DiGiSPICE: Industry Monitoring 13 February 2019
- Priyanka Kanodia
- Feb 14, 2019
- 11 min read
DiGiSPICE
Competitors
Payment gateway firms split on RBI intervention
Publication- The Economic Times
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
The Reserve Bank of India’s intention to regulate payment gateway service providers has received a mixed response from industry players, with some welcoming the move and others cautioning that close regulatory scrutiny may cause operational challenges and stifle innovation. The central bank had announced last week that it will release a white paper for discussion and consult companies before introducing regulations.
Vishwas Patel, founder of CCAvenue Payment gateway, believes the sector doesn’t need more regulations as it already has all the safety networks in place to ensure customer money is protected. “There is a fully functional nodal bank account system as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI); also all gateway entities are PCIDSS certified ensuring security. What more will the regulator do with the fresh guidelines,” he told ET. Patel is also the chairman of industry body Payments Council of India (PCI), but clarified that his remarks were in his personal capacity
“I am not very sure what direction the RBI is planning to take,” said Dewang Nerala, chief executive at Atom Technologies that deploys point-of-sales terminals for banks. “The nodal bank account system, I thought, was enough to ensure that customer money is safe.” Nerala also heads the merchant acquirers’ committee within PCI.
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What is a unicorn and more
Publication- ET Retail
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
India's unicorn club has swelled over the past few years. For those wondering what a unicorn is, it is a term used for privately-held technology companies estimated to be worth at least $1 billion. Globally, India ranks at number three — after US and China — in terms of the total number of unicorns. These Unicorns are from sectors such as software, education, logistics, online commerce and financial technology with diverse business models. After almost months of dull investor activity, investors returned with more capital for Indian startups in 2018. The past year saw several companies crossing the valuation of $1 billion. Here are some of the popular ones:
Online marketplace Paytm Mall: Paytm Mall too entered the famed unicorn club last year. Spun from payments major One97 Communications in mid-2016, the company joined the Unicorn club last year. The company raised $445 million funding led by SoftBank with Alibaba participation at a valuation of $1.9 billion. The company's other key investors include Alibaba, Ant Financial, SoftBank and SAIF Partners.
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Subex to deploy ROC Revenue Assurance for Jordan based Umniah
Publication- Elets Online
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
Telecom analytics solution provider Subex has inked a five year deal with Jordan based telecom operator Umniah to deploy ROC Revenue Assurance. Since its launch in June 2005, Umniah has been able to secure a strong presence in Jordan market by offering high-quality mobile, internet, and business solutions while keeping abreast of the latest industry trends and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Subex was selected based on the Hadoop capabilities of ROC Revenue Assurance and the ability of the solution to meet the compliance needs of the scope. Through this deal Subex will reduce the Total Cost of Ownership of the implementation across the five-year span of the contract. The offering will also provide Umniah with a solution which is highly scalable, multi-functional and supports near real-time data transactions.
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Industry News
Intel and Ericsson partner for 5G platform
Publication- Computer World
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
Intel and Ericsson have partnered in order to align their ongoing developments of Ericsson's software-defined infrastructure (SDI) and Intel's Rack Scale Design.
As part of the multi-year agreement, Ericsson and Intel will converge Ericsson SDI manager software and Intel RSD reference software while maintaining full backward compatibility for current customers. Ericsson SDI system is based on Intel RSD and provides a common managed hardware pool for all workloads
Ultimately, the vendors plan a next-generation infrastructure management platform to deliver agility, transparency and efficiency for 5G, distributed cloud and network functions virtualisation (NFV).
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IDEMIA and Kudelski Group Launch Global Partnership to Simplify IoT Connectivity and Security
Publication- Business Wire India
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
The Kudelski Group (SIX: KUD.S), the world leader in digital security, and IDEMIA, the global leader in Augmented Identity, announced a global partnership that provides manufacturers and service providers a single, fully-integrated solution to manage the network connectivity and security of cellular IoT devices.
As more companies of all sizes and sectors create new business models and operational efficiencies by connecting their devices, their success depends on their ability to ensure the security of the devices, data and access to both. Ericsson predicts that approximately 70 percent of all wide-area IoT devices will have cellular connections by 2022.
"In this age of digital transformation, protecting connected devices and the valuable data they generate is critical for the long-term success of the exploding IoT market,”saidJean-Michel Puiatti, Kudelski Group Senior Vice President for IoT Security. “By combining our battle-tested security technologies with IDEMIA’s connectivity solution, we enable companies to deliver secure, connected products to market more quickly.
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Deep Dive: IBM Is Taking Blockchain Beyond The Hype By Making It Viable For Businesses
Publication- Analytics India Magazine
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
There is much more to Blockchain than Bitcoin and it is inextricably linked with the Blockchain boom and notably the most famous application of the technology. Interestingly, the global cryptocurrency market in Asia hit $350 million in April 2018, but the area so far lacks legitimacy with the Indian Government deploying a wait-and-watch policy towards crypto-assets.
