Mahindra Electric Launches New Brand Identity; Celebrates Over 200 Million Electric Kilometres on Indian Roads

Mahindra Electric Mobility Ltd, a part of the USD 20.7 billion Mahindra Group, and the pioneers of electric mobility in India unveiled a new corporate brand identity with a new logo and tagline - ‘Spark the New’. The new brand identity is meant to give the brand a renewed thrust to achieve its global ambition of being a leading player in electric mobility technology solutions.

The identity also simplifies the portfolio so that the vehicles and hardware solutions are offered under ME branding and the software solutions are offered under NEMO branding. The new identity further enhances the brand for a digital world by ensuring the logo works seamlessly on digital assets as well as on the EV components and vehicles. This move will help the brand approach the Indian and global markets with a clarity of purpose and a sharply defined identity.

The launch of the new brand coincides with the completion of over 200 million electric kilometers by Mahindra EVs on Indian road. The 200 million plus eKilometers done by Mahindra’s electric vehicles has helped save over 22,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions in India. This translates into the need to plant over 10 lakh trees to absorb the equivalent levels of emissions.

The company also unveiled its new vision of being a leading brand in enabling customized electric mobility solutions through cutting-edge technology. The new identity intends to position the organization as the preferred e-mobility partner for OEMs across the globe.

Speaking at the launch of the new brand identity, Mahesh Babu, CEO, Mahindra Electric said, “Today, with a decade’s worth of experience in electric vehicle technology, we are completely prepared to make India an EV hub and take our technologies global. Our new positioning is an acknowledgement of this ambition while being a testament to our pioneering past. It emphasizes our ambition to innovate and create cutting-edge technology with agility, such that we deliver products which make a positive difference to society.”

He further added, “Our new identity truly recognizes the essence of ‘Mahindra Electric’ and there are no better words to capture this than ‘Spark The New’. These powerful words resonate not just with us at Mahindra Electric, but are a clarion call for everyone to join the movement towards sustainable mobility.”

New Logo:

In the new logo, the word ‘electric’ has been derived from the characters of the word Mahindra, thereby ensuring uniformity and recognition. The characters of the word ‘electric’ have been made lowercase to make the brand more approachable.

The red colour in the logo helps us to ensure our identity is deeply connected with the parent Mahindra brand and the blue ensures our connection with electric mobility is further strengthened. 

New tagline:

Our ‘Spark the New’ positioning is a rallying cry for action and works with both internal and the external stakeholders. It has an active voice and a vibrant energy that ensures our actions are always guided by innovation in order to drive new thinking, new ideas and new solutions in the electric mobility technology space.

About Mahindra Electric

Mahindra Electric, a part of the USD 20.7 billion Mahindra Group is a global pioneer in the development and production of electric vehicles. Mahindra Electric is India’s only EV manufacturer with indigenously developed EV technologies that have won global accolades. The Mahindra Group has one of the most diversified portfolios of electric vehicles with the e2oPlus hatch, the eVerito sedan and the eSupro mini-van and Mahindra Treo range of three-wheelers.

Pushing the limits of technology and innovation, Mahindra has acknowledged the need to redefine mobility at every step. This has led to a vision with a desire to transform; a vision which provides an imagination which is more sustainable and more dependable. Venturing into the paradigm of alternative technology has helped Mahindra enable a clean, green and a smarter tomorrow.

Hello. This is Akeira: Intelligent Virtual Assistant Capabilities Just Got Easier to Set Up

Uniphore, an early conversation service automation category leader, is expanding its solution offerings by delivering akeiraTM 2.0, an intelligent conversational digital assistant. Akeira helps automate conversations and reduce the cost of customer service for enterprises while providing  a better customer experience. Key features and associated business outcomes include: 

Simplifying and accelerating deployment time of conversational digital assistants:

Visual modeler: create and edit conversational flows on the fly for easy, rapid deployments
Training: train the intents in a language for a channel and deploy across multiple channels 
Virtual agent health tracking: track intent served and call handling capacity 
Sand box for testing: simulate an intent in a sand box before moving to production

