AAPI: March 2022

DELHI, 20th MARCH 2022

Index of this Newsletter

INDIA

INDIA & THE WORLD

21.1. Principles of distributed agile teams and Global Capability Centers
21.2. Google pours $700 mn in Poland as it pulls out from Russia
22. 60% of enterprises in India to combine human expertise with AI, ML by 2026: IDC
23. The importance of understanding post-Covid gig economy trends
24. Know all about satellite internet and how it operates
25. India, Nepal agree to form joint task force on building hydropower project

* * *

DELHI, 20th MARCH 2022

NEWSLETTER, 20-III-2022

INDIA

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC.

1.1. India's 6G vision under consideration at ITU: Satish Jamadagni

ET Telecom, 26 Feb. 2022

"We have been deliberating on 6G in the working groups, and have been able to consolidate the vision from India, as well as the set of technologies that will act as an enabler to 6G," Satish Jamadagni, vice chairman, TSDSI, and Head of Standards at Jio told ETTelecom.

NEW DELHI: India's vision, and its views on enabling technologies for sixth-generation or 6G, is under consideration at the UN-backed forum which is likely to be frozen by mid of this year.

The national standards body's views, once accepted, would be India's breakthrough in next generation technology.

TSDSI or Telecommunications Standards Development Society India is the country's standards body. Last year, it submitted a vision document, and suggestions on technology enablers to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

"The complete Indian vision of what 6G should be is already incorporated into the ITU documents," Jamadagni said, adding that the global body is expected to finalise its view by July this year, as a part of the International Mobile Telecommunications or IMT-2030 requirements.

The Geneva-based union is, however, deliberating on a 6G roadmap for 2030 following which the third generation partnership project (3GPP) would work on creating standards.

The current governing council of 3GPP's Project Coordination Group (PCG) is headed by chief operating officer of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), NG Subramaniam.

Country's standards body, which has started deliberations as early as 2020, has come up with a comprehensive strategy that included research within India to support enabling technologies, and engagement with global standard bodies for harmonization.

The Delhi-based body that has private sector telecom carriers, technology vendors and chipset makers on board, is advocating next generation technology to be able to bridge digital divide, aid ubiquitous intelligent mobile connected society, and personalize services.

India, considering a tectonic technological shift, is eyeing higher participation in futuristic technological advancements worldwide, to essentially increase the contribution in the global value chain.

Last November, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) formed a technology innovation group, headed by telecom secretary K Rajaraman to develop a roadmap for research and development (R&D), pre-standardization, development of applications and products, and action plans for 6G technology.

1.2. India's hiring activity broke all records in February: Report

ETHRWorld, 5 Mar. 2022

Insurance (+74 per cent) clocked the highest growth in hiring activity in Feb’22 when compared with Feb’21 followed by Retail (+64 per cent) which has showcased a sharp uptick since last year.

Top metro cities saw a very healthy rise in demand as Kolkata (+56 per cent) recorded the highest Y-O-Y hiring trend which was closely followed by Bengaluru (+49 per cent), Mumbai (+45 per cent), Chennai (+45 per cent), Hyderabad (+43 per cent), Pune (+41 per cent) and Delhi (+30 per cent).

The re-opening of the Indian ecosystem has reinforced a positive sentiment among employers and job seekers, as a result of which, a job index saw an uptick of +31 per cent Y-O-Y in Feb’22 vs Feb’21.

India's hiring activity broke all records and touched new heights as recorded by Naukri's JobSpeak index in Feb’22. The Naukri index stood at 3074, surpassing its previous high of 2753, which clocked in Sep’21.

As the Indian economy sees a gradual return to normalcy, sustained growth in the hiring activity was observed across all key sectors. Insurance (+74 per cent) clocked the highest growth in hiring activity in Feb’22 when compared with Feb’21 followed by Retail (+64 per cent) which has showcased a sharp uptick since last year.

Interestingly, after a long sluggish period, the Auto Industry finally showed signs of recovery in Feb’22 as it grew by +12 per cent over Feb last year.

Sectors like IT-Software/Software Services (+41 per cent), Banking/Financial Services (+35 per cent), Pharma (+34 per cent), Hospitality (+41 per cent) and Telecom (+23 per cent) continued to demonstrate strong and consistent growth as concerns around COVID reduced drastically in Feb’22. Medical/Healthcare (+7 per cent) and FMCG (+4 per cent) sectors showed marginal growth in hiring activity when compared with the same period last year.

Metros continue to observe an upsurge in hiring as emerging cities show promise

In non-metro cities, Coimbatore (+57 per cent) recorded the highest Y-O-Y growth beating its past trend followed by Ahmedabad (+32 per cent) and Kochi (+16 per cent). Interestingly, Jaipur (+15 per cent) saw shoots of success, while Vadodara remained flat (-3 per cent) in Feb’22 vs last year.

Demand for professionals across all experience bands grows

The hiring trend across all the experience bands treaded on a positive Y-O-Y growth trajectory in Feb’22 vs Feb’21. When compared with last year, the demand for mid to senior experienced professionals belonging to the 13-16 years category witnessed the highest surge at +35 per cent. The demand for professionals in 8-12 years (+31 per cent), 0-3 years (+30 per cent), 4-7 years (+30 per cent) and above 16 years (+27 per cent) bracket also stayed strong.

Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri.com, said, “Clocking 3074, Naukri JobSpeak Index has set a new benchmark for nation's hiring activity indicating a favourable time for the white-collar job market. With sectors like Auto/Auto Ancillary showing recovery after a long time, and other major organized sectors sustaining growth, one can say that both sentiment and confidence are strong among the job seekers.”

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly Index that calculates and records hiring activity based on the job listings on the Naukri.com website month on month and year on year. The data is compiled from the website wherein jobs posted by clients on Naukri.com are considered. July 2008 is taken as the base with an index value of 1,000 and the subsequent monthly index is compared with the data for July 2008.

2. India adds record 10 gigawatt solar capacity in 2021: Mercom report

IBEF, Mar. 03, 2022

According to Mercom India Research, India installed a record 10 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity in calendar year 2021, a 212% increase year over year. According to the report titled 'Annual 2021 India Solar Market Update,' the country installed 3.2 GW of solar power in 2020 and the cumulative solar installed capacity in India was at 49 GW by the end of December 2021.

"India added a record 10 GW of solar in 2021, the highest ever in a year. Solar accounted for 62% of new power capacity additions in 2021, the largest share of power capacity ever," it said.

During the year, large-scale solar projects accounted for 83% of installations and saw a 230% year-on-year (y-o-y) surge. Rooftop installations registered a y-o-y increase of 138% in 2021. Rajasthan, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh were the top three states for cumulative large-scale solar capacity accounting for 50% of the installations in the country as of December 2021.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

3.1. How India lost opportunity to hire a great scientist: Importance of Hiring Quickly

ETHRWorld, 25 Feb. 2022

Amidst the conventional employees’ complaint of HR not fulfilling the promise of “Will let you know”, imagine the plight of a candidate who has been waiting for the offer letter for a month even after going through a rigorous selection process.

In a candidate-driven market, top talent will be absorbed by a competitor firm if the company takes too long to make a decision, feels Pavitra Singh, CHRO, PepsiCo India.

In the 1950s, Late Indian-American physicist Narinder Singh Kapany did pathbreaking research on fibre optics, attracting India’s First Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s attention. In the PM’s view, Kapany had the potential of becoming a scientific advisor to the defence ministry.

The process of the appointment began after Nehru recommended his name.

However, a book, titled ‘The Man Who Bent Light: Narinder Singh Kapany, Father of Fibre Optics’, reveals Kapany was warned by Nehru.

“...these higher-level appointments often take time to filter through the bureaucracy - two months possibly, or even longer, ” Nehru said.

UPSC’s legacy remained intact as the maximum two months became indefinite!

"But then, as two months became three, then four, then five, and still no job offer, I began getting nervous. I called the Union Public Service Commission, and they assured me that the offer was virtually a done deal," Kapany wrote.

After much waiting, finally, the physicist decided to remain in the US to become an entrepreneur.

This is not the end of the story. A year after Nehru’s personal recommendation, the offer from the UPSC finally arrived. However, Kapany had already moved on.

Why are we discussing Kapany’s case?

Kapany's case has two highlights: Firstly, India lost a great scientist due to the approach of Nehru’s team. Secondly, can India Inc learn from this?

The longest job interview processes are in Brazil (averaging 39.6 days), according to Glassdoor. Interestingly, India has managed to secure a place on the brighter side as the shortest reported interviews are in India (16.1 days) and Israel (16.9 days).

Nevertheless, the WAR is out there (not referring to Russia-Ukraine). The hunt for the best talent would require an agile hiring strategy, as gone are the days when candidates depended on single job offers.

Do lengthy hiring procedures only damage candidates?

In a candidate-driven market, top talent will be absorbed by a competitor firm if the company takes too long to make a decision, feels Pavitra Singh, CHRO of almost 1,70,000 employees-strong PepsiCo India.

“In a candidate-driven market, you don’t have the luxury to sit on profiles and delay the process. At the same time candidate experience is equally very important to create delight in the process,” she said.

Singh raised an important point. Staffing firm Addison Group’s survey found that 70 per cent of job applicants will lose interest in a role if they have not heard back from the employer a week after the first interview. Further, 66 per cent expect to go through two rounds or less of interviews before learning if they got the job.

Please note, Fortune named 120 patents holder Narinder Singh Kapany as one of seven 'Unsung Heroes of the 20th century' for his Nobel Prize-deserving invention.

With the growing millennial workforce, Shantanu Das, CHRO of FMCG direct selling major Amway India, highlighted millennials learn, master a skill fast, and get bored equally fast.

And since most of them are likely to explore and receive multiple offers, he said, “A highly desirable candidate who will contribute to a company's success can benefit either your company or your competitor and should not be lost due to archaic hiring practices and tools.”

Further, Das believes it disrupts the workflow and increases the risk of missing upcoming project deadlines.

Does hiring fast compromise the companies’ ability to hire the best?

As the notion goes, ‘haste makes waste.’ But does it still hold ground in a fast-paced environment? More so, when a long hiring process is costing the company dearly.

Indian organisations spend about Rs 25,500 per hire on average. However, FMCG and other unclassified sectors spend more than double the amount towards their recruitment, a PwC report suggests.

This could be because of the high cost of their recruitment teams. But imagine the rise in the figure if the duration of the recruitment is increased.

R AnandaKrishnan, President - HR and IT of 11000 employees-strong TVS Motor Company, agreed that recruiters have to spend quality time in the discovery and assessment phase to find suitable talent which will ‘fit’ the role and the organisational context.

“However, careful consideration doesn’t necessarily have to mean slow hiring,” he said, adding, “Recruitment managers have to streamline and simplify the hiring process and reduce bottlenecks at various levels to optimise lead time.”

However, Sunjoy Dhaawan, VP - HR, DHL Express India, feels certain niche positions like a compliance officer / IT professional could warrant a longer recruitment process since there could be multiple factors that need to be validated before onboarding a person.

“It is important that every candidate must understand that gestation periods differ from roles. For example, certain sales positions are time-sensitive and need to be handled with unique solutions,” he said.

On similar lines, Fujitsu Global Delivery Centres, with a headcount of more than 5,500 people, launched the Post-Offer Engagement Programme with its new joiners based on the feedback it has received. To put it into action, the consulting company is delegating information on Fujitsu Facts, employee benefits and business case studies.

“I believe that being organised and listening to the candidates, as well as communicating with them regularly – the post-offer engagement is something all organisations and especially the recruitment teams should focus upon in a fast-paced and revolutionised HR world,” said Sumit Sabharwal, VP - HR, Fujitsu Global Delivery Centres.

The ideal time required for the best candidates

The metric of the overall hiring process typically measures how quickly teams identified and moved the best candidate through the job pipeline.

Nevertheless, Das of Amway India said having a longer time to fill than other companies does not always imply that their recruiting process is more effective than yours.

“If we follow this approach, the ideal time for the entire process should be between 45-90 days from the time we start the search,” he said.

And with its process-oriented hiring, Amway India takes about the same time.

However, according to Singh of PepsiCo India, the ideal time for the overall hiring process purely depends on

Role,

Level,

How niche and critical the role is, and

Available talent supply and demand.

The way forward

Experts say urgency should not lead to fast-tracking hiring and onboarding. This could lead to getting a half-backed candidate which has issues in settling down and unproductivity, said Sumit Kumar, VP - NETAP, TeamLease.

He suggested an organisation can use technology for hastening up or reducing the time but never compromise the essentials of hiring and onboarding.

Similarly, AnandaKrishnan feels not giving an empathetic and thoughtful candidate experience due to rushing the hiring or onboarding process impacts a candidates’ long-term engagement with the organization.

“Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it should be avoided,” he said. And concerning the “right speed”, TVS has always approached this based on one of the key tenets of its way of thinking - ‘focus on the process for results.’

Singh and Das both asserted that giving long notice periods in the industry, keeping the potential hires engaged till they are on board is a challenge.

They added that getting a qualified candidate pool that matches the skillset and is a cultural fit in the organisation is another hurdle.

Singh suggested the ideal hire can be achieved by a predefined Turn Around Time (TAT), depending on the level of the role. “There should be defined timelines on sourcing, interview/ number of interviews and initiating the offer,” she said.

HRs need to realize that there is a fine line between hiring fast and effectively vs hiring hastily, according to Dhaawan of DHL Express India.

He mentioned key competencies and technical requirements for the role should be ascertained in advance along with the hiring manager and recruitment processes. And Dhaawan believes recruiters could also be assessed on the quality of their hire, using the 30-60-90-day candidate feedback from managers and looking at the percentage of hires who complete their probation period and get confirmed.

“This will make hiring less of a numbers game and more of a quality game,” he said.

Additionally, Dhaawan said organizations can leverage their past hiring experiences for certain roles to keep the recruitment TAT to a bare minimum, i.e., identifying management institutions that have given good candidates in the past to fulfil vacancies in a particular department or identifying certain industries that have the necessary skill sets.

“This would reduce effort, time and money,” he said.

3.2. Employers should encourage friendship and support amongst co-workers to boost creativity: Study

ETHRWorld, 22 Feb. 2022

A new study from the University of Bath's School of Management has revealed that care from a co-worker inspires people to be supportive of their partner at home. This showed that co-workers had a significant role to play in enabling couples to cope with balancing the demands of work and family life.

The research suggested that organizations should give employees more flexibility to manage caring cover with a colleague without intervention from managers.

In order to maintain a productive and free-thinking environment that boosts the creativity of employees, employers need to value supportive friendships between colleagues. It is the key to unlocking more resourcefulness and innovation. A new study from the University of Bath's School of Management has revealed that care from a co-worker inspires people to be supportive of their partner at home.

This showed that co-workers had a significant role to play in enabling couples to cope with balancing the demands of work and family life. The study titled, 'Sharing is Caring: The role of Compassionate Love for Sharing Coworker Work-Family Support at home to promote Partners' Creativity at work' was published in the 'Journal of Applied Psychology'.

This spiral of support has knock-on benefits for creative thinking at work. "Employees take the support they receive from co-workers home with them, and in a loving relationship, they transfer this support to their partner. This might mean they encourage them to open up about stresses, seek to resolve issues, or make improvements to the juggle of work-life arrangements that benefits the family," said Professor Yasin Rofcanin from the University of Bath's Future of Work research centre.

"The result is that both members of a couple benefit. Spouses pass on support received from co-workers and partners will be more creative at work, in what is termed a 'gain spiral. So it pays for employers to recognize the value of caring co-workers."

