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|In: IOT|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The IoT India Confex 2017, India’s most unique and comprehensive IoT conference will be held on 24th and 25th August at Le Meridien Hotel in Vasanth Nagar, Bengaluru. Organized by Aayera, supported by Department of Telecommunications & Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, the two-day IoT conference is an amalgamation of thought leaders, IoT solution providers, IoT solution seekers, start-ups, State IT Secretaries, Government officials and Investors from across the globe.

VS Shridhar, Senior Vice President for Tata Communications, Damodar Sahu, Consultant partner & Head, IoT for Wipro Limited, Dr Neena Pahuja, Director General ERNET India, Department of Electronics & IT, Vikrant Sankhe, Executive General Manager for Siemens are some of the prominent speakers at the event. They will be joined by industry leaders like Sandip Datta – IoT Country Head, IBM Watson for IBM India Pvt Ltd and Mr. Ramesh Verma, President for The VR/AR Association.

IoT India Confex will focus on industries like Industrial IoT, LPWAN connectivity, Smart cities, Healthcare IoT, Wearables & VR, Connected and autonomous vehicles, Blockchain, Enterprise IoT, Manufacturing & Supply, IoT Architecture, IoT Data analytics & AI, Sports & entertainment, IoT security and agriculture.

Syed Fareed Ahmed, IoT expert and Project Director, Aayera said

IoT is one of the most talked about technologies in India. The next big step is towards implementation of IoT across different industries and sectors. The IoT India confex is a business driven event that brings together solution providers and solution seekers under one roof to discover the most disruptive IoT solutions.

The following are the highlights of the event:

Key Note presentations

  • Connectivity IoT: Partnerships and collaboration to maximize LPWAN (Low power wide area network) success. Looking beyond the technology to understand what will Make LPWAN successful
  • Industrial IoT: future of internet of manufacturing, Generating the new ecosystem for Industries 4.0 – Enabling horizontal cross company value chains by new partnerships and business models
  • Healthcare IoT: patient monitoring today and the role of artificial intelligence in future
  • Automotive IoT: what IoT solutions should automotive OEM’s need to implement for sophisticated connected vehicles
  • Smart home: the role of retailers and advertisers – accelerating smart home product sales
  • Wearables, AR & VR: the future of motion sensing in IoT
  • Energy & Utilities: Internet of Things in energy & utilities

Panel discussions

  • LoRa connectivity: Creating game-changing opportunity with LPWAN
  • Joining forces: Building an open, collaborative & secure ecosystem to deliver true IoT success
  • Emerging IoT solutions for patient monitoring, prevention and mobile health
  • Smart cities: Creating smarter cities – future trends and best practices
  • From fantasy to reality: Successfully launching connected/autonomous vehicles
  • Looking ahead in wearables, AR & VR: from dream to essential

Attendees can look forward to two days of insightful sessions exploring Industrial IoT solutions and an exhibiting space to showcase the IoT Solutions. Attendees can also network with potential business partners and discover new projects. IoT India Confex is an opportunity for attendees to evaluate, select and implement IoT solutions that improve business processes, create new revenue opportunities and drive business transformation.

For more information, please visit IotIndiaConfex

|In: Mobile|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Strengthening its endeavour to foster a one-stop communication platform, Truecaller announced the introduction of the Request Money feature as a part of Truecaller Pay.

The new feature, rolled out last week, saves users from awkward situations of asking for money from someone.  With this feature, users can send a direct payment request to a fellow Truecaller user, via Android notifications. The receiver of the request can just click the notification and make payments after entering their registered MPIN in the app when prompted.

Truecaller users can also create shareable payment links which can be sent via SMS, email, instant messaging platforms or can even post it on a website to receive payments. When clicked, the link would directly open the Truecaller app where the receiver can complete the payment. This makes it extremely useful for small businesses to make transactions and payments simple, secure and direct to bank using just a mobile phone and the Truecaller app.

Truecaller Pay, which was launched earlier this year, lets users create their unique Virtual Payment Address [VPA] in the Truecaller app, and can instantly send or receive money direct to bank account using any Unified Payments Interface [UPI] supported bank. With the addition of these features to its ever-expanding portfolio, Truecaller aims to deliver seamless communication experience to it users.

