Flipkart To Shut Down 'Nearby, Its Grocery Delivery App

The online grocery delivery sector has been seeing a lot of new entrants into the market, from established startups expanding into this field to new ventures being launched. Flipkart made one such attempt about 6 months ago with their latest foray into this area, Nearby. Other major competitors in the market are Peppertap, Grofers and Amazon, which also launched a similar service.

Nearby was launched 6 months ago by Flipkart. It was operational only in certain regions of Bangalore between 10-8 PM. They claimed to deliver the order within an hour of it being placed. But unfortunately this did not work out as they had expected. They faced a lot of problems the major ones being lack of demand and customers, they have finally decided to put this little "experiment" to rest. 

Incidentally, Flipkart is not the only one to face such problems, giants like Grofers and Peppertap also had to withdraw from a number of cities, citing similar reasons. Grofers had to shut its operation in 9 cities and Peppertap closed down in 6 cities. Despite having raised a decent amount in funding, startups in this area still seem to be struggling and haven't been able to put down some solid roots in the ground.

Flipkart has recently seen a change in its reign. There is a speculation that this was a move by the new set of people at the top floor. Binny Bansal was recently made the CEO of the company replacing Sachin Bansal.

Notably, Flipkart saw two of its executives Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori leave the company to start with their own venture. With its leash in the hands of a new team Flipkart is on its way to restructuring which might lead to an eventual IPO in the next few years. Flipkart will be focusing more on making it delivery better in various cities of the country. They plan to deliver a major chunk of their orders through their own logistics and are working towards the same.

 

Flipkart To Shut Down 'Nearby, Its Grocery Delivery App

The online grocery delivery sector has been seeing a lot of new entrants into the market, from established startups expanding into this field to new ventures being launched. Flipkart made one such attempt about 6 months ago with their latest foray into this area, Nearby. Other major competitors in the market are Peppertap, Grofers and Amazon, which also launched a similar service.

Nearby was launched 6 months ago by Flipkart. It was operational only in certain regions of Bangalore between 10-8 PM. They claimed to deliver the order within an hour of it being placed. But unfortunately this did not work out as they had expected. They faced a lot of problems the major ones being lack of demand and customers, they have finally decided to put this little "experiment" to rest. 

Incidentally, Flipkart is not the only one to face such problems, giants like Grofers and Peppertap also had to withdraw from a number of cities, citing similar reasons. Grofers had to shut its operation in 9 cities and Peppertap closed down in 6 cities. Despite having raised a decent amount in funding, startups in this area still seem to be struggling and haven't been able to put down some solid roots in the ground.

Flipkart has recently seen a change in its reign. There is a speculation that this was a move by the new set of people at the top floor. Binny Bansal was recently made the CEO of the company replacing Sachin Bansal.

Notably, Flipkart saw two of its executives Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori leave the company to start with their own venture. With its leash in the hands of a new team Flipkart is on its way to restructuring which might lead to an eventual IPO in the next few years. Flipkart will be focusing more on making it delivery better in various cities of the country. They plan to deliver a major chunk of their orders through their own logistics and are working towards the same.

 

Why Hackathon hiring is better than traditional hiring?

In a company, collaborating with different departments—especially with IT—can be hard if not impossible.

But as corporations start to embrace the idea of software-first future, they’re taking a page out of the tech book by adopting hackathons for everything from R&D to talent retention.

"Industries that you would never think are trying see how they can harvest the benefits of hackathons," says Angelhack founder Sabeen Ali. "It’s decentralizing their IT in favor of a greater collaboration between developers, marketers, and CEOs to create products or simply get ideas flowing outside the typically constrained box."

Ali, who has worked with Verizon, Qualcomm, and Ford, says hackathons needs to be managed like an internal workflow shift—not an event. "We put a change strategy toward it, meet with stakeholders, and we help them sustain the result of the hackathon."

To sustain results, Ali says an ecosystem is put in place where all participants and developers are stakeholders and regular incentives are rewarded to bring hacks to the finish line.

One of America’s oldest toy companies, Hasbro, recently held a hackathon where 150 developers came and developed 45 products—equivalent to billions of dollars in traditional R&D, Ali says.

In India also lot of companies like MeraEvents,Purple Talk etc have started their hiring and talent acquisition through hackathons.

Industry Experts says,In a traditional hiring sometimes we end up acquiring talents who can focus in one technology but when it comes to collaborations even internally in the companies itself then it doesn't go so well.

With this short coming of lack of collaboration ,the companies conduct hackathons by setting an agenda to test the right skills of a candidate with the collaborative skills .

Companies also conduct internal hiring with which stands out a great way to help enable a 'maker' culture that is required in a modern technology company.

"These can be a place for a developer to scratch an itch or experiment with new tools or platforms."

With shifting environments comes risk, whether or not Fortune 500 companies see it as a viable one is a different question.

"Every single time, our organizers are amazed at what the internal teams come up with," Ali says. "At the end of the day, it comes down to how big of a risk do they want to take. Ultimately, the bigger risk you take most and likely will be the bigger reward."

Have you attended or thrown a corporate hackathon? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.

Why Hackathon hiring is better than traditional hiring?

In a company, collaborating with different departments—especially with IT—can be hard if not impossible.

But as corporations start to embrace the idea of software-first future, they’re taking a page out of the tech book by adopting hackathons for everything from R&D to talent retention.

"Industries that you would never think are trying see how they can harvest the benefits of hackathons," says Angelhack founder Sabeen Ali. "It’s decentralizing their IT in favor of a greater collaboration between developers, marketers, and CEOs to create products or simply get ideas flowing outside the typically constrained box."

Ali, who has worked with Verizon, Qualcomm, and Ford, says hackathons needs to be managed like an internal workflow shift—not an event. "We put a change strategy toward it, meet with stakeholders, and we help them sustain the result of the hackathon."

To sustain results, Ali says an ecosystem is put in place where all participants and developers are stakeholders and regular incentives are rewarded to bring hacks to the finish line.

One of America’s oldest toy companies, Hasbro, recently held a hackathon where 150 developers came and developed 45 products—equivalent to billions of dollars in traditional R&D, Ali says.

In India also lot of companies like MeraEvents,Purple Talk etc have started their hiring and talent acquisition through hackathons.

Industry Experts says,In a traditional hiring sometimes we end up acquiring talents who can focus in one technology but when it comes to collaborations even internally in the companies itself then it doesn't go so well.

With this short coming of lack of collaboration ,the companies conduct hackathons by setting an agenda to test the right skills of a candidate with the collaborative skills .

Companies also conduct internal hiring with which stands out a great way to help enable a 'maker' culture that is required in a modern technology company.

"These can be a place for a developer to scratch an itch or experiment with new tools or platforms."

With shifting environments comes risk, whether or not Fortune 500 companies see it as a viable one is a different question.

"Every single time, our organizers are amazed at what the internal teams come up with," Ali says. "At the end of the day, it comes down to how big of a risk do they want to take. Ultimately, the bigger risk you take most and likely will be the bigger reward."

Have you attended or thrown a corporate hackathon? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.

Ratan Tata Invests In NestAway, A Managed Home-Rental Marketplace

Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons and Senior Advisor to IDG Ventures India, has invested an undisclosed amount in his personal capacity into NestAway Technologies Pvt Ltd, a leader in the 'managed' home rentals market in India. Nestaway is Tata's 8th investment since the start of this year.

NestAway is India's first "home rental network". It seeks to manage all the rental pains on both homeowner and tenant sides. NestAway essentially turns unbranded, unfurnished houses into fully furnished & managed apartments and provides them at affordable prices to verified tenants. So far, the startup has provided quality rental homes to about 5,000 tenants across 6 cities. Until recently, NestAway counted Single working professionals among its target audience; but now it has also forayed into the Family segment.

NestAway was founded by Amarendra Sahu, Smruti Parida, Deepak Dhar, and Jitendra Jagadev in January 2015.

NestAway's mission to fix the rental housing market by inspiring trust between owners & tenants raised a notch up through collaboration with Mr Tata – the name that always has & continues to define the word "trust" for millions of Indians. It’s a privilege to work on such an impactful problem with Mr Tata with his visionary guidance & mentoring”, says Amarendra Sahu, Co-founder & CEO of NestAway.

Karthik Prabhakar, Vice President of IDG Ventures India, who is on the board of NestAway, said, “As the first investors in NestAway, we have seen the company grow at a tremendous pace and achieve clear leadership by far in its vertical. It is an honour to have Mr Ratan Tata, an epitome of trust and quality, as an investor in the company and look forward to his guidance and support to help with the next phase of growth."

