Cloud Computing has emerged as a powerful …...Issue 31 may 2016 Cloud Computing has emerged as a...

Issue 31may 2016

Cloud Computing has emerged as a powerful teChnology to empower the make in india dream for smes

I s su es T h aT M aT T e r

Trained under Microsoft’s Project Jyoti, Shanti Lal was motivated to share his knowledge with his community members, so he opened his own computer centre, where today he teaches IT skills to the village youth. Project Jyoti is a YouthSpark initiative that imparts basic computer literacy to young people, for betteremployment opportunities.

Our YouthSpark programmes are aimed at empowering youth to imagine new possibilities and realise their full potential. We work with governments, academia, nonprofits and businesses to provide youth with the education, skills and opportunities to be successful.

Creating a real impactfor a better tomorrow

Scan the QR code with your mobile device to visit us online. If you don’t havea QR Code Reader, SMS ‘Eco’ to 58888 to get the App for free.

To know more about Microsoft’s initiatives, visit www.microsoft.com/india/aboutFind us on www.facebook.com/microsoftindia and www.twitter.com/microsoftindia

1Microsoft Perspective | May 2016

I recently met the founders of iBOT. iBOT is an Internet of Things (IOT) startup and they are helping manufacturing companies make smarter products for everyday use. These include smarter coffee vending machines, water purifiers

and inverters. iBOT’s cloud-based IOT solutions are helping traditional busi-nesses transform their core processes and business models using the power of cloud and data analytics. Cloud and data analytics have the power to transform all Indian businesses, especially small and medium sized businesses. In this issue of the Perspective, we have many examples of how cloud and data analytics are helping SMBs and startups.

Analyst firm Zinnov puts the number of SMBs and startups in the country at 51 million. SMBs contribute to 38 percent of the GDP and 40 percent of exports from India. But the pressure of meeting evolving customer expectations is real for these companies. The pressure of driving product and process innovation, create value, and grow are also real. There is an opportunity to evolve business process-es and models to delight customers. There is also a need to drive productivity by engaging employees and helping them achieve more. And all this is possible with a robust digital infrastructure. SMBs and startups are waking up to it.

At Microsoft, we launched our local cloud services in late 2015. We have seen a surge in SMBs and startups creating a digital infrastructure to support their busi-ness growth with the help of cloud. We have also seen a whole new ecosystem of technology startups emerge. The technology startups and tech SMBs are helping large companies innovate. Luminous, for example, has used iBOT’s IOT solution to create a smart inverter that can help customers schedule predictive maintenance even before the inverter breaks down. There are newer business areas that traditional businesses are exploring with the help of IT and cloud com-puting. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the Startup India, Stand Up India and announced a fund to support upcoming startups with an initial corpus of ` 2,500 crore and a total corpus of `10,000 crore over four years. There is a new Government thrust on innovation, research parks and incubators, all aimed at making startups and SMBs successful. Technology can propel these companies. Technology is disruptive and also transformative. With the Government’s various initiatives, and the widespread access to computing power via the cloud, SMBs and startups are well poised to reap the benefits from the data-driven fourth industrial revolution that is already upon us.

SMBs and Startups Use Cloud and Data to Achieve More

Chairman’s Message

Bhaskar Pramanik Chairman, Microsoft India

At Microsoft, we launched our local cloud services in late 2015. We have seen a surge in SMBs creating digital infrastructure...

2 Microsoft Perspective | May 2016

08 Empowering the Make in India Dream for SMEs

REgulaR SEctIonS01 | Chairman’s Message04 | Up-to-Date28 | Events@Microsoft

The Government of India through its Make in India initiative has kick-started several programs to promote the ease of doing business in the country. Make in India is designed to facilitate investment, foster innovation, protect intellectual property, and build best-in-class manufacturing infrastructure. It is a wakeup call for SMEs and startups who can now leverage these opportunities to compete on a global level.

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Contents May 2016

This magazine is printed on recycled paper


16 In conversationJayesh Ranjan, Secretary, Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department, Government of Telangana, discusses the steps being taken to make Hyderabad a premier IT hub, and the importance of industry and academia partnerships to spur startups.

20 grassrootsPALS Global, with its Virtual AGRI Services, has been supporting farmers, right from crop planning to harvesting stage, and also in marketing their produce.

22 apps for YouCortana is a must have app for all those who would like an organized life. A digital personal assistant, Cortana gets all your things done efficiently. The app can be launched on your Windows 10 PC/tablet/mobile in simple clear steps.

24 ProfileMicrosoft YouthSpark Challenge for Change Asia winner Sonal Jain is redefining Indian youth as globally conscious citizens.

26 States of ProgressIn India, Andhra Pradesh is one of the first governments to harness the benefits of machine learning to predict dropouts and help develop targeted intervention to prevent potential dropouts.

30 case StudySeveral notable healthcare players in India are migrating applications to cloud platforms as they realize that adoption of cloud computing helps hospitals strengthen its business growth.

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EDItoRIalEditor: Sangita Thakur VarmaDeputy Managing Editor: Sanjay K Ojha

DESIgnCreative Director: Tharakaram GSr. Art Director: Anil VKAssociate Art Director: Anil TVisualiser: NV BaijuSr. Designers: Haridas Balan, Peterson PJ Charu Dwivedi & Pradeep G Nair

ONLINE & MARCOM DESIGNAssociate Art Director: Shokeen SaifiSr. Designer: Manoj Kumar VP

PHOTOGRAPHYSr. Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

ISSuES that MattER

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Up-to-DateGood News

The DigiTal inDia campaign has begun delivering results, with electronic transactions related to e-governance projects in the country almost doubling in 2015. According to e-Taal, 3.53 billion transactions took place in 2014, which almost doubled in 2015 to 6.95 billion. e-Taal is a government website for dissemination of e-transac-tion statistics of national and state level e-governance projects including Mission Mode Projects. It receives statistics from web-based applications periodically on near real-time basis and presents an analysis of transaction counts to give a quick view of trans-actions done by various e-governance projects. “The data by e-Taal shows e-services have begun to pick up momentum and reaching the bottom of the pyramid, which is digitally empowering the people of the country,” said Ravishankar Prasad, Minister of Communications & IT, while addressing i-Bharat 2016 seminar organized by the Fed-eration of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in January. The minister said, “This shows Indians’ drive for technology.”

The government has set an ambitious target to achieve 50 percent digital literacy in the country in three years, from its current level of 15 percent. According to reports, more than 12,000 rural post office branches across the country have been linked digitally. The government also proposes to establish ‘digital villages’ powered by LED lighting, solar energy, skill development centers and e-services like e-education and e-health. Up to 50 crore internet subscribers will be reached in next six to seven months. The government also proposes to install 2,500 Wi-Fi hotspots at 256 places by 2016-end. Mobile penetration in India stands currently at 100 crore and internet penetration is 40 crore. Encouraged by rapid mobile and internet penetration in recent years, the government has fixed the target of 50 crore internet connectivity in a year.

Digital India Campaign Shows Results e-Transactions related to e-Governance projects doubled in 2015.

Up-to-DateNews from Around the World

on Technology for Good, for Growth & for Development

hoT-news

Microsoft to activate Yammer for all eligible Office 365 business customers


Up-to-DateGood News

RegisTeRing FoR National Pension Scheme (NPS) is now just a click away for citizens of India. Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority (PFRDA) has developed an online platform, e-NPS, through the NPS Trust at www.npstrust.org.in, where a prospec-tive subscriber can register for NPS and contribute to his/her Permanent Retire-ment Account Number (PRAN). Sub-scribers who already have NPS account can now make contributions to their account through e-NPS directly.

While registering, a subscriber will be required to provide his/her name and Permanent Account Number (PAN) details which will be validated online with the Income Tax Depart-ment. Subscriber can then select the

Now Online Registration for Pension Fund Subscribers

bank (through which KYC verification will be done), fill up personal details, upload photograph and signature. The subscriber will then make the payment through net banking facilities of the selected bank. Once the payment is made, PRAN will

be provided online to the subscriber. The details submitted by the subscriber will be sent through the CRA system to the selected bank for KYC verification.

The bank will have access to e-NPS module in their existing digital signature certificates-based login, which is used for accessing the central record keeping agency system. After the go ahead by the bank, PRAN will become active and operational. Subscribers will be required to print the form, paste photograph, affix signature and submit the physical

form to CRA within 90 days from the date of allotment of PRAN, while con-tinuing to contribute online. It takes only 30 minutes to open an NPS account online and it’s hassle-free. On Febru-ary 17, 2016, the regulator decided to allow the use of Aadhaar as e-KYC, which makes opening an account online even much simpler. While applying for the scheme, a person whose Aadhaar card is linked to his/her bank account, receives a one-time password on regis-tered mobile for validation. Within min-utes of completing the formalities, the investor is allotted a PRAN which can then be used to invest in the scheme.

Subscribers can make subsequent contributions online through net bank-ing /debit card/credit card at any time and the same will be credited in the subscriber’s PRAN on T+2 basis (second day after the transaction). Presently, 10 banks viz Allahabad Bank, Bank of India, Bank of Maharashtra, Oriental Bank of Commerce, South Indian Bank, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Patiala, Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank and United Bank of India have provided the facility of online KYC verification.

The pension regulator has advised all other bank point of presence (POP) to join the e-NPS platform and provide online verification of KYC for custom-ers willing to open NPS account online. Currently, NPS has over 1.13 crore subscribers with total Asset under Man-agement (AUM) of more than `1.08 lakh crore. The e-NPS facility cannot be used for enrollment under Atal Pension Yojana (APY). PFRDA’s step to digital mode is in consonance with Prime Min-ister ’s Digital India campaign that aims to promote e-governance for last mile connectivity through extensive use of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) platforms.

hoT-newsUS-based global non-profit organization, Girls in Tech (GIT), launched operations in India in January and has made Hyderabad its hub. It has been working towards empowering women in technology and entrepreneurship globally. In India, it will raise the visibility of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

1.13crore

Number of subscribers to NPS.


Up-to-DateGood News

majoRiTy oF the Indian population resides in rural areas and is dependent on agriculture as their primary source of sustenance. As such, there is increased focus on the agriculture sector, which is turning out to be another frontier of technological innovation. Entrepreneurs see huge opportunity in the farming sector in terms of technological innovations to bring in a new level of ease and efficiency. The government too is keen to bring to agriculture technology backed improvements and is promoting innovative ideas and creativity that can lead to ‘smart agriculture’.

