The ceo magazine (august 2016) mobile app development

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Vol. 2, Issue 2 | August 2016

25 Fastest Growing

Mobile App Companies Development in India 2016

Sankar Ragavan Founder & CEO, MariApps

COMPANY OF THE MONTH

Krishna VVS Chandaluri Founder & CEO, Sirez Ltd.

CEO OF THE MONTH

Rubique's online marketplace empowers human lives through providing a convenient platform

Manavjeet Singh Founder & CEO Rubique

CITY

STARTUP

A Magazine for Business Startups and Young Entrepreneurs.

The CEO Magazine

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An Initiative of

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Magazine for Business Leaders & Decision Makers

Vol: 2 Issue: 2 August 2016 Publisher: Shrikant Pandey Editor: Ram Avtar Morya Editorial Team: Kaushal Kumar, Aditya Gupta, Jyoti Sharma, Prateek Singh Editorial Associate:Ayanangsha Maitra, Abhishek Dubey Advertisement: Anil S Koranga anil@theceo.in 9718722305

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W

ith nearly 1.2 billion population, India has emerged as one of the most lucrative markets for smart phone companies. Android is the preferred choice of platform among mobile users in India, with app installs growing rapidly. As a result, mobile internet advertisement industry has become an integral and important part of digital economy. From e-Commerce to lifestyle companies are depending on mobile apps, appsolutely.

Recently PM Modi has launched an app for the PMO, which replicates the MyGov website into a mobile format and offers a neat interface just like the online portal. Citizens can access to critical information about flagship programmes, overview of PM's major initiatives. It will enable people to make a donation to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund. The app will also enable users to directly submit suggestions for the PM's Mann Ki Baat programme.

An article in this issue will give you more detail. The article, How GST will affect the Business Environment presents views of entrepreneurs from different industries.

The CEO Magazine has decided to feature Rubique as cover story in this Mobile App Development issue. Beside other services, Rubique has digitized the credit policies of financial institutions. Thus, a customer gets an easy option to check his eligibility through matchmaking algorithm based on the rule engine where it helps the person to identify the offers accordingly. With few banks, Rubique has also integrated with their system so customers get an inprincipal approval online based on his/her online declaration and this brings more certainty for them. Our editorial associate Abhisekh Dubey has explained in detail. This Mobile App Development issue presents the companies who facilitate their clients with innovative and incredible app services that feature business practices and highly responsive client support. This issue tells the tale of Utopean Media, a Mumbai based digital agency. 'We don't work with big B r e a k i n g brands, we work with small brands to make them big, ' expressed Preksha Seth, founder of Utopean Media.

Our editorial team has interviewed the chiefs of MariApps, AscraTech, Deligence Technologies, FruitBowl and some other companies. Their success stories are carried in this issue. In this issue, TCM is also introducing a few budding entrepreneurs, who are in their twenties. Pls let us know what you want to read in The CEO Magazine.

Content

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FruitBowl: A Team of leading Digital Marketing Agency CEO of the Month Sirez: Developing Mobile Apps to Attract, Interact and Transact.

6-7

8-9

Cover Story Rubique's online marketplace empowers 10-14 human lives through providing a convenient platform Company of the Month MariApps: A rising leader in the world of ERP for 16-17 Marine Ascra Technologies: Creating Successful 18-19 IT Consulting Partnerships Deligence Technologies, An Expert team 20-21 of Node.js/MongoDB and PHP/MySQL

Cover Story

Manavjeet Singh Founder & CEO Rubique

Company List 25 Fastest Growing Mobile App Development 22-23 Companies in India

How GST will affect the Business Environment: Views of Entrepreneurs

29

Utopian Media's agency of excellence and 24-25 flexible services solutions

Visit Darjeeling for nature Beauty- A Place for Greenery & Shop Lovers

30-31

Carlson Rezidor's brand Radisson Blu opens its first Resort and Spa in Karjat

26

Mobile App Trends

32 34

Central Cottage Industries, TechProcess launch e-payment gateway to mark Handloom Day

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UCWeb to unveil UC News for India market, decorates 9Apps

35

PM launches PMO Mobile app at Townhall Meet

28

MSAI and Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust launch mobile app to enhance safety of women Acquisition News Flipkart adds Jabong to its Cart,

36

IDFC Bank acquires Grama Vidiyal Microfinance

Sankar Ragavan Founder & CEO, MariApps

COMPANY OF THE MONTH

Krishna VVS Chandaluri Founder & CEO, Sirez Ltd.

CEO OF THE MONTH

Funding News Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani invests Rs 30 cr in 10i Commerce

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Reliance unveils two 4G-enabled Lyf phones, deploys advanced network technologies for 4G

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FruitBowl: A Team of leading Digital Marketing Agency

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n 2010, FruitBowl was co-founded by Faisal Amin and Dedeepya Reddy. The company is a creative digital marketing agency of the freshest minds brought together to conjure the most creative effective solutions to all your brand challenges. With a massive growth, the company is being providing its services better than whatever it promises to its clients. As per remarkable job, FruitBowl has been constantly ranked as one of the leading digital marketing company in India by various independent organizations. The company is a full service Interactive media agency (Social Media, Digital Marketing and Branding) and has been working with a team of highly skilled, creative and overall talented souls with a great zeal. FruitBowl has successfully served more than 300 accounts which include national giants like Reliance Energy, Mumbai Metro, TATA, Vadilal, Zodiac, BMW, Saint Gobain, Sansui, and more.

Along with the hearts of its clients, FruitBowl has also won numerous prestigious awards; Gold for the best digital marketing campaign for CSR category at the Asian consumer engagement forum.

Market Positioning Digital marketing sector is a high crowd market where hundreds of digital marketing agencies are working only in Mumbai. Thus, it was not an easy task for FruitBowl to come in existence. Everyone puts their heart and soul into their work. With such effort, the company has become one of the best preferences for the clients.

"FruitBowl works as a partner with its clients as a unified business solutions provider because it believes, when an agency is not associated with their clients, they may lose their interest in the future and hence, the company may not be able to perform its best," by FruitBowl.

Solution/Product Offerings / Business As a full service interactive media agency, our objective is to cater to all the digital advertising needs of our clients. This includes cost effective media buying, ingenious designing, full proof planning, strategising, attaining visibility on social media and redirecting

Faisal Amin

Dedeepya Reddy

CEO & Co-Founder FruitBowl Digital

Co-Founder FruitBowl Digital

traffic to websites. Experimental marketing, app development and CRM are a few more benefits that FruitBowl offers to implement.

We serve as means of interaction between brands and audiences through social media, building a stronger connection and establishing true and lasting relationships. At FruitBowl, we indulge with our brands at a personal level, taking in account various cultural and social aspects associated with them and their products, so as to come up with meaningful and memorable communication tactics.

The Team behind FruitBowl FruitBowl has been providing its valuable services,and making the clients completely satisfied. A team of (110 and above) highly skilled, talented and zealous people who have a positive attitude towards work, represent the company, and took the company from among 800+ agencies, to the top-10 in a span of 6 years. The India

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company, because of creative talent, feels lucky to create something beautiful and unique creations almost every next day and builds brands and design websites as well.

Differentiating Factors We work with a vision where we do not compromise with the qualities of our products. We aim to be a service provider which exceeds our clients expectations serves better services than whatever commitments are given to the clients.

FruitBowl's brand management theory postulates establishing strong interpersonal relations with clients, to acquire a substantial understanding of 'what they want so as to give them what they need.

Our young, talented and passionate workforce pushes towards realizing set objectives in a creatively infused, free flowing environment where ideas spawn and bounce from every direction. The synchronization between the various creative and strategic departments of FruitBowl plays a major role in the still formulating success story of the company.

It is the diversity of our talents and the unification of our wills, which truly separates us from any other Digital marketing agency.

Road Map/ Future Plans: FruitBowl is growing day-to-day with at a massive rate.

Now, it has great plans to expand the business in Dubai which has huge and scarcely explored digital space. The company has a marvelous strength of skilled people by which it helps startups and it has already helped many digital startups like Utopian Media and also a few nonmarketing startups. Now, the company is setting up a new startup which will help more in businesses as well as customers in B2C connections.

Key Executive Faisal Amin: He is a well qualified entrepreneur, with a degree of Masters of Business Administration (MBA).

Faisal has a vision of understanding new trends and

requirements in the market. He saw a future in integrated e-commerce when people were not even aware of it.

Realizing the fact that the decision making process in big companies, was often a tedious process, Faisal aimed at being a decision-maker himself. Cutting out unwarranted time on discussions and meetings, he focused more on getting result oriented decisions with low time slack.

