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Furthering their shared commitment to democratize access to AI, NITI Aayog and Microsoft India announced an agreement to leverage the benefits of AI for the growth of the nation. As part of the agreement, Microsoft India will support NITI Aayog by combining the cloud, AI, research and its vertical expertise for new initiatives and solutions across several core areas including agriculture and healthcare and the environment. Microsoft will also accelerate the use of AI for the development and adoption of local language computing, in addition to building capacity for AI among the workforce through education.

Announcing the agreement, Shri Amitabh Kant, CEO – NITI Aayog said

For our country, the power of Artificial Intelligence needs to be brought to bear in sectors like healthcare, education, environment and agriculture, which are important for the inclusive development of India. Simultaneously, we should utilize the power of AI to build understanding of the different regional languages prevalent in India under the Hon’ble PM’s call of “Ek Bharat, Shrestha Bharat”. This partnership will help us move beyond pilots and understand how to scale AI implementation in sectors characterized by a preponderance of public goods.

Speaking on the association, Anant Maheshwari, President – Microsoft India said

We are very proud to support NITI Aayog in driving the next leg of India’s transformational journey. AI holds the power to reinvent how we solve societal challenges for socio-economic advancement and support the country’s growth. Microsoft is constantly pushing the boundaries of what technology can do for people and for the world. This collaboration reiterates our efforts to empower every person and organization to do more through technology.

Anna Roy, Adviser, Niti Aayog; Shri Amitabh Kant, CEO – NITI Aayog; Anant Maheshwari, President – Microsoft India

Under the agreement, Microsoft will provide NITI Aayog the following advanced AI-based solutions to address challenges in agriculture and healthcare

  • Farm advisory services – The company will develop farm advisory services to help increase crop yield, pest detection and pest incident predictions as part of projects across locations identified by NITI Aayog. This will involve applying data science, remote sensing and image processing apps to crop maps, yield data and weather data collected over five years. The pest risk detection model will provide information five days in advance of expected attacks.
  • Healthcare screening models at Primary Health Centers – Microsoft will build AI assisted models for Diabetic Retinopathy screening models to support early risk detection, risk assessment and timely medical intervention. These models will be deployed as Proof of Concept [POCs] across Primary Health Centers identified by NITI Aayog. Microsoft will also support NITI Aayog in preparing a blueprint for AI-led Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Programs, which the Central and State Governments can incorporate into their relevant health screening & programs.

The collaboration will also cover the following areas

  • Building capacity for AI through education – Recognizing the fact that proliferation of AI in India would require a focused approach towards capacity building within the ecosystem, the agreement will aim at building capacity among youth. Microsoft will leverage content from the Microsoft India AI Professional Certificate program for developers, academic institutions and students across the country to help skill/re-skill them in the areas of AI and data sciences.

Additionally, Microsoft will promote STEM education in the areas of AI studies and Data sciences for young women in institutes identified by NITI Aayog. This will include a fellowship for select women candidates pursuing post-graduate courses in data sciences and AI, as well as a foundation level AI and data sciences course for young women graduates.

  • Societal Impact Projects – Microsoft Research India [MSRI] will set up a Microsoft – NITI Aayog Problem to Solution Incubation Test Bed within its premises in Bengaluru to develop AI driven solutions for societal problems mutually identified with NITI Aayog.
  • Environment – Microsoft will collaborate with NITI Aayog to identify potential projects on environmental challenges that could be eligible for grants under its worldwide AI for Earth program. If selected, these projects would be eligible for benefits including access to Microsoft Azure and AI computing resources; in-depth education and technology training on these tools and additional support as the projects grow and mature.
  • Natural Language Processing – In keeping with its commitment to lower language barriers to technology, Microsoft will mentor relevant stakeholders to use Natural Language Processing tools in Indic languages in a commercially viable manner.

AI and Microsoft

Microsoft’s goal is to make AI accessible and valuable to every individual and organization, amplifying human ingenuity with intelligent technology. Microsoft is infusing intelligence across all its products and services to extend individuals’ and organizations’ capabilities and make them more productive; providing a powerful platform of AI services and tools that makes innovation by developers and partners faster and more accessible; and helping transform business by enabling breakthroughs to current approaches and entirely new scenarios that leverage the power of intelligent technology.

