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|In: IOT|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Hitachi Ltd. and Hitachi Vantara, jointly announced Hitachi’s first commercial Lumada Internet Of Things [IoT] platform offering. Now in its v2.0 release, the Lumada IoT platform has been fully updated with an elegant, portable architecture that enables it to run both on-premises or in the cloud and to support industrial IoT deployments both at the edge and in the core.

Image Source – Lumada IoT

The new software stack is designed to help customers quickly and easily gain insights, predictions and recommendations from their data, and can be easily adapted to support mid-to large-scale environments. Lumada’s integrated advanced analytics have also been enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI) functionality at scale. The result is a highly intelligent and flexible platform that accelerates superior outcomes for enterprise and industrial customers, such as increased operational efficiencies and cost savings, enhanced operational safety and reliability, improved asset utilization, performance management and product quality, and the creation of new business models.

Among the notable advancements to the Lumada IoT platform are asset avatars, Hitachi’s unique approach to what is commonly referred to as ‘digital twins.’ Asset avatars provide a digital representation of physical assets and rich metadata for analytics, serving as a digital proxy for business and industrial assets and providing rapid data-driven insights into their health and performance, with continuously updated sensor values. This approach helps to eliminate ‘blind spots’ in operation-critical systems by providing improved access to – and insights from – business, machine and human data, which can help users move more rapidly from measurement to management to improvement.

The newly enhanced software stack also provides IoT developers and architects with powerful design tools and features that simplify the creation and deployment industrial IoT solutions, with faster time to insight. Since introducing Lumada to the market as a co-creation platform in May 2016, Hitachi has hardened and optimized its Lumada IoT platform. These improvements are based on numerous deployments in Proof-Of Concept [POC] and co-creation project engagements with its customers and partners, as well as in its own factories.

Hitachi worked with customer Daicel Corporation to co-create an image analysis system using Lumada that improves product quality and increases productivity by detecting signs of facility failures and deviations in front-line worker motions. This system has allowed Daicel to improve the in-process guarantee rate for products.

Another customer, Okuma Corporation, worked with Hitachi to co-create an advanced high efficiency production model with Hitachi to support mass customization in its manufacturing plants. The target of this joint demonstration experiment is to double productivity and reduce production lead time by 50%.

Based on the best practices developed throughout projects like these, Hitachi has enhanced Lumada’s functionality to simplify management of business and industrial assets, support greater  asset utilization and accelerate the time to value of IoT deloyments. Its next generation architecture is highly flexible, composable and adaptable to support customers’ existing business and IT environments and help them to more rapidly achieve highly optimized outcomes.

Customers looking to accelerate their IoT initiatives using Lumada will benefit from engaging Hitachi’s co-creation services, tapping its expansive expertise in both operation technology [OT] and information technology [IT] to create customized IoT solutions that are tailored to their unique requirements.

Keiji Kojima, Chairman at Hitachi Vantara & SVP and Exective officer at Hitachi Ltd said

Our next-generation Lumada IoT platform demonstrates Hitachi’s unparalleled expertise in both OT and IT, and reinforces Hitachi’s commitment to being an innovation partner for our customers in the IoT era. With the powerful advancements delivered today, our customers and partners can now choose to harness the full power of Lumada’s AI, advanced analytics and asset avatars capabilities to simplify their own IoT solution development or to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives in co-creation projects with Hitachi. In either case, we believe Hitachi is delivering a highly intelligent and unique solution that challenges the industrial IoT platform market status quo.

Hitachi’s next-generation Lumada IoT platform architecture has been fully updated with five major layers to form a flexible, portable and composable software foundation with comprehensive security capabilities and expanded support for unstructured data uploads. IoT developers and architects will also benefit from Lumada’s dynamic design features, rich analytics and robust asset management capabilities, including:

  • Lumada edge: Allows any variety and velocity of data to be easily ingested, transformed and analyzed in close proximity to physical assets.
  • Lumada core: Provides asset registry, identity and access management and simplifies the creation of asset avatars.
  • Lumada analytics: Blends OT and IT data to uncover patterns with powerful analytics, machine learning and AI.
  • Lumada studio: Delivers predefined widgets to simplify the creation of dashboard applications; issues alerts, notifications or just straight-through processing.
  • Lumada foundry: Offers foundational services to ease deployment on-premises and in the cloud, as well as security, micro-services and support features.

