The awesome folks at TheLadders, a US based company providing online job search service posed the following 2 questions to Marketing Professionals

  • What is your educational background and how do you feel your degree has aged as your career has progressed ?
  • If you could give one piece of advice to a new marketer looking to stay relevant in an ever-changing industry what would it be ?

The answers resulted in the below infographic where they have shared 8 essential tips from marketers on Breaking in & Staying relevant. Marketing has definitely changed since last couple of years & these tips would help the new-age marketers to stay abreast with the latest skill-sets.

Some good news for marketers in touch with latest trends is The unemployment rate for marketers with the right mix of skills is trending towards zero

Do share your feedback/comments or tips on how you have stayed ahead of the curve in this new-age Marketing era!!

GlobalEdge, announced that it has been featured in the GSPR report 2015 as a true engineering partner capable of complete product development, executing on new and innovative business models. The report is an annual initiative by Zinnov, a leading globalization and market expansion advisory firm.

Speaking about the inclusion, M.P. Kumar, CEO & Founder, GlobalEdge said

GlobalEdge has been focusing on embedded software for over a decade, providing world class services to Fortune 500 customers. Our long standing relationships with customers is a testimony of the quality we deliver.

Zinnov’s GSPR Report 2015 surveyed PE companies all over the world and confirmed GlobalEdge’s high execution capabilities in providing services in embedded software especially for our focus areas like Semiconductors, Telecom and Automotive. I am happy to see the report reiterating, and confirming, our commitment towards enabling customer success stories.

The report highlights GlobalEdge’s unique position to cater to the growing needs of making a connected world for industries like Semiconductor, Automotive, Telecom and Embedded Systems and cites some very interesting points:

  • Rated as an established player in the Embedded Systems category, GlobalEdge is high on its capabilities on scale, number of verticals and client speed
  • Rated at the top in the Semiconductor category, GlobalEdge has been recognized for its capability of delivering complete product development, building reusable IPs and its strong alliances with customers who are industry leaders
  • As one of the few players with R&D Practice maturity, breadth, innovation and a strong eco system connect, GlobalEdge comes out high in ranking under the Automotive and Telecom category

These findings reiterates GlobalEdge’s long standing strategy to continue to focus on being a Chip-to-Cloud partner to enterprises across the globe.

Raghavendra CS, Vice President and Head of Engineering & Customer Delivery, GlobalEdge said

Our single minded focus is on enabling our customers become leaders in their domain. We are continuously working with our customers across the globe to make a more connected world. Our deep domain knowledge and understanding of how global businesses work make us a perfect partner for success.

Ranking high and prominent in its capabilities for delivering solutions for customers in areas such as Semiconductor, Automotive, Telecom and Embedded systems, this report reiterates GlobalEdge’s commitment to come up with world class solutions for its global customers.

About GlobalEdge

At GlobalEdge, it’s not a world of things, it’s the Intelligence of Things. GlobalEdge is a product engineering company, constantly designing and defining the behavior of objects and things around us. The company induces intelligence in things to make global enterprises smarter in a new connected world. In a world of connected things, it delivers solutions that are specific to the Internet of Things. For more information, please visit GlobalEdge

After successfully setting up start-up warehouse in Bengaluru, National Association of Software & Services [NASSCOM] has announced the inauguration of its second warehouse in the city in presence of Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka Shri Siddaramaiah, Shri. K.J. George, Hon’ble Minister for Bengaluru Development and Town Planning, R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM and Rajat Tandon, Vice President, NASSCOM 10,000 startups

What is Startup Warehouse

‘Start-up Warehouse’ is a mosaic, which binds startups and entrepreneurs together in a novel working space, with an electric atmosphere that ensures sustained inspiration. Apart from the coffees, the synergies could be endless here More about it here

Over the years, Bangalore has developed as the start-up capital of India. The city has nearly 3,100 to 4,900 dynamic tech start-ups and has attained the second highest growth rate for exit volume and VC investment among the top 20. The warehouse currently has 20 start-ups and with the new space, the warehouse will consist of 100 start-ups. There will be 5 seats allotted to one start-up.

Startup Warehouse Programme

The start-ups will operate for six months. The entrepreneurs will have a list of benefits which could help polish their entrepreneurial skills as well as polish their marketing ability including; Connect sessions, early stage mentoring, access to resources from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM cloud, Kotak banking etc. The selection would be finalized by a selection committee comprising of stakeholders from the government as well as the industry, viz. Government of Karnataka and NASSCOM. They will be required to sign a lease agreement with the Start-up Warehouse.

The NASSCOM warehouse is a four folds expansion from 10,000 Sq. ft. to 40,000 Sq. ft. area. The warehouse will be equipped with Internet of Things Labs, Design Labs & Mobile Experience Labs.

