All Posts by Himanshu Sheth

|In: Business|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The Cross-Tab Group which includes the companies Blueocean Market Intelligence, Cross-Tab, and Borderless Access, had a major restructuring with two of its three companies, Blueocean Market Intelligence and Cross-Tab, merged to form a powerful new entity, Course5.

Image Source – Course5

The new company combines the deep expertise and resources of both companies across data analytics, artificial intelligence, and market research domains, to create huge synergies for innovation, business-focused solutions, and operations. The third company of the Cross-Tab Group, Borderless Access, is de-merged and will operate as an independent entity.

Course5 will drive digital transformation for business organizations through Analytics, Insights, and Artificial Intelligence. The company will unveil its advanced new suite of solutions and services that can empower companies with future ready analytics, AI driven solutions, and faster insights for decision making. Across market intelligence, digital analytics, market research transformation, and Artificial Intelligence, Course5 is building solutions that are taking organizations to a smarter future. The company serves leading global clients including Microsoft, Lenovo, Colgate Palmolive, WPP Group, and Adelphi.

Ashwin Mittal, CEO, Cross-Tab group said on this occasion

The opportunities ahead of us are massive – the business world is drowning in oceans of data, information, and technology. Through smart solutions and our proprietary AI technology, we are bringing in a new paradigm of decision making to assist our clients in preparing for a new digital future.

Our name reflects our mission – we are going to enable our customers to chart a course beyond the four points of the compass, North, South, East, and West to the fifth direction which is the future. The industries of data, analytics, and market research are going to be completely disrupted through the AI wave and will emerge as more powerful partners to businesses worldwide.

One of the exciting new products deployed for clients is called Course5 Discovery. Course5 Discovery empowers decision makers to get answers and insights near instantly with great ease through a personalized Voice & Chat Assistant available on their smartphones and tablets. These interactive assistants, powered by advanced Natural Language Processing [NLP] and deep learning capabilities would smartly discover the insights by identifying relevant data and performing analytics modelling in a matter of seconds and communicate them in a natural conversational manner to the business user.

About Course5 Intelligence

Course5 Intelligence enables organizations to make the most effective strategic and tactical moves relating to their customers, markets, and competition at the rapid pace that the digital business world demands. They do this by driving digital transformation through analytics, insights, and Artificial Intelligence [AI].

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

3i Infotech Limited, a global Information Technology company unveiled its latest service offering, Conversational Banking at the recently concluded American Banker event in Colorado Springs, US. Voice & Chat which are central to conversational banking and advanced analytics such as channel interaction analytics and voice mining are integrated in this solution to increase cross-selling and minimize channel attrition leading to a friction-less omnichannel experience. Conversational Banking is a part of Altiray’s Omnichannel Solution – Conversational Services and is powered by Artificial Intelligence. The solution provides a 360 degree and holistic approach to converse with customers and enhance their experience.

The voice-led omnichannel solution finds easy application across various industries like banking, insurance and healthcare. It demonstrates how a customer initiates simple or complex transactions, like applying for a loan, applying for insurance, checking account balance or renewing policies etc., using voice interaction and if necessary continue through other digital channels like bot, mobile and portal. It converses with customers, understands requirements, captures requisite data and pre-populates forms where possible, and uses social media like LinkedIn or bank aggregators as source.

Speaking on their Next-gen offering, Mohua Sengupta, EVP and Global Head of Services, 3i Infotech said

Following the recent rebranding of our services business unit to Altiray, we are pleased to announce one more innovative offering from our stable, which is poised to be a game-changer in the industry. This further reinforces our commitment to help enterprises in their digital transformation journey. What this service provides, essentially, is to allow banks to have seamless interactions with their customers. We have also forayed into Conversational Insurance and Healthcare to extend these benefits to insurers and healthcare providers.

In an environment where Voice is the next UI of choice, we want to be the leaders driving the change. There are reports that by 2022 almost 40% of consumers will use voice assistants, compared to 24% today and another 31% will use a voice device instead of visiting a branch or store, compared to 20% today; hence this is a market that’s burgeoning and waiting to be tapped.

