OYO to Unveil 250 Townhouses Cross India By End of 2017

OYO, a leading hospitality technology major in India has expressed plans to open 250 properties — under its mid-market hotel brand OYO Townhouse — across the country, by the end of 2017.

The company opened its first OYO Townhouse in Bengaluru (at Indiranagar) on Monday, which boasts of 22 rooms. With this launch, OYO Townhouse operates seven hotels across Gurugram, Delhi, Hyderabad, and now, Bengaluru, and plans to expand to 12 major cities in India, including Chennai, Kochi, and leisure destinations like Mysuru, among others.

Priced from Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,500 a night, Townhouse provides hospitality experience in the heart of popular neighbourhoods. By the end of this year, in Bengaluru alone, OYO aims to establish 25 Townhouse properties, in areas such as Koramangala, MG Road, Trinity Circle, and Marathahalli.

According to OYO Chief Operating Officer Abhinav Sinha, the unique Townhouse concept is a combination of hotel, store, home, and workplace.

“OYO Townhouse utilises our technology and patented processes to deliver a unique hospitality experience. Townhouse’s ‘neighbourhood’ connect is a result of understanding that millennials like to switch seamlessly from work to play,” he said. 

As part of this venture, the company has invested in staff training and transformation of the infrastructure to suit OYO’s core quality values. All properties under the OYO Townhouse chain, which are brownfield buildings, will be leased. Also, the hotel concept offers smarter rooms and spaces, a 24X7 kitchen, and so on.

He added, “It gives me great pride to share today that we are also entering into a partnership with KTDC to operate a few of the Jungle Lodge Resort (JLR) properties. Now a reliable OYO experience awaits you at JLR!”

Panasonic Sets Up India Innovation Centre With TCS at Whitefield

Consumer electronics maker Panasonic on Thursday announced setting up of its first India Innovation Centre (IIC) in Bengaluru, in association with TCS.

As part of this, the company inaugurated the Centre of Excellence (CoE) at the TCS facility in Whitefield.

The CoE will focus on open innovation in the consumer electronic space and leverage the technology already available with Panasonic India, and create geography-centric USPs to develop innovative solutions, according to the company.

As part of this collaboration, TCS will bring in industry know-how, innovation practices, and create an ecosystem for Panasonic to shape the future product strategy, and enable in digital transformation.

Agencies

Paytm Announces $1.4 B Raise Funding from SoftBank

Paytm, the second largest Internet company run by One97 Communications, on Thursday said that it has raised $1.4 billion from SoftBank Group in one of the largest funding rounds by a single investor in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Besides reducing the burden of Chinese investment by Alibaba, Paytm will find the Japanese conglomerate investment to expand its soon to be launched payments bank operations, expand the user-base and unveil more financial products.

Commenting on the development, Paytm Founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said they the company is at an inflexion point in its journey. “This investment by Softbank and support of the incredible entrepreneur Masayoshi Son is a great endorsement of our team’s execution and vision. We believe that we have a great opportunity to bring financial inclusion to half-a-billion Indians.”

Paytm plans to invest about around Rs 10,000 crore over the next three to five years towards enabling half-a-billion Indians to join the mainstream economy. “As a part of this vision, the company will soon launch the Paytm Payments Bank,” it added.

Paytm, which has around 230 million wallet-users, plans to launch its payments bank on May 23, and will use the money to acquire new 500 million customers and launch a slew of financial service products such as wealth management, deposits, and money lending, among others.

Paytm has tied up with several financial institutions including banks such as ICICI Bank and Bank of Baroda and startups such as Capital First and Capital Float to lend to customers on their behalf.

SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son said that the company’s investment in Paytm is line with the Indian government's vision to promote digital inclusion. “We are committed to transforming the lives of hundreds of millions of Indian consumers and merchants by providing them digital access to a broad array of financial services, including mobile payments,” said Son.

SoftBank, which was an early investor in Alibaba, has committed investments of over $10 billion in India. It has pumped close to $2 billion into Indian startups like Snapdeal, Ola and Housing.com in last few years. The company had to write off a significant portion of that after the devaluation of those investments.

Agencies

Now Free Tool to Combat WannaCry from K7 Computing

K7 Computing is offering a free tool to scan and remove files affected by WannaCry ransomware, which has been causing widespread damage in the last few days.

No other ransomware has exploited a very recently-discovered Microsoft security flaw to spread this way. This makes WannaCry “the most deadly, successful ransomware attack in history,” said J Kesavardhanan, Founder & CEO, K7 Computing, which provides anti-virus solutions.

K7 scanner

It is important that clients know if the system is infected or not by WannaCry ransomware. K7’s scanner scans the system to identify any WannaCry files and removes them from the machine. The scanner also identifies and removes other dangerous ransomware and bots. The free scanning and removal tool can be utilised by individual users and companies, he told the Hindu group journalists.

WannaCry encrypts the data and offers the decrypt code for a price (a ransomware). It exploits an MS17-010 vulnerability to distribute itself. It is possible that WannaCry can arrive through email, either as a malware attachment or as a malicious link. Effect of WannaCry could be far more than what has been reported in the media, he said.

K7 Computing protects over 15 million customers globally against threats to their IT environment. So far, due to WannaCry, nearly 7,000 machines have been affected, he said.

International anti-virus fraternity, including K7 Computing, is working towards creating a decrypt code to retrieve data, which should be made available at the earliest. In the current scenario, users will have to opt for a diagnostic and preventive solution, he said.

