Business Transformation Asia Issue 07

MAY

2022

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KEERTHIVASAN RAVI Co-Founder and CTO

E-MOTORCYCLE

MARKET Raptee Energy is using innovative technologies like cloud, machine learning, analytics, for its range of electric motor cycles.

Raptee Energy

DISRUPTING THE INDIAN

KARTHIKEYAN A Co-Founder and VP Embedded

PHUNITH KUMAR Co- Founder and VP Vehicle Engineering

DINESH ARJUN Co-Founder and CEO

20 22

ROADS HOW

JULY-NOVEMBER 2022 World's largest technology excellence program

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EDITORIAL

WHEN THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT TAKES THE LEAD MANAGING DIRECTOR Tushar Sahoo tushar@gecmediagroup.com CHIEF EDITOR Arun Shankar arun@gecmediagroup.com CEO Ronak Samantaray ronak@gecmediagroup.com GLOBAL HEAD, CONTENT AND STRATEGIC ALLIANCES Anushree Dixit anushree@gecmediagroup.com EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR GEC MEDIA GROUP CO-FOUNDER, BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION ASIA Sundip Sibal Sundip@gecmediagroup.com GROUP SALES HEAD Richa S richa@gecmediagroup.com PROJECT MANAGER Anshuman Jyothiprakash anshuman@gecmediagroup.com EVENTS EXECUTIVE Gurleen Rooprai gurleen@gecmdiagroup.com Jennefer Lorraine Mendoza jennefer@gecmdiagroup.com SALES AND ADVERTISING Ronak Samantaray ronak@gecmediagroup.com DIGITAL TEAM Deepika Chauhan - Digital Content Lead Vijay Bakshi - IT Manager Hemant Bisht - SEO & Digital Marketing Analyst BUSINESS LEAD Ankit Vats ankit@gecmediagroup.com Ph: +91-9999756403 DESIGNED BY

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Some of the most innovative initiatives have sprung out from the Indian sub-continent over the last three decades and more, when the government takes the lead.

Modelling and predictions of the monsoon behaviour, switching to natural gas for public transport vehicles, implementation of urban rapid mass transports, Commonwealth Games and modernisation of New Delhi airport, and most recently modelling of Covid behaviour are some of the initiatives that come to mind.

Now there is another major initiative that can help India move forward, and that is the switch to e-transportation. The Union government’s decision to extend the second phase of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric vehicles, FAME scheme by two years to March 31, 2024, is driving innovation inside the industry.

This phase aims to generate demand by way of supporting 7,000 e-Buses, 500,000 e-3 Wheelers, 55,000 e-4 Wheeler Passenger Cars including Strong Hybrid, and 10 lakh e-2 Wheelers.

There are now 500+ electric two-wheeler players registered in India, according to, Raptee Energy’s Dinesh Arjun. The challenges are to match the performance of the upcoming e-motorcycle with the petrol board vehicles that have been around for so many decades. Inside the Indian sub-continent there is an emotive angle also associated with purchase of high value assets such as the motorcycle. Commuters of the modern day need more than just a vehicle that runs on electricity that replaces fuel consumption, points out Arjun.

In the short term, we also see innovation going wrong, with public risks associated with assemblies, stemming from the fact that these components are meant for a different use case.

Raptee is the first electric two-wheeler brand in India to function with a high voltage power train and is standardising its electric motorcycles with 240V DC and the CCS standard for charging. Raptee electric motorcycle owners will be able to charge their vehicles at the same charging station as electric cars. Arjun believes that such initiatives will help to lower the consumer barriers in switching over to electric vehicles.

Another plus is the usage of edge analytics and performance modelling through Raptee’s patented vehicle control unit.

In our second major feature spread we look at what global executives have to say about today’s technology decision making.

The IT organisation keeps the lights on, but to drive innovation and transformation, IT must partner with business. CIOs must engage with their peers in business and with the C-suite. If the C-suite does not understand and commit to the business transformation journey in full, that journey is going nowhere.

Objectives and targets will keep changing and the CIO will appear rudderless. In this edition, global industry executives revisit the technology and IT decision making process that drives transformation.

Turn these 80+ pages to immerse yourself in our transformative content.

Wishing you the best through the summer months ahead.

Arun Shankar arun@gecmediagroup.com

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BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION ASIA

3

#Sustainability#Governments#NationalVisions

ASIA 19th AUGUST TRANSFORMATION IN

SECURITY NETWORKING BUSINESS APPLICATIONS IT & COMPUTING TRANSFORMATION IN

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TRANSFORMATION IN

BUSINESS PARTNER

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CONTENTS MAY 2022

06 OPINION Rules of diginomics being created while playing

08 OPINION Metaverse is the next version of internet

10 OPINION How CIOs can keep stalled

DX projects moving forward

12

INNOVATION GALLERY

Red bull racing switches to poly studio x30, x50 videobars

34 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION A design-led approach for saas

38-43

COVER STORY

DISRUPTING THE INDIAN

E-MOTORCYCLE

MARKET

64 PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

Bridging the silos of data, people, processes

Raptee Energy is using innovative technologies like cloud, machine learning, analytics, for its range of electric motor cycles.

45-63

SPECIAL REPORT

68 PEOPLE TRANSFORMATION

Recruiting and retaining diverse talent

Future legislations may affect innovation

No more business and it, technology is part of business

Role of cio is evolving, same as technology

Restructure the way it functions every 2-3 years

Accelerating enterprises prefer hybrid cloud

Digital transformation is not an it project

Are you ready for the black swan event?

Place new digital capabilities in neutral central function

Collaboration essential at every level of organisation

70-73

78-81

82-87

88

PEOPLE TRANSFORMATION

SOCIALLY SPEAKING

EXECUTIVE CORNER

LOOKING GLASS

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5

OPINION

RULES OF DIGINOMICS BEING CREATED WHILE PLAYING

While new age models are working, it appears traditional models are playing catch-up, and it would make sense to price in-store products below online.

C

BY NIRANJAN GIDWANI Consultant Director.

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onsumer confidence is returning back. A key driver has been the massively positive and pro-active steps taken by the UAE government and several other governments in the region, including India, which has led to the start of this recovery phase.

Economic stimuli from various governments have been significant, oil prices have recovered to top 100 dollars a barrel.

This, in effect, is shoring up revenues for many governments in the Gulf. The ongoing and highly successful Expo 2020, the signing up of the India-UAE trade agreement, the surge of

new energy between India and the UAE, the upcoming FIFA world cup are all adding to the buzz.

While new age models are working aggressively and strategically, it appears that traditional models are constantly playing catch-up. In fact, strategically, it would make huge sense, over the next couple of years, to provide in-mall and in-store products, services and dining experiences which are priced similar to, or sometimes slightly below online pricing. And then see the difference.

Keeping ahead of algorithms demands constant change. For organisations and businesses which have operated in a similar

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OPINION

KEY TAKEAWAYS Organisations and governments which are investing in data, insight, are the ones at the top.

The common mistake is when no ideas are being generated, the easiest way out is to spend advertising money on creating visibility.

This can have negative consequences if spending online is disproportionate to online business.

way for generations, ensuring medium to long term digital resilience, as opposed to short-term success certificates, should not be underestimated.

Diginomics, in some form or the other, is here to stay.

We can change or stay the same. There are no pre-set rules of engagement. This too happens to be a game where the rules are being created as the game is being played along.

What has transpired in the last few years has led to an expansion in the depth and sheer breadth of the digital consumer. Many customers in the region as well as globally have increased their online purchases.

Many more customers have shifted to digital banking, digital government services, digital payments and even telemedicine.

Armed with AI algorithms, several

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technology start-ups, directto-consumer players, fintechs, edtechs, and so on, are causing disruptions in most traditional formats of businesses.

Leading governments as well as traditional businesses have rightfully adopted a digital first approach to their business model.

In a world which is becoming rapidly digital first, innovation as well as outcomes of business are closely tied to the ability to develop and use innovative technologies and services as efficiently as possible.

And yet, it would be appropriate to talk about potholes and pitfalls that lie in wait for any business model, whether new or old.

A small percentage of top organisations and governments are significantly ahead of the curve in terms of building digital resilience. Digital resilience, in effect, encompasses all aspects of business. From customers, to operations, to workforce, to leadership and financials. From ecosystem to brand reputation of the organisations as well as the brands they handle.

A large number are still in the process of playing catch up in terms of creating true digital resilience. Besides a sound business model and strategy, over time, it is digital resilience which is likely to become the key differentiator between the successful and the not so successful.

It is becoming incredibly important for organisations, brands and brand owners to prioritise the refinement of their products and services. This would mean consciously automating processes that are otherwise time consuming. By integrating automation as well as analytics across digital marketing and management, companies can expect significantly better output.

And this should be done not just for short term sales, but also to efficiently build long-term value.

Organisations and governments which are investing in data,

Ensuring medium to long term digital resilience, as opposed to shortterm success certificates, should not be underestimated

insight, regularly trained teams, and marketing – are the ones at the top.

The common mistake being made is that when no ideas are being generated, the easiest way out is to spend advertising money on creating visibility. This can have negative consequences if what is spent to create online awareness is disproportionate to the online business and an unclear long-term strategy.

With the advent of metaverse, and the constant upgrades in technology, the costs of investments will keep increasing, and will need to be well thought out.

To add to this, if the USA is an indicator, E-commerce sales surged during the pandemic as people avoided shopping in physical stores and clamoured for hard-to-find items such as toilet paper and home goods. But growth has slowed in recent months as shoppers increasingly return to physical stores. This trend could be visible across various regions.

Revenge brick-and-mortar shopping is a distinct possibility, at least in certain categories. The human race has this inherent instinct to be socially engaged, and millions are tired of being confined to their homes.

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OPINION

METAVERSE IS THE NEXT VERSION OF INTERNET

Metaverse will allow people to replicate physical activities and could happen by extending physical activities to a virtual world or transforming the physical one.

T

he Metaverse is a collective virtual open space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. It is physically persistent and provides enhanced immersive experiences. It is deviceindependent and is not owned by a single vendor. It is an independent virtual economy, enabled by digital currencies and nonfungible tokens NFTs. Metaverse will allow people to replicate or enhance their physical activities. This could happen by transporting or extending physical activities to a virtual world or by

transforming the physical one.

Although the goal of a Metaverse is to combine many of these activities, there are currently many individual Metaverses with limited functionality.

Gartner expects that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse for work, shopping, education, social media and entertainment.

A Metaverse represents a combinatorial innovation, as it requires multiple technologies and trends to function.

Contributing technology capabilities include augmented reality, flexible work styles, head-mounted displays, an AR cloud, the Internet of Things,

5G, artificial intelligence and spatial technologies.

To understand the concepts of a Metaverse, think of it as the next version of the Internet, which started as individual bulletin boards and independent online destinations. Eventually these destinations became sites on a virtual shared space — similar to how a Metaverse will develop.

Activities that take place in isolated environments buying digital land and constructing virtual homes, participating in a virtual social experience, will eventually take place in the Metaverse. The adoption

Recommendations for technology innovation leaders Develop digital business strategies that leverage the built-in infrastructure and participants of the Metaverse.

Lead idea and innovation management that focuses on new opportunities and business models with the Metaverse.

Identify the unique technology risk, privacy and security implications in this new persistent and decentralised environment.

List the outcomes, opportunities and obstacles the Metaverse entails in the form of an emerging-technology wheel.

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OPINION

BY MARTY RESNICK VP Analyst, Gartner.

of Metaverse technologies is still at an early stage, so business leaders should limit their investments there.

Technology innovation leaders need to identify, examine and track emerging technologies to help business leaders develop new products, transform the business or mitigate risks. The Metaverse is one such technology whose impact on driving strategic business innovations you need to proactively consider.

There is a lot of excitement around Metaverse, much of it driven by technology companies pre-emptively claiming to be Metaverse companies or creating Metaverses to enhance or augment the digital and physical realities of people. Moreover, activities that currently take place in siloed environments will eventually take place in a single Metaverse.

THESE ARE: urchasing outfits and P accessories for online avatars l Buying digital land and constructing virtual homes l Participating in a virtual social experience l Shopping in virtual malls via immersive commerce l Using virtual classrooms to experience immersive learning l Buying digital art, collectibles and assets NFTs l Interacting with digital humans for onboarding employees, customer service, sales and other business interactions It is expected that a Metaverse will provide persistent, decentralised, collaborative and interoperable opportunities and business models that will enable organisations to extend digital business.

Today there are many individual use cases and products, all creating their own versions of a Metaverse.

Opportunities across multiple industries include: l Higher education, medical, military and other types of trades can deliver a more l

KEY TAKEAWAYS The goal of a Metaverse is to combine many activities, however there are currently many individual Metaverses with limited functionality.

Adoption of Metaverse technologies is still at early stage, so business leaders should limit their investments.

There is a lot of excitement around Metaverse, much of it driven by technology companies.

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Technology companies are pre-emptively claiming to be Metaverse companies to enhance digital and physical realities of people.

immersive learning experience.

They do not need to create their own infrastructure, as the Metaverse will provide the framework. l Virtual events, having gained popularity over the last two years, can now present more integrated offerings. l Retail can extend its reach to an immersive shopping experience that allows for more complex products. l Enterprises can achieve better engagement, collaboration and connection with their employees through virtually augmented workspaces. l Social media can move to the Metaverse, where users can interact through threedimensional avatars.

The adoption of Metaverse technologies is still nascent and fragmented, and we recommend refraining from heavy investments in a specific Metaverse. It is still too early to determine which investments will be viable in the long term, and the priority should be to learn, explore and prepare for a Metaverse without going overboard with implementation, based on a few use cases.

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OPINION

HOW CIOS CAN KEEP STALLED DX PROJECTS MOVING FORWARD Any organisational change will face opposition and CIOs must realise that successful digital transformation requires non-technical skills as well.

T

he global pandemic brought businesses and industries to the brink of collapse and drove digital transformation into the spotlight as a necessary saviour. And while organisations are to be applauded for taking the first necessary steps, most face challenges, which may stem from non-technical reasons as well.

The results generated from global research have concluded that digital transformation initiatives may stall from a myriad of non-technical reasons. CIOs need to be aware of the multiple non-technical reasons that can ground digital transformation initiatives, often for no fault of theirs, and plan to find ways to work around the points of failure described below.

LIMITED FUNDING

Many finance heads continue to look at technology and IT

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spending as an operational expense rather than one driving innovation and longerterm strategic benefit. Hence, when a digital transformation initiative is proposed it may be hard for the CIO to gather the total funding to complete the project.

Inability to gather sufficient funds to drive a digital transformation project also arises when financial decision making is siloed and fails to see and apportion the benefits of digital transformation across the organisation. With such an approach, it may be

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OPINION

BY RANJITH KAIPPADA Managing Director, Cloud Box Technologies.

difficult to justify sufficient funds and may require alternative routes for results.

The way forward is to justify expenditure for digital transformation with the business outcomes delivered. Many times, budgets are available with business heads and may require realignment and reprioritisation of the digital transformation initiative, along the business objectives related to that funding.

Delivery of timely business results and delivery of political benefits if well-articulated, can also help to trigger sufficient levels of investment to mobilise the digital transformation initiative.

Finally, CIOs need to be flexible in identifying and realigning with multiple funding opportunities that may exist across the organisation.

BREADTH OF SKILLS

KEY TAKEAWAYS Finance heads continue to look at technology and IT spending as an operational expense rather than one driving innovation.

The way forward is to justify expenditure for digital transformation with business outcomes delivered.

Budgets are available with business heads and may require realignment and reprioritisation of the digital transformation initiative

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The successful roll out of digital transformation initiatives requires having multiple types of digital skill sets across the organisation.

Some of these core skill sets include cloud migration and orchestration, digital architecture and platforms, data analytics, user experience and design, amongst others. Other than technical skills, teams also need to prepare themselves to become agile and flexible, often referred to as digital nimbleness.

The way forward is to build multiple types of digital training programs across the organisation.

In addition to training employees with digital skills along their functional job roles, they can also be offered digital skills training outside their functional roles. This will help them to understand the multifunctional and cross siloed approach of digital transformation.