Faisal has big, expansive goals to connect the clients through digital marketing. The result - Fruit Bowl Digital, A passion-driven full-service digital media agency that leverages long-term digital solutions that cover digital and commercial ads, marketing, offline communication and website updates. Branding as his arsenal and FruitBowl talent pool his legion, they tackle marketing problems for clients with ease. Faisal was awarded the recognition of Top 50 Digital Marketing Professionals in India.

Dedeepya Reddy: With the desire to create something unique and remarkable in the creative digital marketing industry, Dedeepya along with Co-founder & husband Faisal Amin setup FruitBowl Digital. She did well to set a digital Interactive full service media agency, formed to bring brands closer to their audiences.

DD doesn't believe only in acting to guide her employees but actively participates in brainstorming sessions and fruitful discussions, often becoming the source of inspiration for great ideas. As Head of Strategy & Media Planning, DD is responsible for devising the most foolproof plans and blueprints in order to provide client's services that are worth their money.

Dedeepya's ideology states that "detailing is what sets a great piece of work apart from something that is just good. Striving for excellence and giving great attention to the little things that make up a whole are keys if you wish to create something that marvels.�

DD can be easily described as the backbone of FruitBowl Digital - an essential part of the agency that supports the structure and workflow of the company, without whom the agency wouldn't stand the way that it does.

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CEO of the Month

Sirez: Developing Mobile Apps to Attract, Interact and Transact.

T

he world as we know is in a continuous phase of metamorphosis. We've come a long way from Alexander Graham Bell's Original Phone to Steve Job's iPhone and Google's Android. These are powered by most advanced mobile applications which are making a million bucks. And behind these apps are the most superior minds. And that's what they aim for at Sirez, mobile apps developed to attract, interact and transact.

Sirez was incepted with a vision to be a full-service Digital Solutions Company, where clients would be served with most innovative and unbeatable creative and tech-based products and solutions. They currently cater to clients based in INDIA, USA and UK.

Differentiating Factor What differentiates Sirez from other Digital and Tech companies is the ability to put efforts in all the areas of an online business such as: U I / U X , Creative

Over the last 3 years, Sirez has been actively working on Development of Mobile Applica-tions for both iOS and Android platforms. Their team of skilled professionals is well-versed with the current trends in terms of UI/UX, tools and technology to develop interactive and user-friendly Mobile Apps for both Enterprise and Start-Ups. Sirez has built some proprietary platforms / solutions, such as: § Omni-Channel Commerce Platform § Loyalty Platform § Content Platform § Email Marketing (Promotional and Transactional) § Mobile Marketing § App Store Optimisation

This year Sirez has introduced a new service for 'App Store Optimisation' on AppAfter.com to cater to Organic promotions of Mobile Applications both on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. AppAfter facilitates an App to be in the top charts and be that 'staple app' which everybody needs. It will strengthen the App's ability to be visible in this noisy market and exponentially increase the downloads.

Krishna V V S Chandaluri (Founder & CEO) Sirez India

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Design, Tech Development, Content Development, Marketing and Analytics under one roof. The company is also very futuristic in terms of being aware of the business environment. They continuously survey the market for any new technology or need. This ability has led them to outgrow their reach and services.

Sirez has been working with some of the prestigious brands and startups. Some of the key clients include: Yepme

Timex

Wills Lifestyle

iOrderFresh

Siti

Bharosa Club

Southern Travels

hp

Magppie

Unilodgers

Road Map 2005 - Company Incorporation with the aim to provide Creative and Tech Services 2009 - Started Social Media Marketing Services 2011 - Started Digital Media Marketing and Planning Services 2013-Started Mobile Application Development Services 2016 - Started App Store Optimization Services Future Plans The company is moving forward with an aim to bring innovations in digital marketing. It aims to strengthen its Proprietary tools and solutions for Enterprise and Startups for quick turnaround and go-to-market.

And many more.

Key official

Awards and Recognitions Mr Krishna V V S Chandaluri (Founder & CEO) Sirez has been a leading firm in terms of being media 'eye star' and has been recognized on several occasions as Top Performing Digital Solutions Company. The latest being recognised by:

ยงSILICON INDIA magazine, which featured Sirez in the 'Top 20 Most Promising Digital Media Marketing Companies 2015

ยงCONSULTANTS REVIEW magazine, which featured Sirez as 'CONSULTANT OF THE YEAR 2015'.

Mr Krishna V V S Chandaluri is the founder and CEO at Sirez. He is a well-qualified entrepreneur, having a vast experience in Digital Marketing.

An out and out entrepreneur, Krishna has over 17 years of experience in Digital Marketing and building Tech based Platforms.

He had earlier co-founded a Web Services Company (GeoRapid) in the year 2000 and later formed Sirez in 2005.

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Cover Story

Manavjeet Singh Founder & CEO Rubique India

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Rubique's online marketplace empowers human lives through providing a convenient platform

R

ubique, formerly known as bestdealfinance, was incepted by

Mr. Manavjeet Singh in October 2014. Bestdealfinance, now Rubique,

started its journey with the vision to spread the business throughout the

world and become the largest online marketplace for financial products.

The company aims to work with having open office policy, with an

opportunity for all and all ideas are discussed and implemented based on merit. The company is operating the business from Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata and Hyderabad.

Rubique is an online marketplace for financial products offering a wide range of loan products and end- to-end loan fulfillment to individuals and MSMEs. It has introduced a tech-led lending solution which is unique in the terms of its match-making algorithm and direct integration with Financial Institutions' lending systems. With this technology solution, the model is focused on disbursement rather than mere lead generation allowing customer to get the best deal in the quickest possible time while lowering the cost for customer acquisition for the financial institution.

Rubique has created a one stop shop online platform where customers can view all offers available in the market thereby reducing the time in search. The company has digitized the credit policies of financial institutions. Thus, a customer gets an easy option to check his eligibility through match-making algorithm based on the rule engine where it helps the person to identify the offers accordingly. With few banks, Rubique has also integrated with their system so customers get an in-principal approval online based on his/her online declaration and this brings more certainty for them. The company has made this engine available at all touch points through technology solution whether website, call centers or even if customer comes through its associates, hence ensuring Omni channel experience for our customers.

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The hits & misses

Product & its Business Model

It's always a challenge for a startup to establish its foothold in the marketplace and more so when they are trying to introduce new practices in industry. It's was a struggle time for Rubique (bestdealfinance.com) too to make financial institutions understand their proposition, get their buy to integrate with their platform & grow the offers base to ensure they provide the same promise to their customers. It was challenging time to build on to the proposition as well as incorporate the feedback from various stakeholders. In constant evolution process to establish & strengthen its brand image, bestdealfinance (which had red & blue color logo) became Rubique - A tech-savvy companion who solves the financing puzzle of the customer in quickest possible time (6 vibrant colors depicting the cube)

Product offerings: Catering both to individuals as well as the SMEs, the platform facilitates the best deals across a wide range of loans and credit cards. It has a product portfolio of more than 155 product agreements, of which 90 cater to the SMEs in terms of the collateralized Loan against Property (LAP), working capital, term loans, commercial vehicle & equipment financing.

Business Model: Rubique's business model is focused on disbursement allowing customers to get the best deal in the quickest possible time while lowering the cost for customer acquisition for the financial institution. The company follows a perfect blend of online and assisted online models wherein it targets all consumer segments be it digital savvy, digital naĂŻve or traditional customer.

What differentiates Rubique from many others in the field is that it is acutely conscious to deliver the products better than whatever the commitments are given. In a crowded market place, it has never been easy for anyone to startup a business and flourishes it according to expectations. However, Rubique entered in the market with a strong determination and having uniqueness in its services. In current market of ambiguity and uncertainty, it provides customer a chance to take informed decision which is more certain related to their financing need or credit card. Rubique is different than online aggregator websites.

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Let's know more about Rubique's uniqueness: ยง A neutral platform where lender & borrowers can discover each other bringing transparency in the process

ยง Matchmaking algorithm & Fulfilment engine which offers faster access to credit along with certainty

ยง Wide range of products for individuals as well as small business owners which is not offered by any online model

ยง Multichannel distribution tapping every consumer segment be it digital savvy or traditional customers (Offline to online model) Overall proposition offered by Rubique is definitely in favour of individuals as well as SMEs for all loan products as well as credit cards.

