Hexaware, Microland And Mindtree Get Top Honors At Microsoft India Incubathon 2021

Microsoft India announced winners of the Incubathon 2021, a unique industry innovation garage program for its partner organizations. Teams from Hexaware, Microland and Mindtree bagged the top three awards after 10 weeks of collaborative learning and innovative solution-building, followed by a global jury assessment. Leveraging current business challenges faced by organizations and building industry specific solutions, 37 teams from 14 partner companies designed innovative cross-cloud solutions for industry verticals like retail, healthcare, manufacturing and BFSI. Sixteen teams were shortlisted for the build phase of the industry relevant solutions. The winning solutions include:

·       Hexaware has developed an immersive retail solution that provides the next generation retail shopping experience using the power of AI and cloud. Using Azure Cognitive Services and Dynamics 365, the solution is designed to accelerate buying decisions and enable an immersive customer experience by bridging the gap between in-store and online purchases. Hexaware’s Immersive Experience Framework provides ease of integration with different services and applications in creating personalized virtual experiences across retail, manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, healthcare or education industries.

·       Leveraging the power of Azure IoT and Cloud, Microland has developed a plug-and-play smart healthcare facilities solution that enables real-time visibility and insights to the facility utilization at a hospital and the asset performance to ensure robust operations and wellbeing of both healthcare staff and visitors.​

·       Mindtree has designed and developed an innovative customer engagement solution that provides hyper-personalized insights, recommendations and guidance to support the financial wellbeing of customers during the pandemic and beyond. Built on Azure Data & AI architecture and Power BI, the solution aims to drive higher trust, satisfaction and loyalty among banking customers through better engagement and real-time omnichannel communications.

Venkat Krishnan, executive director, commercial partners, Microsoft India said, “In the emerging hybrid reality, organizations are reimagining their business processes and building their digital capabilities for competitive advantage. Responding to real-world challenges that organizations are facing now, Incubathon participants have built unique innovations for engaging customers, creating efficient processes and transforming products and experiences. Each of the solutions exemplifies the growing tech intensity and customer obsession of our partner ecosystem.”

The winning solutions will be nominated to showcase their solution at the Microsoft Technology Center in India and will receive Azure credits to build their IP.

About Microsoft India:

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft set up its India operations in 1990. Today, Microsoft entities in India have over 13,000 employees, engaged in sales and marketing, research, development and customer services and support, across 11 Indian cities – Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, New Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune. Microsoft offers its global cloud services from local data centers to accelerate digital transformation across Indian startups, businesses, and government organizations.

95% Children Recall Male Role Models As Inspiration In STEM Fields, Avishkaar Survey Reveals

* On the contrary, when asked to describe a scientist, majority of parents and children used gender-neutral terms

* 30% Parents Feel That The Work Environment In STEM Fields Is Not Conducive For Girls To Thrive In

The Indian education sector has been focusing on building momentum and preference towards STEM education for years now, given that technology is becoming all pervasive and is giving rise to newer job profiles that require a niche set of skill-sets which are increasingly dependent on next-generation technologies including AI, ML, coding and robotics to name a few. NEP 2020 guidelines have made it compulsory for 6th graders and above to learn coding as part of their coursework, thereby emphasising the need for hands-on learning. Several public-private partnerships have been relentlessly working towards increasing children’s participation in STEM education and their prospective careers. However, the bigger concern is when one takes into consideration the gender ratio as children progress towards pursuing a career in STEM and next-generation technology. As per the Global Gender Gap Report by World Economic Forum released in March 2021, only an alarming 29.2% technical roles are held by women in India; in fact, India has fallen 28 places in its ranking in 2021 when compared to 2020 - from Rank 112 to Rank 140.

Against this backdrop, Avishkaar, a category leader in next-generation technology education that focuses on robotics, AI, coding, and app development, conducted a survey titled - “India’s Future in Next-Generation Tech & STEM ” in June 2021 among 5000 parents and 5000 children across Indian cities including Delhi NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Cochin.

