The Times of India, India’s most read daily announced the launch of a new weekly page called Times Techies. As the name suggests, it is a page for and by technologists. The page will focus on emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence [AI], Machine Learning, Internet-of-Things [IoT], Blockchain, Cloud, and Robotic Process Automation [RPA], which collectively and dramatically are changing our world in ways that are sometimes difficult to foresee.
The page is for techies to understand how these technologies could improve their companies’ operations and customer engagement, and create new revenue streams. It is also for students and youngsters in the engineering and technology fields to understand how they could build their capabilities in these areas. One section will also highlight the phenomenal, globally impactful work tech centres in India are doing,
The inaugural issue brings to you an article by Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels on how AI has become affordable and easy-to-use even for small firms. It advises young engineers on how to go about a career in AI. It also features the story of Mercedes-Benz’s engineers in India who have developed gesture controls for the 2019 model cars.
Entrepreneurs Rohan Narayana Murty and Arjun Narayan write on technology that they would like to see in the near future. Sunil Agarwal and Ian Baker have created a brilliant cartoon. The Times of India will have most of these columns every week, and new columns as we hear from you. Readers can share their feedback online with #TimesTechies.
IGiven that technology is thriving the most in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, it is being launched in these two cities first.
RailYatri, India’s favourite multi-modal intercity transportation network has launched its branded IntrCity SmartBus on Bengaluru~Chennai route. The company recently launched IntrCity Smartbus service on some popular routes starting from Delhi to Lucknow, Kanpur, Shimla, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Manali which became an instant hit. RailYatri is projecting the IntrCity SmartBus model as a powerful substitute for the trains and a convenient mode of transport for the modern-day budget traveler.
IntrCity promises to deliver on its four core virtues – Timeliness, Trained Professional Drivers, Safety and Hassle-Free Boarding Assistance. In fact, the company is taking a step further and promising a 50% refund if the scheduled departure gets delayed by more than 30 minutes. Their unique ‘Flexi-ticket’ feature allows users to change their travel even at the last minute.
Speaking more about the ‘flexi-ticket’ feature, RailYatri’s Co-founder Kapil Raizada said
While conceptualizing, we figured out that ‘last minute change in plan’ is one of the biggest pain point for the passengers. This is usually followed by cancellation and refund related hassles, multiple follow-ups, etc. We devised a unique solution – gave them the flexibility to change their travel plan at the last hour. IntrCity SmartBus passengers can avail this facility up to 60 minutes before the scheduled departure of their bus.
Bengaluru-Chennai happens to be one of the busiest routes in this region and with the launch of IntrCity SmartBus on this route, we are sure we’ll be able to solve commuting problems for the millennial – working professionals, SME businessmen, students and most importantly women.
Like RailYatri’s other IntrCity SmartBuses, the ones plying between Bangalore and Chennai will also feature train like comfortable berths, free Wi-Fi, on-board entertainment, real-time online streaming of live location, CCTV feed, clean linen, mineral water to name a few.
The inter-city bus travel in this region is better organized than other regions but still lacked what the millennial of this city needs. Current bus aggregators were not able to solve regular commuters’ issues like on-time departure, convenient boarding and drop-off points, flexibility to change plans at the last hour. We thought of solving these issues and thus created a hassle-free, dependable ecosystem which is affordable, convenient and safe. You can book your bus seat and travel on the same day – all within just a few clicks!
The SHI is a 24-week long interdisciplinary business accelerator program for young & early stage startups building innovative solutions in healthcare. On 7th June, the program officially launched with an event at CoWrks Residency Road to commemorate the partnership, by announcing the startups selected for the prestigious program.
In attendance from Yale were Sten H. Vermund, M.D., Ph.D., [Dean, Yale School of Public Health] and Michael Skonieczny [Deputy Director, Yale Institute for Global Health]. The event was an exclusive gathering of healthcare entrepreneurs, experts in policy and seasoned practitioners. The objective of the event was to inspire and align and connect founders, investors and coaches. The event aimed at creating a community, with a shared focus on ushering innovative and scalable solutions to the Indian healthcare sector.
