Dubai Chamber to Open First India Office in Mumbai During 2017

The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry plans to open its first Indian office in Mumbai later this year. Senior officials from Dubai Chamber led by Chairman Majid Saif Al Ghurair and UAE Ambassador Ahmed Al Banna met Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis to discuss on approaches to strengthen business and partnerships between Dubai and Mumbai.

The Dubai Chamber confirmed that Chief Minister Fadnavis supported the opening of their office in Mumbai. They have also invited the Chief Minister and Indian business delegation to visit Dubai.

The visiting Dubai Chamber delegation also hosted discussions with Private Sector Focus Group on the new ways India and UAE can enhance economic cooperation. Of all new companies that registered with Dubai Chamber last year, 29% were Indian, bringing the total number of Indian members to over 36,000.

“We see a host of opportunities for business synergies between Dubai and Mumbai and the presence of the Ambassador Ahmed Al Banna shows the commitment of UAE to India. We had lively discussions, which raised many important subjects regarding doing business in Mumbai,” said Chairman of Dubai Chamber Majid Saif Al Ghurair.

 “We have a strong commitment and will be encouraging Dubai companies to open up business in Mumbai and to strengthen public-private partnerships.”

The Dubai Chamber delegation is visiting Mumbai and Ahmedabad, as part of its Global Business Forum series roadshow.

The delegation includes dignitaries and senior businessmen from the UAE visiting stakeholders in the public and private sector in Mumbai and Ahmedabad. The delegation will also meet up with the Chief Minister of Gujarat Vijay Rupani and discuss new ways to enhance economic cooperation between Dubai and Gujarat.

Established in 1965, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry is a non-profit public entity, whose mission is to represent, support and protect the interests of the business community in Dubai by creating a favourable business environment, supporting the development of business, and by promoting Dubai as an international business hub.

Dubai Chamber Applauds Indian Government’s Ease of Doing Business Initiative

The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry has commended the strengthening of trade and commerce relationship between India and Dubai, crediting this growing relationship to the ease of doing business initiative by the Government at the Centre.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first Indian PM to visit the Gulf nation and this followed by two visits of the crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed last year and in January 2017 to preside over the Republic Day celebrations has strengthened the ties between India and Dubai, said Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman Majid Saif Al Ghurair.

“Dubai Chamber has placed a strategic focus on strengthening the Emirate’s ties with India. The country is a major part of our expansion strategy and we are excited to be opening our representative office in India later this year,” Majid Saif Al Ghurair said while addressing a delegation of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here.

“India offers plenty of exciting trade and investment opportunities which businesses in the UAE stand to benefit from. The country is pushing ahead with plans to expand its infrastructure, develop cluster cities, and boost foreign investment in various sectors.”

Dubai Chamber and Dubai-headquartered DP World, which has operations in India, said that relationships between India and Dubai have taken a completely different turn after the PM Modi’s visit in August 2015, followed by the crown Prince of Abu Dhabi’s visits.

“Partnership between India and Dubai is growing stronger by the day and the government is making all efforts to give assistance to business on both sides,” said Anil Singh, Chairman / Senior Vice President and Managing Director - Subcontinent  UAE - India Business Council / DP World.

“Bureaucracy is major challenge faced by businesses operating in India; however, we believe that doors have been opened up for investments to increase in both countries. We also believe that the ease of doing business has been a major push and it will grow with openness and constant dialogues.”

Recently, DP World Group Chairman and CEO Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem had announced investments of $1 billion in India’s ports, logistics and free trade zone, in addition to its current large portfolio.

Bihar Government & Megasoft Signs MoU to Enhance IT Services with Cloud Technologies

Megasoft Limited, a leading technology company, announced today, the award of cloud-enabled solution and services contract by the Bihar State Electronics Development Corporation Ltd. (BELTRON). The state Government of Bihar, through BELTRON, plans to establish state-of-the-art cloud computing facility for use by its various e-Governance programs and other IT-driven initiatives.

The cloud-enabled State Data Centre (SDC) named ‘Bihar Cloud’ is one of the important elements for supporting initiatives of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). The primary purpose of the cloud computing solution is to establish a viable ‘Private’ cloud environment for use by the various e-Governance applications of Bihar.

