A Diageo Group Company is embracing conversational interfaces with the launch of India’s first artificial intelligence powered chat-bot that offers bar-tending solutions. Simi-Your Personal Bartender is a Facebook Messenger chatbot, developed by Yellow Messenger, a Bengaluru based start-up that has developed customized Digital assistants through botplatform.io technology.
Simi-Your Personal Bartender chatbot will offer over 200o DIY cocktail recipes which can be made with simple ingredients like juices, mint, lime, cola etc. and mixed with USL – Diageo’s iconic brands like Black Dog Whisky, Black & White Whisky, Johnnie Walker Whisky, Smirnoff Vodka, Tanqueray Gin and Captain Morgan Rum among others.
The chat bot has been designed to gain intelligence through conversations and will start by offering bar-tending recommendations based on combination of ingredients and alcohol preference. Going forward it will also offer cocktail recipe choices based on celebratory themes like brunch party, family celebrations, easy evenings and bachelor party. Simi will also get integrated across all USL-Diageo brand pages on Facebook and with the company’s lifestyle website.
Commenting on the launch, B. Sridhar, VP – Digital at USL – Diageo said
There is a shift in the way consumers are interacting with brands today and through this conversational interface we wanted to build a first of its kind bar-tending solution that is not just cutting edge, but can also help us offer our consumers personalization at scale. We believe Simi will open up a world of drinks and has the potential to transform how alcohol is consumed at home
There are over 3 billion highly engaged users on messaging platforms globally and we believe chat bots powered by artificial intelligence will prove to be the next big technology intervention which will prove to be a game changer in how brands engage with its consumers to provide a unique, interactive and personalized experience. In India, USL-Diageo is pioneering the use of artificial intelligence among consumer brands through Simi and we are happy to partner them in developing and powering this experience.
About United Spirits Limited
United Spirits Limited (USL) is a subsidiary of Diageo plc which is a global leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands across spirits, beer and wine categories. Founded in 1826, USL is the largest Indian spirits company, selling around 120 mn cases annually, involved in the manufacture, sale and distribution of beverage alcohol. For more information, please visit United Spirits
MyChoize, India’s fastest growing self-drive car rental brand owned by ORIX has announced the start of its operation in the cities of Jaipur & Ahmedabad starting December 2016. MyChoize would offer self-drive cars on the hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis for intra-city as well as inter-city travel needs of commuters. MyChoize is the self-drive brand of Orix Auto Infrastructure Services Pvt. Ltd, a subsidiary of Japan’s second largest self-drive car rental company ORIX
The company announced that it will start its operations in Jaipur and Ahmedabad with the fleet providing options of a hatchback, sedan & SUVs to its customers in Jaipur. MyChoize offers a wide fleet of cars from manufacturers including Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, Mahindra, Maruti and Nissan running across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and now Ahmedabad & Jaipur. The company provides cars across all segments including compact SUVs, hatchbacks, luxury cars, sedans, and SUVs to its customers.
The states of Rajasthan and Gujarat allure travellers from all across the globe with its breathtaking attractions. Various cities in these states have much to offer when it comes to tourist attractions, with Jaipur and Ahmedabad being the starting points for most travellers. Our expansion into these cities is strategically placed to serve tourists as well as locals for all their travel related needs at most economical rates.
The fares of MyChoize self-drive cars would be starting as low as Rs. 48 per hour in the two cities. The company offers unlimited kilometers to its customers so that they don’t have to worry about a kilometer cap during their driving experience while exploring the state. Mr. Gambhir also announced that the company will be providing customers with a pickup and drop service for the self-drive cars at their doorsteps to make it more convenient for the travellers to use the services.
Keeping in tune with its global scale in self-drive business, Orix has plans to invest $30 million in the next 2 years in the expansion of Mychoize. The service which is currently available on www.mychoize.com would be launching its Android and iOS app by the end of this month.