NestAway has raised over $13 million in capital over two rounds from marquee investors including IDG Ventures India, Tiger Global, Flipkart and Naveen Tewari.

Ratan Tata Invests In NestAway, A Managed Home-Rental Marketplace

Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons and Senior Advisor to IDG Ventures India, has invested an undisclosed amount in his personal capacity into NestAway Technologies Pvt Ltd, a leader in the 'managed' home rentals market in India. Nestaway is Tata's 8th investment since the start of this year.

NestAway is India's first "home rental network". It seeks to manage all the rental pains on both homeowner and tenant sides. NestAway essentially turns unbranded, unfurnished houses into fully furnished & managed apartments and provides them at affordable prices to verified tenants. So far, the startup has provided quality rental homes to about 5,000 tenants across 6 cities. Until recently, NestAway counted Single working professionals among its target audience; but now it has also forayed into the Family segment.

NestAway was founded by Amarendra Sahu, Smruti Parida, Deepak Dhar, and Jitendra Jagadev in January 2015.

NestAway's mission to fix the rental housing market by inspiring trust between owners & tenants raised a notch up through collaboration with Mr Tata – the name that always has & continues to define the word "trust" for millions of Indians. It’s a privilege to work on such an impactful problem with Mr Tata with his visionary guidance & mentoring”, says Amarendra Sahu, Co-founder & CEO of NestAway.

Karthik Prabhakar, Vice President of IDG Ventures India, who is on the board of NestAway, said, “As the first investors in NestAway, we have seen the company grow at a tremendous pace and achieve clear leadership by far in its vertical. It is an honour to have Mr Ratan Tata, an epitome of trust and quality, as an investor in the company and look forward to his guidance and support to help with the next phase of growth."

NestAway has raised over $13 million in capital over two rounds from marquee investors including IDG Ventures India, Tiger Global, Flipkart and Naveen Tewari.

YouTube launches blur tool to allow users to mask moving objects in videos

[caption id="attachment_103740" align="aligncenter" width="701"] A man is seen as a silhouette as he checks a mobile device whilst standing against an illuminated wall bearing YouTube Inc.s logo in this arranged photograph in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. YouTube Inc. provides consumer media and entertainment through its website. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images[/caption]

YouTube has added a new tool to allow users to blur or mask any moving objects in a video before uploading them. The video streaming and sharing site announced on 25 February that its new Custom Blurring tool will be available for users on desktops.

YouTube privacy head Amanda Conway wrote in a blog post, "While the use cases for this tool are vast, we built this feature with visual anonymity in mind. We wanted to give you a simple way to blur things like people, contact information or financial data without having to remove and re-upload your content."



The new feature lets users draw a box to cover the area in a video that they wish to blur out. It has been designed in such a way that users can specify for how long an object or person needs to be blurred by mentioning a start and end time. The blur box can also be re-sized as a video progresses. A lock button has also been added to keep the blur box stationary on the screen, ensuring that the masked object remains inscrutable throughout the video.

YouTube will always render a preview of the blurred video, so if something didn’t work quite right, you can always try again by placing the rectangle in a slightly different spot.

Google says it is using “new innovative technology” for this tool that allows it to analyze videos to track objects “on the fly.” It’s a fair guess that the recent advances in machine vision have made this kind of tool possible now. We haven’t been able to put this new feature through its paces yet, though, so it remains to be seen how well it works in practices.

YouTube launches blur tool to allow users to mask moving objects in videos

[caption id="attachment_103740" align="aligncenter" width="701"] A man is seen as a silhouette as he checks a mobile device whilst standing against an illuminated wall bearing YouTube Inc.s logo in this arranged photograph in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. YouTube Inc. provides consumer media and entertainment through its website. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images[/caption]

YouTube has added a new tool to allow users to blur or mask any moving objects in a video before uploading them. The video streaming and sharing site announced on 25 February that its new Custom Blurring tool will be available for users on desktops.

YouTube privacy head Amanda Conway wrote in a blog post, "While the use cases for this tool are vast, we built this feature with visual anonymity in mind. We wanted to give you a simple way to blur things like people, contact information or financial data without having to remove and re-upload your content."



The new feature lets users draw a box to cover the area in a video that they wish to blur out. It has been designed in such a way that users can specify for how long an object or person needs to be blurred by mentioning a start and end time. The blur box can also be re-sized as a video progresses. A lock button has also been added to keep the blur box stationary on the screen, ensuring that the masked object remains inscrutable throughout the video.

YouTube will always render a preview of the blurred video, so if something didn’t work quite right, you can always try again by placing the rectangle in a slightly different spot.

Google says it is using “new innovative technology” for this tool that allows it to analyze videos to track objects “on the fly.” It’s a fair guess that the recent advances in machine vision have made this kind of tool possible now. We haven’t been able to put this new feature through its paces yet, though, so it remains to be seen how well it works in practices.

This Tiny Device Is Ford's Magic Portion For Bringing Self-Driving Cars To The Masses

Ford is trying its level best to come first in the market race for self-driving cars. All the automobile lovers out there might already be aware about the buzz the term 'self-driving cars' has created over the period of time.

In order to ace the race, Ford has decided to triple its autonomous vehicle testing fleet. The company already has an innovative device ready with them in order to bring autonomous vehicles to the masses.

The newly launched LiDAR device is from Velodyne and is called the Ultra Puck. It is much smaller in size than its previous version that were originally being used on Ford's autonomous fleet.

The new device was specifically designed for automotive use and helps extend the sensing range by 200 meters from the last generation. It also has improved precision, allowing it to better create maps and models for testing.



Originally developed for use in the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) autonomous vehicle competitions, Velodyne LiDAR now provides a full line of sensors capable of delivering the most accurate real time 3D data on the market.

According to Ford's CEO, Mark Fields, while a lot has been said about the technology, nothing concrete has actually come out in the market. But at Ford, the company is actually very serious about the technology and has a very dedicated research and development team working hard for the past ten years to make the dream of self-driving cars a reality.

Adding on the company's stance on the technology, Raj Nair, Ford's group vice president for product development said that the company will now have 30 Fusion autonomous vehicles on the road and test tracks in Arizona, California, and in Michigan.

According to industry rumours, Ford has already progressed from the research phase into the advanced engineering stage for the project. Further, the rumour mill is also hot with the rumour that Ford has partnered with technology giant Google in order to use the giant's help in developing its autonomous technology.

In what adds to as another effort by Ford in making self-driving cars a reality, the automobile company had recently launched the third generation LIDAR technology, which it now using on its self-driving cars project.

This Tiny Device Is Ford's Magic Portion For Bringing Self-Driving Cars To The Masses

Ford is trying its level best to come first in the market race for self-driving cars. All the automobile lovers out there might already be aware about the buzz the term 'self-driving cars' has created over the period of time.

In order to ace the race, Ford has decided to triple its autonomous vehicle testing fleet. The company already has an innovative device ready with them in order to bring autonomous vehicles to the masses.

The newly launched LiDAR device is from Velodyne and is called the Ultra Puck. It is much smaller in size than its previous version that were originally being used on Ford's autonomous fleet.

The new device was specifically designed for automotive use and helps extend the sensing range by 200 meters from the last generation. It also has improved precision, allowing it to better create maps and models for testing.



Originally developed for use in the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) autonomous vehicle competitions, Velodyne LiDAR now provides a full line of sensors capable of delivering the most accurate real time 3D data on the market.

According to Ford's CEO, Mark Fields, while a lot has been said about the technology, nothing concrete has actually come out in the market. But at Ford, the company is actually very serious about the technology and has a very dedicated research and development team working hard for the past ten years to make the dream of self-driving cars a reality.

Adding on the company's stance on the technology, Raj Nair, Ford's group vice president for product development said that the company will now have 30 Fusion autonomous vehicles on the road and test tracks in Arizona, California, and in Michigan.

According to industry rumours, Ford has already progressed from the research phase into the advanced engineering stage for the project. Further, the rumour mill is also hot with the rumour that Ford has partnered with technology giant Google in order to use the giant's help in developing its autonomous technology.

In what adds to as another effort by Ford in making self-driving cars a reality, the automobile company had recently launched the third generation LIDAR technology, which it now using on its self-driving cars project.

Google Patents Project Wing - A Drone Delivery System

Technology giant Google hasn't revealed much about its Project Wing drone delivery service since its announcement in November last year. But, a recently granted patent provides us a much closer understanding about the working of the service due to be launched in the year 2017.