Integration that brings cost savings and better customer satisfaction:

Assisted training: rapid and continuous intent training to improve akeira™’s NLU models to cut down on live agent volume
Live agent transfer: intent-based routing or “hot transfer” of calls to a live agent based on contextual scenarios such as multiple failures or escalating customer sentiments or irritation
Business end point connector service: secure connectivity to business applications and traditional interactive voice response systems
Granular control of intents: flexibility to leverage intent-based features at will or to disengage in live environments for smoother roll outs

Uniphore conversational digital agents do what humans don’t like to

Akeira conversational digital agents work alongside call center humans to radically boost productivity and customer experience. They handle simple transactional conversations which shouldn’t require a human agent in the first place. They make suggestions during a call, proactively look up information and can take actions. Uniphore’s automated digital agents resolve issues in real time, with the capability to seamlessly hand back to a human at any time.

Akeira is an intuitive, flexible, intelligent solution that allows you to build out a digital virtual assistant on existing interactive voice response channels, web chat and mobile app channels to interact with the customers answering or responding to a wide range of questions and requests. Secure enterprise connectors to standard CRM, ticketing and other backend applications further widen the type of requests and queries that can be handled. Akeira is multilingual, supporting global languages and flexible deployment options whether it is on cloud or on premise.

Advanced functionality to save time

At the core of akeira is a new visual modeler. This easy-to-use interface gives administrators the ability to design and deploy entire conversations from start to finish in a few minutes.  Enterprise administrators can create an intent flow, design responses, train user input variations for intent identification and simulate intent behavior from a single interface.  The Visual modeler is scalable and can be trained once and deployed across multiple channels. Akeira’s interfaces will guide a user through every step of the conversation creation process.

Once deployed, akeira will keep track of real-time performance metrics using a virtual assistant health card that will identify the need for corrective action in a virtual assistant and enable administrators to take these actions based on data from the health card.

The success or failure of a virtual assistant is greatly impacted by its ability to learn continuously from conversations that have happened and the outcomes or next actions. To help ensure more effective interactions, akeira now has a function called “assisted training” which is a semi autonomous machine learning capability where an organization can continuously train akeira based on historical conversations and even allow users to identify patterns for new intents. Our digital agents act just like humans. Akeira can personalize content and understands sentiment, trends, and intent.

Extending akeira for even better customer experiences

With an extensive list of features and functionality already built into akeira, there are additional areas and applications where akeira can be deployed.  For example, the AI and automation capabilities can be leveraged across digital channels including web, mobile and social channels.  Additional support for more languages and more automated machine learning capabilities are in development which will provide both enterprises and end customers a cost-efficient, personalized, accurate and predictive omnichannel customer experience.

“As virtual assistants and various bots came on the scene a few years ago, many organizations rushed in, believing it would solve their problems of scale and reduce costs.  But that proved false,” said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal at ZK Research. “In order for these bots to be successful, there needs to be capabilities which help not only set up but maintain and monitor the outcomes as well as help make recommendations for improvement. Uniphore’s latest akeira offering is a solid step forward in this direction”

“Customers have high expectations for any interactions with customer service agents, both real and virtual,” said Samith Ramachandran, senior vice president of product engineering at Uniphore. “Our latest akeira offering steps up the features and functionality of intelligent virtual assistants and makes them easier to set up, more cost effective to manage and, ultimately, smarter in the way they respond.”

About Uniphore:

Uniphore is the global leader in conversational service automation with offices in the U.S., India and Asia. The Company’s vision is to disrupt an outdated customer service model by bridging the gap between human and machine using voice, AI and automation so that every voice, on every call, is truly heard.

Uniphore enables businesses globally to deliver transformational customer service by providing an automation platform where digital agents take over transactional conversations from humans and coach agents during calls and accurately predict language, emotion and intent – all in real time. Conversational automation and analytics, conversational assistant and conversational security elevate how enterprises support and engage their customers, build loyalty and realize efficiencies.

