Mercedes-Benz Unveils ‘Premiere Express Prime’ to Get your Car Serviced Within 3 Hours of Free*

First-of-its-kind aftersales initiative in the automotive industry customers who are time-pressed due to their busy lifestyle

* Mercedes-Benz customers can get their car serviced within 3 hours. If not done in 3 hours, the service will be offered for free*
* Initiative is a part of the “Efficiency focus” by Mercedes-Benz India Customer Services team
* Part of 25 initiatives taken by team Customer Services to celebrate 25 years of Mercedes-Benz in India
* ‘Premiere Express Prime’ service launched in Bengaluru today; will launch soon in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad

India’s largest luxury carmaker and Mercedes-Benz today launched one-of-its kind innovative service program ‘Premiere Express Prime’. This initiative aims at enhancing the customer’s ownership experience, thus making after-sales experience as a key differentiator in the luxury car segment.

Premier Express Prime is an “efficiency focus” initiative from Mercedes-Benz, which enables complete servicing of a Mercedes-Benz in three hours. This innovative concept is made possible due to dedicated infrastructure within the service center comprising of  dedicated bays, dedicated tools & equipment and dedicated special tools A dedicated team for ‘Premier Express Prime’ comprising of one Team Leader and two Certified Maintenance technicians’ makes the quick servicing turnaround possible. This service is now available in Bengaluru and will roll out soon in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. Premier Express Prime however, excludes major service and repairs, warranty repairs or service on specialty AMG vehicles.

Customers benefit by having their average service time for maintenance of vehicles reduced drastically. Further, there is reduced effort for the customer as they have to travel to the service center only once for the service of the vehicle.

Shekhar Bhide, Vice President, Customer Services and Corporate Affairs, Mercedes-Benz India commented, “The long term success of an automotive brand, especially in the luxury car segment in India, is decided on service excellence and hassle free ownership experience provided to the customer. Mercedes-Benz believes in winning customer loyalty through a delightful, exclusive and outstanding service experience. With the launch of ‘Premiere Express Prime’ we aim to reduce the turnaround time of servicing a car to 3 hours, thereby saving precious time of our customers who have a busy lifestyle. After-sales is a key element in our growth strategy in India and we are confident this initiative will help us build on the trust we have acquired from our customers over the decades. In the year 2020, “Efficiency focus” and “Retention offensive” are the key strategies for Customer Services”

Services covered under Premier Express Prime will be:

* Service A type - Oil and oil filter check and replacement, Brake Fluid replacement, Dust Filter Replacement, Wheel rotation, Coolant Antifreeze mixture ratio check, Washing, Interior & Exterior Cleaning
* Service B type - Oil and oil filter check and replacement, Brake Fluid replacement, Dust Filter Replacement, Wheel rotation, Coolant Antifreeze mixture ratio check, Washing, Interior & Exterior Cleaning, Fuel Filter check, Air Filter replacement
* Diesel Fuel filter
* Brake discs  and Brake pads
* Wheel Balancing

STT GDC India Opens its 15th 18MW Green Data Centre Facility Spread Over 400,000 sq.ft in Bengaluru

Highlights

* Further enhances market leadership as India’s largest data centre operator with the addition of a purpose-built hyper scale facility spread over 400,000 sq.ft. adding 18MW of IT load to its total existing capacity
* Over INR 600 crore will be invested into build the state-of-the-art, purpose-built data centre with its infrastructure developed to the highest industry standards 

STT Global Data Centres India Private Limited (STT GDC India) has announced the opening of STT Bengaluru DC 3 in Whitefield, Bengaluru. The new Tier III data centre marks the first facility to be inaugurated as part of STT GDC India’s multi-megawatt capacity expansion plan, spanning major cities in the country.

The newly constructed 18MW, purpose-built facility is spread over 400,000 sq.ft. The entire data centre is designed to meet the highest benchmark in green practices and is built from ground up, drawing on STT GDC India’s combined design, construction, engineering, and operations expertise. It is designed to meet the modern day high-density computing needs of our customers for Mobility, e-Commerce, IoT, Cloud and Big Data.

