Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Land Rover Begins Bookings of the New Defender at Price from Rs 69.99 Lakh Onwards

Highlights

* The icon reimagined for the 21st century ready to make its entry into India
* New Defender to be offered in both 90 and 110 body styles; powered by 2.0 l, 221 kW (300 PS) petrol powertrain
* Bookings are now open for the world-class expert off-road and on, with deliveries to begin from August 2020

Jaguar Land Rover India, today announced that it has opened bookings of the New Land Rover Defender in India. Offered with a 2.0 l, 221 kW (300PS) petrol powertrain with 400 Nm of torque, the New Defender will be available in two distinct body styles, the elegant 90 (3 door) and the versatile 110 (5 door) as a Completely Built Unit (CBU) and is priced from ₹ 69.99 Lakh (ex-showroom India).

Rohit Suri, President & Managing Director, Jaguar Land Rover India Ltd. (JLRIL), said:

“The New Defender embraces its rich lineage in a modern, 21st century package that makes it extremely capable, on and off-road. With the entry of this icon to India, we are extremely proud to offer to our customers, the most capable and durable product in the Land Rover portfolio, while still retaining the authenticity and character of the original.”

The New Defender will be offered in five different variants across both 90 and 110; Base, S, SE, HSE and First Edition. Built for adventurous hearts and curious minds, the New Land Rover Defender is highly customisable with a multitude of seating options, accessory packs and features to choose from. For India, the New Defender will come with 360° Surround Camera, Wade Sensing, Electronic Air Suspension (Standard on 110), Smartphone Pack, Connected Navigation Pro, Off-Road tyres, Centre Console with refrigerated compartment (optional) and more.

More details on the New Land Rover Defender are available on www.landrover.in

Land Rover Product Portfolio in India

The Land Rover range in India includes the Range Rover Evoque (starting at ₹ 54.94 Lakh),  Discovery Sport (starting at ₹ 57.06 Lakh), the Range Rover Velar (priced at ₹ 71.87 Lakh),  Discovery (starting at ₹ 75.60 Lakh), Range Rover Sport (starting at ₹ 87.02 Lakh) and Range Rover (starting at ₹ 182.25 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 in 24 cities, through 27 authorized outlets in Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Kochi, Karnal, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mangalore, Mumbai , Noida, Pune, Raipur, Surat and Vijayawada.

Brigade Partners with Oakter to Unveil Amazon Alexa-Enabled Smart Home Automation


Brigade Group, a leading real estate developer, has partnered with home automation company Oakter to provide smart home solutions to its future residents. As part of its Brigade Plus Easy Home packages, a one stop solution for customized home offerings, Brigade customers will now be able to leverage the benefits of Amazon Alexa. With the help of Alexa, residents will be able to control their home devices such as lights, fans, ACs, TVs, cameras, geysers, listen to the music of their choice, get news updates, make shopping lists and much more, just through voice.

Brigade Plus Easy Home packages offers customers a host of interior solutions such as modular kitchens, electrical fittings, and now the newly announced Alexa-enabled smart home solutions to help them conveniently move into their new homes without the hassle of dealing with various contractors and vendors.

Since 1986, Brigade has been at the forefront of pioneering new trends across sectors – be it establishing the first serviced apartments in Bengaluru, designing large-scale integrated enclaves, introducing the iconic World Trade Center brand to South India and founding the acclaimed Indian Music Experience Museum. With this latest association, Brigade provides customers with tech-enabled designer interior solutions that literally speak their mind!

On this occasion, Ms. Pavitra Shankar, Executive Director, Brigade Enterprises Ltd., said, “There is a shift in customer preferences for homes that have security, convenience and optimised energy consumption to conserve resources. It makes sense that our offerings are updated to accommodate these new devices and technological advancements.”

According to Dilip R.S, Country Manager, Alexa Skills and Voice Services, Amazon India, “With nearly a 5X increase in Alexa-enabled Smart Home users in 2019, customers love the convenience of voice controlling their world. We are excited to see Brigade Group offer this delight of voice-controlled smart home devices with the Brigade Plus Easy Home packages.”

