A religious place, Bollywood and a cricket match venue may not necessarily be connected to business, but Apple CEO, Tim Cook had other ideas as he felt that it was here that all were interconnected and made India’s heart beat when it came to consumption of the Internet. Cook set off to take part in a Hindu ritual at a temple in Mumbai and signed off the day with a Bollywood party hosted by Shah Rukh Khan in Mumbai, which was attended by several celebrities including actors Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Madhuri Dixit-Nene and Aishwarya Rai, AR Rahman, Mahesh Bhatt and Farah Khan. From there, he set off to watch an IPL match in Kanpur. It was not just fun, but business as well for Cook as he went on to inaugurate the Apple development centre in Hyderabad and have a meeting with the Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao. This Apple’s new office in Hyderabad will focus on developing maps for Apple products. The company will hire up to 4,000 new employees at this office, Apple said. He announced the setting of an app design and development accelerator in Bengaluru by early 2017. The Cupertino-headquartered company has not disclosed details on the kind of investments that it is making into these new centres. After all the fun he had, Cook touted that the next significant market for Apple would be India. “Do what you love, put your heart into it and enjoy what you do,” was the success mantra for youngsters, according to Cook.
After a debacle showdown in the Delhi elections, the BJP leader and former IPS officer Kiran Bedi set off as Lt Governor of Puducherry, a post that has been vacant for the past two years. The Union Territory was under the additional charge of Lt. Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The appointment comes after the Congress-DMK alliance won 17 seats in the 30-member Assembly. The AIADMK, which contested the elections on its own, won four seats while the BJP could not get even a single seat. The post has been lying vacant after the Narendra Modi government sacked UPA nominee Virendra Kataria on July 2014. Bedi, who joined the BJP just before the 2015 Assembly elections in Delhi and had been the party’s chief ministerial candidate said, “I am there for the benefit of the country. I am here to give my best every day, each day. I am grateful for the government's decision. They trusted me,” said Bedi about her new assignment. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, with whom Bedi had differences as part of the India Against Corruption movement and against whom she had fought the polls, congratulated Bedi in a tweet, “My best wishes to Kiran Didi (elder sister) for this new role.
Editor-in-Chief of CNBC Awaaz and CNBC Bajar for over a decade, Sanjay Pugalia has signed off his role with the company. Pugalia is known well in both print and electronic media and his 25 years as a journalist is enough proof. He was earlier with Star News, Zee News, Aaj Tak, Navbharat Times, BBC Radio and Business Standard. Pugalia, who is taking a month’s break, declined to comment on his future plans when contacted by Medianama. Meanwhile, there has been a reshuffle in media groups. Alok Joshi, the Executive Editor at Network18 has been announced as the Managing Editor of CNBC Awaaz and CNBC Bajar, and Dharmendra Singh has been elevated to Deputy Managing Editor. Network18 had appointed Santosh Menon as Chief Content Officer to handle the digital businesses of the Network18 Group, including moneycontrol. com, firstpost.com, news18.com, pradesh18.com, and in.com. Manish Maheshwari has joined Network18 as the CEO of Web18, where he will lead digital and e-commerce assets, audience growth, content monetisation, business development, inorganic growth, mergers and acquisitions and product management.
From buying movie tickets to getting a right restaurant everything is just a touch away as the ‘Google Assistant’ helps you with daily tasks. Indian-born Sundar Pichai also unveiled ‘Google Home’—a voice-activated product that brings ‘Google Assistant’ to any room in your house, a new messaging app called ‘Allo’ and video calling feature ‘Duo’ as the company kicked off ‘Google I/O’, at its annual developer conference in Mountain View, California, recently. The ‘Google Assistant’ is conversational—an ongoing two-way dialogue between you and Google that understands your world and helps you get things done. “The assistant is an ambient experience that will work seamlessly across devices and contexts. So you can summon Google’s help, no matter where you are or what the context. It builds on all our years of investment in deeply understanding users’ questions,” Pichai wrote in a blog post. ‘Google Home’ lets you enjoy entertainment, manage everyday tasks and get answers from Google—all using conversational speech. With a simple voice command, you can ask Google Home to play a song, set a timer for the oven, check your flight, or turn on your lights. The messaging app ‘Allo’ comes complete with the ‘Google Assistant’ so you can interact with it directly in your chats, either one-on-one or with friends. Allo includes ‘Smart Reply’ which suggests responses to messages based on context and comes with fun ways to make your chats more expressive, including emojis, stickers and the ability to get creative with photos. ‘Duo’ is a companion app for one-to-one video calling. Best of all, both Allo and Duo are based on your phone number, so you can communicate with anyone regardless of whether they’re on Android or iOS. Both apps will be available this summer.
The founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, Sunil Bharti Mittal, received the Alumni Achievement Award of Harvard Business School. The award is presented annually since 1968 and is the highest honour given to any alumni of the institute. “I am truly honoured to receive this recognition. Harvard Business School’s renowned management programme helped me validate and sharpen my work towards putting together the building blocks to create one of the leading global telecom companies —Bharti Airtel,” said Mittal. Mittal serves on the Prime Minister of India’s Council on Trade & Industry and has held various prestigious positions like Vice-Chairman of International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). He was also felicitated with a Padma Bhushan, country’s third-highest civilian honour, in 2007.