A keynote speech was delivered by Yale School of Public Health’s Dean Sten Vermund on the important role of social entrepreneurship in healthcare. Vermund’s speech was followed by a fireside chat between Vikram Damodaran, [Founder of five.eight], Anand Anandkumar [Founder of Bugworks] and Dr. Charit Bhograj [Founder of Tricog Health].
Moderated by Sten Vermund, the panel discussion was centered around the key challenges, opportunities and strategies in healthcare sectors in both rural and urban India. The event came to a close with all the shortlisted startups delivering immersive product pitches to the audience. The inaugural cohort of the Sustainable Health Initiative [SHI] program comprised innovative startups building new age solutions across maternal health, infectious diseases, and healthcare accessibility and affordability.
The SHI program has been designed to power ‘Innovation’ for long-term social, health and environmental impact in emerging economies. With the ecosystem ripe for innovation, healthcare companies in India are effectively poised to impact billions in the country as well as globally.
The cohort that we’ve assembled today is the culmination of a highly selective global application process. After a tough and intensive review that included multiple rounds of interviews and diligence, we’ve shortlisted companies from both the Indian ecosystem and Yale that are solving a diverse set of complex problems with a mission to impact the life and health of millions across the world. We find this class to consist of humble founders, passionate missions and resilient business models and look forward to arm these companies with the expertise, frameworks and network required to succeed at scale.
As part of this program, each startup will receive up to USD $70,000 in seed funding, mentorship from Yale’s faculty and alumni, as well as benefits from a network of Indian industry experts. In addition, the program includes structured sessions to help startups evolve into a sustainable and scalable business model, refine their go-to-market strategy and build a global network.
Sten Vermund, Dean, Yale School of Public Health, said
Around the world, we face growing health and economic disparities. The public sector cannot fully address the scope and scale of these challenges without private sector ingenuity and creativity. We are enthusiastic about the launch today of the Sustainable Health Initiative to further find innovate solutions that will have a significant impact on the health of communities in India, the U.S., and around the world.
About The CoWrks Foundry
The CoWrks Foundry, based out of Bengaluru, is a premiere acceleration program for early stage businesses in the fields of urban tech, enterprise tech, and social enterprise. The CoWrks Foundry was built to inspire and enable entrepreneurs to build innovative, scalable solutions in tough industries through a challenging curriculum, developed with global experts and strong post-program support. The CoWrks Foundry provides entrepreneurs with frameworks, tailored mentorship, intelligent capital and a deep network to build resilient technology companies out of India.
MobiKwik, India’s leading FinTech Company has announced that it has emerged as the market leader among all the digital payment players [wallets, banks, payment banks] in the IMPS* fund transfer category in the month of May 2019 by clocking Rs. 362 crores in GTV [Gross Transaction Value]. The company has seen a 400% growth in its Funds Transfer Business in the last one year with GTV of Rs. 4,344 crores.
According to NPCI [National Payments Corporation of India] data, MobiKwik commands over 26% market share and has clocked Rs. 362 crores in terms of value of total funds transferred from its wallet to bank, ahead of all major digital payment companies in India. The company has also recorded the highest average value per transaction Rs. 5,363 which represents MobiKwik’s pole position in the segment with genuine use case driven transactions.
Consumer Payments in India is driven by four large use cases: 1. Bill Payments 2. Merchant Payments 3. Funds Transfer and 4. UPI. Funds Transfer is an important category because it commands the highest average transaction value and MobiKwik being ahead of all players in this category clearly indicates the high degree of trust it enjoys with its users.
