplicity and helps agents do what they do best – be human. 

2.      DASH.MENU, revolutionizing diners experiences with FIDEOS: Stepping into a fancy restaurant and not understanding what to order or the order turning out to be completely different from what one may have imagined triggers a huge buyer’s remorse. This may result in a volley of social media backlash and perhaps complete abandonment in the future. However, DASH.MENU helps restaurants, food delivery, and cloud kitchen platforms resolve this challenge with the help of FIDEOS. Dash.Menu entices customers with short food-videos (FIDEOS). Before placing an order, customers can ‘sample’ their food through bite-sized 15 seconds short snippets of how their meal is prepared or would look once served. This takes away the guess-work in ordering and allows restaurants to upsell the food or highlight every distinctive ingredient or culinary skill that goes into the creating of the masterpiece cuisines. It also takes the boring printed menu cards out of the picture, thus, improving the overall dining experience of a customer. Dash is already being used by elite restaurant chains like Marriott, Le Meridian, ITC Hotels, Mamagoto Restaurants, and Taj Hotels among others.

3.      Amplify.ai, because every interaction matters: The primary pain point of any digital business is to engage and acquire its prospective customers over the internet. They have to do it while also understanding the needs of their current customers and fulfilling them optimally. Amplify.ai, world’s first and only enterprise-class, AI-driven customer engagement platform, delivers the same. Rather than driving customers towards a digital platform, the platform takes conversation precisely where the customer is – might it be another website (with conversational display ads) or social media. Amplify.ai is able to gauge the perception of every prospective and current customers with their interactions (including likes, comments, and reactions over the social media) and then adopts the most optimal strategy and extensive personalisation to achieve the desired results.

4.      Haptik, Conversational AI: Customer service as an operational segment demands substantial amount of time and money to be invested in training and management of queries, 80% of which are repetitive in nature. Still, problems such as long wait times, erratic communication standards, unintentional errors and high attrition rates plague customer service operations for enterprises the world over. Chatbots are an ideal option to optimize customer engagement in the most cost-efficient manner as they can cater to a large number of queries offering consistent user experience, 24x7. They can be easily integrated into an enterprise’s existing customer engagement infrastructure without significant expenditure. Additionally, chatbots procure valuable data during each conversation with a user, thereby assisting enterprises with strategic decision making through valuable insights. Haptik’s bots have helped enterprises across sectors to make customer service scalable, easy and optimized, and the unique Bot+human hybrid approach ensures complex queries are immediately re-routed to experts while the bots reduce the workload by effectively resolving simple or repetitive queries. The inclusion of chatbots has empowered enterprises to improve their customer service processes significantly both internally and in terms of external engagement, creating a win-win situation for all enterprises and users alike.

5.      TRELL, an idyllic platform for content creators & brands: Fondly referred to as the Video Pinterest for India, Trell is a community-based platform pivoted around enabling lifestyle discovery through video-based meaningful content in various Indian languages. As a platform hosting over 4 million users, Trell bridges the gap between users looking for meaningful content around lifestyle inspirations and content creators or aspiring influencers who wish to create visual collections of their travel and lifestyle experiences. The superior tech-enabled platform makes it easier for content creators to engage with a highly engaging community of 1 Million Monthly Active Users on the mobile app. This is achieved through video blogging and other mediums, made seamlessly accessible by the superior tech platform that TRELL offers. With the help of user-generated content, Trell serves its community with personal anecdotes and fascinating snippets related to a place, as well as local tips, DIYs and tips and tricks. Till date, the content creators on TRELL have generated over 1.6 Million original and meaningful content pieces around lifestyle. 

Mindtree Joins Hyperledger to Accelerate Blockchain Development

Mindtree, a global technology services and digital transformation company, announced that it has joined Hyperledger, an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. Joining as a general member enables Mindtree to accelerate the development of its capabilities around Hyperledger and offer industry-specific blockchain solutions to prospective clients.

Hosted by the Linux Foundation, Hyperledger is a multi-project, multi-stakeholder effort that includes 14 business blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. Hyperledger enables organizations to build industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions by creating enterprise-grade, open source distributed ledger frameworks and code bases.

Mindtree has made strategic investment in Blockchain space since 2016 and Hyperledger is a very important part of that investment. As a general member, Mindtree experts will have access to training materials, whitepapers, use cases and solutions shared through the Hyperledger community network. Additionally, Mindtree will have access to the talented community within Hyperledger to build a strong pool of engineers and architects with in-demand skills in the Hyperledger technologies. Joining Hyperledger would help Mindtree in evangelizing the existing Hyperledger blockchain-based solutions or in developing new solutions.