The patent reveals how the service might drop off packages at ones doorstep in just under 30 minutes. According to the granted patent, the service has a ‘delivery receptacle’ with enough room for holding packages and has wheels in order to move around. Further, it works by receiving notifications of an incoming delivery drone and emits infrared beacons so as to guide the drone towards itself.

Once the drone has reached close enough and is in position, it deposits the package in the receptacle, which then moves along to wait for you in a secure location.


Notably, Google is looking for partners who can help it bring this technology to the world. If you're interested, please fill out this form here



This could prove to be a breather for all those people out there who were worried whether someone would steal their packages if they weren't home at the time to receive them. We will still have to wait and watch and see if the system will appear in Project Wing at the launch.

On the other hand, Amazon is also racing along with Google in order to beat it at this drone race. Keeping pace with Google, Amazon also showed a drone delivery prototype in November last year which is said to be capable of carrying up to five pounds and flying at altitudes under 400 feet over 10 miles or more.

Amazon is working on different kinds of drones for different environments like rural farmlands, suburban neighborhoods and high-rise apartment complexes, revealed Mr. Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy.

So, for whom are you rooting for in this drone race? Amazon or Google?

Google Patents Project Wing - A Drone Delivery System

Technology giant Google hasn't revealed much about its Project Wing drone delivery service since its announcement in November last year. But, a recently granted patent provides us a much closer understanding about the working of the service due to be launched in the year 2017.

The patent reveals how the service might drop off packages at ones doorstep in just under 30 minutes. According to the granted patent, the service has a ‘delivery receptacle’ with enough room for holding packages and has wheels in order to move around. Further, it works by receiving notifications of an incoming delivery drone and emits infrared beacons so as to guide the drone towards itself.

Once the drone has reached close enough and is in position, it deposits the package in the receptacle, which then moves along to wait for you in a secure location.


Notably, Google is looking for partners who can help it bring this technology to the world. If you're interested, please fill out this form here



This could prove to be a breather for all those people out there who were worried whether someone would steal their packages if they weren't home at the time to receive them. We will still have to wait and watch and see if the system will appear in Project Wing at the launch.

On the other hand, Amazon is also racing along with Google in order to beat it at this drone race. Keeping pace with Google, Amazon also showed a drone delivery prototype in November last year which is said to be capable of carrying up to five pounds and flying at altitudes under 400 feet over 10 miles or more.

Amazon is working on different kinds of drones for different environments like rural farmlands, suburban neighborhoods and high-rise apartment complexes, revealed Mr. Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy.

So, for whom are you rooting for in this drone race? Amazon or Google?

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella To Be Featured In Andhra Pradesh School Textbooks

Born in Hyderabad, India in the year 1969, Satya Narayana Nadella became a world famous name in February 2014, when he took charge of one of the worlds most famous tech company, Microsoft, in the capacity of its CEO. Since then he has become a favourite of the Indian and international press alike. And, now, the wonderful personality has found a place in the school textbooks in Andhra Pradesh.

According to a news piece published in a reputed daily, the Andhra Pradesh government has revised the Telugu non-detailed books from the sixth to the 10th class and English textbooks from first to fifth class. As a result of this revision, Nadella has made his way into the textbooks.

The Microsoft CEO will be one among some of the new personalities being featured in the revised textbooks. Others who have been finalised are, the late mountaineer Malli Mastan Babu, who was famous for being the fastest person to climb seven of the tallest peaks in all of the seven continents, and the celebratory late artist and writer Sanjeev Dev. They all will be a part of the chapter titled ‘Spoorthi Pradaathulu’ (Role Models) in the Telugu non-detailed book for the eighth class. Various other local state heroes have also found a mention in the books of different standards.

From 2014, when Nadella took charge of the Microsoft to the year 2016, the CEO has been successful in turning things around for the tech giant. In the course of making this happen, he has taken a lot of decisions which no one could think about. For example: embracing the company's rival Linux OS on the Microsoft Azure cloud. Smart move, we say.

He further released Microsoft Office for the Apple iPad, spent $2.5 billion to buy Mojang, the studio behind the world famous hit-game Minecraft, released the first-class iPhone and Android mobile applications like Microsoft Outlook, took the decision to skip Windows 9 after the disastrous Windows 8 and went straight for the amazing Windows 10 and introduced the world to Microsoft Surface Book, Microsoft's first laptop ever. So much in such a short tenure surely does deserve a mention.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella To Be Featured In Andhra Pradesh School Textbooks

Born in Hyderabad, India in the year 1969, Satya Narayana Nadella became a world famous name in February 2014, when he took charge of one of the worlds most famous tech company, Microsoft, in the capacity of its CEO. Since then he has become a favourite of the Indian and international press alike. And, now, the wonderful personality has found a place in the school textbooks in Andhra Pradesh.

According to a news piece published in a reputed daily, the Andhra Pradesh government has revised the Telugu non-detailed books from the sixth to the 10th class and English textbooks from first to fifth class. As a result of this revision, Nadella has made his way into the textbooks.

The Microsoft CEO will be one among some of the new personalities being featured in the revised textbooks. Others who have been finalised are, the late mountaineer Malli Mastan Babu, who was famous for being the fastest person to climb seven of the tallest peaks in all of the seven continents, and the celebratory late artist and writer Sanjeev Dev. They all will be a part of the chapter titled ‘Spoorthi Pradaathulu’ (Role Models) in the Telugu non-detailed book for the eighth class. Various other local state heroes have also found a mention in the books of different standards.

From 2014, when Nadella took charge of the Microsoft to the year 2016, the CEO has been successful in turning things around for the tech giant. In the course of making this happen, he has taken a lot of decisions which no one could think about. For example: embracing the company's rival Linux OS on the Microsoft Azure cloud. Smart move, we say.

He further released Microsoft Office for the Apple iPad, spent $2.5 billion to buy Mojang, the studio behind the world famous hit-game Minecraft, released the first-class iPhone and Android mobile applications like Microsoft Outlook, took the decision to skip Windows 9 after the disastrous Windows 8 and went straight for the amazing Windows 10 and introduced the world to Microsoft Surface Book, Microsoft's first laptop ever. So much in such a short tenure surely does deserve a mention.

Are Women Better Coders Than Men?

Biases against women in the workplace have been documented in several studies, but it turns out that popular opinion that women perform less well in technical jobs could be wildly wrong. A recent study by US researchers has found that computer code written by women tends to be rated more highly than that written by men.

Prepints released the study,entitled "Gender Bias in open Source:Pull Request acceptance of womenVs Men" .This probably was the largest study
up-to now on gender bias .

Researchers analyzed data from GitHub, a San Francisco-based open source software community with more than 12 million users who collaborate on coding projects by suggesting solutions to various problems. By tracking users using social networks and Google, the researchers were able to obtain the gender of 1.4 million users, which allowed them to assemble the largest scale study of gender bias to date.



The team examined whether men and women were equally likely to have their coding suggestions, known as a pull request, accepted on GitHub. They hypothesized that pull requests made by women were less likely to be accepted than those made by men. After all, the number of women in computer science are dwarfed by the number of men – according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 73 percent of the field is comprised of men.
The researchers were quick to note that their study does not definitively provide that differences between gendered interactions are caused by bias among individuals, but the trend is "troubling" nonetheless, they said, especially in a field like open source software, which is often praised for being a meritocracy.

When Chantal Marin, developer at Microsoft was asked about it,she says,

"I don’t think that it matters. I can just notice a slight difference in the organisation and documentation of the code. Usually women seem to be more organised and write cleaner code."

If accurate, the study would reinforce the perception against women in the tech work environment, where gender disparity is common. For example, only 18 per cent of Google’s global technical staff is women. In a 2013 survey of the more than 2000 open source developers who indicated their gender, only 11.2 per cent were women. Recent research has also suggested that diverse software development teams are more productive than homogeneous teams.

What do you think about this report,feel free to express your views in comment section.

Are Women Better Coders Than Men?

Biases against women in the workplace have been documented in several studies, but it turns out that popular opinion that women perform less well in technical jobs could be wildly wrong. A recent study by US researchers has found that computer code written by women tends to be rated more highly than that written by men.

Prepints released the study,entitled "Gender Bias in open Source:Pull Request acceptance of womenVs Men" .This probably was the largest study
up-to now on gender bias .