The wide array of connectivity options comprise of configuration alternatives, including shared rack space, individual racks and cage. STT Bengaluru DC-3 will deliver bespoke solutions suiting customised needs and multi-megawatt dedicated spaces catering for both retail and wholesale customers.

Key facts and figures of STT Bengaluru DC-3

* State-of-the-art, purpose-built data centre (G+5) located in Bengaluru’s best-known business district, Whitefield
* The land, building (core and shell), mechanical, electrical plant and equipment are entirely owned by STT GDC India
* With the highest structural and technical specifications, the building is built with post-tension slab technology, spread over 400,000 sq.ft.
* An IGBC green building – Gold, which minimises the building’s impact on the climate and natural environment
* The building is built for seismic zone 3, which is one level higher than required making it one of the sturdiest buildings in the city   
* Floor loading: 1500 kg/sqm to 2000 kg/sqm & 50,000 sq.ft. of seamless floor plate area. With clear height of 5.5 metres, the data centre floor is designed to accommodate racks up to 58U
* Large weather-proof, loading dock with two freight lifts (3000 kg capacity each) to transport preloaded racks seamlessly
* Carrier-neutral and carrier dense facility with large MMR rooms offering a wide array of connectivity choices approaching the building from three diversified paths
* Secured with a perimeter of multi-level security zones, including 24/7 manned security, CCTV video surveillance, identification with biometric access control, and security breach alarms
* Uptime institute Tier-III compliant for continued mission imperatives for design
* Onsite 66kV GIS substation receiving power from two independent power substations for the highest level of power availability
* State-of-the-art, building automation and monitoring system
* Large capacity reliable HT generators with fuel back up of more than 48 hours of continuous operation

Continuing STT GDC India’s strong focus on sustainability, this new data centre includes design features of high-efficiency chillers, reduced water consumption through intelligent design, and energy-efficient uninterruptible power supply.

At the launch, Sumit Mukhija, CEO – STT GDC India, said, “Bengaluru is a hub for many start-ups as well as ITES, e-Commerce, Biotech, and Fintech entities. As the IT city’s largest operational data centre, I’m excited to announce that STT Bengaluru DC-3 marks the first data centre to be inaugurated as part of our multi-megawatt capacity expansion across India, designed to strengthen the backbone infrastructure of the nation’s Silicon Valley. The new facility is also backed by our commitment to providing best-in-class data centre infrastructure for varied retail and wholesale clients”

The latest expansion add ups to 15 data centres under STT GDC India’s ownership and management, and increases the power capacity to over 90 MW of critical IT load across 8 cities, further strengthening its market-leading position as India’s data centre provider of choice for customers with mission-critical IT requirements.

 About STT Global Data Centres India Private limited

A joint venture between ST Telemedia Global Data Centres and Tata Communications, STT Global Data Centres India Private Limited (STT GDC India) is a market-leading data centre service provider with the largest data centre footprint in the country. Since 2004, STT GDC India has been managing the country’s largest raised floor area and critical IT load with now 15 facilities across 8 major cities serving over 1000 customers, including many Fortune 500 companies. Its mission-critical solutions comprise of best-in-class offerings delivering industry-leading uptime to its customers. STT GDC India now operates three of the country’s largest data centre facilities in Pune, Chennai and Bengaluru. For more information, visit www.sttelemediagdc.in

Evolving Engagement Models and Skillsets in the Age of Business Transformation

By Raj Vattikuti, Founder and Chairman of Altimetrik Corp

Technology is changing the world at a speed never seen before. This is dramatically changing customer behavior and their expectations from businesses, who are struggling hard to keep up to the tide. Business transformation is what every enterprise needs today to stay relevant in the near future, which goes beyond the purview of what digital transformation alone brings to the table.

This is also changing the way business has traditionally engaged with technology, which was a lot more in silo and disparately connected. Today, technology is the key driving force in the way businesses run both internally and externally. The expectation of the business from technology, therefore, is now more connected and integrated. Hence, traditional engagement models are failing in several instances and new technology models are gaining more success in their partnerships.