Smart home has become one of the most popular Alexa features and customers are increasingly experimenting with home automation, starting with something as simple as light bulbs. Alexa can seamlessly bring the smart home experience to life. The convenience of controlling smart home devices with simple commands such as “Alexa, turn on the lights”, set timers, ask for information, listen to the news or favourite music, set up quick reminders, add items to their to do list/ shopping list and much more is gaining momentum among customers.

Launched in 2015, Oakter manufactures smart-home appliances compatible with Amazon Alexa, and will be implementing these solutions across Brigade Plus Easy Home Packages. As per Varun Gupta, CTO of Oakter, “Software features are becoming more important in homes. We are delighted to partner with Brigade Group to bring in delightful experience of automation and voice control.”

Brigade has set up multiple model apartments showcasing furnishing options along with the Alexa enabled home automation systems, at the following locations across Bengaluru.

* Brigade Buena Vista, Budigere Cross
* Plumeria at Brigade Meadows, Kanakapura Road
* Brigade Panorama, Mysore Road
* Deodar at Brigade Orchards, Devanahalli
* Brigade El Dorado model unit, World Trade Center Bengaluru

Global Aggregator of Coworking Spaces - CoFynd Flags Off Operations in Delhi, Gurugram and Noida


CoFynd, the emerging aggregation platform for the booking of coworking spaces, have commenced its operations in Delhi, Gurugram and Noida. With the launch of their platform, CoFynd aims to offer event spaces, training rooms, meeting rooms, conference rooms along with the co-working spaces.  They provide these spaces and work environment for start-ups, young/small-medium sized enterprises, and professionals.

Launching a company all on your own can be thrilling, but also quite tough. One may feel isolated in the home office, but hesitant to look for permanent traditional office space because of the high rates. For those sailing in these uncharted waters, CoFynd, a global aggregator for workspaces, will act as an anchor. Whether you are a solopreneur, freelancer or a young team of enthusiastic entrepreneurs, a CoFynd is a perfect place to start and grow.

Coworking is a global phenomenon and it has completely changed the way we work forever. Almost, 2 million people are reported to be working out of Co-working spaces in 2019.  This industry has been growing at 23% since 2010 and number of co-working spaces is expected to double till the year 2022.

However, there are still a lot of challenges in this sector. For instance, there is a lack of a user-friendly platform that can provide standardized information on all co-working spaces.

There is still inability to book spaces online with ease and there is an absence of neutral customer mechanism support. Also, there is absolutely no presence of reviews on spaces to aid correct decisions.

CoFynd recognised all those loopholes and has come up to address and solve those challenges. CoFynd created unbiased platform with standardises listings. It provides the facility to book spaces online with super-ease. The user has the complete support and also has the access to the detailed reviews on co-working spaces.

Putting his thoughts on the same, Atul Gupta, Founder & CEO, CoFynd, said, " CoFynd has been launched to give startups and enterprises a platform where they can find the spaces according to their needs. We provide customised solutions as per their needs. Coworking spaces have become the lifeline of millennials and startups today. The growing demand from freelancers, consultants, and corporates has led to a growth in the co-working sector like never before. The workspaces to be future-ready should be networked, flexible, integrated and innovative, and CoFynd helps you to find one.”

Recently, CoFynd has also raised 1.25 crores of seed funding from some reputed corporates. The funds raised round will be invested across territory expansion plans, technology and marketing strategies.

Speaking about the funding, Atul said, “We are extremely excited to raise the seed funding round. The funds raised by the company will further accelerate the growth of our network and will allow us to broaden our reach and expand our services”.

The strategically located spaces at CoFynd offer access to nearby business centres, provides competitive corporate culture and opportunities to its members for sustained growth. The space is designed to cater to businesses of any size and form to boast diverse working environments having both private offices, cubicles, spacious cabins, meeting rooms, training rooms, and event spaces enabling the clients to choose as per their needs.

This unbiased and unified platform of listing coworking spaces strives to offer ease of discovery and bookings to the user along with 100% offline support for visits, negotiations and closure. It endeavours to give access to like-minded, close-knit, and success-focused professionals who are all driving towards the same goal.

Currently, CoFynd has its presence in Gurugram, Delhi and Noida and are planning to expand in other metro cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai.