“Enterprises are seeing strategic value and want to adopt Blockchain to reimagine some of the current process areas and implement futuristic solutions. With this membership, we will be able to assist our customers in realizing their vision in implementing these solutions.” said Madhusudhan KM, Chief Technology Officer, Mindtree. He added, “Joining the Hyperledger community is a further extension of Mindtree’s effort to build a strong domain expertise around enterprise Blockchain-based solutions that deliver enhanced transparency, security and traceability for our clients across many industries including retail, manufacturing, banking, insurance, airlines & hospitality.”

“Mindtree’s large global footprint and ongoing investment in developing blockchain expertise make it a natural fit for our growing community,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger.  “As enterprise blockchain adoption accelerates, companies that are committed to helping companies put the technologies into production will be a vital part of the ecosystem. We welcome the work Mindtree will do on this front."

The Hyperledger community includes more than 270 organizations, including large technology companies, startups, service providers and academics.

International S.T.E.A.M CONCLAVE 2019 to be Held on Aug 3-4, 2019

Bengaluru-based LIFE -Leadership Initiative for Educators is all set to give an artistic twist to STEM on the 3rd and 4th of August, with INTERNATIONAL S.T.E.A.M CONCLAVE 2019 in association with GyanPro and St Joseph’s College, Langford Road. The two day S.T.E.A.M initiative includes the 3rd LIFE EDUCATORS CONFERENCE and S.T.E.A.M Experience Labs.

Leadership Initiative For Educators (LIFE) is a dynamic initiative that focuses on educational leadership and organizational cultures. It aims to create an ecosystem for educators to create compelling visions for future and charter a clear evolving road map.

The Conference on 3rd of August seeks to traverse across 5 tracks namely Leadership,Pre-Primary, Elementary, Secondary and Higher Secondary and will feature ‘Steam’inent speakers across the world including :

2019’s chosen theme ‘S.T.E.A.M’ focuses on an interdisciplinary and hands-on approach to learning. An artistic extension of the STEM approach, being ‘S.T.E.A.M savy’ is the new-age window to building 21st Century skills.

‘NCERT has shifted focus to experiential learning and making it child centric, while reviewing the National Curriculum Framework. The S.T.E.A.M. Conclave is based on the same principles to make learning of these subjects integrated with hands-on, project based activities.’ - Preethi Vickram, Convenor, S.T.E.A.M. Conclave, Founder- Director, L.I.F.E.

'The National Education Policy, 2019 stresses upon the need for holistic and integrated approach to education. With S.T.E.A.M. I see that this has been addressed. All educators should look at learning about the benefits of this approach so we can bring up our children to be innovative, creative and socially responsible.' - Dr. M.K. Sridhar, Member Drafting Committee, NEP and Member Secretary, Former Karnataka Knowledge Commission. Dr. Sridhar is one of the speakers of the 3rd LIFE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE to be held on 3rd August.

The S.T.E.A.M Experience Labs on the 4th of August, in association with GyanPro Educational Innovation, will be set as thematic zones to offer a ‘hands-on’ experience to S.T.E.A.M, for students,their parents and educators across all levels.

GyanPro has emerged as a S.T.E.A.M propeller and envisions on creating a parallel science education program to make Science fun, inspiring and interactive for young children.

GyanPro researches, teaches & promotes conceptual learning of science. It supports K-10 STEAM education by collaborating with diverse partners, leveraging local and regional resources, to empower science education by inspiring children to learn and experiment with Science. By utilizing evidence-based instructional practices, connecting in and out-of-school learning, facilitating effective science communication and mentoring students, we seek to kindle scientific temper by honing reasoning skills and logical thinking amongst children.

GyanPro has worked with more than 250 schools across India in bringing creativity to formal education for children through STEAM based Learning Aids, Atal Tinkering Labs, Science Fests, Science Shows, workshops, etc. and touched the lives of more than 300,000 beneficiaries.

“Hands-on approach to learning is the truest form of learning, whether it is at school or at home and this has been vouched today by the CBSE and the National Education Policy (NEP). We, at GyanPro, are immensely happy that we are working towards the same goal. ”

- Dr. Supreeth Kittenkere, Founder & CEO of GyanPro Educational Innovation.

The two-day S.T.E.A.M Conclave will be conducted at St Joseph’s College, Langford Road on 3rd and 4th of August.The prestigious St. Joseph’s College is not only hosting the event as the venue partner but is also the resource-provider through its student-interns.

Ritesh Syal Joins as Nutanix India Channel Head for the Enterprise Cloud Leader

Enterprise Cloud leader, Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX) has confirmed the appointment of Ritesh Syal as its new Head of Channel Sales for India. The announcement follows the recent signing of India and SAARC Vice President and Managing Director of Sales, Balakrishnan Anantharaman, and is a clear sign the industry veteran is already stamping his mark and energy on the Nutanix India business.

