Renault India Launches A Full Fledged Website In Hindi Language

* First automotive brand to introduce both Website and WhatsApp based chatbot - Renault Virtual Assistant (RVA); RVA all set to be launched in three regional languages - Hindi, Marathi and Tamil by end of July’21 

* Aims to further strengthen its Regional Reach 

* Hindi Website Link - https://hi.renault.co.in/ 

In a bid to further strengthen its presence in India and cater to the growing customer base, Renault India has launched its full-fledged “Hindi website”. With this, Renault India becomes the first four-wheeler automotive brand to launch a bi-lingual website (English & Hindi), taking another step towards enhancing its familiarity and consumer connect with the Brand. Offering customers language of choice as an interface, the website will enable customers who wish to access the website in Hindi, to efficiently avail information related to Renault’s entire product range and services, enabling direct access to a large portion of potential customer base adopting Internet throughout the country. 

The consumption and demand for content in regional languages has increased significantly over the last few years. India has over 624 million internet user base, with more than 90% users prefer  consumption of content in Hindi and Regional language. Hindi and Regional content consumption on the internet has witnessed a staggering 50% growth over the last year. The growing prominence of regional content and customers demand for accessing the internet in Hindi, has been a key driver for Renault to include regional outreach as an important part of its customer connect strategy.  

Renault India has significantly enhanced its digital capabilities and portfolios with online booking options and other interventions, providing the best of the services to its customers in these challenging times. In addition to demo through the Renault virtual studio, website booking facility and MYRenault App, Renault India launched the Renault Virtual Assistant (RVA) last year, offering personalized customer experience round the clock to potential buyers and existing customers. As part of the customer connect strategy to further strengthen the regional reach, RVA, currently in English, will be available in three regional languages including Hindi, Marathi and Tamil by the end of July’21. 

In the past one year Renault India been aggressively pursuing with an innovative and comprehensive strategy to amplify and grow our presence in smaller towns and cities including Rural markets. Renault India launched a special project like VISTAAR where the dealership teams recruited specialised sales consultants to reach out to the customers in the rural markets. Renault has recently partnered with CSC Grameen eStore, a subsidiary of CSC eGovernance Services India Limited (CSC-SPV). As part of this, Renault India’s leading product range is listed on the CSC Grameen eStore and made available to the potential customers in hinterlands through aspirational Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). 

Driven by innovation, ‘Rural Float’ is yet another significant step to move closer to the customers in the remote areas and provide a Renault vehicle ownership experience. With ‘Rural Float’, Renault has been able to showcase the newly launched sub-four meter compact SUV, Renault KIGER to its potential customers in rural markets, engaging more than 23,000 customers in 233 towns across 13 states, facillitaing 2700 test drives. 

Together with its product portfolio expansion strategy to drive volumes in India, Renault is substantially increasing its network reach in India and introducing several unique and pioneering initiatives to ensure that customers’ have an unparalleled association with the Renault brand. Currently, Renault India has more than 500 sales and service touchpoints in India, which include 200+ Workshop On Wheels locations across the country.

ABOUT RENAULT  

Renault India Pvt. Ltd. is a fully owed subsidiary of Renault S.A.S. France. Renault India cars are manufactured in the manufacturing facility located in Oragadam, Chennai, with a capacity of 480,000 units per annum. Renault India also has a widespread presence of more than 500 sales and service touchpoints, which include 200+ Workshop On Wheels locations across the country, with benchmark sales and service quality. 

Renault India’s product line up and services have seen strong recognition among customers and industry experts alike, winning more than 60 titles, making Renault India one of the most awarded automotive brands in a single year in India. 

Airtel Payments Bank Launches ‘Pay To Contacts’ For UPI Payments

* Customers can now pay by simply selecting a saved contact number 

* Eliminates the requirement to enter bank account details or UPI ID 

Airtel Payments Bank has launched ‘Pay to contacts’ which allows customers to initiate a UPI payment just by selecting the receiver’s mobile number from their phonebook. 

'Pay to Contacts' displays the valid UPI id associated with the selected contact, irrespective of the UPI app used by the receiver. This eliminates the need to enter the UPI id or bank account details to process the payment and saves time. 

