Report Demands for Indian Smart City Tech - Self-Drive Cars, Route Planning and Car Sharing Apps

Population increase and congestion in cities is fuelling demand for ‘smart city’ transport technologies among consumers in India, one of the world’s fastest growing economies. According to a new report from the Future Foundation, commissioned by MasterCard, Indians in bigger cities likes Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai feel that the local governments could be doing more to leverage new technology to improve urban transport services.

Traffic congestion and pollution arising from the use of private cars has become unsustainable throughout the country. The provision of real-time travel information will be key factor in encouraging the use of public transport over private. According to the report, 37 per cent of Indians and 34 per cent of Chinese surveyed already use smartphone travel apps at least once a month. In addition, in India, 59 per cent of respondents mentioned that they are using cars less often for journeys. The focus has shifted towards public transport and the success of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Ahmedabad has encouraged other Indian cities to adopt the system. As payments have a critical role to play in BRT system, the respondents acknowledge that contactless payments and innovation in the fare collection system can help ease congestion by incentivizing travel at less busy times.

The report, ‘Connecting Cities - Mobility: Unlocking Potential in Emerging Markets,’ has unveiled that the governments of emerging markets like India are recognizing the importance of data in providing better services, while over half of urban residents are happy to share their user data to improve transport in their city. The report also shows how effected mobile devices can be in aiding more efficient travel, through mobile payment, real-time travel updates or map services. 64 per cent of the respondents from India said they will be interested in a smartphone or tablet app that provided real-time travel updates.

Key Excerpts of the Report:

* Over half of urban residents surveyed are happy to share their user data to improve transport in their city, with Chinese (59%) and Indian (53%) residents most keen.

* 8% of city residents surveyed in China did not want to share their behavioural data in any circumstances, less than in India (13%) and Brazil (19%).

* Appetite for a service that monitors a travel route and advises on suitable alternative travel options was strongest in India (90%), with Brazil (85%) and China following closely (77%).

* The use of travel apps is growing rapidly; 37% of Indians and 34% of Chinese surveyed already use smartphone travel apps at least once a month.

* Residents in India and China’s biggest cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong) felt the local governments could be doing more to make improvements to the city using new technology.

* There was strong desire in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong for a bike and/or car sharing scheme that can be booked via a smartphone.

* There has been a step-change in behaviour across all the markets surveyed, with 65% of respondents in China claiming to have increased walking, cycling and public transport use. 59% in India and Brazil said the same.

* There was strong interest in cars that drive themselves in India (82%), China (77%) and Brazil (73%), as well as cars that can re-program a travel route to avoid congestion.

Commenting on the findings of the report, Vikas Varma, Executive Director, South Asia, MasterCard said, "Indian cities are becoming increasingly congested. To move around and commute with greater ease, Indians have developed an affinity for technology that simplify their lives and provide them access to services. The latest MasterCard report indicates consumers are willing to provide their usage data and information consumption patterns if there is a surety of that data improving everyday transport. Our report shows that people want local governments to take better advantage of technology to improve services. At MasterCard, we believe that an efficient transport system is crucial to a city’s growth and improves ease of living. We hope that the report will encourage governments and transport operators in the country to unlock the power of data when developing new services and adopting technology.”  

IT Software & Development Centre for Danske Bank in Bengaluru

Danske Bank, a European leading financial enterprise and one of the largest banks in Denmark, has established an IT and support services centre in Bengaluru. 

The centre, in collaborated with ITC Infotech, is the bank's first service centre in Asia and will provide development and support for its banking services. 

Speaking at a press conference, Jim Ditmore, COO of services and IT group, said, "We are very pleased to work with ITC. There is a need of critical delivery of mobile services and we look to leverage it with this." He also said the bank may look to set up a banking representative office in India in the future, to help serve customers better. 