Another important initiative is to build skills in business areas that are the most impacted by digital transformation. Since digital transformation impacts existing job roles and helps to create new ones, communicating new career paths and skills progression based on experience, are another

Delivery of timely business results and delivery of political benefits if wellarticulated, can help to trigger investment.

important part of the internal initiatives.

TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES

Post pandemic, all industries, and all organisations, have experienced an increase in the usage of digital technologies. On the flip side, shortage of IT and technology talent can dampen the enthusiasm of most digital transformation initiatives. The reasons for shortage of technology and business subject matter experts in an organisation can range from cultural to siloed thinking of the management.

A short-term approach of building skilled resources in low code type of digital transformation solutions can only go so far. The real benefits for an organisation are gained by developing the complete gamut of skills required to manage digital transformation initiatives of any complexity and scope.

The way forward is to build a continuous program of developing digital skills and culture across the organisation that helps in positive roll out of a digital transformation initiative. Such a continuous program of skills development and enhancement requires management support and a medium to long term vision for improvement and transformation.

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INNOVATION GALLERY

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INNOVATION GALLERY

RED BULL RACING SWITCHES TO POLY STUDIO X30, X50 VIDEOBARS Poly is partnering with Formula One World Championship winning team Red Bull Racing, in a multi-year partnership as the team gears up for the 2022 season. As the official headsets and video conferencing hardware partner for Red Bull Racing, Poly’s pro-grade gear will support the team by providing clear and constant communication. Red Bull Racing will work with Poly Studio X30 and X50 video bars as well as Voyager 4320 headsets and CCX 500 phones.

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EVENTS

IGOAI STAGES VIRTUAL SUMMIT ON SUSTAINABILITY, MARKING 50 YEARS OF BAHRAIN AND INDIA COLLABORATION

I

nternational Group of Artificial Intelligence in partnership with GEC Media Group and Embassy of India in Bahrain, successfully hosted a virtual summit on The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Sustainability and Renewable Energy on 28 April. The conference focused on the rise of artificial intelligence and its wide impact on numerous sectors and sustainable development. The virtual summit continued for two hours.

By now global organisations have understood the importance of tracking, measuring, and reporting scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 emissions, and the

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importance of 2030 and 2050 milestones. In order to reach net zero by 2050, emissions must be halved globally by 2030.

Organisations therefore have a clear and urgent need to measure the full scope of their emissions before they can effectively manage them. While progress is being made in direct environmental impacts, only 15% to 40% of reporting companies are engaging with their suppliers on climate change, deforestation, and water security, amongst others.

It is urgent that companies mobilise measurements and action down the entire supply chain to achieve the scale required to avert environmental crisis.

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EVENTS

THE EVENT WAS JOINED BY TOP INDUSTRY LEADERS AND PARTICIPANTS INCLUDING: l l l l l l l l l

is Excellency and Ambassador, Piyush Srivastava, Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of Bahrain H Dr Jassim Haji, President, International Group of Artificial Intelligence

Vineet Agarwal, Partner at SG Analytics

Dr Shahnawaz Khan, Assistant Professor at the School of ICT, Bahrain Polytechnic

Dr Chiranjiv Roy, Senior Vice President for Data Science & Analytics at SG Analytics

Sini Raj Pulari, Faculty of EDICT at Bahrain Polytechnic

S Hussaini, CEO Almoayyed Computers Middle East

Moderator, Arun Shankar, Editor GEC Media Group

MC, Dalal Buhumeida

Speaking at the event, His Excellency and Ambassador, Piyush Srivastava, Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of Bahrain congratulated the international group of artificial intelligence for selecting such a relevant and interesting topic.

He also added, “As we all know India and Bahrain enjoyed deep rooted historic and civilisational ties and people to people connect. India is also one of the largest trading partners of Bahrain.”

Dr Jassim Haji, President, International Group of Artificial Intelligence praised His Excellency and Ambassador, Piyush Srivastava, Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of Bahrain for his presence at the event and his participation. He also highlighted benefits to both countries since activity started in India in the eighties.

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EVENTS

ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS THROUGH DATA AND ANALYTICS Vineet Agarwal, Partner at SG Analytics highlighted ESG matters now more than ever and said, “Today more than 80% of the global companies are reporting their physical market and climate related risks with all the stake holders and we have also seen a massive change here over the last decade and so.” He added, there is a huge impact of climate related events on global economy.

AI FOR SUSTAINABLE FUTURE Speaking at the event, Dr Shahnawaz Khan, Assistant Professor, School of ICT at Bahrain Polytechnic said, “Sustainability is meeting the need of the present without compromising ability of future generation to meet their own needs. Nowadays, almost 140 developing countries in the world are meeting their development needs.”

He further stated that regarding sustainability there are three different aspects including environmental aspect, economic aspect, and social aspect.

ANALYTICS AND SUSTAINABILITY CDr Chiranjiv Roy, Senior Vice President, Data Science & Analytics at SG Analytics remarked artificial intelligence is the end product, while analytics is what you build. He also talked about the data science lifecycle.

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EVENTS

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN AGRICULTURE SECTOR While addressing the webinar, Sini Raj Pulari, Faculty of EDICT at Bahrain Polytechnic said we are at beginning of a golden age of artificial intelligence, but we have still only scratched the surface of artificial intelligence. She also talked about the major issue to be addressed in agriculture sector and said, “When we talk about the lifecycle of agriculture there are different stages which comes out with problems but when we look at the traditional issues which we always face due to climatic factor, poor quality crops, these are the very common issues in agriculture sector.”

QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION Vineet Agarwal, Dr Shahnawaz Khan, Dr Chiranjiv Roy, Sini Raj Pulari and S Hussaini, joined virtually for the question-and-answer session. The questions from the attendees included: l What are the robotic and AI solutions suitable for small scale farming in India and GCC? l How do I implement a cost-effective solution using AI and robotics for large scale farming in India? l As a start up in AI, how should I select the use case and get funding? l How can I build personalization in education? l Please recommend how to build speed, scale and adoption of AI applications in sustainability and renewable energy l Are technology vendors investing in building application solutions for sustainability? l What are the negative sides of AI in sustainability and politics?

Dalal Buhumeida ended the virtual summit with her closing speech and vote of thanks.

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EVENTS

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION ASIA ORGANISES VIRTUAL SUMMIT ON AI IN HEALTHCARE

B

usiness Transformation Asia successfully hosted a virtual summit on ‘The Next Wave of Transformation in Healthcare with Artificial Intelligence’ on 29th April 2022. Artificial intelligence has revolutionised the way industries work these days. Healthcare has not remained untouched by the applications of artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence eases reading medical patterns of the patients to provide them with better healthcare services. In the health care industry, artificial intelligence-enabled solutions can provide immediate returns through cost savings, new product development, and better consumer engagement. The greatest challenge to artificial intelligence in healthcare is not whether the technologies will be capable enough to be useful, but rather ensuring their adoption in daily clinical practice.

In time, clinicians may migrate toward tasks that require unique human skills, tasks that require the

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highest level of cognitive function. Perhaps the only healthcare providers who will lose out on the full potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare may be those who refuse to work alongside it.

We shall explore how healthcare groups can scale up their artificial intelligence investments by pairing up with robust security and data governance strategy.

Speakers and participants of the event included: l Prof Dr Ashok Choudhary, Clinical Lead and Senior Consultant, Dept of Hepatology, Gastroenterology and Liver Transplant, Naryana Superspeciality Hospital, Gurugram (Haryana). l Dr Sushil K Meher, Head IT Health, AIIMS. l Dr Ashok Sharma, PhD Additional Professor, Department of Biochemistry, National Cancer Institute-India AIIMS. l Santosh Nair, Head of Innovation and Process Consulting, APAC Siemens Healthineers – Moderator. l Malavika Shanker, President, Southeast Asia of GEC Media Group.

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EVENTS

Malavika Shanker, President, Southeast Asia GEC Media Group started the webinar with her welcome note and said, “In this webinar, we are going to explore The Next Wave of Transformation in HealthCare with Artificial Intelligence and highlighted the complexity and rise of data in healthcare means that artificial intelligence will increasingly be applied within the field. Several types of AI are already being employed by payers and providers of care, and life sciences companies.”

Santosh Nair, Head of Innovation and Process Consulting, APAC Siemens Healthineers moderated the webinar and narrated his knowledge on the present role of AI in healthcare and said, “Things are changing and hopefully coming to an end of the pandemic, but the world is still facing challenges from both man-made and natural causes. The last two years leaving a side of the negative effects what we have seen really is that there was a huge adoption of digital across the globe. But at the same time, we also know that challenges cannot be resolved with technology.”

ABILITY AND INABILITY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE Speaking on Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, Prof. Dr Ashok Choudhary, Clinical Lead and Senior Consultant, Dept. of Hepatology, Gastroenterology and Liver Transplant, Naryana Superspeciality Hospital said, “Artificial Intelligence in healthcare has either been used or is trending in all aspects. Artificial intelligence in healthcare is a need-based solution and it can be accurate, responsible, and objectified.”

He also highlighted the drawbacks of AI in healthcare including Accountability, Ethical, Legal Issue, Fear of insecurity, need more clinical practise.

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EVENTS

DIGITAL HEALTH TRANSFORMATION THROUGH AI: CURRENT PROSPECTS IN INDIA Speaking on the cycle of innovation, Dr Sushil K. Meher, Head IT Health, AIIMS said, “Presently, the Gene and Biotechnology is playing a major role while it is coming for artificial intelligence again. It is putting an extra layer of technology which can be used for the healthcare services. In the 21st century, the information technology, and the knowledge management system for healthcare all are in place as a revolving of the technology.”

He also discussed about the major challenges in healthcare sector including Complexity, Threat of Human Jobs, Cost, Workflow, Competing Priorities, Regulation, Legal, Liability, Human Touch.

CLINICAL APPLICATION OF AI IN GENOMICS - CURRENT STATE AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS Dr Ashok Sharma, PhD Additional Professor, Department of Biochemistry, National Cancer Institute-India AIIMS started his speech with a brief description of Artificial Intelligence and said, “Artificial Intelligence is basically a simulation of the human intelligence process by machines, especially computer systems. It also refers to the multiple technologies that can be combined which helped machine learning, language processing, knowledge representation, expert systems.”

He added that the Artificial Intelligence play a crucial role in genomics. It helps in simplifying genome interpretation by integrating predictive methods with the growing knowledge of genetic disease.

The virtual summit was concluded with an interesting fire chat session with all the speakers and was moderated

by Santosh Nair.

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NEWS

Blockchain is one of the greatest innovations: Enrico Massignani Leading global association promoting best practices in risk management, Professional Risk Managers International Association - PRMIA, successfully concluded its ‘Blockchain & Risk Management: Challenges and Opportunities’ meet that brought together leading industry experts from local and globally-acclaimed organisations.

At the meeting, Keynote Speaker Enrico Massignani, CRO of Generali Group Asset & Wealth Management, Milan, Italy stressed on the need to strengthen the risk management to address various risks including credit risk, market risk, liquidity risk, and more particularly the reputation risk.

Blockchain, one of the greatest technological innovations, provides immediate, shared and completely transparent information stored on an immutable ledger that can be accessed only by permissioned network members. Blockchain offers immense cost-savings and revenue-enhancing opportunities. The global blockchain technology market is worth $210.2 million in 2016. It is expected to reach

ENRICO MASSIGNANI

CRO, Generali Group Asset & Wealth Management, Italy

$2,312.5 million in 2021 at a CAGR of 61.54 percent.

Sravan Janaswamy, Regional Director, Hyderabad, welcomed all the guests and thanked volunteers and participants for their overwhelming interest.

TCS identifies as Microsoft Cloud for financial services partner TCS will combine its deep industry knowledge and experience as a leading transformation partner for BFSI clients, with its Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services solutions, and its large talent pool of Microsoft-certified consultants to enable clients to innovate, and reimagine their businesses to meet evolving market, customer, and regulatory needs.

TCS’ multi-horizon cloud transformation roadmap first entails helping clients build a new future-ready cloudbased digital core that enhances agility and resilience.

Subsequently, the company helps them harness cloud-native capabilities around artificial intelligence, IoT and other technologies to launch new and innovative products and

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services, create new revenue streams, embrace new business models, create differentiated customer experiences, and drive growth.

Clients can significantly scale up and speed up their innovation initiatives by partnering with TCS and leveraging its co-innovation ecosystem of start-ups and academia. To facilitate ideation, rapid prototyping, and agile development of innovative ideas, TCS has invested in a network of co-innovation hubs called TCS Pace Ports, spread across Tokyo, Amsterdam, New York, Pittsburgh, and Toronto.

In addition, TCS will make its vast portfolio of cloud-based solutions and accelerators available on Microsoft Azure to help customers gain faster time-to-market and drive superior business outcomes. These include TCS BaNCS cloud (SaaS) business solutions for financial services, which are listed on the Azure Marketplace, TCS Digital Mortgage solutions, TCS Environmental, Social, and Governance Insights, and TCS Customer Knowledge platform.

The Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services integrates Microsoft Azure with Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform, underpinned by an industry data model, with new capabilities unique to the financial services industry.

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Infosys LaborForce to offer first cloud-native unemployment insurance solutions these systems struggle to support the requirements of our constantly evolving workforce, public policies, and citizen expectations.

The agility of the Salesforce Platform opens up enormous potential for Infosys LaborForce and our National Labor Practice to help states innovate and better support the needs of their citizens.”

PROVEN CAPABILITIES AND COMPLIANCE-READY Infosys Public Services introduced Infosys LaborForce, a fully integrated, cloud-native Platform as a Service – PaaS Unemployment Insurance system. Built on the Salesforce Platform, Infosys LaborForce is a tax, benefits, appeals and workforce solution designed to support state governments in building digital and resilient UI systems. The customer-centric solution equips states with advanced CRM and analytics capabilities, a lower longterm cost of ownership, and greater resiliency, that can result in better experiences for the U.S. workforce.

MEETING THE NEEDS OF THE MODERN WORKFORCE NOW AND IN THE FUTURE

Infosys Public Services has developed LaborForce to address the issues with state unemployment and workforce systems. The Covid-19 pandemic put millions of Americans out of work and state unemployment systems across the U.S. failed to meet the soaring demand for benefits. Infosys LaborForce leverages the proven capabilities of cloud to rapidly adapt to a dynamic work, policy, and economic environment and meet the everchanging needs of U.S. workers.

Infosys LaborForce supports all end-to-end UI processes, including tax, benefits, appeals, workforce,

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pandemic programs, family leave, call centers, and customer service.

The solution leverages Salesforce’s rapid low-code development capabilities, enabling states to add new features and functionalities at speed and scale.

CITIZEN-CENTRIC WITH ENHANCED CASE MANAGEMENT Infosys LaborForce offers automated case management, citizen-centric user experiences, and advanced fraud prevention and detection. For example, using Infosys LaborForce, state employees can utilise functions like click-to-chat to automatically update claims information directly in back-end systems. Infosys LaborForce is also capable of automatically adjusting employer rates based on new information and modifying claims in response – dating back years if needed.

Artificial Intelligence-enabled decision-making capabilities also help resolve questions related to employee eligibility, enabling the solution to flag potential fraud or reconcile inconsistencies.

Eric Paternoster, President and CEO, Infosys Public Services, said, “Unemployment Insurance systems are critical to the infrastructure of the U.S. workforce. But over the past decade, too often we have seen

Infosys LaborForce builds on the proven design and processing components already implemented in more than a dozen states. The product is designed, delivered, and supported through Infosys Public Services’ National Labor Practice, made up of practitioners that have been exclusively supporting unemployment insurance, workforce, and contact center modernisations for over 20 years.

This team of workforce experts has previously helped modernise tax and benefits systems in 20+ states.

States can choose to implement Infosys LaborForce in its entirety or deploy individual modules that best fit their needs. Infosys Public Services also provides states with complementary expertise in service areas including UI training, organisation change management, fraud program improvement and design, federal reporting and data validation, legacy systems support and maintenance, user experience redesign and improvement, modernisation and RFP planning, and grant management.