The key features of Omnichannel Conversational Services include Security, Dialoguing, Persistence and Open API. Here, there is no device dependency. The approach to the conversational services, is to use Q&A to answer generic queries; use cognitive services to answer intelligently; interface with the right back-end system through APIs to get responses; create NLP based responses and present to chat client; and hand-off to human interactions at appropriate time during conversations.

Guest Articles by Ms Mohua Sengupta can be found here and here.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Here to widen perspectives and reach out to internet viewers in a unique manner, BISBO covers current news events in an engaging manner – animation. This format encourages people to understand the most complex world issues and news in a way that is fun and easy to follow. The idea of BISBO was conceptualized 25 years ago but the journey from pen to YouTube transitioned only in 2016.

Image Source – Startups

Within a short span of 2 years BISBO has managed to break the clutter and garners 1.5~2 million views a month on YouTube, Facebook & Instagram. The platforms content is suitable for all ages, however 80% of its viewers are in the bracket of 18~44 years. Interestingly, a sizable number of UPSC candidates use BISBO’s videos as a study source!

The channel has gained popularity amongst its audience for its 5-minute news pieces that are comprehensively covered. An approximate of 30 videos are released every month, in English, Hindi & Bengali, covering several topics like politics, international events, science and tech, entertainment, crime, finance, health, wildlife, lifestyle alternatively.

BISBO wins the Bets StartUp in Asia award by SuperBrands 2018.

Using animation allows BISBO to reconstruct the sequence of events and break it down into interesting parts that are easily understandable. The channels aims to provide an opportunity to explore topics in detail and still have fun.

Shakir Ebrahim – Founder & Creator, BISBO said

By providing sources and references in each video, we not only point interested readers in the direction but also have managed to establish ourselves as credible source of news and information.

BISBO is closing in on 1 Lakh subscribers on YouTube already and is growing sufficiently to target 25 Lakh by end 2019 expanding its library to 8 Indian languages. It was recently awarded Best Start-up in Asia this year from over 6,000+ startups across India, Bangladesh, Malaysia & Singapore by SuperBrands. Complete list of winners can be found here.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The Microsoft Seeing AI App, designed for users with visual impairment, can now detect Indian currency and narrate the denomination to the user. This includes all the notes that are currently in circulation including the new currency bills issued recently. The Seeing AI app now supports five different currencies including the Euro, US & Canadian dollars as well as British Pounds.

Image Source – AI

Seeing AI combines artificial intelligence and rich computer vision to describe surrounding people, text, objects, colors, and currencies in real-time to the user, and is available for download on iOS devices from the App Store. Since its launch in July 2017, the app has completed over 5 million tasks for 30,000 monthly active users.

Source – Seeing AI App

|In: Social Entrepreneurship|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Expanding the reach of Dell Aarambh – A PC for Education initiative, Dell has collaborated with Tata ClassEdge – a leading provider of technology based learning solutions. The partnership is resultant to meeting the common objective of taking digital training to schools and equipping teachers with the requisite knowledge of implementing technology in classrooms. This collaboration expands the reach of Dell Aarambh, through Tata ClassEdge network on educational institutions.

Image Source – Dell Arambh

Dell’s Aarambh initiative addresses the key roadblock faced by parents and teachers who, while realizing the importance of the PC in education, want to continuously stay abreast with latest developments in use of PC for better learning.  The collaboration will enable Dell Aarambh initiative to scale up its reach to the Tata ClassEdge school community, while the Dell Aarambh schools will gain from Tata ClassEdge’s suite of e-learning solutions. Tata ClassEdge’s Principal Leadership Program that aims to equip school principals with strategic thinking and leadership skills will also be extended to the school principals who are part of the existing Dell Aarambh schools.

Speaking on the partnership, Sanjay Radhakrishnan, Chief Commercial Officer, Tata ClassEdge said

At a time when technology has become integral to our lives, it is essential that school education should also be in sync with the way students and teachers interact outside the classroom. Technology in education can transform the process with interactive teaching tools leading to improved learning outcomes. Our partnership with Dell will enable us to expand our reach to Dell Aarambh schools and introduce them to our comprehensive instructional solutions in teaching, learning, assessing and connecting communities.