About CoFynd

CoFynd, founded in 2019 by Mr Atul Gupta, is into aggregation and booking of coworking spaces. It is a global network and community to find Shared Office Spaces, Coworking Spaces, Private Offices, Business Centers and Meeting Rooms, Training Rooms, for Startups, Entrepreneurs, Freelancers, and Small/Medium Businesses. 

Harmony Expands to India, Bolsters Growth of DeFin the Rapidly Growing FinTech Sector


Harmony, a Silicon Valley-based scalable blockchain protocol, announced their entry into the Indian market. They are looking towards establishing partnerships in India’s startup ecosystem and foster the development of blockchain solutions in the Fintech space. With Fintech in India already booming, blockchain protocols are looking for meaningful integrations with startups and enterprises in the space to solve real pain-points.

Harmony is looking to partner, invest in, incubate and offer grants to developers and fintech startups looking to solve problems across cross-border transactions, trade finance, commodities finance, gaming, and virtual goods and many other industries. Entrepreneurs will be able to use Harmony’s open-source platform and tools, leveraging the native ONE token to power utility across a variety of use cases. In the first phase, Harmony will pick 5 partners/developers to work on the cross-fi and de-fi use cases.

According to the EY Global FinTech Adoption Index 2019, the adoption of FinTech in India has grown by 87% which is 64% higher than the average global rate. This growth has been attributed to several factors such as government initiatives, ease in access to innovative products and onboarding of users, and the willingness of the consumer market to adopt non-financial services brands if they are partnered with their existing banks.

A report by Invest India states that the overall transaction value in the Indian FinTech market is estimated to jump from approximately $65 bn in 2019 to $140 bn in 2023, overtaking China as Asia’s top FinTech funding target market. Additionally, a report by Gartner stipulated that blockchain technology has the potential to generate 3 trillion USD per year by 2034. With the present trends, the adoption of blockchain in the fintech space is going to open up several opportunities for India’s startup ecosystem. With the two areas of blockchain and FinTech set to grow in tandem, Indian startups and up-and-coming projects can really use the support via collaborations from experienced players like Harmony.

Harmony Protocol is one of the leading blockchain protocols that has made significant strides in solving one of the biggest problems in space - linear scalability. Due to this, Harmony is one of the top seven decentralised networks in the world alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, and Ripple’s XRP. They already have a live mainnet and their native ONE token is listed on several cryptocurrency exchanges. 

The Harmony team is excited to collaborate with  FinTech startups and developers in India that are looking to solve and scale their products and use-cases by leveraging a fast, secure and decentralized blockchain platform. In order to facilitate this, Harmony is partnering with IBC Media - a startup that connects innovators with enterprises to solve real-world problem statements, to facilitate their vision in India.

“We’re excited to enable next-gen Fin-tech products & use cases in India that leverage a fast & secure blockchain . Given that India’s consumer base is adept with using sophisticated intra-country payment options like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and several digital wallets, we see an opportunity to support the growth of this sector and are excited to collaborate with IBC Media to chart out this journey in India. Harmony will definitely enable the creation and innovation of highly-scalable, secure, FinTech solutions.”Sahil Dewan, Co-Founder, Harmony said.

With respect to India’s growing need for business solutions in the field of cross-border finance, (person) also expressed that Harmony can enable the creation of solutions to reduce the time consumed with faster, transparent, and secure, products.

“We are very happy that Harmony protocol is looking at India as a serious market and believe that they will be a big proponent in driving the growth of the fintech sector in India” said Raghu Mohan, CEO of IBC Media, “At IBC Media, we resonate with Harmony’s vision to scale trust for billions of people and create a fair economy. We are excited to partner with them to create better opportunities and innovate in the Fintech space in India. While it is still early days for blockchain in the country’s fintech sector, such collaborative efforts will explore more widespread adoption going forward.”

About Harmony:

The Harmony Protocol is a proof-of-stake blockchain that uses sharding to reach extremely fast, large-scale settlement for millions of users and helps businesses build marketplaces with fungible and non-fungible tokens. They facilitate the creation of blockchain solutions with zero-knowledge proof-enabled privacy and security. With their entry into the Indian market, Harmony will focus on leveraging India’s rich startup ecosystem and increase blockchain adoption through Decentralized finance (DeFi) and Cross border Finance (CrossFi).

