Sriram Rajamani appointed MD of Microsoft's India lab

Based in Bengaluru, he will spearhead Microsoft India's continued focus on world-class research, innovation and collaboration with the scientific community, the company said in a release.

Microsoft today announced the appointment of Sriram Rajamani as new managing director of its India lab.

Based in Bengaluru, he will spearhead Microsoft India's continued focus on world-class research, innovation and collaboration with the scientific community, the company said in a release.

He replaces Chandu Thekkath, who was managing director of the lab for two years.

Welcoming Sriram, Jeannette Wing, Corporate Vice-President Microsoft Research Labs said "India has one of the fastest growing and most dynamic IT industries, and it's also a unique place in which to do cutting-edge research." Prior to joining the India lab, Rajamani headed the Software Productivity Tools group within Microsoft's Redmond research lab.

Courtesy : Money Control

IT skills gap delays adoption of new technology trends

A lack of skills and understanding could be holding back the implementation of new technological trends such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI).

New research from Capita Technology Solutions in partnership with Cisco surveyed 125 IT decision makers across four target industries - legal, finance, insurance, and manufacturing - to measure the disconnect between IT trends and the technology deployment and examine results by industry.

One key discovery is a rift between the relevance of a trend compared with the number of decision makers who say their industry has the skills to implement it.

While 70 percent of IT decision makers said the IoT was relevant to their business, 74 percent said they didn't have the skills to introduce IoT and 80 percent said they did not have the skills to capitalise on the data received from IoT. Only 30 percent said it was being implemented. Security remains the biggest challenge to IoT adoption, cited by 31 percent.

Similarly, 90 percent said big data was relevant to their business, but being implemented in only 39 percent of businesses and 64 percent didn't have the skills to recognise how they could use big data within their business.

AI is only being adopted by 25 percent of organisations with only eight percent saying it is being adopted in their own company. Eighty percent don't have the skills to implement or keep up to date with trends and developments in AI.

Nearly half (44 percent) believe there is no application for wearable technology in their sector. Cost was seen as the biggest barrier to adoption at 23 percent. Three quarters don't have the skills to implement wearables in their business and 76 percent said they don't have the skills to keep up to date with trends in wearable technology.

A vast majority, 78 percent, believe it is vital to keep up to date with the latest technology trends. Almost all agree financial gains can be made by responding to IT trends within their business and 86 percent agree that competitive advantage can be gained by responding to IT trends within their business.

“Whilst it is encouraging that levels of awareness around the strategic benefits of those trends are high, these results suggest more needs to be done to support businesses and help them close what is a substantial skills gap. Without the necessary skills and infrastructure needed to implement trends such as IoT and big data, businesses across the board will suffer long-term competitive disadvantage; it is up to us as an industry to find the best and right ways to deliver that support,” said Adam Jarvis, managing director, Capita Technology Solutions...

Courtesy : SCMagazineUK

Aditya Birla to merge Nuvo, Grasim

The Aditya Birla Group is merging two of its main companies, Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd (Nuvo) and Grasim Industries Ltd, both of which also serve as holding companies, in an attempt to create a stronger entity, and unlock shareholder value by spinning off and listing one of Nuvo’s subsidiaries, Aditya Birla Financial Services Ltd.

The merger will create an entity with yearly revenue of Rs.59,766 crore, net profit of Rs.4,245 crore and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, a measure of operating profitability, of Rs.12,000 crore.

The merger, announced on Thursday, will also mean the end of Nuvo’s existence. Aditya Birla Nuvo emerged in 2005 after the Aditya Birla Group decided to rename Indian Rayon and Industries Ltd (a company founded in 1956) and make it a vehicle to hold its businesses in the areas of finance, apparel and fashion, telecom and information technology (IT).

Today, around 80% of Nuvo’s revenue comes from three businesses: financial services, telecom, and fashion and apparel. It has exited the IT business, although it retains some of its older businesses such as linen, urea, viscose, and insulators.

Interestingly, it has spun off and listed its telecom business (Idea Cellular Ltd), and fashion and apparel business (Madura Garments was spun off and merged with Pantaloons Fashion and Retail that the Aditya Birla Group acquired from the Future Group).