The ‘wallet to bank’ feature allows users to instantly transfer money to any bank account through the digital wallet. The service is used by small merchants who accept payments via MobiKwik as well as by users who have taken digital loans in their wallets.Unlike NEFT and RTGS, the service managed by NPCI is available 24/7/365 days, including on bank holiday.Speaking on the achievement, Upasana Taku, Co-Founder, MobiKwik, said
We are thrilled to see our leadership position in the IMPS Funds Transfer business ahead of all banks, payment banks and wallets in India. This clearly shows that our efforts to build a secure fintech platform are being appreciated by users. We are now targeting INR 10,000 crores in IMPS GTV and 20+ Million users to use our IMPS service in FY20.
MobiKwik is now the first Indian owned company to have successfully launched and enrolled customers under its full stack of financial services – digital wallet, lending, insurance, investments in Mutual Funds and gold and payment gateway. It’s user base comprises over 107 Mn users, 3 million merchants, and 200+ billers.
Founded in 2009 by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku, MobiKwik has raised four rounds of funding from investors including Sequoia Capital, American Express, and Net1 of close to $120 Million.
Microsoft in collaboration with GA Partners, has provided a launchpad for enterprise software startups to address and showcase their solutions to solve the challenges the BFSI industry face today. The curated startup showcase event for Indian banks and non-banking financial companies saw 10 innovative startups who are at the forefront of India’s FinTech landscape and have demonstrated their ability to achieve enterprise scale. Microsoft is enabling startups to identify the risks, challenges and opportunities in the BFSI landscape and helping device a framework to assess the readiness of a startup to work with a large enterprise.Although startups have been gaining substantial visibility, their growth is often stifled due to increased competition and development of new-gen technologies. Niti Aayog expects the FinTech market in India to touch $31 billion by 2020 and there is a significant rise in the number of FinTech startups which are working towards developing innovative solutions for the industry.
The FinTech industry is also seeing the growing trend of unicorn startups – valuing more than $1 billion. Microsoft enables such startups to equip themselves with the required technologies, develop and showcase their solutions and expand their customer base.
Lathika Pai, Country Head, Microsoft for Startups, MENA & SAARC said
India today has the third largest number of startups which is really robust and addresses issues in every business segment. So, our focus is where can we help the most; how do we work with them to help increase revenues through our Co-Sell motion where Microsoft’s account managers will plug them in to our enterprise clients, geographical reach, management mentorship and more. To do that we offer B2B startups access to co-marketing and co-selling opportunities, deep technical architecture guidance and business mentoring through our Scale Up program.
We are thrilled to be collaborating with Microsoft to help startups scale. GA Partners have been supporting startups with customer acquisition, tie up with relevant partners, and assisting in sales strategy and implementing them with our deep knowledge from the industry. We are happy to be providing a platform for startups to showcase their capabilities in terms of their solutions, apart from presenting their examples on addressing the challenges of BFSI sector.
During the event, Building a win-win ecosystem for Startups and BFSI Enterprises held in collaboration with GA Partners, Lathika Pai highlighted the company’s contribution in advancing opportunities for the startups to connect with industry leaders to effectively develop and build their solutions. The startups that addressed the challenges in the Indian banking industry and offered their solutions are
FinBox – A comprehensive machine learning platform with proprietary data connectors. Businesses use FinBox for credit scoring, cross selling, risk management and to build data driven FinTech experiences.
JusPay – Digital Payments Service enabling secure & frictionless payment experiences. Payment Service provider [PSP] neutral and PCIL1 compliant wrapper-layer that enables clients to scale their online payments and enable ALL payment options.
Worxogo – A pioneering enterprise start-up that offers an AI coach to employees for improved performance, business impact. AI engine uses neuroeconomics, AI predictive analytics to act as a personal digital coach to improve performance of employees in companies, by using the power of Nudges which deliver personalized, predictive performance at scale.
Growth Enabler – Provides intelligence on tech innovation and disruptive business models to help technology leaders resolve business challenges. AI is used to connect startups and companies, enables informed decision-making.
Semusi [AppICE] – A machine learning based mobile marketing automation platform helping businesses build trustworthy relationships with their customers.
VuNet Systems – A unified AI platform that truly connects your user experience, customer journeys, business transactions to your applications, infrastructure ad IT Operations.
