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VeriSign, Inc., a global leader in domain names and internet security, today announced that approximately 1.4 million domain name registrations were added to the internet in the first quarter of 2018, bringing the total number of domain name registrations to approximately 333.8 million across all Top-Level Domains [TLDs].

Image Source – Domains

The increase of approximately 1.4 million domain name registrations globally equates to a growth rate of 0.4 percent over the fourth quarter of 2017.1,2. The Domain Name Industry Brief [DNIB] further shows that domain name registrations have grown by approximately 3.2 million, or 1.0 percent, YoY.

Key Highlights

  • The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of approximately 148.3 million domain name registrations in the domain name base3 at the end of the first quarter of 2018 This represents an increase of approximately 1.9 million domain name registrations, or 1.3 percent, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017
  • As of March 31, 2018, the .com domain name base totaled approximately 133.9 million domain name registrations, while the .net domain name base totaled approximately 14.4 million domain name registrations
  • The .com and .net TLDs had a combined increase of approximately 4.6 million domain name registrations, or 3.2 percent, YoY
  • New .com and .net domain name registrations totaled approximately 9.6 million at the end of the first quarter of 2018, compared to 9.5 million domain name registrations for the first quarter of 2017
  • Growth of .com and .net domain names redirecting to popular global social media and e-commerce sites compared to Q1 2017 is dominated by Instagram [70%] followed by Etsy [18%] and LinkedIn [16%].
  • Total new gTLD [ngTLD] domain name registrations were approximately 20.2 million at the end of the first quarter of 2018, with a decrease of 0.4 million domain name registrations, or 2.0 percent, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017. ngTLDs decreased by approximately 5.3 million domain name registrations, or 20.7 percent, YoY.

Verisign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide statistical and analytical research and data on the domain name industry. The second quarter 2017 Domain Name Industry Brief, as well as previous reports, can be obtained at Verisign.com/DNIB.

  1. The figure(s) includes domain names in the .tk ccTLD. .tk is a free ccTLD that provides free domain names to individuals and businesses. Revenue is generated by monetizing expired domain names. Domain names no longer in use by the registrant or expired are taken back by the registry and the residual traffic is sold to advertising networks. As such, there are no deleted .tk domain names. More here.
  2. The generic top-level domain [gTLD] and ccTLD data cited in this brief: (i) includes ccTLD Internationalized Domain Names, (ii) is an estimate as of the time this brief was developed and (iii) is subject to change as more complete data is received.
  3. The domain name base is the active zone plus the number of domain names that are registered but not configured for use in the respective Top-Level Domain zone file plus the number of domain names that are in a client or server hold status.

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With over 100 million daily active users, and a growing number of Truecaller Pro subscribers, Truecaller has reintroduced the much requested ‘Who Viewed Your Profile’ feature for its Pro subscribers. The feature allows users to see who has viewed their profile, keeping them prepared for which calls to expect and from whom.

How does it work?

Truecaller Pro users will receive a notification when another user has viewed their profile using Truecaller. However, this only applies if someone has tapped on the profile to view it, not searched for it.

Depending on the user’s privacy settings, contact information such as their phone number added by a user could be hidden. Users will still have to send a Contact Request for additional details.

By going to the ‘Privacy center’ in the Settings of their Truecaller app, users can always control who views what information on their profile.

Image Source – TrueCaller

Private Mode

When a user becomes a Pro subscriber, they can toggle on or off the Private mode, which means that another user will not be notified if they’ve viewed their profile.

This is a first of many new Truecaller Pro features that Truecaller will be releasing soon. In the coming weeks, the Pro feature will be re-branded to Premium and the company will be adding more features to make communication safe & efficient.

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The newest entrant in the taxi business in Mumbai – S3 cabs is finding indigenous ways to benefit the cab drivers and reduce their operational costs. While rival taxi companies are slowing down on the EV plans, due to lack of charging points; S3 has got the approval for a mobile bio-diesel distribution pump. The pump will be used to fill bio-diesel for its cabs across Mumbai.