Product Availability and Information

Hitachi’s Lumada IoT platform software is generally available now for purchase and in co-creation engagements with Hitachi and select partners. Some features may not be immediately available in all markets. For more information and a complete list of product and feature enhancements, visit here.

Experience Hitachi’s Lumada IoT Platform at NEXT 2017

Hitachi’s new Lumada IoT platform software and related solutions will be on display at the company’s user conference, Hitachi NEXT, in Las Vegas, September 19 and 20, 2017. Event attendees can see live demonstrations of the software and the innovative IoT solutions Hitachi and its customers and partners are developing with it.

The event also features a full track of IoT developer breakout sessions, providing attendees with an opportunity to engage directly with Hitachi product management executives and development teams. The developer breakout session will provide a deep dive on the latest architectural advancements, design features and best practices for building industrial and commercial enterprise IoT solutions with Lumada.

About Hitachi Vantara

Hitachi Vantara, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., helps data-driven leaders find and use the value in their data to innovate intelligently and reach outcomes that matter for business and society. Only Hitachi Vantara elevates your innovation advantage by combining deep information technology (IT), operational technology (OT) and domain expertise. We work with organizations everywhere to drive data to meaningful outcomes. For more information, please visit HitachiVantara

|In: Mobile|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Times Internet Ltd. has entered into a partnership with Sweden-based communications and mobile identity platform Truecaller, to make sign-ups and phone number verifications easy for its users.

The tie-up is in line with TIL’s unique ‘Single Sign On’ initiative, the objective of which is to increase user convenience by providing a homogeneous sign-up and log-in interface across all TIL web and mobile properties.

Times Internet, with its 37+ digital properties, already offers unified logins [SSO] and loyalty. However, this new tie-up with Truecaller will further smoothen the sign-up and authentication processes for TIL’s customers, of whom 75% access the portals through their mobile devices.

Truecaller’s mobile number based identity solution – ‘Truecaller SDK’ innovation has made mobile authentication exclusively number-based since mobile numbers are highly personalized and user-specific. This enhances security and convenience by eliminating the hassle of repeated OTP SMS-based logins.

Commenting on the partnership, Gautam Sinha, CEO of Times Internet said

Consistent to our flywheel strategy, and catering to a mobile first customer base in India, TIL understands the need to reduce friction and make the experience seamless  across properties.

Commenting on the partnership, Priyam Bose, Director & Head, Global Developer & Startup Relations, Truecaller said

Mobile number has become the primary identity in India. We are excited to partner and integrate Truecaller SDK, our mobile identity solution into TIL’s web and mobile platforms to bring ease of access to our diverse audience across its properties. The more touch points we can bring to our users, the more value we can add to their lives in India’s fast-maturing mobile-first market.

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 dialler that offers caller ID, spam detection, messaging and more. For more information, please visit Truecaller

|In: Entrepreneurship|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

India’s most trusted diagnostics partner CORE Diagnostics Pvt. Ltd is supporting a comprehensive discussion platform for Oncologists and medical experts to talk in depth about the Indian perspectives on genetic mutation and its role in augmenting cancer risk at the 2nd chapter of the Indian Cancer Congress.  Over 3500 oncologists have converged at the conference to talk about latest strategies in treatment and prevention against cancer.

Image Source – CORE Diagnostics

The event is being held from Nov 8th~12th in Bengaluru and has experts in medical oncology deliberating upon the Indian as well as global perspectives in the incidence of different types of cancers and the causes of their rising prevalence.  A rapidly expanding start up and an expert in Oncology testing, CORE have constantly differentiated themselves by their innovative edge in the diagnostics market.

Keeping up with the newest technologies in the cancer detection and prevention space, CORE has an entire section dedicated to the latest buzz in the segment called COREtalks at their booth. Some of the featured talks include BRCA: An Indian perspective on incidence and patterns, Liquid Biopsy: An answer to when tissue is an issue and Next Generation Sequencing and beyond in the management of Cancers – Where do we stand?  CORE is also hosting a Lunch Symposium on Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence in Oncology – The Myth & the Reality as well as participating on several debates and panel discussions.

CORE Diagnostics has also initiated a one of its kind effort to boost innovation as a means to usher in potentially game changing ideas in the field of Indian healthcare.