The point being that business transformation requires a whole new approach and a different set of people with specific skill sets. Forward looking enterprises who are seriously looking at modernizing their business and evolving customer experience, need a special type of companies to partner with as compared to traditional consulting and outsourcing models.

What does it mean? Enterprises are looking for companies who bring ‘practitioners’ who can create end-to-end solutions, and work with both business and technology to achieve relevant business outcomes. They have the ability to create the business transformation architecture based on their horizontal domain-based knowledge.

Practitioners are people who work closely with business to identify and define the set of business outcomes, prioritize, and build an incremental roadmap, instead of a typical big bang approach that usually fails to address definitive issues. Especially when it comes to data related transformation, practitioners are able to define the relevant sources of data. Then they bring data engineering scrum teams who assimilate data from various sources and connect them back to business. They are also the data scientists who work with the business and technology teams to apply the effective algorithms, build dashboards, and provide effective and predictive analytics. Then there are the transformation product engineering teams who ultimately create the products that are derived from these insights and are built to deliver outcomes.

Another crucial part of a business transformation program is the discipline and the governance framework that centrally manages, monitors, and ensures the effectiveness of the initiative. Enterprises need to focus on an innovation framework that helps in maintaining this discipline and add more value to the whole transformation exercise.

This is applicable to every business, be it in the retail, manufacturing, healthcare, automotive or the financial services domain, where change is rapid and directly affects the consumer. It takes one disruptor to bite the largest chunk of pie from established behemoths in any domain. As Einstein has famously said, “we cannot solve our problems using the same thinking we used when we created them.” We have several examples where the failure to evolve the thought process has led to the extinction of successful, established businesses.

Today, however, I feel quite hopeful as I see many enterprises have started to change their thinking towards technology and the providers they choose as partners. It will be interesting to wait and watch the remarkable outcomes these new partnerships will bring to the market and to consumers. 

vivo-CMR Study: Average Indian Spends Over 1800 Hours a Year on their Smartphone

Global smartphone brand vivo in association with Cybermedia Research (CMR), has announced the results of the study titled ‘Smartphone and their impact on human relationships’, to dive deep into the influence of mobile devices on the consumers and their social interactions. As the smartphone becomes the center of universe in our lives, its impact on society, on behaviors and every day human connections is significant. The study evaluates and reports the various dimensions of uninhibited smartphone usage while highlighting the trends, patterns and habits that influence smartphone user actions, moods and preferences.

With smartphones entering every facet of our lives, the survey aimed to understand how mobile devices are altering lives and relationships of users. In the report, it was found that 75% of the respondents agreed to have owned a smartphone in their teens and of them, 41% were hooked to phones even before graduating from high school. From showcasing the benefits to the depth of addiction, the vivo and CMR study tries to understand the behavioral changes pertaining to smartphone usage.

The vivo and CMR ‘Smartphones and their Impact on Human Relationships’ report is based on a survey conducted online as well as face to face across top 8 cities in India. The report cuts across age-groups and demographics: youth, working professionals, housewives spanning the age groups of 18 to 45. The total number of respondents were 2000 out of which 36% were females and 64% were males.

According to Nipun Marya, Director Brand Strategy, vivo India, “Smartphones are ubiquitous in our lives today, be it connecting with friends, family, entertainment, eating out or even travel or entertainment. As the “born in the net” generation grows up as digital natives, there is a fundamental change underway within society- redefining relationships, interactions and the very fabric of human emotions and exchanges. This transformation is also an opportunity to harness and drive positive change, reinforce balance and responsible proliferation of technology and its usage amongst consumers. As a brand that believes in the well-being of our customers, we commissioned this study to get insight into a very pertinent issue that we collectively must address and debate as a community.”