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Truecaller launched its new television and digitally focused advertising campaign with the tagline ‘Sab ke liye’ meaning both ‘for everyone’ and ‘for everything’. The ad campaign is aimed to create awareness amongst the audience about the recent features introduced on the app apart from Caller ID and Spam filtering.

The features illustrated through the campaign include, Truecaller Pay, Flash Messaging and Video Calling powered by Google Duo. Positioning Truecaller as a one-stop platform for its users, the TVC looks at everyday situations the users go through and how Truecaller has a solution to make their lives simple, safe and more efficient. Truecaller has developed several new features for the application in the recent times that provide solutions to consumers in a simple and convenient manner also reducing the need for multiple applications providing the same functions on their smartphones.

Expressing his thoughts on the campaign, Manan Shah, Director Marketing, Truecaller India, said

At Truecaller we have always strived to provide our users with the best experience across all modes of communication, in line with the objective of being a one stop communication platform. By incorporating relevant features, we are confident that our young and active users will stay ahead and find multiple ways to solve their daily challenges. Taking inspiration from realistic scenarios, our TVC will surely be very relatable to the audiences and portray how seamlessly one application can be used for multiple purposes.

The TVC went live on TV and digital starting 13th October 2018.

About Truecaller

People use Truecaller to stay ahead. It helps them know who’s getting in touch, filter out unwanted calls and SMS, and focus on what really matters. The company provides a suite of unique services such as a dialer that offers caller ID, spam detection, messaging and more. Truecaller’s mission is to build trust everywhere by making communication safe and efficient. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, the company was founded in 2009 by Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam.

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Zendesk, Inc. released the Zendesk Benchmark Guide for Enterprise that features insights and best practices for two different types of large companies – Digital Natives that have been considered digital since their founding, and Digital Transformers, more traditional companies that are in the process of modernizing their approach to customer support.

Image Source – Zendesk Benchmark

The report details what sets companies with the most sophisticated customer support operations apart from their industry peers. For both Digital Natives and Digital Transformers, the companies with the best-performing support teams share a commitment to scalability, consistency, innovation and proactive customer service.

One surprising finding – A company’s age isn’t the primary factor linked to its approach to customer support. In fact, plenty of younger companies are still working to modernize their support operations, while several established companies have already mastered the digital landscape.

The high performers in both groups also view their support software as a platform, using apps, integrations and APIs to give agents the information they need to move quickly, maintaining consistency and context across channels.

For both Digital Natives and Digital Transformers, Zendesk Benchmark data shows the companies that face the most challenges are those that directly serve consumers. Traditional enterprise companies that are B2C have a higher volume of requests, lower customer satisfaction scores and the slowest reply times of all company types, implying a digital transformation is most urgently necessary for this group.

At the same time, Digital Native companies in the B2C category still face high customer expectations while handling a massive volume of requests. They see nearly eight times the volume of customer requests and have an average customer satisfaction score that is nearly 10 percentage points lower than companies serving other businesses or operating internally. While these large companies tend to take full advantage of their support software, they see a constant need to innovate and scale to keep up with changing customer expectations.

Digital Natives and Digital Transformers also differ in their self-service capabilities. Digital Native help centers have twice as many articles and a ratio of self-service content views to total ticket volume that is five times higher than that of more traditional enterprise companies. The takeaway for Digital Transformers is that investing more in self-service can lower costs, drive better customer satisfaction scores and improve agent efficiency.

KT Prasad, Country Sales Director, Zendesk India, said

The Zendesk Benchmark Guide findings perfectly mirror the trend in India. In fact, we have been witnessing heightened interest from enterprise and traditional companies in adopting digital technologies to help them scale. While India presents a growing breed of Digital Natives, I don’t think the Digital Transformers are far behind in coming up to speed and embracing avenues such as Omnichannel and self-help when it comes to Customer Experience.

Ted Smith, Director, market insights at Zendesk, said

Regardless of where a company is in its journey, understanding what customers want and how to deliver is critical for businesses to succeed. The Zendesk Benchmark Guide for Enterprise can help companies see how they stack up against their peers and what they can do to position themselves better and create the best experiences for their customers.  

For more information, download the Zendesk Benchmark Guide for Enterprise reports here.