According to the Internet of Things (IoT) draft policy document, the Indian govern-ment plans to invest $15 billion in IoT by 2020. IoT can help automate solutions to problems faced by various industries like agriculture, health services, energy, security, among others, through remotely connected devices. The modernization of agriculture sector will see a wide range of IoT applications for local crop and water resource man-agement, high-tech laser-assisted precision land leveling, soil and plant monitoring, tracking of temperature and humidity, etc.

The Government of India in collaboration with NASSCOM is establishing a Center of Excellence (CoE) for IoT across the country on a public-private partnership (PPP) model. One of the focus areas of this center is ‘precision agriculture’. As per NASSCOM, there are currently about 280 IoT startups, out of which about 40 are focused on preci-sion or smart agriculture.

The goveRnmenT of Gujarat is on a mission to connect all state transport buses with Global Positioning System (GPS), thereby becoming the first state to have a GPS-enabled public transport system. In the first phase of this process, the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) equipped as many as 2,527 state transport buses with GPS. In the second and final phase, over 5,000

buses would be equipped with GPS. The purpose is to ensure tracking of location of all state transport buses on a digital display terminal. As per reports, about 21 bus terminals in Gujarat would be modernized and will have GPS monitors to track buses plying in or outside the state. The GSRTC will also launch a mobile app soon which will allow passengers book e-tickets, know the time-table of buses and track vehicles on different routes. The Road Transport Corporation has already been providing citizens online reservation facility, electronic ticketing machines and e-tendering.

Invest in Agri Tech Innovation, Reap Growth

Soon GPS-enabled Transport Buses in Gujarat

TECH-VOICEZig SerafinCorporate Vice President of Engineering, Skype for Business, Microsoft Corporation

“We are committed to bringing our cus-tomers the leading enterprise commu-nications manage-ment experience in Office 365, and ena-bling IT profession-als and our partners worldwide to deliver powerful, high-qual-ity communications services to their users – wherever they are, rapidly and cost effectively… Our goal is to make the Skype for Busi-ness management tools as powerful and easy-to-use for IT professionals as Skype is for end users.”


Up-to-DateGood News

mahaRashTRa has emerged as the top rank-ing state in terms of overall internet readiness index, fol-lowed by Karnataka, Gujarat, Telengana and Tamil Nadu, according to a report titled Index of internet Readiness of Indian States, published by the internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Indicus Analyt-ics. The readiness survey found that the bottom four states are all from the eastern region of the country. Among the smaller states, Delhi emerged as number one state in terms of internet readiness index, followed by Puducherry and Goa. The survey also found that mobile subscribers in Delhi are twice its

population and topped in the teledensity category with 221 subscriptions per 100 persons. Even the mobile subscriptions with internet connections in Delhi stood at 96.5 per 100 persons. The northeastern states, how-ever, did not figure among

the top three even in the list of smaller states, demonstrating that much more needs to be done in the form of invest-ment and infrastructure development in this region. Among the Union Territories, Chandigarh is ranked top in terms of internet readiness index.

internet readiness is measured as internet penetration and usage in Indian states using four components, viz

Maharashtra Tops Internet Readiness Index

e-infrastructure index, e-participation index, IT services and e-governance index. The factors influencing internet readiness index of each state were found to vary from one another. For instance, in Maharashtra, though e-infrastructure is relatively low com-pared to Kerala, Karnataka, Gujarat etc, yet the state surpasses others in all other components making it the best e-ready society. In case of Karnataka, participation of citizen in ICT environ-ment is lower than Kerala and Gujarat, yet on account of the high contribution of IT to overall economy and success in e-government initiatives makes the state the second most e-ready environment in the county. Madhya Pradesh, though has a high rating in terms of participa-tion, ranks low in all other components. All the four components, however, are equally significant in the internet readi-ness index model.

The key internet using parameters, which have been used in this report, are: mobile subscribers per persons above 15 years of age; share of private players in internet service providers; percentage of households using com-puter/ laptop with internet connection; number of e-transactions in utility bill payments per lakh persons above 15 years; number of e-transactions in Busi-ness to Citizen (B2C) services per lakh persons above 15 years; number of e-transactions in informational services per lakh persons above 15 years; num-ber of e-transactions in statutory and non-statutory services per lakh persons above 15 years, among others.

InDIan RaIlwayS will reach five lakh households through its Railwire network, providing a slew of internet services at the block level in the next two years. Pan-India optic fibre network of Railtel Corporation covers over 4,400 railway stations across 44,300 km. The broadband highway will involve a three-layer network – state capitals to district headquarters, district to sub-divisional and then to gram panchayats

which will be joined to the National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN). The purpose is to empower people at village level with knowledge, skills and core competencies. The telecom arm of Rail-ways seeks to cover 36,000 gram panchayats in eastern part of India and pilot pro-jects at Panisagar and Girania in Tripura have already begun stirring a lot of interest and enthusiasm among locals.

The broadband services of Railtel include emails, online newspapers, online passport application, telemedicine, examination results and net surfing for students with a minimum 2Mbps speed.

Going forward, the gov-ernment has proposed to use space technology and unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor and manage national highways and road assets. National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has signed memoranda of

understanding with Na-tional Remote Sensing Center and North East Center for Technology Application and Research for use of spatial technology.

Railways Sets Target to Connect 5l Homes

A set of key internet using parameters

were used to assess the states.

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SMEs can play a large role in India’s growth story with the

right technology backup. By Team Perspective

In Focus Empowering the Make in India Dream

for SMEs

Small and medium enterprises or SMEs, may be gunning for the global markets, but the reality is they are being underserved by their systemic capability to tackle this challenge head on. Getting their systems in place before they make that quantum leap has its own set of challenges. Case in point: Wonder Polymers, a medium-sized company that manufactures and markets a wide range of self-adhesive tapes in India. These are used in electrical, electronic, air-conditioning, refrigeration, thermal insulation, as well as automobile industries. This Delhi and

Haryana based company boasts of a design unit, quality and test laboratories and employs over 80 skilled workers. Managing its sales process and leads however, despite being a relatively small company, was still an arduous task. Wonder Polymers needed automation as well as internal reporting which was being done manually by one person. A salesperson would record the leads, opportunities and client contact information on an Excel sheet. This meant that the information was processed slowly and only available to one person at a time, invariably the one recording this information.

In the modern manufacturing era, with real time tracking and inventory processing, this system was proving to be woefully inadequate. It was also holding them back from streamlining sales processes to improve employee productivity. Wonder Polymers is not alone. Millions of small and medium businesses in India face the same conundrum as Wonder Polymers. If they don’t adopt technology or adapt to the modern global economy, they could potentially miss out on the biggest opportunity yet.

This opportunity has presented itself to the startups and SMEs just as they reach tipping point in India. On Independence Day last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi exhorted the nation to “Startup India, Stand up India!” India is slated to become the world’s youngest country by 2020, with an average age of 29 years and accounts for around 28 percent of the global workforce. It will soon surpass the US as the second largest smartphone market by 2017. Although Internet penetration is low at almost 20 percent, it is still the world’s third largest Internet population with nearly 400 million people online. All of this combines to make this the best time for startups to incubate and for small and medium enterprises to make a quantum jump.

Traditionally, small businesses are defined as an industrial undertaking with investments in fixed assets of `10 million and with less than 50 employees while a medium-sized enterprise is one with fewer than 250 employees. According to the reports by the SMB Chamber of Commerce and the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, India currently has more than 48 million SMEs. These SMEs contribute more than 45 percent of India’s industrial output, 40 percent of the country’s total exports and create 1.3 million jobs every year. Digitization is the business need of the hour, and it’s driven by the growth potential, IM

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In FocusRural Internet

incubated by programs like the Government’s Make in India initiative. This initiative, launched by the Prime Minister in September 2014, is enabling growth, investment and supplying the tools to enable integration with global manufacturing and supply chains. The idea behind Make in India is to encourage multinational as well as domestic companies to manufacture their products in India. Apart from ensuring that India emerges as the top destination globally for foreign direct investment, surpassing China as well as the United States, it is also about creating jobs, boosting manufacturing output and exports. All of this directly engages the SME sector – be it in automotive, retail, manufacturing, defense and aerospace, or electronics. While the Government has listed 25 sectors as a part of its thrust on boosting the globally integrated local economy,

Finecure pharmaceuticals Limited are leading manufacturers and marketers of pharmaceutical formulations and nutraceuticals

in the forms of tablets, capsules, oral liquids, dry syrup, powders, injections, sachet, and effervescents. Securing

crucial Ip information, and using market insights more effectively was the need of the hour for this medium enterprise. They leveraged the Microsoft Office 365 cloud productivity solution to improve productivity. the digital rights manage-ment and encryption technology that is inbuilt in the software was used to protect their Ip. the company was able to create greater collaboration amongst scientists, technicians and manage-ment through the deployment of Skype for business, document sharing and co-authoring of documents. the use of power bI and analytics has provided accurate field data and deeper market insights to its medical representatives and marketing staff. this has enabled them to engage effectively with medical practitioners and key market influenc-ers. Finally, data analytics, and deeper customer engagement have helped it grow revenue by 30% every year in the last three years. Office 365 is helping the company maintain all specific sets

of standard mandated by the Food and Drug administration, and help with WHO and ISO certification as well.

Vikash rajgharia, Director, Finecure pharmaceuticals says, “protecting Ip, producing quality medicines, distribut-ing them and managing relationships

with influencers like medical practition-ers are key business processes for a pharmaceutical manufacturer. Office 365 has helped us in each of these, bringing in enhanced efficiencies and better control. the quality and speed of our decision making has improved significantly with better data insights and collaboration. Fine-cure’s quest for excellence is rooted in leveraging technology.”

Microsoft’s tools allow real time col-laboration including video conferencing to engage with partners and clients anywhere and anytime. The Office 365 products include cloud based commu-nication and collaboration tools such as Skype for business and offer a global ad-vantage to SMEs. power bI offers a suite of business analytics tools like dash-boards, 360 degree view of metrics and real time updates across devices that allows businesses to get up and running quickly, especially those that use a lot of data reporting and analytics.

Finecure Pharma Grows 30% by Using Cloud Productivity

Solutions and Analytics

To increase manufacturing sector growth to 12–14% per annum over the medium term.

To increase the share of manufacturing in the country’s Gross Domestic Product from 16% to 25% by 2022.

To create 100 million additional jobs by 2022 in manufacturing sector. To increase investment – the Government has already allowed 100% FDI in all the sectors except Space (74%), Defense (49%) and News Media (26%).

Make in India Vision

the reality is, the bulk of the Make in India focus (as the name suggests) will be on manufacturing and retail.