Have you tried out Truecaller Pay, please leave your experience in the comments section…

|In: Hackathon|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

HackerEarth is set to host a series of hackathons to commemorate the 70th year of India’s Independence. The hackfest will comprise of four hackathons, which will cover diverse themes like democracy, health, women empowerment & civic society. HackerEarth is inviting all developers to start a digital revolution by building smart and intelligent solutions for a better nation.

Image Source – Hackocrazy

Through these hackathons, HackerEarth aims to encourage the use of technology and the power of computers to bring about a social change. These hackathons are a part of the company’s CSR initiatives which focus on building innovative solutions that can strengthen democracy, empower women, and bring transparency in governance. The solutions can also help in improving health and civic facilities.

The initiative aims to bring together government bodies, NGO’s, corporates and citizens to work towards a common goal of building a more vibrant and responsive democracy, through the power of technology. These hackathons will also bring together people with diverse backgrounds and skills to unite around a common cause and promote fairness, openness, and equality.

The first hackathon in the series starts with HackoCracy [#HACK4HAQ] on 15th August 2017 and will be a 24 hour-long code fest. The hackathon has four themes:

Democracy [Political transparency] – India needs solutions that make it easier for its citizens to be heard by their representatives. The solutions should reach out to the remotest corners of the country so that the people are more that can keep people informed and there is an increased participation in elections and government affairs.

Media [Fake news and Free press] – We need tools for fact checking and helping people decipher fact from fiction. We need tools to ensure the ‘freedom of the press’ holds for those who are attempting to bring the truth to the public.

Corruption [Bring to light the corruption around you] – Solutions are required to ensure that the misdeeds are exposed promptly. It is also required to help control its spread and reach so as to completely purge the system of corruption.

Society [Create a social impact] – We need solutions that will ensure freedom from many social ills such as unemployment, homelessness, child labour, etc. These solutions should make India a better place to live in and trigger a socio-economic change.

The results of this hackathon will be announced on 30th September and the top three winners will be awarded a cash prize of INR 75,000, INR 50,000 and INR 25,00 respectively.

Vivek Prakash, CTO and Co-founder, HackerEarth said

Technology is a great balancer and can bridge the gap between the civic authorities and citizens. Through these hackathons we want to encourage developers to build solutions that can bring about a socio-economic change in the country, which is the need of the hour.  With each hackathon we would ideally like to create at least one workable solution that addresses issues which are plaguing our nation.

For more information, please visit Hackocrazy Page

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

ACT Fibernet, India’s largest non-telco and 3rd largest ISP in the wired broadband category, increased the data limits for all broadband plans for all its customers in Chennai. Known as a pioneer in Giga enabling an entire Indian city and a disruptor in the Indian broadband ecosystem, ACT Fibernet’s upgraded plans will allow customers to enjoy higher data limits at no additional cost.

ACT Fibernet is combining the upload FUP and Download FUP limits into one monthly data limit. The customer now has the freedom to consume data on uploads or downloads as per his needs and usage.

Under the retail customer plans, ACT Basic will be upgraded to 80 GB total FUP limit with 30 Mbps speed from its current 40 FB Upload FUP and 40 Gb download FUP. Similarly, ACT Blaze will be upgraded to 200 GB data limit with 75 Mbps speed, ACT Storm will be upgraded to 260 GB data limit with 75 Mpbs speed, ACT Lightning will be upgraded to 350 GB data limit with 90 Mbps speed, ACT Thunder will be upgraded to 450 GB data limit with 100 Mbps speed and ACT Incredible will be upgraded to 700 GB data limit with 150 Mbps speed.

Similarly, under the SOHO [Small Office, Home Office] plans, ACT SME Swift will be upgraded to 900 GB data limit with 150 Mbps speed, ACT SME Flash will be upgraded to 1100 GB data limit with 200 Mbps speed and ACT SME Force will be upgraded to 1400 GB data limit with 200 Mbps speed.

Speaking on the new plans, Bala Malladi, CEO, Atria Convergence Technologies Pvt Ltd commented

It is our constant endeavour to provide the best internet experience to our customers through super-fast speeds and enhanced data limits. We are combining our download and upload FUP into total data transfer FUP. This will liberate our customers and provide them significantly enhanced FUP, allowing them the freedom to use internet based on their needs and purpose.

|In: Guest Blogging|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

In an increasingly digitized world, we are all becoming extremely vulnerable to misuse of personal, professional and even national security data and what needs to be done. It is alarming yet not a surprise to see another mass scale ransomware attack just weeks after the havoc created by the Wannacry ransomware.