  • Internet of things Labs A space for incubating IoT/hardware-play start-ups as they build, test and validate concepts and prototypes. It’ll be a meeting place for industry practitioners to share best practices, case studies with these start-ups and for peer founders to learn and assist each other. These will be feeder to the NASSCOM-Diety IoT Labs.
  • Design Labs The Design Labs will be a co-working, co-learning space for ideation and creation of user centric design products. It will house multi-function spaces, innovative tools, usability studios and digital whiteboards for cutting edge design collaborations and ideation sessions. It will also serve as a center for excellence for design practitioners to gather and share best practices.
  • Mobile Experience Labs The Mobile Experience Lab will allow developers, designers and startups access to a wide range of mobile devices from multiple major vendors across all major platforms for testing and building of next generation mobile products and technologies. Testing mobile applications across different platforms and devices helps ensure apps are accessible and fully functional.

Chief Minister of Karnataka Shri Siddaramaiah said

Karnataka has traditionally been an entrepreneurially rich ecosystem. Over the years, the city has seen an unprecedented growth in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are committed to scaling this even further and are pleased to co-opt with NASSCOM to make this dream a reality. NASSCOM start-up warehouse will further provide a platform for the talented entrepreneurs and give them the space they require. The Government is happy to cooperate and support such programs in order to boost the entrepreneurial culture of the city.

Rajat Tandon, Vice President, NASSCOM 10,000 Start-ups said

Karnataka is an entrepreneurial hub. Bangalore is easily the best place to start-up in India right now. There is easy access to capital and a relative abundance of talented youth who are passionate about working for start-ups. The expansion will help nurture over 500 entrepreneurs under one roof, thereby, driving growth and foster innovation under one roof, where start-ups can share knowledge and help build an inclusive yet vibrant economy.

The start-ups can bring in up to four team members into the incubation program. All start-ups will get showcased at select NASSCOM events and other events of partner organizations.

The Start-up warehouse will also host meetings and workshops with innovators and leaders from the technology and business community. With this expansion, NASSCOM aspires to impact 200+ startups by the next quarter from Bangalore adding to the overall 10K impact number.

More information about the NASSCOM Startup Warehouse can be found here & you can apply for the program here

Download the 2015 Startup report from here

About 10,000 Startups

Started in April 2013, 10,000 Startups is an ambitious attempt by NASSCOM to scale up the startup ecosystem in India by 10x. 10,000 Startups aims to enable incubation, funding and support for 10,000 technology startups in India over the next ten years. The initiative brings together key stakeholders of the ecosystem including startup incubators, accelerators, angel investors, venture capitalists, startup support groups, mentors, and technology corporations.

Since its launch in April 2013, they have done about 450+ events in 22 cities of the country which were attended by a whopping 25,000 attendees and received 9000 Applicants, 800 Startups Shortlists, and 150 Impacts.

Nasscom-Partners

For more information about IBM Cloud, please visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing

Flipkart, India’s largest online marketplace, officially introduced #FlipTrends2015, a comprehensive and in-depth view into how Indians shop online.This study across 50 million Indian shoppers analysed consumer buying preferences between January 1st and December 14th 2015 and offers a detailed analysis into what trends dominate the online retail space today.

Rising mobile internet penetration and availability of a wide variety of brands and products at affordable prices across the country at the touch of a mobile screen have truly made 2015 the year of e-commerce in India. According to #FlipTrends2015, electronics and mobiles have emerged as the top performing categories. Delhi NCR tops the chart as the most online shopping savvy city in India, closely followed by Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.

Commenting on this, Ankit Nagori, Chief Business Officer of Flipkart said

2015 is truly the year of the digital Indian consumer. The data taken from FlipTrends, an analysis of over 50 million registered Flipkart shoppers in 2015, shows that Indians are taking to shopping online at a very fast clip. What is particularly gratifying to note is that Flipkart is taking the lead in introducing the ease and convenience of online shopping to millions of Indians in Tier-2, Tier-3 towns, and in rural areas. We continue to stay committed to fulfilling our goal of transforming commerce through technology in the coming years.

Key takeaways of the survey

  • Electronic accessories, mobile, lifestyle accessories & women apparel are consistently the top performing categories across all regions.
  • The study shows that 69% of the online shoppers are male, this gender clearly dominates the online retail space
  • While Delhi NCR emerges as the most e-commerce savvy metro, Southern India has a significant presence with Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai featuring among the top 5 cities that shop the most online along with Delhi NCR and Mumbai
  • Among the Tier-1 cities, Pune is the leader followed by Coimbatore, Ahmedabad and Lucknow. Bhubaneshwar is the only city from East India to feature in this list.
  • Mangalore has emerged as the top Tier-2 city of digital Indian shoppers followed by Mysore. The hill town of Dehradun is third in the list followed by Salem in Tamil Nadu and Guntur in Andhra Pradesh.
  • The e-retail space is largely dominated by consumers falling between the 25-34 years age group. More than half of the consumers shopping online are office goers closely followed by students.