Software Reviews Firm G2 Has Doubled Its Headcount, Revenue in India; Raised $100 Million So Far

G2, a US based software review platform, provides authentic over one million user reviews to more than 5 million people across the globe to help them find the best software and services for their business. Thousands of software vendors market their products on G2 to reach these buyers. Since acquiring Indian start-up, Siftery, in 2018, the company has more than doubled its employee headcount in Bengaluru and increased software reviews and traffic in India by 400%. Siftery was built to help companies manage their software spend.

Relaunched in March 2019 as G2 Track, the offering has expanded to help businesses manage all aspects of their software spend from managing contracts to account usage and compliance. Both the Siftery solutions and the team have been fully integrated into G2 and provided the foundation for the G2 operations in Bengaluru.

Addressing the media at its G2 office, Mr. Godard Abel, Co Founder and CEO of G2 said, "When we acquired Siftery, it had about 20 employees in India and we have since more than doubled the employee headcount to 55. We have not only expanded in headcount but also in office space. Our entry into the Indian market through this acquisition has helped us grow our revenue in India by 2X and we intend to grow many folds in India."

G2 has registered 5 million software buyers coming each month to search for software solutions and even though the US market accounts for over 60% of traffic, India is the fastest growing region and already accounts for 10% of global traffic. G2 expects its Indian market to double on a yearly basis. Europe accounts for just over 20% of the global users.

Abel recently attended SaaSBooMi in Chennai, which is Asia’s largest Software as a Service (SaaS) conference for SaaS founders. With the favorable market conditions and learnings from first-generation Indian SaaS startups like Zoho, second generation SaaS startups, like Freshworks, and Chargebee, are poised to replicate and even surpass the success of companies that came before them, remarks Abel.

"All are familiar with TripAdvisor, an online travel company that operates a global platform with user-generated content, price comparison tools, and online reservations for transportation, lodging, travel experiences, and restaurants. Similarly, since startups want to expand overseas, G2 gives them the platform with real-time reviews and helps them grow,” remarks Abel.

Abel said that it is exciting for G2 since startups like Freshworks, a cloud-based helpdesk software, became the third startup company in India to be called a unicorn in the year 2018. "We strongly believe this is the wave is for software product companies in India and they will become emerging global leaders.”

G2 has over 2,000 customers who list their products on G2, including, AWS, IBM, Hubspot, and also Indian based SaaS companies like Zoho, Freshdesk, and Druva, who all use G2 marketplace to sell their products.

In respect to the Initial Public Offering (IPO), Abel says we have deffered it by another 2-3 years mainly because we wish grow bigger and expand further before announcing our IPO.

When asked about his India Budget 2020 expectations, Abel said, “I would request the local government to spend more to develop the digital and physical infrastructure. This will help us grow here much faster.”

Abel is alumni of Stanford University and founder of several successful startups, including BigMachines which sold to Oracle, and SteelBrick which was acquired by Salesforce. The serial entrepreneur’s third start-up, G2, has already raised $100 million so far.

Western Union and Airtel Payments Bank Real-Time International Remittances to India

Western Union, a leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, and Airtel Payments Bank, a subsidiary of India’s largest integrated telco - Bharti Airtel announced a collaboration enabling millions of Airtel Payments Bank customers in India to receive international remittances in their bank accounts.

Airtel Payments Bank customers can soon direct Western Union money transfers into their bank accounts through the banking section of the Airtel Thanks App in real-time1. These transfers will be available for withdrawal at any of the over 500,000 banking points of Airtel Payments Bank.

Western Union’s collaboration with Airtel Payments Bank offers another channel for swift transfer of cross-border remittances into India, the world’s largest remittance-receiving country according to the World Bank.  With an unmatched distribution reach, millions of Airtel Payments Bank customers across the country will soon be able to seamlessly connect and conveniently withdraw the money, sent to them by their loved ones around the world.

The announcement marks further expansion of Western Union’s unique ability to partner with a growing base of national tech leaders by leveraging its core assets – including global settlement capabilities, network, compliance and technology systems - to enable international cross-border transfers with customer facing innovation.

Receiver-directed money transfer services are on the rise with flexible linkages offered by mobile apps and wallets. It offers receiving customers the choice of a preferred payout method based on convenience.