Megasoft, acclaimed for its sophisticated cloud deployments, will provide state-of-the-art infrastructure and technology solution and services to address various needs of multiple line departments within the state that come under the purview of Bihar Cloud. While the solution is focused primarily on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), other services such as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will complement and be deployed on top of the basic IaaS services.

Rahul Singh, Managing Director, BELTRON said, “In the past, applications and websites of state departments were hosted on different servers. In such a scenario, introduction of a new application or website required all other applications and websites to be brought down. With ‘Bihar Cloud’, sufficient space will be allocated to various state Government departments based on their requirements. The unique feature of this project is that the cloud-based implementation will also further strengthen the security aspect of all the applications. The inauguration of the solution is planned shortly”.

G V Kumar, CEO and Managing Director of Megasoft said, “Virtualization and the cloud mean much more than mere consolidation. Our Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution will not only ease BELTRON’s infrastructure management efforts but also provide them the ability to automatically scale-up or scale-down services hosted in the cloud, based on user demand. By addressing the systems and information technology needs from a holistic perspective, our delivery model will ensure that BELTRON implements ‘Bihar Cloud’ in the most effective manner”.

Megasoft cloud-enabled solution is agnostic to the underlying hardware, storage, network and operating system. Besides enabling end customers to automatically provision services via a web portal it provides service assurance for maintenance and operations activities performed by the users.

Indian CIOs are Prioritizing Digitalization over Conventional Technologies

CIOs in India are prioritizing digitalization and rivaling global top performers when it comes to their commitment to digital business, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner’s annual global survey of CIOs found that average IT budgets in India are expected to grow 10.7 percent in 2017, nearly five times faster than the overall global average of a 2.2 percent increase. However, India is struggling with significant IT talent gaps.

The 2017, Gartner CIO Survey gathered data from 2,598 CIO respondents in 93 countries and all major industries, representing approximately $9.4 trillion in revenue and public-sector budgets, and $292 billion in IT spending. Sixty five Indian CIOs responded to the 2017 Gartner CIO Survey.

“India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and Indian CEOs are looking to their CIOs to deliver on the promise of digitalization,” said Partha Iyengar, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “Indian CIOs are being given the budgets to invest in digitalization and the game-changing technologies that support it, but IT organizations remain immature in some respects and lack key resources. How Indian CIOs deal with the challenges caused by rapid business change and opportunities will help determine the future success of their enterprises.”

When asked how much their company's revenue will grow in 2017, the Indian CIOs surveyed reported that they expected average revenue growth of 12.6 percent. This is much higher than the global average of a 4 percent rise in company revenue among respondents.

The rapid growth in the IT budget poses an extra challenge for Indian CIOs, who will have to be even more creative than their peers elsewhere in finding the skills they need to pursue digital transformation. On the one hand, leaders have committed to using digital technology for business advantage, but skills and resources topped the list of worries at 21 percent.

“Indian CIOs have the money to spend, but the availability of talent and skills necessary to implement key projects remains a significant challenge,” said Iyengar. “The lack of business analytics skills is a global concern, and one that Indian CIOs feel keenly with 35 percent of respondents listing it as a top talent concern. Twenty-five percent of Indian respondents list overall lack of skills as a top-three talent gap, compared with 12 percent of overall respondents. A quarter of Indian CIOs also reported a talent gap in digital business and marketing while 19 percent cited lack of specific technical skills.”

“Indian companies have committed to digital business as resolutely as the world's top-performing enterprises,” said Iyengar. “Like their top-performing counterparts, Indian CIOs list digital business and growth or market share as their enterprises' top strategic business priorities through 2017. In fact, Indian CIOs say it even more emphatically with 37 percent listing digital business as a top priority compared to 28 percent of global top performers and 21 percent of all respondents.”

These business priorities have altered the focus of Indian IT organizations. Indian CIOs mirror global top performers when asked what their IT organizations emphasize. For example, almost 9 out of 10 Indian CIOs stress support for digital business over optimizing IT costs, and almost 80 percent say they emphasize innovation over daily operations.

The commitment Indian CIOs have made to digitalization, involves trade-offs and risks. Today, digitalization accounts for 23 percent of the total IT budget in Indian IT organizations which is more than typical performers (18 percent) but still significantly below top performers (33 percent). Indian CIOs plan to accelerate their funding of digitalization by 2018 to 35 percent of total IT budget compared to a predicted 43 percent among top performers.

