VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

OYO – India’s largest hotel network appointed Suvesh Malhotra as VP-Engineering.  As part of OYO’s technology leadership team, Suvesh will work on building technology as a core differentiator to deliver a best-in-industry user experience. He will oversee OYO’s consumer technology including consumer experience, ordering and payment platforms and data analytics to design and deliver solutions to meet evolving consumer needs.  A seasoned tech professional with 12 years of experience, Suvesh has a proven track record in implementing technology solutions for various businesses. Suvesh joins OYO from Amazon.com where he was leading technology for BuyVIP, a flash sales e-commerce platform. He was formerly the CTO of Stepout – India’s largest social discovery platform and has also worked with homeshop18 and Oracle in the past... Read More

Cisco and Shoppers Stop have announced collaboration to implement Cisco Wireless Solution across 80 Shoppers Stop stores in India. In select stores, Shoppers Stop is piloting the Cisco Connected Mobile Experience (CMX) capabilities integrated with Cisco Wireless Solution for enhanced, personalized experiences for shoppers. This alliance is aimed to accelerate the digitization of Shoppers Stop stores in line with its omni-channel strategy through which the company aims to achieve 20 percent digitally-influenced sales by 2020.  As per Cisco VNI Report 2016 - 2021, total public Wi-Fi hotspots will grow 112-fold to 5.4 million by 2021 in India. With Cisco’s expertise, Shoppers Stop has deployed guest Wi-Fi for more personalization and digital services to help its customers discover the best shopping possibilities within its stores. Cisco’s CMX solution is designed to help Shoppers Stop better serve its customers by analyzing individual customer experience, behavior and engagement..

Capgemini and Ciber has announced that they have entered into an agreement pursuant to which Capgemini will acquire the North American operations of Ciber, for a total price of $50 million. The assets to be acquired include the majority of the North American business of Ciber, covering client-focused assets, employees and operations, with revenue of $275 million. The transaction excludes certain liabilities of Ciber as well as its international operations. The acquisition of the North American business of Ciber, a provider of technology services and IT specialists, will strengthen Capgemini’s presence in the region with key Fortune 1,000 clients in sectors such as automotive, telecom and media. The deal will increase Capgemini’s workforce by an estimated 2,000 consultants in the US and 1,000 in India... Read More

Balaji Telefilms’ video streaming service ALTBalaji will be using Amazon Cloudfront, a global content delivery network (CDN) service. ALTBalaji will have access to multi-petabytes of bandwidth in preparation of the launch of the ALTBalaji service in mid-April 2017. “We use Xstream Mediamaker as our backend OVP and video delivery is entirely hosted by and built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which already serves numerous global OTT platforms with over hundreds of millions of streams. Thanks to AWS, our platform setup is capable of handling high volumes of traffic and media content per week, and at the same time stream content to millions of our customers every day through Amazon Cloudfront,” said Sunil Nair, COO, ALT Digital Media Entertainment... Read More

AMD has acquired intellectual property (IP) and key engineering talent from Nitero, a pioneer in millimeter wave solutions capable of enabling future generations of wireless Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) headsets.  The acquisition provides AMD with a broader portfolio of IP capable of enabling VR headset and solution providers with key technology required to create more immersive computing experiences.  “Unwieldly headset cables remain a significant barrier to drive widespread adoption of VR,” said Mark Papermaster, AMD chief technology officer and senior vice president. “Our newly acquired wireless VR technology is focused on solving this challenge, and is another example of AMD making long-term technology investments to develop high-performance computing and graphics technologies that can create more immersive computing experiences,” added Papermaster.... Read More

Uber, the ridesharing app today announced its mobility partnership with the Gujarat Lions Team for the 10th edition of the Indian Premier League. As a part of this partnership, Uber has launched an IPL special limited period product, uberLIONS that will give cricket lovers in Ahmedabad an easy, comfortable and affordable option to get to Rajkot and get a ride back to Ahmedabad. "At Uber, we are always working on new and innovative hyper-local campaigns, designed to celebrate the cultural nuances​ of the cities that we serve. We are thrilled about stepping in as mobility partners for Gujarat Lions, and giving cricket lovers in Ahmedabad a hassle-free way to commute to see their favourite team play," said Amit Jain, president, South Asia and India, Uber... Read More

Paytm has announced today that it has invested an undisclosed amount in QorQI, an online healthcare startup. QorQl plans to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and big data to improve productivity & care quality of doctors and help patients manage their health and existing ailments better. Qcare solution offers doctors access to patient health and clinical data at the touch of a button. Speaking on the announcement, Sudhanshu Gupta, vice president, Paytm said, “There is a need for quality care at affordable costs and the sector largely works on an acute shortage of information both on the consumer side and on the side of healthcare professionals. There is hence a need of real time data collection and of improving the overall care process with advanced analytics and AI. We are impressed by QorQl’s vision and the team’s ability to solve complex use cases and are happy to be a part of their journey.” Read More

India's Internet economy is expected to reach $250 billion by 2020 thanks to rapid growth in mobile Internet users in the country. E-commerce and financial services are projected to lead this growth. For instance, share of digital payment transactions could more than double to go up to 30–40% by 2020. Digital economy will have a much broader influence beyond the direct economic impact. Digital adoption will deliver several citizen-centric social benefits like enhancing ease of doing business, improving access to services and products and transforming governance. According to BCG-TIE Report, the mobile internet users is expected to grow rapidly to 650 million mobile internet users by 2020 and high speed mobile internet adoption is set to reach 550 million users by 2020. Average data consumption is expected to reach 7-10 GB per user per month by 2020... Read More