Image Source – Malware

To start with, the genesis of both these attacks appear similar. Both of them uses the Microsoft vulnerability called EternalBlue for which Microsoft had issued a patch. In both cases, they attacked institutional computer networks, which we unsecured – the NHS in UK and now the Ukrainian Government.

However, there is a slight but important difference. Usually in case of ransomware attacks, the demand is made from users and the email for communication is unique to each user. In this case it is observed that there is a single email ID that had been provided to all the affected users for communication. This email ID was since suspended by provider. This alludes to the fact that either the hackers were amateurs or more dangerously this attack is not a ransomware and was not unleashed with the intention of merely extracting money, but to destruct important data.

These new mutations of malware are increasingly getting more and more capable and complex in terms of the speed and reach. We are observing that the malwares are spreading automatically across interconnected networks more freely and with minimal or no human intervention. This, also is different from ransomware of earlier versions, which we more topical and pointed – say an individual hospital system. The free lowing nature of the current ransomware is particularly scary since we have limited control or predictive mechanism to guess which networks will be affected next.

As of now, the effects in India has been observed at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust. This can be explained as one of the largest private enterprises to get effected is Maersk, the leading shipping and container corporation whose systems in all likely hood is interconnected with the networks of the JNPT. Having said that it is impossible to predict the next network where the ‘worm’ will sneak in. Also, the Petya ransomware is more fluid than Wannacry as the latter was linear and had one way to move from network to network. Petya has the capability to evaluate multiple options and can use another option of attacking if one fails. It is indeed quite petrifying to imagine a situation is it infects the national service such as the Defense, Police, Financial Institutions and UIDAI.

Considering this, it is clear that prevention is the best form of attack. It should be the responsibility of all computer and internet users – institutional as well as individuals to be aware of the threat and also be prepared for a future attack. Through CERT-IN [Computer Emergency Response Team of India] the Government must issue a ‘what to do’ advisory on prevention tactics to enterprises and individuals. We observe that most of ransomware attacks use ‘end users’ as entry point. The end user might be an individual or a user in an institutional environment. In most cases there is nothing that user can do as these types of ransomware are typically executed through ‘drive-by downloads’ in which legitimate website and browsers are infected. Some of the key action points that can be followed are through basic IT housekeeping such as keeping antivirus software updated & having URL CHECKERS. Also it is recommended that individuals keep only those plug-in’s and add-on’s that are absolutely necessary and used regularly.

Finally, it is high time that system administrators within enterprises and government agencies should have updated defensive security skills. Institutions and governments need strong cyber security and cyber-defense strategies. Cyber-defense capabilities, particularly, is an important mandate as hacking becomes extremely easy and pervasive and IT administrators should know how to ‘defend’ their systems.

|In: Infographic|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Uber the largest on demand ridesharing company have announced the completion of 500 million trips, a key milestone in its four year journey in India. This also comes at a time when the company announced marking double digit growth in the country, and almost 2.5x YoY growth as of June’ 2017.

Commenting on the occasion, Amit Jain, President, Uber India & South Asia said

This is a significant landmark for Uber in India. Four years ago, India was the 18th country in the world to experience the magic of ‘push a button and get a ride’, when we launched in Bangalore with just 3 employees. Today, we are over a 1000 member team who share the common vision of redefining the future of urban mobility. Achieving new milestones and continuing our exponential growth journey is a reflection of a strong business we’re building in India. I’m humbled at the pace at which Uber has grown and the impact we continue to make to the lives of our riders, driver partners and the cities we operate in.

A look at the journey so far…

Growth with impact

Since August 2013, the growing number of driver partners and riders who embraced the new idea of ridesharing and disruptive technology is remarkable. Ever since, the pace of adoption across the country has been truly exceptional. In 4 years, Uber expanded its service to 29 cities across the country.From providing riders with multiple choices to creating micro-entrepreneurship opportunities, more and more people continue to rely on the service for their daily commute and livelihood, which resulted in double digit growth in the country with the business growing by 2.5x in June 2017 YoY.