“The strong emphasis on digitalization by Indian CIOs comes at the expense of more conventional technologies. Infrastructure, data centers, information security and networking rank much lower among Indian CIOs than even the top performers,” said Iyengar. “This is likely an indication of the fact that Indian CIOs have focused on establishing the foundational capabilities over the past decade or so, and they are now concentrating on addressing the competitive challenges by aggressively investing in digital business.”

Microsoft Teams Now Available for Office 365 Customers Globally in 19 Languages

Microsoft Corp. has announced the general availability of Microsoft Teams, the company’s new chat-based workspace in Office 365. The new tool for team collaboration is now available to Office 365 business customers in 181 markets and 19 languages.

Customers worldwide are choosing Microsoft Teams to enable collaboration within their organizations.  Since announcing the preview in November, more than 50,000 organizations have started using Microsoft Teams, including Alaska Airlines, ConocoPhillips, Deloitte, Expedia, J.B. Hunt, J. Walter Thompson, Hendrick Motorsports, Sage, Trek Bicycle and Three UK.

“In a world where information is abundant and human time and attention remain scarce, we aspire to help people and groups of people be more productive, wherever they are,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft.“Office 365 is the broadest platform and universal toolkit for creation, collaboration and communication. Today we are adding a new tool to Office 365 with Microsoft Teams, a chat-based workspace designed to empower the art of teams.”

Office 365 is designed to meet the unique workstyle of every group with purpose-built, integrated applications: Outlook for enterprise-grade email; SharePoint for intelligent content management; Yammer for networking across the organization; Skype for Business as the backbone for enterprise voice and video; and now, Microsoft Teams.

According to Laurie Koch, vice president of global customer service at Trek Bicycle, Microsoft Teams is already streamlining the company’s work by providing assets and tasks in context: “Across Trek’s global teams, the integrated collection of Office 365 apps serves up a common toolset to collaboratively drive the business forward. We see Microsoft Teams as the project hub of Office 365 where everybody knows where to find the latest documents, notes and tasks, all in line with team conversations for complete context. Teams is quickly becoming a key part of Trek’s get-things-done-fast culture.”

Microsoft has introduced more than 100 new features to Teams since November, including: an enhanced meeting experience, with scheduling capabilities; mobile audio calling, with video calling on Android now and coming soon to iOS and Windows Phone; email integration; and new security and compliance capabilities. The company has also delivered new features to make Microsoft Teams accessible, such as support for screen readers, high contrast and keyboard-only navigation. Guest access capabilities and deeper integration with Outlook, and a richer developer platform are targeted for June of this year.

LifeCell Drives on Community Stem Cell Banking for Growth in India

LifeCell International – India’s leading stem cell provider, a pioneer in stem cell research– announced the launch of Baby Cord Share, Community Stem Cell banking to address the need for creating a large inventory of stem cells in the country. BabyCord Share brings together the unique benefits of private and public banks, while effectively addressing the challenges of sourcing matching stem cells in India.

Community Stem Cell Banking is a first of its kind global initiative of LifeCell, which allows sharing of preserved umbilical cord stem cells amongst the community of parents. This provides larger access to donor stem cells within the community and higher probability for finding a matching donor stem cell for treatments. Community banking also helps parents and siblings in accessing stem cells from the community pool, thus providing a comprehensive family benefit for treatments.

According to statistics, individual risks of acquiring a blood or immune related conditions that are eventually treatable by stem cells is 1 in 20.  80% of these conditions would require stem cells from a donor, with the remaining would require their own stem cells. Despite the large need, the transplants that are done are relatively very few, due to lack of availability of matching stem cells for treatment and prohibitive costs in sourcing matching stem cell units.

India has a listing of 1,80,000 bone marrow stem cell donors, which is far less than 1% of the global stem cells donor base, despite accounting for 20% of world population. Moreover nearly 40-50% of these bone marrow stem cell donors are either unavailable or refuse to donate at the time of request.