Over and above work policies, or interventions by supervisors, it is informal support from co-workers that stands out as having the biggest impact on an individual's ability to manage the work-life balance, spilling over to benefit the partner at home and in turn their own creative thinking at work.

Co-worker support can mean being on hand to listen and talk through life's issues and challenges as they arise, offering suggestions for problems at home, as well as providing cover for absence if a child is sick, or other caring responsibilities crop up. The research suggested that organizations should give employees more flexibility to manage caring cover with a colleague without intervention from managers.

The research also alerted employers to the pitfalls of working practices and expectations taking a toll on home life, encouraging employers to be mindful of the detrimental impact on relationships.

"So much research points to the stresses of being in a dual-income couple, it's refreshing to see a win for loving relationships alongside work," said Rofcanin. "While we're not suggesting employers should meddle in relationships, they may be able to positively contribute to the quality of relationships at home by putting policies and procedures in place to minimize work-family conflict, such as limiting overtime and expectations to respond to emails outside of hours."

The study, by the Universities of Bath, VU Amsterdam and IESE Business School, focused on diary entries over five weeks by over 200 full-time, dual-income heterosexual couples in the United States, eighty per cent of which had children.

The researchers acknowledged that there could be drawbacks in relying on co-workers for support with work and family matters, with partners at home feeling jealous and upset about the closeness of 'work spouse' relationships. They suggested that future research could examine the potential of this relationship dynamic to promote conflict at home. (ANI)

4.1. Ensure uninterrupted broadband connectivity and power to expand in smaller cities: IT sector urges government

ET Gov. 17 Feb. 2022

The government wants the IT sector to grow deeper into smaller towns for broad-based economic growth, while the sector facing issues with attrition has also been looking at it as one of the ways to retain manpower, which is apprehensive about migrating to bigger centres like Bengaluru or Hyderabad.

The USD 227-billion domestic information technology industry on Tuesday sought uninterrupted power supply and broadband connectivity from the government to expand into smaller cities of the country.

Along with the infrastructure support, the presence of people with sufficient skill sets, a world-class place of work learning for the kids, and sufficient job opportunities are also necessary for smaller cities so that people do not have to migrate to tier-1 cities, key executives of lobby grouping Nasscom said.

"When I talk about infrastructure, it is not just broadband, but things like power connectivity, electricity, etc. There are quite a few things that have to be addressed. And, we are talking to the government," Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh told reporters.

She said hiring in tier-II and tier-III is becoming a part of our growth strategy and is a key imperative for the growth of the industry, which aspires to take the overall revenues to USD 350 billion by 2026.

Without elaborating details, Ghosh said a pilot project will be launched between the government and Nasscom across a few cities for the same.

"We also need to invest in skilling in tier-II, tier-III cities and that is something Nasscom and companies are doing by working with the engineering colleges and others in these cities to grow the pipeline," she added.

Pravin Rao, immediate past chairman of the body, said it is also important to create world-class educational institutions and healthcare facilities because, today, a lot of migration happens to tier-I cities as people are looking for good-quality education and job opportunities for spouses.

"We need to start creating that kind of ecosystem in tier-II, tier-III cities as well, so that people don't have to migrate to tier-I cities," he added.

Terming it as a "win-win" equation for the industry and the country, Ghosh said micro IT hubs have been created by the industry in centres like Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Coimbatore and Ahmedabad.

Meanwhile, Ghosh also sought a clarification from the government "as soon as possible" to accommodate the hybrid work model where employees can shift between work from home and office as per the demands.

As for the overhaul of the SEZ Act, Ghosh said the sector is also in touch with the government to make hybrid work as a "design principle" and accommodate aspects like work from home and working in smaller centres. Meanwhile, Ghosh also pitched for having data privacy and cybersecurity laws in the country, saying it will benefit the sector.

"A few areas where we need more clarification (on data protection) are about the inclusion of non-personal data, cross-border data flows, etc," she said.

Krishnan Ramanujam of TCS, who is the vice-chairman of Nasscom, said the clarity in regulations will help the IT sector.

(With PTI inputs)

4.2. New Delhi Municipal Corporation plans to meet 100% of power demand from renewable sources in 3 year

ET Gov. 25 Feb. 2022

"We expect to get the entire supply through solar power by the end of 2024,” NDMC vice-chairman Satish Upadhyay said.

Announcing a plan to fully switch to renewable sources of power by 2025, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) on Wednesday approved procurement of 142 MW from Teesta-III hydropower plant at its council meeting.

According to the plan, power will be supplied through Power Trading Corporation of India Limited (PTC Ltd) initially on a medium-term basis -- for three years. Based on the performance, the contract can be extended by two years. Electricity will be supplied at Rs 5.03/kWh, including transmission charges and losses, to the NDMC areas, said an NDMC official.

“Teesta Urja Ltd, an initiative of Sikkim government, had applied through PTC India Ltd for trading of hydro power through Teesta-III hydropower plant. Their rates have been approved by DERC,” added the official.

In addition to this, the council has also consented to purchase from Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam, a public sector undertaking, for supplying 150 MW power through solar energy till 2024.

“Now that the consent has been given, the process for finalizing the terms and conditions as well as making other arrangements for power supply will start soon. We expect to get the entire supply through solar power by the end of 2024,” NDMC vice-chairman Satish Upadhyay said.

He added that NDMC intends to make itself a complete green energy consumer.

As of now, the council’s total consumption is 450 MW, of which only 10 MW is at present supplied through solar plants installed on rooftops in its area. For supplying 100 MW, administrative approval has been given for procuring power through Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd and tender will be floated soon, said NDMC member Kuljeet Chahal.

The remaining 48 MW will be arranged through the green term–ahead market. It is a power-trading platform that was launched in August 2020 to enable bulk electricity buyers to procure renewable energy on a short-term basis from sellers.

“We have embarked upon an ambitious journey of shifting to 100% renewable energy by 2025 and becoming the first municipal council in the country to do so. Therefore, we have decided to not renew our existing purchase agreements with thermal power generating stations after their expiry. Parallelly, we have taken up fresh purchase agreements with only renewable power providers that have expertise in supply through hydro and solar energy,” said Chahal.

Upadhyay said supplying power through hydro and solar energy will bring down tariffs. “The landing cost will be around Rs 5.03kWh for hydro power and Rs 2.44k PH for solar energy. However, the final rates will be firmed up by the regulatory authority,” he added.

5. Young start-ups contribute immensely to technology development, IP creation in India: DoT’s Kishore Babu

ET Telecom, 23 Feb. 2022

“If you look at platform kind of innovation, the technology innovation, science and technology based development as well as IP creation, you've seen companies that are not less than five, six years old, but with them, we are having lot many members who brought in decades of experience from the Centers of Excellence created from global companies and a lot of experiences going into making these collaboration journeys possible,” Babu said during an industry event.

Kishore Babu, DDG (S-R-I), Department of Telecommunications (DoT) at an industry event organized by Broadband India Forum (BIF) on February 23, 2022.

NEW DELHI: Startups as old as a few years contribute immensely to India in terms of technology based development as well as IP creation, said a Department of Telecommunications (DoT) official on Wednesday.

Kishore Babu, Deputy-Director General of DoT said that there is greater scope of collaboration amongst homegrown startups, besides partnering with companies globally.

The telecom department official said the government has proposed that 5% of Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) be considered for research & development (R&D) funding “especially to innovate new technologies for making technologies and services affordable”.

Babu said companies can get trial spectrum from the telecom department for R&D purposes at an annual fee of $70 (~Rs 5,220).

“Perhaps this may be one of the easiest ways available in the world. Through self declaration, you can get spectrum in India, for all your R&D purposes with $70 annually. Any spectrum band for testing or demonstration for R&D purpose, including manufacturing. The objective is to remove the unnecessary barriers…to make India a better India.”

Deepak Bagla, Managing Director and CEO of Invest India emphasized that the growth of unicorn startups in India has been “unprecedented” even amidst the Covid-19 led lockdowns.

Deepak Bagla, Managing Director and CEO of Invest India, at an industry event organized by Broadband India Forum (BIF) on February 23, 2022.

“In 2020, even in the midst of that unprecedented lockdown, we added a unicorn virtually every 30-31 days. In 2021, India added a unicorn every 10 days, in fact, every nine and a half days. And this year, we've just been in the first about 50 days of this year, we've added a unicorn every five days,” Bagla said. “I think at the rate at which we are going by the end of next year, we will have 150 startups,” he said.

The term ‘unicorn’ refers to a privately-held startup with a valuation of over $1 billion.

The Narendra Modi-led government has allocated Rs 283.5 crore for the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme in the Union Budget 2022-23, while the allocation for the Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) stood at Rs 1,000 crore.

The government has set up a Fund of Funds for Startups with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore. The Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is the operating agency for the FFS.

- AGRICULTURE, FISHING and RURAL DEVELOPMENT

6.1. Explosion of tech will shake up careers

ETHRWorld, 7 Mar. 2022, Tejaswini Singhal

New-age technology will ultimately enhance HR; but in short term, executives must find ways to survive it

Investors have smelt blood in HR tech startup sector. Startups that offer full-stack human resources management to companies big and small have been raising big money. A large number of companies including Darwinbox, Apna.co, My Ally, Refyne, Sense, Advantage Club, FloCareer and Keka HR have seen sudden rise. What drives these startups is immense appetite of HR sector for new-age technology, especially after the pandemic changed the work paradigm.

According to an Imarc report, global HR tech market reached a value of $28.65 billion in 2021, and can grow to $48.85 billion by 2027. Such explosive growth in HR tech is a certain sign that HR will see revolutionary change. Tech will boost efficiency and help executives make informed decisions. With new-age tech, HR professionals will find a better and quicker way to work.

However, it's not all good news for HR professionals. Those who can't adapt may not be able to survive the tech revolution.

Jobs in jeopardy?

Anuradha Bharat, VP - People Operations, Razorpay, says, “The emergence of tech in HR has presented a significant opportunity for organisations to make processes more efficient and quick. It will not reduce the number of HR jobs as machines cannot outperform human intelligence. The majority of HR tasks involve the need for emotional intelligence and soft skills, both of which require complex human interaction and cannot be replaced by machines. But at the same time, professionals will have to upskill themselves to enable technology and automation solutions and make sense of the data.”

“With insightful analytics and intelligent technology, HR practitioners are able to make strategic, smarter and data-driven focused decisions during employee recruitment, engagement and retention. Automation in HR can also improve security, raise efficiency and reduce the possibilities of human error," she adds.

“With self-serve, intelligent and integrated solutions such as payroll, HR teams can move beyond support tasks and better utilise their time. All of this makes it imperative that a strong HR team is in place in order to manage all tasks and keep employees engaged,” says Bharat.

Priyanka Anand, VP and HR Head - South East Asia, Oceania and India, Ericsson, says, “Technology impacts zero-touch processes and transaction volumes. Reduction of manual intervention creates bandwidth for HR professionals to focus on consultative and value-driven business interactions. The virtual world needs a platform for greater engagement and HR tech comes handy for creating such conjunctions. It helps HR to move towards a strategic role from a transactional and operational role and helps it grow into a trusted partner to the business in a strong talent-driven market.”

“In my view, investment in HR tech is fundamental in driving superior employee experience. While adoption of technology across industries has been consistently increasing, similar focus and gradual increase in HR tech budget has been observed for a reasonable period. While organisations are becoming more tuned to the idea of management by numbers, data literacy has become a critical management skill. The data democratisation within organisations is a trend which the current pandemic has accelerated and thus a need to further focus on this competence,” adds Anand.

Emphasising on small companies, Rajesh Kurup, HR Head, Gigforce, says, “By adopting HR tech, smaller companies which would have established full HR departments will now hire just a few HR executives. The classical HR role in corporations has always been confronted with and has adopted technology rather well. Be it automation of HR workflows through ERPs or adoption of automated systems, the HR function has always adopted technology. Of course, the function has its share of early adopters to fast followers to laggards but adopted it has. Each such adoption has had its consequent shake-up in the skills and competencies within HR teams.”

“The same will likely play out with the emergence and adoption of HR tech. Fact is that a lot of HR workflows naturally lend themselves to technology adoption. Be it skill-matched hiring, competency assessment, performance management, performance coaching or predictable delivery of HR Services, HR tech can play a major role as a value-adding business enabler. Such technology also frees up substantial time and resources within HR teams to do much more creative and purposeful work that adds to the productive longevity of businesses,” Kurup says.

“As expectations from a contemporary HR function shift towards adding to the intangible value of a business, typical roles in HR will anyway get shaken. Professionals who cannot offer beyond transactional outcomes will anyway face redundancy; HR tech will accelerate it. And, that is a good, progressive thing to happen, for companies as well as HR professionals. We are sure that HR professionals will rise to challenge and succeed,” adds Kurup.

What it means for your career

The adoption of HR tech will allow HR executives to reinvent the future of work. It may push them to change old processes and in turn, increase the adoption of technology to make impactful actions. Besides this, the transformation will also help them build smarter workplaces and skill themselves.

Bharat of Razorpay is quite convinced of this. “With the help of technology, HR leaders will be able to gather far greater and more valuable insights on areas such as diversity, pay equity, sustainability, tenure, retention, etc. The role of HR executives is expected to be more data-driven while also taking up more strategic roles,” she says.

“The role of technology in HR can lead to an entirely new structure for HR leaders who are eager to keep up with the changes. Yet, despite the technological advancements, organisations need to strike that meaningful balance between technology, productivity and empathy to uphold the “human” in human capital. Organisations that put people first, are the ones that will thrive in the long run,” adds Bharat.

Anand of Ericsson says, “Human resources as a function has moved into a strategic role and is leveraging technology in giving a positive engagement experience, while people analytics is providing accurate insights around employee life-cycle needs and helping businesses make informed business and people decisions. As technology and data slowly become central to HR function, it is important for organisations to ensure a smooth skill shift. In the rapidly evolving workplace, data competence empowers leaders in people management and drives better business value.”

“The functional knowledge and experience of a seasoned executive is an intrinsic requirement to run a function. The consultative aspect of the role would continue and in parallel investment in HR competence would be the strategic priority. Helping competence development of the function create employee loyalty and motivate them to deliver positive business outcomes. As technology continues to evolve, HR leaders and organisations need to focus on maximising their employee value proposition and push the learning boundaries of their teams ensuring a future-ready HR function,” Anand says.

Kurup of Gigforce offers two points of views. “There are two ways to look at this. There's never ever a sudden adoption of technology. Companies adopt technology when there is a substantially high-value creation possibility over the existing processes. Secondly, most technology adoption is almost always an inclusive process. Owners and CXOs of businesses always adopt only those technologies that either build on their existing competencies and give them an additional edge. This is true for the adoption of all technology in HR too,” he says.

“Wide adoption of HR technology will actually be a positive development for HR folks too. As the mundane gets automated and as systems start providing intelligent information, HR folks will be able to bring out their best interpretations and help in the value creation objectives of companies. HR executives will be able to free up their time from performing routine work to focusing on more purposeful, more impactful activities,” Kurup says.

“In the short term, some HR executives may find themselves out of step. That is only natural. However, most technology is largely intuitive and only automates or improves on existing workflows. Those who make the effort to learn the technology will find meaningful roles for themselves. With the large-scale availability of online tools and resources for learning these, there is a high possibility of HR executives finding meaningful landing for themselves,” adds Kurup.

New technology is a solution for HR professionals and not a replacement. The role of an HR professional involves many disparate factors such as emotions, where technology cannot help. Besides, the evolution of HR tech will be gradual so HR professionals can subsume it in their roles instead of getting replaced or challenged by it.