Partners in growth

4,50,000 registered driver partners – the magnitude of their commitment and ambition is commendable. Four years in, Uber has created flexible working opportunities for tens of thousands of driver partners. Through UberSHAAN, Uber aims to create 1 million livelihood opportunities as micro-entrepreneurs in India by 2018. Today, they are carving out better, more secure futures for their families by making the pivotal switch to be an independent entrepreneur. They keep cities moving every day, helping riders get to where they need to be. Today, over 80% Uber rides are rated a 5-star experience, none of which would have been possible without their commitment and dedication.

Riders who trust in Uber

Riders and driver-partners have travelled over 5,791,025,961 Km together! With over 5 million weekly active riders in the country, India continues to be one of the biggest markets for Uber, outside the U.S. Whether it’s a ride to work, or one after a night out, Uber is committed to provide a service so reliable and affordable that it drives a fundamental shift from the prevailing paradigm of private car ownership to one of shared commute.

Infographic – Uber-completes 500 million trips

Multiple vehicle options

Every geographic region has its own unique transportation requirements and challenges, and the same reflects in Uber’s diverse product portfolio for the Indian-market. With seven vehicle options, Uber offers cities low cost, flexible solutions that cater to various needs. First/last mile ride to the metro station on an uberMOTO, longer duration trips in UberHIRE or a shared ride in an uberPOOL, the aim is to reduce congestion by complementing public transit systems and eliminating the use private vehicle over time.

Shared mobility

Launched in Bengaluru in September 2015, uberPOOL is now available in Delhi Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune. Today, over 25% of Uber rides are taken on uberPOOL. This has resulted in saving over 480,00,000 kms, which equals to 62 trips to the moon and back; 23,00,000 litres of fuel saved and prevented the emission of over 53,00,000 kgs of CO2, that would have otherwise required 4500 acres of forest a year to remove. Backed by technology, Uber is working towards getting more people into fewer cars and helping cities reduce congestion and pollution over time.

Innovating in India, for India and the world

India is a global priority for Uber, in terms of investment, growth as well as innovation. Uber launched Asia’s first Engineering Center in Bengaluru (Bangalore) in January 2016, a testament to Uber’s commitment to investing in India. With over 100 engineers spread across Bangalore and Hyderabad, several India-first initiatives like uberDOST, Emergency Button, Cash and Dial an Uber have also been launched in countries around the world. In 2015, Uber also set up a CoE in Hyderabad, with nearly 400 employees who focus on providing the best customer support to our riders and driver partners, including a dedicated Incident Response Team that manages critical incidents.

The future – leapfrogging car ownership

Despite very low rates of car ownership-just 18 vehicles per 1,000 people in India compared to 797 in the US, cities in India suffer from some of the worst congestion problems in the world with average speeds falling to 15 kmph and slated to reduce to 5 kmph by 2020 in major cities. Tackling alarming pollution and congestion levels requires concerted action and as responsible corporate citizens, Uber aims to be a part of the solution. Complementing government’s efforts around tackling congestion and encouraging the adoption of carpooling with the help of technology [UberPOOL], Uber is enabling several people travelling in the same direction to share a ride – essentially turning the car into a public good. There is a huge appetite for reliable, efficient and affordable ways to get to and from a particular destination, especially around commuting routes underserved by public transit.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the dedicated service of driver partners and loyalty of our riders. To say thanks and express gratitude, Uber is giving each of the lucky 176 driver partners INR 5000 and the lucky riders Uber credits worth INR 500.

Moving forward, Uber is more focused than ever before on building features for riders & drivers that will help the company get to the next five hundred million.

|In: AI|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Bengaluru based start-up Liv.ai has launched Speech recognition technology in nine Indian languages to enable businesses to reach out to people who communicate in their regional language instead of English. As an alternative to typing, people can now use their voice to text chat on apps like Facebook and Whatsapp speaking in their own language.

Liv.ai has a simple vision to empower people to interact with their devices, businesses and government using their natural voice. Businesses can use it to create digital assistants in regional languages, transcribe audio/video files, setup voice based IVR and do intelligent speech analytics. Liv.ai APIs can be integrated to applications across devices including mobile phones, tablets, PCs, TVs, Speakers, Set-top Boxes & even Cars.

Liv.ai’s innovation enables people to benefit from progress in technology without the need to use English as a medium of communication and many a times without the need of people being even a literate. Necessity to write and speak in English continues to keep people away from using technology to its full potential. Liv.ai’s Artificial Intelligence [AI] breakthrough enables people to break their linguistic barriers and be heard in their own language.