Flipkart has hired Abhijit Upadhye as the Vice-President of Business Development and Harish Abichandani as the CFO, according to the Economic Times. Prior to this, Upadhye was the Senior Director, Worldwide Supply Chain and Relationship Partner for McDonald’s Japan and will now report to Ekart head, Saikiran Krishnamurthy. He has about 20 years of experience in strategy, supply chain, sales and consulting, having worked at companies like McDonald’s for most of his career, and Infosys. Abichandani, former CFO, Tata Teleservices, will now be reporting to Flipkart CFO Sanjay Baweja. He has experience in US GAAP, financial planning, private equity, capital market operations, MIS, reporting and compliance, treasury and taxation.
Sachin Singhal joins PayU India as the head of consumer business. He will be responsible for designing effective business strategies and bring in growth by taking the company’s plans to diversify the consumer business to the next level. The inception of the consumer business category roots back to the recently announced partnership between PayU and India’s leading bank, IndusInd, to redefine the digital experience for Indian consumers, by bringing the full suite of consumer banking products online and powering the same through payment innovations and online ecosystems enabled by PayU. The consumer business category would aim at unifying Indian banking services with latest fin-tech innovations by PayU and create a paradigm shift in the way banking and payments are done in India. “At this stage of our growth in our business, it was imperative to bring on board someone with a vision and entrepreneurial passion. Sachin brings valuable industry knowledge and experience to PayU India which will help us design effective business strategies and more innovative solutions for our consumers and help PayU grow its presence,” said Nitin Gupta, CEO and Cofounder, PayU India on the new appointment. Sachin, with over a decade-long experience in business and technology, during his last stint with Bharti Airtel, has led channel marketing and mobile internet growth. He also led some of the major innovations in mobile internet at Airtel, like One Touch Internet (which won MWC GSMA 2015 award for best consumer mobile application), Airtel Zero (sponsored data platform), and Wynk Movies.
New brands and Bollywood celebrities are synonymous. Kareena Kapoor Khan will now be the face of Benelave, assaying different roles in the campaign which weaves in the regional flavours of India and the brand’s features with catchy phrases, ‘Beautiful can be tough too’, ‘shower hua iqrar hua’, to name a few. Conceptualised by creative agency Caakwan, the integrated 360-degree brand campaign, ‘Looks good, works great’, brings out the seamless adaptation of Benelave and Kareena’s personality traits—individuality, style, strength of character and warmth that helps build, sustain and boost better relations all round—the foundation on which Benelave’s brand philosophy ‘Better Bathrooms Better Relations’ is built. “Benelave is positioned as the branded alternative at a consumer-friendly price point. With this campaign we are aiming for two clear targets for Benelave, increase the brand decibel and recall in the consumer mind and aim to capture 12-15 percent market share in the mass market segment,” said Sandip Somany, JMD, HSIL Limited. Commenting on the new role, Kareena said, “I am extremely enthusiastic to partner with Benelave.”
DBS Bank has appointed former Bank of America executive Mohit Kapoor as head of its technology hub in Hyderabad, Telangana. The technology centre called ‘DBS Asia Hub 2’ (DAH2) is the bank’s largest tech hub outside its home market of Singapore. Kapoor was formerly global delivery leader and chief technology officer at Bank of America - Continuum, in Hyderabad. He will report to Surojit Shome, DBS India CEO, and Paul Cobban, COO of DBS’ Group Technology & Operations. “DAH2 will support the bank in strengthening its technological capabilities across the region as well as its digital banking strategy. Its plan is to recruit 1,500 people over the next two years,” the bank said. “DBS is hugely committed to India, and our investment in DAH2 further underlines this. With this facility, we will be able to develop and retain digital intellectual property, have greater ownership and control of technology, and accelerate new ways of working. It will also allow the group to further leverage the potential of the Indian talent pool in the field of information technology,” Shome was quoted in the release.
Three industry executives from Myntra and Qualcomm have joined hands with Chinese Internet company LeEco, to strengthen its leadership team in India. Shrinivas Bairi as senior director of R&D from Qualcomm where he was Director - Engineering, and has worked at the systemon-chip maker for 17 years and Manish Aggarwal as vice president, marketing communications for Smart Electronics Business, are the new faces on the board of the company. Aggarwal, the Myntra’s vice president marketing and head of monetisation will be the LeEco’s content marketing business; Divya Dixit has been brought on board as director, from Percept Live where she was marketing head. LeEco is looking to set up its R&D centre in India as part of its ‘Make in India’ journey. The Internet major is planning to increase the headcount of its R&D centre based in Bengaluru substantially. The company has sold over 10 million phones in China over a year and 5,00,000 in India in just over three months. LeEco is also setting up in-house Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) in 10 cities across India which will be implemented by end of 2016. The company has invested over $10 million for the cloud and data infrastructure.