The survey brought to light two pertinent insights:

Firstly, it indicated that gender disparity in STEM fields in India is a glaring issue, owing to a lack of female role models in the industry

95% children, including girls, recall male role models as inspiration in STEM fields, highlighting the urgent need to increase the exposure around women role models in STEM fields

When asked why there is an underrepresentation of girl children choosing to pursue a career in STEM and choose top three reasons:

50% of parents feel that societal pressures are one of the main reasons

42% feel that the parents’ influence plays a role

30% of parents even feel that the work environment in our country in these fields is more suitable for males versus females

Secondly, it highlighted the need for schools to implement hands-on learning and introduce children to the world of innovation and move away from rote learning techniques

53% of the parent respondents use the hands-on learning approach to keep up their children’s interest levels in next-gen tech & STEM subjects. This includes toys and kits that help their children with application-based learning

Only 33% of parents feel that the current school curriculum is enough to help their child prepare for a future in next-gen tech and STEM to some extent. 90% of parents feel that this aspect of the curriculum should be made a priority in school

With the aim to gauge the perception of parents of young children, as well as the children themselves on their interest levels and career aspirations in STEM and next-generation technology fields, the survey is a deep-dive into the hidden concerns in the industry. Avishkaar is at the forefront of implementing such changes to ensure gender neutrality along with a more hands-on learning experience.

Commenting on the insights from the survey, Pooja Goyal, COO, and Co-founder, Avishkaar said, “It is heartening to see that parents are making conscious choices to ensure they nurture an innovative mindset among their children. I’m convinced that If our children have to thrive in the world of tomorrow, we need to create micro-environments in schools and homes that make it safe for children to experiment, to take risks, to fail, to think outside the box, to break things, and to build new things. We need to ensure that our children are not mere consumers but creators of technology.

“The process of building new things and creating new solutions is rife with failure and needs a lot of grit and resilience, both skills that we need to inculcate in our children. We need to help our children build this muscle from an early age. As such, it is important that we provide safe spaces for children, especially girls, to take risks and help them build tribes where they can brainstorm ideas and think outside the box. The next important step is gender neutrality, where not every girl has to pursue STEM careers, but children who are really good at it and have interest in the field should have the opportunity to do that”, she further added. 

ACT Fibernet Ranked 32 Among India’s 100 Best Companies To Work For In 2021 By GPTW

* Ranked by Great Place to Work Institute for the 5th consecutive year

ACT Fibernet, one of India’s largest wired ISPs (Internet Service Provider), today announced that, the company has been identified as one of India’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 2021 by the Great Place to Work Institute for the fifth consecutive year.  ACT Fibernet, ranked 32nd in the largest workplace culture study in the country.

ACT Fibernet has earned this recognition by creating a Great Place to Work for all the employees and excelling on the 5 dimensions of building a High-Trust, High-Performance Culture – Credibility, Respect, Fairness, Pride and Camaraderie. Over 850 organizations participated in the Great Place to Work® Assessment, over 700 reached the final evaluation level, and 100 companies were named the best. 

Speaking on the win, Shefali Mohapatra, Chief People Officer, ACT Fibernet said, “We are honored and humbled to be recognized as one among the top 50 of India's best companies for work for in 2021 by 'Great Place to Work Institute'. While the past year has been challenging, we continued to focus on sustaining a healthy, conducive and performance driven work environment. It is indeed encouraging to see the results of our efforts. We see this award as confirmation that our organization is making a real difference and influencing best practices”.

Great Place to Work® Certification is the highly acclaimed & most definitive ‘Employer-of-Choice’ recognition that organizations aspire to achieve. The awarding organization, Great Place to Work®️ Institute, is the ‘Global Authority’ for creating, sustaining, and identifying High-Trust, High-Performance Culture. Considered the ‘Gold Standard’ in Workplace Culture Assessment, Great Place to Work®️ identifies Best Workplaces solely based on Employee Feedback and quality of People Practices in an organization.