With more than 15 years of Channel and Sales management experience, Syal is ideally suited to take the Nutanix Channel business to the next level.  His knowledge and insight of the India software and cloud market combined with a track record for rapidly expanding tier one and two partner organisations make him an ideal asset for Nutanix as it strengthens its Go To Market, GTM, channels.

Before joining Nutanix, Syal was Director and Head of Channel and Alliances for Oracle India where he grew the top level partner organisation and channel alliances and developed extensive GTM experience with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and Systems Integrators (SIs).

Prior to Oracle, Syal was National Business Manager for Public Services at SAP, responsible for the Healthcare and Education / Research verticals nationwide. He has also held senior leadership roles at EMC, where he was the Key Partner Director, and APC, part of Schneider Electric.

“Channel is a key priority for Nutanix in India” said Balakrishnan Anantharaman, Vice President and Managing Director of Sales for India and SAARC, Nutanix. “Ritesh’s appointment reaffirms our commitment to extending our partner ecosystem and to bringing increased choice right to the doorsteps of India’s businesses.”

Speaking on his appointment, Syal said: “I am delighted to be joining Nutanix at such an exciting time for the company and the industry. Being part of a high growth leader and one unwilling to accept the status quo offers limitless opportunities for the channel and for India’s enterprises.”

Syal’s appointment is part of a continuing expansion for Nutanix in India and follows the recent signing of Balakrishnan as Vice President and Managing Director of Sales for India and SAARC.

Trend Micro to Deliver Transparent, Inline Network Security with Amazon Web Services Transit Gateway

Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today announced the extension of its industry leading network protection to the cloud, now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. This was delivered in response to the operational challenges enterprises often experience with available network security solutions. It will first be available for AWS Transit Gateway, with multiple deployment models planned to follow.

“Cloud security is the highest priority for AWS, and we are committed to helping customers achieve the highest levels of security in the cloud,” said Dave Brown, Vice President, EC2 Compute & Networking Services at Amazon Web Services, Inc. “As companies move and scale their infrastructure in the cloud, they are looking for ways to easily insert and manage security appliances in their network topologies. With AWS Transit Gateway, Trend Micro’s security solution is now available to 230,000 buyers through AWS Marketplace and will help our shared customers address their network security needs in the cloud.”

Trend Micro’s security solution was built to accommodate the growing amount of network teams being tasked with extending their security to the cloud. It does so by utilizing the AWS Transit Gateway, which simplifies the routing between Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPCs) and on-premises networks by acting as a hub that controls traffic routing among all connected spokes. For customers with particularly demanding network traffic, the option to deploy on FPGA accelerated instances will be available with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) F1.

“We consistently hear from customers that they face significant operational hurdles with today’s firewall-based approaches to cloud network security,” said Steve Quane, Executive Vice President of Network Defense and Hybrid Cloud Security at Trend Micro. “They introduce operational complexity, are disruptive to deploy and are inefficient, due in large part to complex networking requirements that are cumbersome in the cloud. Trend Micro’s approach removes these operational challenges. With transparent deployment into the network fabric, it delivers scalable security and continuous visibility, while eliminating the need to rearchitect and avoiding application disruption.”

“We’re very excited about what Cloud Network Protection would allow for our network security in the cloud,” said Alex Tarte, IT Security & Risk Manager and Chief Information Security Officer of Copa Airlines. “This solution will allow us to have frictionless security operations for our business applications while meeting the scale and performance demands of our business.”

Trend Micro Cloud Network Protection, available today, will be listed on AWS Marketplace. It leverages the power of Trend Micro Research, including the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) bug bounty program, to spot advanced targeted attacks, vulnerabilities and exploits, and easily integrates with other security tools.

Dineout’s Great Indian Restaurant Festival all Set to take Place for the Second Time this year in August!

Things to look forward to in 4th Edition-
• 8000+ restaurants offering FLAT 50% off on total bill, food bill, drinks bill, buffets and meals under Rs. 199 coupons
• Gourmet Passport members get early access to GIRF deals on 24th July. Deals for all open on 27th July
• Top rated restaurants across 17 cities of India
• GIRF Unplugged, first ever on ground event in 3 cities

Highlights of Feb 2019 edition –
• 2.5M diners used GIRF deals, generating a revenue of over 350Cr
• Every second a table was reserved at participating restaurants
• Over 4.2L people dined out on 24th February alone
• Delhites saved around  Rs. 50 Cr. during GIRF

If you love eating out and enjoy exploring new cuisines then August is going to be your month of more. India’s largest dining out platform - Dineout has announced their ‘biggest ever food & drinks festival’ – Great Indian Restaurant Festival (GIRF) for the second time this year. The festival is slated from 1st Aug-1st Sep giving Flat 50% off deals on Total bill, food bill, drinks bill, buffet and coupons spanned across 8,000+ restaurants in 17 cities including Surat, Nagpur, Kochi and Ludhiana where Dineout will be launched soon. Diners can additionally get 20% cashback on their restaurant bills using Dineout Pay. Along with exclusive cashback offers from HDFC Bank and bonus JPMiles from JetPrivilege every day.