Speaking on the development Sohel Kazani said

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

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

The average consumption of fuel by the cab owners based on 300km per day traveling amounts to 30 liters of diesel, and that equals to INR 2200 per day. A 40% reduction would mean INR 880 saving per day on fuel account or as much as INR 26,000 approx a month by using bio-diesel and the oxy-power unit. A pilot study made us understand that it keeps the fuel systems and fuel injector cleaner thus reducing the vehicle maintenance cost and increasing the mileage. It will also help in additional employment generation. We would like to work closely with the government to make the shift to bio-fuels happen and we hope that they lower the GST on bio-diesel to 5%.

Bio-diesel blend has been made a mandate in many countries. The government had recommended a blend in 2017 but the same has not been made compulsory. Bio-fuels also reduce the emissions making the environment cleaner. It would help the economy by reducing crude import; India imports approximately 8 lakh crores of crude oil annually. Also, it is priced lower than convention diesel, resulting in savings for the drivers. Shifting to bio-fuels is also a long-term solution to the problem of rising fuel prices.

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

Biodiesel can be used in any diesel car without any additional modification as in the case of CNG. It is cleaner and more efficient than regular diesel. Biodiesel can be used alone or blended with regular diesel in any proportions.

About S3 Cabs
S3 cab service has been launched in Mumbai city in the month of May and currently operate around 3000 taxis in the city. Passengers who do not have the application downloaded or without a smartphone, have the option of booking the cab through service representatives designated at different parts of the Mumbai region and also through a phone call. SOS service with CCTV camera in every cab and voice recording has been implemented for passenger safety. Riders are able to customize the trip using language options, tourist guide option, etc. The service is an initiative by the Bharat Freight, a logistics company.

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APUS, world’s leading technology company specializing in Android development and information services announced plans to bring the next phase of disruption in India’s gaming industry through its unique live quiz game ‘Go Millionaire‘, launched on its flagship product APUS Launcher. The company plans to give away over Rs. 4 crores as cash prize to the winners of the game, typically millennials, working professionals or non-working individuals aged between 17 to 35 years of age. The quiz game aims to bring together a seamless integration of entertainment, knowledge and surprise.

Image Source – Go Millionaire

The quiz game starts every day at 10:00 PM IST with cash prize of Rs. 1,00,000/- daily and Rs. 2,00,000/- on Sundays being given out to the winners. Over 80% of the questions are related to the local culture with 12 questions from diversified topics such as entertainment, politics, history, culture, nature, sports and technology. In the last two months, the game has resonated well with the fun, cool young Indian minds who are always in a quest to re-invent their mundane lifestyle.

Speaking about the upswing in India’s gaming industry and overall reaction to APUS’ ‘Go Millionaire’ quiz game, Raymond Chen, APUS India, said

Go Millionaire has managed to open opportunities for young Indian minds to stay connected with the outside world and serve as a window for the world to understand Indian culture and delve into the lives, thoughts and dreams of the millennials.

We, at APUS, are betting big on the potential of India’s digital gaming industry which is growing rapidly. This country’s mobile games market is expected to touch a whopping figure of $1.1 billion by 2020. And, the number of smartphone users is projected to become 628 million by then. There is no doubt that it is a very interesting time to be in India – where the rising interest in mobile gaming is running in parallel to the rise in smartphone adoption as well.

Go Millionaire is not just a unique platform that elevates the knowledge quotient of India’s young minds but also renders a sense of financial independence combined with elements of surprise thereby providing a fascinating user experience. The APUS users, the players of the game, who typically earn nearly Rs. 4000 everyday, have unique stories to tell.

