Jaguar Land Rover’s Lifestyle Collection Now Available Online in India

The Jaguar range in India includes XE (starting at ₹ 44.98 Lakh), XF (starting at ₹ 49.78 Lakh),  F-PACE (starting at ₹ 63.78 Lakh), XJ (starting at ₹ 111.30 Lakh) and F-TYPE (starting at ₹ 90.93 Lakh). All prices mentioned are ex-showroom prices in India.

Land Rover Product Portfolio in India

The Land Rover range in India includes the Discovery Sport (starting at ₹ 44.68 Lakh), Range Rover Evoque (starting at ₹ 52.06 Lakh), the Range Rover Velar (starting at ₹ 71.86 Lakh) Discovery (starting at ₹ 75.18 Lakh), , Range Rover Sport (starting at ₹ 86.71 Lakh) and Range Rover (starting at ₹ 181.86 Lakh). All prices mentioned are ex-showroom prices in India.

Jaguar Land Rover Retailer Network in India

Jaguar Land Rover vehicles are available in India through 26 authorised outlets in Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Kochi, Karnal, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mangalore, Mumbai, Noida, Pune, Raipur, Vijayawada and Surat. 

Airtel Unveils Voice Over Wi-Fi Service ‘Airtel Wi-Fi Calling’ in Karnataka

Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s largest integrated telecommunications company launched its voice over Wi-Fi service – ‘Airtel Wi-Fi Calling’ in Karnataka. This follows the launch of the service in Delhi-NCR.

‘Airtel Wi-Fi Calling’ is designed to enhance voice calling experience for Airtel smartphone customers, especially when they are indoors. With ‘Airtel Wi-Fi Calling’, customers with Wi-Fi at home or office will get excellent signal quality indoors.

There will be no extra charge for calls made over ‘Airtel Wi-Fi Calling’ and the application consumes minimal data. The service is currently available to Airtel customers in Karnataka and Delhi-NCR and will be gradually rolled out across India. 

C. Surendran CEO - Bharti Airtel, Karnataka & Odisha said, “VoWiFi Calling is a major expansion of our network, allowing Airtel customers to get coverage anywhere they have Wi-Fi connectivity. With VoWiFI, customers can access these Wi-Fi networks to talk and use data even when cellular service may be limited. The experience is easy to use and similar to adding thousands of new towers overnight to improve coverage for our customers.”

‘Airtel Wi-Fi Calling’ does not require any app and can be configured on the smartphone by following the steps mentioned below:

1. Check smartphone compatibility on airtel.in/wifi-calling
2. Upgrade device operating software to the latest version that supports Wi-Fi Calling*
3. Go to Settings on your mobile phone and Switch on Wi-Fi Calling
4. Keep VoLTE switched on as well for a seamless experience

Currently, the following smartphones support ‘Airtel Wi-Fi Calling’

Apple: All iPhone models starting 6s and above
Xiaomi: Redmi K20, Redmi K20 Pro & POCO F1
Samsung: J6, A10s, On6, S10, S10+, S10e, M20
OnePlus: All OnePlus 7 and 6 series devices

Airtel is working with all leading smartphone brands to roll out compatibility with ‘Airtel Wi-Fi Calling’. The service is currently compatible with Airtel Xstream Fiber home broadband and will soon be compatible with all broadband services and Wi-Fi hotspots. For more details, log on to airtel.in/wifi-calling

*This update is provided by handset manufacturer. Check with handset brand if you cannot find this upgrade.

A Mesmerizing Evening with Ronkini Gupta, Shivamani and Dr. L. Subramaniam on Dec 27 at Dr B R Ambedkar Bhawan

Venue:Dr B R AmbedkarBhawan, Millers Road, Vasanth Nagar, Bengaluru
Date: Friday, December 27, 2019
Time: 6:30 PM onwards
Note: Tickets available on Bookmyshow

Note to the Editor:

About HCL Concerts: The conservation and promotion of India’s art and cultural heritage is very close to HCL’s heart. To this end, HCL has been organizing HCL Concerts for 21 years, dedicated to nurturing and promoting talent rooted in the glorious heritage of Indian classical performing arts. Concerts under the umbrella of HCL Concerts are organized at Delhi NCR, Lucknow, Nagpur, Madurai, and Chennai in India and at New York and San Francisco in the US regularly throughout the year. Over 600 artists have graced this platform and have contributed towards reinvigorating the Indian classical performing arts.