Underlining the need for promoting innovation in healthcare, CORE Diagnostics’ Founder & Managing Director, Zoya Brar said

Putting appropriate thrust on innovation can bring about revolutionary solutions in healthcare. This is particularly important for a country like India where dynamic ideas are needed to expand the reach of quality healthcare to rural as well as remote areas. In this direction, for the first time ever at a conference, with a platform as great as the ICC, we are hosting a unique ‘Startup Pitch Fest’. This fest will provide a one of its kind platform to boost brilliant ideas in the healthcare domain that can play a pivotal role in diagnosis and positively impact patient treatment. The winner gets cash prizes worth INR 3 lakhs. I am very excited and look forward to hearing from the selected finalists for COREcatalyst on November 10th.

About CORE Diagnostics

CORE Diagnostics is a clinical laboratory focused on next generation diagnostics for disease stratification and therapy selection. The company focuses on bringing the most advanced testing techniques and expertise to India and is the destination for all of India’s high-end diagnostic needs. CORE Diagnostics has a rich menu of high-end tests; provides a second opinion on every test from a global panel of pathologists; and has the shortest turnaround time. For more information, please visit CORE Diagnostics

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Exotel, one of Southeast Asia’s largest cloud telephony platforms have announced capabilities that can help stock brokers record calls and be compliant in a matter of minutes without any IT help or hardware infrastructure.

To prevent unauthorised trading activities, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India [SEBI] has directed stock brokers to compulsorily keep a call record of all orders placed by clients from 1 January 2018. This is to ensure that there is a definite proof of customer orders that can be accessed in case of a dispute which is  a result of complaints about unauthorised trades from customers.

Speaking on Exotel’s initiative, Shivakumar Ganesan, CEO & Founder, Exotel said

There is a limited time frame for stockbrokers to become SEBI compliant. Given this scenario, Cloud Telephony is the best way to record calls in a safe, secure and easy to use manner.

Exotel helps businesses manage their business phone system via a virtual phone system.

Exotel’s cloud telephony platform

  • Records every single conversation – Calls routed via Exotel are recorded and available for access via a simple to use dashboard. The calls are stored on the cloud. The storage is safe, secure and easy to use.
  • Is cost effective – Pay as you go. No maintenance cost. Get started with a simple mobile phone. The system scales and upgrades as per your needs.
  • Allows work On the Go – Don’t be chained to a desk. Take customer calls from anywhere without compromising on compliance
  • Enables speedy setup – Calls need to be recorded starting Jan 1st, 2018. Very little time to set up a robust system. Exotel does this with ease.
  • Allows easy retrieval – Calls are stored in a safe and secure way on the cloud. These recordings can be retrieved from our dashboard, downloaded and shared as per your convenience.
  • Is feature rich – Exotel offers a lot more than a simple call recording. Set up IVR systems, add agents as you grow, keep track of your daily conversations, etc. You can build complex call flows with a simple drag and drop interface.

To help stockbrokers better understand the offerings, Exotel has set up a micro-site to provide information. Please log in to this page to learn more about this.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Daiwa committed to bring the latest technology to India at budgeted prices, announces the launch of its service app ‘My Daiwa’. This is in line with Daiwa’s strategy to provide the best in class customer experience with 24/7 on-demand after sales service to the end consumers, among various other utilities.

The highly differentiated and interactive customer experience aims to demystify the experience of accessing after sales service. The app shall allow scheduling installation/repair appointments and estimating service costs, accessing service history/current status, one call connection to Daiwa emergency assistance service, notification inbox for latest updates, service feedback mechanism & also allows you to Register your product for standard/extended warranty.

Speaking on the launch of the app, Arjuun Bajaj – Director, Daiwa, said

We strongly believe the key to every successful brand is ‘After Sales Service’. Effective After sales allows brands to build stronger connect with the consumers. Not only this extension assures a peaceful buy but also brings a stronger connect with the consumer. We hope we are able to serve our customers better in an Industry where brands are many but when it comes to building relations with customers they become handful. We are here to change the stereotyped perception of the TV Industry.

The Daiwa app can be downloaded from Google Play Store.

About Daiwa

With over 33 years of experience in TV industry, under the Group company ‘Videotex International Pvt. Ltd.’ Daiwa entered the TV Segment in India with one purpose; offering unprecedented, groundbreaking technology with unmatched quality products and prices.

