Airtel And Oracle Double Down On Partnership To Accelerate India’s Digital Economy

* Oracle to leverage Nxtra by Airtel’s data centre network to expand its cloud presence in India

* Airtel Business to offer Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to its million plus enterprise customers

* Companies to set up joint Cloud Centre of Excellence in Gurgaon for emerging cloud technologies, IP development

Oracle and Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s premier communications solutions provider, have extended their partnership to support the growth of India’s digital economy by bringing a range of industry leading cloud solutions to more than 1 million enterprise customers.

The number of active Internet users in India is projected to grow from 622 million in 2020 to over 900 million by 2025[1], driven by affordable smartphones and data tariffs. With 5G services expected to begin in 2022, the Indian economy will see a further surge in demand for digital services and applications. Additionally, organisations are moving to cloud-based applications to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. As a result, India’s public cloud market is expected to grow from USD 3.6 billion in 2020 to USD 9.5 billion by 2025[2].

Oracle Cloud to expand in India with Nxtra by Airtel 

To support the increasing demand for cloud services in India, Oracle will expand its India West  (Mumbai) region capacity with Nxtra by Airtel – the data centre subsidiary of Airtel. The expanded Oracle Cloud Mumbai Region will be available in 2022. Nxtra by Airtel operates India’s largest data centre network of 10 hyper data centres and 120 edge data centres and plans to invest Rs. 5000 cr (USD 760 million) by 2025 to expand capacity by 3X to over 400 MW.

The expanded Mumbai Region will complement Oracle’s existing MeitY-empanelled cloud regions[3] in Hyderabad and Mumbai, which already serve hundreds of customers in the country, spanning the private and public sectors. The expanded region will enable more customers to leverage Oracle’s next-generation cloud infrastructure and Airtel Business network to innovate and accelerate their business growth.

Airtel Business to offer Oracle Cloud

As part of the collaboration, Airtel Business and Oracle will also jointly market Oracle Cloud solutions to enterprise customers in the private and public sectors. Airtel Business serves over one million enterprises in India, including large corporations, start-ups, governments and SMEs. Oracle Cloud solutions will now be available to these customers as part of Airtel Business’ integrated portfolio.

Co-innovation for the Indian market

Oracle and Airtel will also set up a Cloud Centre of Excellence in Gurgaon with a dedicated team of specialists from both organisations. These experts will help modernise Airtel’s internal workloads as well as enable customers to adopt cloud and fully benefit from it. Airtel and Oracle will also work on joint IP solution development to support emerging technology growth areas. These include multicloud solutions, B2B customer experience solutions, unified communications solutions among others.

“The demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is on the rise. We’ve witnessed triple-digit growth in the business last year with more and more organizations, of all sizes ranging from top banks and telcos to governments and unicorns, in Asia, turning to OCI to run their mission-critical workloads. We want to help customers build true business continuity and disaster protection, while helping them address their in-country data residence requirements,” said Garrett Ilg, President, Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific. “Our partnership with Airtel is a milestone and together we can truly help Indian businesses fast-track growth and help boost India’s economy.” 

Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel said: “We are delighted to strengthen our close working relationship with Oracle even further. Airtel’s world-class data centre network will support Oracle’s cloud growth in India as they expand their cloud region in the country. Both companies will also partner to co-innovate cloud solutions for India’s digital economy and take these to the market by leveraging Airtel’s leadership in the enterprise segment. With its 5G ready network and large investments in digital infrastructure including data centers, Airtel is well positioned to tap the emerging growth opportunities in the enterprise segment as businesses accelerate their digital transformation journeys.”

About Airtel 

Headquartered in India, Airtel is a global communications solutions provider with over 480 Mn customers in 17 countries across South Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top three mobile operators globally and its networks cover over two billion people. Airtel is India’s largest integrated communications solutions provider and the second largest mobile operator in Africa. Airtel’s retail portfolio includes high speed 4G/4.5G mobile broadband, Airtel Xstream Fiber that promises speeds up to 1 Gbps with convergence across linear and on-demand entertainment, streaming services spanning music and video, digital payments and financial services. For enterprise customers, Airtel offers a gamut of solutions that includes secure connectivity, cloud and data centre services, cyber security, IoT, Ad Tech and cloud based communication. For more details visit www.airtel.com  

About Oracle

Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle, Java, and MySQL are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation.

