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 engageme...

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

In the hyperconverged world to meet your regular IT needs today which is the future and it is also fact that Data problem is going increase in the coming days. Virtualized workloads with different IO streams are sharing the physical resources of the host. This results in random IO streams competing for resources—and the emergence of new efficiency requirements as the IOPS required to service virtual workloads has increased.  To address the transformational technologies for delivering on the future needs of end users and targeting a bigger share in the HCI space. HPE acquired SimpliVity, data management platform for $650 million in cash. a leading provider of software-defined, hyperconverged infrastructure. Simplify IT operations with one control platform to deploy, monitor, analyse and update, all by a single IT generalist.  SimpliVity provides SDDC (software-defined data center) architecture and HCI technology. Though SimpliVity was founded in 2009, it began produ...

Tally Solutions has launched an online forum dedicated to chartered accountants in the country. The portal will host threads of discussion on the fundamentals of GST, its implications on different stakeholders and opinions shared by eminent CAs in the form of articles and interviews. Tax practitioners and business people will be able to view and follow these and prepare themselves for the transition to GST.  Tejas Goenka, Executive Director, Tally Solutions, says, “We firmly believe that the CA and tax practitioners community will have a key role to play in helping the country transition to and comply with GST. This portal has been designed to house the rich experience and knowledge of CAs and industry experts on tax matters. It will also allow for sharing of knowledge not only among the tax practitioners but also be an awareness forum for businesses. We would like to take this opportunity to invite all CAs in the country to be a part of this forum designed especially for t...

The OPPO F1s Limited Edition comes with 16MP front camera and 13MP rear camera. The 16MP front camera and the beautification feature together helps you click perfect selfies. The Beautify 4.0 has been upgraded based on the study of hundreds of user scenarios.  With seven beautify levels, two skin tone modes and upgraded photo-processing algorithms, beautify 4.0 is optimized to capture selfies with bright, clear skin, vivid eyes and striking features. The F1s also features front-facing 0.22 seconds fingerprint recognition and 3,075mAh battery which is enough for a whole day’s use. It features 4GB RAM, 64GB ROM and ColorOS 3.0. OPPO has launched a new campaign for their consumers this Valentine’s which gives them a chance to win an all-new OPPO F1s Rose Gold Limited Edition. Under this campaign that goes live on the 7th February, 2017, a video starring the “IT” couple of Bollywood – Bipasha Basu & Karan Singh Grover is being rel...

Post demonetisation and the crisis faced by the country, the 9th Odisha Information Technology Fair – 2017 (OITF) holds much more importance to understand the actual groundwork going on the smart city front. The Department of IT, Odisha, STPI, UCCI and C-Dot supported the conference. The conference chose “Digital Transformation” as its theme and the focus of the meet was to popularize digital transaction, Digital India and to understand the investment opportunities in Odisha as Bhubaneswar has been declared as the first Smart City in India. Around 250 delegates including top executives from across verticals comprising of government, academics, corporate world, IT services companies and VARs attended the event. Organized by VARINDIA (India’s Frontline IT Magazine), the event was held at Hotel Mayfair, Bhubaneswar on 24th January, 2017, which served as a unique platform to discuss under one roof the vital issues concerning the IT landsc...

MediaTek has trained 43 NIELIT (National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology) professionals for 45 days on mobile handset design at International Trade Institute, ministry of economic affairs, Hsinchu, Taiwan.  To mark the completion of the progarmme, a felicitation programme was organized at Taiwan, which was addressed through video conference by Aruna Sundarajan, secretary, MeitY, senior officers from MeitY, NIELIT, ICA, MediaTek and others... Read More  

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has appointed Rajesh Gopinathan as chief executive officer and managing director and NG Subramaniam as chief operating officer.  Gopinathan takes over from N Chandrasekaran who has been appointed as the chairman of Tata Sons, effective February 21, 2017. N Ganapathy Subramaniam, (NGS) who is currently president, TCS Financial Solutions has been appointed as the president and chief operating officer. Ganapathy has also been appointed as a director on the board of the company. “I am absolutely delighted that the board has chosen both Rajesh and NGS to lead this company into the future. I am proud of the capability they have to take TCS to greater heights. I look forward to a continued relationship with TCS and the management team,” said N Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons.... Read More

