Jawa Motorcycles Thumbs the Starter on Perak Fridays for Customers'

Jawa Motorcycles commenced the Perak Fridays initiative for its customers, both existing and prospective, throughout the country. The program entails ‘Night Rides’ led by the newly launched Jawa Perak across city streets and will offer customers a chance to test ride the Perak in its natural habitat – the afterhours and the dark.

Perak Fridays concept of test rides in the dark is a country first, and this will evolve into a full fledged night ride program for Perak owners once the deliveries commence in April 2020. While the Peraks led the way in the first edition of this night ride, Jawa and Jawa forty two owners as well as local Jawa clubs rode along for company. Perak Fridays ride happened in dealerships all across the country.

The Jawa Perak was launched on November 15th 2019 at a price of INR 1,94,500 (ex-showroom, Delhi). The bookings for Perak, India’s first factory custom bobber opened on January 1st this year and continue both at the dealerships and online for a limited period of time. The deliveries of this motorcycle will start from April 2nd this year.

‘Airtel Wi-Fi Calling’ Crosses One million Users in Indian Market

Highlights

* Service Now LIVE across India. Works over any Wi-Fi connection.
* The new technology has dramatically improved indoor network experience for Airtel mobile customers through seamless coverage 
* Over 100 smartphones support Airtel Wi-Fi Calling
* In one of the fastest uptake of a new network technology in India, Airtel Wi-Fi Calling has already crossed one million users.

Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) was the first mobile operator to introduce Voice over Wi-Fi in India. Following the extremely positive customer feedback, the company has accelerated the roll-out of its innovative service across the country.

Airtel Wi-Fi Calling is now available to Airtel mobile customers across India.

Also, the service can now be accessed by Airtel mobile customers over any Home or Public Wi-Fi network, making their indoor service experience truly seamless. 

Airtel Wi-Fi Calling leverages cutting edge technology to enhance the indoor voice calling experience for Airtel smartphone customers. It uses Wi-Fi networks to create a dedicated channel for voice calls and allows customers to make telco grade calls to any network. This dramatically improves customer experience as customers can seamlessly switch to Airtel Wi-Fi Calling.

There is no extra charge for making calls via Airtel Wi-Fi Calling and customers can get started on Airtel Wi-Fi calling on their smartphone without the need for any additional calling App/ SIM.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO – Bharti Airtel said: “We are delighted with the extremely positive customer response for Airtel Wi-Fi Calling. The technology has truly transformed the indoor network quality for Airtel mobile customers, particularly in high population density areas in urban markets. Airtel is also the first to make the service LIVE across India and our customers can use the feature on any Wi-Fi.”   

Here is how you can get started with Airtel Wi-Fi Calling

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

Airtel has been engaging with smartphone manufacturers to make all popular smartphone models compatible with the service.  Over 100 smartphone models across 16 brands are now compatible with Airtel Wi-Fi Calling.

Gamerji Becomes the First Ever Startup from India to Get Selected for Qatar Sports Tech’s Accelerator Program

Gamerji, one of India’s most prominent e-sports tournament platform has become the first ever Indian startup to be selected in the accelerator program by Qatar Sports Tech – A sports-centric startup investor and accelerator based in Doha, Qatar.

Qatar Sports Tech runs an accelerator program for startups that use cutting edge technology to reshape the industry of sports. Having competed against 1600 startups from over 15 countries. Gamerji was selected in the top 10 list of startups from across the world for the program.

As part of the program, Qatar Sports Tech will invest USD 150K in Gamerji and incubate the company while also creating a base in Qatar, opening avenues to the Middle East market.

Launched in 2019, Gamerji was founded by Soham Thacker and Varun Gajjar. Within a short span, Gamerji today already has over 120K gamers on their platform.

Gamerji allows gamers to compete, communicate, share content and win cash prizes by conducting more than 15 tournaments every day. Gamers can leverage their skills and earn money from the hours spent. It presently offers games such as PUBG, Clash Royale and Call of Duty. Offered to the public as a mobile application, it is available for Android and IOS users for convenient use.

Speaking on the expansion and funding, Soham Thacker, Co-Founder, Gamerji said, “E-sports as an industry is rapidly growing and Gamerji has the capacity to have more than a million gamers competing in the next 6 months. The company is also looking to raise its seed round soon.”

E-sports as an industry is fairly new in the Indian market. Most tournaments held are hosted offline or on social media platforms. While the registrations, player management and payments are handled using different platforms. Gamerji has consolidated these procedures and is now a one-stop platform for e-sports tournaments.

