Technologies like Machine Learning [ML], Artificial Intelligence [AI], Cognitive Computing, Robotics, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things [IoT], and more are transforming each & every sector in business. The traditional manufacturing industry is also at the cusp of a major revolution and these technologies & processes are the key enablers of the disruption.
Industry 4.0 [I 4.0], also termed the fourth industrial revolution is a transformation that makes it possible to analyze & gather data across machines and improve processes resulting in better productivity at reduced costs. Autonomous robots, Collaborative Robots [Co-bots], Industrial Internet of Things [IIoT] and Additive manufacturing are termed of the key building blocks of I4.0 [Source].
In the Indian market, 20 billion devices are set to be connected to IoT by 2021. The adoption of IoT and IIoT will span across different industries like manufacturing, retail, supply chain, automobiles, healthcare, etc. I4.0 is the future of automation & smart factories and these are some of the technological trends in 2020 that will enable Indian industries to march towards the fourth industrial revolution.
Talking about smart manufacturing processes, Wienerberger is one such company that proved to be a leader in producing clay-based building materials – wall, roof, facade solutions. It is the world’s No.1 brick manufacturer. The company is constantly engaged in leveraging technology and innovation to provide world-class building material solutions. Under the brand name Porotherm Smart Bricks, Wienerberger India has been manufacturing perforated Clay Blocks that are designed to provide improved durability, ease of use, and many other benefits that aid in cost-effective wall construction [Source].
Heavy Duty automation and the use of technology has made Wienerberger, by far, one of the largest clay block producers in South East Asia. With hi-tech robotics aiding the production process of over 70,000 large format blocks which is equivalent to 630,000 regular bricks per day, it is evident that the need for electricity is very substantial. 95% of the factory requirement is met through renewable energy including solar and wind. To cut down on emission the factory converts fossil fuel to a sustainable energy source, that is converting coal to natural gas as a fuel.
We were invited to Wienerberger’s Kunigal factory that is located in the Tumkur district of Karnataka in November 2019. Due to a busy schedule, we could not come up with a timely post on the same. Better late than ever!
Wienerberger AG, announced an investment of Rs. 30 crore in their Kunigal factory and the announcement was made by Christof Domenig, CEO, Wienerberger Building Solutions. The announcement was made on the company’s 200th anniversary and 10th anniversary of operating in India at Wienerberger’s factory in Kunigal.
The investment will enable the company to support its expansion plans including an upgrade and an implementation of new equipment in the factory, converting to natural gas as a fuel and launch of new building solutions that will enable construction practices to be simplified and faster with less resource consumption.
Wienerberger launched its first operation in 2009 in India wherein the company started production of its Porotherm smart clay bricks out of its Kunigal factory. Since its operation in India, the company has built more than 45,000+ apartments across South India and 15,000 independent houses in addition to building many other prominent and prestigious hospitality and educational institutions.
Myself, along with fellow bloggers and journalists had an opportunity to take an insider’s look in their manufacturing facility that uses state-of-the-art technology like Robotics and has extremely energy-efficient manufacturing processes. The impressive part about the factory tour was that the entire factory is managed by less than 20 people and robots were engaged for material handling.
The unit uses sustainable practices in manufacturing through the usage of natural additives like granite waste, rice husk, sawdust, and coal ash as inputs. Totally 30,000 units of power is consumed on a daily basis, out of which 95 percent comes from solar energy [Source]. The representatives of Wienerberger also shared their valuable insights on smart manufacturing and I4.0. More details about the Wienerberger’s India factory can be found here.
So far the company has managed to channel over 92% of its electricity needs is used from solar and wind energy. This has helped Wienerberger India to successfully set benchmarks for the building manufacturing industry across the country and the world at large.
To mention a few of the high-end automated machinery used in the factory are:
The factory is also highly equipped with a full-fledged in-house laboratory and product development facilities. Currently, Wienerberger employs about 250 employees in India. The company is also strongly associated with several CSR activities like providing primary healthcare facilities and affordable housing in the vicinity of the factory.
Christof Domenig, CEO, Clay Building Materials Europe, Wienerberger AG, said
The investment in our Kunigal factory operations will include converting from solid fuel to a cleaner and sustainable energy source – that is natural gas. When it comes to using electrical energy in the factory, 95 percent of the factory requirement is met through renewable energy sources of solar and wind.