Priyanka Wagh, a homemaker from Dhule, Maharashtra, an avid player of the game said

My friends introduced me to the game on social media and I have been playing it ever since. I love the concept of the game as it enhances my knowledge, makes me financially independent and is fun too. Last week, while playing on ‘Go Millionaire’, question after question, I crossed all hurdles and to my complete surprise that day I earned Rs.4264/-. I used the money to pay off the loan amount for that month. Now, I play the game at least 3-4 times a week.

Another ‘Go Millionaire’ enthusiast Satya Srivastava who works at an education focused firm in Mumbai said

I have been playing ‘Go Millionaire’ for a while now as I see a great combination of learning and fun in this. I also thought it would be a good idea to use this platform to re-invent the work culture in our company. And now all my team members play this game. I have introduced it to the students’ community too that liaisons with us daily as it is a brilliant opportunity for them to improve their learning curve and earn decent money as well.

Currently, the quiz game is seamlessly integrated into APUS Browser, which is best known for its boosted speed and privacy protection features.  In the next phase, the game will move to a continuous live quiz show format and will be made available in all APUS products. Additionally, the game is in English at this stage and will be launched in multi-lingual version to cater to the larger segment of India’s young audience very soon.

About APUS Group

Beijing Headquartered APUS Group is one of the world’s leading technology company specializing in Android development and information services. Founded in June 2014 by APUS Group CEO Tao Li, the former vice president of Qihoo 360, APUS Group’s mission is to deliver the world’s most intuitive user experience to Android smartphone users worldwide.

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In today’s era all small and large corporate are sitting on a gold mine of data, however, the biggest challenge they are facing to use these data to get business insights which they can to take effective business decisions and optimize their business.

Image Source – Business Optimization

‘Data Science’ is one of the most talked about topics in the CXO community and even leading analysts like Gartner and Forrester have quoted 2018 as a milestone year for organizations, with over 70% of them expected to leverage Data Science for Business Optimization.

Data Science is an automated method to analyze massive amount of data from various sources and extracting insights from them. Data science starts with examining raw data followed by applying statistical techniques for the purpose of drawing business related conclusions about the information and for modelling and predicting business outcomes.

According to recent industry reports, by the year 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet. Hence, unraveling insights from this enormous amount of information will require the seamless adoption of big data technologies, stronger data security, and integration of AI, machine learning and cognitive technologies applications with business operations.

In 2018, the following trends around Data science and Big Data would likely surface. Trends which include – Prescriptive analytics is poised to drive proactive decision-making, which would impact HR processes; Demand for data scientist will substantially increase, while finding data scientists will be an equally arduous task; Cognitive technologies and Artificial Intelligence [AI] will help reshape business processes; Machine learning [ML] is fast becoming the fulcrum of big data platforms and analytics; Enterprises will increasingly adopt a cloud-first strategy and cloud-based platforms for big data analytics.

Use Cases – Key Success factor for any Data Science Program
There are 2 key success factors when it comes to a Data Science program. First one is the identification of the right business use case and the second one is the availability of underlying data. While many organizations are in the process of preparing their systems to be able to apply Data Science and reap its true benefits, the true challenge is with nailing down the right business cases. Business use cases always needs to start with expected outcome and has to be a combination Business Benefits, Organizational Readiness and Technical Complexity.

Business use cases are often specific to the industry and it is important to select the right use case for your data science program based on your industry.  Let’s look at the top practical use cases by each Industry.

Conclusion

Unlike traditional analytics, Data Science programs are focused on a more specific optimization area but yield multi-fold business value. The key lies in the selection of the apt business use case and program execution – right from the data understanding to model deployment. Most of the successful data science program are executed in an iterative manner to refine the scope of the business case to achieve the desired outcome.

About the author

Srinivasan Rengarajan is the VP & Global Head of Data Science and Analytics at 3i Infotech Ltd. More details about him can be found here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image Source – AI

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

Source – Seeing AI App

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

Image Source – Ather Energy

The Product

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

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

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

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

The Pricing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Ather Energy

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