Takeda Receives The Arogaya CIBioD Innovation And Enterprise Leadership Award

* Takeda was recognized for its holistic initiatives designed to improve the quality of life and standards of care for patients

* The company recently pioneered the 'Blueprint for rare diseases' initiative designed for multi-stakeholder engagement and collaboration focused on rare diseases in India

* The initiative has helped create various innovative technology-based solutions to improve access to healthcare

Takeda India, a core country in Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited’s Growth and Emerging Markets Business Unit, has been awarded the Arogaya CIBioD Innovation and Enterprise Leadership Award at the Tech4Seva Summit. The award was received for the company's holistic initiatives designed to improve the quality of life and standards of care for patients, including the 'Blueprint for rare diseases' initiative

The awarding body, The Center for Innovation and BioDesign (CIBioD), is an initiative of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) aimed at promoting research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the Indian Healthcare System. The award was received at the Tech4Seva Summit, which acts as a platform to mobilize the creative abilities of technology providers from stakeholders to provide scientific and sustainable solutions to the issues that are identified at a grass-roots level.

This honor underscores the company's unwavering commitment to address unmet medical needs and create a brighter future for the nation. Commenting on the recognition, Mr Simon Gallagher, (Interim) General Manager for Takeda India, said, " On behalf of Takeda, a global, values-based, R&D, and data-driven biopharmaceutical leader, I am proud that Takeda India has been recognized with this prestigious award. At Takeda, we believe in the power of Public-Private Partnerships and innovations to broaden patient access to treatment and care in a sustainable way. By leveraging our internal research capabilities while also actively engaging with innovative ecosystems around us, we remain committed to translating science into highly transformative solutions for the joint better health of the nation.”

He continued, “With the same spirit, we recently conceptualized our 'Blueprint for rare diseases' initiative. We aim to go beyond identifying access gaps and their potential solutions and instead enable participants to commit to concrete plans of action to achieve these solutions. The honor motivates us to do more for healthcare systems of the world and aim to help patients lead the best quality of life possible."  

Takeda's 'Blueprint for rare diseases' initiative was pioneered together with all the relevant stakeholders in the healthcare value chain, including the Ministry of Health – central and state, Patient Groups, notified Centre of Excellence, NGOs, and industry bodies. As a part of this initiative, a charter would be developed for stakeholders to commit to improving care and management of Lysosomal Storage Diseases (LSDs) in evolving healthcare systems. It bolsters the nation's commitment towards better health outcomes for collective solution-based innovative approaches and shared responsibilities. The company has also developed innovative technology-based solutions to improve easy access and coverage to healthcare by connecting healthcare providers and patients. Besides steering innovation in the healthcare ecosystem, Takeda adheres to an access-first approach that ensures continuous access to innovations in healthcare and creates a positive impact on the lives of patients, particularly those with rare and complex diseases in underserved communities around the world.

About Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE:4502/NYSE:TAK) is a global, values-based, R&D-driven biopharmaceutical leader headquartered in Japan, committed to bringing Better Health and a Brighter Future to patients by translating science into highly innovative medicines. Takeda focuses its R&D efforts on four therapeutic areas: Oncology, Rare Diseases, Neuroscience, and Gastroenterology (GI). We also make targeted R&D investments in Plasma-Derived Therapies and Vaccines. We focus on developing highly innovative medicines that contribute to making a difference in people's lives by advancing the frontier of new treatment options and leveraging our enhanced collaborative R&D engine and capabilities to create a robust, modality-diverse pipeline. Our employees are committed to improving patients' quality of life and working with our partners in health care in approximately 80 countries.

For more information, visit https://www.takeda.com.

Bahwan CyberTek Appraised At CMMI Maturity Level 5 For Continuous Improvement

* This recognition is a testimony to our continuous improvement processes, quantitative techniques, and adherence to established practices

Bahwan CyberTek (BCT) Group, a global provider of digital transformation solutions, announced that it has been appraised at Maturity Level 5, the highest maturity level of the CMMI Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).

This appraisal validates BCT’s commitment to service excellence and is a testimony to our continuous improvement processes, quantitative techniques, and adherence to established practices. Level 5 maturity indicates that BCT is performing at an ‘optimizing’ level. At this level, an organization continually improves its processes based on quantitative understanding of its business objectives and performance needs.