Researchers analyzed data from GitHub, a San Francisco-based open source software community with more than 12 million users who collaborate on coding projects by suggesting solutions to various problems. By tracking users using social networks and Google, the researchers were able to obtain the gender of 1.4 million users, which allowed them to assemble the largest scale study of gender bias to date.



The team examined whether men and women were equally likely to have their coding suggestions, known as a pull request, accepted on GitHub. They hypothesized that pull requests made by women were less likely to be accepted than those made by men. After all, the number of women in computer science are dwarfed by the number of men – according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 73 percent of the field is comprised of men.
The researchers were quick to note that their study does not definitively provide that differences between gendered interactions are caused by bias among individuals, but the trend is "troubling" nonetheless, they said, especially in a field like open source software, which is often praised for being a meritocracy.

When Chantal Marin, developer at Microsoft was asked about it,she says,

"I don’t think that it matters. I can just notice a slight difference in the organisation and documentation of the code. Usually women seem to be more organised and write cleaner code."

If accurate, the study would reinforce the perception against women in the tech work environment, where gender disparity is common. For example, only 18 per cent of Google’s global technical staff is women. In a 2013 survey of the more than 2000 open source developers who indicated their gender, only 11.2 per cent were women. Recent research has also suggested that diverse software development teams are more productive than homogeneous teams.

What do you think about this report,feel free to express your views in comment section.

6 Tech Related Announcements Of Railway Budget'16 You Must Know

The Rail Budget 2016-17 presented by Suresh Prabhu on Thursday in Lok Sabha was high on technological front. The railway minister took the hand of technology to put the Indian railways on a speedy track to advancement and development. Overall, the budget, which had no hike in fares, received rave reviews from all quarters.

The top 6 technology related announcement made for the Indian railways in the lower house in Rail Budget 2016-17 are as follows:

1) Radio Stations -

Understanding the entertainment need of commuters waiting to board their trains on the train stations, the railway minister has invited the nation's radio stations to provide their entertainment services through the Indian railway's personal address system on various railway stations. FM radio stations for trains are also a part of the plan.

2) Clean my coach service -

What's the one thing that concerns the majority while travelling through trains? Hygiene! Yes, the cleanliness of the toilets and the coaches is one of the main reasons many prefer other transport options rather than choosing the railways. The Railway Minister has understood this problem and has launched a new SMS service through which passengers will now be able to make a request for cleaning their coaches. All they will have to do is to drop a message with their PNR number at 58888 and the cleaning staff will attend to their needs at the next station.

3) GPS based display -

One of the announcement made in the railway budget was the installation of GPS based 20,000 displays across 2,000 railway stations. This feature will keep the passengers informed about the upcoming stations and also help the government in keeping a track of the arrival and departure of trains. As and when implemented, travelers will be able to see less delay in trains as the government will keep an eye on every train.

4) Ticketing capacity -

The IRCTC website for long has been in the news for all the wrong reasons but that's going to change in the coming future it seems. The Railway Ministry has announced that it will increase online ticket booking capacity to 7,200 per minute from the current 2,000 tickets.

5) Wi-Fi- Internet -

Internet is the glue that joins us with the rest of the world while we're travelling. Recognising this, the Ministry has plans of setting up free Wi-Fi services in over 100 railway stations across India by the end of 2016. In fact, the Ministry in association with Google has already enabled Wi-Fi at the Mumbai Central railway station. They plan to install Wi-Fi in nearly 400 stations by 2017.

6) Automated ticket vending machines -

In order to decrease the never-ending lengthy lines at the ticketing counters, the railway ministry plans to install 1,780 automated ticket vending machines. Further, the curb the numbers of ticketless travelers, a provision to have bar-coded tickets is also in the pipeline.

6 Tech Related Announcements Of Railway Budget'16 You Must Know

The Rail Budget 2016-17 presented by Suresh Prabhu on Thursday in Lok Sabha was high on technological front. The railway minister took the hand of technology to put the Indian railways on a speedy track to advancement and development. Overall, the budget, which had no hike in fares, received rave reviews from all quarters.

The top 6 technology related announcement made for the Indian railways in the lower house in Rail Budget 2016-17 are as follows:

1) Radio Stations -

Understanding the entertainment need of commuters waiting to board their trains on the train stations, the railway minister has invited the nation's radio stations to provide their entertainment services through the Indian railway's personal address system on various railway stations. FM radio stations for trains are also a part of the plan.

2) Clean my coach service -

What's the one thing that concerns the majority while travelling through trains? Hygiene! Yes, the cleanliness of the toilets and the coaches is one of the main reasons many prefer other transport options rather than choosing the railways. The Railway Minister has understood this problem and has launched a new SMS service through which passengers will now be able to make a request for cleaning their coaches. All they will have to do is to drop a message with their PNR number at 58888 and the cleaning staff will attend to their needs at the next station.

3) GPS based display -

One of the announcement made in the railway budget was the installation of GPS based 20,000 displays across 2,000 railway stations. This feature will keep the passengers informed about the upcoming stations and also help the government in keeping a track of the arrival and departure of trains. As and when implemented, travelers will be able to see less delay in trains as the government will keep an eye on every train.

4) Ticketing capacity -

The IRCTC website for long has been in the news for all the wrong reasons but that's going to change in the coming future it seems. The Railway Ministry has announced that it will increase online ticket booking capacity to 7,200 per minute from the current 2,000 tickets.

5) Wi-Fi- Internet -

Internet is the glue that joins us with the rest of the world while we're travelling. Recognising this, the Ministry has plans of setting up free Wi-Fi services in over 100 railway stations across India by the end of 2016. In fact, the Ministry in association with Google has already enabled Wi-Fi at the Mumbai Central railway station. They plan to install Wi-Fi in nearly 400 stations by 2017.

6) Automated ticket vending machines -

In order to decrease the never-ending lengthy lines at the ticketing counters, the railway ministry plans to install 1,780 automated ticket vending machines. Further, the curb the numbers of ticketless travelers, a provision to have bar-coded tickets is also in the pipeline.

Bengaluru-Based FeetApart Raises Angel Funding From from Vishal Bali of Nielsen Singapore and Other Investors

FeetApart, an employee engagement & wellness platform based in Bangalore has raised angel funding from Vishal Bali, a senior professional from Nielsen Singapore and a consortium of angel investors across Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai. The financials of funding were remain undisclosed.

FeetApart, founded in 2014 by health enthusiasts & techies Abhishek & Ashrith, is a gamified social network for organizations with a vision to inspire and help employees lead a healthy lifestyle at a global scale. The app is available on web, iOS & Android.

There is a big need for employee engagement & well-being at workplaces and health is often neglected with the excuse of lack of motivation and time. Through its proprietary machine learning algorithms, FeetApart personalizes the wellness journey of an individual by suggesting people, activities, goals & challenges and helps in habit formation and rewarding them at achieving personal milestones as well as winning competitions.

"Organizations all over the world are investing a lot in wellness initiatives as it helps improve the culture, employee morale, productivity and reduces attrition & overall costs. Exercising and staying fit is the new drug and can combat stress which is so prevalent in today's population, especially the 9 to 6 workforce", the founders say.

seedX, a high touch platform facilitated the entire fund raise process. Says Rajiv Raghunandan, founder of seedX, "Once we bet upon a venture, we work with them extensively prior to fundraising too. In this case we were working with Abhishek & Ashrith since August of last year on different aspects of the business model. What we liked about the FeetApart model is the passion of the founders and the clear visibility into a profitable business".

"FeetApart has a great B2B2C model in driving health & wellness in the corporate world. The gamification with team competitions, challenges and rewards also allows HR to engage employees in an innovative manner thus driving up the overall health & productivity index of a company's workforce" –

Investors.

Bengaluru-Based FeetApart Raises Angel Funding From from Vishal Bali of Nielsen Singapore and Other Investors

FeetApart, an employee engagement & wellness platform based in Bangalore has raised angel funding from Vishal Bali, a senior professional from Nielsen Singapore and a consortium of angel investors across Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai. The financials of funding were remain undisclosed.

FeetApart, founded in 2014 by health enthusiasts & techies Abhishek & Ashrith, is a gamified social network for organizations with a vision to inspire and help employees lead a healthy lifestyle at a global scale. The app is available on web, iOS & Android.

There is a big need for employee engagement & well-being at workplaces and health is often neglected with the excuse of lack of motivation and time. Through its proprietary machine learning algorithms, FeetApart personalizes the wellness journey of an individual by suggesting people, activities, goals & challenges and helps in habit formation and rewarding them at achieving personal milestones as well as winning competitions.