6.2. India has third-largest ecosystem for start-ups: Nasscom Official

IBEF, Feb. 23, 2022

According to an official, India has the world's third-largest ecosystem for start-ups, and the number of such businesses is rapidly increasing. Mr. Sanjeev Malhotra, CEO of the Nasscom Centre of Excellence for internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), noted that most of the start-ups are on the application side, but that there has also been a lot of work done in the field of software-assisted services.

He said that "The number of start-ups is growing significantly in the country with 10% being added every year. There has been significant growth in the number of companies and funding organisations which are attributing to this cause." According to him, the country is producing more unicorns, and the "financing pattern is getting healthier."

He went on to say that Nasscom, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, has been providing the required ecosystem for developing start-ups.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

7. Key differences between cable and satellite internet

ET Telecom, 24 Feb. 2022

Cable internet goes through underground coaxial cables that use inner copper wires that are wrapped by insulation to transmit data. A satellite internet connection doesn’t need to travel through underground cables as this service is beamed from satellites orbiting the Earth.

Most consumers are familiar with cable internet but satellite internet is not that mainstream yet. However, satellite internet technology can offer internet access regardless of location. This can help reduce the digital divide in areas with low coverage of terrestrial internet technologies. Satellite internet can also provide high internet speed and a high level of service reliability. Earlier, we discussed how satellite internet works and how it can be useful. Here, we will discuss how satellite internet is different from a cable internet.

Difference between cable internet and satellite internet

Cable internet goes through underground coaxial cables that use inner copper wires that are wrapped by insulation to transmit data. Cable TV signals also use similar types of cables to transmit data. Coaxial cables transfer data much faster than the phone lines used by dial-up connections. However, fiber optics are even faster than coaxial cables.

A satellite internet connection doesn’t need to travel through underground cables as this service is beamed from satellites orbiting the Earth. A dish receiver placed near you can pick up the signal and transmit it to your modem, which is eventually translated into a usable internet connection. Satellite internet is available almost everywhere. This signal comes from space, so it can be picked anywhere if there is a clear view of the sky. This makes satellite internet the only option for people in rural areas that lack access to cable or fiber connections.

Cable internet v/s satellite internet: Internet service providers

Most urban or semi-urban areas usually have multiple cable internet providers. The reason for this is the existing cables that cable companies use to build cost-efficient internet networks. However, fiber networks usually require companies to start from scratch.

As we have mentioned in the previous article, Jio Platforms has recently signed a joint venture to explore the satellite internet space. Currently, two leading telecom operators in India have entered satellite internet services. Other tech giants like Bharti Airtel’s OneWeb and Elon Musk’s Starlink are also part of the new satellite internet space.

Cable internet v/s satellite internet: Internet speed

Cable internet is much faster than satellite internet. However, satellite internet speeds are fast enough for most everyday uses, but there’s a catch: latency. Satellite internet isn’t capable of offering lower latency compared to cable or fiber connections, as the signal travels a longer distance. This causes a slight delay between giving a command and getting the output.

However, this delay is not a major issue for everyday use, but it can be a major setback for online gaming. The delay between action and result can be the difference between victory and defeat in fast-paced, competitive games.

On the other hand, cable internet can offer speeds up to 2,000 Mbps. In some cases, the minimum speeds from a cable provider can be higher than the speed of satellite internet connections. Presently, coaxial cables can transmit data much faster than a satellite.

Cable internet v/s satellite internet: Installation

Satellite internet connections include professional installation with the service. Technicians handle the installation of everything — starting from the dish to your modem. But for cable installation, either you can pay a professional or you can do it yourself. Self-installation is usually very simple as the installation kits come with detailed instructions and all the equipment is available online.

Cable internet v/s satellite internet: Affordability

Cable internet is much more affordable than satellite internet, users can also bundle it with their TV packages. But, you can get a satellite signal as long as you’ve got a clear view of the sky. This is the convenience that makes satellite internet expensive. Whereas, in some areas, cable internet offers download speeds similar to fiber internet.

So, satellite internet can be an option for people, who live in areas that don’t have any other high-speed internet options. But the biggest drawback for cable internet is that packages, providers and prices are not standardised and may vary across the country.

8.1. India could export $500-bn green energy over 20 years: Mukesh Ambani

IBEF, Feb. 24, 2022

Mr. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Ltd. said that technical developments will make India a global new energy leader, exporting half a trillion dollars’ worth of clean energy in two decades, as India makes its energy transition to cleaner fuels. India is now one of the most appealing places in the world for renewable energy investment. However, he also stated that the shift to clean, emission-free energy will take time, and that India's reliance on coal and imported oil will persist for the next two to three decades. The climate problem is an existential crisis, and in the 21st century, energy transformation will decide geopolitical transition. It will help India emerge as a global force when it becomes not just self-sufficient in green and clean energy, but also a significant exporter. This transformation will result in both green jobs and significant foreign exchange savings.

India has announced a new policy to split water using renewable electricity to produce hydrogen, which can be utilised as a fuel in a variety of businesses, including refineries and steel factories, as well as in automobiles. India is one of the first countries in the world to announce hydrogen-powered vehicles. This will be supported by aggressive and forward-thinking legislative support and action on the part of both the federal and state governments, as well as guaranteed funding choices for young entrepreneurs.

India's technology and digital exports have increased from less than US$ 10 billion 20 years ago to US$ 150 billion now. Similarly, India's clean and green energy exports over the next 20 years have the potential to generate half a trillion dollars in revenue. In 2021, India achieved its aim of 40% renewable energy generation, which had been set for 2030. India wants to reach a renewable energy capacity of 500 gigawatts.

India consumes one-third of the world's energy per capita, while a typical Indian's annual carbon emissions are around one-fifth of a Chinese or one-eighth of an American. India's per capita income is currently around US$ 2,000, compared to US$ 38,000 in Europe. If India continues on the current path, it can attain US$ 10,000 per capita in the next 15-20 years.

By 2030-32, India would have surpassed the European Union as the world's third-largest economy. India's energy output must be increased in order for the country to achieve double-digit GDP growth. It has to be done on a technologically affordable basis. In addition, the percentage of green and clean energy in this increased output must increase.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

8.2. India signs deals to export 500,000 T wheat, as global prices surge

IBEF, Mar. 10, 2022

Traders claimed India has inked contracts to export over 500,000 tonnes of wheat in recent days, capitalising on a dramatic rise in international prices and signalling a significant increase in overseas sales from the world's second-largest wheat produce. Russia and Ukraine account for 30% of the global wheat exports. “Most suppliers have signed these deals at around US$ 340 a tonne free on board (FOB) to US$ 350 a tonne," said trader Rajesh Paharia Jain at Unicorp Pvt Ltd.

While benchmark European wheat prices soared above 400 euros (US$ 435) on Monday, and benchmark wheat prices in Chicago settled at their highest in 14 years, the country guarantees producers roughly $257 per tonne for domestic sales. India has massive wheat inventories after five consecutive record yearly yields, and traders are eager to take advantage of any export opportunities. This year, India is expected to export a record 7 million tonnes of wheat.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

9.1. India doubles fresh fruit imports

Asia Fruit, 24 Feb. 2022, Jon Hey

Surge in apple and orange arrivals drives total fresh fruit imports to a record 720,000 tonnes in 2021

India’s fresh fruit imports hit record levels in the 2021 calendar year, doubling to 721,493 tonnes, up from 359,716 tonnes in 2020, according to Fresh Intelligence analysis of data from the Indian Ministry of Commerce.

Apples and oranges drove the increase, together accounting for more than 80 per cent of total fresh fruit imports.

Iran top in apples

Apple imports more than doubled year-on-year to a record high of 436,194 tonnes, up from 215,538 tonnes in 2020, and making up 60 per cent of total volumes.

The growth in apple imports was led by Iran and Turkey. Iran became the largest apple supplier, with data from the Ministry of Commerce showing direct imports of 96,982 tonnes, up a staggering 249 per cent on 2020 volumes. A further 42,617 tonnes of apples were channelled through the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with Iran being the likely source, according to Fresh Intelligence analysis.

Turkey was the second-largest supplier, increasing its shipments to India by 131 per cent to 73,827 tonnes. Chile rounded out the top three, with an almost three-fold increase in sendings to some 55,674 tonnes (up 178 per cent year-on-year).

Significantly, the US, previously a long-term leader in apple imports to India, dropped down to ninth position behind Iran, Turkey, Chile, Italy, the UAE, New Zealand, Brazil and Afghanistan.

All top ten apple suppliers recorded significant growth in sendings in 2021, apart from the US, whose volumes almost halved to 21,385 tonnes. The downturn in US imports reflected the impact of a punitive 70 per cent tariff on US apples resulting from trade wars under previous US president, Donald Trump, as well as shipping challenges.

Poland slipped into 11th place behind South Africa, with imports almost halving to 6,131 tonnes.

Egypt fuels orange rise

Orange imports increased more than three-fold to 153,296 tonnes, driven by a surge in sendings from Egypt. The North African nation shipped 126,000 tonnes of oranges to India in 2021, up more than 374 per cent year-on-year, giving it an 82 per cent market share.

South Africa increased orange shipments by more than 80 per cent year-on-year to 19,811 tonnes. Australia was the third-largest supplier by some distance, with volumes declining slightly to 3,017 tonnes.

Oranges overtook kiwifruit as the third largest import category, even though kiwifruit imports also grew strongly, rising by 43 per cent year-on-year to 67,247 tonnes. Again, Iran was the main supplier, with direct shipments of almost 30,000 tonnes, up 51 per cent on 2020.

An additional 18,127 tonnes of kiwifruit came in from the UAE, which was likely to be Iranian fruit, according to Fresh Intelligence analysis. Chile shipped 13,862 tonnes of kiwifruit, a 26 per cent increase year-on-year, while New Zealand sendings remained flat at 5,625 tonnes.

Beyond the top three fruit import categories, pear imports also registered solid growth, increasing 37 per cent year-on-year to reach almost 25,000 tonnes, while mandarin sendings grew by a notable 161 per cent to 6,494 tonnes.

Emerging categories

Avocados, cherries and blueberries all recorded strong growth in 2021, albeit off very small bases, according to Fresh Intelligence analysis. Avocado imports more than doubled to 888 tonnes, with Peru being the major supplier, followed by New Zealand.

Cherry imports topped 650 tonnes, an increase of 125 per cent year-on-year. Chile ranked as the largest supplier, shipping 239 tonnes, followed by Afghanistan (229 tonnes) and the US (59 tonnes).

Blueberry imports jumped to 345 tonnes from just 43 tonnes in 2020, according to Fresh Intelligence analysis.

9.2. How companies manage to deliver groceries in 10 minutes

ET CIO, 8 Mar. 2022, Vanshika Sharma

With billions pouring into the quick commerce segment, companies are deploying the most cutting edge technologies to bring down delivery times to less than 10 minutes.

As a result of the epidemic and consequent lockdowns, a rising number of people are choosing to buy food online and have it delivered to their homes in minutes. With consumers being time-pressed, they expect on-demand access to food and other necessities. This trend has favoured the quick commerce model, which delivers goods in smaller quantities, such as food, basics, personal hygiene items, and so on, in 10- 25 minutes. But have you ever wondered how these companies deliver your purchases in minutes?

In a recent report by Redseer, Quick Commerce is expected to increase 10-15x during the next five years, reaching $5 billion by 2025. To make delivery within a committed time, quick commerce companies work to stabilize upon a few elements, i.e., the supply chain, inventory, order routing, fulfillment, and delivery, and this is where technologies like AI, ML, data analytics, and data science come into play.

Lightening up the dark warehouses

As quick commerce is based on the dark store concept, products are transported from warehouses and held in these dark rooms before being processed, packed, and dispatched. Hence, for an efficient supply chain and timely delivery, the locations of the dark rooms and warehouses are significant, which heavily rely on historical data analysis.

“Data plays a significant role when we are deciding the location of the warehouse, as we don't know where to establish it, and that is where we use the historical data which is taken first from the primary base such as surveys, analysis, etc. The other comes from search engines and our database, which we have collected from the customer decisions,” Kaivalya Vohra, Co-Founder & CTO, Zepto, told ETCIO.

It also helps to predict the order volume and stock the warehouses with the products and categories demanded by the customers. Predicting historical data along with a real-time database enables brands to precisely store and deliver the customer's order, resulting in improved inventory management and customer experience.

According to Kabeer Biswas, CEO & Co-founder of Dunzo, “The historical data helps in predicting the likely ordering patterns during different periods. It could be at a particular season of the year like Christmas, IPL, etc., or a particular time of the day. So, we know what is needed by our customers.”

Furthermore, live data aids in the tracking of real-time trends as the day progresses and helps in capturing a sudden surge in demand for a specific set of SKUs. Because the store layout is dynamic, SKUs that are in high demand and witness frequent orders at a particular time of day are placed closer to the checkout point, reducing the process of building a basket for an order.

“The warehouse staff who fills the basket right from the time the order is received gets a clear indication from the application about where to find a particular SKU in the store. This saves time in finding a particular product inside the store. The process of filling the basket starts right from the time the order is received and as is done in 2-3 minutes. It is also imperative to keep revising and sanitizing our dashboards to help accommodate large inflows of data and facilitate quick-to-act decision-making support,” Biswas explained.

Thus, data analysis, in conjunction with innovative technology-based solutions, is implemented across key functions such as procurement planning, inventory management, smart logistics, and supply chain planning, which identify red flags at each step as well as improve the TAT process to deliver with 100 percent accuracy.

Mapping the maps

With customers experience being a centre focus of the quick commerce puzzle. For this, Swiggy works on geospatial targeting and address intelligence (powered by Swiggy Maps). Customers visiting the app are automatically routed to the nearest available Instamart store that can service their order in minutes.

“At checkout, we use ML algorithms to estimate delivery time, down to the minute accuracy, based on multiple real-time factors including driver availability, warehouse load, travel distance, weather signals, and more. Once the order is placed, we leverage a mix of ML and Operations Research optimization strategies to match drivers to orders,” said Dale Vaz, CTO, Swiggy.

Therefore, with the management systems backed by the data and algorithms used by the brands, they reduce the processing time, save inventory, accurately fill up customer baskets and move forward with the last mile, where the driver in a promised time delivers the products to the customer.

With driver safety becoming a concern for quick commerce due to the speedy delivery model, Swiggy uses AI to make sure that they monitor the delays from previous experiences. As a result, they do not share the promised delivery time with the delivery executives, ensuring they do not risk their safety to deliver on time.

“Our approach to enabling Quick Commerce is inspired by the Toyota One Piece Flow production system, where our Logistics teams and AI-driven technology product work in unison to eliminate delays, overheads, and inconsistencies in the fulfillment flow. Our AI technology learns from past deliveries and adjusts our delivery time predictions to reflect delays due to real-world situations (e.g., road work-related route changes or evening rush hour traffic),” Vaz added.

Likewise, Dunzo and Zepto, have designed decision-making funnels and control mechanisms for their business scenarios, and ensure to operate at the right speed and with the right scale.

With the plans to expand their businesses, there are still loopholes that brands are experimenting to fill with technology. According to Raju Dhedia, operations director of Vinculum Group, optimizing the cost of the last mile, increasing basket size, and managing the processing time is a pivotal factor for business expansion.

According to Dhedia, “Technology is just an enabler. It depends on the businesses how they will locate the problems when they expand or further nourish their technologies abilities.”

Hence, by blending data with AI/ML technologies brands are able to manage their supply chain, inventory, order processing, and product delivery. It also enables them to automate tedious operations, and increases accuracy by preventing catastrophic errors. As Quick Commerce progresses, we may expect new technology to hit the market in the near future.

10.1. Nashik to be developed into IT hub: MSME minister Narayan Rane

ET Gov. 3 Mar. 2022

The proposed IT Park in Nashik will generate employment and boost the economic activities in the city.