MoneyTap Appoints Barindra Dutta as Director of Data Sciences


A veteran in the lending and financial industry, Barindra joins MoneyTap from Indiabulls, a leading financial services group in housing and consumer finance, where he was the Head of Advanced Analytics. At Indiabulls, he led the development of a scalable, cost-effective sourcing solution. Previously, he has worked at CLIX Capital Pvt Ltd as the Head of Data Science and held multiple leadership positions at American Express and GE Capital, bringing more than 15 years of experience in the consumer lending and analytics space.

Barindra is an Indian Statistical Institute and IIT Kharagpur alumnus, where he did a Masters in Computer Science and a Masters in Mathematics respectively.

“We are thrilled to have Barindra on board at the focal point of our growth story. He brings to the table an in-depth knowledge of scaling data-driven decisioning platforms. We look forward to his astute guidance as we scale to the next level while maintaining our industry edge in innovation and our strong credit discipline, said Chief Business Officer and Co-Founder, MoneyTap, Kunal Varma.

“MoneyTap will give me an opportunity to build the next-gen, data-driven decisioning platform across the lending lifecycle. I’m looking forward to working with the amazing tech team to scale businesses in India and international markets,” said Barindra Dutta on his appointment.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Quantum Celebrates 40 Years of Leading-Edge Data Storage and Management Solutions


Quantum Corp. has marked the company’s 40-year anniversary as an innovator in data storage and management with celebrations at its San Jose, California headquarters and its other global offices, honoring the company’s founders. The milestone highlights Quantum’s heritage of innovation in data storage and management solutions, as the company embarks on a new phase of growth with a series of new product introductions that have expanded the company’s portfolio of offerings for storing and managing video and other unstructured data. The anniversary celebration follows Quantum’s new listing to the NASDAQ stock exchange, as well as its announced plans to acquire the ActiveScale object storage business.

A Company Built on Innovation

Quantum got its start February of 1980 when executives and designers from Shugart Associates, IBM and Memorex designed an 8-inch hard drive that could achieve high performance without the cost or complexity of using a full closed-loop servo system – a major innovation at that time. The company went public in 1982 and continued expanding its product portfolio. Quantum acquired the DEC data storage division in 1994, adding tape automation products to its offerings.

Quantum sold its hard disk drive business in 2001, and in 2006 acquired Advanced Digital Information Corporation (ADIC), including the company’s Scalar® tape libraries, StorNext® filesystem software, and deduplication technology which served as the foundation for DXi backup appliances.

Today, Quantum is an industry leader in the storage and management of video and other unstructured data. According to industry analyst IDC, by 2025 80% of the world’s data will be video or video-like data*, positioning Quantum for growth with its leading video infrastructure portfolio. The company continues to innovate, with six new major product launches in the last year alone, extending the company’s multi-tiered storage for demanding workflows. The StorNext file system has been widely adopted by the media and entertainment industry and was recently recognized with a Technical Emmy award for its pioneering Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) technology. Quantum Scalar tape products have been adopted as the backbone of some of the world’s largest hyperscale archive environments. Entertainment companies, sports franchises, researchers, government agencies, enterprises, and cloud providers turn to Quantum to preserve, protect and manage their most vital data assets.

Supporting Quotes

“Quantum’s heritage goes back to Silicon Valley’s earliest days when the area first captured the world’s attention as a center of innovation,” said Jamie Lerner, President and CEO, Quantum. “Today we’re applying technology to enrich people’s lives in ways they could scarcely imagine four decades ago.

Microsoft Fuels Tech Intensity in India - Showcases Innovation Across Sectors at Future Decoded: Tech Summit


At Future Decoded : Tech Summit, a conclave for Indian developers, technologists and industry leaders, Microsoft today showcased how innovative use of technology is driving stories of success across businesses and communities across the country.