"Organizations all over the world are investing a lot in wellness initiatives as it helps improve the culture, employee morale, productivity and reduces attrition & overall costs. Exercising and staying fit is the new drug and can combat stress which is so prevalent in today's population, especially the 9 to 6 workforce", the founders say.

seedX, a high touch platform facilitated the entire fund raise process. Says Rajiv Raghunandan, founder of seedX, "Once we bet upon a venture, we work with them extensively prior to fundraising too. In this case we were working with Abhishek & Ashrith since August of last year on different aspects of the business model. What we liked about the FeetApart model is the passion of the founders and the clear visibility into a profitable business".

"FeetApart has a great B2B2C model in driving health & wellness in the corporate world. The gamification with team competitions, challenges and rewards also allows HR to engage employees in an innovative manner thus driving up the overall health & productivity index of a company's workforce" –

Investors.

Internet Of Things (IoT) Predictions From Forrester, Machina Research, WEF, Gartner, IDC

Scoring a hat trick of domination at this year's CES was the buzz world 'Internet of things' or 'IoT' as it is popularly known. Out of the total 3,800 companies present at the show, 900 showcased Internet of Things products. While some experts think, the trend is all ready to spread in the jungle like wild fire and has the potential to solidify from being just a marketing dream to full on marketing channel. Others, on the other hand, aren't very impressed with the speed with which the technology is developing and feel the same things are being tried again and again since the coinage of the term.

In order to make our avid readers understand about the present and future of IoT, we at IndianWeb2 have decided to summarise the data and predictions from Forrester, Machina Research, WEF, Gartner, IDC for IoT.

Forrester

Forrester, in a new TechRadar report stated that, according to it, Internet of things technologies are too diverse and immature. The report highlights 19 IoT technologies, most of which are currently in a growth and survival phase. Further, the key to their success is development of standards and robust security.

It further identifies IoT as a business-led trend, which 23% of enterprises are already using and another 29% planning to do the same within 12 months. IoT is being used by these enterprises in order to transform their business models by switching from one-time product transactions to ongoing product-as-a-service relationships, optimize utilisation of financial and physical assets, and in order to create new forms of customer engagement.

Its 2016 predictions for 2016 are as follows:

1) According to them, the year 2016 will see IoT create massive volumes of time-series data and IoT analytics become a specialized category and discipline in itself.

2) About 10 percent of the world's drivers will start making use of new auto “appcessories”—smartphone-enabled devices for cars.

3) Someone will surely train the Wall Street investors on how to follow their evolution from product to service revenues, just as Adobe and Microsoft did when they decided to make the move from selling perpetual licenses to selling software-as-a-service.

4) Home insurance companies could start broadly promoting smart home discounts.

5) Enterprise customers and consumers can be expected to automatically ask the product sellers about the sensor capabilities in the mobile application for a new machine tool.

Machina Research

The Machina Research forecast for IoT 2016 are as follows:

1) The year will finally see the need for an IoT push from a C-level executive getting fulfilled as at least one of the Fortune 500 company can be expected to appoint a Chief IoT Officer for itself.

2) This could be a great year for Chinese IoT players. They will increase their market share by a significant amount across areas like software platforms, smart cities deployments, semiconductors and especially the integrated solutions.

3) At least one of the current major IoT player is most likely to face significant regulatory issues.

4) The world is likely to feel the first pulse of the new and booming IoT economy and a major shift from selling products to providing services. This would be achieved as at least one of the Fortune 500 company is most likely to fundamentally change the way it values or trades assets based on the data provided to it by IoT.

5) Finally Corrective analytics, which is a security option to apply automated corrective measures based on actual real-time outcomes rather than the prescriptive or predicted actions will see the day of light as an approach which is fail-safe across a range of sectors.

6) There will be a massive increase in the popularity of digital twins and digital avatars. Virtualising the real world will become really popular, and augmented reality can be expected to move out of its niches and see much wider adoption and acceptance in 2016.

World Economic Forum (WEF)

About 800 leaders were surveyed by the WEF on 21 crucial points—moments when some specific technological shifts will hit the society—expected to be enabled by IoT by the year 2025:

1) 92.1 percentage of the 800 people surveyed believed that 10 percent of people can be expected to wear clothes connected to the Net.

2) 89.2 percentage of the people surveyed believed that 1 trillion sensors will be connected to the Internet by 2025.

3) 85.5 percentage believed that 10 percent of reading glasses will be connected to the Net.

4) 69.9 percentage of the surveyed people believed that over 50 percent of internet traffic to homes will be attributed to appliances and devices.

Gartner

The Gartner predictions for IoT are as follows:

1) Spending on IoT will see a 22 percent jump from the year 2015. It can be expected to touch the figure $235 billion this year.

2) A black market selling fake sensor and video data for enabling criminal activity and protecting personal privacy can be expected to be existing in another 4 years. Its worth could be more than $5 billion.

3) As far as hardware spending is concerned, spending on consumer applications will reach a total of $546 billion. Further, the use of connected things in the enterprise will most probably reach $868 billion this year.

4) The year 2016 could see 5.5 million new things getting connected every day.

5) Through the year 2018, 75 percentage of the IoT projects will take up to twice as long as planned.

6) At 6.4 billion, the percentage of connected things in use worldwide will see a 30 percent jump from the year 2015. This figure can be expected to reach 20.8 billion by 2020.

IDC

1) 2016 is the year the IoT developers were waiting for. Some 250,000 unique IoT applications are expected to be developed by the year 2020.

2) The year would see local public safety organizations shelling out some $20.7 billion on IoT-enabled solutions.

3) Worldwide spending on the Internet of things can be expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% from the $698.6 billion figure in the year 2015 to nearly $1.3 trillion in the next three years.

4) In another two years, there will be a total of 22 billion IoT devices installed, spearheading the development of over 200,000 new IoT applications and services worldwide.

5) The Asia/Pacific region contributed to 40% of the worldwide total IoT spending in the year 2015.

6) By the year 2020, 10 percent of all the attacks will be directed at IoT systems.

7) By 2018, 16% of the total world population will be Millennials and be accelerating its IoT adoption due to the reality of being part of a connected world.

8) 2016 will see the worldwide wearable device market reaching a whopping figure of 111.1 million units shipped. This figure would be a 44.4% up from the 80 million units shipped in the year 2015. By the year 2019, the total shipments can be expected to reach the magic 214.6 million units figure, at a 5 CAGR of 28 percent.

Internet Of Things (IoT) Predictions From Forrester, Machina Research, WEF, Gartner, IDC

Scoring a hat trick of domination at this year's CES was the buzz world 'Internet of things' or 'IoT' as it is popularly known. Out of the total 3,800 companies present at the show, 900 showcased Internet of Things products. While some experts think, the trend is all ready to spread in the jungle like wild fire and has the potential to solidify from being just a marketing dream to full on marketing channel. Others, on the other hand, aren't very impressed with the speed with which the technology is developing and feel the same things are being tried again and again since the coinage of the term.

In order to make our avid readers understand about the present and future of IoT, we at IndianWeb2 have decided to summarise the data and predictions from Forrester, Machina Research, WEF, Gartner, IDC for IoT.

Forrester

Forrester, in a new TechRadar report stated that, according to it, Internet of things technologies are too diverse and immature. The report highlights 19 IoT technologies, most of which are currently in a growth and survival phase. Further, the key to their success is development of standards and robust security.

It further identifies IoT as a business-led trend, which 23% of enterprises are already using and another 29% planning to do the same within 12 months. IoT is being used by these enterprises in order to transform their business models by switching from one-time product transactions to ongoing product-as-a-service relationships, optimize utilisation of financial and physical assets, and in order to create new forms of customer engagement.

Its 2016 predictions for 2016 are as follows:

1) According to them, the year 2016 will see IoT create massive volumes of time-series data and IoT analytics become a specialized category and discipline in itself.

2) About 10 percent of the world's drivers will start making use of new auto “appcessories”—smartphone-enabled devices for cars.

3) Someone will surely train the Wall Street investors on how to follow their evolution from product to service revenues, just as Adobe and Microsoft did when they decided to make the move from selling perpetual licenses to selling software-as-a-service.

4) Home insurance companies could start broadly promoting smart home discounts.

5) Enterprise customers and consumers can be expected to automatically ask the product sellers about the sensor capabilities in the mobile application for a new machine tool.

Machina Research

The Machina Research forecast for IoT 2016 are as follows:

1) The year will finally see the need for an IoT push from a C-level executive getting fulfilled as at least one of the Fortune 500 company can be expected to appoint a Chief IoT Officer for itself.