Despite there being no such mandate, the measure to introduce natural gas as a fuel is a decision taken by Wienerberger proactively to ensure a drastic reduction in carbon emission, although it will incur additional cost for the company. Wienerberger is continuously striving to convert its production processes to low-emission energy sources.
Sharing his insights, Monnanda Appaiah, MD, Wienerberger India, added
With the Rs. 30 crore investment, we will also be upgrading our machinery and install new equipment with the latest technology that will enable us to scale up the production by up to 25%. The products manufactured in Kunigal offer significant technical advantages over conventional walling materials apart from being environmentally friendly and cost-effective.
We are also actively marketing and supplying clay roof and facade solutions across India and are also planning to expand the product portfolios for these offerings that would be extremely relevant for the Indian climatic conditions and consumer preferences.
Wienerberger’s India product portfolio currently includes clay building materials solutions for walls, roofs, and facades. Wall solutions include products like Porotherm HP, VP Load Bearing, Thermobrick, HP Grinded + Dryfix System; Roof Solutions include Koramic and Tondach, and Facade Solutions include Aspect.
Business owners improve the visibility and popularity of their website by using the right keywords. Content is vital for the website and must be both relevant and useful. New standards and algorithms used by popular search engines block websites that use irrelevant content and follow Black Hat SEO strategies, such as keyword stuffing.
Following new strategies helps business owners find the best keywords to use in their website content.
Evaluate Related Searches on the SERPs
Evaluating related searches on the search engine results pages helps companies find better keywords and phrases. At the bottom of each page is a list with different keyword combinations. These keywords are used by internet users often when locating similar content. Conducting searches for the company and its products shows the business owner all related searches. When adding keywords to the website content it is paramount to use variations of the keywords to increase the visibility of the website and the company’s products. To learn more about selecting keywords, companies can learn about SEO services from Appiloque now.
Align Keywords with Business Goals and Missions
Businesses identify the company’s mission and business goals. The details help the company decide what keywords are relevant to the company and its brand. Adding keywords that are aligned with the company’s goals improve visibility and help like-minded consumers find the business faster.
Using Auto-Populate Features
Using auto-populate features improve how companies use keywords and improve the popularity and relevance of the website on search engines. Auto-populate features complete phrases and sentences entered into the search engine. The additional expressions and phrases are useful to company owners and show the owners what phrases are beneficial for driving traffic to the website. Testing different keywords with the auto-populate features helps companies track relevant keywords and expressions and add the expressions to their website content.
Using Analytic Tools on Search Engines
Using analytic tools on search engines provides companies with further insight into finding the best keywords to use in web content. All popular search engines offer business accounts where the companies generate reports for statistics on the company’s website. A comparison between the web site’ content and relevant keywords helps business owners determine if the content requires changing. Using the account console shows business owners all historical data for all relevant keywords and phrases that pertain to the company, its products, and services. It also helps business owners plan out new marketing strategies and campaigns by supplying companies with more popular keyword selections.
Accessing Keyword Niche Finders
Accessing keyword niche finding tools helps businesses link keywords together and help customers find exactly what they want online. The tools generate a list and show businesses what word combinations help internet users find the company’s products online. An analysis is conducted by the tools that shows for which niches the company and its products are relevant. Using niche-based keywords improves the visibility of the company website and its products online.
Business owners research keywords and phrases by following a variety of techniques. Evaluating related searches and auto-populate features help businesses find relevant expressions and keyword combinations for the website content. Analytic tools are used to evaluate keywords on popular search engines. Niche finders are also effective tools for generating reports and statistics about keywords. Following the best strategies helps businesses increase their profitability and achieve greater success online.
Reverie Language Technologies, leaders in comprehensive full-stack Indic language localization and user engagement solutions and NASSCOM co-hosted #RevHack, India’s first Indian language-based hackathon. On Saturday, January 18, over 200 participants battled it out to build solutions to drive ‘Language Equality on the Indian Internet‘.
RevHack drew participation from experts and enthusiasts who aim to build multilingual tech solutions for Indic language first Indians. Themed around creating an ecosystem for solving problems in digital Indian language space, the participants used technology to build and deliver a functional prototype that solves the problems in Indic language content creation and localization. The participants had access to Reverie’s language APIs – Speech-to-text, Text-to-speech, and Neural Machine Translation.
India has a literacy rate of 69.1% and only .01% of Indic content is available on the internet for consumption. While there will be 536 million language first digital users in India by 2021, there still is a long way to go for achieving “Language Equality on the internet”.