Speaking about the recognition, Mr. S Durgaprasad, Co-Founder, Director and Group CEO, Bahwan CyberTek Group, said, “This is a proud moment for us. The recognition is an indicator of the synergy between our people, process, and technology, coming together to help our customers with the right products, solutions, and services to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Recognition from a renowned entity like CMMI endorses our relentless pursuit of excellence to help our customers become future fit.”

CMMI is a capability improvement framework that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes that ultimately improve their performance. CMMI Institute is a global leader in the advancement of best practices in people, process, and technology.

About Bahwan CyberTek

Established in 1999, Bahwan CyberTek (BCT) is a global provider of IP-based digital transformation solutions leveraging its portfolio of innovative IP in the areas of Digital Experience, Predictive Analytics, and Digital Journey Management across North America, the Middle East, Far East, Africa, and Asia. Driving innovation through outcome-based business models, proven and powerful IP solutions, BCT is a trusted partner for over 1000+ customers, including Fortune 500 companies. With strong capabilities in digital technologies, BCT has over 3,000 associates with technical and domain expertise, delivering solutions to the Oil & Gas, Telecom, Power, Government, Banking, Retail, and SCM / Logistics verticals. Learn more about Bahwan CyberTek at www.bahwancybertek.com   

About CMMI

CMMI Institute (CMMIinstitute.com) is the global leader in the advancement of best practices in people, process, and technology. CMMI Institute’s promise is to inspire cultures of continuous improvement that elevate performance and create sustainable competitive advantage.

CMMI Institute offers market-driven solutions that provide insights for baselining and optimizing key organizational capabilities, cybermaturity, and data assets to elevate business performance. For over 25 years, thousands of high-performing organizations in a variety of industries, including aerospace, finance, healthcare, information technology, software, defense, transportation, and telecommunications, have achieved sustainable business success through adopting the CMMI and proved they are capable business partners and suppliers.  

BharatPe Announces 305 Winners Of The ‘BharatPe Lagao, World Cup Jao’ Contest

* Merchants win an all-expenses paid 3 days, 2 nights trip to the city of Dubai

BharatPe, India’s leading Fintech Company for merchants, today announced that it has flown 305 top performing merchants to Dubai, as a part of its ‘BharatPe Lagao, World Cup Jao’ contest. The winners of the contest won a 3 days, 2 nights all-expenses paid trip to Dubai as well as got a chance to watch the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 matches live. The winners include top transacting merchant partners from 38 cities across India, during the time the contest was live.

As a part of the trip, the BharatPe merchants not only watched live cricket action at the Dubai International Stadium, but also visited popular tourist locations including Jumeirah beach, Burj-Al Arab, Dubai Museum, Atlantis The Palm  & Dubai Creek. They also got an opportunity to visit the top shopping destinations in the city, including the Dubai Mall. The winners included merchants from tier-1, 2 and 3 towns and cities of India. Merchants from the following cities travelled to Dubai - Agra, Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Aurangabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Kochi, Delhi, Faridabad, Guntur, Gurgaon, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kanpur, Karimnagar, Kolkata, Kurnool, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mangalore, Mumbai, Mysore, Nagpur, Nalgonda, Nashik, Nellore, Patna, Pune, Surat, Vadodara, Vijaywada, Visakhapatnam and Warangal.

Speaking about the campaign, Mr. Nishant Jain, Chief Business Officer, BharatPe, said, “We believe in building long-term relationships and hence, run contests from time to time to rewards our merchant partners for their trust in us. The ‘BharatPe Lagao, World Cup Jao’ campaign was a huge success. We saw overwhelming participation from merchants across 140+ cities in the country. Cricket is a great unifier in India and merchants were excited to get an opportunity to visit the cosmopolitan city of Dubai and  watch live international cricket matches . We hope to continue offering such top-class experiences to our top transacting as well as loyal merchant partners in the future as well. I would like to reiterate that merchants will always be our key focus and will continue to launch products that can empower their businesses and aid positive growth.”

The ‘BharatPe Lagao, World Cup Jao’ contest was active from August 15 to September 30, 2021. The contest included three milestones based on number of transactions or TPV on the BharatPe QR. The merchants who completed Milestone 3 could get an all-inclusive package to Dubai to watch India play the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. The winners were decided based on a lucky draw.