Methodology

For the purpose of this report, Zendesk defined enterprise companies as those with 1,000+ employees and 100+ agents. Looking at a sample of 170 enterprise companies that have opted into the Zendesk Benchmark, Zendesk used dimensionality reduction and clustering to discover three distinct approaches to support operations. Zendesk further analyzed those clusters based on operational metrics and product usage to uncover best practices and potential improvements.

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NASSCOM, the global IT giant, has reported that it expects India to grasp a 20% market share in the Internet of Things [IoT]. This newly emerging sector is expected to be worth $300 billion by 2020.

Image Source – IoT

According to NASSCOM’s [Industrial Initiative] Vice-President, K. S. Vishwanathan

The Internet of Things is driving the fourth wave of industrial revolution dramatically alerting manufacturing, energy, transportation, medical and other industrial sectors while emerging worldwide.

NASSCOM, or the National Association of Software and Services Companies, is a not-for-profit association dedicated towards creating a conducive business environment for IT enabled companies and services to thrive in. With multiple industry sectors and sub-sectors in its domain, NASSCOM’s Industry Council has been set up to address the specific needs of each sector. As such, it actively engages with the industry, its policy makers as well as all other stakeholders.

Moreover, as part of the associations’ Global Trade initiative, NASSCOM also focuses on expanding its outreach to both developed and emerging markets. It collaborates with such markets on innovation and technology, policy advocacy related to several issues such as taxation and labour mobility, as well as exploring new geographies and markets. By ironing out any operational hurdles that may stand in the way, overall, NASSCOM looks at promoting India as a technology and services hub on a global scale.

Over the last decade, India has seen an exponential growth in the Internet and E-commerce space, with the number of Internet users going past the 450 million mark. This makes the country the second largest Internet-based market after China.

E-Commerce

This spike in Internet penetration in both urban and rural India has also propelled growth in the E-commerce sector. With a growth rate of about 20%, the country’s E-commerce industry is expected to surpass the $100 billion mark by 2020.

Internet of Things [IoT]

Thanks to the Internet boom, new and emerging fields like Internet of Things [IoT] are now flourishing. Simultaneously, they are also resurrecting and revolutionizing several sectors such as manufacturing, industry, transportation, energy, health care and medical – amongst many others. As a result, India’s IoT market is on track to capture 20% of the global market share and surpass the $300 billion mark by 2020.

The Big Picture

The Internet industry is currently undergoing a massive change with more and more avenues for companies to bank upon. However, for the industry to reach its full potential, a lot more needs to be done. Thereby, the country has set up a mobile and Internet council to nurture the imminent growth in this space and contribute to its overall growth and development.

With the Indian share market steadily chugging along, and more and more entities learning how to invest in share market, India’s overall economic growth is expected to rise. And the stellar showing by the Internet and E-commerce sector is only going to propel it further.

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Truecaller announced the launch of its Instant Messaging [IM] platform ‘Truecaller Chat‘. With the aim to make communication safer and to prevent fake news from circulating, the IM platform will allow users to report links, ensuring that fake news is not circulated unchecked by users.

With social media’s rapid adoption across the country, fake news in India has been on the rise. Truecaller has helped erode spam calls faced by users through Caller ID and also strengthened SMS inboxes by filtering unwanted messages. As a step to curb the spread of erroneous information, Truecaller, with the help from its community, has launched this service as a shield against viral messages sent on its instant messaging platform.

Users will be able to mark website links as spam if they suspect it to have incorrect information, which will then help chatters make a more informed decision about what information is false. With time, Truecaller also plans to apply machine learning and use the aggregated spam reports to predict any upcoming viral trends.

Additionally, ‘Truecaller Chat’ is bundled with interesting features such as, auto-switch between SMS and Chat, which will help users keep conversations in one place. Other features include full media support and more, that will provide its users a polished and enjoyable experience.

Commenting on the launch, Rishit Jhunjhunwala, VP Product at Truecaller, said

As a one-stop communication platform, our IM service will help our users connect and also collaborate to combat the issue of spam. We’re confident that this foundation stone will help build a strong spam-free community.

India has been facing a major law and order problems caused by fake stories especially when they have led to mob lynching and mass hysteria. The Honorable Supreme Court has strongly expressed its stance and has directed social media platforms to take appropriate measures to suppress fake news. By providing a messaging service with capabilities to tackle fake links, Truecaller is taking a big step towards curbing the problems caused by spam and false information going viral.