Ritu Gupta, Marketing Director, Dell Consumer & Small Business, India said

For the new India that is sprinting among emerging economies, it is our teachers and students who need to become advocates of technology in education. Dell Aarambh is our commitment in building the confidence and capability among teachers who are educating the future workforce.

For us, partnering with TATA ClassEdge is a positive step in this direction, as we come together to address a unified goal. The fact is that most of India still needs to visualize the benefits using personal computers. It is important that more such collaborations solidify the concept of technology in education.

Digital learning solutions from TATA ClassEdge is now used across 1,400 schools across India by more than 100,000 teachers. Dell Aarambh, now in its 2nd year, has reached over 75,000 teachers across 4,000+ schools in 79 cities. Teachers have been trained in basic as well as advanced PC usability which they can incorporate easily into teaching learning experiences.

Partnership with Tata ClassEdge in the beginning of 2018 is a testimony to Dell’s belief in adoption of PC technology to help Indian students become true digital Indians. For more information, please visit Dell Aarambh

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Ather Energy launched their disruptive intelligent, electric scooter Ather 450 & their previously unveiled variant, the Ather 340. The Ather 450 is designed for city riding conditions, it comes with a top speed of 80 km/hr, a range of 75 km and one of the quickest accelerations of 3.9 seconds from 0-40 km/hr in the scooter market. Limited pre-orders have opened on Ather’s website and, their experience centre, AtherSpace  at Indiranagar will open for test rides on Friday, 8th June.

Image Source – Ather Energy

The Product

The Ather 450 has been designed to solve for problems limiting current electric two-wheelers, like slow charging speeds, low powered motors, and short battery lives. It can fast charge to 80% at a rate of 1 km/minute. It comes with a 3.3kW BLDC motor that can comfortably ride up 18-degree slopes, making steep parking lots, flyovers, and roads an easy climb. And for the first time in the category, Ather 450 comes with parking assist, which allows riders to reverse into tight parking locations.

The key differentiator of the Ather 450 are its intelligence features, seamless charging and ownership experience. The Ather 450 has a 7″ touchscreen dashboard that allows onboard navigation with options of alternative routes and saved locations. It comes with the Ather app that enables push navigation from the phone to the vehicle dashboard, remote monitoring of the vehicle health, charge monitoring and managing service requirements. Finally, with the Over-The-Air [OTA] functionality, the vehicle is capable of improving over time with continuous improvement and addition of new features and functionalities.

The Ather 450 comes with a home charging Point, that will be installed by the company at either owners’ homes or workplace. Features like surge protection, authenticated power draw, and remote charge monitoring makes Ather’s Point a fast, safe and intelligent charger.

Ather Energy has a new dealership and service model. While the ordering, payment, and test ride scheduling is online, the brand has opened its experience centre, AtherSpace to give customers an in-depth look and experience of the product. The servicing woes are also taken away by a seamless doorstep pickup and service that can be scheduled through the Ather app.

The Pricing

Ather is offering a unique no-hassle, pricing model. The total cost includes what consumers pay upfront to buy the scooter and a monthly subscription that will take care of most operational expenses.

The Ather One plan entitles customers to free public and home charging, periodic maintenance inclusive of consumables, breakdown assistance and unlimited data services for the dashboard at only Rs. 700 + GST per month, which is way lower than the sustenance cost of present scooters.

The Ather 450 is priced at Rs. 1,24,750 on road and the Ather 340  is priced at Rs. 1,09,750 on road. This is inclusive of subsidy @ Rs. 22,000, GST, road tax, smart card fee, registration card, and insurance.

For the first set of consumers, Ather Energy is offering the first year of the subscription plan for free. The company will also provide a home charging Point with the Ather 450 and a charging cable with the Ather 340. The price of these products and their installation will be waived off for these consumers.

