Innholdsfortegnelse for 15 January 2017 i Business Today

It was a new spin. At one of his public appearances in Delhi recently, Travis Kalanick, Chief Executive of Uber, said the company, which connects commuters to cabs, can make cities greener. About 96 per cent of the time, a car lies idle, and much land is used for storing it. If one gives up driving and ‘Ubers’ instead, roads can be used more efficiently, the storage required for cars can be opened up for more useful things, and it would clear the air. “Uber is about giving your city back,” he told the audience. Given Delhi’s pollution crisis, it was a timely message. And anything to do with smarter mobility is the right string to strum as Indian cities plan to infuse a dose of smartness in their chaotic,…

Akodara's cotton and wheat farmers, too, have gone digital with local mandi commission agents being brought to the digital platform. ICICI Bank also provides computer education at the local schools Akodara and Daramali, two villages in Sabarkantha district, Gujarat, separated by about 25 km, are similar in many respects. Both have a population of less than 2,000, with Patels as the dominant caste. The Patels own on average one to five acres of land and 20-30 heads of cattle. Both villages cultivate the same crops – cotton, wheat and castor – and have a literacy rate of around 90 per cent. But while both are pioneers in their own way, Akodara is nationally renowned while Daramali remains obscure. Akodara has been much lauded as the country’s first ‘digital, cashless village’,…

DEEPAK AMITABH Highlighting the advancements in the smart grids infrastructure globally, Deepak Amitabh, Chairman & Managing Director, PTC India, talks about what India can expect, given the government’s thrust on the development of smart grids by way of substantial investments. The most ambitious smart grid initiatives appear to be those underway in China and the US, where smart grids are seen as a way to reduce energy consumption, increase the efficiency of the electricity network, and manage electricity generation from renewable technologies. Japan and Korea also have significant and long-term plans wherein incorporating solar power generation and national smart metering initiatives are the defining foundations. In Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and France, too, there are smart grid initiatives with focused objectives that started as early as 2008, and in…

Leakage was a big issue. In the past four years, nearly 550 km of large pipelines have been replaced out of 600 km across the city. Also, 1.35 lakh HSCs are replaced, out of the total 3.25 lakh connections Strong emphasis is given to customer care service. Rather than having a centralised customer centre, there’s a centre in each zone – 10 zones – so that customers can be better served For decades, Ekadashi Sakre, 43, and her family of five struggled for drinking water. Her house in Nagpur’s Ekatmata Nagar had a water pipe, but no water came from the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC). A local contractor would supply water to the locality from a well through municipal pipes, but the water was not potable. Worse: it was available…

TOM VON BONSDORFF, Managing Director, Volvo Auto India, believes that the stride towards self-driving cars is well underway, and the destination may be closer than you think. He talks about the future of autonomous cars, and how India should prepare to usher in a new era of road travel, which is safer and convenient. Self-driving cars have been one of the most trans-formative technologies in the recent past. With cars getting integrated with the latest advancements, and innovative feature-led technologies, the future holds various new possibilities, opening up exciting ways to travel and explore, not compromising on the safety of the passenger. Moreover, as vehicles become smarter and more connected, their communication with other vehicles will become more enhanced. This will enable a car to accelerate or decelerate smoothly, which…

In November 2016, the government of Rajasthan signed an agreement with a start-up, EM3 Agriservices, to establish up to 300 centres that provide agricultural equipment and services on a pay-for-use basis. The same month, the two-year-old farming-as-a-service (FAAS) company, with 12 custom agri-service centres – branded ‘Samadhan techno kheti’ – that rent out services and equipment to farmers in Madhya Pradesh, was invited to present its business model to Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed major funds to boost yields and incomes of millions of small farmers in developing countries of Africa and Asia. There is a reason why both, a state known for progressive practices in agriculture and a global agency interested in advancing futuristic agricultural practices across poor countries, found EM3 interesting. The for-profit…