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) minister Narayan Rane on Tuesday assured to provide all help from the Centre to make Nashik an information technology (IT) hub. Rane was in the city to inaugurate the conference on IT organised by the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC). The conference was attended by representatives of 100 IT units in the city.

Rane said he would also make efforts to help the IT units willing to set up their base in Nashik by getting them the necessary permission from the Centre. He added the proposed IT Park in Nashik will generate employment and boost the economic activities in the city.

City mayor Satish Kulkarni said NMC is the first corporation in the country to take such an initiative.

He said the civic body had invited Expression of Interest (EoI) to develop IT Park within the municipal corporation limits in joint ventures where the land-owners have land with a minimum area of 50 acres or more. “We received a good response and some landowners have given their written consent to provide a total of 335 acres on lease for 33 years. This proposed IT Park will provide employment to over 1 lakh people at least,” Kulkarni said.

Rishikesh Wakadkar, the president of Nashik Information Technology Association (NITA), said around 250 small IT units are operational in the city involving over 10,000 employees.

“We want the local IT units to be provided space at an affordable rate at the proposed IT Park. Moreover, the local IT units need to be given incentives or subsidies in line with Visakhapatnam,” said Wakadkar.

Arvind Mahapatra, the director of NITA said most of the IT employees from large industries are working from home. Hence, there is scope for the satellite offices of the big IT companies with a capacity of 100-150 employees willing to move if infrastructure or spaces are provided to them at affordable rates.

10.2. Railways introduces indigenous anti-collision system

ET CIO, 5 Mar. 2022

The Indian Railways conducted a live demonstration of Kavach, an automatic anti-collision system, for trains near Secunderabad with both railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and railway board chairman V K Tripthi on board in two locomotives coming from opposite directions on the same track.

NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways conducted a live demonstration of Kavach, an automatic anti-collision system, for trains near Secunderabad with both railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and railway board chairman V K Tripthi on board in two locomotives coming from opposite directions on the same track. But both the locos stopped automatically at 380 metre distance from each other and avoided a collision because of this new technology.

The Indian Railways aims to achieve “zero accidents” by deploying the anti-collision and Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system. Officials said Kavach will soon be deployed on Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata corridors, which are being upgraded to allow trains to run at 160 kmph.

As of now, the Kavach has been deployed on nearly 1,200 km of railway track and in the next two months another 264 kms will be covered.

Kavach is a set of electronic devices, GPS and RFIDs tags which are in locomotives, signalling systems and tracks. Using the high radio frequencies, these devices talk to each other and the programmed system initiates action without any human intervention.

The locos fitted with Kavach will automatically stop if the system detects any manual error by the pilot or any other malfunction such as inadvertently jumping the red signal. The system is designed in a manner to ensure that it brings the train to a halt automatically if Kavach notices another train on the same track.

“If we bring such a technology from Europe it will cost between Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 2 crore per km to operate while ‘Kavach’ will cost between Rs 40 lakh to Rs 50 lakh per km and is a step ahead when compared to technology offered by other similar systems,” Vaishnaw said. He had told TOI recently that if this can be deployed across 7,000-8,000 km of railway network, then the product can also be exported to other countries.

The current avataar of Kavach adheres to the highest level of safety and reliability standard called Safety Integrity Level 4, the railway ministry said.

How effective the system is evident from a video released by the railway ministry which showed that the pilot could not drive the train as the Kavach applied automatic brakes to avoid any head on collision. In another video, the locomotive transporting Vaishnaw came to a halt automatically as it approached a red signal to avoid any untoward incident.

The government started the process for developing India’s own ATP in 2012 under the name Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) and test trials started in 2014.

- INDUSTRY and MANUFACTURE

11. Five companies submit proposals to set up semiconductor and display facilities

ET Telecom, 21 Feb. 2022

A Vedanta Foxconn joint venture, IGSS Ventures and ISMC propose to set up electronic chip manufacturing plants with $13.6 billion investment and have sought support of $5.6 billion from the Centre under the Rs76,000 crore Semicon India Programme, a news release from the Ministry of Electronics and IT said. Vedanta and another company, Elest, have submitted applications for setting up display fab projects with an investment of $6.7 billion. The fiscal support sought from the government is nearly $2.7 billion.

The government said on Saturday that it received proposals from five companies to set up electronic chip and display manufacturing plants with investment of $20.5 billion (Rs1.53 lakh crore).

"The first round of applications was invited till February 15, for establishment of semiconductor and display fabs," the release read. "Despite aggressive timelines for submission of applications in this greenfield segment of semiconductor and display manufacturing, the scheme has elicited good response."

The Vedanta-Foxconn JV, IGSS Ventures and ISMC have applied to set up 28-nanometer to 65-nanometer semiconductor fabs with capacity of about 120,000 wafers per month.

ISM to coordinate with companies

Vedanta and Elest have sought approvals for setting up generation-8.6 TFT LCD display fab as well as 6th generation display FAB for the manufacture of Amoled display panels that are used in smartphones, the statement said.

SPEL Semiconductor, HCL, Syrma Technology and Valenkani Electronics have registered for semiconductor packaging and Ruttonsha International Rectifier has registered for compound semiconductors. In addition, Terminus Circuits, Trispace Technologies and Curie Microelectronics have submitted applications under the design-linked incentive scheme.

The applicants under the semiconductor and display fab schemes have been issued acknowledgment by the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) that has been set up as an independent institution to spearhead the Semicon India programme.

The ISM will coordinate with the companies that have also reached out to states to provide access to infrastructure.

The ministry said the Indian semiconductor market was worth $15 billion in 2020 and was estimated to reach $63 billion by 2026. India's display panel market is estimated to be about $7 billion and is expected to grow to around $15 billion by 2025.

ET reported on Friday that India was set to extend the window for applications to the semiconductor chip design and manufacturing scheme. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the minister of state for electronics and IT, told ET that this was being done with an aim to enable a slew of top global semiconductor companies to also submit their proposals.

Officials said the government had been in talks with industry heavyweights such as Intel, Samsung, Global Foundries and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to apply under the scheme and invest in India.

"There is no deadline as such. Conversations with many global leaders are ongoing and so extending the date is certain," said Chandrasekhar. "The government understands that this is a very time-intensive decision and made more so due to travel and physical meeting restrictions (due to the pandemic)."

12.1. Pharma industry likely to grow to $130 billion by 2030: Industry leaders

IBEF, Feb. 28, 2022

According to industry leaders, the country's pharmaceutical business might rise to US$ 130 billion by 2030. Business leaders attended a 'CEOs Conclave' as part of the Telangana government's flagship annual life sciences convention, 'BioAsia 2022,' which ended on Friday.

Regarding the US$ 130 billion estimates, Sun Pharma Managing Director Mr. Dilip Shanghvi said: "I think if all the players, I see their level of excitement and the sense about future, I think we should be on the way to achieve that kind of a number." He also added that "As India becomes an increasingly more important component for the global supply chain, that should benefit the industry going forward. Various measures taken by the government should also further strengthen our ability to compete. I am quite optimistic."

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

12.2. Biocon Biologics acquires Viatris' biosimilars business in $3.3 bn deal

IBEF, Feb. 28, 2022

Biocon Biologics, a Biocon subsidiary, announced on Monday that it will pay US$ 3.3 billion in cash and stock for Viatris' biosimilars business. Viatris would get US$ 2 billion in cash at the close of the sale, with up to US$ 335 million in additional payments expected in 2024.

Ms. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Executive Chairperson, Biocon Biologics (BBL), said: “This acquisition is transformational and will create a unique fully integrated, world-leading biosimilars enterprise." BBL will acquire Viatris' global commercial infrastructure in developed and emerging markets, as well as its global biosimilars business, which is expected to generate US$ 875 million in revenue and US$ 200 million in EBITDA in fiscal year 2022, with revenue expected to exceed US$ 1 billion next year.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

13.1. IIT Hyderabad, WiSig Networks develop first indigenous 5G tech

ET Telecom, 23 Feb. 2022

IITH and WiSig Networks have jointly announced a maiden 5G data call using indigenously developed 5G ORAN technology. The call was made using Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) capable base station that supports 100MHz bandwidth in the 3.3-3.5 GHz frequency band.

Hyderabad: In a major boost to India's 5G capabilities, IIT Hyderabad (IITH) and WiSig Networks have developed 5G wireless broadband technologies indigenously for the first time.

"WiSig announces a range of ORAN compliant 5G infra solutions including small cells, massive MIMO macro cell Distribution Unit (DU) option 7.2x, integrated access backhaul (IAB) unit that support mm-wave and sub 6 GHz frequency bands. These solutions and products are available for Indian wireless equipment manufacturers on licensing basis," said Dr Sai Dhiraj, Principal Scientist at WiSig.

Based out of the IIT Research Park, WiSig Networks Private Limited is a growing Indian Startup focused on developing 5G Mobile Communications Products and Solutions. IITH and WiSig developed more than 100 5G patents and 15 of which are declared as 3GPP 5G Standards Essential Patents (SEPS) to TSDSI (Telecommunication Standards Development Society, India).

"This is a watershed moment in indigenous 5G development. IIT Hyderabad and WiSig Networks have developed 5G wireless broadband technologies indigenously for the first time, thereby bringing India into the forefront for 5G and beyond. Equipped with these capabilities, India can be self-reliant in designing and manufacturing wireless broadband equipment and play an increasingly important role in future generation technologies, products, and services," said Prof Kiran Kuchi, Dean (R&D), IITH.

Prof B S Murty, Director, IITH, thanked the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for the support that led to the development of world-class 5G technologies at IITH.

"Inventing and innovating in Technology for Humanity (IITH) is our mantra, and we expect WiSig to make India "Aatmanirbhar" in the 5G space", added Murty.

Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) is one of the eight new IITs established by the Government of India in 2008. WiSig Networks was incubated in 2016 by a group of researchers and inventors with the intention to develop further and commercialize the new 5G communication technologies being indigenously invented.

13.2. Indian exporters on Amazon Global Selling platform cross 100,000 mark

IBEF, Mar. 11, 2022

Through Amazon India's online exports initiative, Global Selling, over 100,000 Indian exporters are now selling abroad. The initiative began in 2015 with only 100 exporters and has since evolved to become a major driver of Indian ecommerce exports. It is intended to assist Indian exporters in reaching clients all over the world via Amazon's 17 international websites and marketplaces. Over 140 million Made in India items are available to Amazon consumers in over 200 countries and territories throughout the world, thanks to these exporters.

Since January 2020, the number of vendors has increased by roughly 30% year over year. Non-metros account for a major portion of the program's vendors, with many of these enterprises being first-generation entrepreneurs and developing brands. Amazon claims to have created thousands of globally recognised brands, with total exports exceeding $3 billion. The business has been doing on-the-ground events and seminars to raise awareness about the advantages of e-commerce exports in India's important export clusters. To emphasise the potential of e-commerce exports, Amazon has collaborated with industry peers, trade groups, state and federal government entities, and export councils. It has invested in developing tools and services to assist sellers in successfully selling worldwide from India.

Walmart, the world's largest retailer, asked chosen Indian vendors to apply to join Walmart Marketplace, a curated sellers network that serves over 120 million US customers each month, earlier this year. This effort builds on Walmart's 20-year relationship with Indian exporters. Walmart has set an ambitious target of exporting US$ 10 billion from India each year by 2027, making it one of the company's top sourcing markets.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

14.1. Johnson & Johnson’s idea of DE&I at the workplace

ETHRWorld, 27 Feb. 2022

When Johnson & Johnson was founded in 1886, eight of its first 14 employees were females. Today, 45 per cent of the company’s 1,30,000 global associates are women.

In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report, India slipped 28 places in 2021 and ranked 140th among 156 countries. The report suggests that India’s gender gap is somewhere close to 62.5 per cent. The rate of female labour force participation has also declined steadily from 30 per cent in 1990 to 20.8 per cent in 2019.

It is no news that there exist invisible biases about what women can or cannot do. For instance, the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) have been traditionally male-dominated. To excel at a career in science, one needs knowledge, skills and intellect, but equally important, a creative mindset, analytical skills, perseverance and the ability to work in teams.

So, according to Sonal Jain, Head - Enterprise HR & Consumer Health HR, Johnson & Johnson, when women in STEM drop out of the workforce mid-career, it is a collective societal loss.

Experts say through return-to-work programmes that re-ignite women’s careers, mentoring initiatives, upskilling courses and industry-specific skills training, organisations that provide these women with the right support can effectively halt ‘the leaky pipeline’ and help bring their skills and experience back into the workforce. Support groups and mentors can also ease the transition back into the corporate world, as well as provide physical and mental support.

Re-Ignite by J&J

With the intent to bridge this gap, Johnson & Johnson launched the Re-Ignite programme in India in July 2020. “The programme stems from the company’s belief that pausing one’s career to pursue some other important goal shouldn’t stand in the way of one’s long-term career. On the contrary, it should help enhance it,” says Jain.

Re-Ignite is a global paid returnship programme for experienced professionals who are ready to return to work after a career break of 18 months or longer. “Our aim is to enable women to transition back into their careers alongside others who understand and appreciate their non-traditional career journeys, unique skills, and life choices and experiences,” Jain adds.

Since its launch, Johnson & Johnson has been reaching out to women across the country who are currently on career breaks on account of getting married or having children or pursuing academic programmes. In its first cohort in 2020, out of over 100 applicants, the company selected five women who participated in a six-month-long returnship programme, and one candidate was offered a permanent role within the company.

In its second cohort in 2021, over 150 women applied, of which nine were selected, and six were offered a permanent role. The company’s next cohort will be launched on March 8, which will be celebrated as Women’s Day. “This programme is not only to create a pipeline in Johnson & Johnson, but also to prepare women to transition to any company at this important juncture of their life,” Jain says.

“We also have tie-ups with organisations like Avtar, Jobs For Her and Society of Women Engineers for a steady in-flow of she-talent in our organisation. These organisations work at the grassroots level, and help us open our doors to valuable talent with potential irrespective of their career breaks and experience,” Jain adds.

The company’s main objective with its Re-Ignite programme is to help women in re-starting their careers with ease, and at the same level of proficiency, ensuring they feel confident about their career growth.

Jain shares an anecdote from the organisation!

J&J received Upaasna Kalia, one of the six shortlisted women from a fray of 100 applications, in its first cohort. She had to leave behind a 15-year long career journey in the supply chain due to personal commitments. Re-entering the workforce after a break was a big challenge for her. “The Re-Ignite programme helped her to not just believe in herself but also empowered her to make an impactful comeback,” Jain recalls. On completion of the programme, Kalia got hired as Site Business Excellence Lead at Ethicon Aurangabad (Medical Devices), Johnson & Johnson.

J&J's idea of DE&I at the workplace

At Johnson & Johnson, Jain says, “We are guided by Our Credo, which challenges us to put the needs and wellbeing of the people we serve first. Our mission has always been to make Diversity, Equity and Inclusion our way of doing business by recognizing and welcoming everyone’s unique needs, experiences and perspectives.”

“This culminates into our core virtue ‘You Belong’, which is about creating a deep sense of belonging and a culture where one is valued, ideas are heard, and people advance this culture for everyone,” Jain adds.

This ambition of J&J, according to Jain, has made inclusion an integral part of how diversity is leveraged in the company across different workgroups. The company has created policies and practices that enable all its employees to feel special. For example, J&J makes diversity and inclusion related objectives a part of everyone’s measurable performance goals and objectives that are mapped to rewards and incentives. The company also celebrates diversity through Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) which are voluntary employee-led groups that focus on sharing identities/affinities and experiences.