According to a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report, Make in India – Turning Vision into Reality, Indian manufacturing’s share of GDP fell from 2.2 percent to 2 percent between 2009 and 2013 even as the country’s share in global GDP grew from 2.2 to 2.5 percent over the same period. Despite the advances made in the economy after globalization, Indian manufacturing which accounted


for 15 percent of GDP in 1993 has remained at the same level even today. Consequently, the number of jobs in the sector has stagnated over the past 20 years, increasing only by 1.8 percent per year from 37 to 53 million. In contrast, the services sector has grown by 6.5 percent per year during the same period, increasing its share of labor force from 22 to 31 percent, accounting for over 150 million jobs today. KK Jalan, Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Government of India, admits: “MSME

Manufacturing has not improved the way we wanted. With PM’s Make in India program, this is bound to develop. The GDP contribution from MSME manufacturing is only 6 to 7 percent now but in the future, it will go to 10 percent.”

The BCG report, in fact estimates an even more aspirational 11percent growth, thanks to which, the share in GDP can touch 25 percent by 2030. This would include a 5 percent productivity increase and a GDP growth of 7.5 percent. With this, the revised

KEnt ro Systems Limited is a healthcare products company that brought in the revolu-tionary reverse osmosis (ro)

technology to India. KEnt started its operations from noida, India in 1999 and over the years it has evolved from a market leader in healthcare products ranging from water purifiers, water softeners, and vegetable and fruit purifiers.

Despite being the first company to introduce ro technology to the domestic vertical in India, the business growth was slow initially because it was an expensive product in the market. the company started seeing real traction in 2005-06, but despite the fast paced growth, one of the biggest challenges for the company was their data being man-aged in a very distributed way.

All the offices were managing their own accounting, their own customer data and their own installation and service call data as well. Kent had more than 1,000 service partners across India but initially they were not monitor-ing what these people were doing. as Varun gupta, Director, Kent ro Systems says, “It was important that we knew who our customer was and how he was being serviced. that’s when we felt that we needed a centralized system to take

care of all such information.”they chose Microsoft Dynamics

CrM and it has empowered Kent ro systems to transform their internal operations and have a centralized processing system. Kent ro Systems can now easily monitor their 1,000+ Service partners across India and track customer satisfaction. CrM allows Kent to capture various details, and analyze spare parts that were being consumed by the service call, whether the customer was satisfied with the quality of service, what was the turna-round time to close the call and various other parameters which will help them deliver a good customer service. and

the results were clear to see: Kent sells more than 225,000 RO purifiers every year and holds around 40 percent mar-ket share in India. Its annual turnover is about `250 crores, and 80 percent of its revenues are from its RO purifiers. The company has sold over a million units to date. the new setup has helped in-crease their spare parts’ sales by 30–40 per cent and improve overall efficiency. gupta adds, “We were one of the very early adopters of Microsoft technolo-gies. We had Windows and then we used Office 365 for our office applica-tions. Microsoft CrM became a natural choice because it was easy to adapt and easy to scale too. With use of Microsoft technologies, we are seeing improved customer satisfaction levels, we are seeing a positive impact on our topline and bottom line. We have increased our efficiency and I think we are growing at a faster pace.”

Microsoft Dynamics CrM software offers users a hybrid business solu-tion that can increase sales and mar-keting efficiency. These set of tools, platforms and server client applica-tions can be customized as per the client’s needs using the .nEt frame-work. together it drives the optimiza-tion of business intelligence, social insights, campaign management and other customer relationship goals.

Kent RO Systems Sees a 30–40% Jump in Spare Part Sales by Using CRM

These are the top 5 policy aspects of Make in India that will drive businesses to evolve and this is how technology can enable it.

Government policy and reforms Ease of doing business Infrastructure Technology and innovation Change in mindset

5 powerful ways technology can enable

Make in India

In FocusSMEs in Make in India



manufacturing growth rate would be 10–11 percent for 2030, while the share of manufacturing in GDP would be 21.6–25 percent, with 60 to 78 million jobs being created additionally in this sector.

All this growth is not without its challenges of course. As Tallam R Dwarkanath the President of FKCCI puts it, “SMBs face many challenges.

Martjack Enterprise is a Hyderabad-based digital commerce solution of-fered by reasoning

global eapplications pvt Ltd, which was established in 2007. The aim was to enable an e-commerce ecosys-tem by offering world class digital commerce solutions to retail clients across emerging markets like India. Today this award-winning, top 35 retail suppliers and enterprise-class e-commerce platform, lays claim to a clientele that includes Future group, Lulu, godrej nature’s basket, Metro Shoes, the body Shop, Wildcraft, and Casio. It provides customers with not just a multi-tenant SaaS based ecommerce platform, but also offers end-to-end multichannel commerce capabilities. this includes seam-less catalogue, inventory, order and marketing management, integrated logistics, payments and third-party application integration facility.

the platform, which enables retail-ers/brands to leverage the power of mobile site, mobile application and social media integration to engage with digitally savvy consumers, was built on the Microsoft azure platform.

With more than 50 percent of Internet users doing a preliminary research before purchasing a prod-uct, Martjack uses digital media to increase footfalls, influenced sales and customer engagement for its clients. preloaded tablets showcase rich multimedia product catalogs to consumers, especially for electronics goods. they are also able to capture consumer details while showcasing

the products, which is seamlessly synced with poS systems where the residual part of billing is completed. this reduces the billing time per con-sumer from 18 minutes to 8 minutes.

It also allows banks and insurance companies to extend offers to their debit/credit card holders by provid-ing promotions on purchases through their marketplace.

Martjack Enterprise announced that it has signed on more than 250 Enterprise customers globally for its multichannel commerce platform, making it the leader in the enterprise e-commerce platform space across India and Middle East. the leadership of the company admitted that mov-ing to Microsoft azure has helped Martjack Enterprise acquire this large customer base in record time.

“The flexibility, scalability, agility and security offered by Microsoft az-ure helped us focus on customer ac-quisition and bring in customized de-ployments at quick pace with minimal investments,” said abhay Deshpande, Founder and CEo, Martjack. “our

core interest remains in fulfilling the needs of retail businesses and helping them to win in multichannel commerce world. to achieve this, we were looking for a cloud platform

that could power up businesses online, while also being flexible to deal with sudden growth and reduce investment in infrastructure. With the migration to azure, we have not just added more customers but also supported existing customers to enhance their e-commerce services to offer superior value to their end consumers,” he added.

azure provided Martjack the benefit of using one brand one experience across all digital channels and offer seamless omni channel commerce operations and customer loyalty programs. as more organiza-tions run 100 percent of their IT in the cloud, Microsoft’s azure plat-form and locally hosted datacenters allow SMEs to leverage the power of the cloud, integrate into global pro-cesses, keep costs down and operate with greater flexibility.

MartJack Signs 250 Enterprise Customers after Moving to the Cloud

“SMbs face many challenges... Most importantly, in today’s digital era, it is essential that our SMbs have an online

presence. Less than 5% of our SMBs have online presence today.”

Tallam R Dwarkanath president, FKCCI


They are not aware of the facilities available to them and how to actually avail them. They lack expert advice. They suffer from lack of adequate funding from suitable sources. They do not have updated knowledge in terms of production, marketing and many other aspects. Most importantly, in today’s digital era, it is essential that our SMBs have an online presence. Less than five percent of our SMBs have online presence today.”

Beyond this online presence, managing an enterprise requires specific technological solutions. When it comes to real time tracking, streamlining of business processes, quality control, collaboration and efficient delivery systems, technology will play the crucial differentiator. It will make all the difference when a company wants to efficiently integrate into global manufacturing standards.. The industries to benefit immediately from this will be manufacturing and retail.

Manufacturing & Retail Lead Make in IndiaManufacturing and retail are leading the race to digitization as they will see the maximum gains from this effort to integrate IT into their business processes. According to a survey conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and the BCG, 72 percent of manufacturing executives said they would be heavily investing in advanced manufacturing technologies in the next five years. Manufacturing companies will increasingly use more technology to gain competitive sustainable advantages, better their innovative capability and shorten their product development cycle. The Government, which is pushing India as a global manufacturing hub through its Make in India initiative, can play a more important role by providing a conducive environment and support to the manufacturing companies.

The evolution of technology within the retail and e-commerce space is shaping how consumers behave and interact with brands and savvy, smart retailers know that understanding consumer’ behavior

Information Systems Cut User Time by Half

for the Madhya Pradesh Urban Development and Environment Department

The administrative processes at the Madhya pradesh UDED, were manually controlled - leading to delays, errors and inefficient use

of resources. the UDED is a sprawling government department – with seven divisional offices, 50 district urban de-velopment authority (DUDA) offices and 360 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) including 14 municipal corporations within the state under its jurisdiction. administra-tive processes were manually controlled and thus required a lot of time and effort for data consolidation. also, there was no easy tracking mechanism in place.

to top it off, the Hu-man resources (Hr) team was grappling with the mammoth task of managing the details of approximately 60,000 employees. Everything from recruitment, loans, advances, scale of pay and allowances to retirement benefits such as pen-sions, gratuity, annuity, compassionate fund and provident fund, was under their purview. these details were available only in the form of manual records. the monitoring of up to 18 government schemes was also a challenge and employee training and re-tooling management for all 360 ULBs and 50 DUDAs was affected.

today, the implementation of an Information System built on Microsoft technology, has helped to address these gaps while enhancing efficiency, effectiveness, cost, quality and service delivery. the UDED collaborated with Microsoft partners to design and implement the Urban Sector Manage-ment Information System (USMIS). Us-ing Microsoft technology, the USMIS was designed to identify a better mechanism for enhancing efficiency and effectiveness of processes, cost, quality and service delivery. Starting

off with 100 ULBs in 2012, in just one year, the project covered all the 360 ULbs in the entire state.

thanks to this pension data of ap-proximately 12,000 pensioners has been cleansed and automated, payrolls of 16 units of UADD are generated every month with just a click, funding for the different government schemes and monitoring their progress is done on a web based platform. Finally the USMIS application has reduced the time and effort incurred by user by 50 percent!

pravir Krishak, Founder and CEo, C-

net Infotechon, says, “USMIS has three key Microsoft technology components – Microsoft Dynamics AX, SQL server and Microsoft.net. the biggest advan-tage that Microsoft Dynamics offers us as an implementing partner is the flexibility to create a user interface tailor-made for each role.” anil Kumar gound, Deputy Director, pension, says, “With USMIS, the organization has witnessed a revolution.”