MakeMyTrip, India’s leading travel company recently launched a first-of-its kind recognition programme-MakeMyTrip Star Partner Awards to honour the best rated hotels in the company network. The MakeMyTrip Star Partner awards recognize the best rated & highest performing hotels in every city. Under this programme, the company evaluates the performance of hotels basis customer experience and satisfaction across 24 cities in its network. Hotels in Bengaluru, namely, Sairam Residency, Treebo Elmas, Springs Hotel and Spa, Treebo Silverstar, IRIS-The Business Hotel, Citrus Cunningham Road-Bengaluru, Adarsh Hamilton, Vivanta by Taj-Yeshwantpur, Le Meridien Bengaluru & ITC Windsor-A Luxury Collection Hotel have been awarded The Star Partner Awards under the Customer Choice Award category.
Commenting on the awards Rajesh Magow, Co-Founder & CEO-India, MakeMyTrip said
The domestic hotels segment has grown exponential over the last year or so, and we’re excited to be at the centre of this hyper-growth phase. With initiatives such as the Star partner awards, we intend to engage and recognize the efforts of our hotel partners who have consistently provided superior stay experience to our customers. The recognition and awards are another step towards cementing our relationship with our hotel partners. With the great success of our recognition program in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Pune, Indore and Goa, we have now launched this program in Bengaluru to honor the efforts and commitment of our partner hotels in the market.
The MakeMyTrip Star Partner Award aims to inspire and encourage the partnering hotels to further improve their performance and customer experience.
Commenting on this, Ritwik Khare, Senior VP & Head-Business Development, Hotels, MakeMyTrip said
At MakeMyTrip, we believe that our success lies in the success of our partners. All the hotel partners who are being presented with the MakeMyTrip Star Partner Award have gone above and beyond to ensure that our customers have the most delightful experience at their hotel. MakeMyTrip enables partnering hotels by expanding their reach and we, along with our hotel partners are committed to offer the best in class experience to our customers.
The company has formulated stringent parameters to evaluate the performance of the hotels in its network. The parameters of evaluation include a quality score (basis combined weighted average of customer experience and reviews) and business performance on the MakeMyTrip platform to recognize the best from the rest.
The ‘On-Demand economy’ has definitely been a game changer in today’s fast paced environment and it is here to stay! Online medium is no longer restricted to shopping, mobile recharge, travel, etc. but it has many more dimensions. In fact, it acts an effective medium to reduce the demand-supply gap.
Blue Collar Recruitment : Bridging demand-supply gap
For skilled jobs, portals like Elance, Fiverr, etc. act as marketplaces that help to fill the Demand -Supply gap but Unskilled/Semi-skilled workers (blue-collar workers) like drivers, cooks, cleaners, delivery boys, etc. have to still rely on their acquaintances when they are looking out for a job. If they do not have any reference, they need to rely on agents who take huge amount of commission from them. Though the blue-collar job market is highly unorganized, driven by the urbanization coupled with growing internet penetration, huge market size & fragmented demand-supply, many startups are solving the problem of connecting skilled low-skilled workers with potential employers.
Industry estimates put the demand for blue-collar and entry-level white-collar jobs at 20 crore a year, and the market at USD 15 billion [Source]. Apart from the demand-supply gap, a shorter lead time is also required to identify potential employee for an employer e.g. There is a huge demand for part-time delivery boys during the Big Billion Days, Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale,etc. and any delay in on-boarding or shortlisting potential candidates could have significant business impact [Source].
Though vertical job sites e.g. Quikr Jobs, Naukri,etc. are trying to solve this problem, there are startups solely focused to simplify Job search for blue-collar job seekers. Today, we have a look at Galijob [‘Gali’ means ‘Lane’ in Hindi] that can help potential job seekers find a job in 24 hours.