The team It's a catch 20 situation when it comes to hiring talent in a start -up. You need passionate minds who would like to explore new horizons. Manav realized that hiring talent from same industry means bringing set mindsets & hitting same road blocks. Along with his HR lead in toe, he started identifying talent across other industries like FMCG, travel, telecom, insurance, research, technology, BPO who could bring fresh perspective to solution that they were working. Rubique has now team of 69 people across industries now. But the process does not end here, to nurture & bring out the best in people, you need to give them freedom to work, experiment, fail & yet back on track. Manav decided to imbibe the culture of open culture & that's why Rubique office is designed on "No cabin, on the floor" concept, and moulding the entire experience of work revolving around fun. Rubique has lean organization structure with no hierarchy, it encourages each & everyone to contribute their suggestions/ideas towards company's vision.

Major Milestones for the company since founding As per the unique services, Rubique has been success to achieve multiple milestones through its remarkable efforts. Some of the milestones have been mentioned below: 1.

Only in 1.5 years of operations, it became able to tie up with 60+ financial institutions.

2. One of the very few online platforms addressing financing need of SMEs and currently has over 90 product agreements only for SME products from the 155 products agreements signed so far.

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3. Since inception, it has made revenue of 8 crores, out of which 4 crores have been done only through Q1 Fy 16-17, which indicates the growing acceptance of its proposition.

4. Rubique has been always cautious about its unit economics & so far, it has been able to maintain it positive.

Since inception, the company has processed over 39,000 applications successfully and it has been working with more than 60 financial institutions and has disbursed loans worth Rs. 443 crores and credit setup of around 12,300+ far. Even, Rubique gives the credit of the success to its supporting staffs. A team of skilled, expertise and having high zeal has been utilizing their potential massively.

By next year, we plan to expand to four more cities & strengthen our presence across 10 cities. We will also be investing on the technology front to keep sharpening our technology proposition to customers as well as the FIs.

About the Founder & CEO Mr. Manavjeet Singh (Founder & CEO) First generation entrepreneur Mr. Manavjeet Singh is the Founder & CEO of Rubique, online marketplace platform offering a comprehensive range of financial products and services from multiple Banks and Financial Institutions, through a cutting-edge technology platform. A veteran banker with more than 25 years of rich experience in the field of banking & financial services, he is a well-recognized name in the industry.

Recognition of Rubique Manavjeet started his professional career with Xerox followed by several strategic leadership positions in prestigious corporate organizations like Citibank India, SBI Mutual Fund, HDFC Bank, Reliance Consumer Finance, Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd and YES Bank. In his career, he has handled various types of products ranging from retail & MSME loans, mutual funds, microfinance, to unsecured business lending. Manavjeet has also played an instrumental role in setting up businesses before launching his first entrepreneurial venture, Rubique in October 2014. He conceptualized the online financial platform with a vision to bring transparency and to make finance simple & accessible through technology and create disruption in the online lending domain.

Although the company started its journey in 2014, it has been recognized in the category of "Mobility" & "Enterprise Application" in DQ Live Business Technology Conference for becoming one of the leading companies & Awards hosted by Dataquest in 2015.

Rubique looks in future, in its own words: We strive to become the largest online marketplace for financial products in the near future and one of the few players handling the landscape of Indian lending space.

A professional with a distinguished reputation of being the driving force, Manavjeet has a proven strategic track record in operational efficiencies, business development, sales productivity, managing large teams & financial management. With his expertise, he has taken the company from being just a competitor to web aggregators getting instant approval to going beyond web aggregation and emerging as one of the very few players disrupting lending space through technology solution, in just one year of its existence.

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Company of the Month

MariApps: A rising leader in the world of ERP for Marine

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n 2015, MariApps started its journey offering state-of-the-art enterprise solutions for the marine industry. The company was founded by Mr. Sankar Ragavan and established its headquarters in Singapore. With a team of high skilled, expertise and zeal people, MariApps offers world class shipping software products to cater all types of clients across the globe. Its flagship product PAL e3 is currently running on more than 700 ships covering almost all modules of ship management segments like Crewing, Payroll, PMS, Purchase, Accounts, Catering, Voyage, Dry Dock, QDMS, and Insurance etc.

MariApps is one of the leading companies in web based ship management ERP. The company aims to create innovative products on successive deliveries and has already built unique products according to the needs of the ship management world.

the market share of ERP in marine industry was held by few large vendors. Mr. Sankar broke this monopoly by introducing his company MariApps to the ship manage m e n t world.

"Ther e is a big

MariApps is a Microsoft Gold Certified Development Partner and has been certified by Deloitte with ISAE 3402 - Type 2 certification every year for following standard global norms and keeping the system processes & controls in place.

Journey of MariApps The company commenced its journey by building an ERP for a large ship owner/manager based in Hamburg.

MariApps has so far built three versions of the ERP covering almost all ship management modules. The company is in progress of delivering the next generation PAL ERP system for the Marine industry. Due to the complexness of Marine industry, till 2014, 90 percent of

Sankar Ragavan Founder & CEO MariApps

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opportunity for ERP providers like us to develop applications for the non IT familiar shipping industry."

Says Mr. Sankar.

In a short span of time, MariApps have created a name for itself in the ERP market of marine industry.

MariApps is also one of the very first companies to introduce mobile apps for ship management industry.

The development center of MariApps is present in Kochi having around 150+ highly skilled professionals. Its flagship product PAL e3 is a fully web-based and mobile compliant solution targeting ship managers and ship owners. PAL e3 stores data on a single data source, thus enabling organizations to achieve 'single version of truth' to improve their performance, productivity and profitability. MariApps products are free from security risks as it is thoroughly tested in-house and also by external security consultants.

PAL e3

§ PAL e3 is Enterprise Resource Planning (marine ERP) software targeting ship management and ship owners.

§ A unique product covering all functional areas of the ship management domain with plug and play options for any module.

§ A web based ERP designed for high performance, quicker implementation and easier maintenance.

§ Works with all browsers (IE, Chrome, Firefox) and mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows).

§ Intuitive, simple, easy to use and highly customizable, with built-in interfaces to banks and vendors.

§ Comprehensive video based training module covering all modules with built-in self-assessments.

§ PAL e3 is built with optimized processes and workflows to improve productivity.

§ A customizable dashboard approach, facilitating data driven decision making and management by KPI's.

successfully integrated all our processes under the PAL umbrella. We have offices in 30 countries and support from the MariApps team round the clock has been impressive. PAL solutions has also assisted us in achieving significant data quality improvements. We now enjoy a seamless data flow between our offices and vessels. Thanks to PAL system, now BSM is able to provide their customers financial & operational reports through CWA (Customer Web Access) module/dashboards, thereby promoting full transparency of their operations.

PAL has provided us a unique, integrated system that gives us a competitive edge in the ship management market."

MariApps for employees MariApps provides a world class environment to its employees operating from various locations across the globe. The company does not work by the clock, and also has employee friendly HR policies like work from home options, work sharing options etc. MariApps ensures that its employees get regular training in the latest technologies in order to stay updated and to deliver top notch software products.

Testimonial

About CEO

David Furnival COO, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement “PAL enterprise solutions, has brought stability and innovation to Bernhard Schulte Ship management offices worldwide. PAL e3 has currently 16 modules in our global offices and 300 vessels, covering all functional areas of ship management. BSM has

Mr. Sankar Ragavan Founder & CEO, MariApps Sankar has more than 20 years of experience in IT Domain, he has worked for various MNC's across the globe. In the past, Sankar has served as Corporate Director of IT for Bernhard Schulte Ship Management and as Director of IT for Jumeirah International.

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Ascra Technologies: Creating Successful IT Consulting Partnerships

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ncorporated in 2009 by Mr Atul Agrawal, AscraTech has earned reputation that has unique combination of quality, value, trust and reliability The company delivers its solutions based on modern and innovative technologies.

In the terms of providing remarkable services to the clients, AscraTech has been ranked amongst Top-25 companies providing web solutions.

"Technology is one of the most crowded and challenging markets, but the number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do, it lets people to be creative. It all depends on understanding of people's needs and providing them some of innovative and latest technologies. If we do well there, we kenned we've got something exhilarating believes - Atul Agrawal, founder at Ascra Technologies.

From web to mobile channels, the company provides comprehensive IT Consulting accommodations including e-Commerce solutions, portal development, social media integrations, and mobile application development for a clientele which include a few renown designations. In IT industry, when companies rely and collaborate with other service partners in the favor of strategic development, the trend of such partnership has surged.

A s c r a T e c h ' s responsive website development, mobile applications, and social media solutions have been popular with many startups and companies.