The bank has hired around 800 people for the Bengaluru centre. The centre can accommodate 1,200 people and more hiring will happen as demand for IT services increases. The company has mostly hired those with MCA and engineering degrees. The Bengaluru centre will aim to provide digital services and better software.   

No Easy Ride for IISc to Emerge Among the Top: Prof Balaram

“Indian Institute of Science has always strived to be one of the best in the world. However, at every stage there have been constraints”, said Prof P Balaram, former Director, IISc. He was chairing a session on ‘IISc as a Global Institution - Reaching the top’ on the last day of the IISc Alumni Global Conference at J N Tata Auditorium, IISc. 

In reference to Global University Rankings, Prof Balaram said, “Institutes have to run very hard just to retain their rankings over years”. He also mentioned that funding for science is going down in India, and research institutes should brace for difficult times. Referring to rising the political interference in the higher education, he said, “Due to growing political interference, building institutes has become more like a game of snake and ladder”. Noting the growing influence of NRI’s in India’s policy, he urged the IISc alumni who hold top positions in reputed universities abroad to sensitise the Government on how important it is to support an institute which has survived a century. He urged the alumni, faculty, students, and everyone realise that we need to preserve and protect our institutes. 

Prof Sunil Kumar, Dean, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago suggested that IISc should embrace risk, if it wants to reach the top. “It should also be distinct from the global institutes, and leverage its research”, he said. Prof Usha Vijayaraghavan, Chairperson, International Cell, IISc took the audience through a virtual tour of formal collaborations IISc has with institutes in USA, Europe, Australia, and Japan. 

Prof B N Raghunandan gave a presentation on the new IISc campus that is shaping up in Challakere, 220 km away from Bangalore. Many research centres including Solar Power Generation and Research Centre, Climate Research Centre, Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Semi-arid Research Centre, Skill Development Centre, an air strip and a large scale wind tunnel are planned in the new campus. The campus is also running a Talent Development Centre, which has already trained thousands of high school teachers. It will also be home to Centre of Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education, an initiative which caught Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attention, for which he quickly released Rs 1 crore. 

The session on ‘Mind to Market’ was organised to discuss ways to convert IISc research into usable products. Prof Chandra Kishen, Chairman, Centre for Scientific and Industrial Consultancy, said “Through the Centre, IISc faculty have shared their knowledge on a variety of projects from cyber security and lunar landing guidance”.

Prof Jayant Modak, Chairman, Society for Innovation and Development (SID), said that SID has interacted with about two hundred organisations, and earned Rs 175 crores. According to him, IISc faculty file upto 30 to 40 patents every year. 

KVS Hari, Professor, IISc, an entrepreneur himself, said, “Some of the IISc faculty think that making money is a sin. That may be one reason why many faculty may not be keen to take up entrepreneurship.” Comparing Indian and Western mindsets, he said, “Failure is not perceived as a disadvantage in the West. However, in India we are not allowed to fail. This mindset should change”.

Rajalakshmi Iyer, Chief Technology Officer, pro.com and an IISc Alumnus, suggested IISc to set celar targets on the number of business plans it wants to develop and the number of startups it wants to see in a year.

C S Murali, Chairperson, Entrepreneurship Cell, Society for Innovation and Development, IISc spoke about some of the promising businesses that are started by IISc alumni and faculty. He said, “IISc should be aiming to incubate 10-12 companies every year”. Shekhar Kirani, Partner, Accel Partners, said, “In India, providing quality education and healthcare to 800 million poor Indians is a great technological challenge, and an opportunity”.  

Sahasrat Installed at SERC is Fastest Supercomputer in India: Prof R Govindarajan

Earlier this year, IISc's Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC) inaugurated the Cray XC40 petaflop supercomputer, christened as Sahasrat. The Centre acquired ‘Sahasrat’, a supercomputer for about Rs 33,000 crore, said Prof R Govindarajan, SERC, IISc.  Co-ordinating a session on ‘High Performance Computing and Big Data Analytics’, he said this is the fastest supercomputer in India, and IISc researchers use it for materials research, running climate models, data analytics of biological systems, and computational fluid dynamics.