A customer can initiate a payment by clicking on Pay Money - To Contacts option under the BHIM UPI section and then selecting the receiver's contact.  

Mr. Ganesh Ananthanarayanan, Chief Operating Officer, Airtel Payments Bank, said, “We aim to offer a simple, secure, and seamless payment experience to our customers. With the Pay to Contacts, our users no longer need to worry about entering the bank details or UPI id every time they make a payment. We believe that this feature will significantly add to customer convenience.” 

Customers can now open an Airtel Payments Bank account within few minutes with a video call from the Airtel Thanks app. The bank offers a digital savings account - Rewards123, which gives more value to customers when they transact digitally using the account.   

Paytm Payment Gateway Enables CRY To Raise Donations Amounting To INR 2 Cr+ During The Pandemic

India’s largest payment enabler for businesses, Paytm Payment Gateway has enabled CRY, Child Rights and You to raise over Rs 2 crore in donations during the ongoing pandemic. CRY is a 42-year-old organization and one of India’s most trusted NGOs in the country. Paytm Payment Gateway’s integration has helped the NGO reach a larger audience and collect donations via multiple payment methods. The donations were made collectively through QR code and Paytm’s donation tab.  

Paytm Payment Gateway comes with the widest range of payment methods, like wallet, credit cards, debit cards, net banking, UPI, Paytm Postpaid and others. For CRY, Child Rights and You, the Paytm Wallet has become the most useful method for digital payments through the payment gateway integration. Additionally, the payment methods range has helped in digitizing the donation acceptance process which was highly dependent on bank cheques previously. The same-day settlement facility for NGOs ensures that they need not wait for a long time to receive donations into their bank account.  

CRY, Child Rights and You works with the vision to protect the needs of children in our society and ensure equity for all. In collaboration with 102 local NGOs, CRY, Child Rights and You has already impacted the lives of 3 mn+ children in 19 Indian states. In the current pandemic situation, CRY, Child Rights and You aims at creating sustainable change in the lives of children in need. They are working on relief measures that include the distribution of dry rations and hygiene kits to keep underprivileged children and their families as the pandemic continues. With the digital payment solution backed by Paytm Payment Gateway, they are working on increasing the scope of their programs and efforts. Currently, more than 30% of the contributions CRY receives is via Paytm only.  

Praveen Sharma, Senior Vice President at Paytm said, “Social welfare has always been a key part of all that we do as an organization. During the current pandemic, CRY, Child Rights and You has done a phenomenal job in helping the underprivileged  get access to food and other essentials. Offering Paytm Payment Gateway to CRY, Child Rights and You is a part of our mission to help digitalize the payment system in the country.”

Talking about the much-needed payment solution, Vatsala Mamgain, Director, Resource Mobilisation at CRY said, “Given the nature of the work we do, it is critical to ensure all channels of support are open to our well-wishers, at all times. We’re extremely grateful to Paytm for enabling us to continue protecting India’s most vulnerable communities, particularly in these difficult times. Paytm is one of India’s biggest payment enablers and for us, the platform has certainly been instrumental in mobilizing funds from those who are willing to help to those who are in need and that is definitely the need of the hour." 

Besides this, the company has also announced to offer Paytm Payment Gateway services to the registered NGOs at 0% transaction fees up to Rs. 10 lakhs to help more NGOs.  

FADA Releases June 2021 Vehicle Retail Data In The Indian Market

Total vehicle retail for the month of June’21 rise by 22.62% YoY on a low base. When compared to June’19 (a regular pre-covid month), retails are still down by -28.32%.

On YoY basis, all categories were in green with 2W up by 17%, 3W up by 22%, PV up by 43%, Tractor up by 14% and CV up by a massive 236% (on a very low base due to non-availability of BS-6 vehicles).

Positive momentum from June carries forward to July. With Southern India opening up, we can expect further pickup in demand.

While daily infection cases have been contained offering some respite from the debilitating second wave, however the new virus mutants and the impending 3rd wave continue to pose as risks on a longer term.

FADA thanks the Government of India to bring entire Auto Retail under MSME. This will help the industry at a time when gears are down.

The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) today released Vehicle Retail Data for June’21. 