When Johnson & Johnson was founded in 1886, eight of its first 14 employees were females. Today, 45 per cent of the company’s 1,30,000 global associates are women.

In India, in 2021, the company also launched the first cohort of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) to develop women leaders in healthcare to achieve gender parity in the industry. Around 30 women leaders from Johnson & Johnson India joined the first cohort of HBA which is a one-year self-directed programme to achieve specific, personalised success metrics, designated executive-level sponsorships and increased access to internal and external senior leaders.

“We respect that people want to find meaning and purpose in their professional as well as personal lives. Understanding the same, we have built a cohesive environment where our employees, inspired by ‘Our Purpose’, are uniting us around a common ambition, which is to act as one Johnson & Johnson family to profoundly transform the trajectory of health for humanity,” Jain concludes.

14.2. HP starts local manufacturing of laptops, other devices

IBEF, Mar. 02, 2022

HP becomes the first global computing giant that has begun manufacturing laptops in India, in addition to desktop towers, mini desktops, and display monitors, as part of the government's 'Make in India' programme and production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for electronics. It is also the country's top seller with a 31.5% market share, has increased its Made-in-India reputation by investing alongside manufacturing partner Flex at the latter's Chennai site. According to HP MD Mr. Ketan Patel, HP is expanding its locally created product line and are not afraid to make additional investments. HP's local drive comes at a time when the government is promoting domestic electronics manufacture aggressively, announcing plans such as a PLI for IT hardware and a US$ 10 billion plan to localise semiconductor production. HP’s revenues are expected to be about US$ 3 billion and its sales climbed 59% in 2021.

The demand for digital items such as laptops and desktops has increased dramatically as a result of factors such as work-from-home and education-from-home. With its product line, the company has made significant gains in the gaming and lifestyle areas, in addition to gaining traction in the small and medium enterprise category. The global shortage of semiconductors operated as a barrier in terms of customer delivery, however this aided HP and its competitors such as Dell, Lenovo, and Apple. With devices like HP EliteBooks, HP ProBooks, and HP G8 series notebooks, HP is manufacturing such a wide range of laptops in India for the first time.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

15. Merger with Xilinx makes our India talent crucial: AMD CTO

ET, 28 Feb. 2022, Akhil George

AMD’s engineering team in India is primarily split between Bengaluru and Hyderabad, while Xilinx’s India team is mostly in Hyderabad. With the acquisition, and plans to boost hiring here, AMD’s total India employee base is set to double this year.

“Prior to the acquisition, AMD had already grown to 3,000 engineers in India. Now, with Xilinx, we now have a population of 5,000 engineers in India,” Papermaster said.

Bengaluru: AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx for $49 billion, completed earlier this month, was the biggest ever in the semiconductor industry. AMD’s CTO and EVP of technology and engineering, Mark Papermaster, told TOI that the impetus for the deal came from the complementarity of the two companies’ product portfolios.

“AMD’s focus is on CPUs, GPUs and deploying these high-performance compute engines for everything from the cloud to the edge to personal devices and gaming products. Xilinx too has a focus on high-performance solutions, but a very complementary set of products with field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and adaptive computing,” he said.

FPGAs require a lot of high-level technical skills to build, and Xilinx, Papermaster said, has written many software tools to make this very easy to do. Which explains, apart from a variety of other factors like enviable revenue and cash flow, why Xilinx’s price tag had so many zeroes at the end of it.

FPGAs are integrated circuits that can be programmed for different specific use cases after being manufactured, giving them a lot of versatility.

“What’s great about an FPGA is that it’s an optimised silicon device but the silicon is programmable. Usually, any high-volume CPU, GPU or application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) are hardcoded into the silicon, so you design them for a specific function. But if the algorithms change such that you need tailored performance, then you need to create a new custom chip. With an FPGA, you can change the hardware for that specialised computing without having to create a new chip design because the hardware devices are organised such that you can program them and reconnect their function in a very seamless process,” Papermaster said.

FPGAs are used in a variety of industrial applications and will help AMD expand into new markets and types of chips. It will also enable AMD to offer clients more comprehensive solutions that combine AMD’s CPUs and GPUs with FPGA technology. In 2015, Intel had acquired the then Xilinx competitor Altera for $16.7 billion, and has since used the integration of CPUs with FPGA technology to accelerate, for instance, data centre functionality. These kinds of newer architectures are becoming important with the semiconductor industry beginning to reach the limits to the number of transistors that can be added to a chip – the end of what is called Moore’s Law.

For AMD, which has seen a remarkable resurgence in PC, server and gaming chips since around 2018, Xilinx could help to take on Intel more aggressively, even as the latter gets ready to launch a new series of discrete gaming GPUs this year to challenge Nvidia and AMD.

“Prior to the acquisition, AMD had already grown to 3,000 engineers in India. Now, with Xilinx, we now have a population of 5,000 engineers in India. In fact, it’s about a quarter of the technical population of the entire company. Our India team is incredibly talented and have a wide breadth of skills – from aspects of CPU design, GPU design, adaptive compute and hardware and software skills. We’ve also not done growing, we expect to hire over 1,000 engineers in India in 2022,” Papermaster said.

He said AMD is looking for engineers with ML and AI expertise. “We also want to ramp up our resources in firmware, system on chip (SoC) design, systems and platform engineering, FPGA design & verification, CAD, digital signal processing (DSP) and memory design engineers, as well as software engineers to help build our next generation of products.”

- SERVICES (Education, Healthcare, IT, R&D, Tourism, etc.)

16.1. Riding on digitisation, the Indian tech sector to breach $227 bn revenue mark in FY22: Nasscom

ET Gov. 16 Feb. 2022

The Indian tech industry clocked double-digit growth across sub-sectors, adding $30 billion in revenues in FY2022 and nearly 450,000 jobs

Riding high on the Digital India wave, the Indian technology industry clocked over $200 billion in overall revenue and is set to breach the $227 billion revenue mark by the end of this fiscal year on March 31, 2022.

According to the latest by IT industry’s apex body Nasscom, The fiscal is likely to witness a growth of 15.5% which is the highest-ever since 2011. The Indian tech industry clocked double-digit growth across sub-sectors, adding $30 billion in revenues in FY2022 and nearly 450,000 jobs.

“Fiscal 2022 has been a breakthrough year for the Indian technology industry. We are excited about the opportunities in the 'Techade' as we enter an era of exponential transformation and technology becomes indispensable to progress,” Rekha M. Menon, chairperson, Nasscom said.

While the IT Services vertical is set to clock $116 billion in revenue in FY2022, the BPM sector is set to log $44 billion; ER&D vertical $36 billion; hardware segment $17 billion and software products, $13 billion.

Exports (including hardware) recorded a growth of 17.2 per cent clocking revenue of $178 billion which is over 51 per cent share of India's total services exports, said the Nasscom report.

Further the online ecommerce recorded a growth of 39% to reach $79 billion in 2021-22. Digital revenue share stood at 30-32 per cent, recording an incremental revenue of $13 billion.

“While exports did play a large part in this growth, domestic market emerged as a great propeller, nearing a total of $50 billion owing to India's tech adoption with public digital platforms like Aadhaar, UPI and CoWIN playing a large part in delivering citizen services,” said Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom.

India emerged as a global hub for digital talent with over five million tech workforce. With one out of three employees already digitally skilled, the digital tech talent pool is at 1.6 million, growing at a CAGR of 25%. With massive focus on reskilling and upskilling, the Indian tech industry reskilled approximately 280,000 employees in FY2022, said the IT industry's apex body.

With over 36% of women employees, the Indian tech industry is one of the largest private-sector women employers in India with over 1.8 million women in the workforce.

India continues to be the third largest startup hub in the world with over 25,000 tech start-ups and witnessing 42 new unicorns and 11 IPOs in the year 2021. Over 2,250 tech start-ups were founded in 2021 and a total highest-ever funding of $24 billion was raised in 2021.

The industry also witnessed maturity in the software products segment with the presence of over 2,000 software product companies and 1,000 SaaS companies in India.

16.2. Infosys BPM to hire 400 skilled workers in Costa Rica by 2022

ETHRWorld, 16 Feb. 2022

"The 400 new employees will be hired at multiple job levels and will be distributed across these service lines, with a primary focus on customer service," it said.

Infosys BPM's arm of Bengaluru-headquartered Infosys plans to hire 400 skilled customer services workers in Costa Rica by 2022.

Bengaluru: Infosys BPM, the business process management arm of Bengaluru-headquartered Infosys, on Tuesday announced plans to hire 400 skilled customer services workers in Costa Rica by 2022. Infosys BPM in Costa Rica currently has a skilled workforce of more than 300 people across a diverse portfolio of services, including sales and fulfilment, sourcing and procurement, customer services, legal process management, human resource outsourcing, and Robotic Process Automation, a company statement said.

"The 400 new employees will be hired at multiple job levels and will be distributed across these service lines, with a primary focus on customer service," it said.

CEO & Managing Director, Infosys BPM, Anantha Radhakrishnan, said, "Costa Rica, with its proximity to the US, friendly business policies, conducive infrastructure, and quality of talent, presents a stellar opportunity for us to grow our presence in Latin America."

17.1. Centre urges states to operationalize 1.10 lakh AB-HWCs equipped with tele-consultation services by March 31

ET Gov. 18th Feb. 2022

The HWCs are crucial in providing preventive, promotive, rehabilitative and curative care for an expanded range of services encompassing reproductive and child health services, communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, palliative care and elderly care, oral health, ENT care, and basic emergency care.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan chaired a meeting through video conference on Thursday with all states and UTs to review the operationalization status of Ayushman Bharat Health & Wellness Centers (HWCs), Tele-consultation services and physical and financial progress made under ECRP-II and Prime Minister Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana (PM-ABHIM).

Highlighting that Government of India is dedicated to expanding public healthcare delivery across the country, states were informed through a detailed presentation on the status of implementation of AB-HWCs, their operationalization as tele-consultation centers, and status of implementation of projects under ECRP-II package.

The Union Health Secretary highlighted that for ensuring comprehensive primary health care (CPHC) under Ayushman Bharat, Sub Health Centers (SHCs) and Primary Health Centers (PHCs) are being strengthened as health and wellness centers (HWCs). The HWCs are crucial in providing preventive, promotive, rehabilitative and curative care for an expanded range of services encompassing reproductive and child health services, communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, palliative care and elderly care, oral health, ENT care, and basic emergency care. Trained officials like mid-level healthcare provider (MLHP), Community Health Officer (CHO) are being placed at HWC-SHC and medical officer at PHC (rural/urban). They would facilitate delivery of these services at their respective health centers. HWCs will be crucial in enhancing continuum of care and tele-health and referrals.

The states were advised to ensure operationalization of target of 1.10 lakh HWCs by 31 March 2022 through customized and focused strategy. This in effect means that these HWCs must be fully functional and equipped to dispense free medicines, provide free diagnostics and all prescribed health packages including yoga and healthy living sessions.

They were also advised to ensure that all the 1.10 lakh AB-HWCs are adequately equipped to function as effective and vibrant tele-consultation “spokes”. This would include ensured availability of internet connectivity, desktop/ laptop and required trained and skilled personnel including CHO. States are required to ensure that all the HWCs are mapped to a “hub” which could be a district hospital or district medical college hospital. For each such spoke, states must ensure that a base minimum number teleconsultation sessions are conducted, starting from today, the official said.

Reiterating the advise to states on expediting utilization of funds released under ECRP-II package for strengthening healthcare infrastructure across the country, since the funds will lapse on 31 March 2022, states were again reminded to accelerate completion of projects under ECRP-II, such that subsequent instalment of funds can be released by Union Health Ministry. They were also informed that necessary exemption from ECI have been taken and formally communication to the poll-bound states for utilisation of funds.

Additionally, states were also advised that they can utilize savings under certain components of ECRP-II package with due approval of state health societies for permissible and admissible components, instead of again seeking approval of Union Health Ministry.

States were also requested to expedite proposals and MOUs to be sent to Union Health Ministry under PM-ABHIM to enable the ministry to release funds for the states. States were advised to review the progress under this too.

Vikas Sheel, AS & MD, Vishal Chauhan and Lav Agarwal, joint secretaries, and other senior officials of Union Health Ministry were present in the virtual review meeting along with NHM Mission Directors and other officials from states and UTs.

17.2. Inside IT sector and its Leadership Development approach

ETHRWorld, 27 Feb. 2022

ETHRWorld found leaders in the IT sectors have taken assimilation of approaches concerning two pertinent questions: What kind of organisational structure do companies need? AND which generations of leaders do we need?

In most organisations, Pawan Bhageria feels informal hierarchies automatically get created based on skills and expertise developed through experience and in most cases, they help the organisation achieve optimum efficiency.

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo once said, “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”

So, when leaders are faced with the challenges of choosing between the two best options, instead of picking one, they create a third option: A mix of the best aspects of the two options.

ETHRWorld witnessed something similar. Leaders in the IT sectors have taken assimilation of approaches concerning two pertinent questions: What kind of organisational structure do companies need? AND which generations of leaders do we need?

Question of organisational structure

In most organisations, Pawan Bhageria, President of around 9,000 employees-strong Tata Technologies, feels informal hierarchies automatically get created based on skills and expertise developed through experience and in most cases, they help the organisation achieve optimum efficiency.

However, Bhageria said the ideal organisational structure depends on the type of industry – services vs manufacturing, type of workforce – tech next-gen vs blue-collared plant operations, as well as organisational maturity – startups vs mature organisations.

“Many organisations leverage matrix organisational structures to take advantage of the efficiencies of functional teams and achieve better results,” Bhageria said, adding, “While most tech companies are leaning towards a flatter organisational structure, as they look at empowering their workforce and developing products faster.”

Given India's rapidly changing work and workforce dynamics, Harsha Solanki, MD - India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, Infobip, highlighted it’s not about whether the organisational structure is flat or hierarchical; it's about how agile the organisation is.

Solanki said organising for the future necessitates a more dynamic, adaptable, and less structured operational style than most companies employ today.

“As the company grows, delegating authority at the individual level is vital. However, employees' skills, enthusiasm, and knowledge may be better applied to address business challenges when there is a level playing field,” she added.

To summarise it all in the words of Bhageria, structures must:

Be defined by the phase of the organisation’s lifecycle, and

Have a varied stance from team to team, depending on the nature of work and maturity.

The intergenerational leadership transition

Veera Reddy Patlolla, Global HR Head of over 3,500 employees-strong Cigniti Technologies, feels there is a huge gap in the practical world from what one learns and what is applied, as what is learned is rarely applied. Having said that, he mentioned, “You only learn to play basketball by shooting a basketball.”

Patlolla believes that is where we get so many good leaders even from the current broken executive education system.

“Models of co-innovation by large corporates and learning from the windows of the younger talent will keep the corporate executives grounded,” he said, adding, “We also must allow reverse mentoring to happen where the younger lot coaches the executives in the company.”

An anecdote: Patlolla’s early learning in leadership was to lead and motivate a group of 60 experienced Airmen as a young Air Force officer. They were all seasoned with 20 to 25 years of experience and it was very difficult for them to accept a 22-year-old as their leader.

“I had to be patient with them, listen and value their experience and gain their trust and respect,” he said.

Patlolla had to go with a methodical approach by adjusting his working style to match their way of working, by making himself approachable and by creating a culture of feedback.

The key takeaways from Patlolla’s experience are

Be ok with failures, build a culture around feedback, openness and transparency

Make yourself approachable

Strengthen team alignment and collaboration

Time for newer mechanisms

Bhageria of Tata Technologies asserted that traditional executive education sometimes inhibits some leaders from being able to completely recognize/acknowledge the change in the approach, culture and mindset required to manage the Gen Z and new-age talent pool.