Mobile-based digital payments have been growing phenomenally worldwide. Around 23 per cent of global consumers have adopted it, according to surveys, while among early users of smart-phones, the figure is 35 per cent. The Scandinavian nations – Norway, Sweden and Denmark – as well as the UK, France and Belgium are well on their way to becoming entirely cashless. Close on their heels are Canada, Australia and South Korea. India is way, way behind, but with the acute cash shortage following the demonetisation decision, it is expected to also take a quantum leap in the same direction soon. What are the main concerns as usage of e-wallets and plastic money multiplies and bitcoins grow in popularity? CONNECTIVITY AND SECURITY The first major challenge to taking the cashless economy to every…

“Within the next seven to 10 years, if surgeons do not offer robotic surgery as an option, patients will choose a surgeon who will. Ultimately, it is not a question of what is good for me and you but what is good for the patient. If a procedure is safer and painless for the patient, we can never stop it” DR. DEVI PRASAD SHETTY, Founder & Chairman, Narayana Health, which revolutionised heart surgeries by substantially bringing down costs, says robots are set to perform simpler surgeries in a few years, giving a huge boost to specialised care in remote areas. The future is not an extension of the past. How you create it depends entirely on your imagination. And, if you don’t change with the times, you will become…

KESHAV R. MURUGESH, Group CEO, WNS Global Services and Chairman, NASSCOM BPM Council, says combining robotics with human intelligence can produce results that were considered impossible earlier We enjoy reminiscing about good old days, those happy memories of carefree school and college days. While we commit the happy moments to our memory, we tend to leave out the not-so-happy ones. Like how a letter used to take 10-15 days to reach its destination. Or how you had to call up the airport to enquire about the departure status of your flight and were lucky if somebody answered the phone. Or a good day was one in which the queue at the bank was short and the loan application moved from one desk to the other. Lurking behind the romance of…

“Demonetisation cannot not be seen as a tool to weed out corruption or other ills of the society.” AMITABH KANT CEO, NITI AAYOG The government's move to recall `500 and `1,000 currency notes is the topic of most drawing room discussions nowadays. The fourth edition of BT MindRush was any , top and officials enriching the event with their diverse views, and the government defending the move with all the intellectual power at its command. The morning's session saw Amitabh Kant, the CEO of Niti Aayog, directly take on criticism that demonetisation will cause long-term damage to the country’s economy and said it was a necessary move for India to make any serious attempt to grow at a fast pace. “For India to become a $10-trillion economy and grow at…

While yoga guru Baba Ramdev is the face of Patanjali Ayurved, Acharya Balkrishna has been the silent force behind the home-grown toothpaste-to-noodles company. However, Balkrishna cannot be mistaken for a reticent and reluctant man-of-action. At BT MindRush, he had the answers to all the tough questions thrown at him. Without the trappings of a business magnate or a management guru, Balkrishna was able to convincingly explain the thinking behind Patanjali. “Our business mantra is: solve the problems of people, and they will reward you with success,” he said. He admitted that Patanjali was not the outcome of meticulous planning. It happened because yoga guru Ramdev wanted to help farmers. Balkrishna narrated the story of how Baba Ramdev promised to buy amla (Indian gooseberry) from some farmers in Uttarakhand to prevent…

R.CHANDRASHEKHAR, President of National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), believes good governance is all about leveraging new age technologies. People, processes and technology should effectively combine to deliver Maximum Governance with Minimum Government. Indeed, Chandrashekhar asserts, no governance reform programme can be designed without e-governance at its core. It can be said that the role of ICT in the public sector has evolved from informatisation to providing smart government. But that’s rather a staid way of looking at it. The old model (1980 – 2000) led to high costs with limited results, and was merely an attempt to computerise brick and mortar. Major shortcomings were experienced – there was lack of change management techniques and process re-engineering which often led to duplication, creation of silos and sub-par outcomes.…