Now, it plans to do the same with its financial business. If there is a pattern there, it is by design. Aditya Birla Nuvo was always seen as a vehicle for the larger group’s new businesses. The idea was to spin off and list those that succeeded, and sell those that didn’t look like they could become or challenge the No. 1 or No. 2 in their respective businesses (IT, for instance, was one business that Nuvo and the Aditya Birla Group exited).

The merger will make Grasim “one of India’s largest, well-diversified companies with a healthy mix of businesses with a steady cash flow and long-term growth opportunities,” said Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group. He added that it also simplifies cross-holdings.

Although the Birlas hold their stakes in the group’s companies through a clutch of investment and holding companies, larger companies within the group, such as Grasim, Hindalco Industries Ltd and Aditya Birla Nuvo, also hold stakes in each other and in other group companies.

Birla added that with “diverse businesses spanning manufacturing and services, the combined entity provides a play on India’s growth story”.

Shareholders didn’t agree. With news of the merger making the rounds for at least a few days ahead of the announcement, which came after market hours on Thursday, shares of Grasim took a beating. They ended at Rs.4,538.95 on the BSE, down 6.44%, on a day the benchmark Sensex rose 0.31%.

Courtesy : LiveMint

Microsoft acquires Beam interactive game live streaming service

Microsoft has acquired Beam, a Seattle-based interactive game streaming service that lets viewers play along with streamers as they watch. Beam’s model takes the mostly passive interaction that streaming fans may be used to from services like Twitch and YouTube, and adds the ability for viewers to interact with the streamer via crowdsourced controls.

Players interacting through Beam can direct the play of the person streaming, doing things like setting which weapon loadout they take into battle for multiplayer shooters, for example. It launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016, and won our Startup Battlefield competition. Visual controls provide viewers the ability to help players pick quests, and you can even assign challenges that alter the gameplay considerably from what you’d get via a typical play through.

Beam will join Microsoft’s Xbox  team, and “remains committed to its mission of importing users and streamers across platforms” according to Microsoft.

Beam founder and CEO Matt Salsamendi told me via email that Xbox’s community focus is specifically what made them a good fit for the young company.

“I’m really excited about Xbox’s focus on community,” he wrote. “Beam is fundamentally built on a connected group of passionate individuals that love gaming, and Xbox is super in tune with that.”

In a blog post announcing the news, Salsamendi explained that no immediate changes are planned for the platform, but that the Microsoft acquisition will help Beam grow the platform and add new features and game integrations thanks to the addition support the larger company can provide.

“Right now it’s business as usual!” Salsamendi wrote regarding product plans. “We just launched three brand new interactive integrations and we’ll continue to focus on making the Beam platform an awesome place for gaming communities that want to interact with their audience.”

No terms of the deal were disclosed. The company launched on January 5 this year, with an official debut of its interactive tools at Disrupt in May. Salsamendi will lead the Beam team from Microsoft’s Redmond campus, where they’ll operate under the Xbox engineering department.

In addition to wining TechCrunch Disrupt, the Beam team had raised around $420,000 in seed funding, and participated in Techstars Seattle’s 2016 class.

For Microsoft, picking up Beam gives it a way to build an in-house streaming service, and one designed for participatory play. In its blog post announcing the deal, Microsoft highlights Minecraft as an example of how Beam’s software can promote more social play, and it’s actually a title tailor-made to the kinds of interactions Beam provides. If Microsoft can use the acquisition to drive more community engagement among the younger audience that devours Let’s Play videos, then this should turn out to be a very worthwhile partnership.

Courtesy : Tech Crunch

Microsoft acquires Beam interactive game live streaming service

Microsoft has acquired Beam, a Seattle-based interactive game streaming service that lets viewers play along with streamers as they watch. Beam’s model takes the mostly passive interaction that streaming fans may be used to from services like Twitch and YouTube, and adds the ability for viewers to interact with the streamer via crowdsourced controls.