Over the years, more platforms have been developed to contribute to the growth of the Indian performing arts ecosystem. Most notable of these are the HCL music App, allowing music lovers across the world a chance to enjoy the most comprehensive collection of classical music from the comforts of their home for free, and HCL Digital Concerts, a talent identification and nurturing program aimed at showcasing the talented and upcoming classical performing artists to a global audience through a digital medium.

About the artists:

RONKINI GUPTA:  A distinction holder, SangeetVisharad from GandharvaMahavidyalaya in Hindustani Classical, Ronkini Gupta spent her formative years vocal training with a renowned exponent of Gwalior Gharana, Shri ChandrakantApte. Many years of training later with UstadDilshad Khan, Pt. SamareshChowdhary, and Late Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan Sahab she came into her own style of singing with influences from both Gwalior and Kirana style of singing. At present, she is training under the guidance of Arshad Ali Khan of Kiranagharana.

Exploring various avenues, ranging from Hindi, to regional cinema, she has also forayed into Indian Classical and Jazz Fusion, and yet pure Indian Classical remains her first love. She has performed in different concerts within India and abroad, a notable one being her participation in “Indian Music Festival, 2017” organized by the tabla exponent Shri Mridang Raj Suchak.

L. SUBRAMANIAM:L. Subramaniam, India’s violin icon is the serenity of an Indian musician combined with the magnetism of a western star. Constantly propelled from Singapore to Paris, from Delhi to Los Angeles, he has conquered every audience with the elegance and virtuosity of his style.

His career as a childhood prodigy brought him into contact with the greatest musicians and he soon imposed himself as a master of the violin. At a very young age, he was honoured with the title “Violin Chakravarthy” (emperor of the violin). Till date, Dr. Subramaniam has produced, performed, collaborated, conducted and close to two hundred recordings.

Dr. L. Subramaniam is the only musician who has performed and recorded South Indian Classical Music, Western Classical Music, both Orchestral and non-Orchestral, and also composed for and conducted major orchestras, scored for films, collaborated with a wide range of some of the greatest musicians, from different genres of music including jazz, occidental, jugalbandis with North Indian musicians, world music and global fusion.

A. SHIVAMANI:  A. SHIVAMANI, son of a renowned drummer S.M. Anandan, is a percussionist. He plays many instruments including drums, Octoban, Darbuka, Udukai, and Kanjira. He started his musical career at the age of 12 and his first studio break was playing for one of South India’s leading music composers – K. V. Mahadevan. By the age of 13, he had started building his professional music career with S.P. Balasubramaniam, who he considers to be his godfather.

He started as a substitute in music maestro Ilayaraja’s group. He was keen in taking inspiration from Indian classical music. Impressed by his dedication, tabla stalwart UstadZakir Hussain invited A. SHIVAMANI to join him for a concert.

He has also played for A.R. Rahman’s most popular scores ‘Mustafa…Mustafa,’ of KadhalDesam, ‘Humma..Humma’ of Bombay and ‘Chaiya…Chaiya’ of Uyire. He was also a prominent team member of Bollywood-themed musical – Bombay Dreams. One of his cherished experiences is sharing the stage with Billy Cobham for a concert in Mumbai’s Rang Bhavan. From then on there was no looking back, as he collaborated with renowned musicians of the country and continued with his experimentations.

Mercedes-Benz Unveils ‘Premiere Express Prime’ to Get your Car Serviced Within 3 Hours of Free*

First-of-its-kind aftersales initiative in the automotive industry customers who are time-pressed due to their busy lifestyle

* Mercedes-Benz customers can get their car serviced within 3 hours. If not done in 3 hours, the service will be offered for free*
* Initiative is a part of the “Efficiency focus” by Mercedes-Benz India Customer Services team
* Part of 25 initiatives taken by team Customer Services to celebrate 25 years of Mercedes-Benz in India
* ‘Premiere Express Prime’ service launched in Bengaluru today; will launch soon in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad

India’s largest luxury carmaker and Mercedes-Benz today launched one-of-its kind innovative service program ‘Premiere Express Prime’. This initiative aims at enhancing the customer’s ownership experience, thus making after-sales experience as a key differentiator in the luxury car segment.