All Indian states are moving towards increasing e-governance, but some states are moving faster than others. Among the most proactive are the neighbour states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Andhra Pradesh On December 20, 2014, six months after Telangana was hived off from Andhra Pradesh, the N. Chandrababu Naidu-led government in Andhra launched its ambitious E-office project. The objective was no less than to render every single government file in digital form, making government offices totally paperless. It is a massive work in progress, with daily updates on the number of files thus converted available at http://core.ap.gov.in/CMDashBoard/Index.aspx. Starting with 20 departments, the project has rapidly expanded, with the current number of digitized files standing at 9,78,376 (on December 21). Files of at least two districts, Krishna and West Godavari have…

GEORGE MARSHALL, Founder of Oxford-based Climate Outreach Information Network, argues that we have been far too impervious in acknowledging the severity of climate change. He suggests new ways to talk about this looming threat that speak to people’s distinct and different identities and values. My colleagues in the environmental movement, echoed by newspapers and policy makers, persist in talking about climate change as an environmental problem, to be covered by the environmental correspondent who is reporting on a speech by the environment minister. Is it any surprise that so many people in the business world say, “Yes, we like the environment; look we have a nice CSR policy. But our primary focus is economic returns and the growth of our business!” So the first thing we have to do is…

Could airports, in the longer term, become purely a place where different modes of transport intersect?   SRINIVAS BOMMIDALA, Chairman-Airports, GMR Group, predicts a big shift from fragmented to ‘end-to-end’ travel experience, lesser number of stressful interactions at the airport, and use of big data to improve operational efficiency at airports Over the past decade, there have been several paradigm shifts across the world. In 2006, Facebook moved from being a restricted website to becoming open to anyone over the age of 13, George W. Bush was US president, a young senator from Illinois announced his candidature for US presidency, India had only 140 million mobile subscribers and Indian airports were catering to well under 100 million passengers in a year. Today, Facebook has approximately 1.8 billion users, Donald Trump…

VIVEK VASHISHTHA, Country Leader, Government and Regulatory Affairs, IBM India, explains how proactive planning, improved traffic forecasting and management, and optimised use of existing transportation infrastructure can ensure lower congestion, shorter travel times, increased safety, and reduced emissions and noise. Globalisation, population growth and urbanisation are overwhelming transportation systems around the world, many of which were built to accommodate a fraction of the current load. How can a growing city keep up with ever-increasing transportation management demands? We believe the truly intelligent transportation management system should be: Instrumented: Smarter transportation management systems can track traffic from source to destination, monitor conditions in real time, and instantly identify defects and inefficiencies across assets and infrastructure using information obtained from installed and mobile technologies, including sensors, cameras, mobile phones, social media and…

DAVID BERGVINSON, Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, believes technology will be key to increasing agriculture productivity by delivering tailored recommendations to farmers based on crop, planting date,variety sown, real-time, localised observed weather and projected market prices. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Digital India on July 1, 2015 to create digital infrastructure for empowering rural communities, enabling digital delivery of services and promoting digital literacy. Given that 68 per cent of India’s population is rural and agriculture is the main source of livelihood for 58 per cent of the population, one must consider the role of Digital Agriculture within Digital India. Digital Agriculture can be defined as ICT and data ecosystems to support the development and delivery of timely, targeted (localised) information and services to make…

Three months ago, Rajesh Kumar, a grocery shop owner in South Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, added a new line of business – perishables like fruits and vegetables. All he has done is reserve some space to display the fresh produce he gets from a city-based start-up, Sabziwala. to his doorstep. Whatever is unsold is taken back next morning. Kumar just pays for the quantity that has been sold, after deducting his commission. Sabziwala, the brainchild of former IAS officer Pravesh Sharma, is trying to redefine agri-marketing in a manner never attempted before. Unlike dozens of other online marketplaces that offer home delivery of fresh produce to consumers by bypassing existing retail channels, Sabziwala uses existing outlets, vegetable vendors and grocery shops to sell its branded vegetables. While most retail suppliers, including…