Among its clientele that consists names such as J. Walter Thomson, Digitas LBI, Velvetcase, Voxp

Taking Brands Online Ascra Technologies has been highly apperceived as a quality IT consulting partner in the IT meadow by its reputed clients. Its highly customizable solutions that cater to multi-spectrum industries consummate unique requisites developed with industry standard and are scalable. "Our solutions that are built with the right coalescence of technology and infrastructure understanding the business needs and its application sanction us to run controlled experiments to understand end-user experience & engagement, analyze & improvise which make us unique," asserts Atul.

Atul Agrawal Founder Ascra Technologies

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op, Mojarto amongst many others, six of them have already received funding, thus encouraging AscraTech to proud more on its offerings. While Atul believes in ameliorating services over an exorbitant marketing strategy, AscraTech's philosophy has been building processes, systems, and testing platforms that eventually benefit the customers and the company.

Expounding on AscraTech's marketing strategies, Atul expresses, "We like the idea of it spreading via word of mouth - organically and naturally. It's not that we don't market, we just don't advertise. Also, courteous treatment and quality service will make a customer a walking advertisement so delivery of quality services is our way of marketing. Innovation is the driving force for all technology solutions and there is no substitute for innovation. Original, revolutionary ideas is what we focus on in our solutions to build a better user experience. Analytics and personalized experience are other areas we are looking to improvise on".

Footprints to the Effulgent Future "Quality in a service is not what you put into it, it is what the customers get out of it. So focus on creating value for customers" Atul has learnt over the years. The company's pool of developers, engineers, designers, marketing team and managers are guided and incentivized amidst opportunities of learning every time through veracity and transparency. To develop employees' skills, AscraTech involves them in handling clients and helps them in implementing their ideas that set example of a free-flowing work-culture with a flat hierarchy. With comprehensive business strategy on spending and building best-in-class consulting & technology business that can scale facilely, this company has witnessed a good growth till now without external funding and doesn't wish to compromise its liberation.

Atul integrates, "We are a bootstrapped dedicated team of cognizant and ardent folks who are committed to a mission playing multiple roles".

primary technologies abaft the solutions and create a unique customer experience. We have significantly contributed in the markets we have participated and will continue to do so while we explore new ones," Atul desists.

It was great to deal business with the clients like J. Walter Thompson, Digitas LBI, Concept PR, VelvetCase, VoxPop, Mojarto - NDTV, Smaaash Entertainment, Contest2Win India, Travelibro Trackers, Venus Jewel, Precious Platinum, Viacom 18, Canara Robeco Mutual Funds, Jet Set Go Aviation, Acres Club, Emkay Global and many more. It is highly possible to steer the business with more clients soon.

Key Executive Atul Agrawal, Founder A passionate technopreneur with vast experience, Atul brings in value to the services in Ascra Technologies. He is an entrepreneur and passionate about technology. His experience has been in IT analysis, design, development, testing, implementation, project management, product delivery, client engagement and negotiations, business analysis and IT strategy. He has remarkable knowledge about technology evaluation and selection. Atul is expert entrepreneur having specialization in technology evaluation and selection, agile development, implementation of cloud infrastructure, formulating and executing project plans, business development, creating alliances and partner strategies.

Having prospered in delivering more than 500 solutions to over 200 brands engaging millions of users every month, this organization has grown as a strong technology & strategy partner. Focusing on customers and integrating value to the services, AscraTech's journey on collaborating with the clients and partnering them in their growth saga has been praiseworthy. "As a technology & consulting firm we are always focused on building customized & intuitive applications for the web to build modern systems embrace good ideas and deliver elegant solutions. We will perpetuate to control the India

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 19 |

Deligence Technologies, An Expert team of Node.js/MongoDB and PHP/MySQL Your Growing Technology Partner

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eligence Technologies, a fast growing technology company was founded by Mr. Sanjay Kumar and Nidhi Aggarwal in 2014. With only few people in initial period, the company started serving its valuable clients. Deligence Technology has a great team of highly qualified, skilled and experienced professionals. The team has been utilizing their complete potential to fulfill the commitments given to its clients and to get success to make its customers well satisfied.

Deligence Technology's team is experts of PHP/MySQL and it mainly works in Joomla and WordPress CMSs. The people of the company are also expert of Node.js/MongoDB and mainly working on Metor.js. The company is highly concern of providing services with high qualities and innovative technologies.

On current stage, the company has been providing its services to over 100+ clients from all over the world including The USA, Canada, England, Switzerland, Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Thailand and India.

Deligence Technologies also have concerns for its team members. The company had started its journey with very low strength in its team. Now, there are more than 20 people have been working with 'Zeal & Zest'. As per the growth rate of the company, the team size would be a large in coming years.

Time to time, the company has achieved massive successes and has proved its importance in the field of technology.

Major Milestones for the company since founding ยง We become Meteor Official Partner in Nov, 2015 ยง MongoDB Partner in Dec, 2015 ยง HikaShop Partner in Jan, 2016 ยง Jomres Partner in Mar, 2016 ยง Shopify Partner in July, 2016

Sanjay Kumar CEO Deligence Technologies PVT. LTD.

As IT business is a highly crowed market, there are multiple service providers who serve their services. But, there are only few of them who are able to fulfill of customer's needs. It is a great challenge to make our customer well satisfied and we are here to bring back the trust of the clients from all over the world not only in Deligence Technologies, but in India and Indians also.

With high skilled team, the company is devotee to move further in the terms of new innovative services.

Now, the company is looking towards its next set target which is to start working in IoT (Internet of Things) before end of this year. The company aims to provide its services in the entire world and moving forward strongly towards the direction.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 20 |

Concerns/Vision of the Company

§ We are in action to fulfill the aspirations of our team §

members.

Deligence Technologies is a well-known and trusted brand in IT Services Industry.

Services & Solutions of Delligence Technology

§ § § §

Web App & Web site development Mobile Apps Development (Android & iOS/iPhone) Web & Mobile App Maintenance Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Key Executive The people behind the success of Deligence Technology are Sanjay Kumar and Nidhi Aggarwal who are the promoters & Directors of this company.

Sanjay Kumar: Mr. Kumar is CEO of Deligence Technologies PVT. LTD. He is an experienced IT person with having technical degree of DOEACC "B" Level which is equivalent to Master of Computer Application (MCA). He is a Zend Certified Engineer (http://www.zend.com/en/yellowpages/ZEND003862) and also an Oracle Certified Professional (OCP-DBA). Sanjay has 12 years of experience in Open Source.

Nidhi Aggarwal: She is the other promoter and director of the company. She has earned her master

Nidhi Aggarwal Promoter & Director degree in commerce (M.Com) and Master in Business Administration (MBA) In Finance. Now, she is playing the role of COO (Chief Operating Officer) in Deligence Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 21 |

25 Fastest Growing

Mobile App Development Companies in India Company

Person

Designation

Ascra Technologies

Atul Agrawal

Founder

Beeravolu Tech

Beeravolu Mahnedar Reddy

CEO & Founder

CodeYeti

Ashish Jindal

Co-Founder & CEO

Deligence Technologies

Sanjay Kumar

CEO

ESolz Technologies Pvt Ltd

Vikas Jain

CTO

FruitBowl Digital

Faisal Amin, Dedeepya Reddy

CEO & Co-Founder

Goyal Infotech

Vikas Goyal

CEO

Himalayan IT Solutions

Neeraj Arora

Director

INNOTICAL SOLUTIONS

Amritansh Alok

Founder & MD

Influx Interactive

Harish Anand Thilakan

Managing Director

Khusaki Technologies Pvt Ltd

Satish Sawra

Founder, CEO India

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 22 |

Company

Person

Designation

Kazma Technology

Muzaffar Ahmad

CEO

Mari apps

SANKAR RAGAVAN

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

NewGenApps

Anurag Rastogi

CEO

Open Cubicles

Amit Aggarwal

CEO

Prismetric Technologies

Ashish Parmar

CEO

Parangat Technologies

Sahil Gupta

CEO

Pop Up Technologies

Manisha Rathor

CEO

QSS Technosoft

Pankaj Wadhwa

CEO

Runestone Studios

Rushabh Shah

Founder & Director

Sirez Ltd

C V V S Krishna

CEO

Trium Info Solutions

Hitesh Sonani

CEO

Utopian Media

Preksha Seth

CEO

Vision Future Combine

Sandeep Kelkar

Director

WebileApps Technology

Naz Mir.

Co Founder and Director *All the company names has been arranged in the alphabetical order, this is not ranking.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 23 |

Utopian Media's agency of excellence and flexible services solutions

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reksha Seth, founder of Utopian Media, realized that there is a huge scope in digital marketing solution sector. Founded in July, 2015, Utopian Media is a full service digital agency based out of Mumbai. The company provides effective digital marketing solutions to all your brand challenges. As digital marketing market is a highly congested business sector where multiple companies have been providing their services with strong commitments, it was not easy to enter and flourish the business. However, with a strong determination and clear objective, Preksha decided to start-up the business. She States 'We don't work with big brands, we work with small brands to make them big!'