Players interacting through Beam can direct the play of the person streaming, doing things like setting which weapon loadout they take into battle for multiplayer shooters, for example. It launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016, and won our Startup Battlefield competition. Visual controls provide viewers the ability to help players pick quests, and you can even assign challenges that alter the gameplay considerably from what you’d get via a typical play through.

Beam will join Microsoft’s Xbox  team, and “remains committed to its mission of importing users and streamers across platforms” according to Microsoft.

Beam founder and CEO Matt Salsamendi told me via email that Xbox’s community focus is specifically what made them a good fit for the young company.

“I’m really excited about Xbox’s focus on community,” he wrote. “Beam is fundamentally built on a connected group of passionate individuals that love gaming, and Xbox is super in tune with that.”

In a blog post announcing the news, Salsamendi explained that no immediate changes are planned for the platform, but that the Microsoft acquisition will help Beam grow the platform and add new features and game integrations thanks to the addition support the larger company can provide.

“Right now it’s business as usual!” Salsamendi wrote regarding product plans. “We just launched three brand new interactive integrations and we’ll continue to focus on making the Beam platform an awesome place for gaming communities that want to interact with their audience.”

No terms of the deal were disclosed. The company launched on January 5 this year, with an official debut of its interactive tools at Disrupt in May. Salsamendi will lead the Beam team from Microsoft’s Redmond campus, where they’ll operate under the Xbox engineering department.

In addition to wining TechCrunch Disrupt, the Beam team had raised around $420,000 in seed funding, and participated in Techstars Seattle’s 2016 class.

For Microsoft, picking up Beam gives it a way to build an in-house streaming service, and one designed for participatory play. In its blog post announcing the deal, Microsoft highlights Minecraft as an example of how Beam’s software can promote more social play, and it’s actually a title tailor-made to the kinds of interactions Beam provides. If Microsoft can use the acquisition to drive more community engagement among the younger audience that devours Let’s Play videos, then this should turn out to be a very worthwhile partnership.

Courtesy : Tech Crunch

Nasa is partnering with six companies to build prototypes of space habitats

Nasa is partnering with six companies to build on ground full scale prototypes and concepts of human space habitats. The habitats are all orbital, space or deep space based, and are not meant to be used on a surface of a planet or a moon. Nasa is investing $65 million initially (Approximately Rs 433 Crore), with more investment planned further down the line. The companies that Nasa has partnered with are expected to bear 30 per cent of the cost. The companies are Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas, Boeing from Pasadena in Texas, Lockheed Martin of Denver, Orbital ATK of Dulles in Virginia, Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems of Louisville in Colorado and NanoRacks of Webster in Texas.

Bigelow Aerospace: Bigelow Aerospace will develop the Expandable Bigelow Advanced Station Enhancement (XBASE). The Xbase is an expandable habitat that is meant to be attached as a visiting module to existing space stations. The module will use technologies and techniques learnt after the recent successful deployment of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM)  at the ISS. the modules can potentially be used for stations in low earth orbit as well as deep space. The Xbase is being tested for commercial uses in the low earth orbit usage scenario. Multiple capsules of these kind can be strung together. The Xbase habitat is 330 cubic meters. The Xbase will be based on Bigelow’s B330 module, which is being developed for research purposes, space manufacturing projects, missions to Mars or the Moon, and even Space Hotels.

Boeing: Boeing is developing a modular habitat that is designed to be assembled in orbit. The capsule will be used to assess how humans can live and work in space for extended periods of time. The full scale prototype will be used to test interface standards, system functionality and critical technologies. The habitats are low cost, and very simple. They can be modified for deep space use in long term missions. The full sized module will act as a high fidelity test bed for routine functions of both crew and technologies. Boeing will be leveraging its experience in designing, building and maintaining the International Space Station for fifteen years for developing this modular habitat.

Lockheed Martin: Lockheed Martin is developing a logistics module that will be used with the Orion spacecraft. The Orion spacecraft is meant for resupplying the International Space Station, and ferrying crew to and from it. The Orion spacecraft is also designed for longer duration missions, including any potential Mars missions. The supply module from Lockheed Martin can be used for ferrying crew and equipment to any potential deep space habitats. The main component within the multi-purpose logistics module is the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS). The logistics module is also expected to provide communication support to the Orion spacecraft, as well as deep space habitats.