“The future of money transfer is to deliver what customers want – allowing them to move money whenever, however and wherever they want. Our platform cuts through the international complexities so millions of new customers can access their funds in real-time,” said Western Union President and CEO, Hikmet Ersek.

"Our business offers multiple channel choice for our customers and it comes from building an inter-connectedness platform that links diverse financial and fintech players including Banks, FIs, Telcoms and Fintech players,” Ersek said.

“With India being the largest receiver of global remittances, this alliance is designed to enable better access for the recipients and contribute to financial inclusion in the country. This innovation is an example of how Airtel Payments Bank endeavours to play a role in improving the country’s payments ecosystem,” said Rajesh Sud, Managing Director – Financial Services at Bharti Enterprises and Additional Director at Airtel Payments Bank.

“We are delighted to collaborate with Western Union to add inbound global remittances to our portfolio of digitally enabled financial services. Our technology platforms and deep distribution reach allows customers to access a range of financial services in a convenient fashion. We will continue to bring to market innovative solutions that simplify basic financial services and empower every Indian,” said Anubrata Biswas, MD & CEO, Airtel Payments Bank.

The collaboration will work on the Reserve Bank of India mandated Money Transfer Service Scheme (MTSS), a quick and easy way of transferring personal remittances from abroad to beneficiaries in India. Only inward personal remittances into India such as remittances towards family maintenance and remittances favoring foreign tourists visiting India are permissible under the MTSS guidelines.

CUSTOMER GUIDANCE

The Airtel Thanks app is available for both iOS and Android users. Customers can conveniently receive Western Union money transfers into their Airtel Payments Bank accounts with the Airtel Thanks app by simply inputting the unique tracking number (MTCN), expected remittance amount and sender details. Customers can receive up to a maximum of Rs. 95,000 per transaction.

1. Funds may be delayed or services unavailable based on certain transaction conditions, including amount sent, destination country, currency availability, regulatory and foreign exchange issues, required receiver action(s), identification requirements, Agent location hours, differences in time zones, or selection of delayed options.

Vikram Hospital Bengaluru Performs Successful Delivery on a Patient Suffering from Intracranial Rosai Dorfman Disease

Vikram Hospital Bengaluru, a trusted quaternary care multi-specialty hospital, announced today that it successfully conducted delivery of a patient suffering from a Rare Case of Intracranial Rosai Dorfman Disease (RDD) along with other complications. This feat was performed by the ‘Obstetrics & Gynecology’ at Vikram Hospital.

Roopa, a 38 years old lady was diagnosed to have a rare condition called Rosai-Dorfman Disease (RDD) at Vikram Hospital, She initially presented to our Neurosurgeons with c/o feeling unsteady while walking which worsened with movement of head for 2-3 months duration.  She also had headaches & nasal block.  MRI of the head and neck and biopsy from the nasal sinus was done by our ENT surgeon and the condition was diagnosed by our Pathologist as intracranial RDD.  Patient was seen by Dr. Niti Raizada, Sr. Consultant, Medical Oncologist and started on chemotherapy.

Patient had been married for 12 years and had undergone 2 cycles of IVF but was unable to get pregnant.  After she was diagnosed with RDD, she had given up hopes of pregnancy.  Miraculously, patient discovered she was pregnant within three months of the chemotherapy and continued the pregnancy despite the risk of teratogenicity.

Elaborating on the criticality of the case, Dr. Shashikala Ksheerasagar, Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist, Vikram Hospital, said, “Our team of doctors categorized this case as high risk pregnancy and handled such a case for the first time. The case was very challenging from the beginning as the patient had a spontaneous pregnancy following chemotherapy for RDD, the Obstetric team faced many challenges managing the patient in the presence of co-morbidities like Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM), Anemia, Sub clinical hypothyroidism, Allergic bronchitis, Progressive symptom of RDD like diplopia (Visual disturbance double vision), and cerebellar ataxia (difficulty in walking) and Headaches.”