The brand ensures consistent quality and uniformity in its offerings; its SMT [Surface Mounting] for making motherboards in India, Clean Room for Panel assembly, MI [Manual Insertion] line, Automatic FA [Final Assembly] line sets new benchmark for manufacturing quality and facilities in India. For more information, please visit Daiwa

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Uber announced the launch of two new products – uberACCESS and uberASSIST in Bengaluru, supported by Mphasis, a leading IT solutions provider, as a part of their CSR initiative. With an aim to address day-to-day transportation requirements of senior citizens and those with accessibility needs, riders can request uberASSIST rides and will soon be able to book uberACCESS rides, the forward-facing wheelchair accessible product, on-demand.

Trained and certified by Diversity and Equal Opportunity Centre [DEOC], all driver-partners are equipped with required skills to assist passengers with accessibility needs as well as those who need additional assistance during their ride.

  • uberACCESS an Asia-first launch for Uber in Bengaluru, is a forward-facing wheelchair accessible product. This option offers 50 retrofitted vehicles, with heightened roof and hydraulic wheelchair lift on-demand.
  • uberASSIST is an option for those who require additional assistance – such as senior citizens and people with accessibility needs, including those who may just feel more comfortable with extra assistance when getting from door-to-door. A fleet of 500 uberASSIST vehicles accommodate most foldable wheelchairs.
  • Both uberACCESS and uberASSIST partner-drivers are top-rated partners trained by DEOC to ensure riders feel safe and comfortable for their entire journey.
  • uberACCESS vehicles are rear-entry, which means that riders face forward when they’re travelling, unlike other wheelchair-accessible vehicles which require riders to face sideways or backwards. All uberACCESS vehicles have four-point tie-down straps, which are used to secure the wheelchair to the floor to ensure it stays put during the trip.
  • uberACCESS and uberASSIST are one of the most-affordable ride option for people with accessibility needs
  • Riders have access to a load of smart features to ensure they are in control. Being able to track the ride real time, ability to share ETA and allowing friends and family to follow the trip remotely are all features that can help riders feel more in control of their journey and spend less time thinking about logistics and more time spent getting on with their plans.
  • uberASSIST and uberACCESS are not ambulance services, but a new choice for riders in need of assistance during their daily travels, whether they are riders with special needs or senior citizens.

Announcing the launch, Amit Jain, President, Uber India and South Asia said

At Uber, we believe in creating transportation options that fit every rider’s need.  The launch of uberASSIST and uberACCESS furthers our efforts in this direction. We are excited to partner with, and thank, Mphasis for playing a key role in helping us bring this idea to life. We aim to make these services available in more cities across the country.

Mphasis, through its CSR arm, Mphasis F1 Foundation, has done some pioneering work to create equal opportunities for persons with disabilities to access systems, services and resources.  In line with same commitment, Mphasis F1 Foundation and Uber have joined hands to launch uberACCESS and uberASSIST initiative.

Nitin Rakesh, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, Mphasis said

Over the years, Mphasis has pioneered various high impact initiatives in creating a barrier-free environment – be it through innovative services, policy advocacy or supporting accessible technology solutions. We combined our financial aid with a data-driven, strategic focus – the essential inputs for creating sustainable and scalable impact in our communities. I am glad my team approached Uber with this idea and together we are committed to the cause of bringing innovative solutions that enhance opportunities for everyone.

Mphasis, over the years has undertaken a host of initiatives to transform the lives of persons with disabilities whether it is pioneering accessibility services, policy advocacy, or research and thought leadership. The past year, Mphasis in partnership with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore  has set up a Research Chair dedicated to conducting high impact research on Digital Accessibility and Inclusion. Mphasis’ roadmap for Digital Accessibility is intended to empower persons with disabilities by enabling them to access digital content, web pages, mobile applications, and use all kinds of digital assets effortlessly.

 

|In: Digital|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Over the past few years, technology has taken over every aspect of life. Everything around us has already gone or is going digital. Hence it was prudent that even the humble TV had to undergo digitization. Star India pioneered the digitization of TV in India with the launch of Hotstar.

Digitization has changed the face of TV entirely and revolutionized the way we consume content.

Why has digital TV become a hit?