That's where Utopian Media blossomed as an agency.

The company has complete solution of digital marketing services where it takes care of strategy, brand communication, positioning, website development, app development, Content Marketing, Relationship Building, SEO and related services. Utopian Media believes in collaboration and partnership for empowering the digital marketing sector.

talented and high zeal people where they are utilizing their massive level of potential. With an offbeat environment and passionate workforce, everyone here loves what they do.

Breaking t h e monotony o f a corp ora te

Utopian Media takes initiative to connect with clients on a personal level to communicate about their brands in a memorable, engaging, and high personalized way so that the company may attract the right audience and move them towards its core goal.

Clientele at Utopian Media As the company is young and extremely diligent, it has nearly 50 plus clients, including national level clients such as Rich Graviss, RBL Bank, Siyaram's clothing, Mars Hospitality, water Stones Hotel, F&B Asia, Pastonji Icecreams, Polar, Proline are the few names.

Team of Utopian Media As a king always wins a battle with the help of his/her ministers and soldiers, Utopian Media has been also flourishing the business with the help of its employees.

The company has been working with a team of skilled,

Preksha Seth Founder & Business Head Utopian Media

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 24 |

like office, coming to the work at Utopia is a different experience altogether. Despite all these, the people of Utopian do manage to get work done and are dedicated to making their clients happy, and the world a better place, one idea at a time.

Massive effort of the company Although digital marketing business is a high crowd market, Utopian Media started working with a vision where; there were multiple factors to the audience to attract towards the services and solutions of the company. The company always prefers to provide innovative and newer technologies at effective cost.

Having worked at some of the largest agencies and for the biggest of the brands, the team has a real-time experience on what makes a wonderful app with in the set timelines. Its work stems from passion, and not as a prerequisite for money. The quality of its work is reflected in the money that flows in. As the name suggests, perfection runs in the blood of every Utopian.

Everyone that works here has a desire to create amazing user experiences. Being great at what you do is the cost of entry at UTOPIA. It doesn't care of competition in the market, it believes in focusing on the qualities of its own work rather than to follow-up any one.

Milestones Utopian Media's voice We have grown exponentially for an agency that is just a little over a year old and won national level accounts in no time like Rich Graviss, RBL Bank, Siyaram's clothing, Mars Hospitality, Water Stones Hotel, F&B Asia,

Pastonji Icecreams, Polar, Proline. Our team size has doubled and so have our revenues.

Utopian Media looks to solve general problems through its own solution The company feels that there is a huge gap between what the SMEs want and what the agencies are providing.

Utopian is here to fill the gap. The company personally interacts with the clients to understand their requirements and offer path-breaking solutions to help them achieve their goals and grow.

Key Executive Preksha Seth (Business Head) Preksha is a headstrong believer in the existence of UTOPIA. As founder and business head, she takes care to help brands with effective communication strategies for brand growth, sustainability and better ROI through strategic planning, vigorous handling of social media, design, media planning and buying, search engine marketing, app development, ORM, email marketing, CRM and web development.

She is a natural leader, with a proven track record of building, investing in and empowering successful team, she leads by example and get makes magic happen for the clients.

She acts as a strategic partner skilled at influencing and collaborating with regional and local brands across a complex, matrix structure capable of establishing powerful media campaigns and consensus under highly resistant and challenging conditions.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 25 |

Carlson Rezidor's brand

Radisson Blu opens its first Resort and Spa in Karjat TCM, KARJAT, July 30: Radisson Blu of Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group opened its Resort & Spa in Karjat, a city of Raigad. Situated amongst naturally beautiful surroundings, verdant greenery and awe-inspiring hillscapes, Karjat is a popular weekend destination for regional tourism and international travellers. A convenient two-hour drive from Mumbai and Pune, the resort offers 360-degree views of the stunning Sahyadri Mountains in which it is nestled, along on the banks of the Ulhas River. The 102 key, new build property is the Radisson Blu brand's 29th addition within Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group's portfolio in India.

Radisson Blu is one of the world's leading hotel brands with nearly 300 hotels in operation in 69 countries.

Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group includes 1,400 hotels in operation and under development with more than 220,000 rooms and a footprint spanning 115 countries and territories.

Raj Rana, South Asia CEO of Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group expressed, "We are excited to partner with Mr. Chakraborty to launch this upper upscale resort. This resort's opening reinforces our commitment to enhance the brand's portfolio and further expand our presence in resort destinations throughout India. With its unparalleled resort experience and commitment to excellence, we are confident Radisson Blu Resort & Spa Karjat will be a shining success."

The hotel's award-winning design predominantly features Eastern themes with nods to Thai and Balinese architecture, while retaining an internal narrative that celebrates

Indian design, culture and spirit.

Designed to welcome the savvy, modern traveller, Radisson Blu Resort & Spa Karjat offers wellappointed rooms and suites, with modern amenities.

To ensure guests have a relaxing and pleasurable stay, the resort offers a state-of-the-art fitness center, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a children's pool and an outdoor, heated Jacuzzi. Wellness enthusiasts have a plethora of options to choose from when looking for pampering, at the Escenza Spa. A range of indulgent spa rituals, administered by expertly trained professionals using international products, are designed help guests relax, rejuvenate, and see results. A multitude of dining options includes the Riverside Poolside Bar, which allows guests to dine under the stars, a luxury that most city-dwellers are unaccustomed to. The venue offers an extensive selection of grills and barbecues, accompanied by customised cocktails. The Blu Lounge is a cosy yet sophisticated

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bar where guests can unwind over an extraordinary array of international and domestic wines, spirits and cocktails, accompanied by a curated selection of small bites. An outdoor deck area encourages guests to enjoy being surrounded by the resort's multiple water bodies, in a laid-back yet elegant setting. The Palms is the resort's all-day dining restaurant, featuring some of the most popular dishes seen on menus both in India and around the globe. Guests can sample the Executive Chef's culinary innovations while admiring the pool view and surrounding greenery.

"Radisson Blu Resort & Spa Karjat offers a beautiful balance between modern design and enveloping natural beauty. It is a first-of-itskind luxury offering in an upcoming destination, complete with great connectivity, service excellence and quality standards befitting the Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group. We are excited to introduce this property to a range of discerning guests, " Suhasish Chakraborty, owner of the resort expressed.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 26 |

Central Cottage Industries, TechProcess launch e-payment gateway to mark Handloom Day TCM, Mumbai, 10 August: To mark National Handloom Day, Central Cottage Industries Emporium, an emporium for authentic handloom and handicraft products, launched its epayment gateway to enable digital payments with the support of TechProcess. The payment gateway will empower weavers to sell and increase their business thus helping its customers to avail the facility of easy product booking.

Central Cottage Industries Emporium is an organization under Ministry of Textiles that promotes handicrafts and handlooms on various platforms and sells products created by Indian artists.

The emporium has been selling artefacts only through cash, credit card, cheque and bank transfer for which customers had to visit their Delhi showroom or select the product on the website and order it offline. The tedious process of viewing the products online and then buying them offline resulted into procrastination and in most of the cases loss of buyer's interest, thereby causing loss of sales. With e-payments now enabled, it will enhance the overall customer experience by providing the option of purchasing the products online with ease and also, help the weavers and artists to get the right price to their products.

Having joined TechProcess in July 2010 Kumar Karpe has led its transformation to become one of India's leading electronic payments platforms. Under his leadership, the company has transformed itself from a payment processing company to one that continues to build innovative end user based technological platforms leveraging its deep understanding of customer insights and analytics. Prior to joining TechProcess, Kumar was the Director - Financial Services Sector at IBM India.

TechProcess' operation spans across 40 cities in India.

TechProcess is a recipient of inprinciple approval of Bharat Bill Payments Operating Unit. The company has a simple vision to offer anytime, anywhere payments to all. The company has been pioneering electronic payments in India since 2000 by setting up India's first electronic bill presentment and payment service.

It severs clients from emerging businesses to the largest and most trusted brands across India.

TechProcess has been building, managing and servicing the e-

payments ecosystem through its innovative cloud based payment platforms which have been adopted by leading brands. The service offerings cover the entire gamut of non-cash modes of electronic payments such as card payments, Net-banking, NACH, NEFT/RTGS, IMPS, e-wallets and the like. By catering to a plethora of industries such as large utilities, ecommerce portals, telecoms, banks and finance companies, Tech Process has evolved as one of the most trusted and respected brands for online payments in India.