Orbital ATK: Orbital ATK makes the cargo supply ships for the International Space Station in the form of the Cygnus Spacecraft. The Cygnus Spacecraft will be the basis of the new prototype that Orbital ATK will develop, to be used in tandem with the Orion Spacecraft and other deep space modules. The interfaces between these modules will be tested. The cargo supply spacecraft derived design will be modified and tested for deep space exploration. It will also be modified to accommodate human spacefarers. The prototype will be used to come up with a road map that will lead to a long term mission to Mars.

Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems: Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems is also a cargo resupplier to the International Space Station. Both pressurised and unpressurised cargo is ferried in modules on board the Dream Chaser spaceplane. This is basically an unmanned reusable space vehicle. The habitat is based on the cargo module used for the ISS resupply. This habitat is being fine tuned to work with inflatable habitats simlar to the one being prototyped by Bigelow Aerospace, as well as the ECLSS module from Lockheed Martin. One of the objectives of the prototype is to make sure all the critical sub systems work seamlessly when assembled together. This habitat has a modular design. The key technology being tested is building a long term space habitat over three or four consecutive launches.

NanoRacks: This habitat is being developed by NanoRacks with a partnership with two other companies, Space Systems Loral and United Launch Alliance. The efforts are combined under the name “Ixion.” This is a cutting edge attempt at some outer space jugaad. The attempt is a feasibility study, to check how to re-purpose the propellant tanks of existing launch vehicles, into a habitat that can be occupied by humans. The propellant segment is called an upper stage in launch vehicles, and this is usually discarded after the propellant is used up to launch the vehicle. This is a cost saving measure, if it works, and can be used with many rocket systems.

If you have been noticing the moon on the edges of the images, then that is the region that Nasa wants to dominate in the next stage of the space race. The idea is to explore outward from the low earth orbit of the International Space Station, to the region covered by the orbit of the moon around the earth. This region is called cislunar space. All the habitats that Nasa is developing is designed for cislunar space as well as any eventual explorations towards Mars.

Courtesy : Tech Firstpost

IFTTT recipes now embed directly on 3rd party apps like Ring, Roger and Lifx

IFTTT made a name for itself as a platform for people to easily build (or pick up pre-built) scripts to automate tasks in and between various apps — say, to turn on the air conditioner using your home’s smart thermostat when you car tells it that you are 20 minutes’ drive away. Now, as part of the company’s bid to grow in ubiquity, it is taking the next natural step: instead of expecting users to find or write those recipes themselves on IFTTT, it will now allow developer partners to embed those IFTTT recipes directly in their own third party apps.

Third-party embeds will now be open to all developers, but for today, the first group of partner companies to host IFTTT recipes are video doorbell Ring, money manager Qapital, pollution monitor Foobot, garage manager Garageio, car monitor Automatic, air quality tracker Awair, video doorbell Skybell, smart bulb company LIFX, weather info provider Bloomsky, messaging app Roger, home security startup Abode, and Stack Lighting.

For now, the service will be free for developers to use, said Linden Tibbets, the co-founder and CEO of IFTTT.

While IFTTT works with any app, more recently the company has seen an opportunity in working with connected hardware startups, creating recipes to automate those services and helping a fragmented market work more harmoniously. Many of the companies in this initial group are part of that push.

IFTTT says that several of the companies launching today have been working on integrations in private beta for the last year (and most have been working with IFTTT already: see for example Roger, Qapital, Ring, Foobot, Automatic, Garageio). In the meantime, we’ve seen competitive offerings emerge from others like Microsoft and Hive.

IFTTT, which since 2010 has raised some $39 million in funding from investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Betaworks and NEA, today provides recipes for some 330 apps, but it doesn’t disclose metrics on just how many users it has or how often those recipes are tapped.

But the logic of why IFTTT would flip these services out to be discovered on apps themselves is pretty clear.

The mantra of what IFTTT does is to simplify some of the mechanics and automation behind how a lot of new and often siloed apps and services work today, but for the vast majority of users, actually going to another website to pick up these recipes represents a leap too far.