BharatPe has witnessed a phenomenal growth over the last financial year, with the company witnessing a 5x growth in payments and a 10x growth in lending business. The company has been aggressively expanding across cities and currently has a presence in 140+ cities in India. BharatPe recently ventured into consumer Fintech with the launch of 12% Club- that allows customers to lend and earn interest of upto 12% as well as take loans at 12% annual rate of interest. It also forayed into the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) category with the launch of postpe. BharatPe is aggressively building the lending vertical and has set a target to build a loan book of Rs. 40,000 crores (US$ 5 billion) in the next 5 years.

About BharatPe

BharatPe was co-founded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani in 2018 with the vision of making financial inclusion a reality for Indian merchants. In 2018, BharatPe launched India’s first UPI interoperable QR code, the first zero MDR payment acceptance service. In 2020, post-Covid, BharatPe also launched India’s only zero MDR card acceptance terminals – BharatSwipe. Currently serving over 75 lakh merchants across 140+ cities, the company is a leader in UPI offline transactions, processing 11 crores+ UPI transactions per month (annualized Transaction Processed Value of US$ 11+ Bn). The company has already facilitated disbursement of loans totaling to over Rs. 2,800 crores to over 300,000 merchants, since launch. BharatPe’s POS business processes payments of over Rs. 1,400 crores/ month. BharatPe has raised over US$ 650 million in equity and debt, till date. The company’s list of marquee investors includes Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadfast Capital, Coatue Management, Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Steadview Capital, Beenext, Amplo and Sequoia Capital.  In June 2021, the company announced the acquisition of PAYBACK India, the country’s largest multi-brand loyalty program company with 100 million+ members. In June 2021, it was also given an in-principle approval by Reserve Bank of India to establish a Small Finance Bank, in partnership with Centrum Financial Services Limited (Centrum), the established and profitable NBFC arm of the Centrum Group. In August 2021, BharatPe forayed into the consumer space with the launch of its first-of-its-kind consumer investment+ lending product- 12% Club. In October 2021, the consortium of Centrum Financial Services Limited (Centrum) and BharatPe, was issued a Small Finance Bank (SFB) license by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). BharatPe also made its grand entry in the Buy Now Pay Later segment with the launch of postpe in October.

Infogain Appoints Vivek Sharma As Head Of Sales- Europe Will Expand UK & European Footprint

Infogain, a Silicon Valley-based leader in human-centered digital platform and software engineering services, today announced the appointment of Vivek Sharma as the company’s new VP & Head of Sales- Europe. Vivek brings more than 20 years of experience in technology sales, consulting, client services and operations.

“We are excited to welcome Vivek to our team,” said Rohit Nagpal, Chief Business Officer at Infogain. Vivek’s experience in the consumer, travel & transportation, manufacturing & technology, energy & utilities, and media & telecom verticals complement Infogain's focus areas. He will be instrumental in ensuring we achieve our aggressive growth plans for Europe.” 

Prior to joining Infogain, Sharma held leadership positions at Wipro Technologies. There, he served in several executive roles with a focus on retail, consumer goods, consumer business and transportation for European markets. He brings a highly successful track record in providing digital, business services and technology services to clients, private equity companies and market makers. 

At Infogain, Vivek will be responsible for sales and business development, expanding the Infogain footprint and enabling leading UK and European enterprises to create intelligent, extensible digital platforms that unlock more meaningful and authentic interactions with their customers.

“Commenting on his appointment, Vivek Sharma said, “I am delighted to join Infogain and drive their ambitious growth plans in Europe.

About Infogain

Infogain is a human-centered digital platform and software engineering company based out of Silicon Valley. We engineer business outcomes for Fortune 500 companies and digital natives in the technology, healthcare, insurance, travel, telecom, and retail/CPG industries using the cloud, microservices, automation, IoT, and artificial intelligence. We accelerate experience-led transformation in the delivery of digital platforms. Infogain is also a Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Gold Partner and Azure Expert Managed Services Provider (MSP).

Infogain, an Apax Funds portfolio company, has offices in California, Washington, Texas, the UK, the UAE, and Singapore, with delivery centers in Seattle, Houston, Austin, Kraków, Noida, Bengaluru, Pune, Gurgaon, and Mumbai. To learn more, visit www.infogain.com.