Dr Michael L Norman of University of California, explained his group’s work in supercomputing. Speaking about big data, he said, “Big data is a commercial phenomenon. The scientific community has the opportunity to leverage some of the technologies behind the revolution”. Talking about IISc, he said, “IISc has spectacular atmosphere. I feel at home here”.

Dr Manish Gupta, Director, Xerox Research Centre India, in his talk explained how quality healthcare can be made accessible to all through the use of technology. Commenting on the rising cost of healthcare in India, he jokingly said, “ICUs in India have the most expensive beds in the country!”.

Dr Rajat Moona, Director General, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), and an IISc alumnus, spoke about how supercomputers have evolved in India, and also gave a broad picture of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). NSM aims to drastically improve the number of supercomputers in India, and SERC, IISc is playing a major role in this initiative.

Prof Ram Akella, Director, Center for Knowledge, Information Systems, and Management of Technology, University of California Santa Cruz, and an IISc Alumnus spoke about how India and US could collaborate in the field of big data not only on academic problems, but also on problems relevant to society and commercial establishments.

Use Science to Improve Life of a Common Man: Sudha Murty

Sudha Murty, Chairperson of Infosys Foundation addressing at the IISc Alumni Global Conference at the J N Tata Auditorium on the topic of 'Reminiscence' recalls her student’s days in the IISc.  She said, ““What really matters is what you have done to your fellow human beings”, she said and adds that until I joined IISc, I hadn’t visited Bangalore at all. In IISc, Prof V P Sen Gupta and his wife Nandini were very friendly, and gave me the warmth I needed”. According to her, there were fourteen women students in IISc at that time. Speaking about science, she said, “The ultimate purpose of science is to improve the life of a common man”.

Prof G Padmanabhan, former Director of IISc, shared his days as the Director of IISc. Urging IISc to translate its research so that it can touch people’s lives, he said, “We have a great opportunity to translate. We need to translate science. Science should be applied”. He felt IISc could start ‘Translation Centre for Infectious Diseases’, which can have a great impact.

Prof Roddam Narasimha, one of the leading Indian scientists, and IISc alumnus, spoke about his association with IISc which has lasted more fifty years. “I visited IISc for the first time in 1951, and saw an aircraft parked under a tree. I touched it, and found it beautifully curved. I immediately decided to study aeronautics”, he said, while explaining his fascination with airplanes. He showed a lot of old photographs, and recalled a number of people who made a big difference to his own life and aeronautics in India. Speaking about Prof Satish Dhawan, he said, “He was a remarkable person in many different ways. He was different from others”.

Prof S Ranganathan, who worked on metallurgy in IISc, recalled his undergraduate days in the Institute. “In those days, we got the undergraduate degree in two years, and at the end, we had to give a lecture”, he said. He also proudly said that the foundation stone to the building of Department of Metallurgy was laid by none other than Sir M Vishveshwariah. His first visit to IISc was in 1961, to attend the Gandhi Memorial Lecture given by Sir C V Raman, in which Raman spoke about diamonds.

‘Only IISc Has Chance to Join List of Top Global Institutes’, says CNR Rao

“Indian Institute of Science is the only Indian institution that has a chance to break into the list of top institutes in the world“, said Bharata Ratna Prof C N R Rao. He was speaking at the IISc Alumni Global Conference at the J N Tata Auditorium in the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus.

The IISc Alumni felicitated the legendary scientist for his remarkable contributions to science. Prof Rao is associated with the IISc for more than fifty years, and his path breaking research has brought laurels to the country in general, and to the IISc in particular.