Premier Express Prime is an “efficiency focus” initiative from Mercedes-Benz, which enables complete servicing of a Mercedes-Benz in three hours. This innovative concept is made possible due to dedicated infrastructure within the service center comprising of  dedicated bays, dedicated tools & equipment and dedicated special tools A dedicated team for ‘Premier Express Prime’ comprising of one Team Leader and two Certified Maintenance technicians’ makes the quick servicing turnaround possible. This service is now available in Bengaluru and will roll out soon in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. Premier Express Prime however, excludes major service and repairs, warranty repairs or service on specialty AMG vehicles.

Customers benefit by having their average service time for maintenance of vehicles reduced drastically. Further, there is reduced effort for the customer as they have to travel to the service center only once for the service of the vehicle.

Shekhar Bhide, Vice President, Customer Services and Corporate Affairs, Mercedes-Benz India commented, “The long term success of an automotive brand, especially in the luxury car segment in India, is decided on service excellence and hassle free ownership experience provided to the customer. Mercedes-Benz believes in winning customer loyalty through a delightful, exclusive and outstanding service experience. With the launch of ‘Premiere Express Prime’ we aim to reduce the turnaround time of servicing a car to 3 hours, thereby saving precious time of our customers who have a busy lifestyle. After-sales is a key element in our growth strategy in India and we are confident this initiative will help us build on the trust we have acquired from our customers over the decades. In the year 2020, “Efficiency focus” and “Retention offensive” are the key strategies for Customer Services”

Services covered under Premier Express Prime will be:

* Service A type - Oil and oil filter check and replacement, Brake Fluid replacement, Dust Filter Replacement, Wheel rotation, Coolant Antifreeze mixture ratio check, Washing, Interior & Exterior Cleaning
* Service B type - Oil and oil filter check and replacement, Brake Fluid replacement, Dust Filter Replacement, Wheel rotation, Coolant Antifreeze mixture ratio check, Washing, Interior & Exterior Cleaning, Fuel Filter check, Air Filter replacement
* Diesel Fuel filter
* Brake discs  and Brake pads
* Wheel Balancing

STT GDC India Opens its 15th 18MW Green Data Centre Facility Spread Over 400,000 sq.ft in Bengaluru

Highlights

* Further enhances market leadership as India’s largest data centre operator with the addition of a purpose-built hyper scale facility spread over 400,000 sq.ft. adding 18MW of IT load to its total existing capacity
* Over INR 600 crore will be invested into build the state-of-the-art, purpose-built data centre with its infrastructure developed to the highest industry standards 

STT Global Data Centres India Private Limited (STT GDC India) has announced the opening of STT Bengaluru DC 3 in Whitefield, Bengaluru. The new Tier III data centre marks the first facility to be inaugurated as part of STT GDC India’s multi-megawatt capacity expansion plan, spanning major cities in the country.

The newly constructed 18MW, purpose-built facility is spread over 400,000 sq.ft. The entire data centre is designed to meet the highest benchmark in green practices and is built from ground up, drawing on STT GDC India’s combined design, construction, engineering, and operations expertise. It is designed to meet the modern day high-density computing needs of our customers for Mobility, e-Commerce, IoT, Cloud and Big Data.

The wide array of connectivity options comprise of configuration alternatives, including shared rack space, individual racks and cage. STT Bengaluru DC-3 will deliver bespoke solutions suiting customised needs and multi-megawatt dedicated spaces catering for both retail and wholesale customers.

