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Airtel launches Work@Home for business continuity

by | May 18, 2020 | , ,

Airtel Business, the B2B arm of telecom major Bharti Airtel, has launched new Work@Home solutions to provide business continuity for enterprises. These enterprise-grade solutions are designed to enable employees operate efficiently and securely from their homes.

The solutions comprise a range of connectivity options, including wired and wireless. Also bundled are security solutions and a host of immersive collaboration tools such as Google Meet, Cisco Webex, and Zoom. Better World sees this as a cost-effective means for enterprises to enable work-from-home (WFH) solutions for their employees, without the need for procuring additional VPN licenses separately.

With work from home becoming the new normal, enterprises are facing several issues to pause and rethink their existing work and workplace models. (Read: Work-from-home even after Covid-19 and What it takes to secure IT in Covid-19 era?). Robust internet connectivity remains a primary concern for all companies that have allowed their employees to work from home for an indefinite period.

“These are unprecedented times and businesses are adapting to the evolving environment with new way of working. For a large proportion of employees, working from their homes is set to become the new normal. Airtel Work@Home is yet another innovation to ensure that our B2B customers are able to empower their people with best-in-class connectivity and digital tools to drive business continuity,” said Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO-Airtel Business in an official statement.

Airtel has said that the new remote working solutions would be available as essential and add-on bundles and allow businesses to customize their own plans. Users are provided with an option to select ultrafast broadband with up to 1Gbps speed, high-speed 4G corporate Mi-Fi devices with complimentary G Suite pack, corporate postpaid mobile plans with complimentary G Suite Pack, 4G data SIM with complimentary G Suite, and MPLS over Airtel 4G. The solutions suite also includes a host of immersive collaboration tools such as Google Meet, Cisco Webex, and Zoom.

According to Airtel, Work@Home solutions provide the flexibility to bundle a wide range of services based on employee-specific remote connectivity requirements and bulk procurement on a company paid model. All its corporate customers are well supported by a dedicated call center and fault resolution teams

From a price standpoint, Airtel Corporate Broadband starts at Rs 799, Priority 4G Data SIM with Free G-Suite at Rs 399, and Corporate Mi-Fi with Free G-Suite with 50GB 4G data per month starting Rs 399 plus Rs 2,000 (one-time device cost). Interestingly, the company is also offering priority 4G network to all its platinum corporate postpaid customers and cutting-edge voice over Wi-Fi (VoWifi) technology for superior indoor coverage.

Airtel is not the first telco to repackage its solutions to make it more suitable for remote workers. Earlier this month, Reliance Jio had rolled out a new quarterly work-from-home plan, starting from Rs 999 with 3GB per day data benefit for 84 days and unlimited calling within its network. In the yearly category, it launched Rs 2,399 plan offers which offers 2 GB of high-speed internet data per day for validity of 365 days.

Tech M using AI to help find Covid-19 cure

by | May 16, 2020 | , ,

Makers Lab, the research and development (R&D) arm of Tech Mahindra, a company that provides digital transformation, consulting, and business reengineering services and solutions, is leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to conduct research and help find potential therapeutic drugs for potential coronavirus treatments. This may be seen as a important effort in using AI to find a Covid-19 cure.

In an official release shared with analysts and media, the company said that it was collaborating with renowned bio-scientists for plausible therapeutic drugs and research laboratories for synthesizing and testing these compounds.

“The Covid-19 disease continues to disrupt the socio-economic order, impacting lives and livelihood globally. As a leading global digital transformation provider, Tech Mahindra is not only committed to ensure the well-being of our employees, customers and partner ecosystem; but we are also invested in finding a potential cure for Covid-19 by leveraging cutting edge and futuristic technologies like Artificial Intelligence,” said CP Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra in the release note.

“Our objective was to prevent the entry of virus into human host cells such as lung airway epithelial cells. This is important because the high transmission rate of Covid-19 is attributed partly to the high affinity binding and entry of the virus into host cells. Once the virus cannot enter the host cell, it is harmless,” said Nikhil Malhotra, global head of Makers Lab, Tech Mahindra in the statement.

The R&D team has used Molecular docking approach because of high transmission rates of Covid-19. Molecular docking enables search for therapeutically potent drugs and molecules in real time, to find compounds that can act as inhibitors against a viral protein computationally. Tech Mahindra claims to have conducted molecular docking studies across 19 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ligands and anti-viral drugs on the main protease of the virus.

Tech Mahindra notes that more work was needed to be done to move the process from molecular docking to actual drug design, testing, and drug development at scale. This is just the first step, where computational analysis can reduce the amount of time taken to narrow down the search amongst the vast array of molecules present in the process of finding a cure to Covid-19.

See also: How smartphones could be Covid-19 testing game changers.

About Tech Mahindra’s Makers Lab

As part of the TechMNxt charter, Tech Mahindra’s Makers Lab is focused on developing future-ready solution by leveraging next gen technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality/ Virtual Reality, 5G – Network of the future. There is a range of business problems that Makers lab aims to solve in the future to enhance citizen services and customer experiences.

Buzz of the week: Will FB–Jio deal create magic?

by | Apr 26, 2020 | , , ,

The recent announcement made by Facebook to invest ₹43,574 crore for a 9.9% stake in Reliance Industries Ltd.’s Jio Platforms has created enormous interest in the Indian market (see details of the FB-Jio in this RIL release).