Tyler Prince, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels, Salesforce, said, “Partners are critical to extending the power of Salesforce across industries – including the public sector. We’re proud to see partners like Infosys build innovative solutions to make state workforce programs for citizens even better.”

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Wipro appoints Satya Easwaran as Country Head of India Wipro, a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, announced the appointment of Satya Easwaran as the Country Head for India.

Satya will be in charge of strengthening Wipro’s business in India across key industry sectors through strategic consulting, transformation and modernisation engagements. He will help clients leverage Wipro’s capabilities and investments in Cloud, Digital, Engineering research and develpoment, Data, Analytics and Cybersecurity to succeed in their business and digital transformation initiatives.

Satya has global work experience driving end-toend business transformation programs for leading enterprises in different sectors. Prior to joining Wipro, Satya was the Head of Business Consulting and the Telecom, Media & Technology – TMT Sector Leader at KPMG India. In his tenure at KPMG, in India and the United States, and at Accenture India, Satya has held multiple leadership positions in management consulting

Whatfix acquires Leap.is to expand mobile capabilities Whatfix, the global leader in the Digital Adoption Platforms space, announced the acquisition of Leap.is, a mobile-first onboarding and assistance platform that brings the value of digital adoption platforms to mobile applications. The deal marks Whatfix’s first mobile DAP product-focused acquisition, as well as its largest M&A deal so far.

MOBILE EXPANSION DETAILS

The acquisition will augment the company’s platform by extending Whatfix’s mobile capabilities. Leap’s toolset will seamlessly integrate with Whatfix’s existing applications by adding guidance to mobile apps to improve activations and adoption, reduce time-toship for onboarding experiences, and increase the customization of user experiences overall.

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SATYA EASWARAN

Country Head for India, Wipro.

with a focus on Software-as-a-Service, cloud, digital, strategy and transformation.

Satya holds an Engineering degree in Electronics from Mumbai University, and a MBA in Finance and International Business from the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. He is based in Mumbai.

This acquisition follows an extremely successful year for Whatfix, during which the company achieved 76% YoY revenue growth, 85% increase in new business revenue, and 250% increase in revenue from existing business. Other milestones include closing new partnerships and enterprise customers, earning recognition from top analyst firms, and winning several industry awards including the Deloitte Technology Fast 500.

“Whatfix is the industry-leading Digital Adoption Platform and we are thrilled to join forces with Whatfix to help extend its DAP leadership to mobile,” said Kushargra Sinha, CEO & Co-founder, Leap. “Our common goal has always been to accelerate user adoption of software products and Leap’s mobile offering fits perfectly with Whatfix’s browser and desktop offerings. Joining Whatfix feels like a natural progression in our journey.”

DESKTOP AND WEB EXPANSIONS

As a part of the company’s continued product innovation, Whatfix also launchedWhatfix Studio, a more intuitive and powerful iteration of the current content editor. Studio is built on a low-code platform, enabling content creators to fully leverage its capabilities with little to no technical skills. The easy-to-use UI enables creators to seamlessly design customized endto-end journeys for end users. Whatfix Studio reduces content creation time, improves quality of content and experiences, and helps improve user engagement on applications on which it is deployed.

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WEConnect International hosts forum focused on women-owned biz WEConnect International hosted a forum that included U.S. Ambassador Kelly Keiderling, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, delegates from the U.S. Embassy to India multinational business leaders and roughly 200 women-owned businesses across South Asia. The event provided a platform to discuss opportunities for women-owned businesses to gain greater access to markets and finance.

The forum was part of WEConnect International’s “Women’s Empowerment Through Economic Inclusion” project funded by the U.S. SCA. The 3-year project focuses on generating long-term opportunities for women-owned businesses to connect and conduct business with large buyers, including local and multinational corporations, government agencies, and non-profit and nongovernmental organisations in India, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka.

Recently, Ten of WEConnect International member organisations have collectively committed to source at least USD 22.4 Billion in goods and services by 2025

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from companies with diverse ownership, with a focus on women-owned firms.

Representing some of the largest companies in the world, the member buyers – Diageo, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Kyndryl, Logitech, Moody’s, P&G, Sanofi and Unilever – each specifically noted the importance of buying from women-owned businesses to drive business growth, as well as the value of working with WEConnect International to identify suppliers that are verified women-owned businesses.

Forum participants included global business leaders from IBM and Unilever, who provided insights on how women-owned businesses can best work with their respective markets. Additionally, executives from India’s Standard Chartered Bank, City Bank and Hatton National Bank led breakout sessions to discuss access to finance. Some of the local women-owned businesses that participated in the forum included K-Nomics Techno Solutions Private Limited, Babies Bloom Store, Astu Eco, and FiveS Digital.

WEConnect International is a global non-profit that helps women-owned businesses compete in the global marketplace through capacity development and connections to large buyers seeking women suppliers.

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mScanIt announces an AI-powered ORM solution With a large consumer base hooked on to the numerous social media channels, businesses must adopt a brand reputation strategy to safeguard against potential negative feedbacks floating around undiscovered. mScanIt, a digital platform for e-Commerce analytics powered by mFilterIt, announced the launch of its state-of-the-art artificial intelligence-powered Online Reputation Management solution suite to assist brands in identifying, highlighting, and segregating unidentified feedbacks, review patterns across prominent platforms through real-time notifications and dealing with them instantly.

While manual brand reputation management frequently overlook large number of cases circulating across platforms, mScanIt’s artificial intelligencebased ORM solution recognises the growing importance of brand reputation and employs artificial intelligence computer vision and natural language processing technology to recognise and analyse such evaluations, and capture opinions, feedback and therefore gives one an edge to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Furthermore, when there are no hashtags or brand mentions in a review and simply images, computer vision assists in linking such reviews to relevant brands. Also, natural language processing helps in recording competitor analysis, brand dislikes, sentiment intensity, and such product-specific feedback data.

Growingly, customer feedback is becoming vital for establishing the brand reputation and it’s becoming critical to keep an active track and take appropriate action, especially when a firm introduces new products. Customers are highly aware of the significance of reviews, and they may submit feedback on social media platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter, as well as review sites, personal blogs, and other websites, which can radically impact public impression of the firm. One wrong review and the brand reputation is distorted.

In addition to scanning, the real-time alerts help brands make instantaneous decisions, provide actionable insights and manage brand reputation across platforms. Moreover, brands gain insights into the buyer personas and can curate accurate marketing strategies for boosting the baseline. At all times, firms must project a positive image. Having a positive internet reputation is a terrific way to maintain a relationship with current and potential customers.

Meenakshi Lekhi calls for equal participation of women to achieve sustainable development

BRICS CCI WE the women’s vertical of the BRICS Chamber of Commerce and Industry which works towards promoting active trade, commerce and entrepreneurship between the BRICS and other friendly nations celebrated its 2nd Annual Summit on the theme “Achieving Sustainable Development Goals through Women Empowerment” at a power-packed event in the capital

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today. Meenakshi Lekhi, Minister of State for Culture, Government of India was the Chief Guest at the Summit. The Summit was also graced by HE Mariana Pacheco Montes, Ambassador of Colombia to India and Ria A Sital, Charge d’ Affaires, Embassy of Republic of Suriname to India.

The Summit also saw the presence of eminent dignitaries

Dr Ashok Dalwai, CEO, NRAA, Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Garima Bhatnagar, Spl. CP Intelligence (Delhi), Sahil Seth (IRS), Joint Commissioner – GST, Customs and Narcotics, Sonal Goel (IAS), Resident Commissioner, Tripura Bhawan, Abhishek Singh (IAS), Durga Shakti Nagpal (IAS), Dr BBL Madhukar, DG, BRICS CCI, Vishwas Tripathi Chairman, BRICS CCI, AK Singh, Vice Chairman, BRICS CCI and Ruhail Ranjan, ADG, BRICS CCI and the BRICS WE team of Shabana Nasim, Vertical Head, Ruby Sinha, Convenor, Shormishtha Ghosh, Director – Business Advisory and Ankita Sachdev, Jt. Director.

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3 Techies banter podcast is a FunTech podcast that simplifies All Things Tech Tech is tough. Techies bring it on themselves with jargon and complexity, but does a user have to be a techie to use their product?

The 3 Techies Banter podcast ensures Tech is not Tough. You can even laugh about it!

3 Techies Banter is a technology podcast for non-techies, and techies – anyone with a sense of humour. The three “techies” come from diverse backgrounds, having worked across multiple industries from technology to research to content and education-yet they are united in their desire to take technology and make it a topic of drawing-room conversation where everyone can have a viewpointdiverse yet founded in facts.

Coming from the world of technology and research, they

realised technology is an odd discipline in that sense-it has the potential to impact the lives of people as individuals and as a society significantly, and yet so many people know so little about it or expect so much from it-both equally dangerous.

Perhaps the central challenge associated with tech-related conversations, they decided, was that many people found technology challenging to understand and decode. It was almost always of tech, for tech, by tech. As a result, most people had little interest in technology unless it directly impacted their daily lives.

Think of the podcast as Neo choosing between taking a blue pill or a red pill. The blue pill represents continuing to believe that technology is complicated and meant for geeky-looking people hunched over multiple monitors. And the red pill, as in “The Matrix”, represents the liberating feeling that it’s not a big deal; the red pill is 3TB.

Wipro to acquire Rizing to create an SAP consulting powerhouse

Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology, consulting, and business process services company, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Rizing Intermediate Holdings, a global SAP consulting firm, significantly expanding its breadth of capabilities in helping businesses transform into intelligent enterprises.

Rizing is the latest in a series of acquisitions by Wipro, underscoring the company’s ambitious growth agenda. Rizing’s high-touch approach, along with its industry expertise and SAP consulting capabilities in enterprise asset management, consumer industries, and human experience management, will be instrumental in advancing Wipro’s position as a sought-after advisor for clients’ most complex SAP transformations.

Rajan Kohli, President of Wipro’s iDEAS – Integrated Digital,

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Engineering and Application Services business, added, “Our clients’ digital transformation needs are rapidly evolving, and they are turning to us to help them become Intelligent enterprises. Rizing’s domain expertise, combined with our cloud and digital solutions, will allow us to help clients unlock new value and build agile businesses for a new era of digitalization.”

As one of the leading strategic partners in the world for SAP, Rizing will become a critical extension of Wipro’s SAP Cloud practice and Wipro FullStride Cloud Services.

The combined offering will help clients surface unique business opportunities and new competitive advantages through SAP cloud implementations. It will also help Wipro expand its leadership in oil and gas, utilities, manufacturing, and consumer industries.

Upon completion of the acquisition, Rizing will operate as Rizing, a Wipro company, under the leadership of Maiolo.

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EXL recognised as a cybersecurity transparent leader EXL, a leading data analytics and digital operations and solutions company, announced that it has been recognised as a Cybersecurity Transparent Leader by Censinet and KLAS Research.

Censinet, the leading provider of risk information technology management solutions for the healthcare industry, and KLAS, a leading healthcare industry research and insights firm, have collaborated to create a set of standardised best practices and benchmarks for evaluating healthcare industry cybersecurity practices. Leaders are determined by evaluating performance against the five most prevalent cybersecurity threats and 10 cybersecurity practices that address

those threats, as outlined in the healthcare-specific approach to cybersecurity in HHS 405(d) Aligning Health Care Industry Security Approaches Program.

The Cybersecurity Transparent Leaders were officially announced at the HIMSS22 Global Health and Exhibition Conference in Orlando, Florida earlier this month.

Education Technology Market to reach $998.4 Billion by 2030, says P&S Intelligence The global education technology market size was estimated at $237.6 Billion in 2021, and it is expected to touch $998.4 Billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 17.3%.

With the development of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and IoT, Edtech solutions are set to evolve.

Additionally, the incorporation of Virtual Reality and AR in these solutions supports a more-interactive learning experience for students.

Other factors driving the demand for EdTech solutions include the developments in connectivity infrastructure, surging smartphone penetration, increasing speed of the internet, and growing investments by private equity and venture capital firms. In addition, learning material is easily accessible through smartphone apps.

Furthermore, the increasing disposable income has advanced the demand for mobile learning platforms.

Key Findings of Education Technology Market Report: l The rising usage of the internet and smart devices drives the industry in APAC. In addition, the government’s financial help in developing countries, such as China and India, combined with the advancing accessibility of smart devices for students, is assisting the growth of the market. According to the UNICEF, China has 282 Million students and 17.32 Million teachers in more than 530,000 schools. l Individual learners generated above $100 Billion in education technology market revenue in 2021 as they

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are more open to garnering new skills. Additionally, the high federal investments in the education industry drive the usage of EdTech solutions among individuals. l In the coming years, the usage of IT-driven educational methods will grow the fastest among educational institutions. This can be credited to the growing trend of smart classes, which gained wings during the pandemic. l For instance, in March 2020, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Public Broadcasting Service signed a partnership to provide 700,000 LAUSD students with educational aids via television broadcasts, to counter school closures. l In the same way, the Indian Union Budget FY23 has assigned INR 1,04,278 crore to the education sector, for the advancement of digital connectivity and to offer high-quality education.

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Web 3 video game ArchLootintroduces new NFTprotocol The possibilities are endless to personalize a fighting avatar in ArchLoot, that is a monster. Players can customize their entire set up, including different torsos, limbs, accessories from hundreds of choices, and their colour schemes, with each move unlocking or reseting in-game attributes in an unexpected way.

INTRODUCING INTERACTIVE NFTS Since Axie Infinity ushered Play-to-Earn into a new era, it has enabled positive social impact across the globe, stimulating a GameFi model surge. In this converging age where mainstream game studios are embracing NFTs and cryptocurrencies, and many are expected to launch Web3 games very shortly, the decentralized ledger undoubtedly stands to cultivate the next phase of gaming innovation including new interactions and user-generated content.

It is why it is more urgent than ever to bring new playability into the space. Here comes ArchLoot, a titular loot-style adventurous digital world.

NEW UGC-P2E GAME

ArchLoot is the evolution of P2E games. With its innovative system, engrossing worldline, and thrilling challenges, ArchLoot retains the charm of crypto excitement while adding enhanced graphics and a number of new elements for an even greater gameplay experience.

Hodlnaut launches two new assets TerraUSD (UST) and Terra (LUNA)

Singapore-based crypto lending and borrowing firm, Hodlnaut, has just announced the launch of two new assets namely, TerraUSD (UST) and Terra (LUNA).

Hodlersare able to earn interest in a total of eight supported assets: BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT, DAI, WBTC, and the newly launched UST and LUNA. The effective rates for both open and fixed terms for UST and LUNA are

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The game introduces an interactive NFT gameplay, the first of its kind, to enable on-chain implementation of upgradeable characters/props NFTs. Monsters in the game are composable avatars which come in loot-style NFT parts. Gamers can freely assemble their monsters from a whole NFT directory, where every siloed part can be respectively enhanced, strengthened, or redesigned to create new attributes.

Protected by a treasure contract, all metadata of user modification will be logged on-chain when an NFT goes into the marketplace and therefore protects gamers’ merits.

as follows.

“The Luna Foundation Guard has proven to support the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem, which is in line with Hodlnaut’s vision.

Therefore, we are proud to announce the support of Luna and UST on the Hodlnaut platform,” said Juntao, CEO and Co-Founder of Hodlnaut.

Users can start earning in both UST and LUNA from 7 April 2022, 7:30 pm (GMT+8) and utilise the entire suite of features supported.

This includes Hodlnaut’s Token Swap, Preferred Interest Payout, Fixed Term Deposits, and Interest Account functions. To celebrate the launch, Hodlnaut will be holding a US$2,000 worth of UST and LUNA giveaway. Click here for more information.

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A global launch of the first mars vehicle Human beings around the world are united in the technology iteration, aggregating global outstanding technology industries.

To realise the dream of further exploring Mars and maintaining a sustainable living space of future generations, the world should shoulder the technical responsibility and financial mission together regardless of race and color. To that end, Route Vision Automobile releases the invitation for the world and welcome all of you to join the Mars vehicle DAO factory. Ranging from processing, accessories, and software

technology to design and users, each process is to contribute to the DAO factory’s growth rate.