FORMCEPT – It’s flagship product, MECBot, enables enterprises to perform smart data discovery, auto-recognition of patterns, free-form search & configure ML, DL & Graph based algorithms that can scale dynamically & utilize hardware efficiently.
StatAnalytics – Credit Nirvana is an intelligent Debt Collection platform that leverages ML/AI. It offers a real-time Collection Decision Engine for a focused and prioritized collection process, along with personalized digital follow-ups and messaging.
DheeYantra Research Labs – DHEE.AI is a cognitive conversational AI platform from DheeYantra, capable of understanding and communicating between human-machine, in English and Indian vernacular languages.
EPIKInDiFi – EPIK, a technology company started by Industry experts with an objective to build and provide products and platforms, services and solutions which will help the banks & financial institutions in improving their customer engagement, gaining operational efficiency, reducing implementation costs and achieve delivery certainty.
About G A Partners
Ganymede Advisory Partners [G A Partners] has created a network of industry veterans to provide Go to Market advisory to Indian startups. We help startups build win-win partnerships with Enterprises in Financial Services, Retail and High tech. While the focus is on enabling revenue growth and market-product fit, GA Partners also helps startups raise capital. For more information, please visit G A Partners.
Corporate India is going through a defining time, with emerging technologies taking over many areas of business. Human resource is one such critical area, which is core to any business and has been going through rounds of revolution and transformation, both in terms of processes and technology.
Image Source
AI happens to be the newest kid in the block, which is taking the recruitment processes by storm, as it is getting re-engineered every day, with more and more intelligent and repetitive work being replaced by AI. Let’s look at some of the key areas where AI is being used to empower workforce:
Removing bias – Unconscious bias is a huge challenge that all corporates are trying to fight. Corporate India is no exception. When it’s a conscious bias, it’s easier to tackle but unconscious bias creeps in the most unexpected way. It can not only influence the choice of a candidate at the time of interview, but also the job description itself, making it a far more pervasive problem. AI can easily be used to remove this unconscious bias.
Evaluate profiles and first level interviews – Today sourcers and recruiters are spending a considerable amount of time in scanning, evaluating and shortlisting profiles and doing the first level interviews and the outcome of it is often very subjective, based on the emotional state of the recruiters. AI can easily take over these repetitive jobs, bring more objectivity to it and complete it much faster. There are quite a few AI-based platforms in the market today. According to a report by Forrester, by 2020, candidates applying to jobs at 20% of large global enterprises will interact with chatbots before recruiters.
Improved employee on-boarding experience – Employee on-boarding is the employee’s first experience with an organization and it’s the organization’s best opportunity to create an excellent first impression. Today, due to a resource crunch and subjectivity associated with people, on-boarding experience tends to be random and unstandardized. Using AI effectively can help new employees navigate their way into an organization more seamlessly, giving them an excellent on-boarding experience.
Identifying the customised training requirement for employees – Mostly, people become redundant within an organization because they lack relevant skills, but if we can train the employees in a timely fashion, then organizations can utilize its existing staff, without having to retrench and hire new employees. AI can be used very effectively to match existing talent with the required ones and identify the gaps in skillset and also to do a fitment of who is best trained on which of the required skills.
Resource Management function – People intensive businesses have a huge challenge of finding the right skilled people internally at the right time and often end up hiring people at a higher cost, when an equally skilled person is available within the company. AI can help with this function and in a very time effective manner, thus reducing the cost of hiring, training and keeping a skilled resource on the bench.
Identifying people who are looking out – Losing trained and experienced employees to competition is a huge loss to any organization. AI can easily track the employees keystroke patterns, idle time & internet checking patterns and predict whether the person is looking out for newer opportunities.
Smarter and better people analytics – AI-enabled employee analytics provide the necessary insight to ensure better employee experience. It ensures meaningful employee engagement, creating happier employees and increased employee retention.