Arvind Pani, CEO and Co-founder of Reverie Language Technologies, said
With the first edition of #RevHack, the company aims to inspire coders, developers, and the student community to create innovative Indic language technology-based solutions so that the internet can be truly accessible for all. Our regional language users can progress beyond browsing and India can realize the potential of the next 500 million users.
Anand B and his team comprising of Anirudh S, Abinav C, Vrishab Krishna and Luv Singhal, of Class 11 from National Public School in Indiranagar, won the hackathon. Theirs was the youngest team at the event. With their hack, phonetic sounds of any Indian language can be converted into into braille characters.
Anirudh said that the language to braille translation software can be extended to any Indian language, as Bharatiya Braille [unlike Latin braille] is based on sounds or phonetics and not on the alphabet. “The software has incorporated all sounds from many Indian languages. Every sound corresponds to the arrangement of dots,” he said, adding that Braille was chosen as it was one of the neglected languages in the country.
Several developers focussed on plugging gaps in rural health care services. Mumtaz Irtheqa Ahmed and his team from MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology developed a computer-based software that allows patients to tell the computer software their symptoms and basic information like age, and weight, which then links them to a medical expert. The doctor would receive the inputs in English or a preferred language. Likewise, all ladies’ team from Dayanand Sagar University created an Indic language add-on to Google Assistant.
Pune based Falco eMotors has won the highly coveted Innovation Award on December 17, 2019, in the 6th Annual Ceremony of the CII [Confederation of Indian Industry] Industrial Innovation Awards.
The prestigious Innovation award, recognizing Falco’s success in innovative electric motor technologies and their subsequent impact on personalized transportation and big building human comfort.
Launched in 2011, Falco eMotors has developed electric motor technology for electric bikes, scooters, trikes, motorcycles, electric cars, wheelchairs, and high volume low-speed fans [HVLS Fans]. The technology has been patented and launched in other countries such as India, the USA, Canada, Europe, and Australia.
Our Patented technologies have generated worldwide interest. This prestigious award recognizes the innovative nature of our approach to personalized transportation and big building human comfort. CII has been very supportive. They have understood our unusual approach to innovation and the results we have achieved.
CII Jury evaluated Falco eMotors’ technologies based upon the quality and their originality. The extensive assessment criteria analyzed the Company’s innovation culture within Falco as a function of how people at all hierarchies collaborated and supported innovation, the flow of advancement in spirit, and as a function within Falco. How useful was innovation management of chaos to achieve tangible results? How effective is Falco’s expertise in navigating through such efforts? What tangible as well as intangible inputs to Innovation were made by Falco eMotors? Did Falco eMotors achieve tangible and measurable outcomes?
The CII Jury assessed the results that accumulated within Falco eMotors from the initiatives carried out. The details of CII grand jury are available here.
Along with Falco, twenty-four various other business were bestowed innovation awards, including JCB India Ltd. for ‘The Most Innovative Company 2019’, Amara Raja Batteries Ltd and Sterlite Technologies Limited for ‘Top Innovative Company (Large) in Manufacturing’ as well as – Fluid Controls Pvt Ltd for ‘Leading Innovative Company (Medium) in Manufacturing.’
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman of Axilor Ventures and Co-founder Infosys, said
Innovation should be a movement. There is a need for existing businesses to become world-class. A rigorous process of CII Industrial innovation awards allows the external evaluation of the organization’s innovation capabilities.
About Falco eMotors
Rakesh Dhawan founded Falco in 2011. Electric bicycle technology has been his passion ever since he joined Wavecrest Laboratories in 2001 in Dulles, Virginia. He was key in commercializing the 7-phase electric drive technology for Tidalforce electric bikes. In 2004, Wavecrest Laboratories launched Tidalforce electric bikes with success and high fan following.
Falco revolutionized electric bike technology with the introduction of the ANT+ based 5-phase wireless eBike systems in 2011. Falco’s e-bike technologies are known for exceptional reliability, jaw-dropping speeds, and incredible fluidity in transforming your bike.
Gamerji, one of India’s most prominent e-sports tournament platforms has raised USD 400K from La Gajjar Group, an investment group based in Ahmedabad. The investment has been utilized for building the technology, increasing operations and also for gaining users.