2) This could be a great year for Chinese IoT players. They will increase their market share by a significant amount across areas like software platforms, smart cities deployments, semiconductors and especially the integrated solutions.

3) At least one of the current major IoT player is most likely to face significant regulatory issues.

4) The world is likely to feel the first pulse of the new and booming IoT economy and a major shift from selling products to providing services. This would be achieved as at least one of the Fortune 500 company is most likely to fundamentally change the way it values or trades assets based on the data provided to it by IoT.

5) Finally Corrective analytics, which is a security option to apply automated corrective measures based on actual real-time outcomes rather than the prescriptive or predicted actions will see the day of light as an approach which is fail-safe across a range of sectors.

6) There will be a massive increase in the popularity of digital twins and digital avatars. Virtualising the real world will become really popular, and augmented reality can be expected to move out of its niches and see much wider adoption and acceptance in 2016.

World Economic Forum (WEF)

About 800 leaders were surveyed by the WEF on 21 crucial points—moments when some specific technological shifts will hit the society—expected to be enabled by IoT by the year 2025:

1) 92.1 percentage of the 800 people surveyed believed that 10 percent of people can be expected to wear clothes connected to the Net.

2) 89.2 percentage of the people surveyed believed that 1 trillion sensors will be connected to the Internet by 2025.

3) 85.5 percentage believed that 10 percent of reading glasses will be connected to the Net.

4) 69.9 percentage of the surveyed people believed that over 50 percent of internet traffic to homes will be attributed to appliances and devices.

Gartner

The Gartner predictions for IoT are as follows:

1) Spending on IoT will see a 22 percent jump from the year 2015. It can be expected to touch the figure $235 billion this year.

2) A black market selling fake sensor and video data for enabling criminal activity and protecting personal privacy can be expected to be existing in another 4 years. Its worth could be more than $5 billion.

3) As far as hardware spending is concerned, spending on consumer applications will reach a total of $546 billion. Further, the use of connected things in the enterprise will most probably reach $868 billion this year.

4) The year 2016 could see 5.5 million new things getting connected every day.

5) Through the year 2018, 75 percentage of the IoT projects will take up to twice as long as planned.

6) At 6.4 billion, the percentage of connected things in use worldwide will see a 30 percent jump from the year 2015. This figure can be expected to reach 20.8 billion by 2020.

IDC

1) 2016 is the year the IoT developers were waiting for. Some 250,000 unique IoT applications are expected to be developed by the year 2020.

2) The year would see local public safety organizations shelling out some $20.7 billion on IoT-enabled solutions.

3) Worldwide spending on the Internet of things can be expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% from the $698.6 billion figure in the year 2015 to nearly $1.3 trillion in the next three years.

4) In another two years, there will be a total of 22 billion IoT devices installed, spearheading the development of over 200,000 new IoT applications and services worldwide.

5) The Asia/Pacific region contributed to 40% of the worldwide total IoT spending in the year 2015.

6) By the year 2020, 10 percent of all the attacks will be directed at IoT systems.

7) By 2018, 16% of the total world population will be Millennials and be accelerating its IoT adoption due to the reality of being part of a connected world.

8) 2016 will see the worldwide wearable device market reaching a whopping figure of 111.1 million units shipped. This figure would be a 44.4% up from the 80 million units shipped in the year 2015. By the year 2019, the total shipments can be expected to reach the magic 214.6 million units figure, at a 5 CAGR of 28 percent.

Meet The World’s First Ubuntu Tablet

Isn't the time of multifunctional devices. The customer nowadays wants something more and the plus side is, that the device makers are ready to go all the way and provide the customers with what they want. A perfect example of this trend is Canonical manufactured world's first Ubuntu tablet, the Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition.

The 10-inch tablet runs on the same core operating system as the Ubuntu Phone but the user experience dynamically adapts based on input and the screen size being used by the user. This means, the device is able to double up both as a tablet and a full on Ubuntu desktop.



The device's stunning specifications have the capability to bowl any geeky techie's mind over. The device's gorgeous 10.1-inch IPS inch IPS touch display is powered by a full HD 1920×1200 pixel resolution at 240 ppi. Further, its Inside has a 64-bit MediaTek MT8163A 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal memory to make it a desire for ever tech enthusiast. In order to increase the storage expansion to up to 64GB, the device comes with a micro SD memory card.

This is not all, the device also comes with an 8-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and dual LED flash, which is capable of recording in full 1080p. Further, it also has a 3-megapixel front facing camera for selfies, video chats and vlogs.

For an astounding sound experience, the device comes with front facing Dolby Atmos speakers. Further, the M10 at 246mm x 171mm x 8.2mm, weighs just 470 grams and is lighter than the Apple iPad Air. Yes, you read it right. In addition to this, its 7280 mAh battery makes sure that people are able to make use of it for 10 hours without any hassle.

The firsts for M10 doesn't just stop with its unique slate form factor. It also has the honour of being the first device to deliver on Canonical’s vision of the future of computing: convergence.

According to Canonical, idea behind convergence is, that one doesn't need to distinct, separate devices, each running their own apps and operating system - as one only need one brain to do various functions, similarly one needs only one OS.

Organisations who want to take a tight control over their own systems and avoid any third party access, Ubuntu is the device they were looking for so long.

The M10 Ubuntu tablet global sale can be expected to begin in March. For people wanting to buying the device, they may have to shell up to €250, which we think for such a device is not that bad a deal.

Meet The World’s First Ubuntu Tablet

Isn't the time of multifunctional devices. The customer nowadays wants something more and the plus side is, that the device makers are ready to go all the way and provide the customers with what they want. A perfect example of this trend is Canonical manufactured world's first Ubuntu tablet, the Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition.

The 10-inch tablet runs on the same core operating system as the Ubuntu Phone but the user experience dynamically adapts based on input and the screen size being used by the user. This means, the device is able to double up both as a tablet and a full on Ubuntu desktop.



The device's stunning specifications have the capability to bowl any geeky techie's mind over. The device's gorgeous 10.1-inch IPS inch IPS touch display is powered by a full HD 1920×1200 pixel resolution at 240 ppi. Further, its Inside has a 64-bit MediaTek MT8163A 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal memory to make it a desire for ever tech enthusiast. In order to increase the storage expansion to up to 64GB, the device comes with a micro SD memory card.

This is not all, the device also comes with an 8-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and dual LED flash, which is capable of recording in full 1080p. Further, it also has a 3-megapixel front facing camera for selfies, video chats and vlogs.

For an astounding sound experience, the device comes with front facing Dolby Atmos speakers. Further, the M10 at 246mm x 171mm x 8.2mm, weighs just 470 grams and is lighter than the Apple iPad Air. Yes, you read it right. In addition to this, its 7280 mAh battery makes sure that people are able to make use of it for 10 hours without any hassle.

The firsts for M10 doesn't just stop with its unique slate form factor. It also has the honour of being the first device to deliver on Canonical’s vision of the future of computing: convergence.

According to Canonical, idea behind convergence is, that one doesn't need to distinct, separate devices, each running their own apps and operating system - as one only need one brain to do various functions, similarly one needs only one OS.

Organisations who want to take a tight control over their own systems and avoid any third party access, Ubuntu is the device they were looking for so long.

The M10 Ubuntu tablet global sale can be expected to begin in March. For people wanting to buying the device, they may have to shell up to €250, which we think for such a device is not that bad a deal.

This Pune Startup Helps Family Run Retail Businesses To Grow Into Multi-chain Outlets

The much famous Indian retail sector now has a retail coach on board. For people trying to comprehend what am I saying, let me break it down for you. Your Retail Coach, is a Pune based retail business management startup.
It is primarily into development of SOP i.e. Standard Operating Procedures for the Retail Sector.

The startup aims to abolish the ages old "banya" tag associated with the retail sector by managing the Front and Back office Operations of all young, dynamic, visionary and confident retailers who have an ambition of expanding to multi chain outlets and unleash their true potential.

Your Retail Coach, which is an expert service division of Mind-A-Mend Group, was started in the year 2012 as a soft skills and Sales Training Consultancy. But, soon after they realised that training was a short term motivational activity and couldn't really provide long term solutions for their operational difficulties. This is when Mr. Nikhil Agarwal, MSc. (International Business & Finance) and one of the co-founders of the company suggested developing SOPs which he had observed in all the organised retail businesses during his time overseas. Taking lead on his suggestion, the company went head-on with the survey of understanding the need of SOP in the Retail Sector in Mumbai and Pune areas.