About ACT Fibernet

ACT Fibernet is one of largest wired ISPs (Internet Service Provider) in India. Headquartered in Bangalore it has operations in 19 cities with 1.8 million customers. ACT Fibernet is known for its cutting-edge technology and high-speed broadband connectivity that the company provides to its customers. In 2019, ACT Fibernet forayed in the consumer category with the launch of its product ACT stream TV 4K. ACT Fibernet was the first broadband service provider to bring 1 Giga speed connectivity in India to the city of Hyderabad in 2017, followed by Bengaluru and Chennai in 2018. ACT Fibernet has been recognized as India’s most Consistent Broadband Network in 2020 by Ookla, Best Brands 2020 in the broadband category by The Economic Times, Best Broadband for Streaming in Hyderabad and Chennai as per research conducted by InMobi in Sept 2020, and No.1 Broadband for Gaming according to The Times of India Report, 2020.

Atos Launches ‘ThinkAI’ – A Complete Solution To Power High-Performance Artificial Intelligence Applications

Atos has launches ThinkAI, its secure end-to-end scalable offering which enables organizations to successfully design, develop, and deliver high-performance AI applications. ThinkAI is for organizations using traditional high-performance computing that want to run more accurate and faster simulations thanks to AI applications, and also for those developing AI applications that need more computing power.

High-performance AI applications augment traditional HPC simulation and are essential to process and analyse massive and complex data sets effectively. Compared to traditional HPC simulation, AI-powered simulation enables researchers to tackle problems faster and more thoroughly, with increased accuracy, improved cost-efficiency and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), lowering carbon footprint and creating competitive advantage.

AI applications, such as those related to drug discovery, smart cities or autonomous driving for example, are already being developed today, however barriers such as data quality, security and scalability remain – to help overcome these, expert consulting capability is essential and enables users to successfully define an AI roadmap, build scalable AI applications and industrialize these. ThinkAI is the most comprehensive HPC AI solution on the market today to do this and the only one which combines a full offering from consulting, to hardware and software solutions, to orchestration and final integration. It delivers rapid results and insight on data at optimized cost.

“The Atos ThinkAI solution brings together the necessary pieces for HPC users, at all stages of their AI journey, to leverage the significant opportunities of AI in their own research. The Atos ThinkAI solution can help users in both the scientific and industrial sector effectively combine the newest, most performant hardware and software solutions to speed the development of critical AI-based solutions and enhance the value of their simulation workloads.” said Alex Norton, Principal Technology Analyst and Data Analysis Manager, Hyperion.

“AI has created a new paradigm for applications in the scientific and industrial domains, catalyzing the translation of data to actionable insights. As the complexity of the Machine Learning model and its associated costs continue to grow substantially, dedicated high-performance AI infrastructures become crucial for organizations that want to deliver research breakthroughs. ThinkAI provides a holistic and tailor-made solution approach in advising, architecting and accomplishing AI solutions for any industry, so that they may accelerate time to AI operationalization and industrialization.” said Agnès Boudot, Senior Vice President, Head of HPC & Quantum at Atos.

The ThinkAI solution framework is made up of:

·         “Advise” with industry-contextualized consulting supported by experts at The Atos Center of Excellence in Advanced Computing.

·         “Architect” using best-of-breed AI hardware and software including partnerships with Graphcore and NVIDIA, supplemented with Atos’ digital security.

·         “Accomplish” with end-to-end solution orchestration, accelerating time to AI operationalization and industrialization at optimized cost.

Atos is taking part in this year’s virtual and on-demand ISC, the international Conference for HPC, machine learning and high-performance data analytics from 24 June – 2 July. Find out more about our conference sessions and new solutions here.