June’21 Retails

Commenting on how June’21 performed, FADA President, Mr. Vinkesh Gulati said, “The month of June witnessed re-opening for most of the states except the ones in South. Due to this, the industry witnessed a high pent up demand which was stuck in the system because of statewide lockdowns.

While all the categories were in green, Passenger Vehicles maintains to see good demand as customers continued to show keenness in vehicles for observing social distancing and safety of their families. Two Wheeler category though in green has witnessed a softer recovery as rural market is taking time to get back from post covid stress. Commercial vehicle segment has seen a staggering growth over last year, though on a very low base as there were product shortages due to BS-6 transition.

Overall, the Industry is still not out of the woods. When compared to June’19, we are still in red by -28% with 3W and CVs taking the max hit as they are down by -70% and -45% respectively. Only Tractors continue to grow as it was up 27% compared to June’19.

FADA is thankful to the Government of India and previous MSME Minister, Shri Nitin Gadkari for bringing entire Auto Retail under the ambit of MSME. This will definitely help Auto Dealers in multiple ways, may it be lower cost of financing or lower utility rates to name a few.

Near Term Outlook

Positive momentum from June carry forwards to July. With southern India opening up, we can expect further pickup in demand. On a longer term, Auto Industry is yet to see retail numbers comparable to FY 19.

Continued global semi-conductor shortage is impacting demand – supply mis-match thus restricting the growth of Passenger Vehicles. On one hand, while the new virus mutants and a prediction of 3rd wave in August are effecting sentiments, the revival of monsoons in July after a pause of 2 weeks and a better vaccination drive rate continues to build some hope.

We will therefore have to wait and watch how the overall economy shapes up over the next couple of months. We hence see demand to be a mixed bag and hope that recovery is back on track by the time Navratri and Diwali knocks our door.

Inventory at the end of June’21

Average inventory for Passenger Vehicles ranges from 30-35 days

Average inventory for Two – Wheelers ranges from 20-25 days

Tableau Extends Augmented Analytics, Bringing The Power Of AI To Everyone

* Features available in latest product releases from Tableau and Salesforce help more people see and understand data

Tableau, the world’s leading analytics platform (NYSE: CRM), is bringing data analytics and AI together in a suite of new and expanded augmented analytics features. Tableau’s latest release will empower more people with the right technology to make smarter and faster decisions  regardless of their role and skill level.

New IDC research[1] found that a strong data culture creates numerous benefits including increased collaboration, innovation, and measurable value like trust and accountability, regardless of industry or region. However, gaps persist between expectations and reality —83 percent of CEOs expect their organizations to be more data-driven, but only 33 percent of employees are comfortable using data analytics to support their decisions.

“Organizations can drive growth and foster innovation by pairing the right technology investments with a focus on data culture,” said Chandana Gopal, IDC Research Director, Future of Intelligence. “Technologies like embedded AI and augmented analytics are promising tools that can democratize analytics beyond the traditional BI and advanced analyst user, and empower all workers to become more data-driven in their decisions.”

Key new augmented analytics functions from Tableau include:

Ask Data is now available to all roles and users for Tableau Server and Tableau Online with several significant updates. Ask Data helps more people, regardless of their role, answer business questions using natural language. With a new input experience that guides users on how to ask the most relevant question and dashboard integration for an integrated, simple and personalized experience, this release of Ask Data dramatically broadens the number of people who can successfully ask questions of data.

Explain Data is now available to all roles and all users for Tableau Server and Tableau Online. It helps answer the ‘why’ in data by using powerful statistical methods and machine learning to surface understandable explanations behind data points. Now with a UI optimized for a wider audience, business users can quickly understand the drivers behind a specific data point. Explain Data also reduces the risk of error by searching for explanations in the entire data source, beyond what is shown in the visualization.

Ask Data for Salesforce helps Salesforce users ask any question in Tableau CRM using natural language and semantic search to get answers instantly in the form of insights, instantly generated reports, and recommended dashboards, tailored to the context of their business. Because Ask Data for Salesforce automatically learns directly from Salesforce data and users, minimal admin setup time is required, enabling all users to start using data for decision making.

Einstein Discovery for Salesforce Reports auto analyzes data from Salesforce reports quickly and thoroughly to explore and identify the most important insights, surfacing them with charts and explanations that are easy to understand. It helps reduce the barrier to machine learning by enabling direct access to the associated Einstein Discovery story, where users can analyze further.