L&T Technology Services Partners With Microsoft To Offer IIoT-Based Smart Manufacturing Solutions

L&T Technology Services Limited (BSE: 540115, NSE: LTTS), a leading global pure-play engineering services company, announced that it has entered into an agreement with Microsoft to offer LTTS’ Energy & Sustainability Manager Solution on Microsoft Azure to digitally transform and create sustainable factories of the future.

LTTS’ Energy & Sustainability Manager is a comprehensive compliance and standard-driven solution that tracks energy losses across plants - the goal being to sustainably reduce wastage throughout a business and providing visibility into utilities and plant equipment. Deployed on Azure, the solution will be taken jointly to end-customers as IP-Cosell solution across a variety of industries.

This latest agreement is part of LTTS’ expanded collaboration with Microsoft to enable enterprises around the world to leverage LTTS’ cutting-edge Manufacturing Solution suite hosted on Azure enterprise cloud-first, mobile-first infrastructure.

In a smart factory setup, it has become mandatory to track and audit all forms of energy consumption and at the same time achieve sustainability goals. Keeping energy efficiency objectives in mind, a company-wide commitment towards energy conservation is imperative with visibility into resource utilization across the water, air, natural gas, electricity, and steam to improve the energy map, comply with statutory regulations, save on energy cost, and achieve net-zero carbon emission.

Abhishek Sinha, Chief Operating Officer and Member of the Board, L&T Technology Services said, “Energy savings and sustainability have become key goals of all major digital transformation exercises. In such circumstances, it is paramount that manufacturing companies achieve environmental compliance and standards, while ensuring that environmental goals are observed across the organization. With efficient business operations, enhanced energy management and state-of-the-art green technologies as its pillars, LTTS’ Energy & Sustainability Manager solution will help companies achieve significant energy savings and also attain sustainability goals.”

Venkat Krishnan, Executive Director, Global Partner Solutions, Microsoft India said, “With sustainability at the core of our business, Microsoft has been helping companies achieve the highest levels of environmental sustainability. We are supporting organizations to explore energy innovations for next-gen sustainable technology, while reimagining business models and building a better planet. This collaboration with an engineering services’ leader like LTTS, can transform legacy plants and truly create factories of the future.”

Previously, LTTS has also helped develop the World's Smartest Office Campus in Israel in collaboration with Microsoft. The futuristic campus is being run on LTTS’ smart campus platform i-BEMS (Intelligent Building Experience Management System), considered the backbone of the modern smart building that provide energy saving technology and cloud- based asset management to complement Microsoft’s Digital User Experience design solutions.

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 57 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 17,900 employees spread across 17 global design centers, 28 global sales offices and 72 innovation labs as of September 30, 2021. For more information please visit https://www.ltts.com/

DMI Finance Partners With Reliance Retail For Digital Finance Options To Customers Across India

DMI Finance Private Limited (“DMI”) today announced its partnership with Reliance Retail Limited (“RRL”) to provide a first-of-its-kind suite of digital finance options for RRL consumer electronics customers across India. 

Through a completely paperless digital journey, DMI will offer financing solutions to RRL consumer electronic customers at merchant locations across India. This partnership will kick-off with loans for the newly-launched JioPhone Next by Reliance.

This transformational partnership brings to all RRL customers an end-to-end paperless journey that that will provide instant, flexible, and affordable EMI options. The loan tenor for the JioPhone Next will be for 18 and 24 months with Jio providing a free and attractive plan for the duration. 

The spokesperson at DMI said: “In todays world, a smartphone is not just a consumer product, but a tool for financial inclusion at large. We, at DMI, are proud to partner with Reliance Retail to provide financing for a range of consumer electronics starting with the JioPhone Next, that will enable access to a digital life for hundreds of millions of Indians and bring them a step closer to realizing their dream of a more prosperous future.”

About the DMI Group:

Founded in 2008 and supported by a deeply experienced team across 40 offices in India, DMI is a Pan-India credit platform with core businesses in digital consumer and MSME finance, housing finance, wholesale finance, and asset management. It is a technology-first lender with class-leading digital finance initiatives. It is supported by global institutional investors, strategic family offices, leading banks, and public market creditors in India. For more details, please visit www.dmifinance.in.