While most the e-sports companies are focused on either conducting offline tournaments on a grand scale or sponsoring teams, there has been no attention on casual gamers who comprise of the majority of the market. Gamerji has researched and has taken interest in the mindset of today’s casual gamer who on an average spend over 2+ hours daily playing online games. These gamers are looking for an opportunity to make money and attain recognition by using their skills, and Gamerji provides them with this opportunity.

South African Tourism Aims to Cross 100,000 Visitors from Across Indian Cities in 2020

Highlights

* Unveils evolved brand strategy for 2020~
* Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore continue to be top markets contributing footfalls for South African Tourism~
* Average length of stay saw a YoY increase of 8% in the first half of 2019~
* 1 in 4 Indian arrivals in 2019 were for MICE~
* Pune continues to be one of the fastest emerging source markets for South African Tourism in India~

South African Tourism ushered in the new year with its biggest travel trade initiative in India – the 17th edition of their Annual Roadshow. The roadshow intends to capitalize on the strong potential consumer demand in India in order to surpass the target of 100,000 Indian visitors to South Africa in the current year.

Recognizing the evolving demands of the Indian traveller and in continued efforts to enable trade partners, the 48-member South African trade delegation reiterated the tourism board’s emphasis on expanding the destination and product offering. In addition to experiences, representatives from accommodation establishments, destination management companies, airlines, tourism associations display their products and engage Indian travel and trade partners.

With heavy emphasis on boosting the local economy, the 2020 Roadshow saw the inclusion of 13 new SMMEs, which is double the number that participated in 2019. In addition to creating local job opportunities, the tourism board’s close association with SMMEs allows the introduction of unique products and thus, newer customizable Indian itineraries.

“India continues to remain one of our key focus markets globally and it is encouraging to observe consistent, upward growth from traditional regions like Mumbai, Delhi & Bangalore as well as rising visitor traffic from emerging cities like Pune. With more and more visitors citing South Africa’s scenic natural beauty as reasons to visit, we are focused in our efforts towards opening up newer geographies in our country. This will serve a dual objective of catering to this very consumer demand as well as offering a diversity of itinerary options for our trade partners to sell,” said Neliswa Nkani, Hub Head, MEISEA, South African Tourism.

Bangalore maintained its position as one of the leading source markets for South African Tourism in India. Between January to June 2019, around 6.5% of total Indian visitors to the Rainbow Nation were from Bangalore. 63% visitors from Bangalore travelled solo, while 10% travelled with their partners. According to market research conducted by the tourism board, travellers from Bangalore make the trip to South Africa to soak in scenic beauty (52%), engage with warm locals (24%), and explore wildlife offerings (56%) while also immersing themselves and making the best of the diversity of experiences (30%) offered by the Rainbow Nation. MICE travel (39%) is the primary reason for visitors from Bangalore to travel to the destination. Business travel (20%), leisure travel (18%) and VFR (6%) closely follow suit. The summer and winter holiday periods of April, May and December emerged as preferred travel months amongst Bangaloreans for their South Africa trips.

Sharing further insights, Ms. Nkani stated, “While South Africa has traditionally been perceived as a multi-generation, family destination, it is heartening to see the substantial share of solo travellers in the overall Indian traveller pie. Our evolved brand strategy will help us drive South Africa’s value proposition across stakeholders while creating customized engagement models showcasing destination product offerings to suit the unique requirements from each of our target regions within India.”

With 81,316 Indian arrivals as of October 2019, the destination board shared a positive outlook for the Indian market, noting that as of September 2019, total spends by Indian travellers in South Africa had reached a 4-year high. Average length of stay witnessed a year on year increase of 8% in the first half of 2019.

This year the Roadshow covered Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune paving way for interaction to allow an exchange of detailed market insights and Indian traveller specific trends, thus allowing both partners to deliver and serve better.

CBAN Drives Industry Collaboration by Defining Structure for Interoperable, Multi-DLT Settlement Environment

The Communications Business Automation Network (CBAN) has brought together over 20 carriers and technology developers to design an architecture that brings to life this revolutionary settlement platform.

The members of the Communications Business Automation Network (CBAN), a project initiated by the ITW Global Leaders’ Forum (GLF) in 2018, have today announced the structure and governance principles for the special purpose entity established to create a live Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-enabled automated settlement platform for the ICT Service Provider industry.

The CBAN has published a whitepaper outlining these principals as well as the first release of the Reference Architecture and the initial set of definitions for Data-on-Demand and International Voice settlement that will be offered via the platform.