Indian businesses and startups are emerging as innovation leaders, signaling how state-of-the-art technology can drive growth, enhance customer experience and tackle some of India’s most pressing societal and environmental issues, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Currently visiting India, Nadella said that Microsoft’s mission was to help organizations jump-start their growth through transformational tech intensity  -  which results from enterprises adopting best-in-class  technology rapidly, building their own digital capability, and having trust both in the technology they use and the companies they partner with.

“We have an unprecedented opportunity to apply technology to drive economic growth that is inclusive, trusted and sustainable everywhere, including in India,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “That’s why we are partnering with leaders in every industry across the country to help them build their own digital capability, transform their organizations and achieve more in this new era.”

Addressing Future Decoded: Tech Summit, Nadella outlined examples of tech intensity from Indian organizations.

Azure – the preferred cloud platform for unicorns

MYNTRA:  Myntra, India’s leading destination for fashion and lifestyle, is using Azure to focus on innovation, speed and agility and strengthen their leadership position even further. The elasticity of Azure is helping Myntra scale rapidly for big spikes that occur routinely during festive seasons. Since the deployment of Azure, Myntra, has recorded a 50 percent rise in orders in the latest edition of its biennial End of Reason Sale.

UDAAN:   Udaan, the fastest Indian startup to become a unicorn, is a born on Azure company, With a lean technology engineering team, Udaan leverages Azure for all their infrastructure and cloud needs that span business functions, like lending credit, logistics and e-commerce. Azure provides the tech platform that enables Udaan to be agile in building out technologies that help them rapidly increase their coverage and scale.

Dynamics 365 - helping to deliver business outcomes as a service

ROYAL ENFIELD: Royal Enfield, the oldest motorcycle brand in continuous production in the world, had multiple IT systems that were unable to provide a single view of customers. This led to higher turnaround times, as well employee and customer dissatisfaction. They integrated reporting capabilities across departments, deploying D365 across its operations – specifically D365 Sales, Service, Field Service, Retail, Finance and Operations. This has improved customer experience/touchpoints across the sales journey – from the sale itself to post-sales service. They are now able to follow up after a test ride and capture customer feedback, and also seek services appointments actively. Moreover, they are also able to generate new insights across operations, for example they can identify the most frequent reasons for repeat repairs. The solution is now live at 120 dealers & distributors.

EUREKA FORBES: Eureka Forbes has a 6000+ strong door to door sales team – one of the largest direct sales forces in India. Their sales model needed to be modernized for an era in which customer expectations are changing and behaviors are changing, such as checking products online. Moreover, there is new friction in the buying process, such as gated communities restricting access. Eureka Forbes has consolidated seven different CRM systems onto Dynamics 365, Salespeople can access customer info directly on their smartphones, including granular insights like water quality and the right product to sell in real time.

How innovation improves outcomes for everyone, everywhere

Microsoft is committed to empower individuals, organizations and society towards fulfilling the promise of holistic growth. The company believes that it has an enormous opportunity and responsibility to ensure that its always benefits everyone on the planet, including the planet itself.

HAMS: Road safety is a major public health issue in India and across the world. The HAMS (Harnessing Automobiles for Safety) solution, developed by Microsoft Research, aims to mitigate this. In pilots underway. a smartphone attached to the car’s windshield authenticates the driver is the same as the license applicant. It also monitors the driving test to ensure that the test is fool-proof and objective.  At the end of the driving test, HAMS generate the result to show whether the driver has passed the test or not. The implementation has increased the number of driving tests, reduced the time a candidate has to wait to do a test, and also made the tests completely objective both for the evaluator and the candidate.

NARAYANA HEALTH: Narayana Health has used Power BI to improve efficiency across 6,000 beds in its network of  hospitals – from a 60 percent improvement in lab turnaround times to reduction of wastage of blood in the blood banks to  better predicting surgery costs. Power BI dashboards are key to Narayana Health’s vision of offering low cost, world-class healthcare. They are used to track both financial and operational metrics offering real-time insights across all hospitals at Narayana – a process that earlier took as many as two to three weeks to complete. The solutions also measure real-time data of more than 3,000 doctors across 30 comparable parameters.

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft is in India for a three-day tour. For more details about Nadella’s India visit please refer to https://news.microsoft.com/india-visit-2020/  and follow #FutureDecoded to join the conversation on Twitter.

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