And these are only a few of the core functions that AI can do immediately. However, there still exists a degree of apprehension amongst the human resource fraternity to totally embrace AI, for reasons unfounded. AI today is not just efficient, it is also inexpensive. Just one word of caution, it is imperative that the recruitment processes are reviewed and re-engineered to remove age old practices and made well suited for reaping maximum benefit out of AI.
Research from PWC shows that 63 percent of companies are rethinking the whole role of their human resources department in light of the impact AI will have on the business. Thanks to AI and RPA, human resource experts will be now able to focus on the core areas, which cannot be done by any technology. AI can help build a high-performance human resource team and as a result a high-performance workforce.
About the Author
Mohua Sengupta is the EVP & Global Head at Services at 3i Infotech Ltd. More details about her can be found here
Technology is changing at a rapid pace, whether it is related to mobiles, servers, memory devices, etc. There is an increased level of importance given to the performance & computationpower involved with the components used in those devices. As per a report by eMarketer, close to 491 million people in India would own a smartphone by the end of 2022. Smartphones that are priced within the sub 20K range also come loaded with AI-enabled features, excellent performance, varied camera setup, and more to capture the best shots.
Whether it is a hand-held device like a mobile phone or an enterprise device/technology like a server [cloud-based or local], performance is always given a top priority. However, achieving top-notch performance might come at the risk of higher power consumption and this factor becomes more critical in battery-powered devices. Technology companies are tirelessly working on improving the storage memory since faster read-write speeds would equate to better performance. HDD [Hard Disk Drive] is slowly being replaced with SSD [Solid State Drive] in laptops, tablets, and other device categories where there is frequent R/W access. Solid state addresses the I/O [Input/Output] bottlenecks for companies of all sizes. Mobile phone manufacturers are slowly switching from traditional eMMC [Embedded Multimedia Card] to UFS [Universal Flash Storage] since UFS offers more benefits over eMMC. When it comes to storage, Western Digital [WD] is one company that has a wide product portfolio for end-consumers, mobile manufacturers, as well as enterprises.
Today, about 45% of world’s data is stored on Western Digital devices. In India alone, there are about 4 lakh retail outlets which sell WD and SanDisk products. WD is a 20 billion dollar company which came together over a series of M&A that has taken place since the last 5~6 years. We recently had an opportunity to interact with Dr. Siva Sivaram, Executive Vice-President of Western Digital during his brief visit to India. The discussion revolved around the changing technology trends in storage, WD in India, etc. Below are some of the excerpts from the interaction that we had with Dr. Siva Sivaram.
Can you give some top-level insights about Western Digital ?
First & foremost, we think of ourselves as a data infrastructure company. All the major mobile players use storage by WD, be it eMMC or UFS. As far as the company positioning is concerned, WD is uniquely positioned to deliver the possibilities of data today and well into the future. The company has the broadest and deepest portfolio of HDD & Flash-based solutions. It has consistently delivered breakthrough technology innovations in the areas of 64- layer 3D NAND, 96-layer 3D NAND, Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording [MAMR]. MAMR will enable a new class of ultra-high capacity enterprise HDDs designed to meet the future demands of Big Data.
WD is committed to open compute architectures and RISC-V. RISC-V will accelerate the development of data-centric devices and systems for Big Data, Fast Data & general-purpose applications. As far as India is concerned, it is an important & strategic country for WD since there is a growing talent pool and there is tremendous growth for WD & SanDisk products in India.
A lot of phone manufacturers are shifting from eMMC to UFS. Is UFS going to replace eMMC completely or will there be a gradual decline of eMMC?
The forward speculation on standards conversion is a hazardous game. In the enterprise segment, we talked about Serial Advanced Technology Attachment [SATA] fading for a long time, and it did not go away. We talked about SAAS going away and it is still running around strong. We talked about PCI adoption, which was going to happen so quickly. It did happen dramatically, it was much later than we expected it to happen.