Microsoft Dynamics enabled infor-mation system platform offered the Madhya pradesh government’s UDED ease of use and cost effectiveness. It was built to handle the current vol-ume of transactions as well as any fu-ture growth in data. the user friendly customized software offers business units the flexibility to overcome oper-ational challenges, improve inventory and sales force management.



“the SMb sector as a whole is run mostly by technocrats who are capable of manufacturing to the world standards. government initiatives

in ease of doing business, easy access to the latest technology, and good skill development schemes, will definitely play a major role in the

Make in India strategy.”

In 2005, the Government of India embarked on its biggest-ever poverty-alleviation project. It passed

a law guaranteeing every household 100 days’ paid employment a year to adults in every household under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme. Any registered person was in theory allowed to com-mence work within 15 days and it was to be operation in 200 administrative districts by 2007 and all 610 districts by April 2008. This presented the MRD with a daunting challenge – as all 36 states, hundreds of districts and blocks and gram panchayats had to be connected to the administrative system in New Delhi. The system had to match each citizen’s request with a project nearby that had been pre-approved, track the activity, and make payments.

To administer this law, the Ministry of Rural Development cre-ated a work registry, job-matching, and payments system using Microsoft technologies. Called NREGASoft, the system was initially deployed as a standalone application and connected to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 data-bases in each state.

By the 2007 deadline, NREGASoft was managing the three core processes that bring the act to life - from project

proposals, to job requests, to fund allocation and wage payments. Today, the Ministry of Rural Development uses NREGASoft to help 120 million unskilled laborers find work on local projects each year. Officials have also relied on the system to help them manage staff and finance a total of 14.6 million proj-ects. In 2013–14, this accessible and transparent system helped 128 million people find work and earn a total of U.S. $4.2 billion, giving 50 million rural

Indian families greater security.Prashant Mittal, Ministry of Rural

Development’s Senior Technical Direc-tor says, “When we first started, an official told me that job-allocation could never work. Our Microsoft-based system does work, and this year, 50 million families across rural India are earning cash as a result. By implement-ing this Microsoft technology–based solution, we’ve improved citizens’ faith

in the government and our ability to manage taxpayers’ money.”

The Microsoft SQL Server ’s data management and business analytics platform—for any data, any applica-tion, on any platform, allows businesses and government bodies to accelerate mission-critical applications for data warehousing. SQL Server also guaran-tees security with the fewest vulnerabili-ties of any enterprise database.

So far Make in India has seen `1.20 lakh crore worth of proposals for manufacturing in India. This is just in the field of elec-tronics alone. Today, India has the second largest number of SMEs in the world, trailing behind China that has 50 mil-lion. These SMEs are proving to be the largest employment generators in the country, providing jobs to 40 percent of India’s workforce while manufacturing 45 percent of India’s output.

With 1.5 million SMEs exporting services and products outside India in fields as diverse as manufacturing, retail, pharmaceuticals, food process-ing, service, agro, precision engineer-ing, IT and textiles – the opportunities are lining up. All it takes is the fast dawning realization that IT can enable manufacturing and retail as much as the other life blood of SMEs such as capital, knowledge, and skilled labor.

The Ministry of Rural Development’s NREGAsoft Helps 120 Million Find

Work Every Year

CK Mohan, Vp tanStIa


that only information technology can provide. The Make in India initiatives are designed to facilitate investment, foster innovation, protect intellectual property, and build best-in-class manufacturing infrastructure. In an increasingly complex and competitive global economic landscape, the need to align people, processes and technology is stronger than ever.

The latest technology can help these enterprises reduce cost and time taken to innovate and offer sophisticated products and services. This helps SMEs and startups differentiate from peers, optimize cost structures and most importantly, compete on a global level with other corporate giants.

Already, there are a few SMEs, startups and independent software vendors (ISV) leveraging the benefits of technological tools. For starters, cloud solutions have brought better productivity and enhanced customer experiences for SMEs and ISVs.

The combination of cloud platforms like Microsoft’s Azure, along with the machine learning, analytics and business intelligence tools are allowing startups and ISVs to develop interesting solutions. The use of enterprise-grade cloud technologies allows them to compete with the best across the world. Several such solutions have been developed by born-in-the-cloud ISVs.

For example, CloudCherry offers an omni-channel customer experience management and feedback software that allows brands to understand and track customer needs and experience so that they can improve customer delight. Similarly, Knolskape is a gaming and simulation software company focusing on managing talent transformation. Basically, it uses experiential learning products to help organizations attract grow and retain talent by using gamified learning and business simulations for on-boarding and training.

GrownOut, an HR solutions company focusesd on changing the landscape of talent acquisition through next-generation referral hiring and ZingHR, providers of comprehensive hire-to-retire cloud-based HR solutions have both adopted the cloud platform to transform the human resource function. ShepHertz is another company that provides the complete cloud ecosystem for apps across platforms.

“MSME manufacturing has not improved the way we wanted it to. With prime Minister’s Make

in India program, this is bound

to develop. the gDp contribution

from MSME manufacturing is

only 6–7% now, but in the future, it will

go up to 10%.”

is the key for success. These retailers realize they can utilize technology to capitalize on consumer needs and customize offerings to help significantly increase their bottom lines. That means, an improved customer service, with a direct impact on business as 86 percent of buyers say they will pay more for a better customer experience. Simplifying check-outs for e-commerce will offer a streamlined digital path to purchase. Adding one-click ordering, secure billing information storage, and direct purchasing from retail channels are other tricks of the modern retail trade that technology can support. Mirroring the real life shopping experience will also be key for e-commerce sites. Technology can also provide value added services like virtual reality or shopping assistants or digital test runs.

How Technology can Power the Make in India DreamIn terms of Government policy reforms, Make in India has kick-started many initiatives to promote the ease of doing business and to set up infrastructure. By de-licensing and deregulating the infrastructure, the Government plans to make it easier to do business or manufacture in India. Application for industrial licenses will happen on a 24x7 basis online, and a single window IT platform will be integrated with this portal so that all clearances are obtained in one go. Apart from licenses and environmental clearances, a checklist of compliances will be clearly listed. Smart cities and industrial corridors are being planned to ensure government policy and reforms match the ease of doing business and infrastructure. States like Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are vying with each other to promote industries in their regions. Telangana especially has seen the rise of a public-private partnership (PPP) model with the presence of academic institutions like IIIT, ISB and NALSAR as well as a T-Hub that works as a technology and startup accelerator. This along with the Telangana Academy of Skills and Knowledge (TASK) is paving the way for the smart cities initiative as well. The real estate and renewable energy sectors in Haryana are also using the PPP model for development. As MSME Secretary, KK Jalan points out, “With Happening Haryana, lots of

KK Jalan Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME),

government of India

projects have come up and MoUs have been signed worth `4.5 lakh crore!”

But, more than the investment, it is the change in mindset and technology and innovation that the true competitive advantage for SMEs and startups will emerge. Currently, they see investment in information technology as a cherry-topping that they can do without. Software is simply not seen as a priority capital investment in the same league as hardware. However, to truly compete on a global stage as a world-class manufacturer or retailer requires synergies, cost benefits, flexibility, scalability and responsiveness

In FocusSMEs in Make in India


In Conversation

Jayesh RanjanSecretary

Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department

Government of Telangana

Jayesh Ranjan is a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) of the 1992 batch. He holds a Masters Degree in Psychology from Delhi University, a degree in Business Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and a Masters in Public Management from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He is the Secretary of the Information Technology (IT) Department in the Telangana Government. His assignment involves identifying opportunities of utilizing IT in various government processes, attracting new investments, and promoting digital empowerment of the citizens.


In ConversationJayesh Ranjan

Tell us about T-hub, how did the idea originate? What are its goals, the government’s perspective and your hopes from it?

Telangana is the newest state in the country. We take pride in calling it the startup state. We realize that while startups are fast emerging in our country, most of this growth has been organic. No Government has really taken care to support this sector. Many can say that this a good thing that the Government has stayed away. But I feel that strategic support from the Govern-

“It is a reality all over the world today that new initiatives are mostly coming from the startups...”Jayesh Ranjan, Secretary, Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department, Government of Telangana, tells Sangita Thakur Varma why Telangana takes pride in calling itself a startup state, Silicon Valley as role model, and public private partnership model for progress.

ment can really give a big push to any sector, and is always better than zero support. The idea of developing T-Hub has originated from this thinking.

It seems for Telangana creating an ecosystem for startups is a focus area? Your views on the startup ecosystem model for growth…

Silicon Valley today is considered the best exemplar for the startup ecosys-tem around the world. Many countries have tried to replicate it unsuccessfully. Silicon Valley is the role model for us

too in Telangana, and we are conscious of the earlier failed efforts. Therefore, we have attempted to meticulously put together a comprehensive ecosystem in the T-Hub. The fact that T-Hub today is abuzz with startup activities indicates that we have been on the right path.

Why did the government opt for the PPP model for T-Hub? What is the government’s view on PPP, especially collaborative partnerships with the industry for development?


In ConversationJayesh Ranjan

A key component of the comprehen-sive startup ecosystem is the presence of academic institutions. In the Silicon Valley also, universities like Stanford and Berkley played an important role. Since Hyderabad is blessed with many knowledge-based institutions, we have partnered with three of the best namely, IIIT, ISB and NALSAR. These institutes provide technology mentor-ship, business mentorship and legal, patent and IP mentorship respectively.

How is the industry aligned to the idea of T-Hub, the incubator for accelerators and startups?

T-Hub is not just an incubator but also an incubator of incubators. We are partnering with a number of national and international accelerators includ-ing Microsoft Ventures. The Microsoft Ventures program will focus on the Life Sciences Sector with Merck being the industry partner. I clearly see a win-win for all the participating parties.

What has been the response of the industry as a whole to initiatives like T-Hub and smart cities in Telangana? What are the government’s expectations from the industry on its technology and growth missions?

The presence of T-Hub in Hyder-

What was the outcome of the Smart City Startups Conclave facilitated by Microsoft in October 2015?

The Conclave was able to identify many smart solutions brought out by the startups using Microsoft platforms, which different Government agencies are grappling with. Some of them are being internally evaluated and tested before they can be rolled out.

Again, the emphasis here (Smart City) is startups. How do you think startups will accelerate smart cities in the Indian setup?

It is a reality all over the world today that new initiatives are mostly coming from the startups. While inno-vation units within large organizations are also doing their bit, the fact is that most of the disruptive and transfor-mative innovation is being contributed by startups. The T-Hub is creating a center of excellence in smart cities which will be a very useful platform for large smart technologies develop-ment companies to support.