Initially, they did face a hard time since the services being offered were niche and the retailers were taking a lot of time in understanding its importance. But once they did, they never left the startup's side.

The startup has already developed SOPs for more than 30 brands till date and is still associated with more than 85% of their clients.

Another thing which sets them apart from their competition is the fact that they not only design SOPs but also implement them for the retailers. Further, they also manage the Front Office Operations of the retailers who want to outsource.



Rupal Shah Agarwal, Nikhil Agarwal and Varun Shah, are the brains behind this unique startup. Having come from different educational background, each one of them has a unique capability to offer, which has really added to the startup.

The startup hasn't received any funding as of yet and has re-invested in the business from whatever they have earned from it. By keeping quality of their services at check, they're hopeful that they will be able to achieve their 100 crores revenue goal by another four years.

This Pune Startup Helps Family Run Retail Businesses To Grow Into Multi-chain Outlets

The much famous Indian retail sector now has a retail coach on board. For people trying to comprehend what am I saying, let me break it down for you. Your Retail Coach, is a Pune based retail business management startup.
It is primarily into development of SOP i.e. Standard Operating Procedures for the Retail Sector.

The startup aims to abolish the ages old "banya" tag associated with the retail sector by managing the Front and Back office Operations of all young, dynamic, visionary and confident retailers who have an ambition of expanding to multi chain outlets and unleash their true potential.

Your Retail Coach, which is an expert service division of Mind-A-Mend Group, was started in the year 2012 as a soft skills and Sales Training Consultancy. But, soon after they realised that training was a short term motivational activity and couldn't really provide long term solutions for their operational difficulties. This is when Mr. Nikhil Agarwal, MSc. (International Business & Finance) and one of the co-founders of the company suggested developing SOPs which he had observed in all the organised retail businesses during his time overseas. Taking lead on his suggestion, the company went head-on with the survey of understanding the need of SOP in the Retail Sector in Mumbai and Pune areas.

Initially, they did face a hard time since the services being offered were niche and the retailers were taking a lot of time in understanding its importance. But once they did, they never left the startup's side.

The startup has already developed SOPs for more than 30 brands till date and is still associated with more than 85% of their clients.

Another thing which sets them apart from their competition is the fact that they not only design SOPs but also implement them for the retailers. Further, they also manage the Front Office Operations of the retailers who want to outsource.



Rupal Shah Agarwal, Nikhil Agarwal and Varun Shah, are the brains behind this unique startup. Having come from different educational background, each one of them has a unique capability to offer, which has really added to the startup.

The startup hasn't received any funding as of yet and has re-invested in the business from whatever they have earned from it. By keeping quality of their services at check, they're hopeful that they will be able to achieve their 100 crores revenue goal by another four years.

Revenue From IoT Implementation in India Will Be About $4 Billion By 2020: IDC

IoT seems to have arrived in India and how. According to a latest prediction made by International Data Corporation (IDC), the revenue from IoT implementation in the country for manufacturing will skyrocket and hit around $4 billion in another four years in 2020. This figure makes it a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of a staggering 20 percent.

According to a recently published article of IDC's Manufacturing Insights on the current trends in the adoption of IoT and the opportunities offered by IT system integrators for their implementation, the IoT industry is at a maturity stage in India today where innovative use cases are being employed in certain pockets which is resulting in great amount of business impact.

Multiple diverse components from sensors are combined with products to telemetry for remote connectivity, networking gateways, infrastructure such as an Internet of things platform for computing and storage and an analytics engine in order to bring out key insights from raw data that are required to be integrated together so as for an effective business value to deliver good operational performance. There is no individual player available that can expertise in all these aforementioned areas.

Since the difficulty and complexity involved with multiple systems that need to be integrated is huge, hence, one's choice of partners becomes equally important as the narrowing down of specific operational technologies.

With their escalating investments in Internet of things, system integrators are said to emerge as the key stakeholders in IoT who will end up supervising end-to-end execution by managing to bring together multiple players and their own skills. Companies like Cognizant, Wipro etc. have already openly acknowledged IoT as a top driver for growth while some others have started setting up Internet of things test beds in collaboration with the Industrial Internet Consortium.

According to IDC, the use cases in Manufacturing can be broadly classified into 3 broad categories. These are as follows –

1) Connected supply chain
2) Connected assets within the enterprise
3) Connected products

For a super successful Internet of things blue print, domain knowledge and skills in the aforementioned areas and centric to the industry are very important.

System Integrators who have enough experience in implementing traditional Information technology applications in manufacturing can prove to be extremely beneficial for a connected enterprise.

The IDC report also throws light on the capabilities of twelve System Integrators in terms of their engagement models, use cases, infrastructure, challenges faced and the way through which these challenges were overcome.

According to Ramachandran S, Principal Research Manager, IDC Manufacturing Insights Asia/Pacific, “Successful implementation of IoT projects will be subject to awareness and choice of appropriate partner based on well-defined evaluation parameters for their end-to-end management. The onus of technology perspective and their management will be on partners. This will help manufacturing enterprises to focus on the core areas of IoT in bundling them with their product and services portfolio and in rolling out profitable business models.”

Verticals such as ownership of data, cost sharing and incentives, ensuring their security and interoperability, need to be well-defined in order to make sure that there's an overall enhancement of the system which results in making engagement models extremely important for Internet of things projects.

Revenue From IoT Implementation in India Will Be About $4 Billion By 2020: IDC

IoT seems to have arrived in India and how. According to a latest prediction made by International Data Corporation (IDC), the revenue from IoT implementation in the country for manufacturing will skyrocket and hit around $4 billion in another four years in 2020. This figure makes it a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of a staggering 20 percent.

According to a recently published article of IDC's Manufacturing Insights on the current trends in the adoption of IoT and the opportunities offered by IT system integrators for their implementation, the IoT industry is at a maturity stage in India today where innovative use cases are being employed in certain pockets which is resulting in great amount of business impact.

Multiple diverse components from sensors are combined with products to telemetry for remote connectivity, networking gateways, infrastructure such as an Internet of things platform for computing and storage and an analytics engine in order to bring out key insights from raw data that are required to be integrated together so as for an effective business value to deliver good operational performance. There is no individual player available that can expertise in all these aforementioned areas.

Since the difficulty and complexity involved with multiple systems that need to be integrated is huge, hence, one's choice of partners becomes equally important as the narrowing down of specific operational technologies.

With their escalating investments in Internet of things, system integrators are said to emerge as the key stakeholders in IoT who will end up supervising end-to-end execution by managing to bring together multiple players and their own skills. Companies like Cognizant, Wipro etc. have already openly acknowledged IoT as a top driver for growth while some others have started setting up Internet of things test beds in collaboration with the Industrial Internet Consortium.

According to IDC, the use cases in Manufacturing can be broadly classified into 3 broad categories. These are as follows –

1) Connected supply chain
2) Connected assets within the enterprise
3) Connected products

For a super successful Internet of things blue print, domain knowledge and skills in the aforementioned areas and centric to the industry are very important.

System Integrators who have enough experience in implementing traditional Information technology applications in manufacturing can prove to be extremely beneficial for a connected enterprise.

The IDC report also throws light on the capabilities of twelve System Integrators in terms of their engagement models, use cases, infrastructure, challenges faced and the way through which these challenges were overcome.

According to Ramachandran S, Principal Research Manager, IDC Manufacturing Insights Asia/Pacific, “Successful implementation of IoT projects will be subject to awareness and choice of appropriate partner based on well-defined evaluation parameters for their end-to-end management. The onus of technology perspective and their management will be on partners. This will help manufacturing enterprises to focus on the core areas of IoT in bundling them with their product and services portfolio and in rolling out profitable business models.”

Verticals such as ownership of data, cost sharing and incentives, ensuring their security and interoperability, need to be well-defined in order to make sure that there's an overall enhancement of the system which results in making engagement models extremely important for Internet of things projects.

IAMAI Suggests Ways To Spread Internet Across India

The internet wave is spreading in India like a wild fire. It's no secret that the country is currently the third largest internet user base but considering its population and size, a lot more can be and needs to be done.

According to the current statistics available with us, India currently has the third largest internet user base in the world. Further, the total number of internet users keeps increasing with each passing year. According to figures, the number of Internet users in India rose from 300 million in December 2014 to a whopping 402 million by December last year. According to various industry experts, this number can be expected to reach 462 million by the month of June this year.