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 105,000 employees and annual revenue of over € 11 billion. European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high performance computing, the Group provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 71 countries. A pioneer in decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a secure and decarbonized digital for its clients. Atos operates under the brands Atos and Atos|Syntel. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index.

The purpose of Atos is to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the Group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space. www.atos.net

Emirates Transports 100 Tonnes Of COVID-19 Relief Cargo Free Of Charge To India In May 2021

Emirates SkyCargo flew 100 tonnes of relief materials free of charge from Dubai to India during a three week period in May. The carrier donated cargo capacity to transport essential supplies such as relief tents and thousands of oxygen cylinders and concentrators free of charge on flights to Indian destinations.

"Emirates is deeply connected and committed to India - we are heartened that India is overcoming the virus and we are honoured to have supported the efforts of partners by donating much needed air cargo capacity for moving essential goods quickly and reliably into nine Indian cities," said Nabil Sultan, Emirates Divisional Senior Vice President, Cargo.

Emirates set up the India Humanitarian Airbridge in early May to boost the transportation of urgent medical and relief items to India by offering cargo capacity free of charge on its flights from Dubai to India. The first shipment under the Airbridge initiative flew from Dubai to Delhi on May 13 and comprised 12 tonnes of multi-purpose tent equipment for field hospitals sent by the World Health Organisation through IHC (International Humanitarian City).

Emirates SkyCargo and the IHC have joined hands in the past to deliver relief materials around the world to communities impacted by humanitarian crises. Most recently, the IHC helped channel relief efforts for the India Humanitarian Airbridge, drawing upon their extensive expertise in working with humanitarian agencies and relief logistics.

GHFL's International Brand Global Bags Silver At Tint-Off Contest In The USA

Garware Hi-Tech Films Limited (GHFL) which manufactures premium quality polyester films and is the only manufacturer of sun control window films in India announced that it has bagged a silver medal at the International Window Film Conference and Tint-Off competition held from June 7-9 at Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.

GHFL enjoys a strong consumer base across the globe, including the US market. GHFL's participated in the exhibition with the “Global" brand under which it sells the Window film in USA. 

Mr. Jeason Teasley, who used the "Global" brand window film in the Tint-off competition, bagged a silver medal at the event which is organized annually and “brings together all segments of window, security, decorative, and paint protection film industries under one roof for quality education, business-building, and competition,” according to the event website.

This year a total of 90 contestants were in the fray for the Window film competition, out of which six entries were for the global brand. Mr. Teasley won the silver medal.

Speaking about the win Ms Monika Garware the Vice Chairperson and the Joint  Managing Director of GHFL said that “It is a proud moment for GHFL as the win validates GHFL's ability to produce high-quality products which can compete with the best in the biggest market in the world. This proves that our products are among the best in the world and pass all the test of application skill, quality of the product, ease of application, and a combined score of all these has won us the prize,”

Every year, the most talented window film tinters, and paint protection film installers participate in the event and compete for the top prize in various categories. The participants are judged by the industry veterans based on the quality of their products and the procedure. The product used by tinters in the competition makes a remarkable impact on their performance.

“The win re-establishes our brand "Global" as a very superior product and this win will have a good pull for the brand in the US market, attracting more tinters and retailers to use our brand. We will be using the win to promote the product extensively," Ms Monika Garware added.  

About Garware Hi-Tech Films Limited

Garware Hi-Tech Films Limited (formerly Garware Polyester Ltd.) (BOM: 500655) is the flagship company of the Garware Group co-promoted by the Chairman and Managing Director Mr. S.B. Garware in the year 1957 along with the Founder-Chairman Late Padmabhushan Dr. Bhalchandra Garware. The company makes Hi-Tech specialty performance polyester Films in India and has its State-of-the-Art manufacturing facilities at Aurangabad in Maharashtra, India. GHFL is the pioneer and one of the largest exporter of Polyester Films in India and the winner of top exporters’ awards for continuous 33 years from PLEXCOUNCIL.