Key facts and figures of STT Bengaluru DC-3

* State-of-the-art, purpose-built data centre (G+5) located in Bengaluru’s best-known business district, Whitefield
* The land, building (core and shell), mechanical, electrical plant and equipment are entirely owned by STT GDC India
* With the highest structural and technical specifications, the building is built with post-tension slab technology, spread over 400,000 sq.ft.
* An IGBC green building – Gold, which minimises the building’s impact on the climate and natural environment
* The building is built for seismic zone 3, which is one level higher than required making it one of the sturdiest buildings in the city   
* Floor loading: 1500 kg/sqm to 2000 kg/sqm & 50,000 sq.ft. of seamless floor plate area. With clear height of 5.5 metres, the data centre floor is designed to accommodate racks up to 58U
* Large weather-proof, loading dock with two freight lifts (3000 kg capacity each) to transport preloaded racks seamlessly
* Carrier-neutral and carrier dense facility with large MMR rooms offering a wide array of connectivity choices approaching the building from three diversified paths
* Secured with a perimeter of multi-level security zones, including 24/7 manned security, CCTV video surveillance, identification with biometric access control, and security breach alarms
* Uptime institute Tier-III compliant for continued mission imperatives for design
* Onsite 66kV GIS substation receiving power from two independent power substations for the highest level of power availability
* State-of-the-art, building automation and monitoring system
* Large capacity reliable HT generators with fuel back up of more than 48 hours of continuous operation

Continuing STT GDC India’s strong focus on sustainability, this new data centre includes design features of high-efficiency chillers, reduced water consumption through intelligent design, and energy-efficient uninterruptible power supply.

At the launch, Sumit Mukhija, CEO – STT GDC India, said, “Bengaluru is a hub for many start-ups as well as ITES, e-Commerce, Biotech, and Fintech entities. As the IT city’s largest operational data centre, I’m excited to announce that STT Bengaluru DC-3 marks the first data centre to be inaugurated as part of our multi-megawatt capacity expansion across India, designed to strengthen the backbone infrastructure of the nation’s Silicon Valley. The new facility is also backed by our commitment to providing best-in-class data centre infrastructure for varied retail and wholesale clients”

The latest expansion add ups to 15 data centres under STT GDC India’s ownership and management, and increases the power capacity to over 90 MW of critical IT load across 8 cities, further strengthening its market-leading position as India’s data centre provider of choice for customers with mission-critical IT requirements.

 About STT Global Data Centres India Private limited

A joint venture between ST Telemedia Global Data Centres and Tata Communications, STT Global Data Centres India Private Limited (STT GDC India) is a market-leading data centre service provider with the largest data centre footprint in the country. Since 2004, STT GDC India has been managing the country’s largest raised floor area and critical IT load with now 15 facilities across 8 major cities serving over 1000 customers, including many Fortune 500 companies. Its mission-critical solutions comprise of best-in-class offerings delivering industry-leading uptime to its customers. STT GDC India now operates three of the country’s largest data centre facilities in Pune, Chennai and Bengaluru. For more information, visit www.sttelemediagdc.in

Evolving Engagement Models and Skillsets in the Age of Business Transformation

By Raj Vattikuti, Founder and Chairman of Altimetrik Corp

Technology is changing the world at a speed never seen before. This is dramatically changing customer behavior and their expectations from businesses, who are struggling hard to keep up to the tide. Business transformation is what every enterprise needs today to stay relevant in the near future, which goes beyond the purview of what digital transformation alone brings to the table.

This is also changing the way business has traditionally engaged with technology, which was a lot more in silo and disparately connected. Today, technology is the key driving force in the way businesses run both internally and externally. The expectation of the business from technology, therefore, is now more connected and integrated. Hence, traditional engagement models are failing in several instances and new technology models are gaining more success in their partnerships.

The point being that business transformation requires a whole new approach and a different set of people with specific skill sets. Forward looking enterprises who are seriously looking at modernizing their business and evolving customer experience, need a special type of companies to partner with as compared to traditional consulting and outsourcing models.

What does it mean? Enterprises are looking for companies who bring ‘practitioners’ who can create end-to-end solutions, and work with both business and technology to achieve relevant business outcomes. They have the ability to create the business transformation architecture based on their horizontal domain-based knowledge.