Dr. Siva Sivaram – Executive Vice President, Western Digital
We have these three tiers that we are talking about, MCPs, eMMC, & the latest entrant UFS. We are all betting that UFS is going to happen. But I cannot tell you how it’s going to happen, though it might take a few years before eMMC completely fazes out. I don’t think PCI is going to happen but UFS is surely going to happen.
Do you foresee mid-segment manufacturers moving to UFS ?
It will happen, but not anytime soon. We do expect that given the benchmark set by Apple & Samsung, given the amount of memory that needs to go into overtime, the MCP market will go down, the eMMC market will split. More high-end devices will have UFS and slowly the mid-segment devices will start to taper down.
With the advent of 5G, what type of products can we expect from WD ?
I don’t truly believe 5G volume is happening anytime this year. The mobile market, in general, will have to go through new product migration cycle. 5G will definitely have a huge impact on automotive products, surveillance, AI, smart cities, etc. There’s a lot of growth everywhere.
We thank Dr. Siva for his time and sharing the insights with our readers. If you have any questions for WD team, please leave them in the comments section…
Call for Code 2019 is an annual challenge build by IBM in association with David Clark Cause for developers to build cutting edge technologies to deal with Natural Disaster. In Year 2018, 100k+ developer participated with more than 2500+ application created, 7100+ events live streamed and more than 40+ celebrity support. Call for Code is a program to develop and promote Open Source Technology to solve world biggest challenges.
Technology can travel where people cannot
Unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs], drowns shows great potential to transform humanitarian aid. Using this technology, organizations can map affected areas with greater precise , assess damage in real time, increase situational awareness through high-resolution mapping and deliver items faster, cheaper and more efficiently. Infrared cameras and advanced listening systems enable UAVs to uncover survivors from rubble or among flames and live-stream night footage, increasing the success of critical rescue efforts.
Impact Of Natural Disaster and Need of Technology
2018 Natural Disaster since year 2010. This mean each year 336 natural disaster did happened since then
882 floods and 525 storms took place between end of year 2010 and 2015.
139 Million People are affected by Natural Disaster on average basis
72,205 people are killed on average by Natural Disaster every year.
It is interesting to note, How Technology paved path and made the presence felt during all these years in situation of Natural Disaster. Some of them are
Robots and Drones helped to locate and transmit information about survivors to the emergency response team
Multiple Mobile Applications which allows Emergency Response Team, The Survivor to communicate even when there is no network.
The U.S Geological Team is developing a system to provide Early Warning in case of Earthquake.
Developers across globe have changed the way people think and act. Call For Code aims to provide solutions which inform people about the change in climate or any event taking place in their region; Help the response team with accurate navigation for quick and timely delivery of support, Easy mechanism for medical services delivery provided aftermath of disaster; AI based Chatbots which can allow all stakeholders to communicate even if there is no network etc. When most people see the challenges, developers look at possibilities to solve a problem. They have done and they are still there to do it.
Call for Code extend warm invitations to all coders located anywhere on the Globe to come forward and solve the problems which are damaging and destroying the humanity.
IBM provides all necessary resources, tool kit and products through which one can easily solve problems related to Natural Disaster. Right from Artificial Intelligence which can used to create a mobile app for timely weather updates to improved logistic, pizza delivery etc.
Use the available resources to code with six patterns, six areas of Natural Disaster and Health and mark your presence.
Don’t just end with code, work with mentors, other developers and build a community of change.
Go ahead and submit your code with Demo. Don’t forget to submit it without proper description and agree to participant agreement.
Don’t wait and click on the link. Competition ends on July 29, 2019.
Remember, If your Solution is really an inspirational one and solve the issue of Natural Disaster or Health, you can be lucky enough to get recognized by IBM with a cash reward USD $2,00,000 and lot more.
Unlike NEFT and RTGS, the service managed by NPCI is available 24/7/365 days, including on bank holiday.
Speaking on the achievement, 
Although startups have been gaining substantial visibility, their growth is often stifled due to increased competition and development of new-gen technologies. 