Another trend which has seen an upward trajectory is the swelling number of Mobile internet users. According to figures available, the mobile internet user base in urban India has crossed over the 306 million figures in the year 2015, making it a leap of 65%. The rural India user base registered a growth of 99% at 87 million by the end of December last year.

Don't let these aforementioned figures fool you. India for sure is doing great when it comes to the user base number, but when the discussion moves to internet penetration, the figures aren't that glossy at all. In terms of internet penetration, India stands at a very low 21%. This figure is far behind USA's 86.8%, Brazil's 53.5% and China's 46%.

In order to provide India with some suggestions and recommendations to catch up with its counterparts in the Internet penetration race, Industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India also famously known as the IAMAI has come up a report on the same.

According to the report, one basic reason for slow internet penetration in the country is the wide variety of local languages being practiced in the country. India is a land of varied cultures which come with their own varied and unique languages. This is where the Internet lacks. Most of the content being produced nowadays on the Internet is in English, which proves to be of no use to people who understand, speak and write their local language only.

"Accessing the internet in local language broadly has two challenges. The first challenge is generating content in local languages and popularising such content for broader adoption. The second challenge is on the technical front, pertaining to availability of Indian scripts for generating digital content," the report reads.

Although the Indian government and various private organisations like Wikipedia, Google and Facebook have understood this problem and have come up with local language content, still the availability of this content remains extremely low when compared to other languages. For example, statistically comparing, the Sanskrit Wikipedia has only 11,000 articles, while the Hindi one stands at around 22,000 Wiki pages. On the other hand, the German Wikipedia has 1.79 million pages and 55,000 for a small European country like Estonia. Shockingly, Indian languages occupies less than 0.1% of the content currently on the world wide web.

According to the IAMAI, the number of web users in India can increase significantly if the content available on the internet is accessible to people in their own local languages.

The report further goes a step ahead and identifies the various stakeholders who can be financially benefitted while bringing the local languages content on the Internet to the consumers. According to it, if the Indian language book publishing industry decides to moves its services and products online, they can create a digital opportunity worth nearly a whopping $7 billion for not only the content providers but also the technology players. Further, the online medium will prove to be a much more cost efficient option for them to reach out to their regional language consumers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities than the traditional media that they make use of currently.

The various technological barriers relating to local language fonts and keyboards; the type of device and the subsequent software platform it operates on, is the main reason for the slow adoption of local languages content on the Internet.

The IAMAI report fully narrows down the key players and stakeholders in the ecosystem; takes a serious note of the various developments that have taken place in this regard and also mentions the various future projects in the pipeline, and identifies the various challenges that are currently restricting the Internet proliferation in the country.

IAMAI Suggests Ways To Spread Internet Across India

The internet wave is spreading in India like a wild fire. It's no secret that the country is currently the third largest internet user base but considering its population and size, a lot more can be and needs to be done.

According to the current statistics available with us, India currently has the third largest internet user base in the world. Further, the total number of internet users keeps increasing with each passing year. According to figures, the number of Internet users in India rose from 300 million in December 2014 to a whopping 402 million by December last year. According to various industry experts, this number can be expected to reach 462 million by the month of June this year.

Another trend which has seen an upward trajectory is the swelling number of Mobile internet users. According to figures available, the mobile internet user base in urban India has crossed over the 306 million figures in the year 2015, making it a leap of 65%. The rural India user base registered a growth of 99% at 87 million by the end of December last year.

Don't let these aforementioned figures fool you. India for sure is doing great when it comes to the user base number, but when the discussion moves to internet penetration, the figures aren't that glossy at all. In terms of internet penetration, India stands at a very low 21%. This figure is far behind USA's 86.8%, Brazil's 53.5% and China's 46%.

In order to provide India with some suggestions and recommendations to catch up with its counterparts in the Internet penetration race, Industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India also famously known as the IAMAI has come up a report on the same.

According to the report, one basic reason for slow internet penetration in the country is the wide variety of local languages being practiced in the country. India is a land of varied cultures which come with their own varied and unique languages. This is where the Internet lacks. Most of the content being produced nowadays on the Internet is in English, which proves to be of no use to people who understand, speak and write their local language only.

"Accessing the internet in local language broadly has two challenges. The first challenge is generating content in local languages and popularising such content for broader adoption. The second challenge is on the technical front, pertaining to availability of Indian scripts for generating digital content," the report reads.

Although the Indian government and various private organisations like Wikipedia, Google and Facebook have understood this problem and have come up with local language content, still the availability of this content remains extremely low when compared to other languages. For example, statistically comparing, the Sanskrit Wikipedia has only 11,000 articles, while the Hindi one stands at around 22,000 Wiki pages. On the other hand, the German Wikipedia has 1.79 million pages and 55,000 for a small European country like Estonia. Shockingly, Indian languages occupies less than 0.1% of the content currently on the world wide web.

According to the IAMAI, the number of web users in India can increase significantly if the content available on the internet is accessible to people in their own local languages.

The report further goes a step ahead and identifies the various stakeholders who can be financially benefitted while bringing the local languages content on the Internet to the consumers. According to it, if the Indian language book publishing industry decides to moves its services and products online, they can create a digital opportunity worth nearly a whopping $7 billion for not only the content providers but also the technology players. Further, the online medium will prove to be a much more cost efficient option for them to reach out to their regional language consumers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities than the traditional media that they make use of currently.

The various technological barriers relating to local language fonts and keyboards; the type of device and the subsequent software platform it operates on, is the main reason for the slow adoption of local languages content on the Internet.

The IAMAI report fully narrows down the key players and stakeholders in the ecosystem; takes a serious note of the various developments that have taken place in this regard and also mentions the various future projects in the pipeline, and identifies the various challenges that are currently restricting the Internet proliferation in the country.

JusPay,Mobile payments startup ,Raises Rs 40 crore from Accel Partners and other

Mobile payments startup, Juspay, has raised Rs 40 crore (approx $5.8Mn) in series A round of funding by VC firm Accel Partners and Bookmyshow founders.

Juspay stated that the funds will be used for the product development. As per a leading media publication, The deal values three-year old Juspay, which also counts India Value Fund partner and former Network18 CEO Haresh Chawla as an angel investor, at over Rs 200 crore. Accel has picked up about 20% stake in the company.

Juspay was founded, in 2012 by Vimal Kumar and Ramanathan RV, with a vision to enable the Bn people in India with secure 1-click payments on mobile. The mobile payments company’s technology helps companies simplify payments by aggregating different services across net banking, wallets & cards. It also helps merchants improve success rate of payments on the platforms.

Juspay’s client include companies like Amazon India, Snapdeal, Bookmyshow, Makemytrip, Yatra, Swiggy, Freecharge, Foodpanda, and Jabong.

The mobile payments company's technology helps companies simplify payments by aggregating different services across net banking, wallets and cards, besides also helping merchants improve success rate of payments on the platforms.

Juspay, which has about 30 workers, has seen the number of transactions on its platform increase to 600,000-700,000 a day now from less than 100,000 a year ago. The platform started operations with redBus and Snapdeal as clients, and now has two products - express check out and one-click browser check out .

 

JusPay,Mobile payments startup ,Raises Rs 40 crore from Accel Partners and other

Mobile payments startup, Juspay, has raised Rs 40 crore (approx $5.8Mn) in series A round of funding by VC firm Accel Partners and Bookmyshow founders.

Juspay stated that the funds will be used for the product development. As per a leading media publication, The deal values three-year old Juspay, which also counts India Value Fund partner and former Network18 CEO Haresh Chawla as an angel investor, at over Rs 200 crore. Accel has picked up about 20% stake in the company.

Juspay was founded, in 2012 by Vimal Kumar and Ramanathan RV, with a vision to enable the Bn people in India with secure 1-click payments on mobile. The mobile payments company’s technology helps companies simplify payments by aggregating different services across net banking, wallets & cards. It also helps merchants improve success rate of payments on the platforms.

Juspay’s client include companies like Amazon India, Snapdeal, Bookmyshow, Makemytrip, Yatra, Swiggy, Freecharge, Foodpanda, and Jabong.

The mobile payments company's technology helps companies simplify payments by aggregating different services across net banking, wallets and cards, besides also helping merchants improve success rate of payments on the platforms.

Juspay, which has about 30 workers, has seen the number of transactions on its platform increase to 600,000-700,000 a day now from less than 100,000 a year ago. The platform started operations with redBus and Snapdeal as clients, and now has two products - express check out and one-click browser check out .