However, on the other hand, he said organisations these days are constantly striving to design newer mechanisms to unlock leadership talent across their existing hierarchies, to ensure they attract and retain talent.

According to Bhageria, executive education of the new age must have the following attributes:

Diversity in thoughts, age, culture and gender,

Customised approach to tap talent across the pyramid through talent seeding programme,

Tailoring content that puts together industry best practices and organisational context in one frame, and

A practical and experiential approach to develop Leadership Competencies.

Learning by experiences

For Infobip’s Solanki, it's critical to stay true to yourself and lead in a way that's suitable for you.

She feels the ability to think strategically and connect changes to a larger picture helps leaders to move forward. “We face a variety of concerns and hurdles in business and life but employing a problem-solving approach has always helped me get out of a bind,” she said.

Further, she asserted it is necessary to adjust to each individual with whom we are engaging. “If you have faith in individuals, I believe that empowerment is the next logical step,” Solanki said.

Developing leadership pipeline

The biggest challenge in recent times is the challenge of “The Great Attrition” being faced by most companies, including Tata Technologies. The learning that Bhageria and the team have had over the last few months has reinforced the company’s commitment to ‘care and concern’ for its people.

Tata Technologies is rolling out curated Talent Management interventions that ensure continuous learning and growth opportunities for its people. Making this possible is a team of Business and HR Leaders, some of whom are home-grown talent and some who bring a fresh outside perspective.

The Leadership development approach at Tata Technologies has two key pillars –

Identify, train and mentor future leaders systematically, and

Provide growth opportunities to internal teams so that they can learn and grow to take higher responsibilities.

While ‘LeaderBridge’ looks at Executive Leadership Development, the LEAP Programme takes a bottom-up approach to groom young leaders. Partnership with Top B Schools and internal experience sharing form key elements.

Additionally, Bhageria revealed these talent pools are assigned strategic projects to showcase their learning and growth potential and recognize, as appropriate.

“We are proud to share that our current Head of Delivery Lines of Business for both ER&D and Digital joined us more than a decade back at the bottom of the pyramid and are currently leading large teams to deliver global projects,” he said.

In the context of millennials, Bhageria concluded that where they like to be in the proverbial driving seat, ‘leading from behind’ might be the way of the future.

18.1. RIL opens India's largest convention centre at Jio World Centre with 5G network

ET CIO, 5 Mar. 2022

The convention centre has "hybrid and digital experiences enabled by 5G network", Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said in a statement.

New Delhi: Oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries on Friday announced the opening of India's largest convention centre at Jio World Centre in Mumbai. The convention centre has three exhibition halls spanning over an area of more than 1.61 lakh square feet and two convention halls of 1.07 lakh square feet.

The convention centre has "hybrid and digital experiences enabled by 5G network", Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said in a statement.

RIL also dedicated Dhirubhai Ambani Square and 'Fountain of Joy' to the city of Mumbai at the Jio World Convention Centre.

"Jio World Centre is a tribute to our glorious nation and a reflection of the aspirations of New India. From the largest conventions to cultural experiences to pathbreaking retail and dining facilities, Jio World Centre is envisioned as Mumbai's new landmark, a point where we come together to script the next chapter of India's growth story," said Nita Ambani, director, RIL and founder chairman, Reliance Foundation.

The Jio World Centre, spread over an area of 18.5 acres in Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex, will have a phase-wise opening over the course of the current and the next year, according to the statement.

The Dhirubhai Ambani Square opened at the Jio World Centre is centered around the Fountain of Joy, which is a series of fountain shows of water, lights and music.

"With great joy and pride, we dedicate the Dhirubhai Ambani Square and the world class Fountain of Joy to the people and city of Mumbai. A celebration of the spirit of the city, it will be an iconic new public space where people share joys and soak in the colours and sounds of Aamchi Mumbai," she said.

The fountain features eight fire shooters, 392 water jets, and over 600 LED lights.

The convention centre at Jio World Centre has kitchen capacity which can provide over 18,000 meals a day.

The convention centre has a total area of over 1.39 lakh square feet of pre-function concourse across all the levels, the statement added.

18.2. Microsoft to set up fourth data centre region in Hyderabad

ET Telecom, 7 Mar. 2022

This will be Microsoft's largest data centre in India and will be among the largest foreign direct investments (FDIs) in Telangana.

Pune: Microsoft India on Monday said that it intends to set up its fourth data centre region in Hyderabad, Telangana to meet the growing demand for public Cloud in India. This will be the company’s largest data centre in India and will be among the largest foreign direct investments (FDIs) in the state.

Anant Maheshwari, president, Microsoft India told ET that this would help the company meet the growing demand for public cloud in India which had been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We more than doubled the capacity at our existing facilities in India during the first year of the pandemic and this is directly correlated to the nature of the growth we’ve seen. We’ve taken significant incremental share in the overall new cloud consumption that has happened in the country and therefore have become the number one player in the country,” said Maheshwari.

He expects demand from emerging verticals like edtech, government services, gaming and media and entertainment to drive demand for public cloud solutions in India, in addition to existing ones like banking and financial services, manufacturing, healthtech and retail, among others.

Hyderabad is home to the largest engineering centre and campus for Microsoft globally outside the United States. The new data centre is expected to be its largest in India and will be among the company’s largest data centre investments in India. “I am extremely delighted that Microsoft chose Hyderabad as the destination for its largest data centre investment in India. This will also be one of the largest foreign direct investments (FDIs) the state has attracted,” said KT Rama Rao, Minister Municipal Administration & Urban Development, Industries & Commerce, and Information Technology, Government of Telangana.

According to IDC, Microsoft data centre regions in India contributed $9.8 billion in revenue to the economy between 2016 and 2020. Beyond GDP impact, the IDC report estimated 1.5 million jobs were added to the economy, including 169,000 new skilled IT jobs. The company currently has three datacentre regions in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai.

“A Microsoft data centre region provides a competitive advantage to our digital economy and is a long-term investment in our country’s potential. The cloud is transforming every industry and sector. The investment in skilling will empower India’s workforce today and into the future,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and Electronics & Information Technology of India said.

The new data centre region will further create more jobs and opportunities, said the company. Maheshwari said that the incremental revenue generated by the existing data centres in the last five years for the entire ecosystem would be in the region of about $10 billion. It will offer the entire Microsoft portfolio across the cloud, data solutions, artificial intelligence (AI), productivity tools, and customer relationship management (CRM) with advanced data security, for enterprises, start-ups, developers, education, and government institutions.

19.1. Triggering space revolution for India - Tele-Talk

ET Telecom, 7 Mar. 2022, A.K. Bhatt

"With the government’s vision to make India a significant part of the global space economy, detailed regulation in the form of a comprehensive policy encompassing Spacecom, remote sensing, transfer of technology, Satnav, and all other space aspects will help to shape up the sector and direct a structured flow of more and more investments either from the government or through domestic/foreign investments. This will be an outlay for the next decades which can make India a global destination for space technologies all around the globe," says Bhatt.

Indian Space sector is evolving as a major contributor to the economy thanks to the proactive policies adopted by the government in recent years. As per the Economic Survey 2021-22, the Indian Space sector is predicted to acquire a bigger portion of the global space economy, largely driven by private sector participation with investments flowing from within and outside the country. As per the latest government estimates, more than 100 startups are engaged in the space industry, with 47 of them registering with the government in 2021 alone. The private sector and academia have submitted around 40 proposals to the interim IN-SPACe board for operations ranging from the launch vehicle and satellite manufacture to earth observation applications.

Pursuant to the Make in India initiative, the industry also witnessed the active participation of private players in several initiatives like ISRO’s recent Earth Observation Satellite project with two co-passengers on PSLV-C52. Several components for the launch were indigenously manufactured by private startups. To further engage private sector participation in the space sector, the government has undertaken the initiative of liberalising traditional Satellite Communication and Remote Sensing sectors. Also, with an aim to spur innovation and encourage competition at the global level, the government has eased access to geospatial data as well as mapping restrictions. On the disinvestment front, the government has identified Space &Defence as one of the strategic sectors for disinvestment. With increased investment and engagement with private players, the industry is preparing for the next phase of growth in India.

The government is keen to make steadfast progress in the space sector by pushing massive investments as announced in the Union Budget 2022 and with the Space related policies.

This year, the Department of Space (DoS) has been allocated Rs13,700 crores in the annual budget, Rs7465.60 crores of which is earmarked for capital expenditure, a quintessential approach for the industry that has embarked on several major missions for the upcoming months. Rs13,700 crore was allocated for the DoS to carry out ambitious projects like the Gaganyaan, the scheduled launch of Aditya L1 to the Sun and the development of a trip to Venus. Further, inclusion of space technologies like spatial planning tools with ISRO imagery developed by BiSAG-N (Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics) as part of the Pradhan MantriGati Shakti National Master Plan (NMP) highlights the commitment to increase collaboration between the government and the space sector. The allocation of funds to academic bodies such as Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL), North Eastern Space Applications Centre (NE-SAC), National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL) and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) will further boost research and innovation in the space sector.

Space startups in India have also achieved significant growth over the past one year and is expected to attract more investments across key verticals in the coming years. In a major drive to incentivize the startup ecosystem, the Budget has extended tax benefits to the eligible entities. In addition, the government has announced plans to establish an expert committee to address the regulatory concerns raised by private equity and venture capital investors while engaging with the startup ecosystem.

India currently holds a meager 2.6 % of the global space industry. With the government’s vision to make India a significant part of the global space economy, detailed regulation in the form of a comprehensive policy encompassing Spacecom, remote sensing, transfer of technology, Satnav, and all other space aspects will help to shape up the sector and direct a structured flow of more and more investments either from the government or through domestic/foreign investments. This will be an outlay for the next decades which can make India a global destination for space technologies all around the globe.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETTelecom.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETTelecom.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organization directly or indirectly.

19.2. Inmarsat’s CEO Rajeev Suri anticipates radical leap in space sector

ET Telecom, 19 Feb. 2022

“Money is coming into the space sector quite fast," Suri said. "Venture capital coming into space companies in 2021 was the fastest ever at $70.1 billion. That is close to a 90% increase from the previous record just a year before. If you assume that growth continues five years after that, which I believe it will, the outcome will be a radical leap from where we are today.”

Chennai: If the current momentum sustains, in the next five years, there will be a "radical leap" in the space sector, said Rajeev Suri, chief executive of British satellite operator Inmarsat.

Suri was speaking at the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum 2022 on Friday.

Capacity will "skyrocket" and it is estimated that the sector will grow by 10-20x from 2020 to 2025, he added.

He said that new entrants like Starlink and Amazon will also drive change and will look to capture existing players and build new markets of satellite communications.

There will also be greater consolidation down the road, he added.

“There are currently more than 50 active satellite communications operators, and I would bet that there will be far less than half of that number, in just a decade from now," he said. "And then technological innovation will accelerate driven by the new capital and that innovation will be seen not just in the space sector but on the ground as well with better, faster and cheaper terminals.”

He also said space-based communications will be one of the most interesting, most dynamic sectors of the Techade.

“We believe that the combination of GEO (Geostationary orbit), HEO (High Earth Orbit satellites), LEO (Low-Earth-orbit satellites) and 5G is the best approach," he said. "We also wanted to have 5G for some hotspots around the world such as maritime and aviation. Think about the Singapore Straits, it's very busy and so we think terrestrial 5G can actually help offload traffic."

Suri, however, warned that the overcrowding of satellites may lead to Kessler Syndrome where satellites can crash into each other.

The Kessler Syndrome is a phenomenon in which the amount of junk in orbit around the earth reaches a point where it just creates more and more space debris, causing big problems for satellites, astronauts and mission planners.

20. How top Indian banks are using Robotic Process Automation

ET CIO, 25 Feb. 2022

Top flight CXOs from Indian banks share their views on the state of adoption of RPA, and the multi-faceted value they are deriving from it. For six shining examples of RPA success, read on

What’s the most enduring lesson you’ve learned from managing your operations in the pandemic-ravaged business environment? That’s a question I posed to several high-powered CXOs from the banking industry.

Well, guess what? The most consistently identified lessons trend towards a laser-sharp focus on operational efficiency and process improvement.

Does this signal a radical shift towards a new permeating culture of doing more, much more with less? Sure. Looks, feels, and smells like it.

And this is probably the most opportune time to put these hard-learned lessons to good use.

An anemic economy, budgets cut to the bone, and shrinking RoI windows. Phew!! The avowed objective of extracting value through process efficiency is justifiably gaining a great deal of mindshare with CXOs.

But if your processes are manual, mundane – and dare I say- error-prone? – you’ve got something worth a long, hard look. RPA like warp and woof of a fabric, needs to be woven in and out of the digital strategy of your bank.

Over the past many months and years, it’s been well-nigh impossible to ignore a barrage of reports, articles, and high decibel marketing campaigns by RPA vendors touting the swiss knife-like capabilities of this technology.

RPA has now graduated from the realm of a buzzword to a high-priority strategy for banks. If industry reports are anything to go by, the global RPA market is expected to reach USD 25.66 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 40.6% over the forecast period. The BFSI segment is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 40.1% over the forecast period.

High street banks are avidly implementing RPA in a concerted effort to squeeze efficiencies out of their operations. Investing in RPA makes ample sense. What you may well ask?

First off, it adds muscle around the IT backbone to help your organization lockstep with digital capabilities. It, then, goes on to improve process efficiency, productivity, eliminate manual intervention, save manhours, enhance service availability, reduce risk, inconsistency, and inaccuracy.

Taking the first crack at RPA

Success in business depends on anticipating the future. That’s just the way it is.

ICICI Bank knows this only too well. In 2016, the bank set itself apart in the industry by becoming the acknowledged pioneer for RPA adoption. The bank applied RPA in over 200 business processes cutting across multiple functions including retail banking operations, agri-business, trade and forex, treasury, and human resource management.

It was, in retrospect, a brilliant idea. It led ICICI Bank to muse on the possibility of extending it beyond the initial use cases. Today the bank has approximately 1,500 RPA projects handling around 700 manpower worth of activities to enhance efficiency and improve response time.

This was the beginning of a trend and not an isolated incident unto itself. Banking is a dynamic sector with industry peers who are either early adopters or fast followers. And witnessing the emergence of such a potent new solution was pretty darn interesting for the other banks. Oh boy, would they find themselves watching the action from the sidelines! By 2017, most if not all top banks in India started to dip a toe in the rushing wave of RPA.

This was a time when banks were scrambling to do their crucial bit in giving their operations a sorely needed digital makeover. RPA blends well with this mandate and movement to transform a germ of an idea, or a hint of a process improvement need into an efficient, intuitive, responsive, and secure process. And it's precisely this need that motivated banks to embed RPA into their operations.

The strategic intent was to first identify the processes that lend themselves well to the application of RPA. “All repetitive operational processes which are outside the core banking platform and are currently performed through manual activity are ideal candidates for RPA deployment,” recommends Zuzar Tinwalla, COO- India and South Asia markets, Standard Chartered Bank.

As is often the case with digital initiatives, selecting the right process can ensure that the low-hanging fruit comes in bunches. Deepak Sharma, President & Chief Digital Officer, Kotak Mahindra Bank couldn’t agree more. He employed the same tack when he kickstarted the RPA project at Kotak Mahindra Bank by identifying 10-odd processes consisting of simple, medium, and complex nature.

Delving deeper into the top considerations for RPA process selection, Sharma shares that apart from being manually optimized, the process should be evaluated on the parameters of scale, risk mitigation, impact to customer experience, and the technical feasibility to gauge if it can be substituted by source system’s APIs.