Route Vision Automobile is leading the future because the vehicle system is the core of the future transportation; the Mars vehicle adopts Harmony OS and Tesla (Full self-driving) FSD system. The combining parts of the vehicle employ the architecture of Rivian’s skateboard platform and the vehicle energy contains new energy, such as hydrogen and nuclear energy. It is a new transportation or flight tool on the surface of the earth. Its overall

High-Tech droids unite at Dorsett Wanchai The award-winning Dorsett Wanchai, Hong Kong continues to uphold the #DorsettCares promise by recruiting a new army of high-tech droids

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composition can be customised and assembled. This vehicle can be used on both earth and Mars across planets. The Metaverse Cloud Factory is responsible for the full process, ranging from placing orders, retroactive production to personalised generation. There are options to choose Earth delivery or Mars delivery; it can also be traded in the Metaverse ecosystem.

In terms of different energies and engines, Route Vision Automobile will gradually integrate global quality suppliers. The Earth will serve as a manufacturing base for the geomorphology characteristics of both Earth and Mars. More flexible payment methods will be available and we will embrace the future! The first batch of Mars vehicles will take the innovative way to subscribe and issue with NFT. Owning the NFT will allow to have vehicle pre-sale rights as well as Earth and Mars use rights.

On top of that, upgrading virtual vehicles online is also available.

Overall, each operation serves as a contribution to the DAO ecology to realise the completion of the Mars Home as soon as possible so that we can achieve the interplanetary migration.

and solutions at the hotel to bring its comprehensive hygiene measures to the next level.

These measures range from the iCleanic’s Intelligent Sanitisation Station that sanitises the body from head to toe as well as the belongings of arriving guests, the autonomous cleaning and disinfecting “Whiz Gambit” Robot and the Portable Gambit ensure all public areas and rooms are virus-free, while the UV-C air purifier guarantees the best air quality, to the RICE Robot that allows contact-less delivery of amenities. These droids are now in service to ensure all guests the safest, healthiest, and freshest stay ever.

As “One of the Best Hong Kong Hotels for Quarantine” recommended by Discovery, Cathay Pacific and Time Out Magazine and the “Best Quarantine Hotel in Hong Kong – Silver” by Expat Living, Dorsett Wanchai offers a quarantine package for 7 nights from HKD990nett per night, with daily 3 meals and USD24–110 cash credits for use during the guests’ stay.

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POMAN LO

Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of the Regal Hotels Group.

Regal Hotels group enters the metaverse with MetaGreen Regal Hotels Group announced its entrance into the metaverse with MetaGreen, a project to develop an ESG – Environmental, Social, and Governance themed plot of “LAND” in The Sandbox, a leading decentralised gaming virtual world and subsidiary of Animoca Brands. As an estate LAND NFT within Mega City 2, MetaGreen will be the Sandbox’s first green metropolis and represent an exciting ecosystem that will positively harness blockchain, tokenisation, GameFi, play-to-earn and NFTs. Scheduled for completion by October 2022, MetaGreen aims to promote eco-friendly choices and foster a sustainable community to support a circular economy.

MetaGreen represents the Group’s three distinguishing strengths. First is Regal Hotels’ longstanding focus on customer-centric innovation to elevate guest experiences, such as in 2001 when www.regalhotel.com became the first hotel website in Hong Kong to offer online room booking, or in 2014 when iclub became the first hotel brand in the city to utilise mobile key technology. Second, the Group continues to demonstrate its enduring commitment to sustainability and purpose-driven business initiatives. In 2010, iclub Wanchai became Hong Kong’s first carbonneutral hotel. The Group also seeks to connect with the environmentally conscious new generation by extending its environmental values into the metaverse. The final competitive advantage is the Group’s welldemonstrated collaborative network. MetaGreen already boasts a vast synergistic network of industry-leading partners including Hang Seng Bank, the School of Business and Management of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and UOB who have all already confirmed their presence and support.

Regal Hotels have purchased what is known as an “estate” or a group of individual lands merged into a larger parcel, which will be a green virtual district in Mega City 2 and the first sustainability-themed metropolis in The Sandbox. At present, there are six uniquely interactive districts that make up the MetaGreen virtual estate: Regal Hotels’ green hotel and residence will showcase the latest sustainable proptech innovations and promote financial inclusion in the

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world’s most expensive real estate market, where the Group will initially sell around 100 units in the form of NFTs; MetaGreen Convention Center – as The Sandbox’s first MICE – Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions facility where ESGrelated sustainability conferences will be hosted, demonstrating the next generation of interactive corporate events in the metaverse; MetaGreen Mall – the first sustainability-themed metaverse shopping mall that will cater to Hong Kong consumers who prefer virtual shopping over traditional physical malls, while also offering immersive and creative O2O experiences; Art Park – a green art gallery that will serve as a platform for both artistic innovation and sustainability awareness; MetaGreen Academy – the first metaverse-based secondary school green curriculum, developed in partnership with HKUST Business School as a non-profit initiative of Bodhi Love Foundation, a Section 88 charity founded in 2013 by Poman Lo; and Virtual eco-travel – a metaverse biosphere that promotes biodiversity and online-to-offline eco-farming.

Accessibility and inclusivity are core elements to MetaGreen, as The Sandbox requires only a laptop or desktop computer with an approach quite similar to a traditional computer game. Targeting everyone from Generation X to Generation Z and people of all genders, ethnicities, religions and professions, Regal Hotels sees approximately two thirds of Hong Kong’s population, a user base of 5 million, as potential MetaGreen netizens.

In the coming months, MetaGreen will announce more details regarding its pioneering decarbonise-to-earn model and continue to invite additional ecosystem partners who share their vision and intention of building a greener tomorrow.

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Shandong hired 19 international trade and investment advisors In the afternoon of December 21, Conference of the International Trade and Investment Advisory Council for Shandong Province 2021 was held in Ji’nan. Zhou Naixiang, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Shandong Provincial Committee, and Governor of Shandong, issued appointment letters to 19 advisors from 12 countries including the United States, the UK, Russia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Mexico. He then engaged in comprehensive discussions with the newlyappointed advisors on the theme of “Integrating the new development pattern and promoting high-level development”.

The 19 advisors had submitted consulting advice reports prior to the conference, according to China

Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shandong Sub-council. At the meeting, Alexander Kalinin, President of All-Russian Non-Governmental Organisation of Small and Medium Business “OPORA RUSSIA”, Jim McDonald, Principal and Vice Chancellor of University of Strathclyde, President of Royal Academy of Engineering, UK, Hiroshi Onomura, Executive Vice President, Japan External Trade Organisation, Antoine Simonnet, Chief Supply Chain Officer of Hewlett-Packard, Lim Gait Tong, Chairman and Chief Executive of Farlim Group – Malaysia and President of China-ASEAN Business Association, Yoon Doson, CEO of CJ China, Li Tao, Vice President, Head of Government and Public Affairs, Philips Greater China, and Gu Wei, Head of Continental BU CVS China, Vice President of Continental BA VNI China, delivered key addresses.

The 19 advisors put forward dozens of targeted suggestions on topics such as strengthening economic and trade cooperation and cultural exchanges between Shandong and Japan, South Korea, Russia, and ASEAN, the transformation of Shandong’s manufacturing sector, green and lowcarbon development, and further optimisation of the business environment. They were very optimistic about Shandong’s investment development opportunities and prospects. They all expressed a willingness to deploy their own resource advantages to actively make suggestions, and to contribute robustly to the cooperation.

Huawei supports 3 Gorges Group in building the largest green data center project On March 29, 2022, Three Gorges Group completed the first phase of its Dongyuemiao Data Center Project in Yichang, Hubei. Huawei Digital Power provides the overall data center infrastructure solution for this project. The data center is located on the right bank of the Three Gorges Dam — one of the world’s largest hydropower stations. Once all three phases of the project are completed, the data center will house 26,400 racks, spanning over 100,000 square meters — becoming the largest green data center cluster in central China.

The first phase of the project, costing CNY 845 million, built 4,400 racks with a footprint of 40,000 square meters, including a data center equipment room building, a communications command building, and a 35 kV substation. The entire power consumption of this first phase, amounting to over 200 million kWh electricity per year, will be supplied using clean

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hydropower generated by the Three Gorges Dam. The project is naturally cooled by water from the river to significantly reduce energy consumption and boost energy efficiency.

The Dongyuemiao Data Center is built in accordance with the national class-A equipment room standards. It utilises industry-leading technologies along with proprietary, secure, and controllable products, to become the first largescale, green, zero-carbon data center in China.

Huawei provides the overall L0+L1 solution, including data center system architecture design, main equipment supply, and integrated project delivery and management.

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TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION

A DESIGN-LED

APPROACH FOR SAAS

BY PRATHIMA INOLU Chief Designer and Executive Director, Divami Design Labs

A

The journey in the art world shaped her work. It also changed the way she looked at the world, allowing her to step away from the race, and convert hobby into work.

design-led approach focuses on designing a product or service to create a better user experience. A designled strategy is a process of problem-solving rooted in empathy. It considers the needs and desires of users first before considering any other aspect. Design thinking is a discipline within designled thinking that keeps the process grounded in reality.

This approach is particularly relevant to Saas businesses in the modern era. This is because the user experience is core to their services.

Organizations are increasingly choosing SaaS business models due to reduced costs, ease of distribution, and charging based on usage.

And a design-led approach is instrumental under the SaaS model. Any business considering using a SaaS

approach should consider how design can help them succeed in the market. A key challenge for innovators, challengers, and new entrants is to think differently — and this often means thinking laterally about other industries and technologies.

Design-led thinking is essential because it can help your business succeed in the market.

It considers the user experience and the availability of resources, the business model, and the implementation costs. It enables you to look at your competition critically and how they are servicing their customers. Design is fundamental under the SaaS model because the user experience is key to the service. Additionally, businesses that use a SaaS approach should think about how design can help them succeed.

What Are The Benefits of DesignLed Development?

1. THINKING AHEAD

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION

While product development and innovation are vital, they can be very costly. For fastmoving companies, this poses a problem — especially under the SaaS model where cash flow is essential. A design-led approach considers how you can adapt your products to meet customer needs efficiently and costeffectively. It also challenges customer needs assumptions, enabling you to think ahead.

Applying a design-led approach will also help you create innovative products and avoid simple mistakes, like making a product nobody wants or needs.

2. CONSISTENCY AND SPEED In a SaaS environment, speed and consistency are critical.

To compete in the market, companies must deliver both

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quality products and services quickly. A design-led approach can help here because it focuses on creating a great user experience. As such, your products will be more intuitive, saving your development team time in the long term. Designled thinking is also helpful for product adoption, as customers are likely to give up on a mediocre product long before they do an excellent one.

be flexible enough to work for different types of customers. A design-led approach will help you create new products quickly and efficiently, even if you are working with limited resources. It will also ensure that these products are scalable and adaptable while making your products intuitive, allowing you to expand your user base without compromising with each new customer.

3. SCALABILITY AND ADAPTABILITY

Design-led thinking is critical in SaaS models because the user experience is key to success. This means that it will be vital for your developers to understand how customers interact with their products. If they do not, then there is a risk that your business could fail. For this reason, you should consider hiring experienced UX

One of the key benefits of SaaS products is their flexibility.

Businesses can scale up or down, depending on their requirements. 70% of CIOs claim that agility and scalability are two of the top motivators for using SaaS applications. As such, your products need to

4. EASIER IMPLEMENTATION

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designers who can create a design-led approach to your SaaS products, helping you to establish and meet your users’ needs. This will help your developers understand how customers are interacting with their products — meaning it is easier for them to create intuitive designs and an excellent user experience.

5. INCREASED COLLABORATION AND EFFICIENCY A design-led approach can help developers to work more efficiently. Design-led thinking is helpful in terms of increasing collaboration and efficiency when it comes to meeting customer needs. While the UX designer is responsible for guiding this process, developers can use their expertise to create products quickly and efficiently. This is particularly effective in a SaaS environment, where resources are limited. By creating a process that involves developers and UX designers

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working together, your business will be better placed to meet both the long and short term customers’ goals, making it easier for you to adapt your products in line with changing business needs.

6. INCREASED REVENUE A design-led approach helps you look at how your business meets customer needs effectively.

Because of this, it is likely to lead to increased revenue.

Customers are more likely to use your products if they are designed effectively, meaning they will return again and again for updates. This means you can increase your user base without having to market new services aggressively each time — simply by improving existing ones.

Increasing your user base will generate more revenue and improve your margins by selling more to existing customers.

7. ACCESSIBILITY

SaaS products are designed to

be accessible. Customers should be able to log in at any time and use the services that they need without having to wait for technical updates. This is particularly important if your business offers SaaS because you need to ensure that your products work no matter where customers are or what device they are using. A designled approach will ensure that your products are accessible no matter where customers are or what device they choose to use — helping to generate new revenue and grow your customer base.

PRACTISING DESIGN-LED THINKING There are many ways a designled approach can be applied throughout the development process. What is essential is that the UX designer and the developer work closely together to ensure a smooth design-led technique.

The most effective way of doing this is by creating a product with an intuitive user experience that customers can pick up quickly — making it easier for them to use

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TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION

your SaaS products without any technical difficulties. This ensures that users keep coming back for more while also offering new customers the chance to sign up.

1. DISCOVERY WORKSHOPS Practical discovery workshops help to establish a design-led approach. Design workshops allow the UX designer to understand customer needs better while also working more closely with developers. This will ensure that they are on the same page in terms of the aims and goals of your SaaS business while also allowing them to work together more efficiently when it comes to creating new products.

Discovery workshops involve teams coming together to establish your clients’ aims, goals, and needs. This should be done before any design work is carried out — meaning that developers are more likely to understand how their products fit into the greater picture.

2. IDENTIFY TARGET AUDIENCE The first step of a successful discovery workshop is to identify the target audience for your SaaS products. You should have an idea of who your ideal customer is, and anything that you gather during this stage should help you understand them better.

This will ensure that future development work meets their needs effectively — while also allowing developers to work on features that will better serve your product.

3. OPTIMISING THE USER EXPERIENCE A design-led approach to developing SaaS products focuses more on the customer than many other development processes. This means that there is less emphasis on traditional software features, and instead, it concentrates more on the overall user experience. The aim is to

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ensure that users do not need any technical know-how to use your SaaS products — and you should also try to find ways of improving your onboarding process by adding more interactive elements.

your product before any severe investment is made by getting input from your users early on in the development process. This will ensure that the final product meets customer needs while also making it easier to gain more users.

4. REVIEW AND PRIORITISE TASKS

7. AUTHENTICATE AND IMPROVE

As part of the design process, you need to ensure that your SaaS products are fully functional. This means every element needs to be reviewed while also ensuring that tasks are prioritized according to their importance. By doing this, designers can quickly see which factors will affect users the most, which means that those problems can be improved before any other work is carried out. Regular reviews will also ensure that you are always working towards achieving the overall aims of your business.

91% of those who received an all-around onboarding feel strong connectedness at work, compared to 29% of those who had an effective onboarding

5. ENSURE SOFTWARE MATCHES USER NEEDS

SaaS development is also about finding out whether the software you have created matches your users’ needs. This can be done by asking them a series of questions or organising workshops to help determine how they work, what sort of tasks they need to do, and their pain points. When customers tell you what they want from their SaaS products, it will be easier for developers to create working solutions.

6. PROTOTYPING This is the most critical element of a design-led approach to developing SaaS products.

Prototyping allows developers to create working versions of the software that will be designed, and it also gives customers the chance to provide feedback.

As a result, you will improve

Once you have created a prototype, your next step should be to test it with users. This will allow you to identify potential problems that need to be addressed by developers while also improving the overall experience for customers. While testing is often done at the end of the development process, doing it earlier provides more time for finding and solving issues, which can help you avoid substantial costs later on.

While a design-led approach to developing SaaS products will ensure that your users’ needs are met, it makes the entire process much faster and cheaper.

In addition, by identifying who your ideal clients are early in the development process, you can create software that is much better suited for their needs — which will ultimately help you to gain more customers.