Royal Bank of Scotland is trying out a virtual chatbot, Luvo, which effortlessly responds to customer queries. Luvo , backed by artificial intelligence, also learns from successive customer interactions. The complex queries that it can’t handle go to human staffers. Globally, banks are piloting many such bots, in order to save time, money and standardise the communication process. In India, too, the digital wave is making traditional banking less relevant. In September, the country’s largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank, became the first to launch its version of Luvo. It says over 200 robots are already doing over a million transactions a day. However, barring a couple of large players, most Indian banks are yet to wake up to the invasion of robotics in banking. But it is not only…

As emerging technologies disrupt banking, their success will depend on empowerment and adoption levels. The need of the hour is for multiple agencies — governments, banks, telcos fintech firms — to educate the masses   RISHI GUPTA, MD & CEO, FinoPaytech, says smart phone-based UPI and wallets, which received a shot in the arm after demonetisation, will be critical in pushing domestic remittances and payments anking is necessary, but banks are not, said Microsoft founder Bill Gates. He might have been talking about the impact of technology in facilitating cashless banking transactions. Rightly so, as we in India are in the midst of a digital equivalent of a tsunami, which can change the way we pay and bank forever. Technology-enabled Business Correspondent (BC) model, introduced in 2005, marked the emergence…

ANDREAS WOLF, Joint Managing Director, Bosch Limited, writes that technology, digital systems and automated processes define the future of manufacturing. This will entail that companies innovate technologies to keep pace up with market demands, use creativity to ensure products cater to different sectors in the industry, and install digital systems to enable connectivity. VUCA – a term introduced at the end of the Cold War to reflect volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – has gripped organisations with change in our markets. It is often driven by disruptive technologies, new mobility solutions, connectivity, new players entering the market, and new legislations. The repercussions are tremendous, but survival is the core nature of successful collaborations between the demands of the market and the ability of an organisation to cater to these needs.…

BEN WABER, who leads Humanyze — a behavioural analytics company that uses wearable sensing technology and digital communication data to transform how companies are managed — says people are terrible at dealing with distractions and interruptions and so technology developers need to design with that in mind. How beneficial is technology for workplace performance? At a high level, we know that it makes us more productive. We can search digital records in seconds rather than days. We can rapidly iterate tasks with co-workers by sending quick messages. We can collaborate with teams in other locations instantaneously. That’s not to say that technology is universally positive for work. One could argue that certain aspects hinder performance through distraction and interruption. Here, we’ll investigate the benefits and drawbacks of technology at work.…

All roads led to New Delhi's Taj Mansingh hotel on December 17 for Business Today's annual brainstorming event, the BT MindRush. A virtual who's who made it a point to be a part of the conclave. What followed was an animated discussion on a host of burning issues before the world of business. The day began with a bang. Renowned cardiac surgeon Dr. Naresh Trehan, Chairman and Managing Director of Medanta, took the stage for the morning lecture at the ‘Wakeup Call’ session. Trehan asserted that discipline and control over the quantum and frequency of your food intake can make a world of difference to your health, helping you combat deadly diseases like diabetes. “If you have knowledge of your body, you can add ten physically-strong years to your life,”…

“I see a shift happening from physical assets – gold, bullion, diamond, etc. – to financial assets because of demonetisation” BHARAT SHAH, Executive Director, ASK Group “Because of demonetisation, earnings growth has been pushed back and, consequently, the stock prices have been cheaper” RIDHAM DESAI, MD, Morgan Stanley India “If the recovery happens before one or two quarters, you may not have opportunity to buy shares” NILESH SHAH, MD, Kotak Mahindra AMC “No new capacity has come up after 2011/12. So, a good operating project in any industry will give better results” RASHESH SHAH, Chairman and CEO, Edelweiss Group Stock markets around the world are full of surprises. Sometimes, investors have been wary of the unpredictability and volatile nature of the markets – more so, after the…