WannaCry can spread to all Windows OS prior to Windows 10 without the users’ knowledge. Particularly vulnerable are those operating systems that have not been updated with the latest patch/update. If allowed to launch, from a malicious email attachment, WannaCry will encrypt files even on a fully-patched Windows OS, whether Windows 10 or earlier, he said.

Agencies

TCLL and XLRI Announce Programs for Working Professionals in India

Times Centre for Learning Ltd (TCLL)., and XLRI-Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur recently signed an MoU to collaborate for promoting quality Executive education in India.

This MOU marks the coming together of two potent forces for professional education:  the unmatched pedigree, history and reputation of XLRI management education practice and TCLL’s physical presence, prowess in delivering learning technology, strong corporate connections and commitment to bringing excellence in education in India.

Commenting on the alliance, Anish Srikrishna, President, Times Centre of Learning Limited, said, “We are delighted to be associated with XLRI, one of India’s top business schools. As TCLL continues to strive towards its vision of providing excellent professional education to learners across the age group, I am confident that this association will be a decisive milestone. We are committed to maintain and exceed the high academic standards that learners have automatically come to associate with XLRI and TCLL.”

Working professionals looking to upgrade their skill-set and move up the corporate ladder can choose from the newly launched and upcoming programs to be delivered in different modes that takes care of the busy life of today’s working executives. Executive Certificate Program on Building Leadership Competencies; focusing on creating space for learning around essential competencies and values for leaders to be successful. The classes would be in the form of live interactive lectures to be beamed directly to the participants’ desktop/laptop. The applications are open for this course.

The Post Graduate Certificate Course in Business Analytics for Management Decision (PGCBAMD) will be a 12 month programme focused on building foundation as well as advanced skills in the domain of business analytics. XLRI aims to create specialists in the field of business analytics with in depth knowledge in the various areas of analytics and who would be able to provide managerial insights by analyzing the data which enables decision making. The application for the course can be done from May 10, 2017.

The classes would be in the form of live interactive lectures to be attended from TCLL centres spread across the country in all major cities.

Father E. Abraham, S.J. Director, XLRI said, “We continually strive to build mutually beneficial partnership and look forward to this engagement with TCLL.  We hope that this alliance will provide great opportunities for both XLRI and TCLL.  We look forward to creating new educational programs and identifying ways for our faculty to interact with executives and other professionals in the region.  This partnership will provide terrific opportunities for sharing of ideas and developing solutions to many of the world's key business issues.”

Samsung Electronics and VMware to Simplify IoT for Industrial and Enterprise Customers

At the Internet of Things World 2017, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd and VMware announced a new collaboration to help simplify Internet of Things (IoT) for both information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) teams by expanding end-to-end IoT solutions for industrial and enterprise customers. 

The companies will showcase the combination of the SAMSUNG ARTIK Smart IoT platform with VMware Pulse IoT Center, offering a secure, enterprise-grade, end-to-end IoT infrastructure solution that allows IT and OT teams to have complete control of their IoT use cases, from the edge to the cloud. In addition, the companies will showcase the integration of the SAMSUNG ARTIK 530 with Liota (Little IoT Agent), a vendor-neutral open source software development kit (SDK) developed by VMware, to help enterprise customers with the management, monitoring and securing of their IoT implementation.

Today, enterprises struggle to embrace IoT because of the sheer scale and complexity and security concerns. While SAMSUNG ARTIK Smart IoT platform provides customers with all the upfront IoT hardware and software they need to kick start their IoT developments, VMware will help manage IoT infrastructure from the edge all the way to the cloud. The combination will provide an end-to-end solution, including the hardware and software components, security, cloud connectivity, building services, and ability to monitor and manage the products over the product’s lifecycle.

“VMware and Samsung have a common goal to help enterprises speed their time to market with their IoT initiatives,” said Mimi Spier, vice president, IoT, VMware. “The SAMSUNG ARTIK Smart IOT platform delivers a state-of-the-art IoT platform, and we are collaborating with Samsung to help enterprises simplify their approach to deploying, managing, monitoring and securing their IoT infrastructure and connected devices.”

“Enterprises around the world are looking to develop and deploy IoT solutions to augment their product portfolio or expand into new markets. Being able to monitor and manage these solutions across devices at enterprise scale both on-premise and in the cloud is critical for successful rollouts,” said Curtis Sasaki, vice president of ecosystems, Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center. "We are developing a joint go-to-market plans to address global enterprises looking for at scale, enterprise IoT solutions.  With mutual customers in key industrial and vertical segments, we believe we can jointly address the growing development, deployment, and on going management these customers are looking for."

Ola Launches Progressive Web App in Indian Towns and Cities

Cab aggregator Ola today announced the launch of its 'Progressive Web App' (PWA), a lightweight mobile website that offers users, especially in smaller towns and cities, an app-like experience on simple smartphones.

The company claims that it requires a fraction of the data used by native apps.

Launched together with Google at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco today, PWA will enable the use of the Ola platform across hundreds of cities in India and addresses a significant market opportunity for customers and driver partners, the company said in a release.

It said Ola becomes the first ride hailing app in the APAC region to use PWA technology.

“As the first ride-hailing app in the APAC region that is using PWA technology, this represents an important development that will enable us to reach an ever greater number of customers and driver partners in rural India,” Ola Co-Founder and CTO Ankit Bhati said.

PWA will overcome technological barriers to enter key markets and make Ola the first ride-sharing platform in hundreds of cities across India, where there is limited connectivity and a prevailing use of low-end smartphones, the release added.

”... It’s exciting to see Ola create their PWA, which will ensure their users have an engaging experience from the very first moment,” Google VP Product Management, Chrome Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, said.

Agencies