In India, Blockchain technology has seen its biggest adopter in the BFSI sector, but tech giant IBM, also a leading enterprise Blockchain provider, has been assiduously working on making Blockchain more business viable, mainstreaming the technology and increasing its adoption among other sectors.
According to aMcKinsey report, IBM has invested heavily in Blockchain and sees strategic value in applying it across major industries. In an interview with Analytics India Magazine, Jitan Chandanani, Blockchain Offerings and Engagement Leader, IBM India/South Asia talked about scaling Blockchain adoption in India, creating blockchain-enabled services, its application areas and generating revenue opportunities.
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Blockchain Technology Can Make Patient Data Tamper-proof
Publication- Owlt Market
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
Blockchain technology has been useful in many fields for easing out the storing process, managing data and securing the details. With the recent partnership between the Bitfury Group and Longenesis with Medical Diagnostics Web (MDW), some of the best implementations of this emerging technology will be seen in the MDW radiology marketplace.
The partnership between Bitfury, the world’s leading full-service blockchain technology company, Longenesis, a startup that merges AI and blockchain, and MDW radiology marketplace will create a next-generation platform for maintaining, sharing and securing medical imaging and diagnostics data.
Longenesis will be ensuring that only authorized parties have access to the medical data recorded on the blockchain, in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
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Bitcoin ETF Approval May Not Be Far Along After Blockchain ETFs
Publication- Owlt Market
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
Bitcoin ETF approval has faced many hurdles and been rejected quite a number of times in 2018. There are advisors who still think that ETF makes for a comfortable recommendation to ordinary investors.
Finance expert Ric Edelman said that it is virtually certain for the ETF to come, but the question remains when. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has several legitimate concerns regarding ETF and that’s understood as the industry still has to overcome certain difficulties.
The SEC has long concern over the cryptocurrency market and how to regulate it. Firstly, bitcoin trading isn’t as secure as the other financial markets and lacks custody trading. Secondly, the SEC has no control over the bitcoin price manipulation as it has no governance over international trading platforms.
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India’s Native Blockchain Protocol Launches Testnet
Publication- Crypto News
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
One of India’s homegrown blockchain protocol, Eleven01 launched their testnet on Tuesday. The testnet is ready for real-world use in both public and private workloads. The eleven01 testnet will provide users with an ecosystem to create, publish, and extend the core blockchain services offered through the platform in India.
Earlier, Crypto-News India had reported on eleven01, when the company had held a press conference on the sidelines of the International Blockchain Congress, which was organized in August last year.
At the time, we had asked Rama Iyer, the then CEO of Eleven01, given the computer illiteracy in the country, how would one explain blockchain to people in rural areas. He said, “Although that is a good question, Digital India has reached corners of India where it was not possible before. In today’s time, rural Indians are extremely tech-savvy and explaining blockchain technology will not be very difficult.”
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Tholons aims to be an Accenture
Publication- The Asia One
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
Tholons Digital, a global leader in digital strategy and transformation consulting, founded by Avinash Vashishtha, former chairman and geography managing director for Accenture India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, is all set for a game-changing action in the global IT marketplace. The company says it will emerge as another Accenture and will have $1 billion in revenues by 2022.
“The year 2019 is a game changing year for us. We are building an Accenture kind of business model. We want to be a unicorn in the next three years. Tholons provides digital (AI) transformation solutions, designs customised platforms/products and hosts, implements, manages and maintains everything for the clients,’’ said Vashishtha in an exclusive interaction with Financial Chronicle.
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Blockchain in the business of fashion
Publication- India Retailing
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
Fashion brands are finally beginning to take note of the rising consumer awareness on traceability and sustainability particularly driven by the millenniums. These evolving consumers are deep diving into knowing the history of the apparels before they buy – the story behind each garment and where and how are they manufactured.
Moreover, mere claims or information is not enough to be trustworthy unless backed by detailed sequence of data on the complete value chain necessitated in wake of some or other global brand getting exposed of unethical sourcing or not being sustainable.
This is making fashion companies to attempt towards transforming their business models focused on delivering transparency of data – both in backend and frontend by employing the emerging technologies.
There has been a global buzz around new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Blockchain for some time now and the global Fashion industry has also moved in the last few years to adopt some of these in ways it firmly resisted for a long time. However, blockchain applications haven’t really seen much adoption by fashion organisations.
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#MWC19: Nokia launches IoT packages for mobile operators
Publication- Telecom Lead
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
The IoT packages from Nokia — built on the Nokia Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) infrastructure — simplify the set-up and operations of enterprise IoT services. The Internet of Things (IoT) market is worth €2 trillion. Nokia’s Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) infrastructure provides the IoT connectivity and services support. The applications include IoT sensors, user applications and business models suited to specific sectors.
Nokia WING offers a pay-as-you-grow business model, giving operators the flexibility to scale up IoT services as required. Smart Agriculture as-a-Service: Sensors capture environmental, soil and crop data that is then analyzed to provide insights that help farmers manage crops more effectively, potentially saving costs on irrigation, pesticides and fertilizers.
