by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Entrepreneurship, Investing, Large Enterprise, Markets, Startup Basics, Technology, Venture Capital
Bengaluru : Japanese e-commerce major Rakuten on Monday said it had opened its India research and development (R&D) institute here to focus on deep learning, computer vision and robotics for warehouse logistics applications.
“The Rakuten Institute of Technology (RIT) at our operations centre in Bengaluru will combine creativity and innovation with emerging technologies to fuel the growth of e-commerce,” said the Tokyo-based internet firm in a statement here.
The 20-year-old firm’s five other research centres are in Tokyo, Paris, Singapore, Boston and San Mateo in the US.
The company’s B2B2C platform Rakuten Ichiba is the largest e-site in Japan and among the world’s largest by sales.
“India has a vibrant computer science research community in Bengaluru and we look forward to collaborate with academic researchers to discover and develop new technology applications,” said the Institute’s global head Masaya Mori.
The company has appointed Sunil Gopinath as the Institute’s first Chief Executive.
The applied research on deep learning will be to detect and predict financial fraud, developing applications in computer vision for e-commerce and medical imagining and advancement of automation to improve efficiency in warehouse robotics and logistics.
“India has a large technical talent and its researchers have an understanding of combining academic research with business domain applications to deliver pioneering business solutions,” said Gopinath.
The Institute will also strengthen the company’s global vision of leveraging technology to enhance the convenience of its e-commerce, fintech and digital content services.
“We collaborate with the industry and academia, hold exchanges with educational institutions and conduct research incorporating the latest academic knowledge,” said Mori in the statement.
The firm’s Bengaluru R&D facility will be a hub for collaboration with Indian universities to provide researchers opportunities to study internet technologies and develop services for the Rakuten group companies the world over.
The RIT’s first centre was set up in Japan in 2006 to keep pace with the evolution of the cyber world and the rapid growth of internet services globally.
“Our research centres are engaged in cross-location projects and support globalization of the group companies,” added the statement.
The RIT also partners with Hidehiko Masuhara of the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Ruby computer programming language creator Yukihiro Masumoto serves as a fellow.
With 16,000 employees, the Rakuten Group operates in 30 countries worldwide.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Business Summit, Events, World
Singapore : Finance Ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) on Monday signed the bloc’s first agreement to facilitate e-commerce transactions in the region.
Asean, the third largest trading bloc in the world, is holding meetings on Monday and Tuesday prior to its official summit scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday in Singapore, reports Efe news.
The newly signed agreement will foster speed and cooperation between businesses and governments, generating more efficient transactions, said Singaporean Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing.
At a parallel business summit, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called for greater integration among Southeast Asian nations at a time when multilateralism was under threat from protectionist measures by the US and China.
The US-China trade war is expected to be a major topic on the ASEAN Summit agenda with participation of member countries Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.
The summit will also have the presence of the US, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.
US President Donald Trump will be represented by Vice President Mike Pence, who will also participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Papua New Guinea later.
It is not known so far whether Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Pence will hold a bilateral meeting to address the trade war between the two countries that has undermined world markets in recent months.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate finance, Emerging Businesses, Markets, Online Marketing, Technology
New Delhi : Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia on Wednesday called for a comprehensive national e-commerce policy to tap the huge opportunities in this segment.
According to the Minister, the country was not entirely ready to tap the opportunities offered by e-commerce and there was a crying need to ensure that various arms of the government like the Department of IT, Finance and Department of Posts were on the same page to capitalise on the business prospects offered by the digital space.
Teaotia said while the B2C (business-to-consumer) commerce transactions in India were growing rapidly at a compounded annual growth rate of 34 per cent, there was a need for pegging aspirations realistically as the growth had taken place on a low base.
The Commerce Secretary spoke at a workshop on “Going global through E-commerce Marketplace for B2C Product Manufacturers, Exporters, Retailers and Online Sellers”, organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and Amazon India.
Sanjay Bhatia, President, Ficci-Confederation of MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) said e-commerce shopping is a thriving market, with people increasingly choosing this option to order products and services at their convenience.
“Global e-commerce transactions in 2016 were $1.9 trillion accounting for 8.7 per cent of the total retail spending worldwide,” he said.
Bhatia added that the transactions are expected to grow to above $4 trillion by 2020 — making up to nearly 15 per cent of the total retail spending — and Ficci-CMSME has partnered with Amazon India to create awareness about the potential.
A report by Amazon India — which was launched at the same event — said Indian exporters on the e-commerce platform saw a massive 224 per cent growth in their global exports business in 2017.
“Amazon’s international marketplace saw a staggering rise of 5000 per cent in Indian products offered globally and 310 per cent growth in Indian exporters using Amazon Global Fulfilment channel,” said the first edition of Amazon Exports Digest 2017.
According to the report, with exporters from 2,047 pin-codes across India, Delhi, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh emerged as the leading states with most international exporters on Amazon.