Galijob is a mobile-first (and mobile-only) marketplace for entry level and blue-collar job seekers. It is loosely based on a tinder-like matching service where the job seeker can get a job in 24 hours and likewise the employer can get potential candidate in the same time period!
For job seekers – Job seekers can create a profile on Galijob at the tap of a button and apply for a job in minutes. In order to maintain the 24 hours promise, Galijob ensures that the candidate receives a response within that time frame else application gets withdrawn from the employer’s list of candidate profiles. They encourage employers to be proactive and adhere the 24 hour deadline which ensures they stay at the top of Galijob’s preferred list of employers & receive good ratings. Once the profile is shortlisted by an employer, the candidate can call/chat with the employer in order to get further details about the position.
For employers – Similar to a job seeker, an employer needs to just post his requirement along with the location on Galijob. Once the requirement is posted, he can check the list of potential candidates on the platform & arrange for the next steps of recruitment. Galijob encourages shortlisted candidates with a positive rating to turn up for interviews which ensures they are always at the top of rating table and receive call from many potential employers. The concept of Rating ensures transparency in the entire recruitment process!
While reviewing the app, we browsed through the list of candidates (as a guest and with location turned on) and the results were accurate (shown in ascending order of distance). Since messaging has become so prominent, Galijob also supports Chat where potential job seekers can have a one-to-one chat with employers on the platform.
To summarize, the key features of Galijob are free job listing, One-click apply, Hassle free process, transparent rating policy, advanced semantic search to find what you are looking for and secure chat.
GaliJob – App Review
The app is currently available on the Play Store and on installation it takes around 14 MB of storage. Memory footprint is very critical for an app that caters to a market segment that might have Android phones with less internal storage (and many of them might not be using an external SD Card).
Though the app supports 5 regional languages along with English, it still is not 100% regional since the job description still appears in English. Once the language is selected, user needs to categorize himself as Job Seeker or Employer. There is also a guest mode which is like a read-only mode. Profile creation as a job seeker/employer takes only few minutes and once profile creation is complete, a job candidate would be shown with relevant recommendations based on his expertise & area of residence. We tried couple of searches in Whitefield area and results were favourable though results might vary based on locality.
The design of the Galijob app is simple and creation of profile on the platform is very easy! For reviewing the app, we did a chat with couple of candidates and the chat worked without any issue. Job seekers & employers can also do a search filtered by pin-code which comes in very handy while selecting a candidate.
GaliJob – Team, Competition and more
Galijob is founded by Ajay Anandteertha & Saurabh Saha and their startup is mentored by DAIICT Incubation. In terms of competition, Galijob competes with the likes of Babajob, Aasaan Jobs that are also horizontal-marketplaces for blue-collar recruitment. There are also vertical job sites like Quikr jobs addressing the same problem. It is currently bootstrapped. Galijob is currently operational only in Bengaluru and has received recognition from the Karnataka government for their unique initiative.
Conclusion
Currently only 49 percent of Indians own mobile phones and the data penetration is only 21 percent. However reducing prices of data, wider adoption of 4G [particularly Jio] and the push for Digital India can result in wider smart-phone adoption. Galijob follows App-Only approach, a strategy which was not well received by the users of Flipkart and Myntra [Source], though the model of app-only market place for blue-collar recruitment is already proven by the likes of Cornerjob, JobToday.
Though there is a huge difference between app-only for e-commerce vis-a-vis app-only for job marketplace, only time can tell whether India is ready for an app-only mobile marketplace! If you are an employer looking to hire the best talent in your industry, do give Galijob a try and share your feedback in the comments section…
As 2016 is coming to an end, and you know what that means….it’s time for #YouTubeRewind. This year, more than 200 YouTube stars from 18 countries accepted our Ultimate 2016 Rewind Challenge to pay homage to the biggest videos, memes, channels, songs, and pop culture moments of the year. Keep an eye out for some pretty epic surprise guests. Oh, and we got Major Lazer to help us out with an original mix too.