Earlier this year, Dineout concluded 3rd edition of GIRF in the month of February, which received a massive response of close to 2.5M diners who bought deals and over 350Cr worth revenue generated for partner restaurants, which was 2.5x higher than the last edition. It was the success of GIRF’s 3rd edition that has led to the launch of another one within the same year, only bigger! They are also launching an all-day on ground event - GIRF Unplugged curated by SteppinOut on 3rd Aug in Bangalore, 4th Aug in Hyderabad and 11th Aug in Chennai. With Gourmet Passport - Dineout’s premium membership platform, diners can get a VIP entry to these events along with early access to buy GIRF deals from 24th-26th July. GIRF deals for all can be bought starting 27th July for dining between 1st-31st August at restaurants like Hyatt, Sheraton, Radisson, Mainland China, Social, Lord of the Drinks, Chaayos, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, & more.

Commenting on the launch, Mr. Ankit Mehrotra, CEO & Co-founder, Dineout said, “As August marks the beginning of festivities in our country, we want to give people all the more reason to celebrate and what can be better than GIRF. After a successful edition this year in February, where we seated 2.5 million diners across 12 cities, we heard the call from our diners & restaurant partners, raised the bar in this edition by adding more cities, more restaurants and more partners like – HDFC, Jet Privilege, Jio and Diageo. We look forward to this edition that will be #MonthofMore in true sense”

Speaking on the association, Spokesperson from HDFC Bank said, "We are happy to be associated with Dineout's Great Indian restaurant festival for the second time in a row. Dineout has successfully established a strong relationship with its diners with a unique blend of food and cashback and thus creating a strong affinity for the property. So, while GIRF offers great deals, HDFC Bank cardholders enjoy the added privilege of 50% cashback on buying the deals and they also get 30% cashback while paying their restaurants bills thru Dineout Pay.

GIRF is restaurant industry’s first ever food & drinks festival which was launched in 2017 with the idea to promote the dining out culture among consumers and change the way Indians dine out. The festival has been instrumental for both consumers as well as for the partner restaurants. No questions asked Flat 50% off deals, cashbacks, bank offers, partner offers and more at top-rated restaurants are the main drivers behind the success of the festival. For more details regarding the festival, please login  https://www.dineout.co.in/pregirf

So all the foodies out there, get prepared to indulge in GIRF which is going to offer more food, exciting discounts and offers, more restaurants to explore, more cuisines to discover and more memorable experiences!

Nandini Unveils New Milk Now Fortified with Vitamin ‘A’ and ‘D’

The Karnataka Co-operative Milk Producers Federation (KMF) will, starting this Wednesday, supply Nandini milk fortified with Vitamin ‘A’ and ‘D’.

The move to fortify milk with these vitamins came after reports from the Indian Council of Medical Research and National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau indicated that the Indian population had a high burden of deficiency of Vitamin ‘A’ and ‘D’. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) had also issued orders to fortify milk as it would be available for all sections of society and hence the micronutrient malnutrition can be addressed.

The ‘+F’ Logo will be printed on Nandini Toned Milk, Double Toned Milk, Special Toned Milk, StandardiSed Milk to indicate the fortification.

Speaking at the launch, Murtyunjaya T Kulkarni, Director, Marketing, said that 49 lakh litres of milk was being distributed across the state at present and all of this would be fortified. “We are also looking at fortifying other milk products in a phased manner. We are testing the stability in our lab,” he said.

Director of Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research Dr C N Manjunath had written to KMF four years ago asking them to have Vitamin A and D fortification of milk.

“At least 60-70 % of the population has vitamin ‘D’ deficiency. Vitamin ‘A’ deficiency is common among children. A survey that we conducted at Jayadeva also showed similar results. Most of our staff have the deficiency,” he said.

He also said that this could be attributed largely to staying indoors and lifestyle changes that permit minimal exposure to sunlight. “This is not only affecting bone health but is also known to be causing cardiac problems. The deficiency is known to be a risk factor for high BP and diabetes.”

The fortification would cost KMF 3-4 paise per litre. However, this burden will not be passed on to the customers said, Kulkarni.

The KMF has tied up with the National Dairy Development Board and TATA Trust for this purpose. TATA trust, under its CSR Activity, will bear the additional costs incurred by KMF for six months.