The coming together of Reliance Jio, with nearly 400 million telecom subscribers; and Facebook, with about 300 million Indian users, is a significant market development by all measures. It has the potential of giving restless nights to their rivals. At the same time, it could raise the interest of Facebook’s rival digital behemoths such as Google in RJio’s rival telcos such as Airtel. Consequently, the attractiveness of India’s telecom sector may be expected to go up in terms of valuation, global partnerships and capital raising.

No wonder, while Reliance Industries’ shares jumped 10% on the deal, Airtel’s shares too rose by a notional 1%. As part of the agreement, WhatsApp is expected to strengthen Jio’s new retail business on the JioMart platform while Jio Platforms will support small businesses on WhatsApp.

Though onlookers see the FB-Jio deal largely disrupting India’s retail sector, it is also expected to revolutionize many future ideas. After all, a key challenge that India has been facing to take its digitization efforts to the next level has been the absence of a cohesive ecosystem, which the partnership could help address.

The path, however, is not without some tough challenges.

Today, the industry offers several fragmented channels to telecom and digital users—from payment services to collaboration tools and entertainment. Both small businesses and consumers have multiple choices to opt from. While this is great for users, not many people like the idea of using multiple mobile apps for different purposes. There was a brief period when, after demonetization, Paytm was emerging as the de facto player, but that is no longer the case. Today, it faces strong market competition from giants such as Amazon and Google, as well as from homegrown players such as PhonePe.

Facebook, thanks to its incredibly popular WhatsApp messaging services, is sitting uniquely in the world’s fastest growing marketplace. And by collaborating with Reliance Jio, country’s largest telecom player, they together have the potential of creating a one-stop digital shop that India has long been waiting for.

It is worth noting that while Reliance Jio already has a license for its JioMoney payments platform, WhatsApp is yet to receive a license for rolling out a payment service for all its users in India (it has got the clearance to do a phased rollout, while the final approval remains subject to meeting compliance all requirements set by the government).

With the FB-Jio deal in place, the duo could leverage each other’s capabilities for mutual benefits and compete with existing payment providers in a major way

Besides retail and payment services, if executed precisely, this alliance could also pave the way for Jio to offer exclusive services such as virtual education, premium mobile conferencing, food delivery, digital entertainment among others instantly using WhatsApp.

It is significant that just two days after the deal, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced new collaboration and conferencing features and capabilities for WhatsApp.

WhatsApp, being the favored mode of communication for a majority of smartphone users in India, indeed has the potential to drive Jio’s ambitions of becoming the largest mobile digital player in the world. More so, with most of the population expected to stay indoors even after the lockdown is gradually phased out, the market will need innovations and digital products that can meet consumer need at their convenience. It is not mere coincidence that the FB-Jio deal has come through when the world is still adjusting to the social distancing conditions triggered by Covid-19.

On a concerning note, this deal also proposes a risk of monopoly, and may invite scrutiny from authorities such as Competition Commission of India.

GlobalLogic earns ‘Great Place to Work’ badge

by | Apr 21, 2020 |

GlobalLogic, a leader in digital product engineering, has received Great Place to Work Certification by the Great Place To Work Institute, the global authority on building, sustaining and recognizing high-trust, high-performance culture at workplaces. GlobalLogic has been recognized for creating and sustaining an exemplary employee culture, and for creating shared values around performance in their organization. This prestigious recognition is earned based on extensive ratings provided by its employees in anonymous surveys.

“As a services company, our people are the most important element of our business. It gives me immense pleasure to see GlobalLogic recognized by Great Place To Work Institute once again this year,” said Sumit Sood, Managing Director, Asia Pacific (APAC), GlobalLogic. “It speaks of the effort that our teams make every day to make GlobalLogic an amazing workplace for our employees, and a desirable destination for the top talent in the industry.”

“Our Great Place To Work journey began in 2016 and we received Great Place to Work Certification and got featured in Top 50 Great Places to Work in 2017. This consistent recognition is a testament to our company’s steadfast focus on creating an enabling and enriching environment for the employees and keeping it as a top goal amongst other business objectives,” said Neeru Mehta, Vice President, People Development, GlobalLogic. “Our commitment to further strengthening our people’s practices, culture and pride that our GlobalLogic employees carry with themselves, is indeed a reason of our success we hold today.”

With over 16,000 employees, GlobalLogic is one of the global leaders in helping organizations build their next generation digital products and experiences. The company has always strived towards creating a high-performing and collaborative culture, and an environment that provides independence and empowerment to its employees, helping them accomplish greater heights.

Great Place to Work Institute’s methodology is recognized as rigorous and objective and is considered as the ‘Gold Standard’ for defining great workplaces across businesses, academia and government organizations. Every year, more than 10,000 organizations from over 60 countries partner with Great Place to Work® Institute for assessment, for benchmarking and planning actions to strengthen their workplace culture. Great Place to Work uses the results of surveying millions of employees and examining thousands of the best workplaces around the globe. The list of corporations that receive acknowledgments each year is the result of a climate and organizational culture study that measures conduct, behaviours, and working environment.

GlobalLogic is a leader in digital product engineering. It helps its clients design and build innovative products, platforms, and digital experiences for the modern world, by integrating strategic design, complex engineering, and vertical industry expertise. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, GlobalLogic operates design studios and engineering centers around the world, extending its deep expertise to customers in the communications, automotive, healthcare, technology, media and entertainment, manufacturing, and semiconductor industries.