“My life is intimately connected with this Institute”, he said with a sense of nostalgia. Recollecting his early days in the Institute, he said, “Some of the best friendships of my life were developed here. I met JRD Tata and Satish Dhawan at the IISc”. He called Satish Dhawan “the moral conscience of Indian science”. Prof Rao also revealed that he proposed to his wife Indumati, by calling from a landline phone in the Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry! Back then, that was the only phone in the whole Department! He also wrote his first scientific paper as an independent author, when he was at IISc.

In his speech, Prof Anurag Kumar, Director, IISc said, “Our vision is to be among the world’s foremost academic institutions”. He took the audience through the research activities and infrastructural developments taking place in IISc. He also unveiled a path to realise the vision of making IISc one of the best in the world.

In a session on ‘Contribution of IISc to Strategic Sectors’, leaders from Indian science and technology elaborated on how IISc has played an important role in the development of many technologies of national importance. Kiran Kumar, Chairman, Space Commission, and an IISc alumnus, said, “If ISRO exists today, it’s mostly because of its connections with IISc”. The architects of the Indian space program, Vikram Sarabhai and Prof Satish Dhawan, had very close connections with IISc. Prof Dhawan also served as the Director of IISc from 1962 to 1981.

Bhujanga Rao, Director General, DRDO said, “IISc has contributed a lot in the form of talent. Many of leaders of DRDO studied in IISc”. Elaborating on the “long history of partnership since 1970’s”, he mentioned that a lot of basic research critical for DRDO get done at IISc. “Many faculty members from various departments of IISc are deeply involved in DRDO projects”, he said.

Baldev Raj, Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies, spoke about the role of IISc in the development of atomic energy technologies in India. “Homi Bhabha, the father of atomic energy program, extensively used his connections with IISc”, observed Baldev Raj.  Calling IISc his mother, he said, “Without IISc, I wouldn’t have achieved even a small fraction of what I achieved”.

Kota Harinaraya, Former Chief, LCA Programme, explained how IISc played a crucial role in the development of India’s first Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Tejas. He said, “IISc has nourished the LCA program, and the Department of Aerospace of Engineering virtually it”. According to him, many IISc faculty members worked a lot on the design of the aircraft, development of software tools, and in rigorous testing of components of the aircraft.

Sony Xperia Z3 Series Adds New Features in Xperia Z3+

Building on the success of its Z3 series, Sony India today unveiled Xperia Z3+, the slim, sleek and stylish high-performing premium smartphone. This unique device is the premium addition to the Xperia Z3 series flagship smartphones.

Coupled with Sony’s superior camera technology that is now packed into both the main and front cameras, Xperia Z3+ helps you get the best pictures. Its Impressive smartphone battery stamina and performance keeps you connected faster and longer, whether for work or play. And Sony’s unique signature waterproof design ensures you can do it, whatever the weather.

Beautiful design, better than ever

Slimmer (6.9mm), lighter (144g) and expertly crafted, Xperia Z3+ continues the Sony design story with discreet, but impressive improvements. Not only is it waterproof and dust-tight (IP65/68) ideal for use in all situations, as a further design refinement Z3+ features a capless USB port making it easier and more convenient to charge your phone. In addition the magnetic charging pin has been removed, resulting in an overall more seamless and minimalist design. With a shiny finish on the metal frames, tempered glass and rounded edges, Xperia Z3+ is beautiful to look at from any angle and comfortable to hold.

Z3+ comes available in a choice of four sophisticated colour options to meet your individual taste and style – classic Black and White are joined by a new interpretation of Copper and Aqua Green.

Great pictures anywhere

Z3+ continues to offer the best of Sony’s Cyber-shot & Handycam technologies, to ensure a superior camera performance, and extends the camera evolution not just to the main camera, but the front camera too. Now you can enjoy superior photos, even in low light, with both the front and rear camera. From sceneries to selfies, capture the best shots in any light.