He is up 19 hours a day with a good part of his early mornings and late nights spent in group chats on WhatsApp. No, he is not another teen living life in cyberspace glued to his smartphone and tab. It is a slice out of a typical day of 53-year-old U. Ramamohan, the superintendent of police dealing with cyber crimes at the office of the CID in Hyderabad. “In cyber crime, there is no crime scene from where to begin your investigations. In many cases, the criminal is not even physically present,” says Ramamohan. This is one challenge he needs to constantly face; the other is coming up with innovative ways to outsmart the digitally-savvy criminal. That partly explains the time he chooses to spend in group chats. These…

We’re already seeing the immense impact of digitisation, not only in terms of GDP growth and job creation, but in improving the overall quality of life   JOHN CHAMBERS, Executive Chairman of Cisco, asserts that digitisation has the power to transform India into a true technology leader in the years ahead. What India has been able to achieve in terms of economic transformation over the past two decades is commendable. Through sweeping economic reforms, initiatives to open up Indian markets to global business and investments in areas like digital technology and Smart Cities, the country has made great progress. India has more than halved its poverty rate since the initial economic reforms of the early '90s, and per capita income has almost quadrupled compared with 1991. In the last two…

Rather than generating demand, the solar industry was busy selling. It is time to change that mindset with a host of initiatives like using technology, algorithms and data analytics to map and forecast consumer behaviour and their buying potential   GAGAN VERMANI, the Founder and CEO of MYSUN, a technology-based solar marketplace, believes that the new dawn in solar rooftops will shine brighter and light up Indian households like never before The Sun has never shone brighter for the rooftop solar market in India. After years of neglect and false dawns, this segment is all set to break out of the shackles of utility solar and stand on its feet. In 2016, we have witnessed more installations than the entire installed capacity so far. Principally, there are a few key…

MIHIR SHAH, former member, Planning Commission, says the government, industry and the common man must recognise the common-pool-resource character of groundwater and be smart enough to realise that it is only by sharing it that we can all survive If you want to really get smart with water, the first thing you should realise is that in most parts of India, water is abundantly available. But you also need to recall what a man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had once said: “There is enough in this world for everyone’s need, but not for anyone’s greed”. Today, what Gandhiji advised is being termed a “paradigm shift” in water management. The basic idea is to move away from trying to augment water supply through construction and extraction and, instead, understand the centrality…

RAJIV MITTAL, MD & Group CEO of VA Tech Wabag, a water technology company, hails sea water desalination as the most viable, reliable and perennial solution to meet the ever-increasing need for water supply, more so in a country like India which is undergoing rapid urbanisation. He recommends cost-effective ways to harness it. It is well known that the Middle East has emerged as the largest market for desalination. Countries in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Israel, house some of the largest desalination plants. This helped the region become self-reliant in the water sector. However, the fall in oil prices has decreased national budgets. Under such circumstances, countries in the Middle East are increasingly looking for private sector investment in the form of…

TRAVIS KALANICK, CEO of ride-hailing company Uber, believes that shared, self-driving services would substantially reduce the number of cars on the road in India, easing congestion and pollution woes considerably One of my father’s lasting memories growing up in 1950s Los Angeles was the smog. It’s where I grew up too. But what I remember most is the traffic: the endless hours spent crawling along in the car with my parents as we tried to get around the city. Sadly, three decades later not much has changed. Today, commuters in LA waste almost two whole working weeks a year stuck in traffic. And the air pollution this summer was as bad as it has been for years. Worse still, this kind of pollution and congestion is now a fact of…

VIJAY S. YELMALLE, who runs a Mumbai-based start-up, Center for Research in Alternative Farming Technologies, says as greenhouse technology has had limited success in India, farming without soil is the best way to use our fast-expanding urban spaces. The best part is that mass adoption of this new technology is easier than we think What if you could pluck lettuce, cucumber and tomato from the rooftop farm in your residential building to prepare a salad that is fresh and pesticide free? And that, too, from plants grown without the use of soil? Well, it could be a common sight in the near future. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that by 2050, agriculture production must increase by 70 per cent to feed the ever-increasing population.…