CONCLUSION A design-led approach to developing SaaS products is the best way to ensure that your users’ needs are met. Customers will be able to give their input earlier in the development process, which makes the experience much better for everyone — while it also ensures that your product is developed more quickly and with less cost. When used effectively, a design-led approach to developing SaaS products can help companies save money and time while ensuring that software meets customer needs better.

In addition, by streamlining the development process and getting customers involved as early as possible, companies can make sure that their SaaS products are fully functional.

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COVER FEATURE

DISRUPTING THE INDIAN E-MOTORCYCLE MARKET Raptee Energy is using innovative technologies like cloud, machine learning, analytics, for its range of electric motor cycles.

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COVER FEATURE

(Left to right) Keerthivasan Ravi, Co-Founder and CTO; Karthikeyan A, Co-Founder and VP Embedded; Phunith Kumar, Co- Founder and VP Vehicle Engineering; Dinesh Arjun, Co-Founder and CEO, all at Raptee Energy .

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aptee Energy is an early-stage e-mobility start-up working on powertrain solutions primarily for next generation commuter motorcycles in India. Raptee is building the first ever high voltage, software driven electric motorcycle that will supersede its petrol-powered counterparts in terms of performance, reliability, and cost of ownership.

“Commuters of the modern day need more than just a vehicle that runs on electricity that replaces fuel consumption. We see e-motorcycles not as a direct replacement of fuel engine vehicles but as an evolution towards a better commuting experience,” says Dinesh Arjun, Co-Founder and CEO, Raptee Energy.

Raptee has built a power unit that will help deliver the performance of a high-powered motorcycle, with a top speed of 135 kmph and a range of 150 km per charge. Raptee is building the first ever high voltage-based software electric motorcycle that operates on a patented 240V DC drivetrain.

MARKET OVERVIEW

For the Indian consumer, motorcycles are not just, a tool or a utility, but they come with an emotional aspect. In the Gulf, for example, the motorcycle is purely used for delivery service. And that product does not need to deliver on anything else. It just has to go from point A to point B, at the least total cost of ownership, including vehicle operating costs. But that is not the same in India.

While there is a general perception, that India is a cost sensitive market, the continuing sales of the premium priced Royal Enfield motorcycle, shows a divergence that Raptee Energy plans to leverage in the months ahead.

“Why does, such an expensive product sell in the market, in that much volume,” asks Arjun? “It is because in India you are looking at the second most valuable product a person is ever going buy in their life,” he points out.

After the purchase of a house, the two-wheeler will be the next most valuable product purchased by an average Indian household, and for this household it is not just a tool to go from point A to point B. There are 500+ electric two-wheeler players registered in India. “Everybody wants to get into this space,” points out Arjun. “Most of these players fall into one out of two buckets.”

The first bucket are the assemblers, who are importing the various individual components, with some form factor innovation and value addition.

The second bucket are the assemblers who are importing the complete semi knocked down kits and then re-budgeting them and reselling them. Most of these manufactured imports are from South East Asian countries.

On the plus side, these assemblers do not need to worry about the incoming supply chain. On the negative side, these assembled electric motorcycles are a complete mismatch with the dynamics of the Indian market.

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The Indian motorcycle owners expect their vehicles to have the capacity of 100+ CC, almost no maintenance required, high mileage and a product life span of 10 years.

On the flip side, these imported kits and components deliver a vehicle with top speeds of less than 30 kmph, amongst other limitations.

“While this is the most, functionally practical vehicle possible, but that is not what we are used to,” says Arjun. The Southeast Asian countries are dominantly a scooter centric market, whereas India is a motorcycle centric market, leading to a design and product mismatch.

The public risks associated with these assemblies, stem from the fact that these components and kits being imported are meant for a different use case. “We are bringing them here and then pushing the boundaries of what those products can deliver on. That is where it fails,” says Arjun.

PRODUCT CHARACTERISTICS

There are

500+ electric twowheeler players registered in India

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Raptee is the first electric twowheeler brand in India to function with a high voltage power train.

Electric vehicles can compete with petrol board vehicles when they operate above 90 volts, which is the threshold number for low power versus high power electric vehicle systems. The higher the voltage, the higher the current that can be used, and the resulting power to drive the electric vehicles.

“This is very critical because if you want to push more current, push more power, and make the vehicle as good as a petrol board vehicle, you have to go high voltage,” says Arjun.

“We are not doing it completely new. The same transition happened with electric cars. We are trying to push that transition into electric two wheelers. That is what Raptee as a company is trying to do,” he continues.

Raptee is standardising its electric motorcycles with 240V DC and the CCS standard for charging. The CCS

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open standard is gradually becoming the de-facto standard used for charging of electric vehicles, and is the standard being adopted in India, UAE, and Europe. By adopting this standard, Raptee electric motorcycle owners will be able to charge their vehicles at the same charging station as electric cars.

Arjun likens the CCS open standard for charging to the USB-C standard now being used increasingly for smartphones. “To be on CCS you need to be upwards of 200 volts,” Having access to these urban charging stations has other benefits as well. “Along with Raptee electric motorcycle’s efficient vehicle performance, we believe this will eliminate range anxiety, and boost the transition to EVs,” says Arjun.

ROLL OUT PLAN

Raptee Energy plans to first launch a 200CC electric motorcycle, at a relatively premium price to build its brand. This product will challenge a petrol board motorcycle in terms of performance. The warranty of the battery will be eight years and 150,000 km. The current Indian market size for this category of motorcycles is 1.2 million units.

“What we are doing is fairly new and it does not yet exist in the market. We are moving into the premium range, where we want to start off. This will be our only product till July of 2024, which will essentially be a brand builder,” says Arjun. “We are looking at a vehicle that will outlast and outperform your petrol board vehicle in every way,” he adds.

Raptee Energy will leverage the FAME subsidies provided by the Government of India till March 2024, to bring down the price of its 250CC electric motorcycle so that it is competing with 150CC petrol board vehicles.

The 250CC product will follow a supply restricted production, since Raptee will be in the initial phases of production and will be doing testing and gathering vehicle performance feedback.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS l

Commuters of the modern day need more than just a vehicle that runs on electricity that replaces fuel consumption.

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The public risks associated with assemblies, stem from the fact that these components are meant for a different use case.

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Raptee is the first electric two-wheeler brand in India to function with a high voltage power train.

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Raptee is standardising its electric motorcycles with 240V DC and the CCS standard for charging.

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Raptee electric motorcycle owners will be able to charge their vehicles at the same charging station as electric cars.

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Raptee has signed an MoU with State Government of Tamil Nadu to produce electric motorcycles in the state.

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The vehicle control unit predicts energy consumption based on in-built artificial intelligence and works on minimising energy consumption.

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Going forward, Raptee believes data platforms around VCU will be a revenue generator in the future.

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VCU will run edge analytics using algorithms about the vehicle before sending results to the cloud.

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This innovation around VCU data and application stacks, are supported by Automotive Research Association of India.

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Then in July 2024, when the Indian electric motorcycle market is more mature, Raptee will launch its mass market replacement, which will be a 150 CC competitor.

The 150CC mass market product will be priced significantly less than the 250CC premium product.

For the purpose of manufacturing the 150CC electric motorcycle and for scaling up the 250CC production run, Raptee has also signed an MoU with the State Government of Tamil Nadu to produce electric motorcycles in the state. For this, the Government of Tamil Nadu is allocating 36 acres of land in its upcoming EV park. This will be part of Raptee’s investment of Rs 470 Crores in the state and will help employ 3,560 people. The state has offered capital subsidies for the project and other tax incentives to the company.

“Our real task would come in when our second model enters the market. That is when we expect hard volumes to scale up,” adds Arjun.

EDGE ANALYTICS

There are multiple factors that make Raptee electric vehicles intelligent. Raptee has implemented first-ofits-kind features in its motorcycles. Raptee has built IP in battery management system, pack assembly, vehicle control unit, chassis, motor controller, HV circuitry, safety systems and other sub-components inside the vehicle.

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COVER FEATURE

The vehicle control unit predicts energy consumption based on in-built artificial intelligence and constantly works on minimising energy consumption. Using throttle mapping control algorithms, different drive modes are obtained to achieve peak performance in the vehicle. The vehicle control unit understands riding patterns, reduces power consumption, alerts you when any service is

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due, alerts you of any imminent crash, and increases the life of the vehicle.

“The vehicle control unit, VCU is one of the things that we are most proud of, especially, since in the Southeast Asian region hardware is very hard to come by. What we have developed is, a computer. It has two core processors, core micro controller, 2GB RAM, 8GB storage. The only difference between your phone and

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COVER FEATURE

PRODUCTION SNAPSHOT

this is, your phone is built to last two to four years, this one is built to last a minimum of 15 years,” explains Arjun.

Going forward, Raptee believes the data platforms around the VCU will be a revenue generator in the future. The VCU will run edge analytics using algorithms about the vehicle before sending the results to the cloud. This innovation around the VCU data and application stack, is also being supported by the Automotive Research Association of India.

“We believe the data that is coming in from the VCU is going to be very essential. What the VCU is going to do, is it is going to take the data that it is generating, and it is going to run algorithms on itself for that specific bike,” explains Dinesh. The Raptee VCU can run the algorithms at the edge, or at the bike itself, because continuously transferring all the data from the vehicle to the cloud will be very expensive for the vehicle owner.

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First 250CC pilot unit: July 2022

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First commercial plant, start of operations: September 2022

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Production from September 2022 to September of 2023: 10,200 units

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Second commercial plant, start of operations: September 2023

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Production from September 2023 to September of 2024: 57,000 units

The fleet level data pushed to the cloud will give analytics about the hive of vehicles in terms of performance in three distinct areas. The first will be performance based on urban geography; the second, performance based on the driving use cases; and the third is performance of components and predictability of asset failure.

“These vehicles will form sort of a hive where they push data to the cloud. And they are able to learn from that and kind of improve in that geography,” says Arjun.

The long-term vision of Raptee Energy is to generate value for its customers from its software.

Dinesh cites the example of the mobile phone, which ten years ago was just a phone, but today that term would be an understatement for a smartphone.

“How can I keep adding value to the customer using just software updates,” reflects Arjun.

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REVISITING

TECHNOLOGY

AND IT DECISION MAKING

Other than the IT organization, budgets for business and digital transformation journeys are also available through partnering with business.

MOREY HABER

MOUSSALAM DALATI

PHIL LE-BRUN

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WALID ISSA

STEPHEN GILL

RAMI RIAD MOURTADA

PHILIP ANDREWS

PETE HALL

SANDRINE MOUSTAFA EL KHODRY

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BEYONDTRUST

FUTURE LEGISLATIONS MAY AFFECT INNOVATION Many great ideas that can power a business to new heights, may not be feasible due to global technology limitations and regional data privacy laws.

MOREY HABER,

Chief Security Officer, BeyondTrust.

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nnovation and adoption of digital transformation technologies has been proved to be a competitive advantage for businesses. As we begin to move into the middle of the decade, information technology and business decision makers need to work together to determine the future direction of the business.

Many great ideas that can affect a business may not be feasible due to global technology limitations and regional data privacy laws. In fact, we recently have seen some businesses exit geolocations for exactly these reasons. The business had a great idea, but the technology, security, and legal teams could not continue to meet the business objectives due to regional regulatory governance.

Therefore, in order for a digital transformation initiative to continue to be a business advantage, technology staff and business decision makers need to work together, from the beginning, in order to ensure that any initiative can be deployed legally and sustained in the future.

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The net collaborative effect will benefit the business without the unnecessary pressure on one group or another to produce something that could be a future liability.

Information technology and business decision makers can give back to the community simply by engaging in non-profit and free educational services. If professionals gave a small portion of their time to educating new team members or engaging in mentorship programmes, then their ultimate replacements will be more suited to assume roles as older generations retire.

In the last 24 months, organisations have embraced digital transformation strategies to accommodate a work from anywhere world and modern attack vectors that can be an unprecedented disruption to a business. While this trend has enabled IT and technology decision makers to be flexible with solutions, the risks, cost, and maintenance have caused some concern for organisations.

If you consider that technology is no longer solely on-premises; may be based on a subscription pricing model; and follows an agile development and release process that may not be compatible with your change control methodology; adoption may require changes in your overall business and is not just reserved to the selection of a product.

In addition, cyber security concerns for the new solution and the privileges and access required to make it operate, can violate existing security and data privacy controls. All of these need to be consider by IT and technology decision makers before selecting the next solution to meet the evolution of the business.

Businesses now have an opportunity to expand operations and manage work from anywhere, overhead, business complexity, and automation in 2022.

Modern technology is changing the IT landscape.

With the rapid evolution of AI, automation, and the cloud, there is a need to revisit the traditional

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KEY TAKEAWAYS Collaborative effects will benefit the business without the unnecessary pressure on one group or another to produce that could be a future liability.

Decision makers can give back to the community by engaging in non-profit and free educational services.

If professionals gave a small portion of their time to new team members or mentorship then their replacements will be more suited to assume roles.

Adoption of technology may require changes in overall business and is not just reserved to the selection of a product.

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How to manage office space that may be vacant as

the work from anywhere workforce continues post pandemic How to simplify the end user experience by leveraging

the cloud for applications and services while working from anywhere What a zero-trust architecture could mean for a

common office environment as organisations become less dependent on traditional firewalls and office-based intrusion prevention solutions What technology can help mitigate the risks and

bandwidth restrictions of users working from anywhere including local ISP outages What do traditional IT services like backup and recovery

look like and cost while users operate outside of the office environment What sensitive assets need to have additional security

controls when data, including personally identifiable information PII, is available outside of the traditional office network What are the costs of supplying mobile hardware to all

employees versus allowing Bring Your Own Device for non-sensitive work

organisational structure of information technology and information security teams.

A preferred organisational structure compartmentalises disciplines to on-premises, cloud, solution, and technology but leverages the same solution with role-based access data sets for each team. This requires using the same solutions as a SEIM for the entire company and standardising on tools like MDR, Vulnerability Management, Log Management, that correlates data from every

source for a holistic perspective.

Each team therefore has visibility into their area of concern but can draw from related information in order to look for indicators of compromise or performance metrics. When new technology like AI is applied on top, all the teams’ benefit, and the results are more accurate because data is inspected from the entire enterprise and not just one departmental perspective.

This change needs to occur not only in people but technology too in order to be effective.

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LIFERAY

RESTRUCTURE THE WAY IT FUNCTIONS EVERY 2-3 YEARS With a strategic outlook of 2-3 years, organisations should identify milestones that map successes and corrections, restructuring the way IT functions.

MOUSSALAM DALATI General Manager, Liferay.

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he 2022 hurdles are no newer ones but have been around for some time now: securing top talent, bolstering security, seamless hybrid employee experiences and robust work environments. Moreover, there has been immense pandemic driven burnout that resulted in challenges that technology leaders are still having to deal with and plan to aggressively address in this year.

The pandemic has clearly accelerated customer engagement trends. CIOs have to focus on business transformation, given the increasingly significant role that IT plays across the entire business function, operations and the production of higher revenues from additional customer services.

Moreover, the widespread acceleration of digital transformation initiatives has led to increased technology adoption. IT leaders certainly need to re-arrange the organisational structure and work across cross functional teams that use data and technology to collaboratively make effective decisions and achieve positive business outcomes.

With a strategic outlook of 2-3 years horizon, every organisation should identify milestones that map successes and course corrections,

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restructuring the way IT needs to function.

In today’s complex and disrupted business environments, businesses must be collaborative connected, contextual and seamless to drive promising outcomes. The right systems and communication tools will enable effective crosscommunication and collaboration.

IT and business leaders must have a clear vision on the mission of the business, maintain open lines of communication and extensive cross-team bonding to drive better business outcomes. Speaking of this, digital experiences platforms provide entities with an integrated suite of tools needed to enable effective and seamless communication resulting in successful business ecosystems.

Organisations and companies with a strong vision and ethics have the chance to contribute and provide value to customers, communities and employees through technology.