“There’s a growing disconnect between business leaders expecting a data-driven organization, and employees who aren’t comfortable using data to make decisions,” said Francois Ajenstat, Chief Product Officer, Tableau. “Building truly data-first organizations requires unlocking the power of data for as many people as possible. AI-powered analytics will help more people use data to answer questions, make meaningful decisions and, ultimately, transform their business.”

Through augmented analytics, Tableau tackles the data skills gap by guiding people to uncover insights they wouldn’t otherwise see or discover.

“Ask Data opens up an opportunity to close the gap between advanced analysts and a broader, general business audience, allowing anyone to connect and explore data.” said Ilya Kovalenko, ‎Data Analyst & Visualization Team Lead, Siemens. “By leveraging Tableau’s modern and fast natural language processing technology, our colleagues are reaching insights faster than ever before. With Explain Data, our team is not only able to see data trends, but can easily identify and understand what’s driving them.”

The newly expanded Ask and Explain Data features are now available in Tableau 2021.2. Einstein Discovery for Reports is now available with the Salesforce Summer ‘21 release. Ask Data for Salesforce will be available early next year.

Additional new features in Tableau 2021.2 include:

Collections: Curate content to simplify collaboration and engagement across the organization. People can easily add content (workbooks, data sources, etc) from across their site) and create custom gallery layouts and share them with others.

Jumpstart Your Salesforce Connection: Helps organizations and administrators onboard their employees using Salesforce to Tableau by pre-populating your Tableau Online site with relevant data sources and workbooks that accelerate exploration of Salesforce data.

Connected desktop for web authoring: Enables Creators to transition seamlessly from web authoring to Tableau Desktop for an improved authoring workflow.

Write to Google BigQuery from Tableau Prep: Empowers people to add or update data in Google BigQuery with clean, prepped data.

Containers: Gives customers the ability to run Tableau Server in a single container, making deployments easier, faster and more efficient. In 2021.2 Tableau will support Kubernetes and Docker containers for Linux.

New Canada Tableau Online Pod: Serves our customers in Canada with greater stability and performance.

Area spatial calculation: Allows analysts to measure the square area of a selection on a map, amplifying the power of spatial joins.

Amazon SageMaker for Tableau: Provides a unique opportunity to communicate and share machine learning (ML) with anyone, via self-service analytics. With a few clicks, people can implement ML models built on SageMaker directly within Tableau dashboards.

Aspire Systems Case Study Recognized With 2021 ISG Digital Case Study Award

 

Aspire Systems, a global technology services firm, has announced that it has been recognized by Information Services Group (ISG), a leading global technology research and advisory firm, with the 2021 ISG Digital Case Study Award™, presented to select IT and business services providers for best-in-class digital transformation work with their enterprise customers.

ISG selected case studies from 39 providers for this year’s Awards from a record of nearly 250 submissions. A majority of digital transformation initiatives submitted for consideration were focused on improvements in customer and user experience, with the related goal of driving top-line revenue growth.

Aspire Systems' case study, which received this prestigious recognition, is about a leading insurer whose legacy insurance system had a major constraint that involved a lot of manual work in order to connect its workflows with its partners. Aspire Systems helped it transform with a modern platform that delivered seamless, customizable access to their partners while reducing overhead and human error, thus allowing them to rapidly onboard more partners. The “Underwriting Decision Engine” was a big highlight with faster onboarding of partners. Partners also had real-time access to the insurer’s products. Given the reliance on partners for the insurer, the platform helped them grow their partners up to 150. This makes it a standout example of digital transformation, based on an open platform that makes a partner ecosystem work for all its participants.

“Winning this ISG Digital Case Study award is indeed a proud moment for us. The standout case study which fetched us this recognition focused on the business value delivered to a leading insurer in expanding their distribution channels through our digital transformation initiative. Our insurance practice aims at enabling insurers to improve straight-through processing, enhance operation excellence, increase quote conversion, reduce loss ratio and deliver best-in-class customer experience and this achievement is a testament to the same”, commented Maha Santaram, Insurance Practice Head, Aspire Systems.