Mahesh Ramamoorthy, CIO, Yes Bank shares that in the initial stages of deployment, the bank focussed on automating back-office processes. It is now trying to create efficiency from a risk management and productivity enhancement perspective.

Similarly, RBL Bank has a pipeline of more than 25 RPA initiatives. Pankaj Sharma, Chief Operations Officer, RBL Bank is using RPA across functions like operations, card services, IT support, and customer query management.

RPA becomes the order of the day

The most consistently identified use case for RPA in Indian banks is back-office operations. Customer onboarding/account closure and service automation is a distinct but not too distant second. Several others that were cited include reconciliation, fraud and risk, quality assurance processing, regulatory monitoring, and compliance reporting.

Axis Bank started off its RPA journey with a slew of seemingly easy processes and identified the initial use cases around salary processing through STP upload, cheque processing, and clearing activity, and service request processing for address change or nominations. Subsequently, the bank applied RPA to some of its internal banking processes like invoice processing in the finance department, automating complex reports for managing day to day operations, reconciliation activities for operational control, risk-based triggers for general ledger monitoring, voucher processing for vendor payments, and employee travel claim processing.

For every bank, onboarding of customers across savings and current accounts, loan products, credit cards and wealth products require multiple checks and balances including data capture, validation, and communication. Furthermore, a large number of customers reach out to the bank with post onboarding service requests like demographic change, nomination, upgrade of debit card, chequebook request etc. Earlier, all of this was handled through manual processes. But banks have now realized that these processes if driven through RPA can provide straight-through processing.

“There were 10-12 such service requests catering to roughly 45% of total service requests which were automated in the first phase of RPA deployment,” says Ratan Kesh, EVP and Head – Retail Operations and Service at Axis Bank.

Reconciliation, data upload, and transaction processing are the areas where RPA has shown the biggest business impact for RBL Bank. “In one of the customer payment processes, where PAN data needs to be uploaded and validated across multiple systems, bots are now handling it end to end. This amounts to approximately 75,000 transactions per day leading to over 80% savings in manual efforts. Additionally, the bot is handling over 20,000 customer requests per month for the customer debit card servicing process. This alone has resulted in a 90% reduction in manual efforts at the bank’s back office,” contends Pankaj Sharma, Chief Operations Officer, RBL Bank.

And then there are some complex processes where RPA can provide accuracy and efficiency. “Secured and unsecured dispute resolution for transactions carried out via digital and direct banking channels like ATM is fairly complex due to the multiple parties involved in providing settlement and visibility but with RPA it can be simplified and made more efficient. The settlement and reconciliation and communication to players in the network as well as to customers for all digital transactions can be automated completely using RPA. Thereby enhancing customer satisfaction,” elaborates Ratan Kesh.

He is quick to add that the bank has reduced its TAT for dispute resolution from 90 days to less than 7 days with RPA. Axis Bank has also deployed RPA for end-to-end automation of complex processes like diseased claim processing, trade processing, and trade finance transactions.

Similarly, Kotak Mahindra Bank identified inward remittances, trade processing, regulatory automation and reporting, reconciliation and operations processes as the top use cases for RPA.

And there have also been some well-conceived initiatives in the area of risk mitigation. RPA can take a big bite out of fraud incidents. “Our enterprise risk and fraud system are sufficiently automated. It helps us get alerts on the specific risk factors emerging from different channels. We are then able to percolate those alerts across different frontend channels,” avers Ramamoorthy.

Banking on RPA

RPA is getting ingrained in the operations environment in such a manner that it is becoming ubiquitous. “The internal role-based access controls are automated. Processes that took 5-6 days are now self- service. “One of the key benefits has been in handling scale and risk. It helped eliminate all potential points of failure. The human element only comes in for validation. From the initial 15, we have now graduated to 40 use cases from RPA within Yes Bank. We are now trying to achieve the ambitious goal of ZeroOps. Any new product or capability that we are now trying to create is based on this,” he adds.

RPA has moved out of the back office and into the spotlight as it begins to support frontline operations. “For Kotak Mahindra Bank, RPA 1.0 was more about automating simpler tasks whereas with RPA 2.0, we started integrating with APIs, micro-services and intelligent cognitive platforms like ML OCR platforms,” proclaims Deepak Sharma.

Riding the pandemic tailwinds, RPA bolstered its position within banks. To a bank consistent experience is a defining characteristic by which it would like to be known to its customers. This is where RPA stood them in good stead. Ratan Kesh proudly proclaims that during the pandemic Axis Bank’s customer onboarding and service requests were processed seamlessly in a touchless manner through RPA. “The digital frontend was ready, and RPA acted as a facilitator to strengthen it. The front-end digital solutions when coupled with RPA created an ultimate technology and creative symbiosis leading to a jugalbandi of sorts,” he quips.

Quite evidently, customer service channels have come of age with the usage of bots. During the pandemic, when banks were faced with a shortage of staff onground, RPA came to their rescue by ensuring that this did not cause any downstream impact and provided better control on risks. Besides, customer service wasn’t impaired either. “RPA helped us a great deal, especially for reconciliation. The timely movement of files from one system to another through process reconciliation data helped us minimize our overall risk, reducing the impact associated with people’s non-availability. Yes Bank also managed to reduce the incidents of dispute management. The automated process became fairly streamlined and did not result in escalations,” gushes Ramamoorthy.

The pandemic tilted the scales of power in favor of RPA. Ratan Kesh shares somewhat smugly that Axis Bank launched its automated voice assistant ‘AXAA’, an AI-powered conversational voice bot in July 2020. “If we were able to address the customer queries effectively and promptly, it was thanks largely to these carefully cultivated and meticulously executed RPA initiatives. Problem resolution is now faster, easier, and more accurate than ever before,” he claims.

Efficiency, Ahoy!

Every so often, concerns about the project payback surface- as well it should. “The typical RoI for RPA in banks varies from 12-18 months. But benefits around better TAT and reduced manual risks are seen immediately,” clarifies Deepak Sharma.

However, CXOs believe that the value of RPA initiatives is multi-faceted. Banks should not quantify the payback in monetary terms only. RPA projects justify their cost soon enough- and in several ways.

CXOs cite numerous benefits, led off by process improvement and efficiency. However, the most dramatic and effective impact has been on the operations front. Zuzar Tinwalla, COO- India and South Asia markets, Standard Chartered Bank is enthused. For him, so far, the outcome of RPA seems to be going in the direction he’d hoped. “In operations, our bank saved 10,000 manhours a month by deploying bots. Operational processes that took 10 manhours every day were reduced to about 1-2 minutes of computation,” he affirms.

Success stories from some of the major banks will lead you to believe there’s something there. “Kotak Mahindra Bank,” Sharma informs, “can now take customer requests directly and validate them for appropriate processing without branch network in the middle.”

The bank now boasts of an impressive roster of achievements: reduced turnaround time for customers with 100% security validations, 25 % reduction in development cycle time with an agile integrated framework, 15% improvement in CX, and 60% optimization in business efficiencies. Kotak Mahindra Bank is scaling up 2X Y-o-Y on the RPA program.

Stick and stay, make it pay

Standard Chartered Bank has seen sustainable gains in operational efficiency by transforming the operations staff into a customer-driven, market-oriented bunch. “RPA freed up people to refocus their energy on value-enhancing, customer-facing, frontend roles thereby increasing our overall service proposition,” states Zuzar Tinwalla.

With RPA, banks have also been able to make a quantum leap forward in their digital dexterity. Axis Bank has seen RPA deliver immediate benefits. Over 3.5 lakh manhours were saved by the end of 2019-2020 through 114 odd RPA projects. “Currently, we have over 1000 bots deployed across various functions,” says Ratan Kesh. And the bank is brimming with plans to expand its RPA initiative.

Clearly, Axis Bank is basking in the benefits of its multiple RPA initiatives. The numbers are in favor of a significant impact. Service request processing which took 2-3 days now takes 2-3 hours. NRI service request processing for address change or nomination has seen a 50% improvement in TAT and cost of operations. The rate of Not first time right (NFTR) reduced drastically from 38% to less than 8%. More than 78% of credit cards post onboarding requests are in STP mode. Salary Processing, and government banking processing is a glitch-free end-to-end automated service with RPA. The bank has seen an 80% reduction in Trade Processing TAT. A new solution around Biometric Locker Operations is at a noteworthy 98%. Another first- Transactions routed through Automated Teller have moved to 67%. Pretty smart, huh?

But that’s not all. Leaner and economical operations enhanced customer experience. Account opening for certain types of accounts is instantaneous. Yet it maintains stringent validation measures by conducting 40+ types of validation including internal and external data sets. Bots respond to 26% of the calls at call centres. “Our sustained growth exhorts us to stay invested on the RPA path,” Ratan Kesh declares.

While efficiency tops the chart when it comes to measurable business impact, Pankaj Sharma reflects that RPA is immensely beneficial in knowledge management within a bank. “RPA journey forces banks to document their past experiences in the form of logic trees, validation rules which mainly resides in the minds of hands-on process owners. This documentation brings clarity for the on-ground staff and also eliminates guesswork ensuring consistent process outcomes,” he explains.

With the steady march of RPA into the banks, a new charter for efficiency is being hammered out. As their business grows, automation can grow right along with it. RPA is not a final destination but a route to an intelligent and smart future. A future that fully realizes the potential of intelligent automation.

Meanwhile, it is sure to help you realize efficiency on multiple fronts. With RPA, it doesn’t lie very far off.

INDIA and the WORLD

21.1. Principles of distributed agile teams and Global Capability Centers

ET CIO, Mar. 15, 2022, Smitha Hemmigae

In the distributed agile approach, when multiple locations are delivering work that needs to be integrated at some point, there is a huge risk of things falling apart. GCCs mitigate this risk by taking a purposeful approach to sustaining an agile culture and by recalibrating processes to support agile objectives while working closely with HQ.

Global Capability Centers (GCCs) aren’t a new phenomenon. They have been around for over two decades and have evolved from being a source of cost arbitrage to a core part of organizational strategy and innovation agenda. The model has particularly been successful in India, so much so that they contribute to 1% of the country’s GDP.

Agile methodologies have greatly been adopted by organizations as a means to improve collaboration, especially during the pandemic, when flexibility and agility have so often been vital to success. In a recent conversation with a global CIO of a large retailer, we were talking about the basic tenets of agile. Agile development teams traditionally have preferred co-located employees with close-knit groups, all working in the same place.

Co-location allows frequent in-person contact, quickly builds trust, simplifies problem solving, encourages instant communication, and enables fast-paced decision making. If only this worked, then it’s an anti-pattern to organizations looking to set up a Global Capability Center or global teams in talent rich hubs or setting up distributes agile teams.

Drawing parallels between distributed agile teams and GCCs, we found several similarities between them. They have both have continued to perform well during the pandemic but what does the next normal look like for them, especially when organizations are focused on building a people-centric culture? Let’s find out.

A New Form of Agility

in the wake of the pandemic, people globally have had to inspect the foundations of working, adapt to a new way of remote execution, and integrate their personal and professional lives more than before.Agile teams, in contrast to other functional units in companies, were well equipped to adapt to the change during the pandemic. They quickly pivoted to remote and distributed agile, which helped them achieve flexibility, scale, and efficiency.

If we were to look at the world of GCCs, there has been a 30-40% increase in the number of GCCs set up during the pandemic. Successful GCCs favor empowerment of people. The core tenet of GCCs is the focus on communication, collaboration, and growth with empathy. Hence, GCCs are poised to pioneer the new way of team agility in the post-pandemic world.

Flawless Execution

Most distributed agile teams consist of people from different cultures, working from different locations. However, they have been using proven remote collaboration strategies that have helped them minimize cultural and geographic barriers.

GCCs today are a core part of the enterprise and not an outpost. They have set clear remote collaboration strategies, share the same vision, goals and culture with the HQ, and have the right context to create impact. Progressive mindset, daily stand-ups with the onshore teammates, periodic offshore and onshore visits help GCCs break the geographical and cultural barriers.

Seamless Collaboration

For distributed agile teams, especially where team members choose their own hours, open and seamless communication is of the utmost importance. There isn’t opportunity for informal hallway conversations or water cooler moments in a remote world, and this necessitates implementing virtual alternatives of these social activities.

Effective communication and collaboration should be the cornerstones of a GCC because shared ownership and common purpose cannot be achieved without adequately fostering the enterprise’s values among teams, particularly when they work in different time zones.

One of the primary reasons behind setting up a GCC is to allow global teams across the world to quickly respond to change, and it is possible only through consistent and effective communication. Daily stand-ups, planning sessions, and sprints are some ways to help teams keep communicating and collaborating.

To make global teams work, leaders need to ensure proper collaboration between team members by organizing daily scrums, planning sessions, and discussion virtually.

Employee Empathy

Activities that nurture the morale of co-located agile teams—such as casual lunches, impromptu coffee breaks, or after-work social activities—are not practical in a virtual environment. So distributed agile teams need to make a more conscious effort to be social, polite, precise, and tactful—to ensure everyone feels just as safe contributing remotely as they did in person. Leaders should communicate their expectations with empathy, enable people to focus on their loved ones, and emphasize the importance of psychological safety for team members.

Looking at the GCC ecosystem across the world, I have been amazed at how an empathy-focused approach to technology and business can help pay down technical debt, build trust among team members, and contribute to the overall health of the enterprise. GCCs have been doing this successfully over two decades, where the handoffs between the HQ and the center in Bangalore or Poland have been seamless. Since GCCs are set up far away from HQ, they require a more deliberate focus on empathy, openness, respect, and courage.

Leadership Approach

While looking at distributed agile teams, the core mission of leadership stays the same. However, leaders need to be more deliberate when engaging with teams, especially when you have limited in-person interaction. Working in the same location, agile team leaders often empower teams to push work forward. Working in a distributed manner, they need to be closer to—and more proactive at—guiding their own team members.

Today, there is an increased trust in the leadership capabilities of GCCs. We have seen global leaders, including CIOs, head of global service business and HR leaders based in the GCC. They are purposeful at engaging external customers and stakeholders. They are highly transparent and reassuring in their communication about team performance and objectives which are tied back to HQ. Increasingly, GCC leaders have been able to display, in their tone and approach that everyone is in this together. They engage in regular check-ins, virtual sessions with focus groups, social media, intranet boards, surveys or polls that provide deeper insight and one-on-one conversations with key stakeholders.

If there is one thing that the pandemic taught us, it is that work can be delivered from anywhere and not necessarily from the HQ or the home country. But in the distributed agile approach, when multiple locations are delivering work that needs to be integrated at some point, there is a huge risk of things falling apart. GCCs mitigate this risk by taking a purposeful approach to sustaining an agile culture and by recalibrating processes to support agile objectives while working closely with HQ.

The author is Head of Marketing, ANSR

21.2. Google pours $700 mn in Poland as it pulls out from Russia

ET Telecom, 8 Mar. 2022

"It is already our largest site working on cloud technologies in Europe. With this new investment, across our sites in Warsaw we will have capacity for 2500 employees, with potential for future growth," said Magdalena Kotlarczy, Country Director, Poland.

London/New Delhi: As Google paused all ads sales in Russia amid the Ukraine invasion, the tech giant on Monday announced to invest nearly $700 million in the purchase and development of The Warsaw HUB, a modern office complex right in the heart of Poland's capital city.

Google had moved into The Warsaw Hub as a tenant last year, opening a new office there - a home to teams working primarily on its most advanced solutions powering Google Cloud and its many global customers.

The company employs more than 1000 Googlers in the country.

"Only last year, we added over 350 people, opened our new office in Warsaw and launched a Google Cloud region - the first such investment not only in Poland, but in Central and Eastern Europe," Kotlarczy added.