[L-R] Swapnil Jain, CTO & Co-Founder, Ather Energy and Tarun Mehta, CEO & Co-Founder, Ather Energy

Announcing the launch of the products, Tarun Mehta, Co-founder & CEO, said

We started building electric scooters four years ago at IIT Madras and we are super excited to launch not only the Ather 340, but also our higher performance flagship variant, the Ather 450. It has been designed with quick acceleration, great handling, high storage space and new-to-category features like park assist, remote diagnostics, and onboard navigation. In the last 4 years we have not only built the scooter, but an ecosystem for an electric vehicle future.

Be it the suppliers and partners who were entering the EV market, the charging infrastructure that had to be set up for consumers and the engineering talent itself to build the products. Between the Ather 450 & Ather 340 launching and AtherGrid being up and running in Bengaluru, we are really looking forward to expanding into Chennai & Pune in the coming months. These are exciting times to be a part of the industry.

About Ather Energy

Co-founded in 2013 by IIT graduates – Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, Ather Energy is one the few hardware startups in India. The company designing India’s first truly intelligent electric scooter and is backed by the founders of Flipkart, Tiger Global and Hero Motocorp.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The newest entrant in the taxi business in the metropolis has also vowed to be the greenest on this World Environment Day. While rival taxi companies are slowing down on EV plans, S3 Cabs has got the approval and tie up for a mobile bio-diesel distribution pump. The pump will be used to fill bio-diesel for its cabs across Mumbai.

Speaking on the development Sohel Kazani, Managing Director – Interport Impex Pvt Ltd said

I am very excited that we have received a fantabulous response from the drivers and riders both. As a company, Sahyadri Smart Safe Private Limited was a late entrant in the business, but we always wanted to be the path leaders. Going forward with our vision, we have procured the equipment and supply for bio-diesel distribution.

The mobile bio-diesel distribution van will travel all over the Mumbai and have fixed timings at South Mumbai and near all Mumbai entry points. In the first stage we only want to supply the fuel to our taxis, if we are surplus, we will distribute it to other vehicles too.

The average consumption of fuel by the cab owners based on 300km per day traveling amounts to 30 liters of diesel, and that equals to INR 2200 per day. A 40% reduction would mean INR 880 saving per day on fuel account or as much as INR 26000 approx a month by using bio-diesel and the oxy-power unit. A pilot study made us understand that it keeps the fuel systems and fuel injector cleaner thus reducing the vehicle maintenance cost and increasing the mileage. It will also help in additional employment generation. We would like to work closely with the government to make the shift to biofuels happen and we hope that they lower the GST on bio-diesel to 5%.

Bio-diesel blend has been made a mandate in many countries. The government had recommended a blend in 2017 but the same has not been made compulsory. Bio-fuels also reduce the emissions making the environment cleaner.

It would help the economy by reducing crude import; India imports approximately 8 Lakh crores of crude oil annually. Also, it is priced lower than convention diesel, resulting in savings for the drivers. Shifting to bio-fuels is also a long-term solution to the problem of rising fuel prices. There is no major infrastructure change required compared to EVs where major infrastructure investment is required on charging points.

At the commercial inception of the cab services, S3 had provided a patented technology registered as ‘Oxy Power’ to all its drivers. This technology requires an external fitment in the car and helps in the better utilization of the fuel resulting in 20% and 30% reduction in fuel consumption. Reduced fuel consumption helped the taxis to operate at flat fares all the times. Now with Bio-Diesel, there will be further 5%~10% reduction in fuel costs resulting in Net overall 40% reduction in fuel bill to be paid by the taxi owners.

Biodiesel can be used in any diesel car without any additional modification as in the case of CNG. It is cleaner and more efficient than regular diesel. Biodiesel can be used alone or blended with regular diesel in any proportions. Nitin Gadkari, hon. Minister of Road Transport has been advocating the use of bio-fuels for a very long time. He has mentioned on several occasions that there is an urgent need to re-think and revisit transport infrastructure and fuel dependency across not just India, but the globe.

|In: IOT|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

As per United Nations’ Water Development Report 2016, one of the most serious problems mankind faces today is the scarcity of water for drinking and domestic use. In India, 63 million people are still lacking access to safe drinking water, according to statistics from World Bank. While potable water shortage is a matter of global concern, experts have in the recent past stressed that efficient processes and technologies for conservation, management and proper utilization of water systems is crucial to address the growing water crisis.