Please elaborate Telangana’s collaboration with Microsoft on various initiatives?

We in Telangana value our long standing partnership with Microsoft. As a matter of fact, the opening of Micro-soft development center in Hyderabad about a decade ago brought global attention to Hyderabad’s potential of being an IT Hub. Today we are col-laborating with Microsoft on a range of topics like cloud computing, digital edu-cation, smart technologies etc.

Is Telangana aiming to become the next IT hub of India?

Hyderabad is already recognized as a major IT center globally, second only to Bangalore in India. With our new policy and renewed focus, we are confident of becoming the premier IT center of our country.

How do you see the citizens of Telangana benefiting from all these initiatives?

We firmly believe that any technol-ogy, unless it benefits people, is of no worth. All our endeavors to introduce new technology solutions are guided by this philosophy.

“T-Hub is not just an incubator but also an incubator of incubators. We

are partnering with a number of national and international

accelerators including Microsoft

Ventures.“

abad, which is the largest technology incubator in the country today, has been received very positively by the industry. In fact, many companies are choosing to locate their development centers in Hyderabad just because of the presence of unique institutions like T-Hub and Telangana Academy for Skills and Knowledge (TASK). For the companies, engaging with the startups and getting them work out any specific solutions they require, is a very good value proposition.

How do you see technology transforming cities?

The national program on smart cities has brought technology to the forefront of providing solutions to the civic issues. However, in my opinion the appropriate technology must also attempt to solve a pressing need, must be easy to oper-ate, must be cost effective, scalable and vendor-neutral.


The Indian agriculture sector is currently undergoing rapid advancements aided by disruptive technological innovations. While for the private sec-tor, the emerging business opportunities in agricultural technology are the main attraction, the Government of India wants to bring about revolutionary changes through modernization. In line with this, the Government plans to

invest $15 billion in IoT by 2020 to automate solutions for agriculture and enhance productivity and efficiency. Precision agriculture has become the byword in the sector with around 40 startups working in the field. One such startup is PALS Global Solutions. A technology services and solutions company, it began operating around three years back with a small team of just four dedicated professionals, which has today grown to more than 50. PALS Global is a proponent of social change, and to this end it launched Virtual AGRI Services (VAS), a comprehensive Cloud Farming ERP solution built with lifecycle based approach, to support farmers. VAS helps farmers right from crop plan-ning to harvesting stage, and also in marketing their produce.

For Phanidhar Palakoti, CEO, PALS Global Solutions, the motivation for developing VAS was the crisis in the agricultural sector. “Virtual AGRI Services has been developed

Servicing Farmers on CloudVirtual AGRI Services or VAS is a comprehensive Cloud Farming ERP solution built with lifecycle based approach to support farmers, right from crop planning to harvesting stage, and also in marketing their produce.

GrassrootsPALS Global Solutions

VAS



after extensively analyzing the problem areas in the sector to build a comprehensive platform which could transform agricul-ture into smart and profitable agriculture,” he explains.

The Agricultural ScenarioIndia is still a largely agrar-ian economy with agriculture accounting for more than 60 percent of the total employed workforce. The predominant mode of farming is subsis-tence, and farmers produce just enough for their needs. The Government of India, over the years, has brought in targeted policy initiatives and structural reforms that facilitated growth in agriculture. How-ever, the share of agriculture in GDP has been steadily declining, from 58 percent between 1950–2001 to about 13.94 percent in 2013-14, but, the sector remains resilient. India achieved self-sufficiency in foodgrain (265 mil-lion tons during 2013-14).

Despite commendable progress, agriculture sector is rocked by distress, farmers’ suicides, skyrocketing prices of certain commodities during spe-cific seasons, etc. Some of the critical issues impacting Indian agriculture listed by Palakoti include:

1. Aging: The youth are moving away from this traditional occupation. Deficits in technology, infrastructure, investment, and management have made agricul-ture the most low-paying and unattract-ive profession in India.2. Fragmented and small landhold-ings: According to the provisional data by the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (2012), there is a signifi-cant increase in operational holdings, from 119.90 to 137.70 million between 2001 and 2011, with cumulative increase of 14.8 percent. This indicates widespread fragmentation of land holdings and reduction in their size, which has created multiple problems. These include small resource base of

farmers limiting investment into the sector, crippling credit flow, small produce and consequent marketing problems including logistics, inadequate volumes to achieve scale for effective marketing, input supply issues, limited arm mechanization, etc. 3. Increased cost of produc-tion: The cost of production is going up and uncertainties are increasing. The quality of farm inputs is a major concern, even as farmers use inputs like pesticides indiscriminately. Lack of reliable and timely advisories

and unscientific crop management practices lead to increase in the total cost of inputs. 4. Price uncertainty and distress sale: Unable to get remunerative prices due to middlemen, small and marginal farmers resort to distress sale, as most of the farm produce is highly perishable and subject to price volatility. Price and market risk also occur as small farmers need to compete with organized pro-ducers, middlemen and traders.5. Huge gap in yield and quality: There is a huge gap between yield in the research stations and the actual yield in farmers’ field. This is mainly because of insufficient support and reach of agriculture extension system

VAZ technology landscape architecture built on Azure cloud platform

Farmer Producer Organizations

Expert AdvisorsExperts Connect using

Internet with Farmers

FarmersInteract with

Smartphones or Feature Phones

VAS Field AgentsData Capture Device

through Low Cost Android Smartphones VAS – Village KIOSK

VAS Kiosk Facilitates

Farmers Access to Portal

Virtual Face to Face Interactions with Experts

Weather Integration Maps – GIS

Buyers

Input Agencies

Financial Institutions

Govt Agencies

MySQL Database

Ubuntu VM

Microsoft SQL Reporting Server

Windows VM

ETL MS SQL

Azure Load Balancing Services

Web API MVC Service

Windows VM

.NET MVC Web Application

Tomcat

Java Application

Web API

RedisDB

FreeSWITCH

Red5Voice

Video

Ubuntu VM

SMS Gateway

Office Power BI

AZURE Blob Storage

AZURE Notification Services

Microsoft AZURE Cloud Platform

Market Linkages

Functional Components of Virtual AGRI Service

Reduction in Production Cost

Increase in Production Quality & Yield

Buyer Registration

Insight into Potential Produce

Outut Aggregation

Buyer direct Interaction

Online Auction of Produce

Online Market Price Information

Direct Debt to Farmer / FPO

account

Reduction in Production Cost

Improve Production

Quality and Yield

Increase Income through

Market Linkage

In-time Analyzed Information

Farmer Registration

Farm and Crop based Inventory

Producer Organizations

Input Agencies & product catalogs

Just in time aggregation

& procurement

Online Procurement and Indenting

Connecting Custom Hiring

Agencies

Farm Planning and Activities

Threat Control through AGRI Surveillance

Farm and Crop based Expert

Advisory

Crop Status and Random

Observations

Virtual Face to Face Interactions

GPS based Soil Sampling

Online Training on Farming

Practices

Functional Components of Virtual AGRI Service



to farmers, which leads to increased crop damage.

How VAS Addresses Gaps“Virtual AGRI Services demonstrate differentiated benefits to farmers in improving their livelihood through increasing return on investment,” explains Palakoti. VAS provides a host of value driven capabilities that help reduce production cost, increase production quality and yield, in-time insights into analyzed information, etc. The cumulative services thus help farm-ers increase their income. VAS is a single window service for farm planning, input procurement, production and market-ing of agriculture produce. It brings the ecosystem together, which includes farmers and all stakeholders who con-tribute to farming. These are input agencies, producer organizations and communities, experts and potential buy-ers, FPOs, SHGs, financial institutions, insurance agencies and field surveyors. The services are personalized and local-ized, and secure. VAS enables farmers to access timely inputs and interven-tions anytime and anywhere through smartphones, and village kiosks. Farmers can access VAS solution using an intui-tive smartphone based application or through a web interface with support from identified VAS village kiosk centers.

Benefits with VASReduction in production cost: Farm-ers adding a crop using VAS smart-phone, the system will automatically generate list of activities based on pack-age of practices for that specific crop, variety, cultivation type and climatic zone. These activities are pushed to farmers’ smartphone as tasks or alerts. These activities includes quantity of inputs required to complete the activity. The system would automatically aggre-gate these inputs across multiple farm-ers and provide consolidated view of inputs required in a specific region. This information is shared with the suppliers who then can reach out directly to the farmer for selling their inputs at nego-tiatied price based on the aggregated quantity. Important information like discounted prices by input agencies is published online and farmers check out discounted rates and indents.Increase in production quality and yield: VAS helps in crop planning and

production that improve quality and yield of produce. Farmers can seek assistance from VAS experts directly to control threats or impacted crops. This interaction is through internet based voice communication asynchronously using VAS smartphone application. Farmers can also schedule virtual face to face interactions with experts.

Farmers also use VAS to generate GPS based sampling ID to facilitate accuracy and integrity of soil samples. Based on the sample reports generated by testing laboratories, VAS generates soil health card correlating with crop inventory. VAS online training module provides a facility for experts to deliver webinar sessions for training farmers on farming best practices. The online train-ing sessions can be availed by farmers through VAS village kiosks. The fact that a farmer can discuss all his problems in his native language and send a voice clip makes VAS more farmer-friendly. Increase in income through market linkages: VAS facilitates buyer inter-actions with farmer directly avoiding middlemen and ensures transparency in financial transactions. Individual buyers and buyer organizations have to register with VAS. VAS facilitates virtual aggrega-tion and thus substantially reduces the market and price risk to the farmers. The produce is auctioned through VAS platform which provides prevailing price information to both buyers and farmers. Registered buyers and farmers can par-ticipate in online auctioning of produce.In-time analytics: The in-time insights on farming and market related infor-mation facilitate right planning and execution of farm enterprise and in this analytics plays a huge role. VAS provides analytics spanning every aspect of farm-ing, including farm and crop analytics,

threat impact and control analytics, soil nutrition analytics, expert advisory ana-lytics, input aggregation analytics, pro-duce aggregation analytics and market and auctioning analytics.

Technology Behind VASPALS Global Solutions has built VAS com-pletely on Azure platform in partnership with Microsoft through BizSpark pro-gram. The company adopted Azure as the cloud platform for its ability to help them scale, yet remain flexible. “With a potential to address 50 percent of India’s population, we needed a platform that can scale with global technology which has a presence in India,” explains Pala-koti. For VAS, they required cloud that supported both Windows and Open Source as first class citizens. The young enterprise did not want to be stuck with a platform that would require microman-aging. “We needed a platform that could provide service in the true sense. It must allow us to focus more on our business, rather than managing the infrastructure, with the service provided through plat-form as a service,” Palakoti elaborates. Also, since VAS application depends more on mobile technology, “we needed a platform that can provide inbuilt ser-vice for connecting mobile devices more seamlessly to the cloud,” he sums up the reasons that led to Azure cloud decision.