Last week, Google announced it will provide $10 million to local organisations helping refugees from the war in Ukraine who arrive into Poland.

"The funding will support both immediate humanitarian efforts and assistance for refugees in the first weeks of their stay in Poland, as well as their longer-terms needs," it added.

After blocking Russian media outlets, Google last week said it paused all ad sales in the country in response to the ongoing Ukraine invasion.

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine is both a tragedy and a humanitarian disaster in the making," Kent Walker, President, Global Affairs at Google, wrote in a blogpost.

Earlier, Google had indefinitely paused the monetisation of Russian state-funded media such as RT and Sputnik across its platforms.

22. 60% of enterprises in India to combine human expertise with AI, ML by 2026: IDC

ET CIO, 17 Feb. 2022

The report, released on Tuesday, provides a five-year outlook on key emerging trends, such as IT, cloud, artificial intelligence and automation, future of digital infrastructure, future of trust, future of intelligence, data and content technologies, and corporate banking.

How does AI/ML & bias come into play in HRMS?

Organizations that need the best talent, will do well only when they leverage the latest that technology has to offer, which is to use AI and Machine learning to help them identify the right talent with the right skills using AI, based on the ML algorithms

HRM solutions have become quite essential in the operations of an organization and with the solutions being integrated with AI/ML, it has largely streamlined the whole process of onboarding, training, and other HR activities. With this in mind, it is important to know where a technology like this lie in today’s world and how beneficial or harmful can it be.

“Everything is now moving digital, HRM solutions used to be there in the past, if you look 4-5 years back, they were used for your basic HR processes and with organizations now moving to virtual, these HRM solutions really help you identify on how you’re doing the capacity planning are you really utilizing your employees. Earlier, we were not able to do a time and motion study, you had to apply various tools to get time and motion for any employee or any department,” Sharad Sharma, CHRO & Chief Ethics Officer, Pramerica Life Insurance said.

Talking about HRM solutions today, Sharma said in one click his team is able to provide time and motion study, their business capacity, productivity analysis, how are people contributing to the function, and since everything is digitized, one doesn’t need to have an interface on basic HR processes.

Automation is the biggest value these HRMS bring to the table, believes Vicky Jain, CEO & Co-Founder, uKnowva, who feels it is important to know what are the various processes within your company and where does AI/ML factor in.

“In a lot of areas, finally AI/ML, they’re all doing only one thing which is automation again, which software also did to some extent and then AI/ML came into the picture where a logical software or a normal program won’t work. A very simple example is resume parsing - earlier, what used to happen is screening used to be a 15-20 minutes task, ‘When I see a CV, he has done this much, he has these many skills, ok he is screened’, so I spent 15 minutes, now a resume parser can do it within microseconds, so this is AI that is induced,” Jain explained.

He added that there are certain areas which probably were never even done like capturing the happiness of employees, which is where this kind of solution has come in, stating that earlier no one even thought of implementing these features but now it is possible because we’re doing so much of virtual interaction, so much of timing spent on the screen. And there are many more areas like intelligently figuring out when someone might leave, might resign, by analyzing data - leaves, attendance, all of this.

Prashant Kaddi, Partner, Deloitte India also shared some insights on where does the AI/ML part come into the equation, stating, “Organizations that need the best talent, will do well only when they leverage the latest that technology has to offer, which is to use AI and Machine learning to help them identify the right talent with the right skills using AI, based on the ML algorithms that look at the history of employment trends and find the right requirements for successful hires in the past.”

He explained further that core HRMS leverages historic data and learns from it, to identify the risk of attrition by combing through performance history and pulse surveys to find the mood of the employee, understand and assess engagement levels and compare the leavers to alert the need for intervention and help the employees stay engaged with development, reward, and realignment strategies.

AI and Bias are terms that go hand-in-hand and it is important to state the role of the same in HRMS when AI plays such an important role. Kaddi added saying, “Using too much AI / ML in people process can have a negative impact to employee experience, some recent studies have shown that Automated chatbots are not trained to understand human emotion and the loss of a personal connect drives employees further away and makes them feel alienated, which is more relevant now, in a post-pandemic era with remote work prevalent everywhere.

He continued, “Bias that can creep into the algorithms due to the limited nature of keyword matching and selection processing that the software understands to recommend the right candidates for jobs.”

To overcome bias, Kaddi added that mechanisms such as model audits are implemented. Further AI ML decisions are augmented by human oversight and based on manual annotations of deviations, model recalibrations are factored in on a periodic basis.

Jain gave an example to break down the concept of bias in simple terms, “I’ll give you a simple example on how does bias creep in, and it is the same approach - like your GPS tracking, there is a bias there also and how is it dealt with. For example, if you are sitting over here, why does it say exactly the same location, it is actually capturing signals from three antennas and on the basis of the intensity of the signal of the each tower, it is able to figure out, so basically what I’m trying to say is if you’re dependent on just one source, the bias would always have been there, but there were three areas from where data is being collected and that is the key.”

On what his experience has been with bias, Sharma said, “Most of the time, the HR team, or the HR functions, throw the data but most of the time, it ends up being emotional data, it is not backed up with some intelligence on ‘What is this data telling us?’ ‘Do we hire a profile like this?’ If there is a trend of attrition that is showing profiling of people, the top management would want to really see those insights on ‘what is this data telling you?”

He added that in the past, in the absence of any AI tool or any other, decisions like these were made on your own assessment of your situation which was often presented to people, but these tools help throw light on the inferences on the data, which help make the conversation more meaningful and targeted.

“I think, HR functions have always been deep on analytics, and with all these tools & applications coming in place, it really makes the HR functions’ role look more clearer and they can possibly talk with a lot of conviction on what the data is telling them,” Sharma said.

23. The importance of understanding post-Covid gig economy trends

ET CIO, 18 Feb. 2022, Goutham Bende

The term “gig economy” is being used these days widely, and more so in the post-COVID world. It can be explained with a “Pay and Use” example, where independent workers exchange online services for money through digital platforms. The gig economy gets its name because each piece of work is equivalent to a single “gig.”

App-based platforms, which employ in bits and pieces — making deliveries, driving passengers, or cleaning homes — are at its foundation. Not every gig economy job requires the use of a technological platform. This article will look at the gig economy in the developed and developing countries both during the pre- andpost-COVID-19 eras.

Gig economy in the pre-Covid developed world

Several people in the US and Canada could legally take up extra jobs to meet their financial obligations or fulfil their dreams. They worked on a contractual basis instead of a full-time basis and had the flexibility of choosing their workdays and hours. According to the Harvard Business Review in March-April 2018, roughly 150 million workers in Western Europe and North America have given up their stable organisational lives to become independent contractors. Technology has enabled many more people to take up flexible gigs, examples being companies like Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft.

Gig economy in the pre-Covid developing world

Workers in India and other developing nations primarily aim towards doing the same job throughout their lives. Unfortunately, certain companies in these countries have also gone to insert clauses in their contracts discouraging employees from working elsewhere simultaneously. Over the years, this has propagated a culture that makes it necessary for employees to strictly adhere to the fixed work days, hours, and schedules and the standards of their respective industries and specific companies.

Gig economies in the current post-Covid Era

The gig economy is steadily expanding and has an almost equal impact on labour dynamics, payroll, and the global economy. According to the ADP Research Institute, full-time gig workers in 2021 account for 24% of workers in 19 nations. To manage a large workforce, it is necessary to obtain a suitable ERP solution from a well-known company that provides Contract Workforce Management services.

For a period that saw the devastation caused by Coronavirus worldwide, the ‘Gig economy’ clearly came across as a breath of fresh air into many lives. It has given and continues to provide workers with a sense of flexibility, independence, and autonomy over their work lives. The fact that they are involved in building their empires rather than someone else's adds to the motivation and excitement.

Aspects of this new gig economy include:

Gig Culture - It is essential to incorporate a unique mindset and style to work within the gig economy. This can undoubtedly be seen on freelancing platforms such as Freelancer and Upwork. This mindset comprises openness, engagement, a sense of freedom, and accountability, enabling people to brand themselves and move fluidly from one project to another.

Work from Anywhere- Unconventional co-working spaces allow gig workers to bounce off ideas with other like-minded people, exchange business experiences, and network professionally.

Technology - This economy requires many more technical tools as compared to the conventional economy.

Technology and the gig economy

Remember, technology gave birth to the “gig economy,” and it is a technology that will see it through to maturity. Technology has enabled all stakeholders to gain more significant influence over their work by removing employers' monopoly over work schedules. Companies are beginning to regard the gig economy as a critical component of their personnel strategy. Take, for example, Instapage, a San Francisco-based company that saved $2.3 million by outsourcing work to Upwork.

Similarly, platforms were created to link people with others interested in their products or services. For example, vocalists and musicians can find opportunities to record vocals for paying clients through AirGigs. Fiverr has created a diverse freelance economy for anyone to offer nearly any service for a set rate.

The economy in the post-Covid world

The need for gig workers has never been greater, with multiple waves of COVID-19 engulfing countries worldwide and organisations undertaking massive cost-cutting attempts to stay afloat. According to Mastercard, the current percentage of the gig economy is between 1-3%; however, by 2021, it is predicted to reach 15-20%, with a valuation of $450 billion.

COVID-19's unparalleled disruption is heightening the need for agility, adaptation, and change. However, the platform on digital economy and New Value Creation enables businesses to use technology to be more agile in the face of disruption and to develop new digitally enabled business models for a new standard – post-COVID, purpose-driven, long-term, and inclusive.Over the next decade, digitally-enabled platform business models are expected to generate 70% of unique value in the economy.

Preparing for the expanding gig economy

It is essential for today’s employers to use their ‘human’ sides to understand and be compassionate towards their employees. They should be flexible in the adoption of new techniques and consider the following:

Employers must be prepared to give their employees flexible hours

Individuals must upgrade their skill-set

Companies must invest in people

Individuals must develop advanced interpersonal skills

Individuals and their employers should build resilience and adaptability as skills

Businesses can launch tailored learning journeys for closing critical knowledge gaps

Obtaining flexible and upgradable timesheet and billing software to handle employees and customers

Organisations must get a suitable service-centric ERP solution that can help them manage their contingent workforce.

Conclusion

While the threat emerging for the Covid-19 pandemic will be felt severely for the next few years, the global paradigm change triggered in company operations and the labour economy is set to stay for much longer. The more employers and potential employees brace themselves for technology, the better it will be for businesses.

The author is Practice Head, Ramco Services Resource Planning Solution, Ramco Systems

24. Know all about satellite internet and how it operates

ET Telecom, 23 Feb. 2022

Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio Platforms has recently signed a joint venture with European satellite-based broadband service company SES to explore the satellite internet space. Other than Jio, there are other tech giants like Bharti Airtel’s OneWeb and Elon Musk’s Starlink that want to send thousands of these satellites to orbit. With this new deal, two leading telecom operators in India have now entered the satellite internet services.

A satellite internet connection uses a satellite to provide an internet signal that goes from your internet service provider (ISP) to you. This technology reflects the internet connection down from a satellite that’s circling the Earth. Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio Platforms has recently signed a joint venture with European satellite-based broadband service company SES to explore the satellite internet space.

Other than Jio, there are other tech giants like Bharti Airtel’s OneWeb and Elon Musk’s Starlink that want to send thousands of these satellites to orbit. With this new deal, two leading telecom operators in India have now entered the satellite internet services. Here we will discuss what satellite internet is and how it operates.

How does satellite internet work?

Internet service providers send an internet signal to a satellite in space, which then comes back to the users and is captured by their satellite dish. The dish is connected to the user’s modem, which finally connects their computer to the internet signal. This process then reverses back to the internet service provider and is repeated every time.

Equipment that come with satellite internet

Internet service providers will use specific types of equipment if their users are considering switching to satellite internet. Earlier, most satellite internet came with larger equipment, but nowadays most internet providers have smaller, more compact equipment. Most satellite internet now only comes with a modem, wireless router and network cable. Earlier, some providers even used a dish for the signal to reach with more ease, but it is not very common anymore.

The modem used for satellite internet is the electronic device that converts the satellite's signal into one that is readable by your system’s network adapter. This is what brings the internet to your computer. The router used for satellite internet also works like the ones that are used in broadband internet connections. The router distributes the modem’s internet signal throughout your home, either by Wi-Fi or by Ethernet cable.

Important details you should know about satellite internet

Speed of Satellite Internet: Satellite internet used to be extremely slow and offered download speeds of around 750 Kbps earlier. Advancements in technology and new satellites have helped satellite internet to offer its users increased speeds. There are satellite internet service providers that offer speeds up to 100 Mbps, which is similar to what most cable and DSL internet plans offer.

Satellite internet offers higher latency: The time it takes for data to be sent and received is known as latency. In this case, latency is the time it takes for data to go from your system to the satellite dish, to your provider’s satellite, to a different satellite dish at your ISP and back again. Latency has been a drawback for satellite internet for a long time as it involves multiple steps. So, satellite internet provides higher latency compared to cable and fiber internet. Cable and fiber internet offers latency in the range of 20 to 50 milliseconds (ms), whereas satellite internet ranges can be as high as 600 ms. Satellite internet data travels a long way as satellites are positioned 22,000 miles above the earth. Gaming suffers the most obvious effects of higher latency as it requires ultra-quick responses. First-person shooters (FPS) games don’t work well with satellite internet, but other online activities, like web browsing, emailing and photo sharing, doesn’t get much affected by latency.

Weather can affect Satellite internet: It is true that severe weather conditions can interrupt satellite transmission temporarily, but it is usually not a significant problem. Storm-related interruptions, also commonly known as “rain fade,” are restored as the storm passes. In case of heavy snowfall, communications can be restored by removing the accumulations of snow from around the satellite dish. On the contrary, a heavy thunderstorm with fallen trees can disable cable connections for days.

Satellite internet is expensive: Satellite internet is comparatively more expensive than cable or fiber internet. However, its monthly costs have been reduced over the years to make it a more affordable option. It is important for users who have no other internet providers to choose from.

25. India, Nepal agree to form joint task force on building hydropower project

IBEF, Feb. 25, 2022

India and Nepal agreed to form a joint task group to look into a proposal to build a hydroelectric project using funds from both nations. According to authorities from the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources, and Irrigation, the agreement was made at the 9th meeting of the Nepal-India Energy Secretary-Level Joint Steering Committee in Kathmandu. Mr. Chiranjivi Chataut, joint secretary at the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation said that, Issues such as existing transmission lines between the two countries, under-construction and proposed interstate transmission lines, the Arun III hydropower and transmission line, and interstate power trade were discussed.

Both sides agreed to expand the capacity of energy imported and exported via the Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur interstate 400 KV transmission line. The transmission line for 400 kV will be 140 kilometres long (20 kilometres in Nepali territory and the remaining 120 in Indian territory). According to the agreement, the Nepalese government is responsible for managing the budget for the project's construction.

The proposal by the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) to export electricity to India has been welcomed by India. According to sources, the NEA has asked India to approve a proposal to export 850 megawatts of electricity to India before the monsoon season begins.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

* * *

AAPI

Pages

Wednesday 16 March 2022

NEWSLETTER, 20-III-2022

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC.

– AGRICULTURE, FISHING & RURAL DEVELOPMENT

– INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURE

– SERVICES (IT, R&D, Tourism, Healthcare, etc.)

NEWSLETTER, 20-III-2022

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC.

- AGRICULTURE, FISHING and RURAL DEVELOPMENT

- INDUSTRY and MANUFACTURE

- SERVICES (Education, Healthcare, IT, R&D, Tourism, etc.)

INDIA and the WORLD