"Globally, Indian handicraft products are extremely popular and are collected by enthusiasts across the length and breadth of our country. We are glad that our association will enable customers to experience our convenient online payment platform and buy the products with ease. Our association is aligned with the Government's initiative of 'Digital India' and will help enhance consumer's digital payment experience," Kumar Karpe, CEO, TechProcess Payment Services Ltd Said.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 27 |

PM launches PMO Mobile app at Townhall Meet New Delhi: As a part of the MyGov's anniversary, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched an app on 6 August creating a digital platform for citizens to have discussions and directly submit grievances to the Prime minister's office (PMO) right from their smartphones.

Before launching the app, Modi distributed prizes to the winners of various contests, including Ek Bharat Shrestha Bharat, Duties of a Citizen, Governance Quiz and India-Africa Quiz.

Prime minister launched the MyGov portal on 26 July 2014 as a part of the government's Digital India campaign. The government had organized a two-phased online contest in March 2015 on MyGov platform for the development of PMO app. A team of six engineering students from Delhi won the contest and finally developed the app.

"Interestingly, the team that won the contest to develop the app is a team of young engineering students from Delhi," said Gaurav Dwivedi, CEO of MyGov portal. " A team of six students - comprising students from Sri Venkateswara College, BITS Goa, BITS Pilani, Maharaja Agrasen University of Technology, Delhi College of Engineering and Stony Brook University New York - are the faces behind the first-ever crowd sourced app for the Prime Minister's Office, an extension to MyGov.in initiative. The team led by Raghav Sarin, a student of Economics Honours at Sri Venkateshwara college, won a contest organised by tech giant Google in association with the Indian government that saw more than 10,000 entries and 45,000 ideas," Indian Express reported.

The PMO app replicates the MyGov website into a mobile format and offers a neat interface Just like the online portal. The app contains groups and discussion topics like Clean Ganga, Food Security, Girl Child Education, Caring for the specially abled and more.

MyGov has 3.52 million registered members, 1,82,000 submissions in 491 tasks and 3.40 million comments in

590 discussion themes. The app has a variety of important topics of discussion, polls, suggestions, etc.

Apart from allowing users to take appointments with PMO officials, the app also allows users to directly submit suggestions for the PM's Mann Ki Baat programme, have a peek at his pre-fixed calendar and an option to share posts on all social media and online platforms with one touch. A listing of selected questions people have posed to the PM on Twitter and his replies, and audio files of his messages are some of the other features. This app also provides citizens access to critical information about flagship programmes, overview of PM's major initiatives, and enables people to make a donation to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund .

The event was Modi's first 'Town hall' address in the country to mark two years of MyGov, the government's citizen engagement platform. He had last year answered questions from the audience at a town hall event at the Facebook headquarters in the US.The day-long event hosted a panel discussion and saw participation from union ministers and senior officials. The proceeds from the sales of merchandise on this app will go to the Ganga cleanliness programme, MyGov chief executive officer (CEO) Gaurav Dwivedi informed.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 28 |

How GST will affect the Business Environment: Views of Entrepreneurs

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he GST tax reform is India's biggest tax reform since independence which aims to streamline India's fragmented tax system with a single levy.

The Parliament has finally passed the long-pending GST bill.

According to Lalit Chaturvedi, General ManagerMarketing, Kyocera Document Solutions India, GST is a reform on the scale of the 1991 Economic reforms that changed the entire DNA of the Indian Economy. The Government is moving to create a massive single market without barriers within our borders. This will bring in transformation of the overall business scenario in the country. Uniform tax rates will enable companies to be independent on selecting states for establishing their offices, or warehouses and hence, inventory cost and cost on maintaining multiple warehouses will also come down significantly. Thus, the overall business operation cost is expected to cut down by 5 to 10% and multiple taxation system will come to an end. Referring to Office Automation industry, with subsuming multiple indirect taxes, there will be no more ambiguity in interpretation and classification of tax structure, GST will bring in a win-win situation for all.

Mr. Arjunpreet Singh Sahni, Executive Director of Solitairian Group said "By replacing a large number of indirect taxes by a single indirect tax regime across the country, Goods and Services Tax (GST) is all set to bring economic revolution in India by providing greater relief to the industries from the complex tax system and so the approval of GST Bill in Rajya Sabha is undoubtedly a step towards greater progress and growth that will surely lead to a considerable increase in the GDP of the country."

Arun Kumar, eminent economist and retired professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University opined "It's very difficult to prevent this trend of issuing fictitious bills.

It's a common practice with builders, who accept major portion of the price of a house in cash and no receipt is

given to the con sumer. Unless strict measures are taken to prevent black money generation, such practices will continue."

With a goal to create one single market, the GST bill will boost economic growth with some optimistic estimates suggesting an added 2%. The GST regime will bring uniformity in the market creating a consolidated national-market-space. The distinction between goods and services will not apply, thereby, ensuring ease in tax compliances by ensuring one unified tax levy. This will also help SMEs avail the complete tax incentives paid on procurement of all input goods as well as services from various sources such as import, inter-state purchases, and local purchases and services like power, telephone etc. The start-ups and SMEs have more reason to rejoice as this GST structure will provide higher exemptions to new business, businesses with turnover between Rs 10 and 50 lakh will be taxed at lower rates, R. Narayan, Founder and CEO, Power2SME said. " GST implementation is a huge game changer for the transportation and logistics industry. Supply chains will now be designed and operated based on business & supply chain considerations i.e. speed to market, potential impact of lost sales, total cost of delivery including working capital cost, rather than only on tax driven considerations. The Express delivery industry will see a positive impact due to shift to the organized sector, better transit time requirements by customers to ensure faster working capital turnaround. One of the biggest benefits for the road express logistics service providers will be the significantly enhanced predictability of transit times as check posts will get removed. This predictability improvement should lead to a shift of volumes from air to road as the cost - transit equation will tilt significantly towards road movement."

Mr. Abhik Mitra, Managing Director of Spoton Logistics expressed The CEO Magazine.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 29 |

Visit Darjeeling for nature BeautyA Place for Greenery & Shop Lovers

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ince the greenery is getting extinct from our surrounding, people are probably missing such climate where they could watch sceneries with pleasant greenish environment. In coming season, people are looking such places where they can visit any favorable tourism place. As per the circumstances, Darjeeling is one of such places, where people are showing their interest. If you love to visit a place where you can enjoy the greenery along with many other options like shopping of foreign goods and many more, Darjeeling is the perfect place for you to visit in the up-coming season.

Darjeeling, located in west Bengal is situated of 6,710 ft. in Lessar Himalaya. The place is the UNESCO World Heritage Site which is famous for its Darjeeling Himalayan Railways and its famous tea industry. The vivid landscapes, weather and tea plantation along with slopes make the place beautiful and now, it is considered as one of the most popular tourist destinations in India,

especially for them who loves greenery. Even, people love to visit while plucking tea as it looks bizarre when women pluck tea with hanging basket on their shoulder. Darjeeling spread a large area of 3149 sq. km which has been separated for shopping centers and visitors can shop different varieties of showpieces, clothes, handicrafts and many more at reasonable cost. You can also shop for woolen garments and goods made in outside of the country.

Darjeeling is one of the places for a visitor which provides you miscellaneous types of attractive options while just one visit.

Let's know more about tourist attraction centers in Darjeeling Observatory Hill: Observatory hill is also known as "Makal-Babu-Ko-Thaan." It is the oldest site in Darjeeling. The hill is near Chowrasta, is popularly known for its magnificent views of snow-clad peaks, including mount Kanchenjunga, is visible from the observatory hill.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 30 |

The Mall: For visitors, it is an awesome place.

Mall is like the town center of Darjeeling. You can enjoy while watching few of old and heritage stores, and there is open view also with many pine trees all around. Apart from these, there are lots of young lads with their ponies offering horse rides to children.

Chowrasta: Chowrasta is situated in the heart of Victorian Darjeeling which is a gentle place for the shoppers and souvenir collectors.

As per given above the few attraction points, there are many other places where you could make yourself enjoyable and peaceful. If you visit there, you should not miss the places like Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling, Rangeet Valley Traveler Ropeway, Places rround Darjeeling, Pashupati, Tiger Hill and Mirik.

How to Reach Reaching Darjeeling for travellers is not a peculiar task, it is well connected through almost modes of transport, except water way.

By Air: Travelling by air for Darjeeling is very convenient. It can be reached here from all the major parts of the country to Bagdogra airport. It is only 3 KM away from Darjeeling.