The utility and convenience of digital content have made it an integral part of everybody’s life. People have embraced the digitization of the Indian TV industry as it offers numerous benefits. With this anytime anywhere TV, you will never miss a show. To add to that, you can access to all your favorite shows in one place. Since Indian audiences are heavy consumers of TV content, Digitization of TV was a dream come true. Now, you can watch your favourite shows as per your convenience without compromising on other plans. A number of people prefer watching digital content while commuting. This gives them more time for other activities and also serves as a great on-the-go entertainment.

Launch of Hotstar

The digitization of Star TV rocked the digital TV industry. Star India launched its unique video streaming platform, Hotstar, in February 2015, which soon became a sensation. The app with its unique content, supreme quality, multiple features, and user-friendly interface had the audiences glued to the screens in no time. The Star digital revolution unwrapped new avenues for the digitization of the TV industry.

How did Hotstar trigger the digital revolution?

Even since its launch, Hotstar has been breaking records. Hotstar was introduced at a time when Internet speed in India was very slow. Which is why it was developed in such a way that it streamed videos seamlessly even at a low speed of 50 kbps. Its launch was timed perfectly, which was just before the start of the ICC World Cup 2015.

Within just a week of its launch, Hotstar got 1.5 million downloads and topped the list of free apps on Google PlayStore. This was a remarkable feat as it took Facebook 10 months, Twitter 12 months, and Instagram 2.5 months to reach the level of one million downloads.

The success story of Hotstar did not stop here. In another 33 days, the app downloads reached 10 million. In 18 months, the download crossed 72 million; while Netflix took nine years to reach 75 million. In January 2017, it was found that Hotstar app downloads had crossed the mark of 175 million.

The astounding figures clearly portray the onset of the digital era of Indian TV, and how it was transformed with the entry of Star India’s Hotstar. Clearly, Star India was instrumental in paving the way for digitization in India. It intensified the competition in the market and compelled aggregators to perform better. The rising value also enabled new entrants to take an interest in the market, thus pushing the message of Digital India.

To know more about how Star India led Indian television into the digital era, click here

|In: Interviews|Last Updated: | 2 Comments

Technology is evolving at a very rapid pace, with technologies & trends like Artificial Intelligence [AI], Machine Learning [ML], Chatbots, Augmented Reality [AR], etc. creating a dent in every possible sector. Few years back, when you were interested in buying a property, you had to personally visit the site, evaluate & inspect it and than come at some logical conclusion.

With the advent of AR/VR, consumers can now have a look at the property/flat from the comfort of their homes thereby saving time as well as money [for the real-estate company that mostly bears the cost of the site-visits]! Artificial Intelligence is already disrupting the real-estate sector.

When we talk about online real-estate Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com immediately comes to our minds. All these companies have been game changers in their own respect, having varied business models. Today, we have a chat with Ravi Bhushan, Group CPTO, Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com about emerging technological trends, AR/VR, Chatbots, etc.

Being a CPTO of multiple portals which are into real-estate, as a PM what are some of the data points that you use to ensure that the right set of features are deployed in the respective portals ?

For all the three platforms, i.e. Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com, we have different business models that cater to both common and unique use cases. At a high level, I keep a close watch on the following data points

  • Traffic growth and quality
  • Engagement and conversion metrics
  • Supply growth
  • Demand supply match metrics
  • Quality score of content on a platform
  • Customer’s satisfaction score

There are has been lot of talks about AI, Machine Learning [ML] in the real-estate sector, how much impact will AI and ML have on the sector ?

I feel that there is tremendous scope of AI and ML in the digital real estate sector. Some of the areas wherein we are deploying and evaluating these technologies include:

  • AVM for price estimation in real estate
  • Lead quality scoring, based on the consumer’s behaviour [online + offline] data
  • Sentiment analysis around projects and developers based on the UGC data on IREF
  • Image classification and image quality check of listings
  • Automatic response by bots on real estate queries based on the knowledge base we have across platforms

How will emerging trends like AR/VR enhance the buying experience and how it can act as a compliment to physical site visits ?