The main camera features the 20.7MP camera with Exmor RS for mobile image sensor, BIONZ for mobile processing engine, and a 25mm wide-angle G lens. Create the best shots first time, every time with improved Superior Auto – it automatically optimises settings to give you the best possible picture and can recognize up to 52 different scenes. And with new Gourmet mode, even your food pictures will be looking their very best. Add some fun and creativity to your photos with the latest Xperia camera apps including Style portrait and AR mask. Capture impressive detail even in low light conditions, thanks to the ISO12800 sensitivity and large 1/2.3 image sensor. Get great shots even when there is strong backlight, with HDR for photos and videos.  Preserve and enjoy your precious moments in high quality with 4K video recording and output.

The new 5MP front camera with Exmor R for mobile image sensor means you can now get better selfies in any light. And the 25mm wide-angle lens is perfect for group selfies. Superior Auto analyses the photographic environment and automatically adjusts settings to make you look great every time. Full HD 1080p is ideal for video chat and when you are shooting selfie videos, SteadyShot with Intelligent Active Mode estimates movements to produce smoother videos.

Powerful performance and up to two-day battery life and quick charging

Xperia Z3+ comes packed with the ultra-fast Snapdragon 810 octa-core 64 bit processor that lets you browse faster than ever and get the optimal graphics experience. Whether you’re multi-tasking over Wi-Fi or the latest 4G network, Xperia Z3+ delivers the speed you need. LTE Cat6 and Wi-Fi MIMO support enable faster connection speeds for a rich, connected experience with up to 300 Mbps LTE data download speeds on the move (actual speed may differ according to operator networks) . Download email with attachments in seconds and enjoy video streaming with no delays or unwanted buffering.

Powerful smartphone features demand smart power management. Xperia Z3+ is equipped to let you enjoy whatever you like doing for as long as you want. Sony’s incredible up to two-day battery stamina and innovative power-saving technology combine to give you superior long-lasting battery performance. And now you can get one day usage with just 45 minutes of charging using the quick charger which is supplied in the box along with Xperia Z3+. Not only that, the Xperia Z3+ can keep going for 5.5 hours with just 10 minutes of charging.

Keeping you entertained

Xperia Z3+ features an ultra-bright 5.2” Full HD smart adaptive display that provides increased brightness and contrast, without losing stamina. Sony’s TRILUMINOS Display for mobile with Live Colour LED and X-Reality for mobile ensure sharper and more vivid colours. Intuitive contrast enhancement delivers the most optimized viewing experience, even in bright sunlight.

Sony’s rich expertise in audio technologies lets you enjoy sound in incredible detail and clarity. High-Res Audio reproduces high frequency sound for a studio quality experience. DSEEHX upscales the audio fidelity of your existing MP3 or AAC tracks to near High-Res Audio quality. And for high quality wireless music listening, Sony’s new LDAC codec transmits data three times more efficiently than legacy codec over Bluetooth.

For those times when you need to block out background noise, Xperia Z3+ supports digital noise cancelling and pairs with the MDR-NC31EM headset, reducing ambient noise by up to 98%. The Xperia Z3+ can identify headsets (both Sony & 3^rd party) and optimise  audio settings to deliver the best audio output. Xperia Z3+ can sense both the type and style of headset and automatically adjusts the audio settings accordingly for best sound experience.

Keep playing your favouritePlayStation4 (PS4) games wherever you are in the home with PS4 Remote Play². Simply connect your Xperia Z3+ to your PS4 via home Wi-Fi and use the DUALSHOCK4 Wireless Controller to ensure you never miss a minute of the action – whatever room you are in.

And to ensure you continue to enjoy the best experiences that Sony has to offer, all Xperia Z3+ users will benefit from access to Xperia LoungeGold - delivering the world of Sony entertainment at your fingertips. Get access to exclusive competitions and offers; be among the first to try out new apps; and enjoy the latest movies, TV episodes and music included with your device.

Xperia Z3+ will be available across Sony centers, Xperia stores and major electronic stores in India.