Brainchild of three friends from IIT Kharagpur – Subodh Kumar, Dr Sanjeev Kumar and Kishore Mundra, the Liv.ai platform recognises voice in all major Indian languages namely Hindi, Punjabi, Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati and Marathi. Along with what they proudly call the best AI team in India, the co-founders have been working for more than three years in developing speech and language based applications for Indian languages. While global mobile phone brands and biggest Apps during the same period were expecting over a billion people to use their products in English only.

Liv.ai had predicted rightly, the advent of business automation, launch of voice commanded devices such as smart speakers and need for traditional uses such as transcribing will revolutionise the AI enabled technology landscape. In a recent report, McKinsey Global Institute stated that in the year 2016, companies invested between USD 26 billion to USD 39 billion on AI technologies and top two areas were robotics and speech recognition

Stressing on the basic need for local language speech recognition, Subodh Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO, Liv.ai said

People in India are not proficient in English, but the technology ecosystem has been built around English. We at liv.ai recognized that global solutions may not work here and thus we envisioned solution specific to India which in hindsight has proved to be a right decision.

Liv.ai has already been integrated with leading Indic keyboards allowing people to use their voice to send emails, messages or post on social networks. In addition multiple large businesses are integrating Liv.ai’s APIs to automate their customer care. The technology is well-designed to work amidst background noise without loss of data.

The team led by some of the brightest minds in Artificial intelligence in India promises to augment the technology space with newer products to bring voice recognition capability to a billion people in our country.

For more information, please have a look at the Demo of Liv.ai

|In: AI|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Cyber Managers Software Services [CMSS] has launched a talk Bot aptly named H# [H Sharp] designed for a natural language understanding and can make human – like natural conversation with the support of AI, NLP and machine learning.

H# can be easily plugged-in on different social communication platforms, external or internal and does not demand for a separate login or complicated interface navigations, get talking right on your twitter or any intranet communication platform that organization might be using currently.

A chat/speech bot which directly plugs into existing HCM [PeopleSoft, SAP HCM, etc.] – which has helped a leading bank to move beyond mere clicks to chat and speech as interfaces for their HRMS. Reducing transaction time by as much as 30% and correspondingly increasing usage, the chat bot allows employees and managers to engage with their existing HCM on an intuitive level.

Godwin Pinto, Business Head at CMSS said

The need for automating HR functions arose long time ago, as the world saw increasingly large corporates adapting software and apps taking over the mundane tasks of managing people at work. Historically, as HCM Systems were designed by engineers, they have stressed more on the ‘System’ component than the ‘Human’ component; the actual user who is going to be affected by it. This has resulted into systems which although extremely functional, limit themselves to manage and transact with Human Capital rather than engaging with it.

HR Bots has taken automation to an all new level, as it allows for interactive, response based real-time functions. Since User Interfaces [UI] and User Experience [UX] have undergone a sea-change in the last 5 years, especially after social networks have put the spotlight firmly on engaging with the ‘Human’ component, it is expected that HCM should not be left far behind.

Although HR professionals feel intimidated with the new technology, fearing their elimination from the HR roles, Godwin adds

HR Bots should not be seen as adversaries, but as a colleague, they are here to facilitate rhythm in daily HR tasks, for instance form filling, maintaining musters, and managing leaves, etc. Hence, the organization can utilize their HR workforce productively into tasks where a human touch or human reasoning is required.

Within the same corporation; one sees that while consumer-facing systems have interesting interfaces like bots and apps; Employee facing systems like HCM, have to make do with Retro User Experience till such time as the whole HCM is upgraded to a newer version or flavor. This leads to a huge experience gap for employees; who on the one hand have a highly engaging user experience as consumers; and on the other hand ‘transact’, click by click, as employees.

Features & Benefits of H#

  • Support for common HR functions like seek leave, muster, etc
  • Suggestive data intelligence for assistance in approvals
  • Ready connectors for HRMS like Peoplesoft/Fusion, SAP, etc.
  • Highly personalized responses based on user’s profile
  • Pre-trained for common HR queries

From induction to exit, H# helps perform HR related tasks like – getting salary information, applying for benefits and leave, fill forms, take surveys and even collaborate with other employees – through a unified chat, speech and mobile interface. All while giving HR a whole new touch point for employee engagement – with a hint of personality and as natural as having a conversation.

For more information about H#, please visit H-Sharp, the HR Bot