Future ForwardGoing forward, PALS Global aims to reach to other states, with immediate plans to rollout VAS in Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab and Odisha. The current short-term plan, as the CEO says, is “to reach 1 million farmers in next 12–16 months.” The company’s currently pro-viding services to around 10,000 farm-ers through its various projects.

Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure offers integrated services—compute, storage, data, networking, and app—that help enterprises work faster, accomplish more,

and provide cost-efficiencies. Azure cloud offers matchless combination of managed and unmanaged services that allow businesses to build, deploy, and manage applica-tions as per requirement. Its hybrid cloud solutions are enterprise-proven and give businesses the opportunity to scale up or down to match demand. It is easier to build applications that span both on-premises and the cloud on Azure platform. Data stor-age, backup, and recovery are more efficiently and economically handled on Azure.

Cloud Farming


For Windows 10 users, life has become more fun and relaxed. Thanks to Cortana, the personal digital assistant for PCs and mobiles, small mun-dane tasks are no longer stressful. Packed with intuitive intelligence, Cor-

tana anticipates your needs. Launched in India in November last year, Cortana is easily Windows 10’s best feature.

Know Your AssistantThe discovery of Cortana on Windows 10 is itself a delightful journey. As soon as you launch Cortana, she prompts you to get her started in simple clear steps. Once you have done that, you can enjoy the many services of Cortana. Instead of you doing every little task alone, Cortana get things done on your Windows 10 PC, tablet and phone more efficiently. Cortana is not an assembly line product in one-size-fits all mould. She is designed as a personalized app capable of responding to your individual needs. Talking about Cortana’s Indian avatar, Mythreyee Ganapathy, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft, says, “For the customizations and localization of Cortana, we worked on three broad areas – 1. Add the capability to recognize Indian voices and accent; 2. Make Cortana Indian by crafting an Indian persona for Cortana; and 3. Add India specific Cortana experiences that are suited to Indian audience, which include among others post-paid mobile bill payments and tracking train reservations and journey. Localization to a market’s requirements is a key aspect of introducing Cortana in a geography. For the engineering team at Microsoft, Cortana is thus a work in progress, as they are continuously updating the entire tech stack to fix issues, add enhancement and implement feature backlog. “Localization involves hiring the best possible voice for Cortana, customizing Cortana experiences to work in the market and adding new features to cover up key gaps in the product offering and making Cortana understand and speak out typical accent of market users. It is a fairly long process that runs into months and is closely tied to Windows release cadence,” explains Mythreyee. Voice is an important element in Cortana’s localization. To carry out commands of the users, Cortana must understand their language, dialect, tone and inflection. For users too, a personal assistant whom they can barely understand would be of no use. Hence, the team behind Cortana is constantly at work to improve user experience. Mythreyee says, “Cortana’s voice output is essentially the result of machine learned models that become better as we provide more and more sound recordings of the talent behind Cortana’s voice and add more and more samples of a typical Indian user. Essentially, Cortana’s voice has some degree of continuous improvement.” The result of all this effort is a delighted and satisfied Indian customer, as Cortana responds to their voice commands accurately and with alacrity.

Made to Order Cortana is a personal assistant with a difference. She is digital, super efficient and fun.

Apps for YouCortana

The Digital Personal Assistant

APP AssistantCortana is a truly personal digital assistant designed with the user in mind. It helps the users to quickly and easily get things done on their Windows 10 PC, tablet, and phone.

The Intelligent Assistant Let Cortana take care of all your important tasks. From paying bills, reminders on upcoming events and traffic jams, to movie shows, the app has been designed to serve as a super efficient personal assistant. An engineering marvel at your service!

Bill Payments

Trains

Cricket


Apps for YouCortana

But how does Cortana anticipate all the user’s needs? Simply by collecting all relevant information about the user. The app also collects and uses browsing history in Microsoft Edge. All this information is saved on the device in Cortana Notebook, and in the cloud on the Bing.com dashboard. Cortana processes this information to understand and anticipate the user’s requirements. Once the microphone has been set up and voice of user fed to Cortana, she is ready to execute any voice command. Customized to Local Culture No two cultures are the same. A joke in one may offend another. Cortana understands this. Cortana provides services in tune with a country and its culture. In her Indian outing, Cortana recognizes local accents, idioms and speech patterns. The app has gathered important regional data and knows what is important in Indian culture.

The engineering team has worked hard to ensure cultural relevance and appropriateness in local content. The five key personality themes that keep Cortana’s character relevant to the cultural context of India are her understanding of: 1) importance of national identity; 2) the level of politeness or formality in informal conversation; 3) how humor is used

The Multitasking Expert: Packed with intuitive intelligence, Cortana anticipates the user’s needs. The personal digital assistant for PCs and mobiles Windows 10 users, Cortana is not just engineered to accomplish tasks; she is also a fun companion.

in casual conversation; 4) use of stereotypes and clichés and; 5) sports as a rallying point.

The engineering team focused on high-value features and popular scenarios. The top queries and functions users look from Cortana like “tell me a joke”, “sing me a song”, “flip a coin”, questions about Microsoft products and general conversational questions were customized to Indian context. The team built dialogues based on current events.

This customization makes Cortana sensitive to cultural touchstones. She understands cricket is almost a religion for Indian users and provides updates on score and information on upcoming matches. Users can also access past results on their favourite team. Cortana loves cricket and her star is India’s cricketing icon, Sachin Tendulkar.

The localization process does not stop with cricket. The team will continuously update Cortana’s country-specific content and personality. Mythreyee informs, “Cortana will be undergoing updates throughout her life.

Engineering teams will keep on adding new features, fixing bugs and make Cortana more relevant and personalized”.

What She Can Do for YouCortana has answers to all queries of her

user. From managing daily schedule to setting reminders to pay phone bills or booking movie tickets, Cortana does it all much like a personal assistant. What takes Cortana’s services a notch above the rest are small specialized services. For instance, she provides traffic updates. The user thus is pre-warned on snarl ups and traffic jams.

For a Windows 10 mobile user, Cortana will track, manage and pay phone bills by integrating with popular payment apps such as Paytm. This service is available on Airtel and Vodafone in the first phase and will extend to other operators soon. Cortana can organize trip details such as PNR status and train schedules and also provide regular updates on the current location and upcoming stations.

The human touch is further enhanced by her sense of humor. From jokes to horoscope, and selfie, Cortana assists in all these with a dash of quirky humor. Ask her if she dreams and hear her respond. Need a story, or a joke to tell your friends? Just ask Cortana and hear her delightful answers.

Time you brought Cortana home! As Mythreyee concludes, “Cortana is the most personal digital assistant that helps you become more productive in a very transparent manner.” Android users need not despair, as Cortana will soon be available on them too.

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Being young can mean a lot of different things to different people. All these dif-ferent perspectives, if channelized correctly, can lead to transforming results, for the youth carry within themselves a spark that challenges and wants to change the status quo. The Microsoft YouthSpark Challenge for Change contest is an ini-

tiative that aims to ignite and harness this spark within young people across the globe. It allows them the freedom to creatively express how they want to bring about the change they want to see in their surroundings.

Ask Sonal Jain, who challenged gender stereotypes to be part of the 2015 Challenge for Change and is a winner from Asia, on what inspires her, and it opens up a whole vista of possibilities. “My motivation has been curiosity and rationalization. I simply can’t accept whatever is served to me without questioning it.” It was this yearning to learn new things and do more that led the 22-year-old into becoming a change-maker. When Sonal received the call informing of her win, she was already working with local children creating education opportunities for them and promoting gender equality through the use of technology. In a candid chat with Perspective, Sonal shared that her team com-prising eight people from different geographies had come together for the World Merit Fellowship Program. Though the project has been called off, the team is busy, “trying to work with the help of volunteers in different countries.”

Breaking StereotypesMicrosoft YouthSpark Challenge for Change Asia winner Sonal Jain is redefining Indian youth as globally conscious citizens.

ProfileSonal Jain

Sonal JainChennai girl Sonal Jain, is an alumnus of Girls’ Jain Community School where she began breaking gender stereotypes. She went on to pursue a degree in Media and Communication at Symbiosis International University, Pune, and later joined the Ashoka University Young India Fellowship, then offered by the IFRE (International

Foundation for Research and Education). Sonal is a Fellow of the World Merit Fellowship Program and Asia winner of Microsoft YouthSpark Challenge for Change program.

ProfileSonal Jain


Her take on gender is as unique as her personality. “Gender equality, as I see it, is an unrestricted expression of one self,” she says. Sonal believes gender stereotyping limits one’s self-expression, forcing people to curb their interests and capabilities in multiple domains. So how does society tackle issues of gender? She advocates educating the young as the key and gives her own example to prove her contention: “Personally, hav-ing access to a good education helped me break out of the gender stereotype.” Sonal feels there is an explicit need to bring gender discussions to public forums as even in the changing world scenario where women share equal responsibility with men in every sphere of life, they have little say in the deci-sion-making process at home. Similarly, for men certain roles and professions are considered taboo or not ‘manly enough’. Sonal suggests early exposure of children to gender concepts to enable them to self-assess without falling prey to stereotyping.

Determined to provide others with the opportunities she received, Sonal is collaborating with seven other like-minded individuals across the world to design a video-based educational program called ‘World in a Box’, which is focused on gender equality. This was also her entry for the Challenge for Change initiative. The group is working to create awareness on identity, gen-der and gender roles among children. “There are various ways in which we are trying to realize the project in different countries,” says Sonal.

It was the World Merit Fellowship Program that led to Sonal’s participation in the Challenge for Change program. World Merit Fellowship Program was launched in 2014 by World Merit, a global platform of talented youth who are passionate about world issues. Elaborating on the World Merit Fellow-ship, Sonal says, “It brought together 24 young people from around the world, who are very active in the social development space, and divided them into various groups depending on their interests, capabilities and skill sets. There were two teams working for gender equality and two on climate change.” Sonal reckons the issue of gender inequality is more pertinent to India.