The market is competitive, consumer preferences continue to shift, technology continues to evolve, and markets continue to move. The market dynamics are constantly changing with many new opportunities arising in the digital experience space. Clients, across the public and private sector who strongly believe in elevated digital experiences are making significant investments in rich authenticated and seamless experiences. They are looking to drive superior, personalised and memorable in-person and digital experiences across all touchpoints.

Over and above, customer experiences, clients are also investing significantly in rich and engaging employee experiences. According to a report published by CMS Wire, 77% of organisations consider digital workplaces extremely important in terms of organisation’s priorities.

In companies such as Liferay, we have the opportunity to create working environments where diversity, inclusion and career opportunities are a key part of successful business while giving back to the communities through EVP programs Employee Volunteering Programme.

Additionally, employees have an open-door policy

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PRINCIPAL CHALLENGES FOR DECISION MAKERS

KEY TAKEAWAYS Digital experience platforms provide entities with an integrated suite of tools needed to enable communication resulting in successful ecosystems.

Organisations with a strong vision and ethics have the chance to contribute and provide value to customers.

The market is competitive, consumer preferences continue to shift, technology continues to evolve, and markets continue to move.

The market dynamics are constantly changing with many new opportunities arising in the digital experience space.

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Talent and skills game This is an area that remains critical to the technology leaders’ agenda as roles continue to evolve in the diverse, fast changing and increasingly digital economy. A deep understanding of where the gaps lie and how they need to be sewed up will help tackle this issue. Not having the right people in place puts pressure on how fast any company can move regardless of if you have the budget. If you don’t have the talent, you can’t move.

Hybrid work environments While ‘flexibility’ is an advantage, longer work hours burnout is a bigger disadvantage. Moreover, striking a balance between in-office and remote employees is another area that needs to be addressed.

Increased personalisation Hyper-personalised experiences continue to take centre stage and entities need to gather a much more accurate understanding of their customers, anticipate customer behaviour and constantly learn, improve and deliver to stay abreast of customer expectations. Moreover, entities cannot keep experiences purely digital or physical; long gone are those time. Organisations also need to embrace augmented experiences.

Driving and guiding change The challenge of managing, mobilising, understanding, and leading change means that being a successful change leader isn’t easy. It requires knowing how to mitigate consequences, overcome resistance to change, and deal with team members’ reactions to change. that encourages learning and growth within the company based on individual interests as well industry transformations.

Technologies such as Liferay’s Digital Experience Platform, are witnessing increased adoption as a foundation to customer centric approaches. Scaling experiences

on cloud is another area where we see immense opportunities as it enables organisations to reduce the complexity of managing infrastructure and empowers them to create experiences with enhanced benefits of cloud, further enriching capabilities and scaling digital experiences.

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CIENA

ARE YOU READY FOR THE BLACK SWAN EVENT? Industry professionals need to lead the companies’ strategic transformation initiatives, be more disruptive and ready for Black Swan events to emerge.

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n 2022, to stay competitive, businesses will be looking at the cloud for its benefits beyond enabling collaboration. This includes automation, security, and disaster recovery. Businesses that are familiar with using

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different cloud applications will make possible quick adaptation to these new technologies. Early adopters will give companies a good understanding of the business problems that can be addressed using the technologies, providing a competitive edge.

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PRINCIPAL CHALLENGES FOR DECISION MAKERS PETE HALL

Managing Director, Ciena.

One of the main challenges faced by IT decision-makers in the region is the ability to meet consumer demands by investing in new infrastructure while maintaining similar or lower costs of service. The number of unique mobile subscribers in MENA reached 400 million during 2020, representing around 65% of the population according to GSMA The Mobile Economy report.

KEY TAKEAWAYS CIOs and CTOs need to communicate the benefits of technology implementations across the organisation.

Career progression and contribution to the community on a larger scale is an ongoing conversation in the IT industry.

Organisations compete for the best talent that helps companies to achieve a competitive advantage.

Network providers will have to keep pace by getting closer to the end-users and delivering exceptional customer experience.

There is a need for synced efforts between network providers.

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According to the latest forecast

by Gartner, the IT spending in MENA will return to pre-pandemic levels and even surpass the costs by 2022. It’s either adapt and transform to a fast-moving digital world or get left behind. CIOs and CTOs need to not only ensure they have the leadership’s buy-in, but also communicate the benefits of technology implementations across the organisation to enable an efficient roll-out.

Career progression and contribution to the community on a larger scale is an ongoing conversation in the IT industry.

In the ICT sector, organisations compete for the best talent that brings innovation, new ideas and helps companies to achieve a competitive advantage. Industry professionals need to lead when it comes to companies’ strategic transformation initiatives, be more agile and disruptive to be ready for Black Swan events to emerge more often in this fast-moving sector.

A Black Swan event is an

unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.

Additionally, the remote work trend will continue encouraging end-users to seek new ways in which digitalisation can ease their lives. In this new era, network providers will have to keep pace by getting closer to the endusers and swiftly delivering an exceptional customer experience.

There is also a need for synced efforts between network providers. A majority of the networks are ahead of the curve and providers are displaying increased efforts to prepare their domain to adapt and meet demand, such as boosting Internet speed and transferring traffic from wired to wireless networks where data is utilised extensively.

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SPECIAL REPORT

AMAZON WEB SERVICES

NO MORE BUSINESS AND IT, TECHNOLOGY IS PART OF BUSINESS Find more ways to say yes in businesses rather than allowing inertia and complacency of past successes to dominate, is the key here.

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t is exciting to see thousands of progressive companies reimagining their industries. For example, they use data to gain deep insights into market and customer opportunities, appealing at a more personal level to customers through real-time personalisation, and creating

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new channels through which customers can engage.

Prior to the on-demand power of the cloud, this level of speed and insight was out of reach for most companies. Technology is no longer the barrier. It’s now a case of whether companies will think big about the opportunities, and quickly and iteratively bring

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SPECIAL REPORT

PRINCIPAL CHALLENGES FOR DECISION MAKERS l

Simply stay relevant!

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The old school technology departments of the past

PHIL LE-BRUN

Enterprise Strategist, Amazon Web Services.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS The old school technology departments of the past that sought to control and manage all technology will not work It is not particularly motivating to feel like an order taker in your own business.

Relevancy to me means helping create awareness of how to use technology for competitive advantage How your own organisation needs to remove barriers to faster, iterative experimentation.

Evolving organisational structures to become more agile stretches beyond IT.

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that sought to control and manage all technology will not work, nor is it particularly motivating to feel like an order taker in your own business.

Relevancy to me means helping create awareness of

how to use technology for competitive advantage, how newer technologies such as the cloud are creating business agility, and how your own organisation needs to remove barriers to faster, iterative experimentation.

Finding more ways to say yes in businesses rather than

allowing inertia and complacency of past successes to dominate is key here.

these to life with their customers.

Firstly, let us be clear that technology is part of the business.

No more the business and IT! Technology permeates every function and understanding how to use technology and data wisely for business outcomes should be a priority for all leaders. Businessfocused technology leaders invest time demystifying technology for their peers, and ensuring a focus is placed not just on the technology but also the people and process changes needed to deliver business outcomes.

Breaking down barriers to collaboration including setting up the small cross-functional teams, what we call two-pizza teams, and giving them business problems to focus on.

Evolving organisational structures to become more agile stretches beyond IT. Most organisations are designed for efficiency, not the ability to quickly understand and adapt to customer

needs. Progressive organisations create cross-functional teams and empower them to deliver business value to customers. It increases accountability, focus and motivation while reducing unnecessary overhead.

These organisations relentlessly drive efficiencies in areas that are not competitively advantageous and thus focus more time and money on those areas of true differentiation. The cloud is an engine for this. For example, using Machine Learning to automate processes to free employees to experiment on behalf of their customers.

Technology has the power to improve many societal issues whether sustainability, poverty, hunger, or health. This potential will only truly be unleashed if we educate broadly on how to us technology and data. Inspiring the next generation and equipping everyone with these skills is one way we as leaders can help here.

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SPECIAL REPORT

RED HAT

ACCELERATING ENTERPRISES PREFER HYBRID CLOUD Transformation leaders take advantage of the flexibility of open, hybrid cloud platforms because they do not want to be dependent on a single cloud.

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merging technologies including AI, ML, edge and serverless computing present a variety of new opportunities whilst skill gaps are identified as the top barrier to digital transformation initiatives. Another significant factor is that digital transformation leaders are increasingly planning a hybrid cloud

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strategy, instead of remaining solely dependent on either private or public clouds.

Organisational priorities shift between the different stages of digital transformation initiatives.

Decision makers in organisations in earlier stages are more likely to focus on cost reduction and simplification. But those in the emerging and other

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SPECIAL REPORT

PHILIP ANDREWS

Vice President and General Manager, Red Hat.

PRINCIPAL CHALLENGES FOR DECISION MAKERS l

Talent gaps is the top barrier to digital transformation.

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Other challenges that regional IT and technology

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KEY TAKEAWAYS l

Organisational priorities shift between the different stages of digital transformation initiatives.

Decision makers in organisations in earlier stages are more likely to focus on cost reduction and simplification.

Decision makers in later stages choose innovation as their priority.

Digital transformation projects start as IT efficiency or remote customer or employee engagement efforts.

Later, digital transformation projects come to be seen as improving competitiveness, revenue growth, and customer experience.

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companies face are integration issues and organisational resistance to change.

Digital transformation is the progressive accumulation

of new approaches to people, process, technology to create better business outcomes.

Closing talent gaps, accelerating cloud-ready

applications, establishing a hybrid cloud platform, are part of effective digital transformation.

later stages most often chose innovation as their top priority, according to data in Red Hat’s Global Technology Outlook 2022.

Last year, many organisations were forced to rethink their dayto-day operations as workforces across the globe went remote.

Industry buzzwords like digital transformation that may have been five-year plans became overnight priorities for organisations across the board.

Many digital transformation projects start as IT efficiency or remote customer or employee engagement efforts but, later, come to be seen as crucial for improving competitiveness, revenue growth, and customer experience. People are an important part of digital transformation.

When it comes to cloud strategy, organisations that consider

themselves to be in the leading or accelerating stages of their digital transformation have a strong preference for hybrid cloud.

This is in contrast to organisations that are in the earlier stages of their digital transformation, who tend towards a private cloud-first approach. This suggests that digital transformation leaders understand and are able to take advantage of the flexibility and consistent experience of an open hybrid cloud platform because they do not want to be dependent on a single cloud.

While Red Hat as a company has experienced significant change in the past two years, it remains committed to open source, both as a technology and a philosophy of leadership, management and employee relationships.

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SPECIAL REPORT

BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP

PLACE NEW DIGITAL CAPABILITIES IN NEUTRAL CENTRAL FUNCTION Introduction of a digital and design authority that encompasses IT, business, digital functions should act as governance to facilitate strategic choices.

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he acceleration of digitisation is forecast to enhance customer experiences, inspire wider enterprise growth and induce long-term productivity. The ensuing opportunities for the GCC are twofold as the region progresses towards digital maturity.

IT and technology decision-makers must engage in collaborative endeavours with business leaders to re-imagine services and products from the ground-up, so as to facilitate smart solutions for digital user-driven journeys. With shorter-

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term pilots for digitally enabled use cases, leaders in IT and technology can create rapid impact and build momentum for an accelerated digital transformation truly agile delivery.

A key to that comes from a dual track approach, one that combines core technology operations and new digital efforts through an updated operating model, such as is the case with Bionic companies.

BCG research shows that a Bionic orientation results from increased automation and AI adoption across internal and customer-facing processes,

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SPECIAL REPORT

PRINCIPAL CHALLENGES FOR DECISION MAKERS RAMI RIAD MOURTADA

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Partner and Associate Director, Boston Consulting Group. l

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KEY TAKEAWAYS A Bionic company uses a digital-oriented governance to make decisions around userfacing products and services, investments, innovation.

Successful digital model drives collaboration by reducing boundaries between IT and business teams.

Successful digital model accelerates joint decision-making, common ownership, accountability of digital transformation efforts.

IT and technology decision-makers face a perfect storm in the region with hybrid work trends taking centre stage while digital transition is ongoing.

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IT and technology decision-makers face a perfect storm

in the region with hybrid work trends taking centre stage while digital transition is ongoing.

This is impacting all sectors and industries with a broader

set of challenges.

GCC technology and IT leaders need to navigate around

core operational complexities as they maintain their business-as-usual outputs.

The need to maintain momentum and bridge to new

digital approaches marks a big challenge too.

The next steps must be grounded with focus on greater

development and retention, scale-up of modern capabilities to succeed the latest digital efforts.

and includes new organisation capabilities such as agile delivery, advanced analytics and a humancentred design. A Bionic company also uses a refreshed digitaloriented technology governance to make decisions around foundational solutions, user-facing products and services, investments, and long-term innovation.

A successful digital model drives collaboration by reducing boundaries between IT and business teams, accelerating joint decision-making, and creating common ownership and accountability of digital transformation efforts.

BCG’s first-hand experience with organisations ramping-up digital maturity, posits the following: IT and technology decision-makers should place most new digital capabilities in a neutral central function, at least temporarily.

To maintain close collaboration, the introduction of a strategic digital and design authority that

encompasses IT, business and a new digital function should act as a governance forum to facilitate strategic choices relating to both customer-facing products and services, and internal digital efforts.

As IT and technology leaders help drive organisations’ digital journey, they naturally build new management skills and functional capabilities, through operational exposure to a new digital model.

This in turn increases their career capital and widens opportunities, internally or externally.

For long-term viability, IT and technology decision-makers should complement core operational competencies with track record of impact in newer digital transformation business metrics.

Ultimately, this presents core opportunities to give back to the community, with organisational secondment of fresh graduates, or through personal mentoring and coaching for high-potential professionals.

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SPECIAL REPORT

ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

ROLE OF CIO IS EVOLVING, SAME AS TECHNOLOGY IT decision makers must look at their career progression as a means to evolve and develop based on their skills, experience and desire to grow.

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he hybrid work environment has now become the new norm in our emerging digital-first ecosystem. However, over the longer term, companies need to consider how to address continued collaboration and teamwork as employees move toward a model where, even when they are working together, they will not always be located in the same physical space.

That means people within the remote working landscape will not have the same impromptu interactions they used to have around the water cooler. Businesses will need to create more bonding opportunities for staff.

It is also worth thinking about managers’ accountability as they interact with employees, from onboarding new staff and understanding training requirements, to managing productivity and providing guidance, all from a distance.

On the business process side, companies will need to think about business operations workflows, and how to digitise them. Digital

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transformation is only going to continue. Businesses need to ensure they have the right digital platform to enable the right hybrid landscape to ensure ongoing growth.

Digital transformation is now a key driver for business success and often results in the lines blurring between technology and business. It also means that the role of the CIO, CTO expands, and they take on a more strategic role to identify new growth areas to drive profitability.

As CIOs are expected to lead both, business and digital transformation initiatives and their outcomes, we can see IT leaders restructuring to adapt and respond to the shift in business needs. However, there must be an emphasis on getting the customer experience right, implementing a security strategy to support the hybrid-work model, driving innovation and ensuring overall employee wellbeing and satisfaction.

Decision making is a key component of every IT leader’s day to day functioning. These decisions have a direct impact on the business, and it must be a

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SPECIAL REPORT

PRINCIPAL CHALLENGES FOR DECISION MAKERS SANDRINE MOUSTAFA EL KHODRY

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Vice President, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS Digital transformation is a key driver for business success and often results in the lines blurring between technology and business.

The role of CIO, CTO will expand, as they take on a more strategic role to identify new growth areas to drive profitability.

We can see IT leaders restructuring to adapt and respond to the shift in business needs.

Decision making is a key component of every IT leader’s day to day functioning.

Decision making has a direct impact on business and it must be a collaborative effort from the team.

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l

The role of a CIO is evolving, the same way as technology.

IT decision makers must look at their career progression

as a means to evolve and develop based on their skills, experience and desire to grow.

They need to enhance their business skills to enable their

career growth.

The new era which started two years ago at the onset of

the pandemic, has mostly changed all the usual positions as we know it.

Nowadays, it is all about business; all support functions

including IT are here to support business growth.