Airtel Payments Bank, India’s first payments bank was launched by union minister of finance and corporate affairs Arun Jaitley nationally, and is now live in all 29 States of India. Also present on the occasion were Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman, Bharti Enterprises; Uday Kotak, executive vice chairman & MD, Kotak Mahindra Bank; Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel; and Shashi Arora, MD & CEO, Airtel Payments Bank.   Airtel Payments Bank will commit an initial investment of Rs 3,000 crores to develop a pan India banking network and digital payments ecosystem for IT, manpower, marketing and distribution.   Speaking on the occasion, Sunil Bharti Mittal said, “Just like mobile telephony leapfrogged traditional telecom networks to take affordable telecom services deep into the country, Airtel Payments Bank aims to take digital banking services to the unbanked over their mobile phones in...

The board of directors of Tata Sons, at its meeting has unanimously appointed N Chandrasekaran as executive chairman, Tata Sons. N Chandrasekaran shall take charge from February 21, 2017. The board of Tata Sons said, “Chandrasekaran has demonstrated exemplary leadership as the chief executive officer and managing director, Tata Consultancy Services. We believe he will now inspire the entire Tata group to realise its potential acting as leaders in their respective businesses, always in keeping with our value system and ethics and adhering with the practices of the Tata group which have stood it in good stead.” Chandrasekaran was the chief executive officer and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services since 2009. A Tata lifer, he had joined the company in 1987 and was appointed as a director on the board of Tata Sons on October 25, 2016.

Gionee, a leading smartphone brand is planning to double its revenue in 2017 to reach Rs 8,000 crore.  In 2016, Gionee claims to have sold one 1.25 million devices to reach a turnover close to Rs 3,200 crore. The company also claims to have grabbed 5 per cent market share in India.   Spending heavily across consumer touch points the young brand has been associated with major sports including cricket, football, kabaddi and badminton. As a part of intense brand building initiatives, the company has co-sponsored the Premier Badminton League as a mobile partner and ODI trophy. The brand will also continue to sponsor all cricket matches till March 2017... Read More

In the wake of demonetization, AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), Delhi has partnered with MobiKwik to convert all its payment facilities cashless. To commence with, resident doctors, staff and visitors can pay with MobiKwik in the institution’s cafeteria. Payment of doctor’s consultation, tests and other services will be made cashless by the first week of January 2017. AIIMS is a medical college and medical research public university based in New Delhi. The Institute was established in 1956 and operates autonomously under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Daily, over 25,000 patients visit the facility to receive best-in-class treatment for their ailments.... Read More

Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, is supplying AT&T with a remote subscription management solution that will enable its customers to deploy new and highly secure IoT applications globally. Gemalto's LinqUS On-Demand Connectivity (ODC) subscription management solution and GSMA M2M 3.1 compliant Embedded SIMs (eSIMs) will simplify the logistics of providing mobile services for enterprises requiring global mobile connectivity for IoT applications and provide improved life cycle support for their subscriptions. Gartner reports the IoT ecosystem is growing massively with 6.4 billion objects to be connected in 2016 and 20.8 billion connected by 2020... Read More

Idea Cellular has rapidly expanded its 4G network in Karnataka, covering 1,579 villages and towns across all 30 districts and covering 37% of its population.  Idea’s high-speed wireless broadband services covers key towns of Bangalore, Hubli, Dharwad, Mysore, Mangalore, Belgaum, Davanagere, Tumkur, Hassan, Udupi-Manipal, Shimoga-Bhadravati, Bellary, Bijapur, Raichur, Bidar, Hospet, Gadag-Betigeri, Chitradurga, Kolar and Chikmagalur. Rajat Mukarji, chief corporate affairs officer, Idea Cellular, said, “With nearly 900 MHz of spectrum in both FDD and TDD bands, Idea is preparing itself to substantially enhance customer’s wireless data experience and capture a higher share of the exponentially growing mobile data business. As one of the leading mobile operators in Karnataka, Idea continues to invest in the market and lead the digital experience for our customers.” Idea has launched a range of products offering voice and data be...