You can have a look at the complete list in the #FlipTrends2015 info-graphic below

FlipTrends_Overall

Cheetah Mobile, a leading mobile Internet company with approximately 567 million mobile monthly active users, has introduced a new feature in CM Locker for combating smartphone theft. The new feature – GPS tracker, helps users track down stolen smartphone by automatically sending an email of the phone location once the intruder attempts to access CM Locker protected phone.

Combining with the existent Intruder Selfie function, which automatically sends selfie of intruder after three failed attempts of accessing CM Locker protected phone are made. CM Locker helps prevent phone theft and safeguards users’ privacy on daily basis.

CMLocker

Smartphone Theft’s in India

Smartphone theft is a growing problem in India. 37,878 mobile thefts were registered in 2014 out of which Delhi accounted for 16,362 complaints, three times as high as Maharashtra’s 5,697, the second highest. The other major states with a high count of mobile theft cases are West Bengal [2,049], Uttar Pradesh [1,798], Karnataka [1,750] and Bihar [1,591].

The Indian government has an online portal known as ZIPNET [Zonal Integrated Police Network] which lists stolen mobile phones in addition to other information. Currently, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Chandigarh Police share information on this portal. Considering the rising phone theft issue in India, it is an advantage that CM Locker is now available for download in Hindi.

CM Locker – Features

CM Locker’s email alerts act as a big deterrent to smartphone thieves and will help in curbing the increasing theft in the country. Launched at the end of 2014, CM Locker quickly shot up to around 10 million downloads on Google Play. With an average user rating of 4.7 stars in just 4 months, it is the highest rated security locker in the world providing the speedy, safe, and simple user experience.

In addition to safeguarding user’s privacy, CM Locker also improves battery performance via automatically shutting down battery draining apps running in the background. The app is equipped with phone boosting feature for optimizing the overall speed of the phone.

Moreover, CM Locker is packed with different wallpapers and themes for customization, three types of password modes including fingerprint, a fully integrated weather forecast function and many other impressive features.

CM Locker can be downloaded here

[Image Credit* – CM Locker]

About Cheetah Mobile Inc

Cheetah Mobile is a leading mobile internet company. The Company aims to provide the best apps for mobile users worldwide, while building a leading global mobile ad platform for advertisers. Cheetah Mobile had approximately 567 million global mobile monthly active users in September 2015. Its mission critical applications, including Clean Master, CM Security, Battery Doctor and Duba Anti-virus, help make the internet and mobile experience speedier, simpler, and safer for users worldwide. For more information, please visit Cheetah Mobile

WebNMS, the IoT and telecom network management software division of Zoho Corporation has been awarded the prestigious Express IT award under IT Innovation category at an event organized by the Indian Express group in Bengaluru recently.

The awards ceremony was presided by Hon. Minister for Communications and IT, Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad. The jury judged companies based on the software projects implemented by them within or outside of India. Several factors such as innovation, scalability, reliability and robustness were taken into consideration for selecting the winner.

WebNMS

WebNMS IoT platform is engineered with multiple capabilities such as ‘energy management, remote site monitoring and mobile asset tracking’ to suit enterprise requirements.  The platform is targeted at IoT applications for smart cities, utility and power sector, logistics and transportation, retail, oil & gas, construction, city planning, building management, waste and traffic management. Being open, the platform could scale up to 1000’s of devices irrespective of their make and protocol.

Prabhu Ramachandran, Director, WebNMS said

WebNMS aims at offering enterprises with well–defined and niche real-time applications built using the IoT platform. Our platform is equipped to solve real-time challenges faced by large enterprises and governments looking to enhance citizens’ lives and improving civic operations. We thank the Express group and jury for the recognition bestowed.

Mr. Ramachandran also added that

The enterprise focused IoT Platform covers a broad spectrum of real-time applications for government, utilities, energy companies, smart city projects and more. The platform stands out because of its unique combination of capabilities comprising energy management, remote site security and mobile asset management.

About Express IT Awards

The Express IT Awards – an initiative of The Financial Express, recognize fresh thinking that creates value. The Awards discover, recognize and reward IT initiatives that have enabled businesses to go beyond the ordinary. The Express I.T. The awards are adjudged by an eminent jury panel comprising of globally recognized innovators – corporate heads, academicians and thought-leaders from the IT industry. For more information, please visit Express IT Awards

About WebNMS

WebNMS is the IoT and telecom network management division of Zoho Corporation. With over 25,000 telecom management software deployments, the division has close to 2 decades of expertise. The IoT software platform is open and highly customizable with APIs engineered to fit enterprise applications pertaining to energy management, remote site monitoring and mobile asset tracking. For more information, please visit WebNMS

Many of my friends who plan to come to Bangalore ask me “How is the night-life there & what are some of the hip-hop places around your locality”. Well, we have all come across this situation where we have landed in a new city & want to enjoy the ‘Night Life’ in the city 🙂 Every city has something unique to offer whether it is culture, food or even night-life.