This should encourage CIOs and IT leaders to reinforce

their business skills to continue being a part of the game and having the right added value.

collaborative effort from the team.

Bringing people into the decisionmaking process enhances creativity and lends a fresh perspective to the task or challenge at hand.

Involving counterparts in the decision-making process fosters collaboration and helps break down organisational silos.

However, what is really critical is including the right people who will be implementing strategies and agreed solutions, in the decisionmaking process.

It is key to think about creating a specific role of a change manager into IT organisations to follow change and to ensure right technology implementation and also anticipate and work on resolving all roadblocks.

The principal opportunity from digital platforms is to optimise costs as well as to improve efficiency through innovative network digital services. It allows

the atomisation of processes and make consumers, customers and staffs day to day more productive and optimised. This opportunity lies in all sectors from healthcare to education and governments.

It is not anymore about only finding the right technical solution to answer a specific need; it is more about what technical solution will have a direct impact on productivity and efficiency of the employees that will directly impact the business growth.

Technologies involved in digital transformation largely include AI and ML, cloud, data analytics and management, IoT, communication, robotics and a number of emerging technologies like 5G. Although DX initiatives may not implement all these technologies together, it brings together multiple technologies where data and secured networks play a critical role in enabling workflow automation.

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SPECIAL REPORT

HERIOT-WATT UNIVERSITY

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS NOT AN IT PROJECT Organisations must acknowledge the business side of digital transformation rather than addressing it as a purely technological issue and communicate this effectively.

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ccording to Deloitte, while 85% of CEOs accelerated digital initiatives during the pandemic, most cannot articulate their overall strategy and track their progress. This necessitates a restructuring of IT decision organisation whereby different technological functions are integrated within core IT. While many organisations have a digital strategy, they lack the ability to strategize across functions, making it challenging to address opportunities and risks. This is because a single technology will not address the organisations’

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needs, rather a complex set of technological solutions are needed.

Most importantly, organisations must acknowledge the business side of digital transformation rather than addressing it as a purely technological issue. Finally, when making technology decisions, communicating effectively across different IT functions is essential for the smooth functioning of digital technology.

The role of technology decision-makers has become more critical than ever as the digital business transformation evolves. Technology leaders are taking on additional responsibilities

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SPECIAL REPORT

PRINCIPAL CHALLENGES FOR DECISION MAKERS STEPHEN GILL

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Academic Head of the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS l

When making technology decisions, communicating effectively is essential for the smooth functioning of digital technology.

The role of technology decision-makers has become more critical than ever as the digital business transformation evolves.

The most important point is that departments can no longer afford to remain siloed.

As business models change and technology advances, rolling out collaboration tools for effective communication becomes necessary.

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Most challenges that IT leaders may face in 2022

are related to the integration of AI and Intelligent Automation systems within organisational culture.

Although the Middle East is expected to receive 2% of total global AI benefits in 2030, equating to $320 billion, AI comes with a unique set of challenges.

AI and Intelligence Automation systems often face

issues with maintainability, scalability and governance, which makes them a challenge for most organisations.

A strong business plan and a deep understanding of

the objectives behind implementation is necessary for success. Additionally, despite companies making investments in digital technologies, legacy infrastructure impedes the ability to fully unlock digital opportunities.

Organisations must work to consolidate technology

environments with core IT to reap the benefits of cost reduction and seamless integration that digital transformation can bring about.

to ensure their organisation’s digital focus comes to fruition.

The most important point is that departments can no longer afford to remain siloed.

As business models change and technology advances, rolling out collaboration tools for effective communication becomes necessary. IT and technology leaders must consider what tools and processes would boost crossdepartmental collaboration.

Supporting teams during shared projects, monitoring workflows and forming a framework where multiple business counterparts are involved in decision making is sure to boost

inter-organisational collaboration.

According to Gartner in 2021, $170 billion is forecast to be spent on IT in 2022 within the region. As GCC countries continue their efforts to migrate from oil-exporting economies to a knowledge-based economy, IT growth will be one of the main opportunities this coming year.

The UAE’s ICT Information Communication Technology strategy involves the deployment of secure cloud infrastructure and data storage across all industries. Additionally, investments in AI will continue to grow as the region explores opportunities for innovation.

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BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION ASIA

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SPECIAL REPORT

NETAPP

COLLABORATION ESSENTIAL AT EVERY LEVEL OF ORGANISATION This collaborative effort inside the organisation, from C-suite to business units and into applications, will determine how IT can best support their business.

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he pandemic forced IT to deliver services outside of the traditional way.

It has contributed to expediting cloud adoption but at the same time raised concerns about security in the enterprises with ransomware attacks increasing across the globe.

Regional IT and technology decision makers around the world operate their businesses in hybrid cloud environments in order to meet growing business demands for faster innovation, while optimising operations and lowering infrastructure costs.

They will need the flexibility and agility of a hybrid cloud architecture to manage massive

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amounts of data being generated daily and use it effectively to accelerate time to insights and better inform decision making.

Protecting valuable information is key in this environment and therefore should strengthen their security posture by establishing a secure foundation across the organization, hybrid cloud.

This is a time of both significant disruption and opportunity for IT organisations. IT technology decision makers are in a position to play a strategic role in advancing their businesses through innovation and adoption of digital technologies.

Partnership is key to success here. Collaboration is essential at every level of the organisation, from

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SPECIAL REPORT

PRINCIPAL CHALLENGES FOR DECISION MAKERS WALID ISSA

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Senior Manager, Presales and Solutions Engineering, NetApp.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS l

Organisational priorities shift between the different stages of digital transformation initiatives.

Decision makers in organisations in earlier stages are more likely to focus on cost reduction and simplification.

Decision makers in later stages choose innovation as their priority.

Digital transformation projects start as IT efficiency or remote customer or employee engagement efforts.

Later, digital transformation projects come to be seen as improving competitiveness, revenue growth, and customer experience.

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Regional IT decision makers are overwhelmed by

the rate of change and trying to align themselves to understand that this pace of change is actually the new normal.

Regional IT and technology decision makers will have

to deal with exponential growth and movement of data across hybrid cloud.

Data is expected to significantly grow with AI, ML, big

data, analytics, video surveillance driving this growth.

IT decision makers would need the right strategy to

incorporate and manage data in a complex, hybrid world.

NetApp data fabric solutions will help enable regional

technology decision makers to synchronise and secure their data between clouds and on-premises solutions.

the C-suite across to the business units and deep into the datacentre, application, cloud and operation teams. This collaborative effort inside the organisation will help determine how IT can best support their business.

They would have to sit together and map out strategies that look at both the benefits and the risks.

They need to acknowledge the things that they have to overcome, simplify their operational guidelines, processes, and architectures, and get that delta between how they run it before and how they want to run more effectively in the future.

While technology keeps evolving at rapid pace, there will be a skills shortage in the market for new technologies like AI, ML Security and Cloud. This is going to be a good career progression opportunity for IT professional to transform their career.

In the meantime, there will be a gap. And therefore, organisations should have a plan and strategy on how to fill this gap by running specialised training to address the pace of change, innovation and adoption of digital technologies in the region.

In my opinion, one of the most important give backs to the community that the industry and vendors can do is to work with local governments and educational institutes to fill the demand for properly trained IT professionals in early stages.

This can be achieved by introducing AI, analytics, cloud education as part of universities and colleges curriculum. This type of education can evolve to provide the next generation of professionals with the skills they need to support digital transformation and business growth.

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PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

BRIDGING THE SILOS OF DATA, PEOPLE, PROCESSES

Large organisations have multiple stakeholders, multiple people, multiple personas, silos get created, and people are not ready to share the data.

BY SIDDHARTHA BHATIA Regional Vice President, Dataiku.

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ataiku competes in the data science and machine learning platforms. It has been sitting in the Gartner’s leader’s quadrant for the last two years. On a scale of 5.0, Dataiku has been rated as 4.9 on parameters such as customer experience,

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integration, support, product capabilities. Dataiku has been well endorsed by the end user community and Gartner.

“Each and every customer out there, they are all looking at extracting insights from data they have collected,” says Siddhartha Bhatia, Regional Vice President, Middle East and Turkey, Dataiku.

Customers build data lakes and data warehouses and what they want is an end-to-end data science platform, where everything is standardised.

“This is where we define what end-to-end really is. We really are a very complete software platform,” he adds.

Data science as a subject has five building blocks. These include: l Clean and wrangle: This is the cleansing and wrangling of

data. How do you connect with any data source whether structured, unstructured, semi-structured data, data at rest, or data in motion? l Build and apply machine learning models: This can be done in a visual manner, which means that people who do not know anything about coding, like the business user or the business analyst, they can drag and drop and create automated machine learning models. l Mining and visualisation: Dataiku is unique since one platform addresses both personas, the business side and the technical side. It has all the open-source libraries, that can be accessed by the data scientist, as well as dashboards and tables. l Deploy to production: Once the prototype has been created, Dataiku makes it easy to move

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PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

Data science as a subject has five building blocks.

Most large organisations and enterprises typically have the same challenges. into production, also called operationalisation of models. l Monitor and adjust: Dataiku provides one single interface to monitor the various models that have been deployed, to see the drift between the real data and the model and adjust the drift.

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Dataiku connects to any data, takes a sample of the data, applies cleansing and wrangling to the data, builds and applies the machine learning models, and pushes the output through an integrated business application for consumption by the end user.

The typical data science process is to build a model and train it from a certain data set using a

designer. Once you are ready to deploy you move it into production that can be enabled to response through an API or through automation, depending on the use case.

Traditionally data science models were built using straight coding like Python and R, and the process could take weeks and months. The next challenge would be moving

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PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

Inside large organisations there are multiple stakeholders, multiple people, multiple personas and silos get created. In order to scale machine learning inside an organisation you need to thread together data, technology and people.

the mass of code into production also called operationalisation.

Using Dataiku, productionising of models is rapid and straight forward. “Customers are able to get models from the design stage and development stage into production within a couple of hours,” says Bhatia.

Dataiku is in a unique position since it is one single platform across the five building blocks of data science. “What we offer is one license that addresses all the five circles end to end,” he adds.

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Typically, Dataiku works well where an end customer has a business challenge that needs to be solved, through multiple disparate data sources that need to be integrated.

“If I ingest, and if I connect to them and create sample data using machine learning and AI, we are into it” explains Bhatia.

Most large organisations and enterprises typically have the same challenges. The first challenge is the long baseline of historical data that gets

saved in multiple applications and multiple databases. The second challenge is the nature of the custodian of the data.

Sometimes it is IT, sometimes it is business, sometimes another department. The third challenge are the processes around data consolidation and data sharing.

“These are large organisations with multiple stakeholders, multiple people, multiple personas. What usually happens in a large organisation is, that these silos get created,” points

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PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

Another strength of Dataiku is that the application embraces open source and makes available its libraries.

KEY TAKEAWAYS Dataiku has been well endorsed by the end user community and Gartner.

Each and every customer is looking at extracting insights from data they have collected.

The typical data science process is to build a model and train it from a certain data set using a designer.

Once you are ready to deploy you move it into production that can be enabled through automation.

Traditionally data science models were built using straight coding like Python and R.

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out Bhatia. “Moreover, people are not ready to share the data. That is where the problem is. Siloed-data, siloed-people, siloed-processes.”

“We have seen a pattern where people have collected their data, but they are not getting insights.

And for insights, they need a data science platform,” he adds.

How do you explain technical concepts to business audiences?

There is a silo there, and a lack of collaboration amongst different teams. Business is putting a lot of pressure, to deliver projects faster. It is also difficult to move, data science projects from a lab environment to a production environment.

In order to scale machine learning inside an organisation you need to thread together data, technology and people. And that thread is provided by Dataiku to enable and achieve successful end to end integration.

“We have the ability to connect to any kind of infrastructure,” continues Bhatia citing various examples. This could be a Snowflake database; a traditional data warehouse like Vertica or SAP HANA; the cloud; Docker based

environment; Azure platform or Google platform; data lake powered by Hortonworks or Cloudera; industrial control systems. “We can connect to any kind of data,” he reinforces.

Dataiku is positioned as one platform for everybody in the organisation. And that is a unique positioning in the market with one single, collaborative, governable, auditable environment.

With increasing availability of cloud native offerings, another trend is the move to cloud. “We have seen a market shift and everybody’s preferring a cloudbased platform. That is a reason why on-premises are sort of fading away,” remarks Bhatia.

Another strength of Dataiku is that the application embraces open source and makes available its libraries. While this is a strength, end users also expect elements of governance, lineage, security, and making sure that everything is happening in a very auditable environment.

“If I had to summarise it in one line, I would say, we make opensource enterprise ready for our customers,” reflects Bhatia.

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PEOPLE TRANSFORMATION

RECRUITING AND RETAINING DIVERSE TALENT The benefits diverse teams bring to an organisation, like innovation and ability to resolve issues quickly, allow IT to work smarter.

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ften surrounded by primarily male C-level executives and teams, women in IT face unique challenges, among them marginalising behaviours from peers, biases from others, and selflimiting beliefs. IT is second to last in terms of representation of women across corporate functions. They make up only 26% of IT employees, and that number decreases across the ranks of senior leadership.

Many organisational leaders recognise that there is an unbalanced representation of women and men on their leadership teams, but they view it as a social problem, rather than a business problem. This means they are not

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prioritising it.

The irony is that IT organisations continue to face pressure to deliver solutions quickly and with limited resources, and the answer is staring them right in the face: recruit and retain diverse talent.

The benefits diverse teams bring to an organisation, like increased innovation and the ability to resolve issues more quickly, allow IT to work smarter.

To complicate matters further, hiring requirements for IT roles are antiquated. When presenting at IT conferences, I like to ask the crowd who has a technical degree. Every time, less than half the audience raises their hand, revealing that many of the senior-most technical leaders at any given organisation come from non-technical

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PEOPLE TRANSFORMATION

BY CHRISTIE STRUCKMAN Vice President Analyst, Gartner.

Women make up only

26%

of IT employees, and the number decreases across the ranks of senior leadership

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backgrounds.

This, combined with research that shows women tend to shy away from jobs they do not believe they are 100% qualified for, suggesting IT teams are artificially limiting their talent pool by recruiting against those outdated job descriptions.

First and foremost, women face marginalising behaviours like ageism and my idea syndrome — when a male colleague repeats an idea that a woman has just offered, and a robust discussion ensues with no acknowledgement that the woman had said it first.

Marginalising behaviours like that progressively and successively teach women they are not valued.

This contributes to them leaving.

Turnover is only exacerbated when you bring pay equity into the conversation. Women are paid less than their male counterparts, on average. When organisations do not deal with these issues, it is difficult to retain women. Women in technical roles, who tend to leave at the mid-manager level and more often overall, quit their jobs at more than twice the rate of their male peers.

A group of passionate women at a leading global healthcare company started a program to attract and retain women in technology programs. Their efforts paid off within just one year, with representation in the IT workforce rising 4% overall and 10% on the information security team. In addition, women who took part in the program reported an increase in their confidence, optimism and resilience, some of which resulted in them taking the next step in their careers.

Those that are making progress in improving female representation at all levels in IT have a structured program for diversity, equity and inclusion.

Organisations will make significant progress on female representation by creating a pipeline view of the life cycle

KEY TAKEAWAYS IT is second to last in terms of representation of women.

Women make up only 26% of IT employees, and the number decreases across the ranks of senior leadership.

IT organisations face pressure to deliver solutions and the answer is staring them right in the face.

To complicate matters further, hiring requirements for IT roles are antiquated.

Women tend to shy away from jobs they do not believe they are 100% qualified for

of female employees in their workplace, prioritising: l Recruiting women l Retaining women l Reporting progress Gartner has seen an uptick of women in technology employee resource groups, which serve as a forum for women to focus and share their experiences and ideas, learn from mentors, hear from guest speakers and develop strategies to navigate their careers. Smart organisations also bring in senior male co-sponsors to reinforce support for such programmes.

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TEAM MEMBER’S INTEGRITY Yes, there has been an increased awareness of diversity and its positive and essential role in the workplace. Diversity, inclusion and equity are important points of discussion in workplace culture, and it is great to see businesses taking more advantage of diverse skill sets those individuals from different backgrounds can bring to the workplace. Every individual brings unique qualities to a role.