Roopa’s health continued to deteriorate where she had difficulty walking, visual disturbances & managing day to day activities like cooking, housekeeping and as pregnancy advanced, she was heavily dependent on her husband for performing even the smallest of tasks such as eating food, medication, etc. If condition was untreated, she would have headaches, severe visual disturbance and incapability to walk. She would have continuously raised intracranial pressures which could lead to herniation of brainstem and sudden death.

It was a challenge handling her, an elective C/S was done, and patient closely monitored post operatively. Post pregnancy Lactation was an issue as she had a delay in initiation of lactation. Two and a half months after delivery patient underwent radical stereotactic radiation for the intracanal lesion. Following radiotherapy, patient made a good recovery and was able to handle her baby, her household chores independently,” added Dr. Shashikala Ksheerasagar, Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist, Vikram Hospital.

Dr. Mohan D. Mahendrakar, Consultant Pediatrician & Neonatologist, Vikram Hospital, Bengaluru said, “Patient delivered a baby boy and we found that baby was suffering from imperferforate anus, ASD (Atrial Septal Defect - hole in the heart) and PUJ obstruction on the left side. After diagnosis, the baby underwent colostomy on the very first day he was born.”

After a period of time as the baby grew older, an ANO-RECTO PLASTY was conducted by Dr. Deepti Vepakomma, Consultant Paediatric Surgery. Now the baby is more than a year old and has normal growth and development.

Dr. Niti Raizada, Sr. Consultant, Medical Oncologist & Hemato-oncologist, Vikram Hospital, Bengaluru, said, “Intracranial Rosai Dorfman Disease is extremely rare, and it is an uncommon benign idiopathic lymphoproliferative disorder. It commonly affects lymph nodes, extra nodal involvement of multiple organs, Bilateral painless cervical lymphadenopathy, fever, night sweats and weight loss. Exacerbation of RDD during pregnancy and the need to resort to radiotherapy using cyber knife due to aggravation of symptoms and remarkable recovery”.  is what we have seen.

RDD in this lady responded very well to combination chemotherapy drugs - however they were discontinued when she conceived.  Later post-delivery, disease evaluation suggestion that tumor had increased in size and causing many symptoms when additional local therapy was recommended.

Dr. Somesh Mittal, MD & CEO, Vikram Hospital Bengaluru also commented, “We are proud to have dedicated and specialized consultants who focus constantly on saving lives of patients at all stages of illness. Roopa’s case was highly risky and our consultants worked really hard to save her and also her child. 

Telegram Introduces Polls 2.0 to Enhance Chat Experience with Three New Kind of Polling Options

Key Highlights

* Polls 2.0 comes with three new capabilities: Visible Votes, Multiple Answers and Quiz Mode
* Channels and Groups can explore possibility of conducting polls in multiple ways
* Quiz Bot: for additional text and media along with multi question quizzes

Telegram, a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app, today announced an addition of new and exciting features for conducting various types of polls within chat groups and channels. Termed as Polls 2.0, users can now explore three new kinds of Telegram Polls – Visible Votes, Multiple Answers and Quiz Mode.

Polls 2.0 aims to enrich the learning experience, giving its users more options to engage and express their opinions by way of selecting from various options. This new feature can enhance the experience of users to create opinions, generate polls and be used by learning and education channels to create objective based learning through multiple choice questions (MCQs) and subject based quizzes. Already popular with students, this new feature by Telegram, will make exam preparations and learning methods more interesting and participative.

Launched globally and available for Indian users, these polls can be created in groups or channels. An updated attachment menu, now allows ‘Poll’ Option where users can follow simple steps from the menu and choose one of the three poll type. Creating a poll is made easy by simply typing the question, add answer options, choose the settings that fit in as best purpose, and just roll it out.

Telegram recognises that messaging applications have become an intrinsic part of communication across age groups and industries. Focussing on driving relevant innovations to bring new features and capabilities on the app that can enhance, evolve and transform the overall user experience, the company launched three new capabilities:

A new capability: Bot API and Quiz Bot

Quiz Bot is going to be another surprise for the users as it will allow them to create multi-question quizzes with additional text and media capability and share them with others. This enables them to create exam-style prompts with graphs and tables. Users can answer on the groups, channels, or personally, as well. The Bot can also keep a tap that how many answers were right, time taken by a user and upload it to a global leaderboard Telegram has created.