Technology in the AR/VR sector is growing at a fast pace. Most of the global powerhouses are extensively investing in AR/VR related technology. An immersive viewing experience of a property [which does not exist] by using virtual reality, significantly solves the use case of visiting a sample flat. This technology can complement physical site visits in two ways

  • With these technologies one can do virtual site visits without any risk as visiting the site physically to experience the progress can be risky during construction
  • AR can be of immense value when it comes to customizing your house and get a near to a real glimpse of your future house

Can you list down top five features of PropTiger, Makaan, Housing from technological point of view vis-a-vis its competitors ?

I have listed the top five features that set us apart from our competitors

  • Comprehensive coverage of ratings and reviews of agents provided by genuine home seekers on Makaan.com solving the issue quality differentiation between sellers.
  • Makaan.com: First platform with real time authentic transaction data in Indian real estate
  • Category’s most innovative and user friendly maps based experience of 100% verified listings on Housing.com solving the issue of information asymmetry.
  • Category’s first ever web based virtual reality solution for most advanced visualisation [Sample flat, unit plan, construction updates, locality] targeting millions of internet users without any tech. barrier.
  • Deep learning based lead quality scoring engine based on consumer’s behaviour [Online + Offline].
Ravi Bhushan – Group CPTO (Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com)

Chatbots are now becoming main stream with Fintech, Banks, etc. how can chat bots be used to enhance the overall buying experience ?

Chatbots concept is still very early for real estate sector. The important thing to notice is that unlike many other sectors, in real estate, the search pattern is very broad. However, we definitely feel that with time there will be adoption in real estate and in order to ensure that we lead it from the front, we have already invested in this technology.

In fact, we are the first one to launch Facebook bot based search experience through which one can search and call sellers from the chat window itself on Makaan.com.

What are some of the measures taken by your product/tech team to provide ‘customized’ buying/selling experience and to ensure that there is a maximum conversion rate ?

There are many things which are done in this direction. Some of the important measures followed by us include:

  • Relevance logic: Matching of user intent with the property options provided during the search journey
  • Ratings/Reviews: One of the main goals for home seekers is also to find out the right seller and for that authentic ratings/reviews are very important. We are working really hard to ensure that this use case is addressed properly.
  • Drip marketing: Real estate being long buying cycle, drip marketing at various stages of the journey to bring back consumers and make them convert is also a significant area
  • High quality content: On Housing & PropTiger, we have 100% verified listings and on Makaan we have most comprehensive reviews and ratings. We also power our platform with the UGC from the biggest forum in Indian real estate which we own.

Searching for ‘your kind of flat’ is still a tedious process on real-estate portals [where search can go upto how many rooms, area, etc.], what are some of the challenges to have these initial search terms integrated in a voice-based engine so that there are less number of user interactions [with the device] ?

We have made some great progress in our Audio related technologies to parse and meaningfully understand the home seeker-seller interactions. As far as voice searches are concerned, we already have this feature in our PropTiger app. Based on the traction, we will further enable the same in our other platforms.

With the advent of sub 1500 phones, new segment of customers have emerged that could be first time data users. Are there any plans of PropTiger/Makaan/Housing to cater to this market [be it a light-weight app/site, etc.] ?

Yes, this is an area of opportunity for us to penetrate further in tier 2/3 cities in India. Jio being a light weight HTML5 based app ecosystem, we are willing to launch our experiences as soon as it is allowed. Having said that, we have already invested in technologies like Progress Web Apps [PWA], Instant apps to provide app like experience to our web users and we look forward to tap any such opportunity in future.

From a product feature point of view, there has been less push to lure multi-lingual audience [e.g. Certain audience in  Kolkata might not be well versed with English but good in their native language], is there any push to cater the non-English speaking audience ?

We are witnessing some noticeable shift towards the vernacular space and we see this as an opportunity. We have already started to write some regional content on some of our content platforms such as PropGuide, MakaanIQ, Housing News, etc. Based on the traction, we will further invest in this direction.

What are some of the emerging trends in the tech-space and where do you see the real-estate sector [from tech point of view] couple of years down the line ?

With better government regulations, reforms & advancement of technology, the information asymmetry will reduce significantly in the coming years. The online platform will push their boundaries in terms of reaching towards closure to transactions.

The centralized listing content source [like MLS in other countries] is bound to emerge and lots of physical activities will be replaced with advancement in visualization technology related to AR/VR/3D space.

We thank Ravi Bhushan for sharing his insights with our readers. If you have any questions for Ravi, please email them here or share them via a comment to this article.