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With the Indian online gaming industry slated to grow to $1 Billion by the year 2021. Gamerji is giving an opportunity to today’s casual gamers, who comprise of the majority of the market to leverage their skills and earn money through their e-sports platform.
Gamerji allows the new age gamers to compete, communicate, share content and win cash prizes by conducting more than 18 tournaments every day. It presently conducts tournaments for in-demand games such as PUBG, Clash Royale and Call of Duty. Gamerji is available as a mobile application, for both Android and IOS.
Launched in 2019, Gamerji was founded by Soham Thacker and Varun Gajjar. In just 4 months, Gamerji today already has over 120K gamers on their platform.
Speaking on the funding, Varun Gajjar, Co-Founder, Gamerji said
We plan to utilize the funds to make Gamerji the leading e-sports platform in India
E-Sports is arguably the fastest growing industry in the world and India provides a perfect platform for virtual tournaments with an audience of more than 100 million gamers to offer.
About Gamerji
Gamerji is an e-sports tournament platform where there are daily matches conducted for games such as PUBG mobile, Clash Royale etc. Gamerji works with a vision to have a platform where gamers can compete, share content & win prizes.
With features such as group chat, leader board, videos & gaming profile, Gamerji aims to enhance the experience of gamers and provide them with a single platform to maintain their gaming stats. Founded by fellow gamers & young entrepreneurs, Gamerji is constantly working towards the growth of e-sports industry in India.
Credit cards have become a widely used financial product today. They bring to you the convenience of making payments through a plastic card anywhere and at any time. Over and above, you enjoy a range of benefits and offers as a part of this payment method.
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So what are cash back credit cards? As the name suggests, cashback credit cards offer you cashback rewards when you make a transaction. The rewards are lucrative and can add to your earnings.
Cashback credit cards make for the most popular type of credit card. This is because of the obvious reason that they let you earn. How does it work? Each time you purchase through you cashback credit card, you receive a percentage of the price that you paid. The cashback may be rewarded to you instantly or at the end of the billing cycle. You must note that cashback can be enjoyed only through eligible purchases. Typically, these purchases are as defined by your credit card issuer.
Redeeming your cashback
There are different ways through which the credit card issuer lets you redeem your cashback
Statement credit – The most common way used to redeem the cashback is through a statement credit. This means that the rewards are used to lower the credit card bill in the following cycle. The earned cashback rewards is adjusted into the following bill.
Account Deposit – The direct account deposit allows you to have the cashback directed straight into your bank account. For example, if you have earned INR 2000 as cashback reward through your monthly eligible spends, then the same value is added to your linked savings or checking account. This is yet another option that is popular among cashback credit card users.
Gift card or shopping vouchers – Depending on the brand partners, the cashback rewards can be received through gift card rewards for different brands. This can include restaurants, shopping sites, resorts, clothing brands and much more.
It is essential to pick a credit card that meets your requirements. Ensure that you can strike the right balance between your spending while effectively earning through the rewards. Additionally, be mindful of the fees attached to the card and these include the annual fee, repayment duration and more.
Cashback rewards are great if you can commit to making repayments on time and keep all the fees in check. It is most important that you avoid making unwanted purchases while being lured by the lucrative cashback offers.
ThoughtWorks, a global software consultancy, successfully concluded its India chapter of ThoughtWorks Live 2019 in Bengaluru on 28 November 2019. The event was an invite-only conclave specially designed for today’s digital CXO. The conclave hosted opinions and insights on the theme; Accelerating Digital Fluency. The day’s sessions discussed what it takes for businesses to not just become, but stay a digital course.
This blog has a long-standing association with ThoughtWorks as it also had a detailed coverage of Technology Radar Summit by ThoughtWorks which was held in June 2019.
Why the delay in coverage of ThoughtWorks Live 2019?
You might be wondering what took us so long to cover the event on this blog? Since October 2019, I moved into technical and business writing and more time was spent on acquiring clients who could use our services. Though it is like a freelancer kind of a role, I would term myself as a rookie entrepreneur who is using his blogging and technical skills to enter into an entire new domain:). Watch out this blog where I would writing more about the transition from being an engineer to a so-called writer!
Coming back to ThoughtWorks Live 2019, the event was a wonderful opportunity for tech-enthusiasts to learn from industry experts and thought leaders in the industry. These folks shared their experiences of building Modern Digital Businesses. Since the theme of the event was Accelerating Digital Fluency, all the talks focused on building a digital mindset that is needed to create differentiated customer experiences.