From Kapil Sharma, TVF, AIB and behind the scene video of Shah Rukh Khan becoming the FAN, this year’s top trending videos represent the amazing variety of creativity shared on YouTube every day.
Collectively, the top 10 videos have 70 million views and the channels who make them have more than 45 million subscribers who tune in regularly to watch the funny, insightful, entertaining content they create/upload.
In movies, Rajinikanth as Kabali went viral with Aamir Khan’s Dangal and Salman Khan’s Sultan following closely behind. The biopic of MS Dhoni featuring Sushant Singh Rajput was also a huge hit.
From an ads perspective, it is quite evident from the YouTube Leaderboard 2016 that several brands chose to create long format ads for a primarily digital-first audience. In fact, seven out of top 10 most watched ads in 2016 were over 90 seconds long. And audiences too were willing to invest their time and attention on ads that are narrative-driven and take a storytelling approach. #Dettolsheronkepanje was the most viewed ads for 2016 with close to 13 million views, and #Ranveerchingreturns and Amazon’s #ApniDukaan taking the next spots.
Recently announced Indian linguistic email address service solution provider DataMail has made a remarkable achievement of bringing a revolutionary change in the life of web users and smartphone users in Russia. Indian Tech Innovator, Dr. Ajay Data, Founder & CEO of Data XGen has partnered with a Russian domain registry company and formed a joint venture (JV) called POST.RUS. The announcement of this JV with Webnames Limited and Data XGen Technologies was made at a press conference organised in Moscow.
DataMail.Bharat created history when it was launched recently in India to provide email address services in 8 Indian languages. This technology solution was what Webnames Limited of Russia was looking for since the past 13 years as they were trying to innovate the ‘Russian Email Address’ to replace English with Russian. With this joint venture, POST.RUS, over 140 million Russians will be empowered to use the ‘Made in India’ technology for Russian language email addresses on web and smartphones for free.
LtoR – Dr. Ajay Data, Indian Innovator Founder and CEO, Data XGen Tech and Mr. Alexei Sozonov, Director of Webnames LLC and CEO of newly formed JV at the conference in Moscow
India has taken a lead to build linguistic email address technology which can be used globally. I am proud to say that India has innovated the linguistic email address which can be now offered to non-English spoken populations of the world. Post this launch of Russian language email address service, we will be soon entering into other countries too so as to enable billions of non-English people to join the world wide Internet by simply removing the language barrier.
Mr. Alexei Sozonov, Director of Webnames LLC and CEO of newly formed joint venture – said
Being a pioneering company for IDN Web Addresses names in Russia, we are thrilled to create history in Russia by offering domains and email address service in our own language. It was Russia’s dream since last 13 years and today with the help of an Indian innovator, Dr. Ajay Data, we will be fulfilling our country’s dream by launching POST.RUS which will surely empower the Russian population.
Dr. Ajay Data further added
While we are empowering the people of Russia with Cyrillic Email Address service, I am thankful to our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for launching a DOT BHARAT service and giving us domains in 8 Indian languages. However, we are far behind the vision for making India digital. We should bring these 8 linguistic domains to each Indian resident who is not comfortable with the English language and would like to communicate and use Internet in his/her own language. Dot Bharat must be promoted in every corner of India and we are willing to support in this mission.
Russian Internet penetration rate has doubled in last five years and has reached 84 million users. In Russia more than 50 million users are accessing the Internet from mobile devices which is equal to half of the adult population in Russia. Unlike Indian handsets, Russian handsets already have Cyrillic keyboard enabled and do not require any external app support. Due to this feature the adaptability of Russian email addresses will be faster than in India.
What is DataMail
DataMail is Made in India – World’s first email service supporting Internationalized email supporting email IDs in Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, Punjabi, Telegu, Bengali, Marathi.
The services are FREE for everyone through the simple Mobile app download on iOS and Android phone and anyone can go on their play store and download DATAMAIL and gets their first email address in their preferred language.