By Train: According to the different zones of the country, people can reach by train. Sealdah and New Jalpaiguri are the two major nearest railway stations.

By Road: Darjeeling is well connecting to Silliguri.

There is a huge terminal here, state and private buses run overnight from Calcutta to Silliguri.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 31 |

Mobile App Trends

B

ecause of latest gadgets, smartphones, new development of technologies and other trends, Mobile industry goes through rapid changes. Mobile app installs increased by 129% in 2015 as compared to 2014 with shopping, entertainment and gaming apps being the top 3 installed app categories respectively. Travel apps, however, witnessed the fastest growth with installs increasing by 474% as compared to 2014. Here we are presenting a few trends related to mobile apps.

M-Commerce and M-Banking In the coming years thousands of people are expected to adapt to M-Commerce. For processing transactions, use of cash, credit cards or debit cards will be used less. A good percentage of retail commerce is expected through tablet or smartphones. This is a positive trend to be seen Rather than using credit or debit cards for purchasing and making payments, people will use mobile phones. Google Wallet and Apple Pay will also play a significant role.

Rapid increase of Multiplayer Games Games continue to be the most popular category of apps for both feature phone as well as smartphone users. Mobile games will be more on cloud in upcoming years. Developing a mobile platform that can successfully incorporate all of these applications as well as the next generation of applications - which will incorporate features such as HD video, highfidelity audio, digital SLR-like imaging and augmented reality- is a challenge. A gradual increase can be observed in mobile games to multiplayer from single player.

HTML 5 From past few years, HTML 5 has been getting lot of popularity. More hybrid mobile apps are being created everyday. With rise of hybrid apps based on HTML, a decrease in the native apps is expected in upcoming years. Hybrid HTML5 app development will gain more and more momentum in mobile industry and this trend is not going to change in foreseeable future. Hybrid HTML5 apps are successful in enterprise and consumer app development.

IoT and Big Data Integration News aggregation App IoT it is going to be integrated with everything we use everyday. Mobile devices can't stay far away. Healthcare, energy and automotive industries have already started experimenting with IoT and mobile integration. Mobile app helps businesses to grow and flourish in their respective areas of expertise. One can contemplate on finding new data collection procedures or methodologies that will give you a better insight into what fits and also this will help you develop apps that are client expectation centric and performs well. In a word, IoT and Big Data are going to be an important and integral part of mobile app development in near future.

People always want to know about daily and current affairs. News app seems to be a fierce competition.

There are rocking apps like News Hunt, In Shorts and TOI. Cheetah mobile has come out with their technology-oriented news recommendation app Insta News. UC web is also developing the News app.

Mobile Browsers Like almost all the countries, in our country, Mobile browser is on the growth path of technology life cycle.

Millions of first time smartphones users will be more relying on the browsers to access content.

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 32 |

UCWeb to unveil UC News for India market, decorates 9Apps

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libaba Mobile Business Group's venture UCWeb India has announced the launch of UC News - a platform that brings together news content from over 20 featured channels, including news, cricket, technology, entertainment, movies, lifestyle and more. With its technologies and big data, Alibaba Mobile Business Group is committed to bringing about mobile internet innovation and reliability.

According to a spokesperson "UC News is the perfect solution, providing relevant, local, communitycentric content. The app, developed exclusively for India, is powered by the company's big data technology that tracks and matches the trending keywords on Facebook and Twitter and decides on the trending topics before recommending them to the user. �

UC News offers a platform that brings together both traditional and new media content creators in a single place, and introduces them to millions of Indian users who already enjoy a faster browsing experience on UC Bowser. It is an easy-to-use app, and features a unique and highly user-friendly interface. The app also allows users to customize content subscription, as they can choose any kind of content they wish to consume. To help make valuable opinions heard, UC News is also planning to partner with selfpublishers and key opinion leaders in the future for original content.

On the other hand, Alibaba Mobile's another leading android marketplace 9Apps has announced its foray into the lucrative e-

commerce space in India. It will now offer multiple and exciting new features on its app for shopaholics, along with its existing role as India's leading provider of android apps and games. The move marks a major shift in the company's strategy for India market and is expected to benefit 9Apps' 250 monthly active users . This platform also plans to offer Comparative Pricing where users can compare product prices from 8 different sellers including Paytm, Flipkart, Myntra, Snapdeal, Jabong, Askmebazar, Voonik and Shopclues. The Discount Aggregation or Coupon Zone is a one-stop shop for all discounts and coupon codes available on 9Apps. Not just that - users also get a discount of value 50 INR for free when they sign up for Amazon via 9Apps.

9Apps marked the announcement through a mega shopping festival, starting July 25, 2016.

Announcing the launch of the service, Ebrahim Popat, Country Manager, 9Apps said, "9Apps is the first app marketplace to offer these services to users. With these features, we aim to become a oneIndia

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stop solution for our users and help them shop smart. 9Apps is much more than just a tool to download apps and games. We are on a constant look out for ways to evolve user experience." 9Apps also announced a social media contest asking its users to share their crazy and funny shopping stories.

Participants can send in their entries using #MyShopaholicStory and stand a chance to win One Plus 3, amongst other prizes.

9Apps is one of the most popular Android marketplaces globally with a huge user base as well as an abundant and varied app repository.

9Apps supports incremental updates to help users save traffic and increase the speed of product upgrades. Serving over 250 million monthly active users around the globe, 9Apps is available in 7 languages and covers China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Vietnam, Middle East and other emerging markets. 9Apps is a major product of UCWeb - a business within Alibaba Mobile Business Group. 9Apps can be downloaded from 9Apps.cc

www.theceo.in

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 34 |

MSAI and Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust launch mobile app to enhance safety of women

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obile Standards Alliance of India (MSAI) in association with Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust launched I Feel SafeTM Safety Ka Power ButtonSM mobile app to enhance the safety of women and children of India. Smt. Asha Devi, mother of 'Nirbhaya' unveiled the app at a well attended ceremony held on August 9 at Delhi University's North Campus Convention Centre.

"I greatly appreciate the support and motivation that the youth of this country and leaders like Shri Harsh Vardhan and other dignitaries have given to Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust and the cause of Indian women in the last nearly four years. It is my fervent wish that every girl should be able to live a wholesome life and step out of home without the fear of molestation and violence. I am happy that MSAI have developed the 'I Feel Safe' mobile app for this purpose," Asha Devi, mother of 'Nirbhaya' said.

The family of the Delhi assault and rape victim 'Nirbhaya' established the Nirbhaya Trust in December 2012. It is an institute formed to assist women who have experienced violence to find shelter and legal assistance. Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust provides direct assistance to the victims of crime through counseling, legal advice and psychological and economic rehabilitation.

"For centuries, women in India have suffered social strictures and abuse. It is important to change societal mindsets so that every girl of our country receives the respect which is her due and shines in life in her chosen field be it science, engineering, medicine, sports, dance, music or any other field of human endeavour," conveyed Shri Harsh Vardhan, Minister of Science and Technology, Government of India in his message.

The "I Feel Safe" mobile app, powered by Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust, is a personal safety application for smartphone users. 'I Feel Safe' instantly adds a virtual panic button.

Mobile phone owners can simply press the "Safety Ka Power Button" five times to activate an alarm. The app does not need to be invoked for the safety alarm feature to work. In fact, it works even if the screen of the phone

is locked, the SIM card has been removed, no Wi-Fi networks are available and without the need to subscribe to a data plan. The app works across India on all mobile networks and sends near real-time updates about the location of the mobile user.

In the event of an emergency, I Feel SafeTM notifies the user's emergency contacts with the longitude and latitude of their current location. It places an automatic call to the national emergency number 100 and the location of the potential victim is tracked every 30 seconds and made available to their emergency contacts, as well as the I Feel SafeTM emergency call centre team, who then reach out to provide support, to overcome the emergency situation.

"The I Feel SafeTM mobile app addresses the growing need in the country to ensure better personal safety of women and girls if they are threatened with physical abuse or assault. This personal safety solution can also be availed by senior citizens, and anyone who senses a threat to his or her personal safety," stated Ms. Bhawna Kumari, Business Head, MSAI. "I compliment MSAI and Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust for taking the initiative to develop this app. It will not only create a safe environment for women but, it should also help to bring into focus key socio-economic issues impacting the women of India - quality healthcare, education and equal employment opportunities. Delhi Police will extend all possible support in this movement to empower the nation's women," asserted Shri Robin Hibu, IPS, Joint Commissioner of Police, Delhi.