ThoughtWorks Live 2019 – The attendees
Apart from selected journalists and technology bloggers, the event witnessed a total of 111 participants that also constituted industry experts like
Lathika Pai – Country Head, Microsoft for Start-Ups [Profile]
Dr. Vivek Raghavan – Chief Product Manager and Bio-metric Architect, UIDAI [Profile]
Jaspreet Bindra – Digital Transformation Advisor to ThoughtWorks [Profile]
Ashish Grover – VP – eCommerce, Falabella S.A, & Head of Technology, Falabella India [Profile]
Avinash Raghavendra – Executive Vice President & Head – Information Technology, Axis Bank [Profile]
Anil Kumble – Chairman, ICC Cricket Committee & Former Indian Cricketer [Needs no introduction 🙂]
Each of these thought leaders shared their their expertise & experiences on stage and it was an immense learning opportunity to all of us who were the ‘selected few’ to be invited for the event.
There were close to 100+ C-level customers of ThoughtWorks, prospects and analysts who shared exceptional feedback about the content, sessions, experience zone, and interactions with their leaders.
ThoughtWorks Live 2019 – Birds eye view of the event
The event started with keynote sessions by ThoughtWorks practitioners [Nag, Gunjan, and Gary], followed by a fireside chat [Avinash Raghavendra] and lightning talks by some of the eminent practitioners from the tech industry [Lathika Pai, Vivek Raghavan, Ashish Grover], followed by a panel on data moderated by Jaspreet Bindra and the last session was with Anil Kumble [Former Indian Cricketer in conversation with Smitha].
As the core focus was on Digital Transformation, there was extensive usage of the keywords in all the talks!
ThoughtWorks Live 2019 – Event Digest
The event was kicks-started with opening remarks from ThoughtWorkers – Gunjan Shukla, Market Partner – South East Asia, ThoughtWorks India, and Nagarjun Kandukuru, Business Principal – Artificial Intelligence.
Opening Remarks – ‘Digital an unkept Promise’
Below are some of the key takeaways from the insightful talk by the ThoughtWorkers who spoke about the prominence of Digital Transformation and why just building a mobile app cannot be termed as Digital Transformation.
Often businesses forget that ‘Digital’ and ‘Transformation’ are two separate words. Business leaders need to understand that ‘digitization’ is different from ‘digital transformation’. For instance, simply building a mobile app cannot count as a strategy anymore. You have to rethink how you manage demand, add value throughout the delivery cycle, and handle procurement or hiring. As a result, digital transformation is indistinguishable from business transformation.
Operating models aren’t keeping up with the demands of digital transformation. Legacy processes are deterring businesses from realizing the full potential of transformation. The key to effective transformation lies in shifting emphasis from profit/ROI maximization to client experience optimization, while putting power back in the hands of those who are creating solutions for your clients.
There are gaps between strategy and execution because ‘innovation’ and ‘scalability’ aren’t doing the Tango. Building teams that are capable of dealing with unpredictability, and driving inclusion [and not just diversity] can help address these gaps, because a good idea can come from anywhere.
Digital Transformation isn’t about becoming a faster caterpillar, rather the aim is to morph into a beautiful butterfly.
Do have a look at the insightful talk on ‘Digital an unkept Promise’ below:
The presentation on ‘Digital an unkept Promise’ is availablehere.
Keynote – Digital Fluency : ‘Connecting the Dots of Digital Transformation’
The next session was the keynote by Gary O’Brien, Principal Consultant & Organizational Designer, ThoughtWorks. His talk revolved around catering to the needs of the digital era and how to serve the modern digital businesses that are outcome-driven rather than output-driven.
The Digital Era is marked by three major shifts – heightened client expectations, speed and tech-driven value delivery.
Increasing client expectations requires businesses to develop ‘client obsession’ – that means aligning all practices and processes to create more value for your clients. Value is different from benefits, and it does not inherently exist in any business. You need to create value for your clients, and find ways to do so quickly, consistently and continuously.
Modern Digital Businesses are those that are outcome-driven rather than output-driven.One way to achieve outcome-orientation is to define your desired business outcomes first, then work backwards to identify measures of success, and design work to meet those measures.
It’s also critical to build a Test & Learn Culture that’s guided by capabilities, scalability and profitability. You can leverage knowledge to understand what ‘value’ means to your clients and use insights from data in a strategic manner to tell if your clients are responding to shifts in your offerings.