About Data XGen Technologies
Data XGen Technologies is one of the largest Complete Enterprise Solution company catering to the needs of unified communication. Having 13 years of experience, the organisation was initiated as an Email Management solution company which provides Email platforms for its users. The vision of Data XGen Technologies is to continue to innovate and be a global leader in the email market-place by being a premium next-generation email platform and to serve the entire spectrum of organizations – from small businesses, to enterprise, to multi-million user data centers – on the same scalable, secure and affordable platform. For more information, please visit Data XGen
Verisign released its Q3 2016 Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Trends Report, which analyses key trends in online attacks, including attack statistics, behavioral trends and future outlook. Verisign released its Q3 2016 (July 1, 2016 through Sept. 30, 2016). This report contains the observations and insights derived from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack mitigations enacted on behalf of, and in cooperation with, customers of Verisign DDoS Protection Services. The security research of Verisign iDefense Security Intelligence Servicesconducted, represents a unique view into the attack trends unfolding online, including attack statistics and behavioral trends for Q3 2016.
Key takeaways
DDoS Attacks Are Unpredictable and are becoming more challenging to all industries
The highest intensity flood attack: TCP SYN flood peaked at approximately 60 Gbps and 150 Mpps (Million Packets Per Second)
49 percent of the total attacks was UDP flood attack
DDoS Attacks Are Unpredictable
DDoS attacks continue to be complex and unpredictable, making them more challenging for companies to mitigate. While not directly observed by Verisign, Q3 2016 was notable due to several attacks unprecedented in attack size. Specifically, the approximately 620 Gbps attack against KrebsonSecurity1 and a 579 Gbps attack reported by Arbor Networks 2 were significant and widely reported within the industry.
Attackers in Q3 2016 launched sustained and repeated attacks against their targets. In fact, out of all the Verisign customers targeted by DDoS attacks in Q3 2016, 41 percent were targeted multiple times during the quarter.
Multi-Vector DDoS Attacks Continue to Dominate
Fifty-nine percent of the DDoS attacks mitigated by Verisign in Q3 2016 employed multiple attack types indicating that DDoS attacks continue to be complex, and thus require more time and effort to mitigate.
UDP flood attacks continue to dominate in Q3 2016, making up 49 percent of the total attacks in the quarter. The most common UDP floods mitigated were Domain Name System (DNS) reflection attacks, followed by Network Time Protocol (NTP) reflection attacks.
Highest Intensity Flood and Largest Volumetric Attack
The highest intensity flood attack observed by Verisign in Q3 2016 was a TCP SYN flood that peaked at approximately 60 Gbps and 150 Mpps (Million Packets Per Second). This flood attack is one of the highest packets per second attacks ever observed by Verisign, surpassing the previous highest flood of 125 Mpps mitigated by Verisign in the fourth quarter of 2015.
The largest attack in Q3 2016 utilized the Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) protocol (IP protocol 47) and peaked at 250+ Gbps and 50+ Mpps. This is the first time Verisign observed this type of attack against its customer base. The attack was notable in that the attackers encapsulated UDP packets to legitimate service ports within the GRE protocol. Attackers were able to increase the payload and add volume to the attack with this technique. Both the source and destination IP addresses in the encapsulated data were spoofed. The spoofing of the IP addresses forced the network devices of the end recipient to analyze the content within the packet, which depleted the recipient’s resources while consuming processing capacity and available network bandwidth.
For more information on DDoS trends, the full report can be downloaded from here
About Verisign
Verisign, a global leader in domain names and Internet security, enables Internet navigation for many of the world’s most recognized domain names and provides protection for websites and enterprises around the world. Verisign’s Security Services include intelligence-driven Distributed Denial of Service Protection, iDefense Security Intelligence and Managed DNS.