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After a successful edition in 2017, Dell concluded the second edition of Designathon, a 24-hour challenge driven event with teams participating from organizations in fields of Architecture, Engineering, Manufacturing, Fashion & Lifestyle and Media & Entertainment.

Image Source

Dell Designathon, unlike the usual design challenges, is for companies depending on design led innovation for their products and solutions. It reaches out to 2D & 3D design enthusiasts from various industries to showcase their prototype on a designated theme to bring their ideas to life. The theme this year was ‘enabling human progress through design for sustainable urbanization’, and was hosted as part of the much coveted Dell Technologies Forums across Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Designathon this year, received a remarkable response with over 339 registrations across four cities.

This event saw submissions of 40 creative & thought-provoking ideas & designs for sustainability – to develop a market that embraces imperfect food buyers with good deal and community sharing program; to cut down the human intervention to clean the garbage and plastic waste from the rivers and seas; to design a semi articulated truck that functions exclusively as a bus and vice versa at the click of a button, ensuring that the bus per unit economics improves quite substantially, among others.

The event is endorsed and supported by the Association of Designers of India [ADI]. This year, Dell also hosted ‘Design Circle’, a mentorship program delivered via workshops for shortlisted teams to augment their design thinking before competing in the challenge. At the challenge, participating teams were provided with access to cutting-edge technology from Dell’s powerful Precision line-up of workstations – Precision Tower 5820 and the Dell 43-inch Ultra HD 4K monitor. Dell Precision portfolio is a top choice for design led businesses with the recent most collaboration with Marvel Studios for ‘Antman and the Wasp’.

Speaking on the last leg of Dell Designathon in Bengaluru, Srihari Palangala, Senior Director, India Marketing at Dell EMC said

Dell Designathon is a platform for design tech enthusiasts, and we are delighted to offer this opportunity for aspiring innovators. For over 20 years, Dell Precision products have provided the foundation for bringing amazing creative ideas to life, thanks to their high-performing, fully-customizable features designed for the needs of today’s professional creators. The Dell Designathon, is our way of bringing creativity and technology together that address real challenges with real solutions.

Of the 40 teams shortlisted for Dell Designathon across four cities, the intent was to select winners across verticals:

  • Mumbai – Team Mumbai Hackerspace for Transport System for Sustainable Urbanization
  • New Delhi – Team Agribazaar for their Imperfect food with perfect stories
  • Hyderabad – Team Satyam Engineering for their solution to use printed paper to print multiple times
  • Bengaluru – Team Boiled Corn Productions for their concept of selfies for innovation

For more details on Designathon, please visit Dell Designathon

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Underlining the need to bolster the cybersecurity ecosystem in the country, Microsoft India and the Data Security Council of India [DSCI] have launched  the CyberShikshaa, a 3-year program to create a robust pool of skilled women professionals in the country. Supported by the Ministry of Information Technology (MeitY)’s Information Security Education & Awareness (ISEA), CyberShikshaa recognizes the growing potential of cybersecurity as a sunrise segment and the need for a large base of diverse industry ready talent.

The program was launched in New Delhi in the presence of Shri Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & IT, Ms. Rama Vedashree, CEO, Data Security Council of India and Mr. Anant Maheshwari, President Microsoft India.

As part of CyberShikshaa, 1000 women from underserved communities will be trained in ten locations across the country and offered employment opportunities. CyberShikshaa is open to women science graduates between the age of 20~27 years. The first phase of the program will be rolled out across Noida, Patna, Hyderabad and Mohali starting today.

Inaugurating the program, Shri Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & IT, said

Bridging the skill gap in the niche domain of Cybersecurity is a national imperative. There has been an increased participation from industry, government and academia to develop cybersecurity skills required for India. This program embarked upon by DSCI and Microsoft is aligned with Ministry’s ISEA program and will not only provide impetus to bridging the skill gap but will also help draw more women into Cybersecurity domain.

Speaking of the initiative, Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said

As India leapfrogs into the next phase of growth, we see a multi-fold growth of digital assets. This increases the need for an enhanced cybersecurity infrastructure and advanced security solutions. India is also fast emerging as a prime destination for offshore cybersecurity R&D and security operations centers. This will lead to the next wave of jobs – one we must be ready for with a skilled workforce. CyberShikshaa is the first step towards this. We believe this is the beginning of a movement, one that we encourage all stakeholders to join in.