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From AI To Blockchain, BFSI Is Setting The Direction For Technology
Publication- Express Computer
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
The BFSI sector has always been the first to experiment and adopt emerging technologies, even when the business case is not so clear. Last year, while the hype about blockchain came down significantly, AI continued to be an increased area of interest. As expected, bots continued to be deployed across the enterprise, and showed the ability to handle queries of increased complexity and scale.
Kotak Mahindra Bank’s Keya, India’s first voice bot in the banking sector, handles more than a million interactions every month and successfully recognises the intent behind 70 per cent of all calls. Similarly, 120 bots deployed at ICICI Lombard General Insurance handle about 90 per cent of policy issuance in near real-time.
As bots learn and unlearn and relearn, they are fast shaping up to handle extremely complex queries. For instance, Yes Bank’s mPOWER bot goes a step further and connects customers with the nearest sales person on call instantly via an automated call patching facility. It can even send an SMS to the nearest dealer for the customer, for arranging a test drive of the car selected in the bot.
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New Milestones In YES Bank’s Data Analytics Journey
Publication- Express Computer
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
A basic analytics journey starts with reporting the inquiries right and transferring them to more advanced machine learning areas. “Our analytics journey started with traditional technologies, where we had data-warehouses of the world. We were having difficulties in providing analytical capabilities at scale. The bank was not able to use the usual data management systems to process the information to a quantum which was required to handle the number of users,” says Rajat Kanwar Gupta, President and Head ML/Analytics Solutions and Development CoE, YES Bank.
The bank was also struggling with selectively identifying the data that needed to be analysed. Consequently, Gupta started to look for a modern data platform, where they had multiple choices like a traditional data warehouse or an open source ecosystem approach. The bank further conducted POCs and finalised on an open source big data analytics platform and Cloudera became its partner.
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Reliance Group’s Unlimit takes IoT to logistics sector with latest offering
Publication- Tech Circle
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
Unlimit, an Internet of Things (IoT) company which is part of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, has developed an end-to-end monitoring solution for the logistics industry. The solution, called Tracksuite, aims to help companies track, secure, analyse and ensure productivity of vehicle fleets, cargo and warehouses by reading data points such as the route taken, driving behaviour, maintenance of temperature and security.
Tracksuite’s launch comes at a time when technology is increasingly becoming a key cog of the logistics industry. According to a report by market research firm Novonous, the logistics industry in India is pegged at $300 billion, and is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 12.17% by 2020. The research company further said that about 90% of trucks in India belong to singletruck owners, which makes the sector ripe for digital connectivity and aggregation platforms.
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IBM scientists predict how blockchain and AI can tackle the global food crisis
Publication- Tech Circle
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
At its flagship technology conference Think 2019, Armonk-headquartered tech giant IBM is addressing the issue of hunger and will introduce scientists working on solutions to the global food crisis at the event, a report by the tech giant stated. The company will showcase how blockchain can prevent food from going to waste, how technology can map the microbiome of bad bacteria and how artificial intelligencebased micro sensors can detect food pathogens at home.
The earth’s population is estimated to touch the eight billion mark in the next five years. IBM has recognised that to feed such a large number of people, it needs to devise ways to maximise crop yields and ensure that epidemics that destroy waste can be curbed, the report stated.
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Azure IoT Edge now supports virtual machines
Publication- Daily Host News
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
Microsoft is growing support for Intelligent Edge with the availability of Azure IoT Edge on virtual machines (VMs). The tech giant aims to create an open and strong ecosystem and provide users choices in deploying their edge solution.
Azure IoT Edge is a solution that brings cloud intelligence to the edge and allows users to act on data in real-time. Microsoft had made it generally available last year in June, and also open sourced the service on GitHub. This allows users to make changes to code and go for an open container approach for deploying Microsoft and third-party services across edge devices.
With the recent announcement, customers will be able to run Azure IoT Edge on a VM using a supported operating system. Although it will support most of the operating systems that can run containers, Microsoft said that all of them are not equally supported.
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Role of GIS in the journey of smart cities
Publication- Geospatial World
Edition- Online
Date- 13 February, 2019
Smart cities are future cities that aim to identify smarter choices to maximize end-user satisfaction and speed up urban socio-cultural and economic development. They are knowledge-based cities with the capability to uplift the growth of their respective nation by planning, management, governance and development systems where geospatial information is at the forefront helping decision makers to take right decisions.
Today, a growing number of cities rely on Geographical Information Systems to unlock powerful insights that would otherwise be hidden in data. GIS has got the proficiency to model the real world of the city in totality. It can incorporate millions of variables and has the capacity to geocode variables and stimulate for planning, management and development of a city. Looking at its wide knacks eminent speakers at Geosmart India 2019 highlighted the topic and gave an insight that how GIS can help cities to grow.
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