All the new poll types are supported in today's update to the Bot API, so bot developers can build on this new functionality.

The bot will keep tabs on how many questions users got right and how much time it took them to complete the quiz. It also keeps a global leaderboard for each quiz create by any user.

About Telegram:

Telegram, a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security and speed was launched in 2013. A device agnostic platform, it provides its users the capability of sharing unlimited files up to 1.5 GB setting itself apart from various other platforms. The open API and AI based BOT integration provides the messenger app a competitive edge over other platforms. Users can create groups for up to 200,000 people or channels for broadcasting to unlimited audiences.

ServiceNow Introduces New Industry Solutions Strategy will Focus on Banking and Telecom Verticals

ServiceNow, the company that makes work, work better for people, today announced a new industry solutions strategy to deliver workflows that help companies in specific industries address their unique digital transformation challenges and create value at scale. ServiceNow initially will focus on developing industry solutions for banking and telecommunications and will work with strategic partners to support its industry solutions journey and integrate those solutions in the customer environment.

“Every company around the world aspires to deliver great experiences that drive fierce customer loyalty and create powerful employee engagement,” said Bill McDermott, president and CEO, ServiceNow. “And companies across many industries are turning to ServiceNow to help them transform their business to unleash productivity and fuel innovation. By creating industry–specific solutions, delivered through a partner–led model, we can better address the unique challenges that companies in key vertical markets face as they look to digitally transform their businesses.”

ServiceNow’s new banking solution will simplify middle–to–back office operations to help banks move at the speed of digital business, delivering seamless customer experiences throughout the enterprise that drive customer loyalty. The company’s new telecommunications solution will align customer care and service assurance to transform how communication service providers deliver great customer experiences by proactively anticipating issues and addressing them quickly while maximizing availability and quality of service.

Expanded Partnerships to Support Industry Solutions Model

ServiceNow also announced it is extending the scope of its partnerships with Deloitte and Accenture to address the unique challenges in the initial target industries.

Deloitte will become the “Lead Launch” Partner for ServiceNow’s banking solution, working with ServiceNow to implement new workflows that will transform how banks operate. This builds on Deloitte’s existing role as Lead Launch Partner for ServiceNow’s Finance Close Automation product, which was announced last year at ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2019 conference.

“Our Financial Services clients are looking to leverage technology to rethink customer experiences, and banks in particular need to transform underlying operations to make that happen faster,” said Brian Johnston, Financial Services Industry Leader, and Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “As part of our strategic collaboration with ServiceNow, we are combining Deloitte’s industry know how with ServiceNow’s intelligent and intuitive cloud platform to deliver solutions that help our Financial Services clients move at the speed of digital business.”

Accenture will become the “Lead Launch” ecosystem partner for ServiceNow on its new telecommunications solution, helping companies drive digital transformation through purpose–built workflows. Accenture will also help guide ServiceNow’s product roadmap and create telecommunications–specific digital workflow solutions that deliver great experiences to help support software defined networking, especially vital for new connected services enabled by 5G.

“With 5G being one of the highest priorities and most significant investments for service providers, they are seeking a competitive advantage by establishing greater agility and scale in today’s cloud–first world,” said Peters Suh, North America Communications Industry Lead at Accenture. “Through our expanded ecosystem partnership with ServiceNow, we’re better positioned than ever to help companies elevate solutions and support the transitions of the telecommunications industry.”

ServiceNow’s solutions for banking and telecommunications are expected to be available later this year. The company expects to announce solutions for additional industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, media, technology and others, in the future.

ServiceNow is making work, work better for people by delivering digital workflows that simplify employee experiences and unlock productivity. As a strategic partner to the world’s largest enterprises, ServiceNow is focused on enabling digital transformation and driving customer success. The Now Platform is the not–so–secret sauce that allows ServiceNow to deliver experiences that transform the world of work. ServiceNow’s intelligent and intuitive cloud platform serves as a single foundation for delivering enterprise–wide digital workflows.