Considering the recent demonetization initiative by the government of India, ToneTag has introduced mobile payments through feature phones. The technology enables anyone with a standard phone to make cashless payments seamlessly without having to download an app or worrying about internet connectivity.
India is home to more than a billion active mobile phone subscriptions with an overall tele-density of 81.18% as of May 2016, according to TRAI. Mobile is the one technology that has permeated across all geographies and strata of the Indian society. Despite this the smartphone penetration in India was less than 30% in early 2016.
Most Indians living in tier II or tier III cities and villages in India have limited access to smartphone based services and mobile internet. Apart from that, according to RBI data, there are 665 million cardholders in India who are served by only 1.24 million POS terminals that accept card payments, majority of which are found in larger stores within urban India. In the wake of demonetization, therefore feature phone users in villages and rural areas are unable to avail digital payments, resulting in a severe cash crunch. There is an immediate need to solve this issue, through accessible solutions.
Though certain technologies such as USSD can be used to transfer funds between feature phones, the solution is not frictionless and there is a steep learning curve to perform these transactions which has affected adoption in India. Also, the digital payment companies have to ensure that this shift to cashless payment is not momentary as a result of demonetization but a long term behavioral shift and the user should not fall back to cash payments post the demonetization effect is normalized. To make digital payments mainstream, the entire experience of making digital payments should be better than paying by cash to bring user stickiness.
ToneTag is built on technology which is frictionless, interoperable and built on an open architecture that enables cashless payments to be made from feature phones. Now a cashless payment transaction can be as simple as making a telephone call, something all feature phones users are adept at doing. This means that small town and rural consumers will become part of the digital payment ecosystem by just dialing ToneTag toll free number 180030101887. They are able to deploy this technology to support the national agenda for financial inclusion and cashless payments.
Mohandas Pai, Vice chairman of Manipal group & a ToneTag investor said
This launch of an open platform to enable feature phone users to access the benefits of a cashless digital economy that’s being driven by our PM’s vision-driving financial inclusion for 70% of Indian phone users.
I think that ToneTag sound-based technology will enable consumers in small towns to go cashless with minimal digital literacy. This will also be a boon in rural India where there is a huge need for accessible and easy to use digital payments to replace cash usage. It is heartening that start-ups such as ToneTag will help bridge the digital divide and enhance financial inclusion among feature phone users.
By enabling feature phones to pay, we are removing hardware costs and the steep learning curve many Indians had associated with mobile payments. With this accessible technology ToneTag is sure to include many into the digital financial ecosystem especially as demonetization has disrupted the formal cash economy.
How the ToneTag technology works
ToneTag’s breakthrough technology uses audio signals or ‘tone tags’ for data exchange between devices. Payment instructions can be transmitted, using a sound signal, through a traditional phone line, without any additional hardware or software requirements. This makes highly inter-operable cashless payments possible from any mobile phone to another phone or computing device.
A feature phone user just needs to call an IVR number and bring the phone close to the merchant’s ToneTag enabled phone or other computing device, that is enabled to accept payments. The merchant will transmit the billed amount and transaction details by sending an audio signal or ‘tone tag’ which is captured on the IVR server.
Security and Compliance
The customer’s unique mobile number serves as the first factor of authentication. The customer then enters a PIN from the dial pad on his/her feature phone, as a second factor of authentication, resulting in an easy and secure cashless payment transaction from a regular feature phone. Processing takes place through IMPS or existing IVR banking infrastructure in real-time. This makes ToneTag the fastest, easiest and most secure solution available in the market for cashless, digital payments, bridging the last mile in financial inclusion.
About ToneTag
ToneTag is a sound based proximity communication provider that enables contactless proximity communication, location based services and customer engagement services among a multitude of other solutions. Backed by Reliance VC among a host of investors, ToneTag has enabled contactless, offline, proximity communication on any device through sound and their team continues to innovate and transform the way devices will communicate with each other in the near future. For more information, please visit ToneTag