Commenting on the survey findings, Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group, CMR  said, “While the explosive surge in smartphones in India has enabled Indians with not just communicating with loved ones, but with myriad other uses cases, including  in consuming entertainment and in expressing themselves, our survey results demonstrate that the  dependency over smartphones has increased. While smartphone will continue to be the primary go-to device, smartphone users have realized that periodically switching-off would help benefit their personal health.”

Some of the key findings are as below:

* Average Indian spends 1/3rd of their waking hours on their phone, which translates to 1800 hours a year
* 30% fewer people meet family and loved ones multiple times a month (now vs 10 Years ago)
* 1 in 3 people feel that they can't even have a 5 min. conversation with friends and family without checking their phones
* 73% respondents agree that if smartphone usage continues at the current rate or grows, that it is likely to impact your mental or physical health.
* 3 out of 5 people say that it's important to have a life separate from mobile phone and that could help them lead to happier lives.
* For results based on a randomly chosen sample of this size, there is 95% confidence that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 2.2% of what they would be if the entire population had been surveyed.

Playerzpot Among Top 10 Online Sports Fantasy Portal in India

It is fascinating to witness the evolving landscape of Indian sports and the rapid rise of online fantasy gaming in the country/ fan engagement. Cricket matches are one of the two occasions annually where every Indian feels the patriotic surge and cheers for the nation, our cricket team and those individuals playing representing our nation. The matches are gripping and over some time gradually fans shift to affiliate with the individuals, playing for the nation more than the game itself.  Playerzpot is an online sports fantasy portal. It is a platform with over 1 million users in India.  Playerzpot offers its users Fantasy gaming for Cricket, Football & Kabaddi matches. Within 4 years of inception, Playerzpot today ranks among the TOP 10 Fantasy Platforms in India with a 1% market share. What's fascinating about the company is that it's a profitable business amidst the fierce competition.

It is a multi-sport aggregator platform that offers Free to Play, Pay to Play, content, commerce and community engagement for various sports. With their customer-centric approach, they ensure the highest possible gain for their customers in the easiest, reliable and secure way. Their unique referral system allows users to earn while sitting from the comfort of their homes.

The Founder and Director of the company Yogesh Doiphode is an IT graduate from VJTI and a vivid sports lover with a vision of changing the gaming landscape in India. Mitesh Gangar is the Co-Founder and Director, who is a veteran in programming, as a full stack developer and Android developer. Under their capable leadership, they expect to see Playerzpot changing the way an Indian sports fan can consume sports online.

They hold experience of converting a start-up into a profitable business by using the best possible marketing strategies. They have been using strong methods to turn this venture into a big part of the lucrative business in the current market. They have established Standard Operating Procedures; Playerzpot’s Fantasy sports aspires to be one of the best games to play.

India has over 300 million online sports fans, of which over 60 million use fantasy sports as their primary tool for engagement with their favorite sport. In all likelihood, the next wave of growth in sports consumption will mainly be driven by fantasy sports and sports content platforms. Playerzpot is a futuristic project with great potential. The portal provides curated sports experience across the available sports format enabling fan engagement with peers and people sitting across the country. 

Four Unique Innovations Honored at the First-Ever WTFL Indian Startup Innovation Camp 2019

Key Pointers

* Startups that won the competition under the categories of Community, Conservation, Culture and Commerce are F5 Escapes, Quick Ride, NotOnMap and MeTripping, respectively
* These innovations were first-of-its-kind innovations; poised to disrupt the travel, tourism and hospitality sector
* In association with IHCL and Tata Trusts, WTFL is committed to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in the sector
* WTFL Start-Up Innovation Camp 2019 focused on talent, innovation, diversity and sustainable development within and beyond travel, tourism and hospitality industry

After attaining a successful stature at global level, World Tourism Forum Lucerne (WTFL) made its debut in India this year with first-of-its-kind competition – Indian Start-Up Innovation Camp 2019. The event concluded today on 18th December at Taj, Bengaluru where the four winners with the most unique and innovative ideas were announced.