The ISG Digital Case Study Awards evaluate the objectives, solutions and outcomes achieved through digital transformation projects. Technology and service providers worldwide submit case studies, which are independently validated by the enterprise client and reviewed by an expert ISG digital research review committee. Selections are based on a multi-dimensional assessment of the tangible impact of digital transformation on the client’s business and the uniqueness of the provider’s solution.

“The events of the past year have accelerated the adoption of digital technologies and business models,” said Paul Reynolds, ISG partner and chief research officer. “Enhancing customer and user experience was the most prevalent objective across the enterprise-provider projects we examined, and the transformational role providers are playing was evidenced by the many innovative and impactful solutions they delivered.” The ISG Digital Case Study Awards program and related research help guide ISG’s digital advisory work with enterprise clients.

About ISG (Information Services Group)

ISG is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 700 clients, including more than 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; strategy and operations design; change management; market intelligence and technology research and analysis. Founded in 2006, and based in Stamford, Conn., ISG employs more than 1,300 digital-ready professionals operating in more than 20 countries—a global team known for its innovative thinking, market influence, deep industry and technology expertise, and world-class research and analytical capabilities based on the industry’s most comprehensive marketplace data. 

About Aspire Systems:

Aspire Systems is a global technology services firm serving as a trusted technology partner for more than 200 customers across the globe. Aspire works with the world's most innovative enterprises and software product companies, helping them leverage technology to transform their business in the current digital landscape. Its proven approach to Software Engineering & Digital Technologies helps companies run smart business models. Aspire’s core philosophy of ‘Attention. Always.’ communicates its belief in lavishing care and attention to its customers and employees. The company currently has over 3200 employees, globally and is CMMI Level 3 certified. It operates across North America, LATAM, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific. Aspire Systems has been recognized for the 12th time in a row as one of the Top 100 ‘Best Companies to Work For’ by the Great Place to Work® Institute.Mr Gupta will be responsible for building ecosystem partnerships for driving magicpin’s growth. A graduate of IIM Ahmedabad and IIT-Delhi, he has decades of experience as an entrepreneur and investor.

In accepting the position, Pranay Gupta stated, “magicpin is a fantastic platform that lets consumers save, while driving growth for its 150K+ merchants. I am eager to join the team and build partnerships that take magicpin’s massive savings network to many more consumers.”

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Commenting on the appointment, Anshoo Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO of magicpin said, “We are excited to welcome Pranay to the magicpin family. He brings a lot of experience, expertise, and valuable insights to the position, and we look forward to him playing a key role in the company’s next phase of growth."

Mr Gupta’s appointment comes on the heels of other key strategic additions to the leadership team of magicpin.

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magicpin is India’s #1 savings app that spans from local merchants to large brands, online and offline. We bring the local market alive on our user’s phone and let people discover and save through our magicpin rewards programme, powered by over 150K partner stores.

magicpin drives over $1B of annual business that covers local merchants and brands like Pantaloons, Lifestyle, Westside, Levis, Jockey, Titan, Fastrack, McDonald’s, CCD, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Flipkart, Boat, Amazon, Samsung, Biba, ITC, Zandu, P&G and many more. 

magicpin Appoints Pranay Gupta As VP, Growth And Business Development

magicpin, India’s #1 savings app, has appointed Mr Pranay Gupta as the new Vice President of Growth and Business Development. He was the co-founder of 91 Springboard and is extremely well networked in the technology ecosystem.

Mr Gupta will be responsible for building ecosystem partnerships for driving magicpin’s growth. A graduate of IIM Ahmedabad and IIT-Delhi, he has decades of experience as an entrepreneur and investor.

In accepting the position, Pranay Gupta stated, “magicpin is a fantastic platform that lets consumers save, while driving growth for its 150K+ merchants. I am eager to join the team and build partnerships that take magicpin’s massive savings network to many more consumers.”

Commenting on the appointment, Anshoo Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO of magicpin said, “We are excited to welcome Pranay to the magicpin family. He brings a lot of experience, expertise, and valuable insights to the position, and we look forward to him playing a key role in the company’s next phase of growth."

Mr Gupta’s appointment comes on the heels of other key strategic additions to the leadership team of magicpin.