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www.theceo.in

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 35 |

Acquisition News

Flipkart adds Jabong to its Cart

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lipkart Ltd on 26 July 2016 announced that it has acquired online fashion portal Jabong through its unit Myntra in a move to maintain its position as the market leader. But the financial details of the deal were not revealed.

Jabong is one of India's major fashion multi-brand e-store with over 1,500 retail brands. The company witnessed an operating loss of Rs 426 crore in FY15, slightly lower than in FY14. The revenue growth in FY15 inched up by just 7 per cent to Rs 866 crore from Rs 811 crore in the previous year.

Binny Bansal, co-owner of Flipkart said: "Fashion and lifestyle is one of the biggest drivers of ecommerce growth in India. We have always believed in the fashion and lifestyle segment and Myntra's strong performance has reinforced this faith. This acquisition is a continuation of the group's journey to transform commerce in India. I am happy that we will now be able to offer to millions of customers a wide variety of styles, products and a broad assortment of global as well as Indian brands."

Flipkart Executive Chairman Sachin Bansal tweeted: "Welcome Jabong India to the Flipkart family.

We'll create history together."

Jabong is owned by Global Fashion Group and has been on the lookout for a buyer for the last few months. The company has been in touch with Snapdeal as well as Future Group and Amazon, but a deal failed to pass through. In 2014, Amazon reportedly wanted to acquire Jabong but the price tag was a steep $1.2 billion. Jabong is the only loss-making outfit in GFG's portfolio of ten companies in the January-June 2015 period. This acquisition will strengthen Flipkart Group's position in Fashion and Lifestyle segment to compete with Amazon Fashion in India.

IDFC Bank acquires Grama Vidiyal Microfinance

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rivate sector lender IDFC Bank on 12 July bought South Indiabased lender Grama Vidiyal Microfinance for an undisclosed amount. Grama Vidiyal is the fifth-largest MFI in India and has a customer base of 1.2 million, operating from 319 locations across 65 districts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala Karnataka, Puducherry, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh. The assets under management were Rs 1,502 crore as on March 31, with a quarterly profit of Rs 15 crore.

Some of the branches of the non-banking finance company would be converted into IDFC branches. Rajiv Lall, MD and CEO of IDFC Bank said, for the time

being, Grama Vidiyal will continue with its own branding. Grama customers will get full access to banking services of IDFC Bank.

IDFC Bank already has 50 branches serving about 40,000 MFI customers. Grama Vidiyal customers would add to it.

The Grama Vidiyal senior management would continue to run the show and all the employees of the newly-acquired MFI would continue with the unit, Lall said.

Commenting on the withdrawal of IDFC Bank's two partners for the proposed payments bank, Lall said, while Telenor reevaluated its strategic footprint in India, Dilip Shanghvi withdrew after considering the competitive landscape.

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"We decided this was not an opportune time for the trio to pursue a payments bank," Lall added.

This is a first-of-its-kind transaction, where a bank has taken over a microfinance institution (MFI) and made it a subsidiary.

www.theceo.in

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 36 |

Funding News

MyTaxiIndia raises fund from Nihon Kotsu

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ccording to Delhibased online car rental solutions provider MyTaxiIndia (MTI), it has raised $1 million in a bridge round of funding from existing Japanese investor Nihon Kotsu to partly fund its expansion plans on July 21. Nihon Kotsu is an 88-year-old service provider that operates limousines across Japan.

It has a fleet of over 4,000 black and yellow taxis in Tokyo alone. In August 2015, the firm raised $500,000 in its pre-Series A funding from Nihon Kotsu Co.

According to a spokesperson, My Taxi India and Nihon Kotsu share the common values. Cofounded four years ago by Anshuman Mihir, Mohit Rajpal and Satyakam Rahul, MTI has a fleet size of 12,000 taxis in 120 cities and offers a complete spectrum of chauffeur drive services for personal and business requirements that can be booked online. It plans to increase its presence to 200 cities by the end of March next year.

MTI runs daily discount offers for customers and has a 24x7 customer support centre. Recently

it tied up with budget airline SpiceJet to give passengers the option of booking a taxi to reach the airport at the time of ticket purchase, and is looking for more such tie-ups.

The company will use the capital raised from Nihon Kotsu for expanding services to tier 2 and 3 cities, it said adding that a part of the money will also go for technology development, marketing and branding. MyTaxiIndia is also currently in talks with other investors to raise USD 5-10 million in a Series A round.

Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani invests Rs 30 cr in 10i Commerce

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nfosys co-founder and prolific investor Nandan Nilekani has invested Rs 2530 crore in 10i Commerce Services, a one-year-old start-up, founded by Amit Sharma and Apoorva Jois. Sharma and Jois together formed Go Untucked, a private label e-commerce firm.

The Bengaluru-based start-up recruits small vendors in towns and villages that will assist locals to buy online through its app, ShopX. It offers in six local languages to allow non-English speakers to conveniently shop on the app. It has about 13,000 retailers and expects to touch 100,000 retailers across India in the next few months.

"What 10i is trying to do with ShopX is provide the traditional, small retailer the same level of technology, logistics, sophistication

and supply which ecommerce or organised retail gives. So, that's what attracted me to it - using technology you can aggregate hundreds of thousands of small retailers and give them access to the best products, give them access to the best technology and so on," said Nilekani.

"I believe the future of India's development and growth has to be domestic-led, services-led, and achieved by platforms that aggregate rather than by large monolithic companies. So, I see the future as platforms that aggregate taxis (Uber and Ola) or manufacturers (Amazon and Flipkart) or aggregate farmers, etc.

This will also enable millions of people joining the formal economy," Nilekani wrote to Business Standard.

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"I believe in 10i as it is going to aggregate lakhs of small retailers onto a platform and give them the best products, technology, supply chain and customer service capabilities. This will enable them to compete with organised retail and e-commerce." he added.

This is Nilekani's largest investment in a startup since he parked close to $7.5 million in Sedemac.

www.theceo.in

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 37 |

Reliance unveils two 4G-enabled Lyf phones, deploys advanced network technologies for 4G

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s the day of commercial launch for 4G is coming closer, Reliance is constantly increasing its portfolio of LYF smartphones. The 4G entrant has unveiled two smartphones Lyf Flame 8 and Wind 3, which will be available only on Flipakrt. Both the devices offer VoLTE support. Powered by a 1.1 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 processor, Lyf Flame 8 has 4.5-inch FWVGA display with 480x854 resolution. It is is priced at Rs 4,199. This phone offers 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage which can be expandable. The smartphone sports an 8MP rear camera with LED flash and a 5MP front-facing camera. The connectivity facilities like 4G, LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS are there. A 2,000 mAh battery fuels the device.

On the other hand, after slashing prices of its LYFbranded handsets last month, Reliance has one again given a price cut to some of its smartphones.

Now, Reliance Digital has further slashed the prices of LYF handsets by up to Rs 3,000.

According to its annual report for 2015-16, Reliance Jio will have over 92,000 Evolved Node B (eNodeB) and over 1,00,000 small cells at the time of commercial launch. Reliance Jio is present in all of the 29 states of India with a direct physical presence in more than 18,000 urban and rural towns and over 1,50,000 villages. The company has a network of over 2,50,000 route km of optic fibre cable. This telecommunication giant already has the highest amount of LTE-ready spectrum as compared with the current industry players.

Reliance also revealed that Jio has deployed advanced network technologies like Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV), and its network is ready for future evolution of technology including transition to 5G with minimal additional capital expenditure in the network.

The other one, Lyf Wind 3 has a price tag of Rs 6,999 and flaunts a 5.5-inch HD display with 720x1280 pixel resolution. Powering the smartphone is a 1.2 GHz quad-core 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor coupled with 2GB RAM. It offers 16GB of internal storage which can be expanded up to 32GB by installing a According to Reliance, Jio has also built nearly microSD card. half-a-million square feet of cloud data centres and It comes with an 8MP primary camera with LED a multi-terabit capacity international network. flash and a 2MP secondary camera for selfies. On the connectivity front, the handset offers 4G, LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and houses a 2,920 mAh battery. Last week, Reliance launched the Lfy Wind 2 smartphone priced at Rs 8,200. Lyf Wind 2 is the first smartphone in the Wind series to sport a 6inch display and metallic frame design. The handset is equipped with BesLoudness to enhance the audio performance.It runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop operating system. Powering the device is a quad-core MediaTek processor paired with 2GB RAM. The device comes with 16GB internal storage which can be further expanded up to 32GB using a microSD card.

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www.theceo.in

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Vol. 2, Issue 2

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August 2016 | 38 |

RNI No. DELENG18953