Garware Hi-Tech Films Ltd.’s (GHFL) manufacturing facility in Aurangabad is vertically integrated, from manufacture of polyester chips to the finished product of polyester films with four independent manufacturing lines and a business that spans the globe.  Polyester Films are used for variety of end-applications such as PET Shrink films for Label application, Low Oligomer PET films for insulation of hermetically sealed compressors motors, Electric motor insulation and cable insulation, sequin application films, TV and LCD screen application, Packaging applications etc. GHFL is also the market Leader and India’s only manufacturer of Sun Control window films for Building, safety and auto applications. The company has facilities for manufacturing various coated products and co-extruded products for specialty application, apart from its capacity to design the recipe for raw material of PET films to suit the end application of the product.  The company has also developed surface-protection films and Paint Protection Films designed to deliver the highest level of protection and impact resistance which has applications in many sectors.  

L&T Technology Services And Mavenir Partner On Open RAN And 5G Test Automation Solutions

L&T Technology Services Limited (BSE: 540115, NSE: LTTS), a global leading pure-play engineering services company, today announced a strategic partnership to deliver end-to-end 5G automation services with Mavenir, the Network Software Provider building the future of networks with cloud-native software that runs on any cloud.

The automation services will include Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) automation of the 5G ORAN portfolio of RU/DU/CU products, in conjunction with the Cloud Native 5G NSA and SA core network products, for global frequency bands supporting TDD and FDD technology.

LTTS’s rich heritage in the delivery of telecommunications engineering products and services and growing portfolio of ready-to-use 5G components played a crucial role in this agreement.  LTTS will contribute to the acceleration of Mavenir’s cloud-native product roadmap driving increased market share in the 5G telecom landscape. This engagement between LTTS and Mavenir also enables a unique opportunity for co-creation and contributes to a joint go-to-market strategy driving innovation in the 5G space towards CSPs and Enterprises.

Amit Chadha, CEO and Managing Director, L&T Technology Services said, “5G ORAN solutions are disrupting conventional approaches to network services delivery for people and objects across industry verticals. This partnership enables both companies to drive the solutions and serve the global demand for connectivity and enriched services. At LTTS, we look forward to providing a world-class, comprehensive automation solution to Mavenir and serve as a hub for accelerating innovations in the 5G space.”

Pardeep Kohli, President and CEO, Mavenir said, “Our partnerships with leading global mobile service providers have set high expectations among our stakeholders. With its expertise in 5G, we are pleased to partner with an engineering services company like LTTS to enhance our go-to-market strategy.”

LTTS’ development, testing and integration services delivered from its Bengaluru (India) premises will  include subject matter expertise, advanced automation capabilities and patented tools and platforms enabling cost-effective and speedy integration of a wide range of ORAN RU/DU/CU products and applications together with Cloud Native 5G core network solutions accelerating commercial deployments across a broad spectrum of customers and industry verticals of Mavenir product portfolio.

About L&T Technology Services Ltd

L&T Technology Services Limited (LTTS) is a listed subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Limited focused on Engineering and R&D (ER&D) services. We offer consultancy, design, development and testing services across the product and process development life cycle. Our customer base includes 69 Fortune 500 companies and 53 of the world’s top ER&D companies, across industrial products, medical devices, transportation, telecom & hi-tech, and the process industries. Headquartered in India, we have over 16,400 employees spread across 17 global design centers, 28 global sales offices and 69 innovation labs as of March 31, 2021. 

About Mavenir

Mavenir is building the future of networks and pioneering advanced technology, focusing on the vision of a single, software-based automated network that runs on any cloud.  As the industry's only end-to-end, cloud-native network software provider, Mavenir is focused on transforming the way the world connects, accelerating software network transformation for 250+ Communications Service Providers in over 120 countries, which serve more than 50% of the world’s subscribers.