RAN MAIDAN, President & CEO of Netafim, a global leader in smart irrigation solutions, asserts that farmers can now control their fields remotely from the palm of their hands using their mobile phones. Agriculture is getting more and more digital, and its future lies in leveraging real-time analytics and automated systems. By 2050, the world’s population will near 10 billion people. Most of the addition will be in developing countries like India, where the improvement in quality of life is also driving an increase of per capita food consumption. As a result, to feed the world we will need to produce 50 per cent more food than we do today, while arable land and water resources are limited and scarce. At the same time, current practices in agriculture, which consume…

A.P. HOTA, MD and CEO, National Payments Corporation of India, says India is well on its way to realise its goal as a less-cash and digitally-empowered economy, and will have an edge over others with its unique technology infrastructure from both the government and the private sector India, the world’s fastest growing economy, is gearing up for a digital payments revolution and is developing infrastructure that will pave the way for a less-cash economy. With the demonetisation of currency notes, digital transactions have witnessed growth of more than 100 per cent since November 8. The focus of the government is towards building a cashless economy. The main platforms for digital payments for the masses have been RuPay debit card, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), Unstructured Supplementary…

“With ‘Internet of Things’, we will see a shift from hospital-centric to patient-centric models where patients will not have to travel long distances and wait for hours to get a doctor’s attention. The convergence with technologies such as cloud will drive better clinical analytics.” MILAN RAO , President & CEO, GE Healthcare (India and South Asia), says digital’s true impact on health care in India will be felt only when it transforms the way value is created for both patients and providers. The good news is, that transformation is already under way in pockets Dr. Chandrashekhar, an anaesthetist serving as an intensivist at Tumkur District Hospital, has a unique job. One of his primary roles as in-charge of the intensive care unit, or ICU, is to collaborate with an intensivist…

Freedom, flexibility, balance, control and being one’s own boss – even a dream job, perhaps, does not tick all the boxes. Or, does it? Well, in a rapidly changing work environment more and more people, globally, are opting for ‘gigs’– onetime, short-term assignments or projects – where they may accept a job, or decide not to, and set their own hours and use their own equipment. They are independent workers signing up on-demand contracts and are paid by the hour, day, contract, or on the basis of the complexity of the task. A company’s brand value has not really been on the top of their minds – a fact that is reflected in the start-up hiring scenario. “India is the second country in the world where freelance work is on…

PALLAVI JHA, Chairperson and Managing Director of the Indian arm of global corporate training firm Dale Carnegie Training, says people should matter more to company managements than profit. New technology, data analytics and social networks are just some of the innumerable factors playing a huge role in shaping how people think, communicate, collaborate and work today. The current workforce is a diverse group of people of varying ages and qualifications, more varied than ever before. Traditional career models may soon become obsolete, as many of tomorrow’s roles will be ones we haven’t even thought of yet. Ray Kurzweil (Futurist and Chief Engineer at Google) has foretold that 20,000 years of progress would be packed into the next 100. The common consensus is that employment as we know it today will…

The example was from more than a century ago. It is still relevant, and forcefully underlines two negotiating aces that can tilt the scales in your favour. One day, in 1912, during the US presidential campaign, Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign manager woke up to a blunder. They had printed three million pamphlets with Roosevelt’s photograph without seeking copyright permission from the photographer and his studio. If sued, for around $1 a pamphlet, the cost of the oversight would come to $3 million. The campaign manager came up with an interesting idea. He sent a telegram to the photographer: “We are planning to distribute millions of pamphlets with Roosevelt’s picture on the cover. It will be great publicity for the studio whose photograph we use. How much will you pay us to…