”When World Merit was inviting applications for WMFP, we were not told

about the structure of the fellowship or the area of work we could be given. Only the scope of it was indicated. “My motivation was to compare and learn about development activities from around the world. Though the opportu-nity sounded vague, my purpose was to get the best out of it and may be even help them shape it better,” says Sonal, adding, “The best thing about being onboard a pilot program is the flex-ibility it gives you in shaping the pro-gram and its design. I love that kind of freedom and responsibility.” The seeds of Sonal’s project for the Challenge for Change contest by Microsoft Youth-Spark lay in one of her early pet causes and the project that she did with World Merit is what she proposed to Micro-soft. It is called Equality Matters.

For the Chennai girl, the journey of dis-covery to a more meaningful social reality began in Shri BS Mootha Girls’ Senior Secondary School, where she began breaking gender stereotypes early. She went on to pursue a degree in Media and Communication at Symbiosis International University, Pune, and topped it up with a Young India Fellowship, then offered by the IFRE (International Foundation for Research and Education).

In the first year of her undergradu-ation at college, the spunky youth was already interning with an NGO in Chennai that worked with mentally ill women from lower socio-economic backgrounds. This internship sparked off a string of pet projects for Sonal. One of the early ones was with slum

families in Pune and today she is working on a project around women’s menstrual health and hygiene. “Cur-rently, I am working on a project to get at least 100 Indian women to switch to using menstrual cups which are more environment friendly, com-fortable and safe,” says Sonal.

Not one to sit on her laurels, this dynamic change-maker is already plan-ning her future course of action. The first target in the series, in the next year or so, is project relaunch. Apart from this, Sonal is working to establish a college of liberal education in Puducherry and facilitate the global youth empowerment project Merit360. At Merit360, organized by World Merit, 360 young people from around the world will work in collabo-ration with the United Nations on its Sustainable Development Goals. “I hope to empower my team of 22 to be more socially conscious and take action for the UN SDG Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities.” The project involves helping partici-pants or ‘goalkeepers’ better understand the issue of their interest, research, think critically, discuss, collaborate, design a solution and implement it. The program will culminate in a 15-day gathering in the US, involving a visit to the UN head-quarters in New York where the youth will present their projects. These projects will demonstrate how small efforts can bring about a change, explains Sonal.

Youth like Sonal who are working to make each small change a positive con-stant through creative human endeavor, demonstrate the power of human will.

Change Leaders Sonal Jain (second from right) with her group of youth leaders who are working on various programs to bring about change in global society.


On January 7, Microsoft unveiled Surface Pro 4, the thinnest, lightest and most powerful tablet that transforms into a full-fledged laptop in seconds, with the addition of a type cover. The tablet is designed to reinvent personal computing

and sets the gold standard for convertible tablets. Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, says, “It is a highly prolific and versatile device that will push the limits of performance and productivity in the most elegant way.” The 8.4 mm thin iteration is powered by Windows 10, and at just 786 grams it is lighter than the earlier versions. The launch event was followed by two demo sessions, which showcased why Surface was the ultimate device for graphic designers, and how it was reinventing productivity and pushing the boundaries of creativity. Another session for Windows Insiders and bloggers, demonstrated how the Surface engineering team played an instrumental role in developing Surface Pro 4 and the entire ecosystem of Surface accessories. The tech community also got a hands-on experience of the powerful Surface Pro 4.

Microsoft Launches Most Versatile TabletSurface Pro 4 is a tablet that gives you flexibility of a laptop.

Events@

MicrosoftSurface Pro 4 Launch

The Big Launch Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft (left and below) along with (L-R) Bimal Das Joint President–Distribution Business, HCL Infosystems; Ajay Sawant, Managing Director, Orient Technologies; Sumit

Bhattacharya, Executive President, Strategic Businesses and Marketing, HCL Infosystems; Ranjan Chopra, Founder and Managing Director,Team Computers; Tyler Bryson, General Manager – Marketing and Operations, Microsoft India; and Vineet Durani, Director – Windows Business Group.

Power Packed With the versatility of a laptop and tablet, all rolled into one device, Surface Pro 4 has transformed the tablet category by focusing on productiv-ity. It is the most productive tablet on the planet. Packing in nine hours of battery life and even more power and perfor-mance, Surface Pro 4 is the thinnest and lightest package yet. Demos at the event (above and below) had people hooked!

Scan the QR code with your mobile device to visit us online. If you don’t havea QR Code Reader, SMS ‘TW1’ to 58888 to get the App for free.

To know more about Microsoft’s initiatives, visit www.microsoft.com/india/aboutFind us on: www.facebook.com/microsoftindiaand www.twitter.com/microsoftindia

Supported by Microsoft’s BizSpark programme, Kalidasan has created ‘Tuk Tuk Meter’,a Windows Phone app, which allows auto travellers to not only calculate the correct fare, but also identify faulty meters. BizSpark is a YouthSpark initiative that provides start-up companies with free software, support and visibility during the first three years.

Our YouthSpark programmes are aimed at empowering youth to imagine new possibilities and realise their full potential. We work with governments, academia, nonprofits and businesses to provide youth with the technology, skills and opportunities to be successful.



States of ProgressAP School Dropout Project

T he cloud platform has brought in democratization of computing with its on demand cloud infrastructure and distributed computing environment. Now computing has become powerful, affordable, accessible, scalable and universal (anytime anywhere anyone). The scalability, up and down, afforded by cloud means workloads can be tailored to suit the task at hand. This simple flexibility offers huge advantages, as it makes the cloud

platform a tool for bringing about far reaching social changes. Health and education are two critical areas that generate vast amounts of data. In-depth analysis of this data can result in action that directly impacts society. Here, advanced big data analysis and machine learning algorithms can play a critical role. Smart Governments are already getting on intelligent cloud platforms to process the vast volume of data generated, and with the rich visualization and analytics capabilities of cloud are taking positive actions.

AndhrA PrAdesh

Data-driven School GovernanceMachine Learning helps shape education policy in Andhra Pradesh to tackle school dropouts.

states of Progress

Machine Learning & Advanced Analytics in Education

States of ProgressAP School Dropout Project

How Azure ML Helps EducationGlobally, institutions are discovering the power of machine learning (ML) and advanced analytics and working on their strategy to boost graduation rates. In 2014, Tacoma Public School, Tacoma, WA, took up its graduation rate from 55 to 78 percent. The district was earlier known as dropout factory. How did this happen? The school brought in Microsoft Azure ML to analyze data of past five years and using the ML model set up a predictive pipeline to calculate which stu-dent was at risk of dropping out.

In India, Andhra Pradesh is one of the first Governments to recognize the advantages of harnessing machine learn-ing in the social development space. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, in a Facebook post dated August 15, 2015, said, “The cloud-based machine learning solution that they (Microsoft) have built in collaboration with the AP’s Depart-ment of Education will help us predict student dropouts. This is being imple-mented in Chittoor district as part of Badi Pilustondi – flagship program of the Government. This is the first of its kind in India…machine-learning technology can enable both educators and students in making insightful decisions by ana-lyzing large volumes of data in today’s new mobile-first, cloud-first world. It also offers the potential to transform the future of skilled workforce in India.”

AP Government Adopts MLThe machine learning models being built on data being collected on student enrolment will predict dropouts and help develop targeted intervention to prevent potential dropouts. These initiatives may include subsidies, programs and other interventions to help schools improve graduation rate. The project began with a pilot to understand the risk of post 10th class dropouts, from 1,100 schools in the district of Chittoor. The data from various nodal agencies was used to mine data across parameters like student per-formance, school infrastructure, teachers’ skills and socio economic aspects as well as exit points such as Intermediate, ITI, polytechnic and open schooling by col-laborating with other departments.

This analysis led to the discovery of over 60 visual patterns to understand school dropouts. Andhra Pradesh Gov-ernment then expanded the pilot to include the entire state covering more

get more nuanced understanding of the how the dropouts happen.” Happy with the outcome, the Andhra Pradesh Government has decided to expand the ambit of the exercise. As Commissioner Rani informs, ““We have now requested Microsoft to do this exercise across all classes.” The Government has spread the project to all 13 districts which will cover more than five million students across all classes in the next year.

Mr. RP Sisodia, Principal Secretary, School Education Department, Gov-ernment of Andhra Pradesh, remarks, “Education is a key pillar of development for the Government of Andhra Pradesh. Our work with Microsoft on predictive analytics is to see if we can better predict student dropouts before they actually dropout and use the data to do cus-tomized interventions to stop the drop-outs. We now have a 360-degree view of students, mapped to close to 100 variables.” Principal Secretary Sisodia is convinced of the ability of ML and ana-lytics and observes, “Through this solu-tion, the AP Government is confident of acquiring a ‘more nuanced understand-ing’ of the situation. ML will contribute towards better governance.” He firmly believes it is important to get cutting edge technologies into Governments.

ML Beyond Education With success in education, the AP Government has now signed multi-department MoU with Microsoft to undertake machine learning pilots in agriculture, rural empowerment and other departments. The collaboration to this effect was announced during the meeting of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on December 28, 2015. Earlier in September 2015, at the Digital India dinner with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in San Jose, Mr. Nadella, had mentioned the Andhra Pradesh machine learning project to prevent school dropouts, and again in January this year, at the World economic Forum in Davos, he drew the attention of the world leaders to the work being done in the education field with cloud technology.

Across the globe, Azure ML and advanced analytics are being recognized as the new frontiers of technology-led innovation for social change. Meanwhile, machine learning surely has the potential to change the way India learns.

than 10,000 schools under the Badi Pilustondi (back-to-school) campaign. The machine learning model designed to predict student dropouts has already produced 600,000 predictions.

Post the successful completion of the pilot, Ms. Sandhya Rani, Commissioner, Department of Education, Government of Andhra Pradesh, said, “We have now built a predictability service along with Microsoft, with access to mandal level officers, who can just enter the data of new student and discover the probability of a particular student dropping out.” Commenting on the analytics, Commis-sioner Rani said, “Few of the early trig-gers, we observed, are total GPA, Math and language score, medium of instruc-tion, gender and community that lead to dropout.” The initial insights on dropouts point to academic performance (higher marks = less dropouts), medium of language (kannada-medium schools = more dropouts vs English = lower drop-outs), gender (girls > dropouts). Predic-tion service designed for government mandal officers shows dropout prob-ability for every student in every school/mandal/district. The interface allows offi-cers to do counseling.

The understanding of student profile has helped evolve individualized and customized counseling. The results, as Comissioner Rani observes, are excel-lent. “We are proud to say that as on today, we are at 90 percent confidence levels to be able to predict dropouts and as we work with more data year on year, we are confident that we will

Education is a key pillar of development for the Government of Andhra Pradesh.

Our work with Microsoft on

predictive analytics is to see if we can

better predict student dropouts before they

actually dropout...