In the first phase of evaluation, WTFL shortlisted 16 unique startups for the final round after evaluating 200 startup applications. Winners of this competition were announced in the categories of Community, Conservation, Culture and Commerce respectively in the field of travel, tourism and hospitality from the Indian subcontinent. They were also rewarded with USD 10,000 each along with a personalized two-year mentoring by industry experts.

Martin Barth, President and CEO, World Tourism Forum Lucerne said, “Out of all the game-changing ideas by 200 startups that applied for Indian Start-Up Innovation Camp 2019, we are happy to announce the names of four most unique startups that stood out with flying colors. We believe, organizing the event in India this year gave us an opportunity to come across interesting ideas. Considering that, India has a niche product portfolio in travel, tourism and hospitality sector and is expected to grow at a rate of 100% by 2028. We are sure to make a mark and create awareness around the on-going environmental issues and look forward to holding more such engaging events in India in the coming years.”

Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and CEO, The Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) said, “Tourism has been one of the growing economic sectors across the world. IHCL is proud to support WTFL in this great initiative to recognize innovation in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector, which is one of the biggest job creators globally.”

Prabhat Pani, Senior Advisor - Partnerships, Tata Trusts, said, “The Travel, Tourism and Hospitality sector has the opportunity to bring about irreversible change in the remotest parts of India, through collective efforts of several institutions and influencers in the society. Tata Trusts believes that wider impact can be achieved through the creation of a collaborative ecosystem that fosters innovation, inclusion, sustainability and entrepreneurship. Further, Tata Trusts, with its focus on integrated community-based interventions across India, aim to create sustainable value-chains, while augmenting the socio-ecological resources.”

The globally renowned platform that provides world’s leading tourism, travel and hospitality leaders along with innovators to meet and shape a more sustainable future. For the past 10 years, WTFL has given an exclusive ground to the budding businessmen by nurturing their innovations in this sector. With this platform, our country will brace up to revive Brand India with the help of 5 Ts: Tradition, Talent, Tourism, Trade and Technology.

In 2017, Global Himalayan Expedition became the first Indian start-up to have won the prestigious WTFL competition.

TECNO Spark Power Joins Flipkart’s Year End Sale from Dec 21, 2019

Highlights

* Following its debut on Flipkart, Spark Power received an overwhelming Consumer response
* Spark Power boasts of a segment-first 6000 mAh battery with Amoled Screen which creates tremendous value for the entry-level consumers Smartphone
* The smartphone will be available at INR 8,499 with some Special offers from December 21, 2019 till December 23, 2019 as part of Flipkart’s Year End Sale

TECNO, the global smartphone brand, has announced that its newly-launched Spark Power smartphone will be a part of Flipkart’s long-awaited Year End Sale, making it the perfect choice for a Christmas & New Year gift.  Spark Power, which has already received a stellar response from the Consumers. It is a game-changer in the sub-9k category owing to its segment-first 6000 mAh battery – a monster that can make the phone last up to five days giving users 29 hours of video playback, 35 hours of calling, 17 hours of gaming or 200 hours of music – all in a single charge! Additionally, it has a brilliant 6.35-inch HD+ dot notch display with AMOLED Screen

SPARK Power has been well received by the consumers and the response has been great in terms of feedback making it the ‘Highest rated Smartphone brand’ on Flipkart in India. On a scale of 5 stars, the phone received a 4.7 stars for its battery, 4.2 for display and a unique 5 stars in the ‘value for money’ category.

Spark Power is the latest addition in TECNO’s already impressive ‘Spark’ series line-up that also includes SPARK Go the best-selling most affordable dot notch display smartphone at INR 5499. The ‘category defining’ 6000 mAh battery of TECNO Spark Power with AI power saving & safe charging addresses the most important need of the category consumers -- enjoy uninterrupted entertainment on the go.

TECNO Spark Power is sleek and boasts curved glossy unibody for a stylish finish. The smartphone is available in two contemporary color hues - Dawn Blue and Alpenglow Gold. It also incorporates TECNO’s unique localised anti-oil fingerprint sensor.  Another unique feature is the Smart Key which allows users a one-touch access to Google Assistant.