DREAM ENVIRONMENT Integrity is one of the most important traits that a team member can have, as research has an immense impact on others. It is also vital that research is backed up by evidence and cross-reviewed.

Having cultural and mutual respect and integrity from the top-down team is essential.

MOST ENGAGING Communicating with people and lifting the burden of securing their digital way of life, with threat research and advancement Unit 42 provides, is one of the most gratifying parts of working.

ANNA CHUNG

Principal Researcher Unit 42, Palo Alto Networks.

MOST CHALLENGING Working in cybersecurity has many challenges on a day-to-day basis, such as staying on top of all threat information and attacks, malicious tools and campaigns, and also keeping up to date with new technology trends. While some days can be very hectic, these challenges make the job exciting.

HIGH-TECH LEADING DIVERSITY The industry has changed a lot since I started. The times are improving, and diversity is being more embraced. A career in technology can be an amazing experience. You will work with some of the brightest minds and the pace of innovation will continually keep you entertained and challenged.

A career in technology does not mean that you must be an engineer. There are many roles in product management, marketing, sales, and other roles that women can consider. High-tech companies are investing and trying to lead by example with diversity and equality programs. This will help with the opportunity to be successful and for career path momentum.

DREAM ENVIRONMENT A fun and welcoming workplace culture, genuinely encouraging diversity, and providing flexible working conditions that make it possible for women with children and other caring commitments to continue contributing.

MOST ENGAGING The opportunity to educate the market on cybersecurity trends and innovation is enjoying. It has also been great to create new jobs for college hires and watch them flourish as they grow and gain skills. It is extremely fulfilling to see members of my team hit their stride and do remarkable things.

CAROLYN CRANDALL

Chief Security Advocate and CMO, Attivo Networks.

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MOST CHALLENGING With great power comes great responsibility. I have enjoyed being given the management responsibility to make decisions and drive change for the organisation. However, with these responsibilities, there is not always enough time in the day to achieve everything that I want to do.

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OK TO SAY, I DO NOT KNOW There is an increased awareness of diversity and the positive role it plays in the workplace. It empowers the team to achieve greater creativity and innovation, allowing them to think outside the box, and drive innovation that allows them to grow closer to Tenable’s customers, partners, and communities.

DREAM ENVIRONMENT Ciara believes her work should be appreciated, and her opinion valued. She also prefers to be treated with respect and to see others being treated the same. It is important to have a good work life balance and the flexibility to take her son to an appointment. Tenable has an open-door policy and anyone can raise issues or concerns at an executive level at any time.

MOST ENGAGING The great thing about cybersecurity is the constant change and evolution. It keeps her on her toes, and she is continually learning.

Mix of both business and technical aspects of the job and importantly using people skills is most engaging. She loves helping customers, particularly those who might be struggling, and solving their problems.

CIARA CAMPBELL

Senior Security Engineer, Tenable.

MOST CHALLENGING It is continuous learning every day. Keeping up with required technical knowledge can be hard and the subject is so vast. Ciara has learnt that everyone comes across things they have not heard of before and it is okay to say, I do not know. An important lesson she has learnt is not to feel like she needs to know everything.

ACKNOWLEDGING A GENDER GAP Layale believes organisations are putting much more effort into creating a diverse working community. Companies in male dominated industries, have acknowledged a gender gap and are promoting diversity in the workplace. As a result, we are seeing women step up and succeed in leadership roles across different organisations worldwide.

Diversity in general increases productivity, creativity, and collaboration.

Specifically, in a male dominated field, women can offer new perspectives and work methodologies.

Layale’s job functions includes delivering technical presentations and demos, responding to RFPs, leading proof of concepts, and sharing technical knowledge with prospects.

DREAM ENVIRONMENT A work environment is about the people you work with. Layale enjoys collaboration, teamwork, exchange of ideas and knowledge. A supportive leadership team is a contributor to good work culture.

MOST ENGAGING The most satisfying aspect is winning deals and securing revenue for the business. Moreover, by successfully closing a sales cycle, I also help customers achieve their business goals.

LAYALE HACHEM

Senior Solutions Engineer, BeyondTrust.

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MOST CHALLENGING The most challenging part is maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

I find it hard to disconnect when I am fully invested in opportunities and projects.

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LONG WAY TO COMPLETE DIVERSITY Diversity in the workplace has been proven to create a positive impact, time and again. Whether it is the ability to tap into a wider talent pool, enhance collaboration, or even positively impact bottom-line growth, organisations have begun to realise the benefits.

There has been an elevated awareness about the importance of this workplace culture shift, which has led to increased adoption by leadership where some companies have set targets to achieve a healthy gender mix.

However, the numbers are still shy and there is a long way to go to achieve complete diversity and equality in the workplace.

Sandra is the go-to partner and trusted security advisor for organisations embarking on maturing their cybersecurity programmes and capabilities.

DREAM ENVIRONMENT An ideal work environment is one that brings the human factor into play; compassion, work-life balance, flexibility, and trust are few of the many qualities that cultivate a healthy workplace. Technology has never been more ubiquitous to support the new ways of working.

MOST ENGAGING Sandra finds it engaging and satisfying to be considered a true partner during the journey and see benefits of work being delivered. She strives to understand the customer’s cybersecurity challenges and follows a collaborative approach.

SANDRA HATTAB

Cybersecurity Consultant, Axon Technologies.

MOST CHALLENGING Remaining current and relevant in the cybersecurity field and continuing to deliver value to customers are challenging aspects of the role. Sandra participates in regular training that helps create and retain core competencies.

DIVERSITY AND HOME OWNERS At bnbme, we recognize the importance of a diverse workforce and ensure this is maintained to capacity. This has helped the entire team to communicate with each other patiently, even though languages spoken are different. The diverse backgrounds of each of us, have also helped in liaising with different nationality property owners and guests.

As the co-founder and Chief Business Officer, I overlook the entire business development for bnbme and manage the property portfolio.

DREAM ENVIRONMENT We have a highly charged work environment with everyone super passionate and working in alignment with the company’s core values.

It would be a dream to have the culture of fitness and nutrition become an integral part of each other’s lifestyle.

MOST ENGAGING Happy property owners over their high rental incomes and their wellmaintained assets is definitely the most satisfying feeling-delivering the promise that is made to them. Also, the great reviews that pour in from our well taken care of guests.

SHILPA MAHTANI

Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer, bnbme Holiday Homes.

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MOST CHALLENGING Recruitment would definitely be my biggest challenge. Finding the right candidate who can fit into our current work culture is something we are constantly striving for. We are on a continuous manhunt.

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QUICK GUIDE TO CXO WORKPLACE WELLNESS Wellness matters because everything an individual does and every emotion, relates to their wellbeing and achievements, which can affect organisational performance.

W

e all have experienced how the pandemic has upended the normal work environment and in some cases the lives of many corporate employees.

The precarious conditions that most of the corporate employee’s experienced resulted in triggering an epidemic of burnout and also left many employees struggling to cope. In several

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studies, it has been indicated that more than 70 percent of workforce have described the pandemic as the most stressful time in their professional careers.

A research conducted by Oracle and Workplace Intelligence found that 2020 was the most stressful year people have ever experienced in their working lives. 78% of the workers surveyed said that the pandemic has negatively affected their mental health, 76% indicated that companies

should be doing more to protect workers’ mental health, and a staggering 85% said that newfound work-related stress is affecting their home lives.

Healthy employees = More business + Higher revenues The Future Workplace 2021 HR Sentiment survey found that 68% of senior HR leaders rated employee well-being and mental health as a top priority.

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BY EKTAA SIBAL India’s number one Inner-self Transformation Specialist, International Meditation Expert, Global Executive Leadership Coach and Gifted Energy Healer with inborn intuitive abilities.

Organisations and employers recognise the impact of having healthy, happy and stress-free workforce as they are more productive and constructive than an overworked, burnt-out or unhealthy workforce.

Wellness matters because everything an individual does and every emotion, he, she feels directly relates to their wellbeing and their professional goal achievements in turn affecting the organisational performance.

Workplace wellness is essentially well-being initiatives that an organisation adopts as a policy to support healthy actions and to improve overall wellbeing of the employees. Workplace wellness helps the employees to enrich their physical, mental, emotional, occupational and social well-being.

wellness programs involves organisations to follow some specific steps which revolve around:

BENEFITS OF WELLNESS PROGRAMMES

SETTING GOALS

Employee wellness programs have multiple benefits, both for the employers and the employees.

Here are some key benefits of incorporating corporate wellness programs in the organisationl Reduces stress among employees l Healthier Individuals l Creates Work Life Harmony l Generates Positive Influence on l Company Culture l Boosts Productivity l Reduces Absenteeism l Improves Recruitment and Retention l Builds Higher Morale l Increases Adaptability A Harvard study concluded that each dollar spent on wellness programs saves employers about $3 in healthcare costs and another $3 in reduced absenteeism.

The heart of any business is its people. They are the organisation’s liveliness and force towards the future. Some of the activities that an organisation can incorporate as a part of corporate wellness programme to bring transformationImplementing workplace

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26%

of senior HR leaders rated employee well-being and mental health as a top priority.

Creating wellness goals that are beneficial to both the organisation and the workforce is imperative to the success of the wellness programme.

FORMING A TEAM It is essential to form a team which is responsible for planning and executing the wellness programme which should have people from different departments of the organisation.

PLANNING Designing the wellness programme forms the essence of how it will be rolled out. At this stage, budgets are created, ideas are researched, and employee needs are ascertained.

TAKING FEEDBACK For the wellness programme to be successful, regular feedbacks should be taken and the necessary improvements or amendments should be done on a regular basis.

While a wellness programme includes a broad spectrum of activities that an organisation can offer to their employees, some of the activities that can help

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are happier, have stronger immune systems and are almost 50% more productive than those who don’t.

MINDFUL AFFIRMATION Personal Affirmations helps in bringing positivity and reminds one to be mindful in life.

YOGA CLASSES

While Yoga has many physical benefits, it also is a great stress reliever. Yoga is an effective way to incorporate self-care and doing it at work helps in creating commitment with the organisation.

REVIEW PROCESS

KEY TAKEAWAYS Organisations recognise the impact of having healthy, happy and stress-free workforce as they are more productive and constructive.

Workplace wellness is essentially wellbeing initiatives that an organisation adopts as a policy to support wellbeing of employees.

Workplace wellness helps employees to enrich physical, mental, emotional, occupational and social well-being.

Each dollar spent on wellness programs saves employers about $3 in healthcare costs and another $3 in reduced absenteeism.

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employees in their emotional, social and mental well- being are-Mindfulness Being mindful is about paying attention to what is happening within and outside us without judging it. It helps in being more aware of the state of mind and thus creating a stronger connection with self. Consequently, facilitate the organisation in increasing productivity while developing resilient and happy workforce.

Organisations such as Google, Nike, and Apple have already implemented mindfulness into their culture.

MINDFULNESS ACTIVITIES INCLUDE: MINDFUL MEDITATION The practice of meditation focuses on one’s breathing, and it helps in getting the minds to focus on present and stop it from wandering or even worrying.

MINDFUL GRATITUDE Being thankful and caring towards co-workers and in general to those around is a great technique to appreciate teamwork and collaboration.

People who express gratitude

Embedding wellness as a part of the review process can help in creating a culture of care for the employees.

The review conversation can help the organisation to understand the areas that can be improved and elevated in creating a robust wellness programme.

WELLNESS AS LEADER

As a leader, one needs to walk the talk for which it’s not just about prioritising wellness and announcing a few virtual wellness events or talks. Each leader should display the responsibility towards company’s commitment to wellbeing. Being a leader also implies valuing your own well-being, showing your team that you value theirs, too.

In practice, this may mean actually using your vacation days or being open about reserving your calendar for a therapy appointment. Being open to listen and to act on various wellness opportunities is to set an example for your team to follow your lead.

Wellness at workplace should not be confined to health insurances or health check-ups but should extend to all those areas that can improve physical, mental, social and intellectual wellbeing.

Thus, putting a well curated corporate wellness programme is need of the hour to transform the people’s lives and in turn transform the organisation.

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MERCEDES-MAYBACH FULLY ELECTRIC MODEL FOR RETAIL IN 2023 Mercedes–Maybach revealed the final chapter of Project MAYBACH, its cooperation with trusted partner, Virgil Abloh. The Project is in partnership with Mercedes-Benz Chief Design Officer Gorden Wagener.

Inspired by the great outdoors and a distinctly off-road environment, the 2-seater, battery-electric off-road coupé combines large off-road wheels. Key for both Abloh and Wagener was a responsible vision of future design. Creative freedom enabled the design teams to conceptualize what the future of electric travel could look like. Under the transparent surface of the front hood are solar cells that increase the range and breathtaking size - almost six meters long.

Looking to the future, Mercedes-Maybach will launch its first fully electric model for retail in 2023. Sustainability is not only associated with the drive technology, but also with the materials the vehicle is fitted with. During the development process, Mercedes-Benz prepares a recycling concept for each model in which all of its components and materials are examined with a view to their suitability for the various stages of the recycling process. The ultimate goal is to reduce the environmental effects of materials used in the production of every Mercedes-Benz vehicle.

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REAR-WHEEL DRIVE, REAR-WHEEL STEERING, AERODYNAMIC DESIGN Automobili Lamborghini presents the Huracán Tecnica, with rear-wheel drive V10, developed for pilots seeking perfection on both road and track. The powertrain delivers 6,500 rpm and acceleration of 0-100 km/h in 3.2 seconds. The recalibrated system with driving modes and suspension set-up, includes rear-wheel direct steering, and innovative brake cooling improvements. The Tecnica ensures that the pilot enjoys the strongest connection to the car and asphalt.

Performance comes with new brake cooling management, inspired by track-based Lamborghini experience, delivering consistently better braking performance on both road and track. The Tecnica’s carbon ceramic brakes adopt specifically designed cooling deflectors and ducts, directing the airflow into the discs to maximise heat dissipation and reduce brake fluid temperatures and brake pedal elongation.

Aerodynamic efficiency and lightweight engineering are included in every element. A new bumper featuring an air curtain is included for the first time. A new front splitter, with lower, open slats directing air through the wheels, contributes to improved downforce and cooling.

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BENTLEY FLYING SPUR 50% LESS NOISE IN EV MODE Bentley Motors is the most sought-after luxury car brand in the world. In EV mode, the Flying Spur Hybrid offers occupants up to 50% lower cabin noise compared to a combustion engine.

Customers want the feeling of a tourer, using EV mode during the week, with the security of an internal combustion powertrain for the weekend, making a hybrid the perfect solution.

A fleet of Flying Spur Hybrids amassed data, downloaded every day from each car’s onboard computer, showing that 30% of usage was with the engine off. In a Bentley study, 70% of customers identified the top reason to purchase a hybrid was environmental friendliness, with 98% driving daily in EV mode and 83% also charging their vehicle daily.

The new powertrain combines a 2.9-litre V6 petrol engine with an advanced electric motor.

The E-motor is powered by an 18.9 kWh lithium-ion battery and can be charged to 100% in as little as two and a half hours. The electronics convert the energy stored in the high voltage battery to supply the E-Motor or supplement the 12V vehicle electrical infrastructure.

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LOOKING GLASS

LAMBORGHINI DELIVERS BEST EVER RESULTS, DONATES TO UKRAINE, HYBRID IN 2023

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LOOKING GLASS

Lamborghini’s turnover reached all-time high of €1.95 billion, a 19% increase over 2020. Efficient management supported by the launch of new models drove operating profit to a level never previously seen. The operating margin more than doubled compared to 2018 and reached 20.2%.

Lamborghini arranged for a donation of €500,000 to UNHCR – the United Nations refugee agency – which has been working in Ukraine since 2014. This gesture was accompanied by the decision to suspend business in Russia.

In the coming months, Lamborghini will unveil innovations for the Huracán and Urus, and then conclude the age of internal combustion engines and move on to hybridisation, commencing with the arrival of the model replacing the Aventador in 2023.

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