The publication of the reference architecture, the business product definitions and the whitepaper are a culmination of extensive collaboration between the members of the CBAN, the GLF and a group of leading technology developers. Such collaboration is unique in the industry as it represents the first time that many different ecosystem players have combined efforts to create an interoperable framework that can support multiple business products running on multiple different DLT implementations.

The CBAN Reference Architecture describes the design of the chains, services and solutions endorsed by the CBAN special purpose entity that has been incorporated as a membership organisation in Singapore. The objectives of using the CBN Reference Architecture are to:

Maximise the choice of technology solutions available to ICT Service Providers
Increase the CBAN’s longevity ('future-proofing')
Maximise the CBAN’s scalability in terms of the supported business products, number of technology providers developing solutions for the platform and the number of ICT Service Providers able and prepared to use it.

The CBAN Reference Architecture and the business product definitions were developed through the collaboration of the current CBAN members A1 Telekom Austria, BTS, Colt Technology Services, Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier, IDT, Orange, PCCW Global, Tata Communications, Telefónica International Wholesale Services, and Telstra, together with AT&T, Sparkle and Verizon, and a group of leading technology providers Amartus, Clear Blockchain Technologies, ConsenSys, CSG, Difitek, Internet Mobile Communications, Orbs, R3, Subex, Syniverse and TOMIA.

Commenting on the release of the whitepaper and the CBAN Reference Architecture, Louisa Gregory, lead of the CBAN working group and Chief of Staff at Colt said: “We set out in June a vision of the benefits a DLT-enabled automated settlement can deliver to the ICT Service Provider industry. The period of intense collaboration between carriers and technology vendors since then has only reinforced the strength of that vision, which has now culminated in the creation of the CBAN entity and the publication of its role, governance principles and technical framework. We are as convinced as ever that an automated settlement platform to benefit the whole industry can and will become a reality in the coming months.”

Marc Halbfinger, CEO of PCCW Global and Chair of the GLF, said: “We have taken a major step closer to achieving automated interoperability and settlement of ICT Service Provider traffic. We agreed early on that this transformation can be most successful if adopted by the whole industry. That is why we are assuring complete transparency by sharing everything we are doing to allow anyone to ask questions and to engage. This published whitepaper and the first releases of the technical documents will further drive ICT industry engagement.”

Jussi Makela, Director of the GLF and project manager of the CBAN working group said “The level of support and engagement from every carrier and technology developer involved over the past six months since we launched the CBAN project has been incredible. This has allowed us to transition this very quickly from a study group into an actual development project that is expected to be in-production and delivering real value to participating members before the end of 2020.”

Tata Motors Opens Bookings for its New Tata Altroz BS-VI Passenger Vehicles Range

Tata Motors has announced the bookings open of its completely refreshed product portfolio, which will consist of the BS-VI models of the Tiago, Tigor, and the Nexon. With this portfolio launch, Tata Motors officially migrates to Bharat Stage-VI in the passenger vehicles segment. The new range of BS-VI products will sport revamped designs with all-new features and is set to be priced higher than their predecessors.

Customers can book these products with an amount of INR 11,000 by visiting the nearest Tata Motors authorized dealership or their respective product websites. The said BS-VI range of products will be launched nationwide later this month.

Commenting on this occasion, Mr. Mayank Pareek, President, Passenger Vehicles Business Unit, Tata Motors, said, “Tata Motors has been vigorously working towards a seamless transition to BS-VI. We are delighted to have reached this milestone and are elated to be the first in the business to announce the introduction of an entire range of BS-VI products at once. This newly designed and refreshed range is in alignment with sustainability guidelines while still delivering segment leading performance. We hope that our new range will contribute towards a cleaner and greener India while providing innovative transport solutions to customers and industry alike.”

With class leading design aesthetics, the entire range brings into play the Impact 2.0 Design language. A brief description of the products is as follows:

Tiago:

The new Tiago sports a more confident and mature look. Providing a thrilling experience along with comfort and convenience, this hatch is sure to lure its customer set.

To book the new Tata Tiago customers can visit https://www.tatatiago.com/

Tigor:

The new Tigor is confident yet understated and offers an executive-oriented design to its customers. With its stylish look and enhanced technology, the Tigor delivers absolute performance while providing regal comfort to its occupants.

To book the new Tata Tigor customers can visit https://tigor.tatamotors.com/

Nexon:

With its aggressive, sporty and modern look, the Nexon is one of the most popular Compact SUVs that has been well received all. With a complete new face, this new Nexon will be revolutionary not only in terms of technology but will offer its customers with enhanced convenience in all aspects.