Putting the recipes directly in the apps themselves makes it far more likely that they will be used, and giving them to users of, say, connected devices will make those devices more functional, and therefore more likely that users beyond early adopters will buy them.

“We think bringing IFTTT into our app is going to be key for user adoption, and we’re excited to see how these new users react to suddenly getting so much more out of Garageio,” said Zachary Dziczkowski, CoFounder & CEO of Garageio, in a statement.

The hurdle of getting IFTTT recipes to be understood — let alone used — is something that Tibbets himself acknowledges.

“Our biggest challenge is that we have taken a different path to others,” he told me in an interview. “It’s taken a lot of work to explain what we do to people. We are not AI, or a smart thermostat, or a smart virtual assistant, but we believe any one of those things can benefit if they use the information locked into each one of those silos. And that is what we are focused on. That is the challenge. That is a blessing and a curse.”

Courtesy : TechCrunch

Norway's Yara acquires Tata Chemicals' urea business for $ 400 million

Norwegian chemical company Yara International ASA has entered into an agreement to acquire the Tata Chemicals Ltd’s Babrala urea plant and distribution business in Uttar Pradesh for $ 400 million (about Rs 2670 crore) on a debt and cash free basis, including normalised net working capital.

“This acquisition represents another significant step in our growth strategy, creating an integrated position in the world’s second-largest fertiliser market. India has strong population growth and increasing living standards, and significant potential to improve agricultural productivity,” said Svein Tore Holsether, president and chief executive officer of Yara.

The plant has an annual production of 0.7 million tonnes ammonia and 1.2 million tonnes urea, and generated revenues and EBITDA of respectively $ 350 million and $ 35 million in the financial year ended March 31, 2016. The plant was commissioned in 1994, and is the most energy efficient plant in India, with energy efficiency on a par with Yara’s best plants.

“We are impressed with the world-class operations we have seen in Babrala. The workforce is committed to high HESQ standards, and has a solid safety track record. This well operated plant and its highly skilled employees will make an excellent addition to Yara's global production system,” said Holsether.

Yara has operated in India since the 1990s, focusing in recent years on premium product sales in the West and South of the country, delivering strong volume growth and margins well above Yara's average for the region.

“Our growth in India can be further accelerated with this acquisition, creating a larger market footprint for Yara and enabling increased premium product sales in particular. We will place great emphasis on successful integration of the operations, and will put in place an integration team consisting of highly experienced Tata Chemicals and Yara employees, the latter from both our existing India operations and our regional management,” said Terje Knutsen, SVP and Head of Yara Crop Nutrition.

The agreement will be subject to regulatory approvals and sanctioning by the relevant courts in India, a process which is expected to take 9-12 months after which closing of the transaction can take place.

Courtesy : Business-Standard

Facebook has come up with a Plan B for bringing the internet to India

India already chose free and open internet over what Facebook had to offer once. But second time’s the charm, right?

Facebook is launching ‘Express Wi-Fi,’ a program that will allow customers to purchase low-cost data packages from their local internet service provider to access the fast internet via local hotspots. Although the company has not announced a commercial rollout date, it has already tested a pilot version with 125 rural wifi hotspots, according to the BBC. “We are currently in the early stages of testing Express Wi-Fi with multiple local ISP partners in India,” a Facebook spokesperson told Quartz.

The social media giant’s last outing in India was met with heavy backlash. Internet.org, its free service launched in February 2015 , irked net neutrality supporters by limiting access to sites handpicked by Facebook—the opposition left CEO Mark Zuckerberg befuddled. A year after its release, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) put an end to the initiative. With its latest attempt to re-enter the Indian market, Facebook has removed this point of contention by ditching selective access altogether.

With user growth in US and Europe stalling, the company has to focus its efforts beyond the west. Second only to the US with 142 million monthly active users, India is a prime market for Facebook. “India is a country with tremendous potential in terms of new users,” Erna Alfred Liousas, a social media analyst at Forrester, told Quartz. “Since Express Wi-Fi isn’t stipulating which sites users can access, and isn’t free, hopefully they’ll receive a more favorable reception.”

Low internet speeds, weak infrastructure, and a lack of consumer trust are among Facebook’s challenges in a region like India. It faces another big threat: competition. “Google, Facebook, Amazon and many others (Uber, Alibaba, etc) are focusing attention on ‘the next billion’ users to come online in emerging markets as a huge opportunity,” Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Sandler wrote in an investor note in July.

Google even got a head start. In September 2015, the search giant announced plans to offer free high speed wifi in 400 railway stations across the country—at no cost—and by last month, the service was already active in 19 stations with 1.5 million people using the service.

If Facebook manages to provide internet services under its brand name in India, more people will likely become acquainted with and join the social network. Or at least that’s the plan.

Courtesy : Qz

HDFC, MAX Merge Life Insurance Business

The 30-year friendship of two top Indian businessmen has created the country’s most valuable insurer

Deepak Parekh and Analjit Singh have known each other for three decades.

A renowned banker, Parekh is credited with building India’s most valuable lender, HDFC Bank, over the past 22 years. Singh is the quintessential businessman who has dabbled in businesses ranging from healthcare to insurance and telecom, among others. While 71-year-old Parekh is among India’s most influential people, Singh, 62, is one the country’s richest men with a net worth of over $975 million.

On Aug. 08, the duo came together to add another dimension to their relationship.

They agreed to create what will be India’s biggest insurance company, estimated to be valued at $10 billion.

Their companies HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company—part of HDFC Ltd and India’s third-biggest private sector life insurer—and Max Life, the fourth-largest, have agreed to merge over the next 12 months.

The new company will be known as HDFC Life and is expected to be listed on bourses soon.

“We will have many challenges on the way,” HDFC chairman Parekh had said on June 18 before the merger was announced. “I have known Analjit for 30 years. We have a trust factor. It didn’t take time. Hope it works out.”

The HDFC board agreed to the merger on Aug. 08. Currently, HDFC Standard Life Insurance and Max Life have a combined market share of 10.8%, while the industry is dominated by the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). LIC isn’t listed so its exact market value is uncertain.
The deal, for which talks began in June 2016, will see HDFC Standard Life shareholders—mortgage lender HDFC, Britain’s Standard Life Plc, and others—owning 69% of the new company, while Max Life shareholders will get 31%.

What the deal means

Max Life will be merged with its parent company, Max Financial Services, which in turn will merge with HDFC Life.

Max Financial Services is already listed, and the combined entity would then be automatically listed. The merged entity will then “command a valuation” of over Rs 65,000 crore, HDFC Life managing director and chief executive Amitabh Chaudhary told reporters on Aug. 08.

Max Life’s promoter, Analjit Singh, will also receive a hefty payout of Rs850 crore as part of a non-compete fee over the next four years. “The proposed transaction brings together two large life insurance players with complementary capabilities,” HDFC Ltd said in a press release (pdf) on Aug.08.

“This deal creates one of the strongest life insurers in India, which has the ability to gain market share over time,” Santosh Singh, head of research at Shanghai-based Haitong Securities, said. “In my opinion, both the companies and their shareholders are going to benefit as it significantly strengthens the distribution and helps them provide insurance solutions at the reduced cost.”

In Asia’s third-largest economy, with a population of over 1.3 billion people, over 80% of the people don’t have access to any health insurance. India accounts for less than 1.5% of the world’s total insurance premiums despite being the second-most populous nation.

“Currently, the general insurance penetration in India is only 0.8% and life (insurance) is 3.2% of GDP,” consultancy firm KPMG said in a report. However, it expects the industry to be worth $400 billion by 2020.

It also helps that the Narendra Modi government relaxed foreign direct investment (FDI) norms for the sector this March. Of the 52 insurance companies in India, 24 provide life insurance while 28 provide general insurance.

“We see structural changes in the life insurance business over the coming years,” Analjit Singh said on Aug.08. KPMG also anticipates a big consolidation in India’s over $60-billion insurance market.

“The market was expecting some consolidation, but basically the expectation was one of the smaller companies, one or two smaller companies will get with some of the bigger private sector players,” SB Mathur, a former chairman of LIC, said. “This is a welcome surprise.”

Courtesy : QZ