Practitioners are people who work closely with business to identify and define the set of business outcomes, prioritize, and build an incremental roadmap, instead of a typical big bang approach that usually fails to address definitive issues. Especially when it comes to data related transformation, practitioners are able to define the relevant sources of data. Then they bring data engineering scrum teams who assimilate data from various sources and connect them back to business. They are also the data scientists who work with the business and technology teams to apply the effective algorithms, build dashboards, and provide effective and predictive analytics. Then there are the transformation product engineering teams who ultimately create the products that are derived from these insights and are built to deliver outcomes.

Another crucial part of a business transformation program is the discipline and the governance framework that centrally manages, monitors, and ensures the effectiveness of the initiative. Enterprises need to focus on an innovation framework that helps in maintaining this discipline and add more value to the whole transformation exercise.

This is applicable to every business, be it in the retail, manufacturing, healthcare, automotive or the financial services domain, where change is rapid and directly affects the consumer. It takes one disruptor to bite the largest chunk of pie from established behemoths in any domain. As Einstein has famously said, “we cannot solve our problems using the same thinking we used when we created them.” We have several examples where the failure to evolve the thought process has led to the extinction of successful, established businesses.

Today, however, I feel quite hopeful as I see many enterprises have started to change their thinking towards technology and the providers they choose as partners. It will be interesting to wait and watch the remarkable outcomes these new partnerships will bring to the market and to consumers. 

vivo-CMR Study: Average Indian Spends Over 1800 Hours a Year on their Smartphone

Global smartphone brand vivo in association with Cybermedia Research (CMR), has announced the results of the study titled ‘Smartphone and their impact on human relationships’, to dive deep into the influence of mobile devices on the consumers and their social interactions. As the smartphone becomes the center of universe in our lives, its impact on society, on behaviors and every day human connections is significant. The study evaluates and reports the various dimensions of uninhibited smartphone usage while highlighting the trends, patterns and habits that influence smartphone user actions, moods and preferences.

With smartphones entering every facet of our lives, the survey aimed to understand how mobile devices are altering lives and relationships of users. In the report, it was found that 75% of the respondents agreed to have owned a smartphone in their teens and of them, 41% were hooked to phones even before graduating from high school. From showcasing the benefits to the depth of addiction, the vivo and CMR study tries to understand the behavioral changes pertaining to smartphone usage.

The vivo and CMR ‘Smartphones and their Impact on Human Relationships’ report is based on a survey conducted online as well as face to face across top 8 cities in India. The report cuts across age-groups and demographics: youth, working professionals, housewives spanning the age groups of 18 to 45. The total number of respondents were 2000 out of which 36% were females and 64% were males.

According to Nipun Marya, Director Brand Strategy, vivo India, “Smartphones are ubiquitous in our lives today, be it connecting with friends, family, entertainment, eating out or even travel or entertainment. As the “born in the net” generation grows up as digital natives, there is a fundamental change underway within society- redefining relationships, interactions and the very fabric of human emotions and exchanges. This transformation is also an opportunity to harness and drive positive change, reinforce balance and responsible proliferation of technology and its usage amongst consumers. As a brand that believes in the well-being of our customers, we commissioned this study to get insight into a very pertinent issue that we collectively must address and debate as a community.”

Commenting on the survey findings, Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group, CMR  said, “While the explosive surge in smartphones in India has enabled Indians with not just communicating with loved ones, but with myriad other uses cases, including  in consuming entertainment and in expressing themselves, our survey results demonstrate that the  dependency over smartphones has increased. While smartphone will continue to be the primary go-to device, smartphone users have realized that periodically switching-off would help benefit their personal health.”

Some of the key findings are as below:

* Average Indian spends 1/3rd of their waking hours on their phone, which translates to 1800 hours a year
* 30% fewer people meet family and loved ones multiple times a month (now vs 10 Years ago)
* 1 in 3 people feel that they can't even have a 5 min. conversation with friends and family without checking their phones
* 73% respondents agree that if smartphone usage continues at the current rate or grows, that it is likely to impact your mental or physical health.
* 3 out of 5 people say that it's important to have a life separate from mobile phone and that could help them lead to happier lives.
* For results based on a randomly chosen sample of this size, there is 95% confidence that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 2.2% of what they would be if the entire population had been surveyed.