Vishal & Shekhar, Sunil Grover Rock Bangalore at the Imperial Blue Superhit Nights

Imperial Blue is proud to present its 6th season - ROCK & LOL, an extensive 11-city tour across India. The tour kicked off in Guwahati on 24th November 2019 and after rocking Jorhat on 30th November, Asansol on 1st December and Jaipur on 14th December, it came to Bangalore on 11th January 2020. Through this new concept, audience witnessed true ‘Men Will Be Men’ moments where the energetic live music was sandwiched between an overdose of comedy making it a perfect one-stop for a memorable night. Superhit Nights has performances by some of the most talented bunch of musicians and comedians on one stage, and with thoughtfully curated integration of both, it made the audience Rock ‘n’ LOL.

Season 6 artists Vishal & Shekhar, Sunil Grover, Zubeen Garg, KK-Mohan, Jassi Gill and B Praak are all set to create a new benchmark in live entertainment. The tour now moves on to Ambala, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Dibrugarh, Mangalore culminating in Vizag.

Bangalore concert witnessed capacity crowd at White Orchid Convention Centre, Hebbal where the audience danced on the enthralling numbers of Vishal & Shekhar such as dared disco, gulabo, slow motion mein, desi girl among others and laughed on some of the specially curated comic acts by Sunil Grover.

Announcing the new season, Ishwindar Singh, General Manager Marketing, Pernod Ricard India, said, “This year’s Superhit Nights is targeted towards the two passion points of our consumers - Humor and Music. This concept truly activates the emotion of ‘Men Will Be Men’ giving our consumers an electrifying experience with the combination of Bollywood superhit songs from Vishal & Shekhar and endless humor from Sunil Grover.”

Prior to the event, “The dynamic music director duo, Vishal & Shekhar said, “We always try to give our fans a unique experience which we can all cherish together, and that’s what's most exciting for us about Imperial Blue Superhit Nights season 6. A seamless combination of music and comedy coming together on one stage will be an all-new level in live entertainment! “Performing for an audience alongside Sunil Grover’s unbeatable comic acts will be an experience to look forward to. Can’t wait to show the audience what we 3 have in store for them. We are ready to Rock and LOL”

Known for his memorable characters and impeccable comedy timing, Sunil Grover also said, “I am very thrilled to be a part of Imperial Blue Super hit Nights season 6 and hoping to make the audience Laugh out Loud (LOL). I am curating some unique acts for the audience, something they will instantly connect with. Bringing together two genres is going to be very entertaining and a one-of-a-kind experience for both Vishal & Shekhar and me. I am eagerly looking forward to meeting lot of people and interacting with them on stage in this mind-blowing event”.

Previous season of Imperial Blue Super Hit Nights had seen the queen of dancing numbers, Neha Kakkar perform across 7 cities where more than 100,000 audiences attended the concerts of Imperial Blue Super Hit Nights and were left entranced.

About Seagram’s Imperial Blue
Seagram’s Imperial Blue is the largest brand of Group Pernod Ricard by Volume. The brand was born in 1997. The brand has become synonymous with the word Man thanks mainly to its iconic communication line ‘Men will be Men’ built on the insight – Confident men take on life with optimism.

About Pernod Ricard
Pernod Ricard is the world’s no. 2 in wines and spirits with consolidated Sales of € 8,682 million in FY16. Created in 1975 by the merger of Ricard and Pernod, the Group has undergone sustained development, based on both organic growth and acquisitions: Seagram (2001), Allied Domecq (2005) and Vin &Sprit (2008). Pernod Ricard holds one of the most prestigious brand portfolios comprising of : Blenders Pride, Royal Stag, Imperial Blue, 100 Pipers, Absolut Vodka, Ricard pastis, Ballantine’s, Chivas Regal, Royal Salute and The Glenlivet Scotch whiskies, Jameson Irish whiskey, Martell cognac, Havana Club rum, Beefeater gin and well known wines like Jacob’s Creek, Brancott Estate, Campo Viejo and Kenwood. Pernod Ricard employs a workforce of 18,500 people and operates through a decentralized organisation. Pernod Ricard is strongly committed to a sustainable development policy and encourages responsible consumption. Pernod Ricard’s strategy and ambition are based on 3 key values that guide its expansion: entrepreneurial spirit, mutual trust and a strong sense of ethics. Pernod Ricard is listed on Euronext (Ticker: RI; ISIN code: FR0000120693) and is part of the CAC 40 index.