“Since its launch in 2015 in India, Amazon’s Global Selling Program has opened e-commerce markets to Indian businesses allowing them to go global and showcase their ‘Made in India’ creations to the world, supporting government’s vision of establishing India as a global manufacturing hub,” said Gopal Pillai, GM and Director, Seller Services, Amazon India.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Large Enterprise, Marketing Basics, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Technology
New Delhi : E-commerce players like Amazon and Flipkart will be able to make airborne delivery of products to customers in India using drones enabled by technology being developed by the country’s aviation sector, a minister announced on Thursday.
“E-commerce deliveries using drones are certainly going to be possible in India. Companies like Amamzon and Flipkart can deliver products with the tecnological developments we are seeing in the aviation eco system,” Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said at the Aero Expo 2017 here organised by the PHD Chamber of Commerce.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Wednesday invited public comments on the draft rules on use of drones, including for commercial purposes, which the aviation regulator hopes to finalise by the year-end. Drones have been classified under five categories based on their weight.
“Aviation is at the cutting edge of technology be it in avionics, software..throwing open the drone industry to experimentation and innovation will really benefit India,” Sinha said.
Noting the various uses of drone technology in areas like oil and gas prospecting, agriculture and in taking pictures, Sinha said use of drones as “air rickshaws” for travelling around a 100-km radius could be a viable proposition.
A few years ago, a drone had been used to deliver a packet to a location at a multi-storeyed building Mumbai. The local police, however, described it as an unauthorised flight in violation of rules.
Noting that this government had brought in the National Civil Aviation Policy, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said that the sector had notched up 20 crore passenger trips this year, which exceeded the Railways’ 13 crore passengers in their upper class coaches.
“Our journey, however, has only begun because only 3 per cent of Indians actually fly. With our efforts to increase connectivity, we are aiming at 30-40 per cent,” the minister added.
Vice President Venkaiah Naidu was among the chief guests at the event and released a knowledge paper on the sector.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Large Enterprise, Marketing Basics, Markets, Medium Enterprise, Online Marketing, SMEs, Technology
By Nishant Arora,
New York : Buoyed by the demands from sectors like e-commerce, banking, telecom, government and other enterprises to store and scale up Big Data, global chip maker Intel is ready to help India achieve high-performance computing.
According to Lisa Spelman, Vice President and General Manager, Intel Xeon Processors and Data Center Marketing, Intel, the sheer size and scale of the country has always impressed her and the company with its next-generation processor portfolio is bullish on its future in the country when it comes to managing massive sets of data.
“The government has done an impressive amount of discussion in the area of high-performance computing. There is a talented developers’ community in India. Intel is ready to help the country achieve its high-computing goals when it comes to handling Big Data across the spectrum,” Spelman told IANS here.
Intel reported a record revenue of $14.8 billion in the second quarter this year.
The growth was witnessed in client computing (which was up 12 per cent) and data-centric businesses (which was up 16 per cent).
The Intel Data Centre business delivers almost half of Intel’s operating margin and is expected to grow revenue at over 15 per cent through 2018.
According to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, the data centre is central to the company’s strategy and is a remarkable opportunity.
“By 2021, we expect the data centre to be a $65 billion silicon opportunity, and we’re less than 40 per cent of the total available segment today,” Krzanich said during the investors’ call recently.
To see its data centre business accelerate, India is a natural choice for the company.
Spelman is positive on the improved technological prowess and the presence of right talent in India.
“The several initiatives that the government and enterprises are offering today to help the people is remarkable. We have a strong engineering workforce and research and development facilities in the country to help the government realise its dreams,” she added.
In a short time, the Intel India Development Centre in Bengaluru has become a significant international design and development centre for the company.
The IIDC is Intel’s largest non-manufacturing site outside the United States, with over 2,500 engineers focusing on Intel’s core areas like application software and solutions, chip sets, communication software, graphic drivers and microprocessor, among others.
The newly-launched Intel ‘Xeon Scalable’ processors offer data centre customers huge performance gains for artificial intelligence (AI) and other data-intensive workloads.
The ‘Xeon Scalable’ processors offer 138 times deep learning performance gains and 113 times inference gains.
This means that the customers can do more inference on general-purpose hardware without the need for specialised accelerators.
The ‘Xeon Scalable’ processors also provide security without compromise.
Most of the top-notch firms like Microsoft, Amazon, Baidu etc are using Xeon processors to handle heavy data workloads.
Intel ‘Xeon Scalable’ processors are uniquely architected for the evolving data centre and network infrastructure.
These processors are designed to support an expanding range of existing and emerging data centre and network workloads, including cloud computing, 5G-ready networks and AI, delivering 2.2 times the performance over its predecessor.
“With this technology, India can leapfrog other mature markets in becoming a leader in the next generation data centre technology adoption,” the top Intel executive said.
Intel is also bullish on infusing AI and machine learning (ML) into its chips.
However, “when it comes to the chip architecture, AI is not yet fully settled and actually needs a broader portfolio,” Spelman noted, adding that Intel is constantly working towards making more efficient, industry-ready AI-enabled microprocessors.
(Nishant Arora is in New York at the invitation of Intel. He can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