On January 7, Microsoft unveiled Surface Pro 4, the thinnest, lightest and most powerful tablet that transforms into a full-fledged laptop in seconds, with the addition of a type cover. The tablet is designed to reinvent personal computing

and sets the gold standard for convertible tablets. Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, says, “It is a highly prolific and versatile device that will push the limits of performance and productivity in the most elegant way.” The 8.4 mm thin iteration is powered by Windows 10, and at just 786 grams it is lighter than the earlier versions. The launch event was followed by two demo sessions, which showcased why Surface was the ultimate device for graphic designers, and how it was reinventing productivity and pushing the boundaries of creativity. Another session for Windows Insiders and bloggers, demonstrated how the Surface engineering team played an instrumental role in developing Surface Pro 4 and the entire ecosystem of Surface accessories. The tech community also got a hands-on experience of the powerful Surface Pro 4.

Microsoft Launches Most Versatile TabletSurface Pro 4 is a tablet that gives you flexibility of a laptop.

Events@

MicrosoftSurface Pro 4 Launch

The Big Launch Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft (left and below) along with (L-R) Bimal Das Joint President–Distribution Business, HCL Infosystems; Ajay Sawant, Managing Director, Orient Technologies; Bhaskar

Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, Sumit Bhattacharya, Executive President, Strategic Businesses and Marketing, HCL Infosystems; Ranjan Chopra, Founder and Managing Director,Team Computers; Tyler Bryson, General Manager – Marketing and Operations, Microsoft India; and Vineet Durani, Director – Windows Business

Power Packed With the versatility of a laptop and tablet, all rolled into one device, Surface Pro 4 has transformed the tablet category by focusing on productiv-ity. It is the most productive tablet on the planet. Packing in nine hours of battery life and even more power and perfor-mance, Surface Pro 4 is the thinnest and lightest package yet. Demos at the event (above and below) had people hooked!







In the past few years, industries across the globe have witnessed unprecedented changes as they learn to work with cloud computing and test its transformative powers. One such industry that has benefitted from the immense potential of cloud, cloud-based apps, machine learning and advanced analytics is healthcare.

At the nucleus of the massive transformation and development of the healthcare industry, lies information technology. Supported by technological innovations and advancements, the healthcare industry has undergone systemic changes. How-ever, the needs of healthcare sector are of an evolving nature, and require delivery models that allow collaborative platforms and sharing of information. There is an increased need for efficiencies in diagnosis and cost effective care. In this scenario, cloud computing promises to change the profile of the industry. Cloud platforms allow all stakeholders, from medical practitioners, research organizations to the health insurance industry, to collaborate effectively.

Cloud computing has allowed the traditional paper records-based industry to tap digitized information anytime, anywhere. As hospitals adopt more cloud-based services, and move healthcare applications to cloud platforms, they are discover-ing the power of enhanced engagement. In the cloud environment, there is better

Transforming Healthcare Cloud computing is enhancing the efficiencies of the data-driven healthcare industry, as it addresses various critical scenarios.

Case StudyCloud Platform for Healthcare Industry


Case StudyHealthcare on the Cloud

and enhanced seamless coordination between patients, medical practitioners and research institutions.

Across the globe, as healthcare play-ers realize these benefits, there is a spurt in migration of the healthcare industry to the cloud to enable a patient-centric and data driven environment. In India too, notable healthcare players are migrating applications to cloud plat-forms with the assured knowledge that that adoption of cloud computing helps hospitals strengthen business growth. The three fundamental business consid-erations driving cloud adoption in the healthcare industry are:

Speed: Reduced ‘time to market’ (‘time to develop’ and ‘time to deploy’) makes IT agile in servicing the needs of business units or developers and enables business to compete and grow in the digital economy.

Scale: In a data-driven era, the cloud

provides an infinite set of computing resources for health service providers to compete with improved intelligence. New digital economic capabilities such as big data, machine learning, etc., allow businesses predictive and disruptive ways to compete and innovate in the market space.

Economics: The cost efficiencies of scale make businesses more profit-able and productive. The pay-as-you-go option in addition to the benefit of changing CapEX to OpEX models are built into cloud computing platforms.

The Cloud Edge A 2012 report of Cloud Standards Cus-tomer Council titled, Impact of Cloud Computing on Healthcare illustrates how “cloud computing caters to the key tech-nology requirements of the healthcare industry” and lists them down as follows:

Enables on-demand access to computing and large storage facilities which are not provided in traditional IT environments.

Supports big data sets for electronic health records (EHR), radiology images and genomic data offloading, a burden-some task, from hospital IT departments.

Facilitates the sharing of EHRs among authorized physicians and hos-pitals in various geographic areas, pro-viding more timely access to life-saving information and reducing the need for duplicate testing.

Improves the ability to analyze and track information (with the proper information governance) so that data on treatments, costs, performance, and effectiveness studies, can be analyzed and acted upon.

For better interoperability and con-nections, healthcare institutions need to work outside their firewalls and provide access to their data, which otherwise will lie unused in their on-premise servers. However, opening up protected data has its share of issues. Healthcare industry has “stringent requirements for security, confidentiality, availability to authorized users, traceability of access, reversibility of data, and long-term preservation”, notes Impact of Cloud Computing on Healthcare report.

Here, Microsoft with industry-leading approach to security, privacy, and com-pliance, assists healthcare companies minimize cost and complexity as it helps them migrate to the cloud.

Why India Must Move Healthcare to the CloudOne of India’s largest and fastest grow-ing industries, healthcare can gain potentially by migrating to cloud com-puting. In 2015, healthcare providers in India are expected to spend $1.2 billion on IT products and services—an increase of 7 percent over the spend in 2014, says Gartner. A Zinnov study highlights how cloud-based solutions can improve two aspects of Indian healthcare services delivery: 1. Cloud computing by lowering IT Infrastructure spend can help reduce cost by approxi-mately 30 percent and help augment service quality at lower cost in hospitals; and 2. Cloud computing can potentially help in delivering applications such as CRM, which in turn would improve user experience.

Microsoft’s cloud solutions are designed to power next-generation healthcare services. One of the key hindrances for cloud adoption in the sector, as noted earlier, is data residency. Commercial cloud services through local datacenters take care of this issue as they help automate business process, create innovative solutions and enhance customer service, thus creating a wealth of opportunities for the ecosystem.

Cloud Computing Transforms Patient ExperienceOne of the key challenges for hospitals is creating seamless and hassle-free patient experience. Core line-of-busi-ness applications like, HIS, ERP, PACS, etc., automate workflows, provide more visibility into patient information, build more collaborative teams, and deliver better patient care. A next-generation, technologically-advanced, cloud-ready solution enables hospitals to focus more deeply on care delivery and patient experience.

Fortis Healthcare, a leading player in the Indian healthcare sector, adopted a public cloud-only approach to improve the user perception and remove dependence on its company-run datacenters. Thus, Fortis freed its IT team from time consuming micro-managing of infrastructure, the IT team has been able to solve business problems that transform patient care.

Fortis decided to move away com-pletely from on-premise datacenters to Microsoft Azure Infrastructure-as-a-


Case StudyHealthcare on the Cloud

Service. This enabled managed infra-structure and services and is bringing the healthcare provider agility to build and deploy applications.

Fortis is now running diverse plat-forms and solutions on the cloud – OSS, Oracle. etc. By the end of 2015, Fortis had migrated 21 of its hospitals on Microsoft Azure. The switch to cloud platform has led each Fortis hospital to report improved performance and increasing transaction volume.

Columbia Asia, an international healthcare group, too opted to go on the cloud recently. Microsoft helped it build a next-generation cloud ready hospital management system which is now helping the hospital group meet its emerging enterprise needs. Microsoft has evolved a customized cloud-ready HIS for Columbia Asia which enables its healthcare professionals to gain more visibility into patient information, build collaborative teams, and deliver enhanced patient care. With cloud plat-forms, its radiologists are now collabo-rating and running tele-radiology for the group’s and third-party hospitals.

Healthcare research institutions like L

V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), are har-nessing the power of cloud computing coupled with machine learning to digi-tize patient data and derive insights for improved deliveries. IT solutions that not only improve productivity, but also bring healthcare delivery models closer to the patients, are the need of the hour today. LVPEI is developing the demographic eyecare profile of the country, a project that works on a model of data analytics and is set to revolutionize the healthcare sector. The model uses Azure ML to pre-dict the success probability of corrective eye surgery like Lasik.

Almost 75 percent complete, the proj-ect covers 124 vision centers of LVPEI. The eyeSmart Electronic Medical Record system that works with advanced data analytics was developed in collaboration with Microsoft. Working with this system, the institute discovered that it had repre-sentation from every corner of India. This data will help in demographic disease profiling and care delivery. The institute has moved 1.1 million consultations data of patients, collected over five years, on the eyeSmart EMR system to Azure. The data analytics of administra-

tive and clinical data is now enabling the institute to derive insights which would have far reaching effects.

Future of Healthcare with Cloud Computing

Connected healthcare services will help India’s march towards a digital future. An integral element of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India vision, connected healthcare with pre-ventive care powered by big data and analytics will ensure health for all in the country. Telemedicine, a fast emerging sector in the country, is expected to rise at a CAGR of 20 per cent to reach $18.7 million by 2017. The healthcare industry’s ability to provide to enhanced patient care and prepare for preventive care offerings, will take the country on the path of robust health. The industry will benefit from cloud-based services through local datacenters as health information is critical. Microsoft is part-nering with several state governments to provide local datacenters and cloud and analytics solutions to ensure that India’s healthcare industry remains in the pink of health in the years to come.

Connected healthcare services will lead India towards a digital future. An integral element of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India vision, connected healthcare and preventive care powered by big data and analytics will ensure health for all.

Devesh has developed a groundbreaking solution, which at first maps a child’s actions, and then analyses that data to create apps and interactive games that enhance learning abilities in dyslexic children. This innovative solution won Devesh’s team the Imagine Cup national finals. Imagine Cup, a global technology competition, is a YouthSpark initiative that offers students a platform to use their creativity and knowledge to help address the world's social challenges.

Our YouthSpark programmes are aimed at empowering youth to imagine new possibilities and realise their full potential. We work with governments, academia, nonprofits and businesses to provide youth with the education, skills andopportunities to be successful.


Scan the QR code with your mobile device to visit us online. If you don’t havea QR Code Reader, SMS ‘For’ to 58888 to get the App for free.To know more about Microsoft’s initiatives, visit www.microsoft.com/india/aboutFind us on www.facebook.com/microsoftindia and www.twitter.com/microsoftindia

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