But if you cannot enjoy the night-life than you have an option to relax at home & prepare tasty lunch/dinner. When I was a bachelor, it has occurred many times with me that during the weekend, we used to short-list many dishes clubbed with cocktails but the end-result used to be very surprising 🙁 Blame it on our ignorance to prepare awesome food or laziness on our side to not look for quality recipes freely available on the internet. This was way back in 2005~06 where there were not many smart-phones [to be more precise there were lot of feature-phones:)].

Fast forward now, we are all busy in our lives & in most of the scenarios – be it searching for a Doctor/Carpenter or even a Life-Partner; MOBILE PHONE has become our default companion. Few weeks back, a friend of mine [who is an entrepreneur] visited Bangalore since he had to pitch his idea to a VC firm. As an entrepreneur he was busy building the product & working his heart out to get the Minimum Viable Product. As expected, his meeting with the VC firm was awesome & hence he decided to treat us with lovely Cocktails !! Instead we treated him first 🙂

My wife & myself looked out for Cocktail Recipes on-line & we came across LiveInStyle – Your single point contact to discover great events Happening around you and the best Night Life in your city. It’s section on ‘House Parties’ was very helpful for us as we could get some great inputs on how to make great cocktails. We had an in-house celebration with the Cocktails but that was not the end of celebration 🙂

Me, my entrepreneur friend & others decided to go Clubbing. Blame it on my ignorance or my reserved nature, I have not been to many pubs since I am not a ‘Party Animal’. We could co-relate this situation with the problem we had in finding Cocktail recipes; so we decided to check out Pub Finder in India section on LiveInStyle. We checked out the INSIDE PUBS category where they have everything listed about the PUB. PUB FINDER & INSIDE PUBS combination did help us to zero in on a Pub in Indiranagar.

We reminiscenced the good old College Days & my friend continued his ‘Product Pitch’ even when he was drinking… In fact, great ideas are born on a drinks table 🙂 We did give him some feedback about his product, so his visit to the Pub did not go Futile (An entrepreneur is always looking to improve his/her product every single moment :)) It was almost 2.30 AM & it was time to head back home. Being a responsible citizen, it was very important we kept our motto of Live Responsibly alive !! We booked an on-demand taxi obviously via the mobile phone & reached home safely 🙂

LiveInStyle saved my day by being a ‘Partner in finding Pubs’ and ‘Partner in Home Parties’ which made every moment special !!

Few weeks have passed by & we are still awaiting good news from my entrepreneur friend as to when he would be back to Bangalore for his ‘second meeting’ with the VC firm:)

Disclaimer : This blog caters to audience above the legal drinking age in India, i.e., 25 years.

[Image Credit* – liveinstyle.com]

Letv, the China-based internet technology conglomerate, made an announcement about taking part in the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show [CES] to be held in Las Vegas. The speculation is that this appearance at CES could precede the organization’s entry into India.

CES is a globally renowned electronics and technology trade show hosted by Consumer Electronics Association in United States. Held in Las Vegas every year from 6 to 9 January, CES has become the largest and most impactful consumer electronics and technology trade-show in the world.

Letv made its appearance in CES Asia in Shanghai in May this year, where it exhibited its premium Series 3 Super TV X55 & Max65. As the world’s only internet company with a connected and all-inclusive ecosystem covering Cloud, TV, mobile, electric car, sports and internet finance, Letv will certainly impress audiences with products and concepts that bind leading technology and a superb user experience.

At a press meeting in Hong Kong, Letv launched several products including its flagship Super phones, the world’s first innovative EUI system and newly-acquired content. To conclude the briefing, Tin Mok, Vice President of Le Holdings and CEO, APAC ended his presentation with “See you in Las Vegas”, which implies that Letv will be an active participant at CES to be held in Las Vegas between 6-9 January 2016.

Letv’s recent moves have sparked tremendous curiosity, anticipation and expectations in the industry and among consumers. Apart from the launch in Hong Kong, the company also signed a memorandum of understanding with the British luxury sport car maker Aston Martin for developing connected electric vehicles.

As Letv advances its global presence, there is significant evidence that the internet giant is also foraying into India as its founder has, at various platforms, expressed keen interest in the India market. Currently, it is rumoured that the company is engaged in rigorous testing of its phones in various labs in India.

Founded in 2004 as a video-streaming company, Letv has become a full-fledged listed conglomerate with a wide range of businesses including TVs, mobile phones, green cars, sports, music, movies and TV show production. Highly active interactions and responses from Indian users on the company’s social media platforms are indicative of Letv gearing up to amaze the Indian market as well.