Mayur Abhaya, MD and CEO, LifeCell said, “With increasing awareness amongst the parents preserving their baby’s stem cells, community banking could help increase the inventory by more than 50,000 every year. Through community banking of cord blood units, India has the potential to become the largest inventory of stem cells globally, increasing the scope of potentially lifesaving stem cell transplants for babies, their families, their communities and others of Indian origin worldwide.

 As per a study funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), if 2.5 lakh stem cell units of Indian origin are made available, chances of patients in India finding a matching stem cell unit will exceed that of even a patient in advanced countries such as U.S. Moreover, the cost of sourcing matching stem cells from public banks from elsewhere in the world could cost around Rs 15 to 20 lakhs making it unaffordable to many.

Dr. Prasad Narayanan, Senior Consultant - Medical Oncology, MD (General Medicine), DM (Medical Oncology) said, “At a time when certain conditions require donor stem cells for transplants are almost 4 times higher than conditions that use patients’ own stem cells, Community stem cell banking is a welcome move from LifeCell, addressing access to donor stem cells of Indian origin which will help future generations stay protected”

Everyday around thousands of babies are born in India and the availability of an umbilical cord donated and stored could be abundant to treat many medical conditions.

 Dr. Jyothsna Madan, MD (OBG) Sr. Obstetrician and Gynaecologist said “Off late there have been awareness and trend amongst parents in preserving their baby’s stem cells at birth. With community stem cell banking, the decision towards preserving umbilical cord stem cells gains larger significance with added protection for the child and the additional protection for the family too”

In order to encourage more people to donate to the Community Bank, LifeCell offers benefits like zero retrieval cost, open access to any matching unit, immediate availability and a large inventory, thereby increasing probability of getting the right match. The cost of stem cell transplant for the donor or sibling would be compensated by LifeCell as token of gratitude for signing up for the community bank. The community member can also avail a full refund of membership fee if the sample is released to another member, thereby incentivizing the donor.

Everyday around thousands of babies are born in India and the availability of an umbilical cord donated and stored could be abundant to treat many medical conditions.

V. Ravi Shankar, Chief Marketing Officer, LifeCell said “Community banking is a new perspective where the baby can bless the family with the protection of stem cells. With an addition of 50,000 units to the community bank every year, notwithstanding the existing inventory of 2,00,000 units of existing customers which may get added to the community.’’

The community stem cell banking will be available to customers with immediate effect at a starting price of Rs 16,990 with an Annual Storage Fee of Rs 4,000 per annum. LifeCell also offers additional long-term plans wherein customers can choose to prepay the storage fee. BabyShield, LifeCell’s preventive genetic screening and diagnostic testing services, is India’s market leader for newborn screening services and recently forayed into prenatal screening.

Mobileye - Driverless Car Technology Firm Now Part of Intel Inc

 US chipmaker Intel is taking a big bet on driverless cars with a $15.3bn takeover of specialist Mobileye.

Intel will pay $63.54 a share in cash for the Israeli company, which develops "autonomous driving" systems.

Mobileye and Intel are already working together, along with German carmaker BMW, to put 40 test vehicles on the road in the second half of this year.

Intel expects the driverless market to be worth as much as $70bn by 2030.

Jerusalem-based Mobileye has contracts with 27 car makers. It also controls about two thirds of the market for software that runs automatic emergency braking and semi-autonomous cruise control systems already fitted to cars and trucks.

Technology companies are racing to launch driverless cars.

Earlier this month, Nissan test drove a converted Leaf vehicle and said it hoped to make the cars available by 2020.

Google has also done extensive development of driverless cars.

Announcing the deal, Intel said that as cars "progress from assisted driving to fully autonomous, they are increasingly becoming data centres on wheels".

The chipmaker reckons that by 2020 driverless cars will generate 4,000 GB, or 4 terabytes, of data a day that can be mined for information.

Betsy Van Hees, analyst at Loop Capital Markets, said Intel had very little presence in the automotive market, "so this is a tremendous opportunity for them to get into a market that has significant growth opportunities".

Timothy Carone, a Notre Dame University academic, said: "Major players are finding ways finding ways to position themselves for a change as seminal as the personal computer revolution."

Mobileye was founded in 1999 to develop "vision-based systems to improve on-road safety and reduce collisions". 

The company, along with Intel's automated driving group, will be based in Israel and led by Amnon Shashua, Mobileye's co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer.