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The BuSineSS of infoTech Vol XXXVii no 6 | June, 2019
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A Robot foR EvERy
EmployEE p. 18 lighting thE
futuRE p. 44 Riding on thE
WAvEs p. 32
An indepth report on digital payment trends in India and the future of mobile payments An indepth report on digital
How did
indians
Pay
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08 I
COVER STORY interviews24
Collaborating to Upgrade SkillS
—PRaSanna SaRambalE CEO, Data Centre Business & Group Head, Business Development, Sterling and Wilson
26
being Smart with FinteCh
—PRaTIk DIlIP aDanI CTO, Samco
30
it For adUlt learning programmeS
—VaRun DhamIja
VP, Pearson Professional Programmes
20
it For the elderly
—anuRaDha DaS maThuR
Director & Co-Founder, Samarth Technology Solution
28
making roadS leSS CongeSted
—knm RaO
CEO & Co-Founder, Quick Ride
How did
indians Pay An indepth report on digital
payment trends in India and the
future of mobile payments
| A CyberMedia Publication www.dqindia.com June, 2019 | 5
contents
06 Edit 07 DQ Team
regular D i g i t a l e n t e r p r i s e
18 A Robot for Every Employee
32 Riding On the Waves 52 Are We Losing Privacy?
54 Skilling Workforce
56 The Automation of Everything
58 RPA and Its Impact 64 The Road Ahead
44 Lighting The Future
49 Wings of Hope
s m a r t i n D i a
D i g i t a l e n t e r p r i s e
66 Decoding Data Protection 68 Partners in Efficiency6 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | Govindarajan Shrikanth
Executive Editor
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in Edit
Time Is Now To End innovation Myopia
Andy Grove wrote that a couple of decades back, but it beautifully, in a nutshell, defines the state of IT industry at this point in time. The traditional IT outsourcing models are aging and losing sheen by the day and its time to re-invent IT with focused innovation strategies to stay in the race. The computing industry is on the cusp of things. Many companies are struggling to make up for the lost growth and revenues as the industry by and large was caught in a disruptive nexus of forces that has manifested in an alphabet soup of abbreviations – ranging from IoT to SDN et al. Let’s go to the core question:
What ails growth? Beyond the sluggish economy, it’s the lack of innovation that’s slowing down things.
Most technology leaders you meet today lip syncs ‘Innovation’. But very little is said about what are they innovating? or How is it manifesting at ground zero? Particularly, when you look at an industry like IT outsourcing, in which every vendor has a global sourcing model- but at the end of the day, it’s a model each one struggles to differentiate. So if you ask the IT service providers- what is your Innovation Quotient (IQ), the chances are you might not get a lucid answer- because most of the jobs they do are still linear. But sadly, the IT outsourcers here in this part of the world are measured only based on their stock and quarterly performance and many fail to look at parameters like in what ways they have innovated enterprise IT organizations with their services or how much they invested in R&D or creating CoEs and stuff like that. But now the time has come wherein IT organizations are demanding more innovation from services providers, hence it is imperative they raise their bar by providing ‘Innovation Benchmarks’ in order to transition to the next orbit.
That leads to the critical question: Are Indian IT Outsourcers prepared for this change?
The answer is by and large a very fudgy one you get. For instance, I asked a leading IT industry CEO this question, and he gave a typical reply: “ The answer to your question is a ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. I left it with that, as probing further will only yield such ‘politically correct’
ambiguous answers. All said and done this process of innovation the industry has been talking for years. And if you look at the IT industry, the only way innovation can come about is non-linear innovation- wherein the emphasis is more on IP, products, platforms, service excellence et al as against the ‘time and material’ model. But we need to accept the fact that IT services in India is still mired in linearity and it will take a while for non- linearity to kick in and every company’s dream is to grow its non-linear revenues.
Bottom-line: In an Indian context, for those companies struggling to put in an innovation roadmap, the time is now for decoding the innovation cliché and end myopia by infusing more granularity, action, and clarity in terms of innovation in tangible terms.
“Not only has the basis of computing changed, but the basis
of competition has also changed too” – Andrew S. Grove,
Only the Paranoid Survive.
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eDitorial
editor And GroUP editor: Ibrahim Ahmad exeCUtiVe editor: Govindarajan Shrikanth ASSiStAnt editor: Soma Tah, Archana Verma, Supriya Rao
ASSiStAnt editor (SPeCiAl ProJeCtS): Ankit Parashar ConSUltinG editor: Anusha Ashwin MAnAGer deSiGn & CoVer deSiGn: Vijay Chand
8 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | CovEr story | Digital Payment
sunil Rongala, Rafaa Dalvi, Manish Kohli
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in
I
n FY 2018-19, there was a concentrated effort by the government and banks to increase the deployment of point of sale (POS) terminals; the target was 2 million terminals but the achievement was half of that.Merchant acquiring
For FY20, the government has now targeted a growth of 33%. It has also mandated the banks to deploy around 8.5 million POS terminals across rural areas and North- Eastern states. This move to promote deployment of POS terminals is an indication of the way ahead for the sector. Given this potential and the fact that the merchant acquisition infrastructure remains largely unfulfilled, several companies have entered the physical POS terminal market and made investments to install POS terminals across retail outlets.
The private sector banks led the way with POS terminal deployment both in terms of numbers and year-on-year growth. The total POS terminals deployment stood at 2.4 million for private sector banks (up by 31% from Mar-18), 1.1 million for public sector banks (down by 0.8% from Mar-18) and 0.07 million for foreign banks (up by 6.7%
from Mar-18).
A point to note is that while 29% of transactions on POS terminals were done using credit cards, they translated to 52% of the total amount spent on POS terminals. One reason is the conservative nature of Indian consumers who mostly use debit cards for their daily purchases and credit cards for purchasing high value items. In Q1 2019, the average ticket size on POS terminals for debit card transactions was INR 1,323 and INR 3,477 for credit card transactions.
How did indians Pay
An indepth WorldLine India report on digital payment trends
in India and the future of mobile payments
| A CyberMedia Publication www.dqindia.com June, 2019 | 9 CovEr story | Digital Payment
Makar Sankrati respectively. The trend of highest number of transactions recorded during festivals continued like previous year.
The merchant categories with the highest volume and value of transactions in Q1 2019 were Grocery, Restaurants, Petrol Stations, Apparel Stores and Specialty Retail which accounted for about 65% volume of transactions and about 40% value of transactions. The categories remained the same for both credit and debit card transactions.
Unified Payments interface
UPI has been key in steering the entire ecosystem of consumers, payment processors and banks towards digital transformation and it continued its monumental growth in 2019. The total volume of UPI transactions in Q1 2019 was 2.1 billion, a 328% increase from Q1 of the previous year. In terms of value, UPI clocked INR 3.5 trillion, up 495% from Q1 of the previous year.
Some banks have sent notifications to their customers stating that P2P (peer-to-peer) UPI transactions, from May 1, 2019, would be chargeable after 30 transactions while P2M (peer-to-merchants) transactions will continue to remain free. This is intended to prevent abuse of the UPI system where individuals are taking advantage of offers given on UPI transactions and will not impact genuine transactions. The uptick may slow-down slightly because of this but the increase in P2M transactions because of UPI 2.0 and the government’s plan to make QR code- based payment mandatory in all shops will likely nullify the negative effect.
In addition, the growth in volume and value of POS terminals didn’t translate to the total share of transactions done by cards (ATM + POS). While the transactions at POS terminals increased from 1.3 billion transactions in Q1 2018 to 1.6 billion transactions in Q1 2019 (up by 24.8%), the share of card transactions at POS terminals to total card transactions went up from 36% to 38% only.
Similarly, while the value of transactions at POS terminals have increased from INR 2.4 trillion in Q1 2018 to INR 3.1 trillion in Q1 2019 (up by 27.4%), the share of value of money spent through cards at POS terminals to total money spent through cards at POS terminals and ATMs went up from 24% to 27.6% only.
The above information is of particular interest because the number of POS terminals actually increased by 18.6% while the number of ATMs remained constant at 0.2 million during the year indicating that despite the push from the government to increase awareness about digital payments along with the sustained effort by banks to enrol merchants to join the digital payments platform, cash is still king.
RBL Bank, State Bank of India, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Corporation Bank, accounted for over 75% of the total terminals in the country. January was the month with the highest number of transactions in Q1 2019.
January 23 ranked as the day with the highest number of transactions but this should come as no surprise given the commencement of the Republic Day sale offers. The days with second and third highest number of transactions were January 12 and January 13 which were Lohri and
THE RESERVE BANK OF INDIA IN ITS LATEST VISION DOCUMENT NOTED THE DECLINE IN PAPER-BASED
CLEARING INSTRUMENTS AND OBSERVED A SIGNIFICANT GROWTH IN ACCEPTANCE INFRASTRUCTURE FACILITATING DIGITAL PAYMENTS DURING 2015-2018. IN THE YEARS TO COME, WE ARE CONFIDENT THAT INDIA WILL WITNESS OVER A 50 PERCENT RISE IN MOBILE-BASED PAYMENT TRANSACTIONS AS PROJECTED IN THE DOCUMENT
— Deepak Chandnani, MD, Worldline South Asia & Middle East
10 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | CovEr story | Digital Payment
Local players such as Paytm and PhonePe have been competing for market share in the digital payments space, facing stiff competition from the global giant Google.
They together process 80-90% of UPI transactions, of which Paytm leads in terms of transactions volume and Google Pay leads in terms of transactions amount. This essentially means that Google Pay is quite close to Paytm in terms of volume and way ahead of in terms of value.
Freecharge, Mobikwik, HDFC PayZapp, ICICI Pocket are the other players on the UPI platform. Aggregators like Ola and Uber are also issuing their UPI handles. Amazon Pay has finally marked its entry in the Indian P2P (peer- to-peer) transaction market; its entry in UPI payments was delayed due to data localisation and data privacy regulations and it had relied on providing online payment services via UPI apps like BHIM.
Also, with the upcoming WhatsApp Pay, the UPI platform is bound to break its transaction records in the coming months. UPI has the potential to transform the payments ecosystem in India and we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. Immediate Payment System (IMPS) continued to rise despite the growth in UPI and wallets, and showed a strong jump in Q1 2019. IMPS recorded 528 million transactions, a 71% increase from Q1 of the previous year. In terms of value, IMPS clocked INR 4.7 trillion, up 70.5% from Q1 of the previous year.
Card issuance
Card payment instruments remain the most preferred option among consumers primarily because of the ingrained behaviour of consumers to pay for items through
cards, credit or debit. Card issuance will see an uptick with the rise of several metro and smart city projects.
National Common Mobility Cards (NCMC) solution has the potential to digitalise transit payments like Bus, Metro, Cab etc. and other payment channels like toll, parking, small value offline retail payments and normal day-to-day retail payments. In addition to this, payments banks and aggregators are also set to introduce credit cards to a new all-digital consumer base.
There are about 925 million debit cards and about 47 million credit cards in circulation. Between March 2018 and March 2019, India added about ten million credit cards and 64 million debit cards. It is worth noting the number of debit cards started falling after hitting a high of 998 million in October, likely due to the mass closure of accounts with zero balances. In Q1 2019, the total number of credit card transactions was 466 million, an increase of 24.5% over the previous year and the total number of debit card transactions was 3.7 billion, an increase of 18.5% over the previous year.
In Q1 2019, total value of transactions done on credit cards was INR 1.6 trillion, an increase of 30.4% over the previous year. The total value of transactions done on debit cards was INR 9.6 trillion, an increase of 8.4% over the previous year. It is quite clear that debit cards are largely used for ATM withdrawals while credit cards for POS transactions. Also, consumers tend to make larger ticket size purchases at POS terminals when compared to debit cards. The challenge will be how to move ATM transactions into digital payment transactions which fits into the national agenda of going digital.
SOME OF THE KEY IMPEDIMENTS TO THE GROWTH OF DIGITAL PAYMENTS ARE LACK OF FINANCIAL LITERACY AMONGST SMALLER MERCHANTS, HIGH PROPENSITY OF HOUSEHOLDS TO SAVE IN CASH AND
THE UNORGANISED CASH-INTENSIVE SMES
| A CyberMedia Publication www.dqindia.com June, 2019 | 11 CovEr story | Digital Payment
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(Sunil Rongala, is VP, Strategy, Innovation & Analytics at Wordline India; Rafaa Dalvi is Senior Consultant, Strategy & Corporate Affairs at Wordline India and Manish Kohli is Manager, Marketing & Communications at Wordline India)
(Source: Worldline India)
THE NUMBER OF POINT OF SALE (POS) TERMINALS INCREASED TO 3.72 MILLION IN MARCH 2019, AN INCREASE OF 18.6%, FROM
3.14 MILLION IN MARCH 2018.
18 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | digital EntErPrisE | ROBOtiCS
shrikanth G
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in
A
fundamental transition is happening on both the supply and demand side of IT as automation which was a talking point a few years ago is at the threshold of becoming a baseline soon. One of the critical factors of automation of enterprise workflow and processes is Robotic Process Automation (RPA).what is rPa?
According to experts at Ui Path, they say that “Robotic Process Automation is the technology that allows anyone today to configure computer software, or a “robot” to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process.
A Robot for Every Employee
Robotic Process Automation or RPA, will radically change the workplaces
of the future
| A CyberMedia Publication www.dqindia.com June, 2019 | 19 digital EntErPrisE | ROBOtiCS
RPA robots utilise the user interface to capture data and manipulate applications just like humans do. They interpret, trigger responses and communicate with other systems in order to perform on a vast variety of repetitive tasks. Only substantially better: an RPA software robot never sleeps, makes zero mistakes and costs a lot less than an employee.”
According to a Gartner observation, “RPA tools mimic the “manual” path a human worker would take to complete a task, using a combination of user interface interaction describer technologies. The market provides a broad range of solutions with tools either operating on individual desktops or enterprise servers.”
the implications
What RPA is ushering has multifold ramifications. It takes us closer to the debate of whether 100% uptimes is a reality. At the heart of the RPA debate is the concept of “A Robot for every person”. This is indeed a radical thought that will completely change the workplaces of the future and one can imagine the impact if each and every employee so empowered with a robot.
In an interview to Technomy, Daniel Dines, Co-Founder and CEO of Ui Path remarked, “The robots are coming, but they aren’t what you think. Just as PCs appeared on every office worker’s desk in the 1980s, soon every worker could have their own software robot.”
Indeed this sets the tone and the context of the times
to come. Any debate of automation creates a job scare, but to an extent, it is a reality. In the context of Robots for every person, what it means is, it is a huge relief for employees to free away from a mundane task and focus on the big picture. At the same time, when an employee is doing only mundane jobs, then the job will be cannibalised with robots.
According to Gartner, Global RPA software is estimated to reach $680 million in 2018, an increase of 57 percent year over year, the RPA software spending is on pace to total $2.4 billion in 2022. Gartner estimates that 60 percent of organisations with revenue of more than $1 billion will have deployed RPA tools by the end of the year. By the end of 2022, 85 percent of large and very large organisations will have deployed some form of RPA. The growth in adoption will be driven by average RPA prices decreasing by approximately 10 percent to 15 percent by 2019, but also because organisations expect to achieve better business outcomes with the technology, such as reduced costs, increased accuracy and improved compliance.
Experts also caution that RPA is not a one-size-fits- all technology and there are cases where alternative automation solutions achieve better results. RPA solutions perform best when an organization needs structured data to automate existing tasks or processes, add automated functionality to legacy systems and link to external systems that can’t be connected through other IT options.
WHAT RPA IS USHERING HAS MULTIFOLD RAMIFICATIONS. IT TAKES US CLOSER TO THE DEBATE OF WHETHER 100% UPTIMES IS A REALITY. AT THE HEART OF THE RPA DEBATE IS THE CONCEPT OF “A
ROBOT FOR EVERY PERSON.” THIS IS INDEED A RADICAL THOUGHT THAT WILL COMPLETELY CHANGE THE WORKPLACES OF THE FUTURE
AND ONE CAN IMAGINE THE IMPACT IF EACH AND EVERY EMPLOYEE
SO EMPOWERED WITH A ROBOT
20 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | Digital EntErprisE | AppS
Dr. Archana Verma
x-archanav@cybermedia.co.in
—AnurAdhA dAs MAthur Director & Co-Founder,
Samarth Technology Solution Digital EntErprisE | AppS
Dr. Archana Verma
x-archanav@cybermedia.co.in
20 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication |
| A CyberMedia Publication www.dqindia.com June, 2019 | 21 Digital EntErprisE | AppS
G
ive us brief details about samarth technolo- gies’ work with the elderly from an it per- spectiveSamarth with its mission, is to bring happiness and peace of mind to the elderly and the children who care about them, has now begun to offer a full-range of family-quality services for elderly across the country, which may otherwise require as son or daughter to look after. These range from health and clinical care, ensuring safety and security, emergency response, home maintenance, errands, travel and even engagement and mental stimulation
The Samarth Care plan is delivered through a network of educated young women, who act as proxy daughters with a clear role to understand the concerns of the seniors and provide the last mile comfort. The proxy daughters are supported by a centralised operations team which manages regular communication, monitoring, a network of service providers, know-how and information. The combination ensures that the program is not just trustworthy and empathetic but also very resourceful and reliable.
The global survey of Indian elderly and their children gave some key insights:
• Elders are not very comfortable to use of apps as they exist today.
• There is a need to match the advancements in mobile technology with on-the-ground response system to
significantly reduce the negative impact of health- related events.
The Samarth Technology Solution is geared towards achieving following objectives to help elderly.
• Adapt the technical capabilities into elder friendly delivery
• Monitor the data to predict / recognise health and safety events
• Appropriately Respond to such events / predictions for suitable corrective actions
• Empower the stakeholders with information for most suited response.
• Small Value Added Services e.g. Reminders, task lists etc either directly managed by elders or supported thru Samarth’s support system to reduce mis-happening’s.
At the core of technology solution is the mobile app, which provides interface to collect information, trigger emergency response system, deliver and monitor services and build an empowered care giver network.
There is ongoing development to enhance the proposition leveraging deep learning with analytics through visuals, voice and ambient sensors remote monitoring of health, event-based trigger for emergency response e.g., fall detection, motion sensing etc., remote monitoring of safety and security and an analytic capability to identify early signals, for prophetic responses to situations best suited for independent elderly living.
IT For The elderly
Samarth Technology Solution helps the elderly people navigate
through the 21st century India by making IT apps user-friendly for
them. An exclusive interaction with its Director Anuradha Das Mathur,
who is also the Co-Founder and supports its industry alliances,
research and advocacy. Excerpts:
22 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | Digital EntErprisE | AppS
This “Backup elder care” helps employees reduce the amount of care giving work as well as stress that they end up carrying to work. For more details on how to use this visit their website www.samarth.community.
give us brief details about the Vedica scholars programme for Women
The Vedica Scholars Programme for Women is a unique alternative to the traditional MBA programme. The pro- gramme’s mission is to prepare women with potential to achieve fulfilling careers and create a cadre of successful women professionals for the 21st century. It is an 18-month full-time, residential programme with a re-imagined multi- disciplinary curriculum that has been carefully crafted to the expectations of employers today. The programme is a combination of classroom learning, hands-on work experi- ence, and mentoring and coaching by some of the most in- spiring academics and professionals of our times. A profes- sional certificate in Management Practice and Leadership is awarded on successful completion of the programme.
How do the elderly people manage and find the it solutions you provide in terms of usage?
In the rapidly aging population, the elderly are called upon to adapt to new technology and the demands of modern society. It is widely accepted that elder individuals show low adjustment to the advent of new technologies compared to younger generations, either because they do not have the technological experience or because of their current health status
Furthermore, at their effort to use new technologies, they usually face many difficulties deriving from demographic characteristics such as income, education, geographical location, possible disabilities, as well as difficulties related to the complexity of new technology.
Other contributing factors for this low adjustment to new technologies are the lack of incentives, economical obstacles, digital skills and appropriate training. A commonly held view is that the market is not currently investing enough on innovations for the elder users, such as comprehensive and user friendly services for healthier living conditions. In addition, many products and services often are not appropriate to the needs of elder users and exacerbating the sense of frustration
The main sources of information for the elderly are the Internet, thematic television channels and magazines. In their effort to take greater responsibility for their personal health, physical status and independent living conditions, the elderly users need to be more informed through the use of Internet, thematic television channels, magazines and other sources of information. We ensure this with a combination of a uniquely managed network of Care counsellors across the country, curated service partners and products, and proprietary media and community, which is backed by a strong backbone of technology that integrates services at the backend as well as delivers an effective customer experience to the users. Our care counsellors help the elderly with the technology.
Technology may involve the use of most simple everyday electrical appliances (TV, kitchen, vacuum cleaner, dishwasher etc.) or other more complex machines (ATMs, PCs, mobile phones etc.) premising the ability to properly use them and our care counsellors assist the elderly just the way they would do with their parents.
In is widely accepted that the use of new technology by the elderly population has a beneficial effect on their quality of life. It is an essential step and to ensure this we train and equip our care counsellors to help them to familiarize with technology, thus removing all fears of new technology use.
ThE MAin SouRcES of infoRMATion foR ThE EldERly ARE ThE inTERnET, ThEMATic TElEViSion chAnnElS And MAgAzinES. in ThEiR
EffoRT To TAkE gREATER RESPonSibiliTy foR ThEiR PERSonAl hEAlTh, PhySicAl STATuS And indEPEndEnT liVing condiTionS, ThE
EldERly uSERS nEEd To bE MoRE infoRMEd ThRough ThE uSE of inTERnET, ThEMATic TElEViSion chAnnElS, MAgAzinES And oThER
SouRcES of infoRMATion
24 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | digital EntErPrisE | talent
Dr. archana Verma
x-archanav@cybermedia.co.in
—PRaSanna SaRamBale
CEO, Data Centre Business & Group Head, Business Development, Sterling and Wilson
digital EntErPrisE | talent
24 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication |
Dr. archana Verma
x-archanav@cybermedia.co.in
| A CyberMedia Publication www.dqindia.com June, 2019 | 25 digital EntErPrisE | talent
C
ould we have a brief overview of sterling and wilson data Centre vertical, its location, ca- pabilities, future activities, goals etc.We started our Data Centre vertical 5 years back and are today recognised as one of the most credible Turnkey Data Centre EPC organisation in India. Sterling and Wilson provides turnkey data centre services to its clientele including Design, Build, O&M. Having executed multiple prestigious projects like Rajasthan State Data Centre, Vodafone, NSE, NSDL, we have eperience in handling project of any type and size. Recently, we have forayed into International market with new projects in Egypt and Nepal and plan to expand our growth in South- East Asia, West Asia and other regions.
Through our partnership with a German company
‘Data Centre Group’ which has numerous Modular DC installations in Europe, we are well placed to offer various high quality Data centre solutions including Modular and Containerised solutions.
what kind of certifications are in plan? are there any training programmes as well?
By partnering with Uptime Institute, Sterling and Wilson will be in a position to facilitate Uptime Institute’s Tier Certifications of Design Documents (TCDD), Constructed Facility (TCCF), and Operational Sustainability (TCOS) as well as the M&O Stamp of Approval for management and operations. This alliance also includes Sterling and Wilson as a promoter of the globally recognised ATD, ATS and AOS educational accredited designations. The collaboration will enable both Uptime Institute and Sterling
and Wilson to expand business further in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
what will be the segment of the society benefiting from these activities?
This partnership with Uptime Institute will enable both the organisations to engage further in the region with colocation, telecom, government, banking, PSU, NBFCs and Data Centres of all types and sizes. Sterling and Wilson will be known as a unique Data Centre player delivering value-added end-to-end services.
what service shall be provided by both partners?
Sterling and Wilson will promote the Uptime certifications (Tier Certifications of Design Documents (TCDD), Constructed Facility (TCCF), and Operational Sustainability (TCOS) as well as the M&O Stamp of Approval for management and operations). Sterling and Wilson will also be providing value added services to enable these certifications. This alliance also includes Sterling and Wilson as a promoter of the globally recognised ATD, ATS and AOS educational accredited designations. The collaboration will enable both Uptime Institute and Sterling and Wilson to expand business further in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
All Uptime Institute services will be performed directly by Uptime Institute.
This collaboration of both the companies will in turn be beneficial for many enterprises to improve their performance, efficiency and reliability of business-critical infrastructure.
CollaboraTIng To Upgrade SkIllS
Industrial skills-training and certification has acquired great value in today’s IT sector, in order to stay in tandem with the continuously evolving technology. Sterling and Wilson have tied up with the Uptime Institute to provide training and certification, which will be of relevance in many sectors.
In an exclusive interaction with Dataquest, Prasanna Sarambale, CEO,
Data Centre Business & Group Head, Business Development, Sterling and
Wilson, shared some of the features of this tie up. Excerpts follow:
26 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | digital EntErPrisE | FinteCh
Dr. archana Verma
x-archanav@cybermedia.co.in
—PRaTIk DIlIP aDanI CTO, Samco
beIng SmarT wITh FInTeCh
digital EntErPrisE | FinteCh
Fintech companies are now going forward using a lot of Smart technologies such as IoT, AI and ML.
Samco is one such Fintech company, experimenting with Smart-Tec in order to keep pace with the fast changing world. We had an exclusive interaction with its CTO,
Pratik Dilip Adani.
Excerpts follow:
give us brief details of the technology used by your organisations, especially ai and other related technologies.
We are using a lot of Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning technologies to analyse, process and give our customers real time actionable insights using which they can trade with ease. The idea is to shield the customers from millions of data points and just give them relevant information which is personalised rather than generic
| A CyberMedia Publication www.dqindia.com June, 2019 | 27 digital EntErPrisE | FinteCh
info, using which they can quickly decide and take action.
We have also built technology systems which are used in RankMF ratings and Stock ratings, thus enabling the best trading and investment ideas to our clients.
are these technologies developed in-house or has there been collaboration with other organisations?
Yes, we strongly believe in two things for our customers, to create long term wealth and to make sure our customers do not lose money. We significantly believe, that huge opportunity exists in solving both these problems and hence we develop our own product for which we have an excellent in-house team working on the latest technologies and helping us achieve the afore mentioned goals. All these technology systems are proprietary to Samco.
How do you keep your technological know-how updated with the fast moving developments in the it sector?
The ever changing technologies for innovation are advancing so quickly in our current business, in order to keep your technical skills up to date can be a difficult task, but it is extremely important for those in the tech industry, where fast-moving changes impact work dramatically. Hence we have our employees enrolled for online training programs apart from that we also have an internal knowledge-base managed by the internal active tech members.
what is the current state of fintechs in the indian market?
Globally, the Fintech industry is divided into Lending, Personal finance, Payments, WealthTech and Regtech.
We think of ourselves in the Wealthtech domain. Most of the Fintechs are concentrating on providing an execution- based platform. When a customer comes to their platform they assume that they know what they want to buy or sell.
We on the other hand, are making all our products in a way where besides being an excellent execution platform we get involved in decision making for the customer. Our Stocknote and RANKMF platforms are testament of this philosophy where we help our customers by using tech driven proprietary products to take an informed decision.
Our Giga trading engine provides auto-generated research so our clients can be abreast with the latest information
as soon as it is out. Also, our Smart SIP is another asset which allows investors to make automatic adjustments to market volatility along with the traditional SIPs to make higher returns compared to the traditional SIP. MosDex considers the margin of safety of stocks before investing.
How do you train your workforce to upgrade them- selves in the newly emerging technologies? what kind of training programme do you use?
Each employee is accessed on the basis of their current calibre. Further, the human resource and training team creates a personalised learning programme based on the availability of resource and time dedicated by the willing employee. Then comes the task of motivating the individual to learn more and implement to create and efficient product. We strive to induce the culture of learning, asset building and mentoring.
a) domain orientation :
Since we hire employees of various streams we make sure that they go through a domain training. This is a must for everyone in our company right from an intern to a Management role, everyone needs to go through it. Onboard trainings ideally start on the first day of employment and may carry on throughout the first year as needed.
b) technical development training :
Technical skills training is a mandatory employee education trait because it’s the primary way your employees will know how to technically do their jobs.
And for those who already know how to do their jobs, we make sure that they still have a lot to learn with our mentoring programs. We involve our Core experts in creating new training programs. Employees need to engage in ongoing learning on a regular basis to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies.
c) Products training
Product trainings can either be a part of on boarding for new joinees or can be available for any employees who need refreshers on the products and services offered by the organisation. This type of training can also be used to educate staff on newly introduced products, services or features in order to stay enlightened.
28 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | digital EntErPrisE | SmaRt City
Dr. archana Verma
x-archanav@cybermedia.co.in
—knm RaO
CEO & Co-Founder, Quick Ride
makIng roadS leSS CongeSTed
Using the IT technology in carpooling system can de-congest traffic on the roads. KNM Rao, CEO & Co-Founder, Quick Ride shares some details of this process with Dataquet.
Excerpts:
digital EntErPrisE | SmaRt City
T
ell us about your growth journey, milestones, serv- ices, number of riders etc Started in 2015, Quick Ride helps every car owner to build a carpooling culture and enable the urban commuters to start sharing the empty seats in their car with colleagues. We enable commuters to use technology in order to discover, connect and route-match with other carpoolers in a seamless and automated manner. We automate end to end process of carpooling and make it feasible for the urban commuter.With better use of vehicles, many more cars can be taken off the road every single day. This will go a long way in making cities cleaner, greener and reduce road congestion. With our service, colleagues from the same workplace or friends in the college can come together to share a ride. As soon as users request a ride on app, they are matched with car owners along their way and the car owner can choose with whom they would like to share a ride.
Today, we have 1.3+ Million Carpoolers doing 14+ Million Carpool
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rides, therefore saving 20,000+ Tonnes of Carbon Emissions. We are proud to state that seven out of Top- 10 IT Companies in India use our service. This has also resulted in 20%+ parking space Optimisation.
How are you enabling shared and sustainable mobility?
The challenge in a developing country like India is centred on traffic congestion, lack of solutions for the rising population and end-to-end connectivity. Majority of the daily commuters in urban cities travel to and from their workplace in their cars which are occupied by one person only. This has led to a surge in traffic density on our roads leading to elevated levels of congestion & pollution.
Alternate means of commutation are inconvenient, untimely or expensive. The only sustainable solution is for the commuters themselves to become awakened citizens and carpool on their daily commute, thereby, addressing these challenges and contributing to the economy.
While most of us are aware of car-pooling, we do not practice it either because of issues in coordination or lack of car-pooling matches. We are helping every car owner to build a carpooling culture and enable the urban commuters to start sharing the empty seats in their car with colleagues. We have automated the end to end process of carpooling to make the whole experience hassle-free.
We are building a large and self-sustainable carpooling network. This not only saves money on the consumer’s part but has helped saved thousands of tons of fuel and reduced carbon footprint by a mile. These environmental impacts provide higher levels of satisfaction than financial benefits. It also ensures optimal utility of vehicles.
How different are you from the competitors?
Ours is a real-time ridesharing app which connects the daily commuters with the car-pooling owners. The app helps user’s travel with friends, colleagues, and neighbors making their commute economical, eco-friendly, social, safe and convenient. Appended are the key differentiators that make Quick Ride unique from other car-pooling platforms:
• The commuter can choose his/her preferred rider, unlike other car-pooling apps where any driver partner will be assigned to a passenger every day, thus ensuring the ride is secure.
• The car owner can accept passengers request depending on the preferred pickup and drop location of the passenger (they can check if the passenger’s route
is the same as the car owners). No extra earnings or deduction policy is applicable for this, unlike other car- pooling apps where the driver partner has to pick and drop passenger from different locations.
• Our payment system is unique and it is based on car- pool points. This system facilitates the users to offer car-pool some days and take the carpool rides from others using same points earned.
• The platform is built on principles of no inconvenience for car-poolers. On your route, your time, your choice of people. This makes car-poolers to engage.
• Enterprise security features with customisability to each enterprise requirements.
• We’re the first one to introduce Features like Live ETA in car-pooling segment you can schedule ride instantly, Schedule in advance or schedule recurring rides.
• We use advanced learning with analytics, to ensure a reliable match with carpoolers, route, time, the destination for a smooth overall experience.
• We have the largest base of Female carpoolers across the country, reinforcing the Trusted Brand reputation.
• Our marketing strategy is unique and it focuses on building carpooling culture than just downloading the product.
what is the roadmap for the company in the coming years?
Our vision is to increase the awareness about carpooling among Indian citizens and corporates and become the preferred mode of a daily commute across top metros in India. Today, motor vehicles are significant contributors to the poor air quality. Our goal is to reduce one million cars off the roads every day, thus, contributing to decongestion and reducing the pollution levels.
We’re operational in major metro cities such as Delhi- NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Trivandrum and Kochi. The goal is to create 1 Million carpooler network now in each metro city for hassle free commuting. Our vision is to increase the awareness about carpooling among Indian citizens and corporates and become the preferred mode for daily commute. Today, motor vehicles are significant contributors to the poor air quality. Our goal is to reduce one million cars off the roads every day, thus, contributing to decongestion and reducing the pollution levels by removing at least 5000 Ton Carbon Emission every day. We will continue to expand across all the developing cities in India to enable a hassle free travel for commuters.
30 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | digital EntErPrisE | talent
Dr. archana Verma
x-archanav@cybermedia.co.in digital EntErPrisE | talent
—VaRun DhamIja
VP, Pearson Professional Programmes
IT For adUlT learnIng programmeS
Adults have increasingly begun to feel te
need to re-skill and upgrade their skills in the professional arena nowadays. At the same time, with their work and family commitments, they are not able to attend regular courses. In such a scenario, online professional courses come handy to them, especially if they’re powered by the new-age platforms.
Varun Dhamija, VP, Pearson Professional Programme shares details about such courses in an exclusive interaction with
Datquest. Excerpts
follow:
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W
hat are the trends among adult learners wanting to learn professional courses?Please give figure, statistics, charts etc if any.
With the advent of new technologies, job dynamics have undergone huge changes making re-skilling the key essence for better career option. Nurtured in an education-oriented culture, Indian professionals realise the need and are pursuing or opening to the idea of short courses to upgrade and up-skill. A well-structured non-degree courses with measurable impact have the potential to enhance learning and provide an opportunity to understand domain concepts like artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, blockchain amongst others.
We recently conducted Pearson Study of Adult Learners across six countries aimed at understanding adult learner behaviour and interest in non-degree programmes and certificates. The study revealed that 27% of Indian learners are already pursuing short-term courses while 28% of Indian adult learners plan totake-up single subject short term-course with one-time fee.With reference to the adoption and demand for degrees, 46% of Indian learners plan to do post graduate and 39% are currently pursuing BA degree courses.
The study further revealed that most of the Indian learners are keen on short courses, of which 23% of learners prefer qualification awarded by a professional body. In fact, 66% of adult learners prefer online education indicating the growth in demand of online courses. While India is making a headway in digitization of education, blended learning is gaining pace with the Indian learners and professionals. Though 32% of adult learners prefer complete online courses, the demand for blended learning is growing substantially as 49% of adult learners prefer a
“blended” option to continue education.
Changing information consumption patterns are also reflected in the choice of course format, with 22% of learners selecting online courses with the video lecture format. Though the rise of E-learning has helped encourage students to take on more responsibility for acquisition of knowledge, 32% of learners across India still prefer teacher-led learning followed by self-directed learning at 26%.
give some details about the it courses that are popular among adult learners.
In today’s dynamic business landscape, advancement of technology has created seismic shifts in industries, making many old job roles irrelevant and creating need for new skills. According to a NASSCOM report, up to 40% of the
estimated four million workforce in India need re-skilling over the next 5 years to keep pace with automation and changing skill needs in various industries.
Hence, courses in newer technologies especially in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data & Analytics, Cloud Com- putingprovide immense opportunities for career growth.
Also, the courses such as Web Development, Internet Application Development and Computer Programming are the most popular under Computing & Information Technology.
From mature technologies, there is a high demand in the areas of cybersecurity, programming, networking and project management.
How important are certifications in adult it courses?
who provides these certifications?
In recent years, certificates have become increasingly popular, as students have begun concentrating more on skills needed in the workforce. It is an important element for employees to exhibit mastery over the knowledge they possess. Additionally, this helps the corporation to deploy talent on projects requiring an advanced skill set. In many cases, we have seen that clients for IT companies seek data on the certified talent that can be deployed for their needs.
Professional programmes are important for adult learners and these certifications are mostly provided by learning companies and eco-system providers.
is it essential for corporate companies to tie up with educational institutions to provide training programmes?
This debate has ended. Corporations have realised that in today’s fast-moving world it is better to tie up with an institution that specialises in learning and training.
Our LearnIT portfolio has online courses that focus on accelerated learning in the shortest possible time. These courses are global and are consistently rated in the top 50 courses on the Safari learning platform. Key features include: facilitated by leading experts on future trends and the most desired technologies, Learn anywhere, anytime, on any device and concepts are demonstrated live with real use cases and step-by-step, easy to follow exercises.
One big move that we are making is building assessments, knowledge checks and projects that will help test and demonstrate mastery. All on this on a same learning management system will make learning experience superior and the results measurable for the learning & development community.
32 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | digital EntErPrisE | e-COmmeRCe
DQ Bureau
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in
T
he Indian E-commerce and consumer internet sector has had multiple waves of entrepreneurship but it was in the last decade when the inflow of large amounts of capital from marquee global investors made its way to Indian shores and cemented itself as one of the most exciting destination and area for innovation and disruption.The factors fuelling this digital economy over the last decade are manifold such as sustained growth in disposable income, the rise of internet penetration, availability of affordable smartphone, low mobile data tariffs, improved digital literacy, creation of digital payment acceptance infrastructure, continued support
An indepth EY report on the trends in E-commerce in Hyperlocal, EdTech and B2B sectors
and stimulus provided by the Government through programmes (Start Up India, Stand Up India, Make in India). With an ecosystem and systematic enablers in place, companies have taken to the challenge to solve relatively mundane problems that have also had significant disruption in traditional industries. India currently has over 430 million internet users, however digital transactions is still low and this provides for a massive opportunity for growth and expansion for e-commerce and consumer internet companies.
The sector is expected to reach $200 Bn by 2027, and is a significant avenue to provide employment and building micro-entrepreneurship in the country.
Riding on the waves
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THE GROWING DIGITAL ECONOMY COUPLED WITH RISING PER CAPITA INCOME, AND CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS PRESENTS A HUGE MARKET POTENTIAL THAT START-UPS ARE TARGETING WITH TECHNOLOGY-LED DISRUPTIONS. THE HIGH GROWTH POTENTIAL AND THE SIZE OF THE MARKET IS ATTRACTING SIGNIFICANT INTEREST FROM PRIVATE EQUITY (PE) AND VENTURE CAPITAL (VC) FUNDS TO INVEST IN INDIA’S E-COMMERCE AND CONSUMER INTERNET SECTOR
— Padmanabh Sinha, Chairman IVCA Managing Partner, Tata Opportunities Fund
channel, etc all with a target of increasing sales and gaining customers while keeping convenience at its very core. Companies are now pivoting their ‘brick and mortar’ stores to experience centres.
data driven personalization: Providing customers product of choice based on past preferences or current searches have reaped rewards in terms of repeat customers across formats. This ‘Digital Gold’ allows for business to understand user behaviour and will continue to play a key role in shaping go to- market strategies. With the demographic diversity of India, and the volume of customers’ onboarding services steadily increasing, harnessing relevant data to provide granular level personalisation will not only help customers but also provide an effective feedback loop for companies to tailor their process to the targeted customer base.
Another key development impacting this sector has been an evolving regulatory environment. Government regulations according to the Press Note 2 and recently released draft E-commerce policy have significant impact on companies in this segment. In order to comply with the current direction of the policy, companies need to adopt various strategies including change current operating model which would lead to increased cash burn, and stress on current supply chain network. In addition to the above, the draft policy also focuses on data and associated ownership as it suggests to treat data as a ‘national asset’ which needs to be regulated in terms of cross-border data flows, access / storage of data etc.
In 2018, 7 companies in the sector reached unicorn status proving investor confidence and willingness to back innovative products and services. Early 2019, has also continued to witness big early stage investments across sub-segments of E-commerce and consumer internet companies like Softbank’s investment in Delhivery and Firstcry, Sachin Bansal’s investment Ola;
other companies like 1mg, Zolostays and Medplus have also successfully raised investments. A surge in their offerings by helping not only solve issues but also help in onboarding new customers to the digital arena.
vernacular: One of the major barriers for adoption of digital services is the availability of content in local Indian languages. By 2021, the number of internet users in India using local languages will be 536 Mn, exceeding the number of internet users using English.
With a growing base of Indian language users from both urban and tier 2/3 cities, it is essential that companies provide full stack of services available in the users’ language of choosing. Voice search is another important access point that needs to be enabled and optimized by industry players, which will certainly make for a convenient shopping experience and also keep bringing more consumers online.
omni-channel strategy: Offline-online play for retail chains and online companies provides for a much broader interaction touch-points with customers.
We have seen a series of new models that are being deployed such as ‘shop & drop’, ‘brick to click’, ‘click to brick’, ‘Manless stores’, ‘Integrated buying’, omni-
34 | June, 2019 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | digital EntErPrisE | e-COmmeRCe
investments
OYO, Swiggy, Byjus, PayTm Mall, Pine Labs, Zomato, Udaan, PolicyBazaar, CureFit have collectively raised a lion’s share ($4.6b in 2018) of the total investments into this segment. Majority of funding is towards building supply chain; expanding into new segments;
global expansion; acquisition or consolidation; bring innovative product offerings to the market.
Further, the recent exits recorded by the investors in the recent past have also proved the trust is well placed by the PE / VC community in the start-up ecosystem. The Walmart-Flipkart deal is one of the largest deals in 2018, with the $16 billion acquisition,
big investors have made 60% return on investment and has bolstered potential of the sector growth indicators.
This deal inspires other companies to expand and grow and has also provides stimulus to new and existing investors who have made significant gains in this transaction. In addition to this there has been US$1.7 billion M&A/strategic Investments in the sector. Other key investments made to help consolidation in the marketplace and/or secondary transitions are Alibaba’s investment in BigBasket and PayTm, Tencent’s investment in Dream11, Naspers investment in Byjus and Swiggy, have shown that Indian start-up ecosystem is thriving and is poised for next level of growth.
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IN ORDER TO COMPLY WITH THE CURRENT
DIRECTION OF THE POLICY, COMPANIES NEED TO ADOPT VARIOUS STRATEGIES INCLUDING CHANGE CURRENT OPERATING MODEL WHICH WOULD LEAD TO INCREASED CASH BURN, AND STRESS ON CURRENT SUPPLY CHAIN NETWORK
— Ankur Pahwa, Partner and National Leader, E-commerce and Consumer Internet, Ernst & Young
The growth projected in the sector, certainly augurs well for not only companies but also investors. There is also a new class of angel investors comprising experienced professionals and successful entrepreneurs who are investing alongside institutional investors, which helps investee companies source talent, gain operational and strategic benefits. Looking at this space, execution of strategies for better operational management and unit economics as well as greater control on the cash burn are important; but companies also need to constantly innovate and engage consumers more effectively to continue on the journey of keeping them online.
This section has been contributed by Ankur Pahwa, Partner & National Leader, E-commerce & Consumer Internet, Ernst & Young.
Hyperlocal
There has been a paradigm shift in terms of the lifestyle preferences and buying trends among Indian consumers over the last decade. Urban India has gradually embraced consumerism and is increasingly opting for seamless services. The “near me” concept is catching up with the consumers with more and more large and small players entering the “hyperlocal” space.
Growing internet penetration, rise in the number of people using smartphones and increasing disposable incomes have acted as a catalyst for the hyperlocal sector while reshaping customer behaviour and expectations. Hyperlocal E-commerce industry in India has been significantly driven by growing numbers of
start-ups, enhanced investments in last couple of years and “on-demand delivery” preference.
The services delivered through hyperlocal business models have always had a large market, be it concierge, grocery, food or pharma. Though the sector witnessed a temporary slump in terms of deal activity as scale became a challenge with the pressure on unit economics, any optimization of logistics cost would have a direct impact on customer experience.
The PE/VC interest in hyperlocal delivery was revived with Google investment in Dunzo. Companies like Swiggy, Zomato, Grofers, Milkbasket, Dailyninja, etc.
were able to raise funds for expansion. Companies focused on improving unit economics by improving order densities, frequency of delivery to achieve operating efficiencies and use technology to optimise operations and improve customer experience.
Latest fund raised by Swiggy has also been made to enable the company to launch operations into newer territories, acquire satellite kitchen companies/brands in order to improve unit economics. While hyperlocal delivery has been primarily associated with grocery and food delivery services, there are also other areas of applications including E-pharmacy, concierge services etc. Subscription services providing regular customer engagement are also strong enablers, this is only a small fraction of the potential market.
Considering the recent developments and market trends, hyperlocal space will see more companies, including big players like Ola, Swiggy, Bigbasket etc.,