CyberShikshaa is significant in more ways than one. It will empower women technologists, ensure a growth driven livelihood for them and increase the participation of women in the industry.

[L-R] Rama Vedashree, Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Anant Maheshwari Sanjay Bhal

According to NASSCOM, the strength of the women workforce in the IT-ITeS industry currently stands at 34%. CyberShikshaa will develop a comprehensive ecosystem and evangelize women to harness the opportunities of cybersecurity as a career.  In addition to establishing a strong training network with competent trainers and infrastructure, it will work to facilitate partnerships amongst government, industry and academia.

Speaking of the association Ms. Rama Vedashree, CEO, Data Security Council of India said

Cybersecurity skills development and enabling growth opportunities to women talent in cybersecurity domain is a key imperative for government and industry. DSCI is pleased to partner with Microsoft in developing industry ready women cybersecurity professionals though the CyberShikshaa program.

The CyberShikshaa curriculum will comprise an interactive, 4-month training course with a combination of theory, case studies and practical hands on projects managed by a group of training partners led by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing [C-DAC]. It will also include mentoring sessions and workshops with industry leaders; soft skills training and technical sessions by Microsoft employee volunteers. Campus interviews will be organized for students on successful completion of the course.

CyberShikshaa is part of Microsoft’s commitment to providing the underprivileged with the right skills for sustainable livelihood options in a technology driven world. The company’s skill development efforts focus on

  • Education and skilling of undeserved youth, children, and women
  • Coding and computer science skilling for employment
  • Technology-enabled learning for inclusion of youth with disabilities

Till date, Microsoft has helped skill around 700,000 young people from rural, tribal and migrant communities of whom more than 400,000 have been placed in jobs.

About DSCI

Data Security Council of India [DSCI] is a premier industry body on data protection in India, setup by NASSCOM, committed to making the cyberspace safe, secure and trusted by establishing best practices, standards and initiatives in cyber security and privacy. DSCI brings together governments and their agencies, industry sectors including IT-BPM, BFSI, Telecom, industry associations, data protection authorities and think tanks for public advocacy, thought leadership, capacity building and outreach initiatives.

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Jio announced a five year partnership with India’s leading broadcaster, Star India to unleash a new era in sports entertainment. Jio and Star will make all televised India-cricket matches available to users of JioTV and Hotstar in India. Not just this, for the first time ever, cricket production, a streaming platform and a high-speed data network has come together to deliver the best of cricketing content with connectivity to benefit the Indian consumers.

This partnership will cover T20, One Day Internationals [ODI], International Test Cricket and Premier Domestic Competitions of the BCCI. Jio and Star have been instrumental in leading many such disruptive initiatives, where it has put the consumer in the centre of innovation.

Akash Ambani, Director – Jio, said

Jio continues to bring the most exclusive content to its users, this time around through the JioTV app. Cricket is not just played, its worshipped in India. Every Indian must have access to the best sporting events as well as quality and affordable bandwidth to consume the content.

With this partnership, we intend to address both these objectives of providing the best sporting content with the best digital infrastructure to the Jio users. Jio promises to and will continue to bring a superlative customer experience in the areas of sports, AR, VR, Immersive viewing and more in the coming days.

Sanjay Gupta, Managing Director – Star India, said

Over the last five years, we have re-invented the sports experience in India across screens, both television and digital. Indian cricket under BCCI is one of the most compelling properties in the world and we are excited to apply the same lens of innovation and re-invention to the property that we have applied to other sports in the last few years. And, with a new partner in Reliance Jio, we will have even more opportunities to raise the bar for cricket fans.

About Reliance Jio

Jio will bring transformational changes in the Indian digital services space to enable the vision of Digital India for 1.2 billion Indians and propel India into global leadership in digital economy. It has created an eco-system comprising network, devices, applications and content, service experience and affordable tariffs for everyone to live the Jio Digital Life. As part of its customer offers, Jio has revolutionized the Indian telecom landscape by making voice calls for Jio customers absolutely free, across India, to any network, and always. Jio makes India the highest quality, most affordable data market in the world so that every Indian can do Datagiri.