We’ve identified the five building blocks of a Modern Digital Business and our Digital Fluency Model was born out of the realization that not all businesses need to focus on all these blocks in equal measure. Your Digital Fluency is therefore aspirational – it’s where you are versus where you want to be; also, achieving this fluency is a non-linear process – you need to understand how investing in these blocks can maximize your client’s experience. Your fluency pattern is therefore your unique digital signature.
The Digital Fluency Model is our response to how digital transformation is being handled and spoken about in the market.
To summarize, Digital Fluency isn’t a race, rather its journey unique to every business.
Do have a look at the insightful talk on ‘Connecting the Dots of Digital Transformation’ below:
The presentation on ‘Digital Fluency – Connecting the Dots of Digital Transformation’ is availablehere.
Lightning Talk – India Stack : Driving Transformation Through Digital Public Goods
The session by Dr. Vivek Raghavan was by far one of the best sessions where he spoke about the various aspects of the India Stack, financial inclusion, and UIDAI. Below are some of the key takeaways from his talk:
Moves in support of financial inclusion in India have seen acceleration due to increased political will, a proactive central bank, and ‘India Stack’, which refers to a set of technologies that address the three layers of financial inclusions – Identity, Payments and Data Empowerment.
These technologies and the supporting infrastructure were all built over time – a decade to be precise [2009 to 2019]. A verifiable unique identity was fundamental to enabling financial inclusion therefore it had to be backed bio-metrics, while also being simple. Aadhar aimed to give every Indian that unique identity using basic data – name, date of birth, gender, and phone/email.
While we have been successful in addressing Identity and Payments, data empowerment is still a challenge – users currently don’t have access to their own data. Account aggregators could restore the balance in the system by determining who stands to benefit from all this data. We are trying to drive the shift from using data to sell to the consumer to using data to empower the consumer.
The India StackHow UPI Works
Every Indian is interested to know about Aadhar and how it has helped drive financial inclusion in India. This talk appeals to each one of us and should not be missed!
The presentation on ‘India Stack – Driving Transformation Through Digital Public Goods’ is availablehere.
Lightning Talk – Driving Digital Transformation by Leveraging Startup Innovations
Lathika Pai, Country Head, Microsoft for Startups, MENA & SAARC spoke about her journey as an entrepreneur, digital transformation, and Microsoft for Startups. Her talk will definitely appeal to anyone who has an inclination towards start-ups or who is interested in the overall eco-system.
Below are some of the key takeaways from Lathika Pai’s talk at ThoughtWorks Live 2019:
It is not about what technology can do, but what you can do with technology.
Disruption has become the norm across industries.
Two important constituents of Digital Transformation are empowering employees and engaging with clients.
The Indian Startup Ecosystem is vibrant, with 27 Unicorns in under 7 years. We have $51 billion in funding across 2773 funded startups.
Watch her entire session below:
The presentation on ‘Driving Digital Transformation by Leveraging Start-Up Innovations’ is availablehere.
Lightning Talk – Digital, The Great Leveller
Ashish Grover, VP – eCommerce, Falabella S.A and Head – Technology, Falabella India spoke about how going digital has created transparency in their business units, and enabled collaboration between geographically distributed teams.
Below are some of the key takeaways from the talk by Ashish Grover:
Falabella, a 130-year-old legacy integrated business with operations in retail, financial services marketplace, and real estate has been on a mission to optimize instant engagement at speed and scale.
Thanks to digital, geography is no longer a barrier, processes are more streamlined, speed is easier to achieve, and so is scale.
Through their transformation journey they have learned that empowering expertise is the answer to business woes. They look at it through the lenses of meritocracy, diversity, product thinking, aspiration and purpose. They’ve also paid attention to building feedback loops, simplifying processes, creating transparency and winning the support of leadership.
You can watch his entire session below:
The presentation on ‘Digital, the Great Leveller’ is availablehere.
Celebrity Chat
This was the moment that many of us in the crowd were waiting for! Being a die-hard cricketer myself, I have always admired Kumble’s bowling skills, especially the flipper. I have always admired him as a great cricketer and a coach that transformed the Indian cricket team.
Anil Kumble – Former Indian Cricketer spoke with Smitha Hemmigae, Head of Marketing – ThoughtWorks India about his cricketing and coaching journey and how digital technology can be leveraged more to improve the game.