Image Source – IoT

With an eye to innovate in terms of water resource management, Chariot Tech Private Limited, a company that operates New-Delhi based IoT start-up Chariot, has recently tied up with Axioma Metering, a market leader in energy and metering products’ manufacturing in the Baltic region.

The partnership intends to change the face of water metering in India by introducing an umbrella of IoT technology-enabled smart water meters, which will be equipped to monitor, analyze, and appropriately manage water networks across the country.

Commenting on the collaboration, Nilay Mehrotra, Co-Founder & CEO, Chariot said

In today’s era of rapid urbanization, management of the water systems is a critical component for the sustained socio-economic growth. At a time when our country is facing the threat of a full-blown water crisis, Axioma and Chariot’s partnership is not only going to benefit the Smart Cities mission, but also the country’s citizens extensively.

Coupled with the power of the Internet of Things, the adaptation of smart water metering on a large scale has the potential to enable responsible water usage within communities, which in turn, can emerge as a permanent solution to India’s water mismanagement woes. With the help of advanced analytics-based optimizing strategies, we dream of a future where every household gets a fair share of clean water supply.

With the thrust on Smart Cities and Digital India recently, maintaining operational efficiency in terms of urban planning and infrastructure development for residents has become all the important. The outlook and growth trajectory of Smart Cities of the future will largely depend upon smart infrastructure; this is exactly where OEMs need to partner with startups, to derive support in meeting their software and hardware requirements.

Vaidas Jakubavicius, CEO, Axioma Metering said

Apart from being a manufacturer of world-class heat and water metering devices, we at Axioma Metering believe in constant innovation, R8D, and up-scaling. While we already assume a leadership role in developing ultrasound technology-based metering products in Baltic countries, we are indeed delighted to partner with Chariot in India, so as to bring a new dimension to the smart water metering scenario in this country.

With sustainability and high-tech resource monitoring at its heart, we are sure that this tie-up will provide immense value to Indian cities and states, which are already poised for a digital revolution.

Smart water meters provide real-time tracking for the flow and distribution of water networks in a specified area, while also monitoring consumption and expenditure. By studying usage patterns and parameters, predicting water loss due to leakage and enhancing water utility becomes easier. Over a period of time, this also helps in directing the water resources to low-yield areas which are in need the same.

Explaining further on the significance of the tie-up, Raj Garg, Co-founder & CTO, Chariot added

Chariot has introduced a first-of-its-kind Universal IoT platform to India, and also has to its credit executing a project in Maharashtra on Smart Water Metering. Since inception, one of our key focus areas is to help the governments in making efficient choices by leveraging the power of emerging technologies.

Through this partnership, we look forward to combine Axioma’s expertise in the metering sector with our own in the IoT solutions front; the ultimate aim is to support administrative bodies and regional stakeholders to manage their water needs.

As a digital enterprise, Chariot’s Universal IoT platform, which is agnostic to any IoT protocol and device types currently available, delivers comprehensive Platform-As-A-Service [PaaS] and Software-As-A Service [SaaS] solutions for developing and operating big data, predictive analytics, and so on.

On the other hand, Axioma designs and manufactures mechanical and ultrasonic devices for heat and water metering that are exported to 36 countries across the globe; it has already established a strong presence in European countries, and posted annual turnover of approximately 25 million euros. The company will be consolidating its foothold in the Indian arena through this partnership.

About Chariot Tech Pvt Ltd

Chariot is an IoT startup based out of New Delhi. Chariot was born in March 2017 as a brain child of two founder Nilay & Raj. Nilay & Raj started this company as a home automation company but suddenly struggled choosing optimal technology for the product. This confusion gave birth to chariot universal IoT platform. Nilay met Raj through a common friend on Raj’s birthday and started discussing random ideas over a coffee which finally resulted into birth of Chariot. Chariot till the time of formation have been growing at a rate of 45% month on month with a lot of enquiries from both domestic and global market. Chariot has successfully executed a project in Maharashtra on Smart Water metering using chariot product. For more information, please visit Chariot