Indian-Aus Entrepreneur Wins Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award

Indian-Australian Entrepreneur Aamir Qutub has won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award category in the Business Excellence Awards (GBEA) in Australia.

Established in 1986, and managed by the Geelong Chamber of Commerce, The Business Excellence Awards are the oldest continuously running business awards in Australia. Justin Giddings – CEO of Avalon Airport won the Business Leader of the Year and Aamir Qutub (CEO, Enterprise Monkey) won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. "With a record number of entrants participating in the Geelong Business Excellence Awards, and going through a stringent judging process, the Awards are now more competitive than ever. Ask any of the winners, they’re absolutely worth winning" says Ben Flynn, CEO Geelong Chamber of Commerce.

Aamir is the founder & CEO of Enterprise Monkey (a digital solutions agency), Tech Investor and Co-Founder in 6 startups.  Aamir is also the member of Ministerial Advisory Committee to the Minister for Planning in Australia. Aamir was appointed as the General Manager of ICT Geelong (local IT Industry Cluster) at the age of 25. Aamir was the founding Secretary of Pivot Summit - Australia’s largest regional tech conference.

Aamir was brought up in Aligarh city in Uttar Pradesh. He did his Bachelor of Engineering from Aligarh Muslim University in India and immigrated to Australia at the age of 23 to do his MBA from Deakin University.

“I applied for around 150 office jobs but couldn’t get any due to the lack of Australian experience. I used to work as a cleaner at the Avalon Airport and distribute newspapers in midnight to pay for my living and fees.” Aamir says.

In 2012, Aamir got an internship opportunity with ICT Geelong. Impressed with Aamir’s exceptional performance and passion for digital transformation, he was asked by the board to step up as the General Manager of ICT Geelong at the age of 25.

Prior to that Aamir was elected as Gen. Secretary of AMU Students’ Union 2011 (India). As Secretary, Aamir organized the first ever recruitment drive in AMU which resulted in the placement of 2000 students in 30 companies. His passion towards technology contributed in digitization of AMU campus by the introduction of free WiFi and Smart Classrooms. He also developed strong bureaucratic and political connections which empowered him to lobby some National Policies for the welfare of Students.

In 2014, Aamir founded Enterprise Monkey – a web & app solutions company in brother in law’s garage in 2014. “I started with $2000 in savings” says Aamir who led his company to establish in 4 countries with YoY revenue growth of 300% in first 3 years.

Enterprise Monkey has established itself as a leader in web and app space and now growing it’s leadership in Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Internet of Things space. The client list includes NASDAQ listed companies as well as seed stage startups.

Gartner Says Worldwide Smartphone Sales Will Decline 2.5% in 2019

Worldwide shipments of devices — PCs, tablets and mobile phones — will total 2.2 billion units in 2019, a decline of 3.3% year over year, according to Gartner, Inc.

The mobile phone market is set to record the worst performance of these device types, declining by 3.8% (see Table 1). “The current mobile phone market of 1.7 billion shipments is around 10% below the 1.9 billion shipments reached in 2015,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. “If mobile phones don’t provide significant new utility, efficiency or experiences, users won’t upgrade them, and will consequently increase these devices’ life spans.”

The trend for lengthening mobile phone life span began in 2018 and will continue through 2019. Gartner predicts that high-end phone life span will increase from 2.6 years to nearly 2.9 years through 2023. Gartner estimates that sales of smartphones will decline by 2.5% in 2019, which would be the worst decline ever.

5G Phones to Represent 51% of Total Phone Sales in 2023

Earlier this year, mobile operators launched 5G services in parts of the U.S., South Korea, Switzerland, Finland and the U.K., but it will take time for carriers to expand 5G coverage beyond major cities.

By 2020, Gartner estimates that 7% of global communications service providers will have a commercially viable wireless 5G service. This will mark significant progress from 5G proofs of concept and commercial network construction work in 2018.

In the first half of 2019, several phone manufacturers released 5G-enabled smartphones. To improve slowing smartphone sales, mobile manufacturers are looking to introduce more affordable 5G-enabled phones in 2020. “In 2020, 5G-capable phones will represent 6% of total sales of phones. As 5G service coverage increases, user experience will improve and prices will decrease. The leap will occur in 2023 when we expect 5G phones to account for 51% of phone sales,” said Mr. Atwal.

Product managers should ensure high-end phones are differentiated by application integration with other devices, rather than relying just on 5G hardware evolution.

Contraction of the PC Market in 2019

While worldwide PC shipments totaled 63 million units and grew 1.5% in the second quarter of 2019, there is still uncertainty for PC demand in 2019. PC shipments are estimated to total 257 million units in 2019, a 1% decline from 2018. “The ongoing trade dispute between the U.S. and China — and potential imposition of tariffs – are likely to impact the PC market this year.”

Following a strong Windows 10 migration among businesses in the second quarter of 2019, Gartner analysts maintain that 75% of the business PC installed base will have migrated to Windows 10 by the beginning of 2021. “Product managers need to continue promoting the end of Windows 7 support in 2020 as an incentive to migrate to Windows 10,” concluded Mr. Atwal.

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.