Below are some of the key takeaways from Jumbo’s session:
Anil Kumble has seen multiple formats emerge and grow during his playing career and has excelled in all three cricketing formats – Tests, ODIs and T20. This session looked at Anil’s life and experiences through a digital lens.
When questioned about the rapid pace of change, in both cricket and business, Anil Kumble said tracking change is always overwhelming. Instead, simplifying things to look at constants helps him stay focussed – a great piece of advice for business leaders too.
In the context of his legendary performance in the India v/s Pakistan test match where he scored 10 wickets, he spoke about how one great performance can lead to heightened expectations. “You are only as good as your last game“, he said – perhaps another word of advice for business leaders. Much like cricket, business too demands consistency.
Anyone who has admired Anil Kumble’s bowling skills would definitely enjoy the session as he draws similarities between the game of cricket and business in this insightful session. A must watch…
Other than these sessions, there was a panel discussion on “The importance of Data” titled Data is not the new Oil. It is even more Powerful! The participants in the panel discussion were Hemant Misra, Head of Applied Research, Swiggy; N.S. Nappinai, Cyber laws Expert; Govind Shivkumar, Principal – Investments, Omidyar Network; Jaspreet Bindra, Digital Advisor & Blockchain Expert; Sudhir Tiwari, MD, ThoughtWorks India.
There was also an interesting Fireside Chat on the topic How to Accelerate Digital Fluency in Banking. Avinash Raghavendra, EVP & Head – IT, Axis Bank in conversation with Sandeep Reddy, Head of Financial Services Practice, ThoughtWorks India.
During the social gathering 13 distinguished analysts from Gartner, Forrester, Everest Research, ISG, Avasant, and HFS Research shared positive views on how ThoughtWorks Live is different from events by other service providers.
On the social media engagement front, the event received significant traction through the evening and was trending #1 in Bangalore and #15 in India. You can find the tweets on ThoughtWorks Live 2019 here.
ThoughtWorks Live 2019 – ‘Accelerate Your Digital Fluency’
Though we are late in writing about ThoughtWorks Live 2019, the learnings of the sessions will be applicable for many more years to come! So go ahead, and gain wonderful insights from the talks presented by the thought leaders present at ThoughtWorks Live 2019.
In its efforts to enable the startup ecosystem in Tier 2 cities across the country, Microsoft’s ‘Highway to a Hundred Unicorns’ has selected 54 startups from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Kerala and Telangana. The top tech startups selected through ‘Emerge-X’ win Azure credits and a host of business and tech benefits.
The competition has received over 530 applications and the top three startups from each state gain access to a year-long mentorship program and a two-day founder bootcamp.
Highway to a Hundred Unicorns, the Microsoft for Startups initiative, works closely with local governments to strengthen the startup ecosystem in each state. The fifth edition of the outreach program was hosted at Hyderabad in association with the Government of Telangana. More than 150 innovators and entrepreneurs engaged with Microsoft experts, industry stalwarts and ecosystem stakeholders, including members of the state government.
More than 650 startups that have participated in the five events have benefited from the mentorship and guidance through technology workshops on Azure, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Over 75 ecosystem players including the Global Entrepreneurship Network, TiE, Headstart, NASSCOM, and Startup Grind as well as prominent investors, entrepreneurs and executives in the national startup ecosystem have actively engaged with the innovators at each of the locations.
Telangana Emerge X Winners with [L-R] – Lathika Pai, Jayesh Ranjan, Gayle Sheppard, and Rajiv Kumar
Wholesalebox and Rapidor are among the participating startups in the program that have received recent fresh funding from one of the participating investors.
Lathika Pai, Country Head, Microsoft for Startups – MENA and SAARC, said
The entrepreneurial energy of startups is rising well beyond the known metropolitan hubs and is remarkably high in Tier 2 cities, despite the obvious challenges. Through Highway to a Hundred Unicorns, we have been able to reach some highly promising innovators from each of the five states. In the next phase of our journey, we look forward to engaging with more startups and accelerating their growth and providing them with Microsoft’s platform to go global.
Microsoft for Startups is committed to helping entrepreneurs build and scale their companies, by leveraging the cloud platform, enterprise sales team and partner ecosystem. Through its cutting edge technology expertise, strong focus on Microsoft for Startups, a growing partner ecosystem, and the venture fund M12, Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help startups evolve from being market ready to enterprise ready.
